#thinking about it i do not really think this flavor of comment cancels those things out

[meadowlarkx]

i have some thoughts i can't put into words well but the more one decides that like [assorted relatively minor things, interests, reactions] are evils the lines of which cannot be crossed, and the more specific the thoughts and opinions that need to all every single one be in alignment for one to like or just tolerate someone else, the more isolating one's experience is, and lonely, and dimmed, because more and more peope out of everybody else seem threatening, stupid, malicious, or just unworthy of one's respect or any real connection. which is a shame from a lot of standpoints. and i think it's quite easy in a sterile online space to critique things, which isn't bad in and of itself and is sometimes urgent and useful, but can quickly move to 100% condemnation and "cringing" in small social circles over just about anything whatsoever. and sometimes my roommate is like hozier has such fae vibes and it's like fine actually. it's literally totally fine and it isn't that deep at all and there's no harm meant by it.

[retrievablememories]

the second time around | jaehyun

title: the second time around pairing: jaehyun x reader genre: fluff, some angst request: “Hi! Here’s a suggestion for a story or add-on to another story you wrote. I really liked moonlight w/ jaehyun! Could you do a follow up with him not seeing her for awhile and him (and her secretly) being pissed about it but wants to reconnect with her but outside of being a customer. Ty and keep up the good work with your writing.” word count: 2.9k warnings: a couple mentions of sex a/n: hmm...the sequel to moonlight...sequels are scary to write but here we are lol. this could’ve been posted last sunday really but i’ve been stalling oof

Despite getting Jaehyun’s number after that night at the strip club, you’ve seen and heard a lot less of him than you’d like. On his end, Jaehyun isn’t so pleased about losing touch either, but you wouldn’t know that with the lack of communication.

Both of you are ultimately busy with your own lives, and it’s not like he can just drop in whenever he wants to visit you. Not just because he’s busy, but also because of where you work. The men keep their visits to the club on a once-a-month basis for a reason—to avoid tipping off any stalkers who’d find out and leak their whereabouts.

You’ve texted each other a few times since your first meeting, and you enjoyed the conversations you got to have within that timespan, but the time between responses kept getting longer—on both of your ends—until things eventually dropped off.

You were unhappy about this, though you tried not to be so obvious about it to the other girls. Getting attached to customers was not a good look. Even if they were handsome and nice and had good dick.

However, Anya was the first to notice your slightly sour mood despite your best efforts to project an unphased demeanor. And, being her usual nosy self, she managed to pry it out of you before you could even think about denying it.

“Don’t stress about it,” she’d told you on the night you finally spilled the beans. She’d wrapped her arms around your shoulders and tipped your chin up, making you hold your head up higher and look at yourself in the mirror reflection facing you. “There will be many more men where he came from. And if you don’t wanna deal with any more men right now, that’s fine too. He doesn’t know what he’s missing out on, anyway.”

“I’m not stressing over it,” you’d argued, sighing. “We don’t stress over men who aren’t boyfriends, remember?”

Anya grinned then, though you could tell it was the kind of smile you give when a friend is doing something they shouldn’t be—or indulging in something they think is good for them when it’s not. “Duh. But you might wanna start following your own advice if you’re gonna be dishing it out!” And then she’d gone off to do her own thing, probably to finish getting ready for her set later that night or to go bother one of her favorite bartenders.

You’d looked at yourself in the mirror more closely, frowning at the truthfulness of her statement and wishing you had not been quite so easy to read. You’d had a show right after that, which allowed you to take your mind off the mess for at least a few hours. But in the small moments when you weren’t thinking about work or school or anything else you had to do, Jaehyun crept back into your mind like a specter, wanting you to acknowledge him even though you weren’t getting the same.

When you head out to the parking lot after a particularly long night, you slow your steps when you see a man leaning against his car, his cap pulled over his eyes and his head low. In any other scenario, you probably would’ve alerted one of the bouncers, thinking he was some creep waiting until after your stage to try to corner you in a shady area. However, you hold off on calling anybody because you can clearly recognize him even if he thinks he’s being inconspicuous—it’s Jaehyun.

He lifts his head when he hears your shoes on the ground, and his lips turn up into something of a smile.

“If you wanted another dance, you’re a bit late. We just closed,” you say jokingly, raising an eyebrow at him. Jaehyun shakes his head.

“Tempting idea, but that’s not what I came here for.” He turns to face you fully now, observing you in your casual, after-work clothes. In the back of your mind, you realize this is the first time he’s seen you outside the context of performing. Then he sighs. “It feels like it’s been forever since I’ve seen you.”

“I know.” Your familiar irritation rises again. Sure, maybe him coming to see you or you going to see him more often isn’t feasible. A text or a call, though...would be decidedly less effort, and not difficult to do. You’re not sure whether to be more irritated with him or yourself about not trying to reach out again, though you decide to aim your annoyance at him just because you can.

Jaehyun nods to your agreement. “How have you been?”

“I’ve been fine,” you say. “Work is...work. It has its ups and downs. How are you? Busy with the idol life?”

Jaehyun sighs. “Yeah...it just gets…stressful sometimes.” He bites his lip and shakes his head, seeming bothered about whatever’s going on with his job but not wanting to say much more about it.

“I’m sure,” you respond, and you don’t really know what to say afterwards. It’s been a while since either of you talked, and it’s strangely hard to try to pick up where you left off as if nothing happened. Jaehyun realizes this, too, and appears distressed at not knowing how to keep the conversation going with you—and possibly wasting your time.

You nod to yourself and shift on your feet. “Well, the Uber will probably be here soon, so—”

“I don’t know what things will look like between us, but I don’t want us to fall out of contact again,” Jaehyun blurts out, then winces. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just...don’t want either of us to leave before we...sort this out, I guess.”

You think to yourself, wondering if this is really worth trying to pursue. You’ve yet to deal with a man with the level of fame that Jaehyun has, yet with such a strict image to keep, which makes things exponentially more complicated. But despite your apprehension, you still want to know where this could lead. After a moment, you say, “Well, if you’re willing...I’d like the same.”

Jaehyun nods and stands up a little straighter, like that response just gave him the energy he needed. “Do you wanna….go somewhere? Just to like, hang out.” His proposition is abrupt, and you didn’t expect it. 

“Now?” You check your phone, and it’s 18 minutes past 2 a.m. There aren’t too many places that will still be open at this hour, other than establishments similar to your line of work, but you aren’t in the mood for any more of that tonight. Your driver, too, is only a few minutes away, but you already find yourself with your finger hovering over the Cancel button. “We could.”

Jaehyun goes around to the passenger side of the car and opens the door for you. You get into his car, noting its sleek interior. Once he gets in, he asks you what you want to hear, and you notice he’s looking through his Spotify. You shrug.

“I don’t know. Show me something you like,” you say. You cringe at sounding so disinterested, which makes you realize you might just be a little more upset about being ghosted than you thought you were. You almost want to curse at how this dude is taking you off your usual game. “I mean, I like hearing new music anyway, so…”

Jaehyun starts the car and grins slightly. “Alright, then let me show you the best of the best…” You both end up listening and vibing to a playlist he’s made, which is good. Not that you didn’t expect it to be, but you end up liking most of the songs he shows you, which usually doesn’t happen with other people’s playlists.

Jaehyun ends up taking you to an ice cream place that’s still open this late, to your surprise. The sitting area inside the store is closed, though they’ve kept the drive-thru open for late-night travelers like yourselves who want a quick treat. You don’t question it, though; you definitely won’t pass up a chance for some ice cream.

You end up eating the ice cream while sitting in his car and listening to the rest of his playlist. Neither of you say much other than commenting on the songs or talking about your favorite ice cream flavors or making other non-committal small talk. You kind of prefer it this way, at least for the moment—just listening to the music and watching the headlights and taillights of cars that pass by.

You and Jaehyun ride around the city for a while longer after finishing the ice cream, not intending to go anywhere in particular but just coasting on the highways. It might be an excuse to keep listening to this new playlist he’s put on, or maybe more reason to pretend that awkward period between you never happened. Acknowledging it in a way, but not speaking any life into it. 

Eventually, though, it has to arise back to the surface. Jaehyun taps his fingers against the steering wheel at a red light, like he’s impatient to get somewhere, and you wonder what he’s feeling until he comes out and says,

“I think it was...ultimately my fault for not contacting you more. Or not trying to stay in contact.”

The words hang in the air for a moment. “Well, I won’t argue with that,” you finally respond.

“It’s just hard to get close to anyone and be an idol at the same time. Sometimes I sabotage myself when I shouldn’t, and…” He trails off, though you don’t know whether he’s searching for the words or has decided to leave his sentence at that.

“You’d rather not be embarrassed by dating a stripper, or something along those lines?” Your tone is nonchalant, though you’re a little bothered by saying it. He wouldn’t be the first or the last person to feel some type of way about your job, though you’ve mostly gotten used to the judgment at this point.

Jaehyun seems a bit startled by the statement. “If you like doing it, then I don’t care what you do. You should live your life however you want to.”

“I see,” you say slowly. “Most men I meet outside of the club are not receptive to it, so you ain’t gotta lie if you feel some other way about it, seriously...”

“I’m serious,” he insists. “You told me that day that you liked it, and I believed you. I just think...we should all be able to do things we enjoy without worrying about what others think of it.”

Jaehyun turns to look at you for a moment, and his features are lit up by the street light as it turns green. His face, which is simultaneously painted with shadows and glowing with light, appears to be just as genuine as he sounds. Or maybe this late-night atmosphere just has you feeling more receptive and sentimental than usual. Then he broaches the next subject carefully, steering you back to where the conversation began. “You didn’t text me anymore, either.”

“I figured you’d moved on or something, maybe started talking to someone else…” you reply. “And, you know, if that was the case...so be it. There wouldn’t be a point to chasing someone who wasn’t interested anymore.”

“I am interested.” Jaehyun rushes the words out, like he’s eager to dispel the uncertainty before you get the wrong idea; not that that hasn’t already happened, but still. It isn’t too late to change your mind. “I want to like, know you as a person...not just while being a customer at the club, or something like that.”

You nod, looking at your hands and considering his words. “We can do that...yeah, we can.” Then you hold your hand out to him, a grin playing on your lips. “Nice to meet you, then. I’m Y/N.”

He smiles too, and takes your hand in one of his. “I’m Jaehyun.”

The conversation after that seems to reach a turning point, like somehow you’ve broken the ice and can finally talk to each other on a deeper level without worrying about the issue that’s been lingering over your heads all night. You think you could talk to him like this for hours if you wanted to, if there was enough time in the world for it. 

Unfortunately, though, you don’t have as much time as you’d like, and once it starts edging on 4 AM, you both decide it’s probably best to call it a night. Jaehyun takes you back to your apartment after you tell him where it is.

He parks in front of the apartment complex, and you’re prepared to thank him for the night and get out, but he insists on walking you up to your apartment—something about it being too dangerous for women to walk alone at night.

“It’s not that far.” You laugh, but you aren’t going to argue about it if it means getting a few more moments with him.

Jaehyun follows you up the steps after you both get out of the car. You walk a little slower to prolong the moment, but eventually you have to get up to your apartment door. You also take your time with taking your keys out of your bag and putting them in the lock. And maybe you’re not as slick as you thought, because Jaehyun notices. He laughs quietly behind you, but the sound isn’t low enough to escape your hearing.

You turn around to look at him, your hand on the doorknob. “Well, I guess that’s it. Thanks for the ride...and for the ice cream, you know.”

He nods, and one of his dimples pokes out. “You didn’t have to entertain me tonight, but I’m glad you did...so, thanks.”

Both of you linger in your doorway for a few more moments. Jaehyun wants to come in, and you know it, but you also know he probably won’t say it because he technically shouldn’t. His members are expecting him back at the dorm. He doesn’t want to impose, and he didn’t even bring any extra clothes. But you know he wants to come in, and you want it, too.

You tilt your head to the side. “Would it be bad if I asked you to stay?” you say tentatively.

A slow smile spreads on his face. “No, it wouldn’t.”

You open the door wider so he can step inside and take his shoes off at the entrance. You lead him to your living room by the hand. “What do you wanna do?” you ask, looking at him imploringly. You want to be sure you’re both on the same page concerning your intentions.

“Whatever you wanna do,” he echoes, holding your hand a bit tighter. You expect to see lust or some similar desire in his expression and had already figured you might end up having sex again tonight, but his eyes expect nothing from you. He only smiles in the dim light of your apartment and waits for you to make the next move.

You laugh, and it comes out as an airy chuckle. “Well, then...I want to lay down. It’s been a long day.” From your tone, Jaehyun understands that you really just want to lie down and not think about much of anything else right now. He follows you when you lead him into your bedroom and sits patiently on your bed while you go to the bathroom to change into your night clothes. You’re thankful you already took a shower at the club, because you’re not sure you’d have the energy to do all that now.

He’s taken his jeans off when you come back into the room, though he still keeps his shirt on. You get onto the bed and lean over him, hooking your finger into the collar of his shirt, and he looks up at you. “You can take this off if you want, I don’t care.”

“Is this you saying you want to see me shirtless?” He grins, though he readily takes the invitation and pulls his shirt off, placing it to the side along with his pants.

You shake your head good-naturedly, a smile on your face. “I promise it’s innocent…but the view never hurts.”

You peel the sheets back and you both climb underneath them, lying across from each other and looking at each other like you want to say something more but aren’t sure what. There isn’t much light in the room except for the street lights coming from your bedroom window, muted slightly by the blinds.

Jaehyun laughs suddenly, breaking the silence, and you do the same. You’re not sure why either of you are laughing, but you do so anyway, simply enjoying the moment for what it is. After your laughter dies down, he takes your hand from where it’s resting on the pillow and slips his pinky around yours. “I’ll try not to lose you this time.”

You lean a little closer to his face so you can plant a kiss on his lips—just a short and soft touch. He tastes like ice cream, and somehow you know there will be many more kisses like this in the future. “You better not.”

[starlightrows]

Love In All Its Forms

Pairing: Boba Fett x reader

Word Count: 1.3k

Tags: FLUFF, illness, non-sexual nudity

Summary: It’s the day for celebrations of love, but instead of the plan you’ve crafted, you’re sick in bed

AN: Happy Monday! As I’m writing this, snow is continually falling, roads are closed and I’m spending Valentine’s Day solo and sick with a cold. But it’s okay, because I love all of you! Happy (late) Valentine’s Day!

“Lay back down princess, you need to rest,” Boba says, pushing on your shoulder gently. You’d woken up feeling intense pressure behind your eyes, and your nose running.

“No,” you tried to protest, pushing back against him. “You took time off from your duties, I spent weeks planning for today,”

You were starting to get upset, you really had been looking forward to today. Asked him weeks in advance to take this particular day off. On your home world, today was a special holiday to celebrate love in all its forms. Friendships, parenthood, spouses, lovers, partners of all kinds. And you wanted to celebrate with Boba, your love. Originally you had hoped to take him to your home world, it would be covered in snow this time of year. There are pools of hot bubbling mineral water up the mountain your home village was situated at the base of. You thought he might enjoy the hot water, and uninterrupted alone time you’d be able to enjoy. Unfortunately the journey to reach your home planet, celebrate the holiday, and the return trip would take too much time. But he had agreed to give you this day.

“I know,” he pushes your hair back, and sits next to you on the bed. Your eyes are beginning to water and your chest tightens. You don’t want to get upset this way, and you really don’t want to be sick. You sigh and close your eyes, willing the tears not to spill over

“I just— I really wanted today to be special. I wanted to show you how important you are to me,” you cry softly. Boba continues petting your hair, staring down at your pitiful form.

“We don’t need a specific day to demonstrate love cyare,” he tells you. His words are kind, but they do nothing to comfort you.

“I just wanted to take care of you, and make you feel loved,” the tears fall freely from your eyes.

“Cyare, you make me feel loved everyday,” he catches your chin between his thumb and curled forefinger, forcing you to open your eyes and look at him. “If today is truly the day for lovers, than let me take care of you,”

You don’t really want to relent, you don’t want to let this go so easily. But you feel like bantha shit, and you don’t have much of a choice. So you nod your head, and let him tuck the covers around you.

“Sleep princess, I’ll be here when you wake up,” he kisses your forehead, as you shut your eyes. The bedding is soft and warm, such a stark contrast to the chilled hard stone that make up the walls of the palace. Normally a welcome relief from the blazing dual suns that beat down on Tatooine. The warmth of the covers and plush pillows combined with your illness induced exhaustion, draws you back into sleep.

True to his word, Boba is there when you wake up again. He sits by in one of the comfortable arm chairs you’d had decorated the rather sparse bedchamber with, reading something off a datapad. You don’t alert him to your wakefulness, instead you just settle your gaze over him. You hope beyond all reason that he’s reading for his own enjoyment, and not for work. This was supposed to be a relaxing, pleasure only kind of day.

“Boba,” you call out for him, reaching an arm up out of the covers. He looks over at you, sets down the datapad.

“Can I get you anything little one?” He asks, coming to sit beside you once more, accepting your small hand in his two large ones. “Water? Tea?”

“Water please,” he releases your hand, and steps off into the adjoining ‘fresher. You sit up in bed, and accept the glass of water he offers on his return. You drink the entire glass, and hand it back to him to set on the bedside table.

“How are you feeling?” He asks, settling onto his side of the bed. He opens his arms, inviting you to cuddle up to him. A luxury you don’t often get to experience with him, so you take full advantage.

“A bit better. My head doesn’t hurt so bad, but I can’t breathe through my nose,” you say honestly. His thumb strokes your upper arm where he holds you.

“You wanted us to go to those hot springs on your home world,” he says, “we have a bath tub. The steam will help your breathing,”

“Maybe in a bit,” you say, clutching his shirt just a little tighter “you’re a very comfortable pillow, my love,” He chuckles, and presses a kiss to the top of your head. For now you were just happy to held.

Eventually the idea of a soothing bath, and humidity to open up your sinuses was too tempting to pass up. The day had gotten away from you, and an evening bath would be a decent way to end the day.

Boba disappeared back into the ‘fresher to run you the bath. You took some time to remake the bed, and toss your used handkerchiefs into the wash bin. Boba beckoned you into the ‘fresher. Helped you remove your night shirt you’d spent the day in, and gave you a hand for stability as your stepped down into the sunken tub. The hot water felt amazing on your aching body, and the steam wafting up from the water was already starting to ease your breathing. You leaned you head against the high wall of the tub and closed your eyes. Even though your throat was still sore, this was very nice.

“Are you going to join me?” You asked, sensing he was still in the ‘fresher with you

“No,” he answered “I’m going to check on dinner. I asked the scullery maids to make bread and soup for you,” You hummed in acknowledgment. He leaves the ‘fresher, making sure to shut the door so the steam will stay trapped inside.

Sinking further into the water, you think about how lucky you are. People you’ve been with in the past would likely be angry they’d taken a whole day off of work, only to have to take care of you or have plans canceled. But not Boba, for as much of a grump he could be at times, he truly does love you and appreciate you.

When he returns, the bath water is going a little cold and the steam is dissipating. He holds your bathrobe open for you and fastens the tie. He leads you back to bed and offers you a bowl of the soup he had mentioned before.

The broth is flavorful and rich, even though you’re already warm from the bath, it warms your insides. He sits with you, sipping off his own bowl of soup.

“Thank you,” you say, as he takes your now empty bowls placing them on the table by the door. The maids will likely come retrieve them later. You’ll have to remember to thank them in person as well when you get the chance. “Thank you for taking care of me today,”

He gives you a look, as he begins turning down the covers to get you tucked back into bed for the night. “How many times have you taken care of me when I was sick or injured, little one?”

“I wouldn’t have died or anything if you had chosen to go back to work instead of staying though,” you comment while he slides under the covers beside you. Draws you in, placing your head on his chest

“Today is the day for love in all its forms, and sometimes loving someone means taking care of them,” he says. You never would have expected this from him. He could have his tender moments with you sure, but this gentleness and wisdom is new.

“I’ll make it up to you,” you say sleepily “Next time you can manage a day off. I’ll return the favor and spoil you all day,”

He chuckles at your musings. “As if you don’t spoil me everyday,”

You’re fading, sleep calls to you. But you get out one last thing. “I love you,”

He nuzzles your head with his cheek, you’re fully asleep but he responds anyway “I love you too,”

[dappersheep]

Food Fantasy: An Analysis on what killed a Golden Goose (3/3)

Ladies and gentlemen, we've arrived at our final destination.

Again before we start, we have our obligatory disclaimers. I do not own the game or its characters, nor do I claim to know the true history and likely fate of this game. I am entitled to the thoughts and opinions written within this post. Feel free to agree or disagree with the points being made.

This post also remains untagged from the main foofan tag. Only my followers will see this.

We are in the third and final stretch, and the checkpoint is past the cut.

Community

So... here we are, fellow Master Attendants.

As consumers of this piece of entertainment media, we are free to enjoy it however we wish. Appreciating what is there, creating something new from what exists, playing the game by the meta or however you want to play it (within your means and at your own risk of course). There's no one true and absolute way to experience the game.

However, just as you can enjoy something, doesn't mean you can't also point out flaws or shortcomings of the media in question. As an active veteran player, I've already pointed out the many gameplay design flaws  already. And I'd be pretty dumb to say that Food Fantasy's writing is perfect. Hell, it has a lot of holes from a worldbuilding consistency standpoint. 

And what of things from the community side? Yes, there will be times you'd see content you consider cringe, or something in fanon you don't agree with. Or there happens to be fan theories and fangirling posts you don't like the take of because of X or Y.

And that's fine. If we all happen to play the same way, like the same thing, agree on the same thing and produce the same thing, well, this would be one helluva boring community, wouldn't it?

But what if someone decides the way you're playing the game is wrong and harasses you over it? What happens if someone decides that their interpretation of the game's flavor text and lore is more important than what anyone else thought about it? What happens if someone decides that they're absolutely right, and you and everyone else who disagrees deserves to be bullied out of the fandom?

As much as I want to say we aren't part of the problem why the game is deteriorating, we are unfortunately, part of the reason why the game is as such even if most of the blame is directed towards Funtoy and Elex themselves.

⦁ Whale Authority. Whales will always be part of a gacha game's ecosystem. Without them, the game won't be able to maintain its upkeep costs, moreso  for one that services global regions instead of just one. But when a game decides to cater its decisions of what features should be prioritized and when it should be launched around only its most elite paying players' voices  -even if that influence has since tapered off-, you know there is something wrong with the publisher's management team and priorities.

⦁ Interguild drama. While I did not personally follow any of this, this has certainly been the peak of in-game tension back in the day. Poaching good players from both competitive and smaller guilds, guild mergers that often ended up making the annexed guild/s the equivalent of UK colonized India or Australia, suck-ups chummying up to guild leaders to keep a spot in an active, high ranking guild (for bragging rights!) despite never contributing much to overall damage, and just general dislike of certain players' attitudes. Actions like this have disillusioned many players about their playing experience and the reason why many eventually just lost the motivation to log into FooFan.

⦁ Cheaters. You know very well about the Hacker-teme I've mentioned before, but that was in context of Elex being incompetent with dealing with them. Here, I would like  to point out the players who are desperate to dominate  the playing field for whatever reason to the point that they would resort to cheating the ranks with forceful modifications of the APK. Whether it is to rank high in catacombs weekly, get a top spot in daily disaster damage, or weasel their way into the competitive whale ranks of a major ranking event, these are the people who have no qualms messing with the code to give themselves an easier time with the game. And if they're caught? Some pretend that they've made a mistake, some quickly sell the account to escape the blame, some others just scamper away into the dark and hide in the lower ranks where they can't be found. Others simply don't care and keep cheating until Elex decides to finally ban them... if Elex ever decides their rebates score isn't worth saving the account.

⦁ Ship wars. Ah yes, a staple of drama in any fandom. There doesn't need much explanation to this as we've all had our fair share of running into a battleground in whatever fandom we visit. Someone ships BB52 wholeheartedly? Nope, problematic 'age gaps'. Someone likes Napoleon with Pastel? Someone's bound to misinterpret their bios in order to justify that Napoleon was being abusive. Spaghetti and Borscht? Borscht is minor coded, ship her with Vodka instead. Whiskey and Pizza or Cassata? Cancelled! And I've never heard of the Foe Yay trope or pretend I don't know about it! Rarepairs? Disgusting! No fanon in my canon playground! Turkey and Eggnog? Gasp! How dare you, you pedo-shipper-even-though-you-never-said-you-shipped-them-romantically-but-that-isn't-my-point!

⦁ Character Obsession: Bias. On one hand, you love a character so much. Relate to a character so much. You have thus pulled this character into the folds of your bosom and coo at them like a mother dove and get so minutely triggered if someone so much as makes one disagreeable or joking comment about the character that you fly into an overreactive ballistic rage that would make a Canadian goose honk in fear. You don't care what they are in canon. You don't care about the possibility of mistranslation. What matters is the fanon space you carved out for them to exist in and that's all that matters. The problem with this is when this obsession takes over common sense and social etiquette and it steps into harassment territory. You begin to think: I'm the only one who 'understands' the character. I'm the only one who wishes better for the character, everyone else is out to defame them! Oh wait, you like them too? Do you like them the way *I* like them? No? Maybe if you're my 'friend', I'd let it slide. But to everyone else? No one else has the right to like them as much as I do. No one! Never mind that they're completely fictional- No one hurts my bias because in turn, they're hurting *me*!

⦁ Character Obsession: Anti. On the other hand, you hate a character so much. This character just makes you see so much red. Their smug little smirk just makes your blood boil. Their fictional backstory makes you recoil in disgust. You hate that someone else loves a character you hate so much.  You cannot *believe* that someone could be so daringly stupid to like a problematic character. They must be problematic too then. They must be hiding real life secrets that are problematic! Yes, yes. That's right. That person's a supporter of abuse. That person's into pedophilia. That person is into military lolita fashion that Japan started the trend of but clearly Japan was part of the Axis Powers! And that... that person... that person... is a roleplayer and a yaoi fangirl properly interacting with minors and adults. How dare they...!

⦁ Fan Translations.  Normally it wouldn't be a problem that a group or two or several are translating pieces of the game's lore ahead of the official. But with Elex's very delayed translations and extreme allergic reactions to translating Food Soul bios, people have become dependent on fan-translation groups to get their fix. The problem herein lies... is when the translators get drunk off the power that they are one of a handful in a small community who can magically transcribe the oriental moonrunes into English. The problem starts when the translator starts to have an inclination. The problem starts when the translator loses their professional detachment and start adding in details here and there into the fan translated product that ultimately changes the meaning and direction of the entire story. The problem is also escalated when that translator's embellished product is touted as the truth by their followers. If there was an upcoming character whose backstory is connected to a character they hated (either because of someone or they just don't like the character) and you were hoping to read the fan translation? How would you know that what you get isn't something doctored to the point it's basically fanfiction?

⦁ Social Justice Vigilantism. Sometimes someone does not have a character obsession or need it to be annoying. Sometimes, someone just wants to ring the alarm over something they find 'problematic' in order to police and sanitize the enjoyment of the media for 'everyone'. They no longer really take enjoyment out of a new Food Soul design being leaked, they no longer read the lore just to enjoy what it has to offer. Instead, they nitpick bits and pieces of the design and point it out repeatedly as a reason why the whole thing is bad. They point out bits of the story and inject their interpretations of it without really comprehending what they've read in full and react badly to it. What's worse is that they have no qualms publicly posting their reactions and eagerly and hungrily await those likes and echoes of agreement that they were right.

⦁ Circles of Influence. Everyone has a group they eventually gravitate to in a fandom. It comes with its own pros and cons. Sometimes you join a group because someone you admire is in there, sometimes you join a group because you just want to mingle and see more content. All valid reasons. Arguments can't be avoided in a group, it has to happen... But you have to take care. You have to take care to feel the change in the air of the group. When someone starts pushing people to agree with them. When your most admired people start to feel overly sensitive about certain characters or issues. When you start to feel obligated to spy on other groups outside of this one for 'nonbelievers', 'traitors' and 'heretics' who do not think the way this group does, and that bringing back bits and pieces of gossip as offerings would somehow make you more favored in the eyes of the inner clique or remain inside it. There is a gripping sense of annoyance when that person comes in to complain but you can't do anything about it but nod and agree. There is a pervading sense of fear and apprehension of overstepping an invisible boundary. There is fear that you might be next on the chopping block, after witnessing one of the others being ganged up on and thrown out without a second thought, their name spat upon like they're worth less than dirt. And so reluctant you are to give up what you have with them that when they push you to do something you are reluctant to do, all in the name of 'harmony and justice'... You do it. Even though it would mean offering yourself up to the mob with no salvation, and the stark realization that... [they] never cared about you as a friend.

And we've come to the end of this analysis trilogy. The writing got a little bit strange in this post, but honestly this is the best way I could put it. I'm aware things can and will be more complicated than the bullet points I've written but I'm just one person and I tried very hard to keep details of all the drama that happened in this fandom as vague as possible. Of course, that wouldn't work if you know what I am talking about.

The community is quiet now for the most part, the game is somewhere between limbo and the living plane. Things could be better for us, but I don't really count on it.

I wish I could leave a bit of a moral warning or something. But rather than do that, I just hope this was an entertaining read into one individual's eyes into Food Fantasy and everything that makes it up.

[jadagul]

Relevant to the boycotts/cancel culture comment I posted the other day:

A gaming forum I've been following for six years has completely melted down over the past couple months. It has a politics/news/other shit subforum, and apparently the political conversations there have totally fucking exploded. I didn't know that—I don't read the political threads because they're invariablly dumb—until one of the anchor posters announced that he was leaving and never coming back because [litany of grievances].

And they're now having a thread about what they would need to do to keep the forum intact despite the explosions that have been happening. And a number of posters are weighing in basically with the position: "I'm not willing to interact with people whose politics are terminally evil, and any bonds of community I may have had with them before must be dissolved".

That's a paraphrase, but only because I don't want people googling the forum in question and going to harrass the people (or vice versa): a bunch of the posters are arguing that there's something wrong with you if you can coexist with people whose politics are wrong. The moderator/forum-owner has like three rules, and one of them is "don't wish death on any actual people", and he's said the violations have become so constant that he can't enforce that rule any more.

(And note that often the coexisting that can't happen is between different flavors of left-of-Biden; there are various people unwilling to coexist with Hillary voters, and others unwilling to deal with Bernie voters, etc. Or if you are willing to compromise on "Universal health care now!" you're a muderer and deserve to die.)

And that's the sort of shit that I'm really, deeply, concerned about and opposed to. You can't have a functioning modern democracy if people won't engage in any way with people who disagree with them. This is very High Liberal of me, I realize, but the hard part of building a functioning social system is making it possible for everyone to interact despite their disagreements.

Someone, I think maybe balioc, posted the other day that every single person you meet has some beliefs you'd find abhorrent. It's important to find ways to deal with people despite knowing they have those abhorrent beliefs. That's what I tend to be going for in my anti-boycott, anti-'cancel culture' positions.

And honestly, part of the infrastructure for that is making it possible to not know when people disagree with you, which is why I think people publicizing the fact that X company has a CEO who supports Y position are doing us all a great disservice. Let people have their political beliefs in private!

And now I'm kind of wondering if this is part of what makes social media fraught. People are sharing their political beliefs in ways they didn't before, and getting reinforcement for them. Your neighbors and coworkers always believed horrifying things, but now you know that they believe horrifying things. It makes it harder to pretend.

I think that last idea is probably really powerful but I'm too lazy to write it up right now. But a lot of society is built around maintaining the ability to "not know" things that everyone knows perfectly well. ("It was commonly accepted that an eager young bride could accomplish in six or seven months what took nine for a more experienced wife.") When we remove the space for that protective ignorance, all sorts of things start failing.

[welcometomy20s]

June 30, 2021

Coco (and Lulu’s) Legacy

Coco wrote the book on how to be a Hololive member, from front to back. She plotted out how one can amass an audience, how to interact and build a worldwide fandom, how to integrate ideas of the audience to the grand narrative of the company, how to deal with tee-tee and pairings, how to cope when YouTube strikes you down in its impunity, and how to cope when Cancel Brigade comes to destroy your work, along with how to bring a more cohesive workplace, how to protect yourself from the unmooring of identity that is inherent in VTube, and finally how to leave when you are in a rollercoaster that is only going up. Coco wrote the book and now we follow.

AsaCoco was brilliant from its outset. Having a place to know the ins and outs of various members of Hololive was a great way to connect the rabbit hole. But there is a deeper reason for the brilliance. I talked before about how the major tension in VTube is one between the corporate back-end tradition of Japan colliding with the audience front-end tradition of YouTube. AsaCoco is something directly in line with that second tradition. The visual language of YouTube is different from those of movies. A jump cut in a movie denotes a different idea than a jump cut on YouTube. Movie critic complaining about jump cuts in vlogs is like a Spanish reader complaining about a sentence in English being awkward. Of course it is, it’s in a different language. Unlike movies, which come from theatre and literature, vlogs’ lineage comes from news broadcasts. Many of the early web successes were styled in a news format (rocketboom, Ze Frank, What the Buck and so on…) One does not complain about the jump cut between different presenters in a newscast, and so one does not complain when a similar thing happens in vlogs. But the point is that AsaCoco harkens to the audience-based tradition.

One might write off the ARK arc as an aberration, but I think ARK did add something constructive to Hololive and VTubers as a whole. I like to think of ARK as a training wheel for Minecraft. Minecraft is relatively challenging compared to ARK. Minecraft speedruns are mildly impressive, ARK speedrun less so. ARK is actually like the middle ground between Monster Hunter and Minecraft. You can play ARK like Monster Hunter, gather a bunch of friends to hunt monsters, or like Minecraft, build your own zoo or house or so on… And in that flexibility, one can easily learn how to tell a compelling narrative in an open-world setting. Pekora’s war criminal tendencies developed there, Miko’s ‘pon’ nature was crystalized there, and so on…

Holohouse was an underrated achievement. At first, the idea feels like the natural extension of their idol nature. Idols live together, so why not virtual idols? But having virtual idols living together comes with additional benefits that Nijisanji should note.

Stalking is an awful thing, I know since I experienced and have done something similar in my past, but stalking is also a desperate thing. And desperation tends to abate when people are more open about themselves. One of the articles talking about Coco’s graduation infamously notes the mystery of Coco’s identity, which is chucklesome since Coco’s identity might be the most open secret in all of Hololive. This was in line with Hololive’s more open policy, several of Hololive members do their own personal work on the side, while in many early companies, this was forbidden. Nijisanji’s background is less open than Hololive, perhaps due to the number and less mass attention, and that leads to stalking being a more adventurous one. One that livers have to deal with more alone, while for Hololive, it’s likely people would catch and perhaps even tar the perpetrator. More attention means more risk with less excitement.

Holohouse also protects aggressive fan behavior by introducing VTuber solidarity. With more offline collabs, the people would know each other more personally and therefore have a ground of contacts in which to alert suspicious behavior. Safety in numbers.

Holohouse also brought us KanaCoco, which was a lesser known pairing until the couple ring story, and now it has become one of three big couples of Hololive, the other two being NoeFlare and OkaKoro. The big three all have a different style of their tee tee. KanaCoco is the type of a longtime buddy. Both Kanata and Coco struggled with familial and economic circumstances, and they are both struggling under the same roof. And within that struggle comes comity and friendship. It’s not love in your typical sense, but it is a type that would lead to marriage and childrens… but the current LBGTQ+ status in Japan is pretty bad, so tee tee and hush hush it is.

In a sense, KanaCoco provides for an excellent cover. It is one of the most inspiring portrayals of woman-woman friendships in media and it would be one of the more enduring aspect of Coco’s legacy as it passes down through the generations.

[Note: This somehow became an apologia of the past week. Well, I do like to show my thinking with my behavior, perhaps to my detriment, so… just be warned.]

For the past week, I was hyping about the fact that Gura passed Kizuna Ai to become the most-subscribed VTuber. And I made the point, not through immaturity, but because I realized this coincided with Coco’s graduation. Without Coco, there wouldn’t be Hololive English, or Gawr Gura, and therefore this event would not have happened. This, therefore, was one of the last great accomplishments of Coco. An indelible mark of her foresight and perseverance. A realization of her plans. So, in a sense, this was one of my ways of celebrating Coco’s career, albeit in an admittedly twisted way.

But beyond Hololive English, there was the famous Meme Review, which has a weak lineage with the early meme review series from PewDiePie. Now for the digression, whoever ends up at the top gives us a flavor for that specific era, since one naturally assumes success means finesse and would try to emulate the style. Vlogbrother’s visual style and mannerism was largely lifted from Ze Frank. PBS Idea Channel famously emulated Ray William Johnson’s background to his own ends. And Kizuna Ai was famously inspired by PewDiePie at several points in her career. Which is why PewDiePie’s Congratulations felt right as a tribute. One of the big shared characteristics of the two was the lonely years at the top. PewDiePie is probably going to be longest reigning ‘King’ of YouTube for a while (of course, depends on if Cocomelon catches T-Series in due time) and at the time his reign was abnormally long. Most people hold onto the top spot for a year or two, so it felt odd that PewDiePie was untouchable for so long. Similar things must have been raised for Kizuna Ai as well. Many people must have felt that Kizuna Ai just did not represent VTubers at the current time.

So, when competition showed up, of course people were excited. It felt like it was time. I believe PewDiePie’s Congratulations was not a simple diss track, although it’s formatted like one, just due to the culture at the time. So the hypothetical Kizuna Ai version would be extremely light-hearted. The ‘diss’ would be your typical “she’s short”, “she’s hydrodynamic” and so on… it would be clear there is no actual bad blood, and the song would be welcoming of the new era. Era, as I said before, brought on by Coco.

Back to the Meme Review, meme review was great as it centered reddit as the base for the fandom, rather than twitter, which is a horrible platform to bring a sense of communal welcomeness. Reddit is probably the best functional place for stuff like this, even though we all know it has its host of problems that needs to be resolved.

What is the most important stream in Hololive? Well, some people would point to Aqua and Coco’s The Raft stream, which is a poignant encapsulation of a stream. The dramatic counterweight to the other greatest stream in Hololive, Korone’s all-english Mario stream. Aqua and Coco are always the odd pairing, but it could have worked, and it might have been beneficial. Aqua is one of the most shy people in Hololive, and Mio is already busy with Ayame and Subaru, so the best person might have been Coco.

But China. There were two big beneficiaries from China in Hololive, one was Fubuki and the other was Aqua. While Fubuki, in Coco’s last months, famously went out of her way to intertwine herself with Coco to directly redirect her audience, like the mensch she is, Aqua always struggled with her audience retention, therefore played shy with Coco.

Edit: Well, my initial final impression was… what a wonderful finish. The interview portion was well-meant, but honestly a little formal. When the 4th Gen went together, is when the stream turned into something special for me, and the final performance was actually really well-done. Coco went out like an idol, which makes sense. For whatever provocation Coco perpetuated, Coco only did them out of love. And ultimately Cover knew that. Coco’s final month was a warning and a reminder.

Can I talk about all the different tributes lately? In some sense, Usaken Summer Festival is part of this… for an organization that is immensely popular, I just adore how Cover and their talent always has this drive to throw everything and see if it works. I noticed this during Golden Week. Golden Week in Hololive was jam packed. There were great events, Mio’s morning stream was astounding, leading to one of biggest growth spurt for Mio. Miko’s drawing collab was absolutely hilarious, for such a simple and seemingly hastily put idea. One of the people in a forum commented on this and affixed something that left my mind… what did Nijisanji during the same week? Even I was surprised by how little Nijisanji did that Golden week. They barely did anything!

The innovative spirit does give them trouble, more than it is worth, but Cover never really stopped its momentum, even when most other companies would have stopped a long time ago! This is the greatest thing about Hololive and Cover, the most redeeming feature. One that would serve them well. Coco wrote the playing book, let us pray that Cover sticks to them, because the fall of Cover comes the moment they stray.

The Pre-Coco era was about a company struggling to get their idea through. The Coco era was about writing the playing book. So the Post-Coco era will be about remembrance, it’ll be a struggle to keep the memory of what the playing book is. It’ll be about them being Hololive as they become part of the global zeitgeist.

[afinepricklypear]

**Update: The works mentioned in this post have since been taken down. The “message” was removed by AO3 because it was a violation of their TOS and it seems the author chose to remove their “opinions” piece.**

Despite the ongoing world crisis, I hope everyone is doing great as the year comes to a close and prepping for a safe holiday season.

I don’t really post here a lot, but I just wanted to talk about a problem that exists in every fandom and has recently come up for me in the BSD fandom. This problem is typically referred to as: toxic behavior, however, I sort of hate that term because it’s an umbrella term that encapsulates a wide array of behaviors that is purposefully vague so as to imply everything can be toxic, which means the definition changes depending upon the person, and ends up getting thrown around to describe any behavior that a person dislikes. That said, most people can agree that the term ‘toxic behavior’ includes “shipper wars” and harassing people because of their “ship”.

Yesterday, a user on AO3 going by the penname E_C_arts posted a message titled “deer Soukoku fans” and giving it the not-innocuous summary “please we’re begging you, please stop”. Clicking through leads to a rather prime example of this particular flavor of toxic fandom behavior, guised as an attempt to defend those who were allegedly victims of this self-same behavior, also a lovely example of emotional manipulation.

Although what’s currently posted (and what I managed to screen shot below) may not seem terrible on first glance, if not a little cringey, and can be easy to agree with (don’t bully people that write for a ship you dislike), this was not their original message and has been edited since being posted and, and only after receiving the number of comments it did and which they’re now noting as “proving their point” – a point which they erased, thus manipulating perceptions. I wish I had gotten a screenshot of the original, but if you scroll through the comments, you can find some people that quoted it.

This person most definitely did open their “message” to Soukoku fans by literally telling them to “stop writing” for it. They claimed there was some unspecified AU (or maybe multiple unspecified AUs) that had been overwritten for, that it was overused, and not original. They went on to talk about how the abundance of soukoku content was turning off new fans to the series (don’t even know how that logics…) and bullying people from creating content for other ships, basing these irrational sentiments off some false claim that removing everything with the soukoku ship from the fandom would only leave behind a sad, inacccurate (and oddly specific) 305 posts.

Evidence of their now deleted perspective can be further seen in another post they made to AO3 a couple days before this ugly rant. Titled simply “My unpopular BSD opinions”, they didn’t manage to garner much attention and went mostly ignored because, well, it’s your opinions about the show and that’s whatever. Of course, when you click into it, the very first “opinion” shared, is that they hate Dazai x Chuuya. Okay, that’s an opinion everyone is entitled to, and that’s fine. You don’t like the popular ship, that’s…not exactly an unpopular opinion, there’s quite a number of people that don’t ship soukoku. No problem. Until, they go on to elaborate.

Despite the title of this piece being ‘their opinions’, they state as ‘fact’ that its confirmed that this is “not a thing”, so ‘please stop shipping them it doesn’t work, it’s way too overused for it to be “funny” anymore’ (I’m a little confused about this wording, because Shipping is Serious Business™, so…not sure there are too many soukoku shippers doing it because they think it’s hilarious or whatnot, in fact, most soukoku fics are tagged ‘angst’, which we all know, angst is very ‘haha, lol’…but whatevs). They then include the same sentiment they expanded on in their Dear John to soukoku fans and subsequently deleted: “Please stop, there are too many au’s with almost the exact same plot Chuuya and Dazai being together, its really difficult to find any non-Dazai x Chuuya au’s”.

On the surface, once again, there are some “truths” to this sentiment. DaiChuu is a popular ship and there is a disproportionate amount of soukoku ship fics on the fandom comparative to other ships (soukoku comes in at a whopping 10,000+ currently, with the next popular ship Aku/Atsushi sitting at a decidedly less 2500+). It’s really not that difficult to find non-DazaixChuuya fics, if you know how to use filters on AO3, but there are going to be less to read from when you filter it down, and depending on your ship, you may find yourself in a fic desert, and I can certainly understand why someone young and lacking in rational thought processes might want to blame the popular ship for this predicament.

The problem with this logic, and it permeates every fandom, not just BSD, is that the shippers sharing and loving their ship are not to blame for your lack of ship content. You just don’t have a popular ship. If all the people who love soukoku stopped creating content for it, as this person is ‘begging’ them to do, that’s not going to increase the amount of content for your ships, because the reason that content isn’t being created is because there aren’t enough shippers for it. So, the only way this person’s logic works, is if what this person is actually saying, isn’t that they want these people to stop creating content for the BSD fandom, they just want them to jump ship, stop creating content for soukoku and start creating content for their ships.

Any creator/fan is going to have a visceral reaction to that: who the fuck are you to tell me what to create? And for free, no less!

This moves us more towards a clearer definition of what is toxic fandom behavior. In short, its telling anyone how they should interact with or interpret their favorite content. I mean, even Word of God does not have this power. That’s because every single fan in a fandom is an individual human being. They are possessed of their own autonomy, and as a creator I know, that once you put something out into the world and give it over to others, you have little control over how people consume and feel about your work. You can tell them your intention, but that’s not going to sway them to interpret it that way, and that’s…just the way it works.

Now, the elephant in the room needs to be addressed. It’s easy for me to be ‘offended’ by this person’s post and not see their complaints because I am a soukoku fan. I’m also the target of this person’s rant, and one of those people this person is attempting to emotionally manipulate into writing for other ships in the fandom for which I have no preference. But I am capable of seeing the other side of this argument.

First, because I do have other fandoms in which I am part, and for which I have a rare-pair ship. For example, I am a Gundam Wing fan and a 2x5 (Duo/WuFei) shipper. I’ve posted two 2x5 fics on fanfiction.net. While 2x5 is not the rarest of rarepairs in the Gundam Wing fandom, it is significantly eclipsed (as are almost *all* ships in the fandom) by the 1x2 (Heero/Duo) ship. Do I hate 1x2 shippers for my lack of 2x5 content? No. I just appreciate what I’ve got all the more, and I’ll create content for it when I feel compelled, and I sure the fuck won’t implore 1x2 shippers to stop writing for their fave and write more for mine because I want more 2x5 – that’s sheer entitlement, right there, pure and simple. I also ship 3xD (Trowa/Dorothy) in Gundam Wing, which *is* the rarest of rarepairs – I think there’s only, like, two stories in existence that features this pair on the entirety of the internet. I’m also a RavenxMurphy (Murven) shipper in The 100 fandom and I do not hate Bellarke fans because…those people are scary and have canceled the show’s creator for not delivering on Bellarke, and in BSD, I ship Atsushi/Lucy (yes, I said it, they’re cute af and I hope Asagiri delivers on that ship). I also low-key ship Yosano/Ranpo (sorry, Ranpo/Poe shippers, I understand the appeal, I just think him and Yosano is sooo cute, please don’t kill me…), and I also ship Yosano with Kunikida – all of which are some of the rarest in the BSD fandom.

Second, because I have seen and called out shipping harassment in the BSD fandom, so I am well aware that this kind of thing exists – as it exists literally everywhere and in every flavor. Against soukoku shippers from antis and by soukoku shippers against shippers putting Dazai or Chuuya with any other characters and by soukoku shippers against other soukoku shippers that are, uh, “doing it wrong”. None of these is appropriate. You’re not fighting fire with fire if you’re an anti-attacking the popular ship, you’re just creating a bigger fire and burning the entire fandom down. You’re not defending your ship if you are a soukoku fan attacking non-soukoku fans, you’re just punching down by attacking a less popular ship. And top/bottom arguments aren’t just toxic, they’re also deeply entrenched in fetishization of same sex pairings through a forced heteronormative lens and is, kind of, sort of, actually homophobic in its basis (yes, I said it. It’s ignorant and homophobic and trying to argue with ‘personality/physical traits’ as evidence of who serves what position in the bedroom can be emotionally and mentally damaging to members of the LGBTQ community. Claiming that Chuuya should be bottom because he’s shorter/smaller, or that Dazai has ‘bottom energy’ because he’s more flamboyant and ‘feminine’ is straight up discrimination – a shorter guy can definitely be top, and a manly man can be bottom, it’s not a behavior based on perceived gendered traits, it is just a fucking preferred sexual position, and no, you are not ‘fixing it’ by purposely using positions for these characters that eschews the stereotypes either. Trying to justify positioning by personality/physical traits at all, in any way, shape, or form is just not okay – if it’s your preference, it’s your preference, no justification needed, just recognize that it is *your* preference and arguing what’s ‘right/wrong’ positioning is just plain wrong).

But this brings us to a different issue: bad actors and blaming a whole community for a ‘few rotten apples’. I could easily lump this one person in with everyone that does not ship soukoku and deem them all toxic, aggressive, entitled, bullies attempting to harass soukoku shippers off the platform. Or I could see them for what they are, individuals with individual motivations and drives and morals that also happen to share the same shipping preferences. Is it true to say that there are no soukoku fans that engage in the behaviors described by E_C_arts? No, there are definitely those that do, as there are antis that engage in that same behavior against soukoku fans. But this person also asserts that soukoku fans turning ‘every BSD post about soukoku’ is also a toxic behavior. To which I refer you back to one. This is how they engage with and interpret the work. Don’t yuck on someone else’s yum. People want to gush about how cute they thought soukoku were in an official art, or that they felt there was some hidden (or not so hidden) interaction between them that validates their ship, or their inspired to create soukoku content based on it, so what (for the record, it irks me too when people go ‘see it’s canon and Bones totally ships it’, because it’s unlikely, given BSDs genre, that any romantic relationship will be confirmed, soukoku notwithstanding). It is not, in fact, toxic to gush over it. Let them have their fun with it, let them enjoy their ship. Now, if you go and make a comment about liking the art for other reasons and they reply to you about “…but also soukoku”, then still, that’s not toxic, that’s just them enjoying the content the way that they enjoy it, so let them enjoy it, and you opened yourself to engagement without any qualifiers for the type of engagement you were soliciting, you can’t then backtrack and go ‘but I’m not a soukoku shipper, they should’ve been able to read my mind and known that, it’s totally toxic of them to share their personal reasons for loving the show in response to my sharing my love for the show’. But if you comment about another ship, and they reply to you “…ew, gross! It’s 100% soukoku” then yes, that’s toxic. A lot of people fail to make this distinction, that they are, maybe, merely being triggered and not actually harassed, by feeling like their ship isn’t being validated because they see another ship all over the place and everyone they engage with ships it.

It’s also toxic, to take an experience with one person and hold every soukoku shipper in existence responsible for that one person’s inappropriate behavior. The truth is, that bad actors amongst soukoku fans are not unique, not to the ship and not to the fandom and not even to fandom culture in general. Every group in existence everywhere has bad actors in it that, while the group disavows their behavior, they continue to be held accountable for those individuals and judged by them. For current events, look at how the BLM movement has been blamed for bad actors (many of whom were not actually BLM activists) that took advantage of the protests and started riots and chaos. A small percentage of people were involved in these behaviors, but the entire movement, despite speaking out against rioting, continues to take the blame for it. For me, that’s the root of toxicity. We need to start holding individuals accountable and stop blaming people who have no control over those individuals, because they share a few similar beliefs or interests. That’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But the shippers as a whole are not to blame for the actions of a few, and the reason that it feels that there are so many more soukoku fans that do this is because of volume, there are so many more soukoku fans. It’s basic math. If two percent of fans are these toxic kinds of shippers, then there’s going to be so many more of them in a larger population than a smaller one.

I try to call out toxic behavior, no matter if it’s my ship being lambasted or one of my fellow shippers doing the lambasting, whenever I see it, but the trouble is, I don’t typically go into fan content that isn’t for my ship and, thus, I don’t see it. The same goes for the vast majority of soukoku fans out there. We’re here for soukoku content, we’re seeking out soukoku content, and avoiding what isn’t soukoku content. But here is my offer to all of those who are outside of my ship. I like to argue. If someone is harassing you for having a non-soukoku ship, call me, let me know, I will argue with them for you. I will explain to them in no uncertain terms, and in many unpleasant ways, that they do not represent the soukoku shipping community and they are an embarrassment to us. Content for any and all ships is welcomed and encouraged within the fandom. Write, draw, contribute, be a part of the fandom and express yourself, please. If you are a soukoku shipper (or even if you’re not), and someone is harassing you about your top/bottom preference, call me, let me know, I will argue with them for you. I will explain to them why their justifications for which character should be top or bottom in a same sex pairing is grossly misrepresentative and exploitative of the LGBTQ community and rather disgusting. Do not assume that because we seem to remain silent on these types of harassment that it’s because we are in agreement with them, it is only because we haven’t seen them – why would we, we’re not going in those spaces that weren’t created for us. Ask the community for help, don’t attack the rest of us for the poor actions of a few that we were not even aware of. Let us help you in policing them, rather than assuming we don’t care. We are just too busy staying in our lanes, but if you need us, we are here. Majority of us want a clean, friendly, welcoming community for creators of all types as much as you do.

All of this aside, there are spaces and places for these debates and AO3 is not it. Posting this kind of message is actually a violation of AO3 TOS, constituting as harassment, which is defined on the AO3 TOS as “…any behavior that produces a generally hostile environment for its target…”( https://archiveofourown.org/tos#IV.G.). This general behavior also falls into the realm of another kind of toxic fandom behavior: hijacking a platform/tag for your own purposes that is a direct contradiction to its express usage (otherwise, known as trolling). AO3 is for posting fan-made content that contributes to a deeper understanding and expansion upon the original work. Using AO3 to attack people who are using AO3 for exactly what it is designed to be used for is an abuse of the platform. It’s not okay and invites similar content that will ultimately interfere with the original purpose of the platform. AO3 is for fan content, not for your own personal rants about other people in the community, please keep it that way

I do also want to note, that this person choosing to edit their post after receiving the justified ire from fans (notably soukoku and non-soukoku fans alike upset by the audacity of this person, who, as far as can be told, has never themselves contributed fanfiction to the community, to tell people what they can and cannot write) for their original comments, is a form of manipulative abuse called ‘gaslighting’. They are now claiming to be a victim that “never said to stop writing”, despite that having been the literal words they used in the opening of their original post. They are now pointing at these comments as “proof” of their point that soukoku fans are aggressive bullies that attack without cause when there was definitely cause from the original comments. This person clearly has bigger issues than just lacking shipper content for their personal preferences on the BSD fandom.

To all of those who are afraid to share content for your ship because you think you’ll be harassed, as evidenced by this person’s claims, that is simply not true. While there might be one or two people that say something, we all get them no matter if you have a popular ship or a rarepair ship, haters are gonna hate – I’ve gotten my share of hateful comments towards my ships too, but there are many more people that share your ship and are interested in your content, in fact, some of them are starved for it. While having a rarepair might mean you’ll garner less interactions with your content, you have a better opportunity to form a deeper bond with the people that do interact, and they may be more appreciative, because what you’re delivering to them is so much harder to come by. The existence of one ship does not affect your ship’s popularity, and if it simply went away, that doesn’t mean that your ship would receive more attention – in fact, it might mean the show itself would receive less attention.

Create and let others create and use platforms for their appropriate purposes, and most importantly, when it comes to addressing toxic behavior in a fandom, look to yourself first. Are you placing the blame where it belongs? Are you addressing the root cause of the problem or swinging blindly and attacking innocent bystanders in the process? Will what you say actually help the problem? Or will it contribute to the issue, and maybe even create an issue that didn’t exist before?

[transsexualhamlet]

tg anime vs manga *sighs*

i have the power of hyperfixation and anime on my side! AAAAAAAA

Ok now that we’ve gotten the sins of re post out of the way we need to discuss this. And I just feel that this needs to be covered because I can’t ever get away from constant discourse on this, mostly fueled by manga readers who feel entitled to always think they’re superior for reading the manga, that the manga is the only real canon, that it’s more complex or better, I’m so fucking tired of it. I am also a manga reader, and I tend to get like that sometimes too with many series (for example no. 6 and the promised neverland.) I get it. It can be really annoying to see something butchered on screen to what the original is, changed or represented differently or given a different message or simplified. But just. Some people like the anime and it’s not a goddamn holy war for y’all to fight. It only makes anime fans not want to read the thing even more yknow cause manga readers are pretentious assholes, and I am aware of this as one of them.

(again ok i’d like to mention i know this fandom is basically dead but a certain p*nterest is always like 4 years behind on fandoms so i keep fucking running into Discourse that’s like, still current, whenever i want old random ass content) (and youtube, why do i look at youtube comments, because I personally enjoy being offended? yeah probably)

And that brings me to the point of this anime vs manga. 

This is a lot harder to compare than a lot of other series, because there are just... so many more differences not just in the style and vibe but the story itself.

Disclaimer, I’ve never watched the anime for :re and i don’t intend to, because I honestly have no earthly clue how tf you can get from the highly diverged tokyo ghoul root A to re and make it make sense, and I don’t really want A ruined for me. So you can call me biased towards the manga in the case of re, i guess (which makes my eventual conclusion even more strong I’d say) Honestly I just see them as two completely different stories, the manga’s version connecting with re and A just like... ending there. So how we’re drawing the lines is basically tokyo ghoul A versus the manga and :re. God, I know this isn’t a fair fight because I already hate re so much, but I feel like the manga’s story is much more intertwined with :re than the anime’s is, so that’s what we’re going with.

oh god also another disclaimer this opinion is coming from the biggest fucking kanehide whore, you can disregard anything i say if you ship The Straights and/or do not care for my boi hide

To be honest, if I can take my own conclusions and liberties to the story, I like both versions, each have their pros and cons and kind of a conflicting message. They can’t really coexist. Usually I’d consume all versions and then create one consistent canon in my head for what I accept as the true events (for example my main owari no seraph, first season of the anime is canon but after that we only follow the manga since those can come together and make sense.) but it’s very hard to do that in tokyo ghoul, since I must confess... I really like root A. Like of course, it’s a lot different from the manga, but tbh I think it’s super valid. (unlike most Fans TM like this Fan TM who i’m sending this post to just to spite their singular Youtube Comment Section Discourse, yes I did write this post for you and many others like you) But the ideas that make up root A conflict a lot with the ones of the manga, so I just have to accept that they’re separate things and treat them as such.

Now to break it down so people can understand where I’m coming from I guess? God this is already so long here’s a read more

The Case for The Manga (including :re manga)

More Lore + Plot Shit: One of the main reasons that manga readers are pretentious little bitches is a valid reason, namely that, as is the case with most manga, there’s simply more to it than people can fit into an anime. (Although people need to understand that’s because,,, it’s simply a different medium, so it will have different pluses and minuses, such as for example a soundtrack, color, moving pictures,,, you know, all that. Anime onlys don’t say that the anime is better by stating these things that a manga won’t have... because they’re fucking obvious. So manga readers should stop acting like an anime is inherently sub-par for being less in depth, but we digress.) I can understand that reading the manga is kind of important for wanting to understand the lore (though there are like so many other reasons ppl might want to watch it other than to get the lore) and without the explanation of how all this came to be and how it works, everything tends to be really mysterious, confusing, and seemingly random. It’s really nice to know what’s all going on, of course, and stuff like the washuus, rize’s backstory, the explanation for like, kaneki in general, all that- if you’re looking for like, plot shit, manga is definitely your go to. But like, sometimes, you like, don’t actually care about those things.

Haise: Of course one of the most important things about well, including re is that I fucking love Haise. Like he is my favorite Kaneki. He’s just so wonderful, look at him in he glasses and he floofy hair and he striped pants and he energy boxers and he s p i c e and he MOM. And I really like how they took Kaneki’s character and developed it more with Haise, you can see his turnaround from innocent--> Emo--> Trying To Be Innocent Again But Failing and I think that’s really sweet tbh. I rejected that at first because I didn’t understand it but once I actually read re I thought it made a lot of sense and was a logical thing to do with his character. (though, uh, moving forward, after his hair changes again i disagree with it, haise 1.0 is a good take and i love him and i want the best for him) I could go on I’ve already written a post of what I think is wrong with :re so if you want to hear my take on kaneki’s 37 pokemon evolutions that’s in there

Good New Characters: And of course there are my favorite bitches such as quinx squad, oh my god, there was a terminal lack of dumbass squad vibes in the original and ishida fucking gave it to us, I love them, I love them with all my heart and I think that if I wasn’t attached to them I’d probably just cancel all of :re but like this is just my personal problem. God I love them. Ishida always pulls through with characters I’m now too attached to.

Vore Lmao:Ok like hear me out. I just get a laugh out of it every time the manga has to remind me of this little fucking fact. Like ok I just. Cannot get over it. It’s so serious about it too and like I realize it’s a serious deal but o h  m y  g o d

Ok and now that we’ve got that little rant over I do want to say that it is like actually really important past the “lmao that’s pretty gay” bit, like??? In some ways it’s more fitting than the anime because well, ishida’s point always seems to be “what would mentally and physically hurt kaneki the most right now” and does it because that’s who this bitch is. But it just?? Kind of makes a bit more sense for the storyline if we’re being picky here, it’s so,,, painfully on point? Like the entire reason he gave in to Being A Ghoul and all was so he could save his friends and shit (i actually do not remember if this was a thing in the manga but like? when he was being tortured and he like imagined hide being really mad at him and getting killed by jason and shit?) LIKE AND THEN HE GOES AND HAS TO BASICALLY BE THE PERPETRATOR OF THAT HIMSELF, FUCK, it’s a lose/lose situation of “don’t do the bad thing and watch your friends suffer” or “do the bad thing and watch your friends suffer but like, later” ishida please

The meaning of Hide being alive: Ok this is just me crying over chapter 75 still but like. Instead of in the anime, where hide’s point seems to be that instead of letting kaneki sacrifice anything more he’d be the one to give his life up and such, and save kaneki, in the anime tbh he just really wanted to be with kaneki right then?? and like ouch but understanding that in the manga he wasn’t just planning on dying and leaving kaneki to deal with it afterward he wanted to go on and continue to try to help the guy no matter the shit he had to go through, no matter if the dude just like forgot that he existed for two years and all- LIKE UH CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW HIDE DOESN’T EVEN EXPECT ANY APOLOGY? like kaneki’s like “OH MY GOD I’M SUCH A TERRIBLE PERSON” and hide’s like lmao nah it’s cool i’m thriving- that his big motto was “live” rather than “peace out motherfuckers it’s been fun”. Cause. Fucking. Ishida. Can’t kill off characters well but like at least he made keeping this one alive justified. 

The D e t a i l s: Ok well I feel like this is something everyone knows but the anime is missing a lot of really,,, crunchy details that the manga throws in there, like, well, kaneki’s fucking,,, bones thing, and other assorted details, g o d like those are missable if you want to never understand half the memes but also like,,, sometimes you just gotta read that shit. It also like, makes more sense when you do but sometimes it’s just stupid things that aren’t important but are fucking hilarious.

The Flavor: In general I’d say the greatest difference between the anime and the manga is the general flavor of the thing, the vibe in the manga is a lot, to be frank, darker and grosser and bloodier than the anime, which is a lot more focused on being pretty and Tragic than “HOLY SHIT WTF” but like. That’s valid. With that comes it being a lot more, real, and although the art may not be as polished as the anime’s, sometimes that’s exactly what you need, and the really gritty sketchy shit that’s in the manga sometimes is exactly what it’s supposed to be for the manga. (in the anime, i’d say that the colored and polished style fits it better, so we’re good there.) It’s a lot more real, in the manga, when the anime hesitates to “go there” a lot (and well, sometimes that’s welcome, but sometimes it’s like y o u  g u y s  c o m e  o n  r e a l l y maybe i DID want to see that did you ever think of that)

So like, to sum it up i’d just like to say it’s more detailed, sharper and darker and is simply So Much. There is just More Content

The Case for Root A

ON THE OTHER HAND, (buckle up fuckers)

Depth of Emotion (that Ishida was too much of a pissbaby for): God like you know what I mean if you read the last post, we spent a whole episode on these gay fucks in root A, with backstory and dreams and drawn out suspense and emotion and GUYS LOOK AT THEM NO REALLY OH MY GOD YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND HOW IMPORTANT THIS IS whereas hide’s limelight in the manga is a whole... two pages, oh whoopee, and that’s mostly due to the fact of ishida putting himself in a spot of “oh fuck goddamn if i drew that in i’d get flagged for gay porn” but that’s his own fault, so he downplays the whole scene and really keeps it in the dark, whereas in this anime it’s understandably a lot less,,, like that, but how it plays out here is simply... really nice and makes you cry and shit, whereas in the manga I’d go “oh god oh damn oh fuck” *laughs my ass off because i really can’t take this seriously*. You get just... more here.

To elaborate on this, in the anime, as a gay fucking bastard, I can get practically an endless amount of content from episode twelve, and endlessly stew over all Those Things about it, every hard hitting line, the expressions, the music making it even sadder, the ways the VAs say the words, the cinematic beauty of the blood dripping on the floor and like how it’s supposed to make you think it’s kaneki’s, GOD I COULD FUCKING GO ON, but if we want to get that in the manga... 

we get three incredibly basic lines, a blackout, and then a “QUICK LET’S MOVE ON TO SOMETHING ELSE BEFORE ANYONE NOTICES THE IMPLICATIONS OF THAT HAHA”

So if we want to have more, we need to write it. (sadly) None of it is ever played out canonically so like,,, all we can do is infer and make shit up. It’s like, I am a writer so like that’s my whole job but I really would rather have more content, and have the content that’s there get to be emotional instead of *blank face* “this is plot that is happening, sadly” but like maybe it’s just bc i’m gay

Really Fucking Beautiful (aesthetically as well as story-wise): This kind of just goes hand in hand with the depth of emotion bit, and I think it can’t really compared to the manga here because I’m gay so I see pretty colors and cry so the anime is understandably appealing for me, but I’m also talking emotionally, yeah. There’s a lot of plotlines and implications of the story that are really well played out, I always love to watch the original because it does a very good job handling a lot of the harder topics and stuff that makes the whole thing worthwhile- like the whole point you’re supposed to see that the ghouls and humans are both just as monstrous when you break it down, that there are good and bad people on both sides, everyone just wants to live and feel good in their own life and perspective, everyone has reasons that justify their behaviour in their mind, sometimes you just can’t win no matter what, all that... they’re all really important messages and make the whole story, and they were handled much more delicately and with more expertise in the anime. 

It’s hard to pin down, but I feel like the manga was just based more on Fight Scenes Characters OoH Fake Science and kind of just gave kaneki infinite power ups after Trying Harder no offense, obviously those things were there and they were still very good in the manga it’s just sometimes they were cheapened a lot by ishida really not keeping track of what he’s trying to say with his story and sacrificing it a lot for “BUT WHAT IF KANEKI’S HAIR AND IDEALS CHANGED AGAIN” instead of making it a whole cohesive work. (and yes, I am VERY aware of your “well aCtuAlLy the hair represents his sanity” thing i know i know and i’m about to rip it to fucking shreds so)

Understandable Character Development And Staying True To It: Which brings me to this point, character development. This was another thing that was just... handled with more expertise in the anime, whoever was in charge of it. Mostly this has to do with Kaneki, since like, no offense but he’s the only one who ever gets much character development other than like, juuzou (asmr you only get character development if your hair color changes) oh and i guess there’s tsukiyama but he’s someone who shouldn’t have gotten character development. Touka gets character development only before re for some reason, and like tbh that’s kind of it. I do think Juuzou’s character development was valid, because well... it made sense? I complained about it before because I was like “well he just turns into spicy L” but i’ve since changed my opinion, he’s best boy. But Kaneki? They went way overboard with him in the manga, and generally? Calm tf down ishida.

Breaking it down, one of the main things that most of the tried and true manga stans seem to hate about the anime the most is Kaneki going over to Aogiri in root A. Since they’re much more acclimated to the manga, they don’t understand why he would do that (quoting a particular ‘probably made sense in the manga!’ yes i know that whole thing was poking fun at the show and i felt it lmao) and they just pin it to “ahaha he has now become Edgy for the fans ehehe time to make fun of him” and TO BE FAIR YOU’D BE COMPLETELY RIGHT. I love to make fun of Kaneki when he does his edgy bitch thing because that’s what he is. A basic edgy bitch who is just,,, such a main character. But like. He does actually have his reasons despite popular opinion and to be honest I think they’re a bit more valid than in the manga, where he’s just like “well I’ve been tortured, that was not pleasant and i kinda did a bad thing, let’s go back to anteiku but i’m just gonna Try Harder To Fight this time”. I can understand that, but like, it seems like in the manga every Character Development of kaneki is some form of “i will now be stronger” except for the singular “I will now be a different person” which, well, we’ll get to that. 

In the anime though, even if it seems like more of a basic edgy bitch move, it’s like?? It makes perfect sense to me, and to be honest more than the manga does? Obviously he doesn’t wanna be best bros with Aogiri, he realizes they’re all bad people who have done really terrible things, but the fact is he now sees himself as the same thing, he now understands their motives because in his mind he is also now Bad TM. His whole character development of being tortured was that peace wasn’t an option no matter how much he wanted it, he couldn’t live being a pacifist and the world was forcing him to give the “i am the only one that understands! we need to stop fighting!” bullshit up because there was no way to achieve it. He realized if he kept himself the way he was more people he loved would be hurt like they already had because he couldn’t, so he doesn’t just Decide To Become Stronger, he gives up his humanity. And that includes basically letting himself defend his own actions and try to do “the right thing”. 

Him then joining aogiri makes sense because well. They’re the people who are the strongest, who have the power, who are the same as he sees himself. He still wants to protect the people he loves, he just also realizes he can’t do it by working with them since he now understands that their more peaceful ways will by definition get them fucking killed. His understanding is flawed, of course. He’s not really right. But this is his understanding and from that it makes perfect sense for him to join up with aogiri and try to still do as much as possible from that standpoint, realizing that most likely the people he’s trying to protect will hate him for it. I think that makes sense to me, what do you not understand about it? (I also understand that may make some people mad because he’d Doing Bad Things but I point to you he’s so soft, remember when he was really nice to naki when he was literally the one who killed the guy naki was crying about? remember when he was doing a raid and he saw that guy hiding and he never mentioned it? remember like the seventy times he Cried TM, yeah he’s problematic obviously but if you want problematic I’ll point you to a certain fucking black reaper. Shironeki has nothing on that asshole.)

I think what Kaneki did in the manga was fine, but in general the anime (again) had more depth of understanding and emotion versus a steady Try Harder Get Stronger shonen deal, which, well, fair, but like, nah. Continuing why I think the anime dealt it better is the ending of A, which was a lot more well rounded then *kaneki gets stabbed and then there’s a lot of random plot shit going on in the background*. Here Kaneki then got to round out the end of his character development by realizing slowly through the second half of this season, him becoming a kakuja and then basically deciding like, not to

((kakuja kaneki was dealt with again different in the anime and manga because he basically stopped trying to use it in the anime bc he realized it was a bad fucking idea but this goes along with the ‘his character development of “i’m gonna do bad things for good reasons” --> “actually no wait that was a bad idea” was actually done in root A instead of being dragged out into :re and it’s appropriate for its own medium and the messages it’s trying to get across so manga loyalists hate it’ but we digress))

So in root A we got to see him actually develop and realize himself through the second half of the season starting with cochlea, his interactions with Amon, and ultimately through Hide, that he’d been doing the wrong thing by becoming more monstrous/fighting harder because what he did was ended up forgetting the most important thing, *smiles in gay* HIDE.(well, his humanity. yeah. i cite the terrible opening for root A with the fun ‘the hands taking off kaneki’s mask are hide’s’ bit.) He then remembered again why he wanted so bad to stop the war between humans and ghouls, he wanted to be able to live in peace and not have to be a monster- something that was not dealt with in the manga (though for understandable reasons of We Need To Fuck With Him In Re More, they then didn’t deliver on creating something like that later so I take this.)

That’s most of the difference between the original manga and anime, but I’d also like to discuss (briefly, I’ve already yelled about them) the ridiculous amount of hurdles ishida went through to fuck with kaneki in the manga, Of course there is the fact that well, the slower transition of his character does make some more sense for the manga because if you take :re into consideration, his eight billion character changes are more tolerable when they haven’t like, already happened before in the manga (just the anime). It makes more sense there for Haise to be tormented by past kaneki telling him He’s Too Weak because in the manga he hasn’t already had that development prior to “dying”, and he lost his memories still believing he had to be strong even if he did bad things, whereas in the anime it doesn’t track because at the end like i just said he kind of gives up his ghoulhood on purpose because he realizes that joining aogiri and fighting and shit was really wrong because, hide. So I can see why those character decisions were not made in the original when planning for :re, but... the fact remains that those previous decisions do not make up for how absolutely weak :re’s game ended up being with kaneki. 

So tldr this entire section, All the manga’s defense of how they handled Kaneki’s development is basically void because all those choices were buildup for development in :re which ishida then COMPLETELY fell down on. So the alternative is better.

And now comes my yelling about how exactly Ishida fucked it up: hair colors and kaneki’s 80 kanekis. If black is supposed to represent sane and white is supposed to represent insane or, whatever, i dunno, who tf thought black reaper kaneki was sane? Who tf would think kaneki in the end isn’t? I haven’t looked into this really, and I’d really love it if someone explained it to me the way ishida was going for bc I do not understand it. Like that tracks with Juuzou, and with Kaneki up to Haise Original, but they don’t really make a cohesive sense seeing as after Haise’s hair color changed again that whole deal kind of goes to shit. Not to mention... I just... they completely failed to make those character changes actually part of the story, I’m mostly complaining about black reaper haise, none of him makes any sense. What’s his deal? He wants to protect who he loves? Tracks with the ghouls but fun fact he abandoned his kids? He actually cared for them? What then, he wants to be the strongest as possible? Sure but then?? Why?? I don’t understand his motives at all.

We also didn’t get to see him get his memories back either, which I was actually very much looking forward to, it just,,, like all of a sudden he’s talking with eto about yoshimura and i’m like bruh when tf did that happen? It’s bad, and although chapter 74-76 is super valid, and his change back into white hair kaneki makes sense, I also have the complaint about how haise basically disappeared just like he was worried he would. I think that was bad and I’ve said that already, it doesn’t make sense, he just literally throws those entire two years away to go back to the way he was before he was with the CCG and just forgets everything he’s wanted for the last few years? Fiction logic test fucking failed, and you’ve also broken my heart. Love Haise. You got rid of him. I love kaneki too but like. Why don’t they just. Like. Merge. He is one whole complex person, not one and an imposter, god. 

This is a big negative for re and the manga, so automatically a positive for root A where I simply Do Not Have To Deal With That Bullshit and the character development actually makes sense. I can understand the decisions in the original manga could have set up for good development in :re, but they completely failed to deliver.

root a didn’t fast forward to re at the end god damn let us process this shit first before you try to connect it to something else: The thing with this point is that it’s really difficult to separate the original manga from the continuing story in :re because the thing intertwines so much and immediately moves us forward with a ton of plot points for the next part of the story before we’re done with this climax and the end of this story. Sometimes that’s ok and I can see doing that from an author’s perspective because you want people to continue reading your story instead of taking that as the end but it’s really annoying on a reader’s end, because I’m picky and I want to be able to just be able to enjoy my original canon without it like, metaphorically touching :re on a plate. It’s something that I don’t even do with my own longer stories, like for example I have like a trilogy of >100k fics that like, well i’m technically not done with them but like. 

People really like the first one because it’s more focused on a more popular ship and basic elements people like about the thing, and then by the second book it moves on to talk more about the plot and lore and brings in more secondary characters. And so I knew that a lot of the readers of the first one wouldn’t want to have to deal with a lot of the “oh well stuff is happening elsewhere that will effect stuff later!!!” random plot shit that none of my readers actually cared about. So I kept it to wrapping up the points of the first book and then leaving the introduction of new characters and plot for the people who actually wanted to read it. Ishida didn’t do that, and of course it’s within his right to like?? Want to promote the next series but I’d have enjoyed it more if we ended it at kaneki’s “death” and wrapping up the deals with the rest of the characters instead of quickly shoving in the beginning of seventy more plotlines before the book ends. Like honey I simply do not have the reading comprehension for that. In the anime we get something that... makes sense.

In the anime, however, it’s quite the opposite, for example the reveals like Eto=owl=takatsuki sen were pushed before that and they saved episode twelve for, well, the end bit. Like what was actually the ending. There were detriments to this I had to say (LIKE GUYS I GET IT HE’S CARRYING HIDE HE’S CARRYING HIM I GET IT YOU’VE BEEN DOING IT FOR HALF THE EPISODE NOW OK I UNDERSTAND CAN WE MOVE ON) But like, I prefer the concept of a simple idea with as much emotion squeezed out of it as possible to a ton of confusing and contradicting ideas that are touched on for a second before moving on. So the *cries for half an hour* ending was much more appealing to me, and I can keep that separate in my head from any of the ideas that :re creates, letting me pretend it doesnt exist and imagine that’s the end and there’s nothing else to worry about. If we want to move forward and hear more, then we can, but it isn’t necessary like it is with the manga.

No Bad Takes that are hard to pry apart from good plot and characters:This is basically the downsides of the new characters, which is well, if I had to make a whole ~keep reading~ post about how problematic everything in re was that does have to count as a downside. I love the new characters, but they also come intertwined with a thousand really bad takes on like, everything, and of course I can ignore it and just act as though they were written in like, to be perfectly honest, a non transphobic way, it’s a real downside when the original anime was pretty pain-free in the way of their takes on their characters. They fucked everyone up in re and I will not elaborate, we’ve talked about this, it’s just the anime, and which i mean season 1 and root A, don’t really have any bad takes I need to try to get rid of, it’s surprisingly something I have little complaint about at all and I ALWAYS have complaints.

Hide!!!!: Obviously, you can tell that a lot of my opinions are going to be hide based because he’s the only thing I ever think about. But we have to take into account just how... hide???? This goes a lot into the depth of emotion bit but it also offers the other side of the argument for Hide’s part in the :re manga, which well. Was mostly chapter 75 if we’re going to be perfectly honest here. He doesn’t get any other limelight. Even in the chapter where Kaneki meets him again he gets a whole what, three pages? In the manga, he has an extremely valid deal about basically, living, keeping going no matter what, and that is a fitting part for the manga, considering the rest of the points there ride more on Keep Fighting instead of Think About Your Emotions And Morals, but honestly chapter 75 was really valid. So why do I still think the anime’s version where he like (ok I don’t know about the re anime we’ve discussed this, i don’t even know how they choose to explain that) he like, dies in kaneki’s arms is better overall? Again, I would have totally accepted that deal if it was made a part of the story because it made me cry, it was super valid, and if they’d continued in that way I would have agreed with it completely over that. But the fact is again that they failed to deliver, and Hide got largely ignored, suffered so much with so little outcome. There was so much buildup and it was incredibly valid, but when the time came for them to meet again and basically show... why it was important that Hide lived in the end? 

They didn’t. They straight up didn’t. Kaneki’s like “oh sorry bro... glad you’re alive and all...” *goes off and fights* and like? Honestly? @everlastingspiral is right, if that’s all they’re gonna do with him what’s the point of keeping him alive? I love every single panel of him and I wouldn’t have read re if he didn’t, but hide gets absolutely NO payoff. For letting kaneki literally vore his entire mouth off, leaving him disfigured and unable to talk, then kind of disappearing for two years and doing seemingly nothing but trying to help kaneki even though he’d forgotten the guy existed, risks his life like a thousand fucking times, eventually gets back to him and the dude’s running a fucking anti-human organization, helps him like Not Be A Volitile Pile Of Flesh Anymore and then what should have been a very important moment of them meeting again gets completely overshadowed by touka and random plot shit and more fights and they barely interact, they don’t even hug or anything, they barely talk, and at the end hide is still there but to be honest he’s gotten absolutely no thanks for all he did and ishida acts at the end as though he’s done very well with hide and gives him a tiny bit at the end throwing in a tragic backstory for fun (which hot take he really didn’t fucking need on top of it all) and... there’s no real hint that Kaneki is better off with Hide there, even though there should be. In 75, in his dream, kaneki is sobbing and crying and all like i’m so lonely without you but when they actually meet each other again? “yo” “hey” “uh sorry about,,, the thing,,, you know” “nah man it’s ok” “let me talk about myself for a bit” “yes you always do do you want to hear what I’ve been up to” “not really” “that’s fine i’m only here to support you”

...So you can understand why I’ve gone a bit sour on that. If that’s all you’re going to give him? Hot take? Let him die. Hide deserves better. (and i will deliver that in writing, but for the purposes of canon.)

In the anime, however (not counting re again... although he still gets the short end of the stick just in the original manga too compared to the anime) he’s properly dealt with! he gets his proper limelight and he gets acknowledged for what he’s done thusfar in the story, which is already so much. Kaneki then realizes that, but it’s already too late (or it isn’t, and they like negotiate with the ccg and then they get to live happily ever after) either way he gets appreciated and he gets hurt, but it’s properly acknowledged. And after all that, after saving kaneki and getting him to the cafe and doing it all while bleeding the fuck out, he gets to spend that time with kaneki and die in kaneki’s arms. And frankly? That’s all I think he’s ever needed. It’s really poetic and pretty and brings kaneki’s character around full circle, and even if it’s overly sappy, cliche, drawn out... he gets the attention he’s due and he gets a fucking break. He wanted to show Kaneki he wanted to do something for him and save him instead of the other way around, but then HE GOT ACKNOWLEDGED FOR THAT, instead of just well, tirelessly working towards it forever and having to be content to be a background character with practically no value to Kaneki anymore.

Keeps The Same Vibe: The big thing about this is that with the manga and with re, shit just goes all over the place, and I feel like I’ve amply showed that already through this essay or whatever this is. Again about the consistency and the professionalism, It’s a concise story that makes more sense than the manga while also being simply neater and more deep, making sure all the points, themes and messages work together and make sense to create a cohesive deal even if it’s not as long. (the manga is like ishida had a TON of good ideas for an essay but then fleshed out the thing ten minutes before deadline and managed to completely lose what his original thesis was even if the thing was 10 pages long.) Basically. yeah. That kind of sums it up, my last point concerns the ending.

Not Cheap Ending: If you want to hear my take about how absolutely terrible re’s ending was, check out my The Many Sins Of Tokyo Ghoul :Re post, and we’ve discussed how the original’s manga ending was bad and well not really an ending, it just leaves you unfulfilled and takes you into “well I guess I have to start a whole nother sequel series ig...” but root A like? Actually ends it? If a reader didn’t know that there was any content after that, they could pretty much infer that hide’s death or almost death whatever you inferred out of that ending (again we’re ignoring re) allowed Kaneki to finish his character development and realize they needed to stop the war, which basically tracks with what’s going on in everyone else’s perspective- eto’s problem with the world because of what happened with everything, is basically like, all of aogiri, juuzou and shinohara, amon and akira and kaneki and they can realize all they have to do is just sit down and fucking stop it because none of them want to be fighting, hide is the catalyst for that because the CCG can see how Kaneki cares for him? And it’s so open ended that you could just like literally believe that and there’d be no way for that canon to tell you otherwise, or you could go onto re and whatever if you wanted to. I think that’s the best thing. 

In conclusion, both have valid points, and in general I’d say that the manga goes better with :re and the anime is better as a stand alone but if I had to choose overall, this particular anime is better (taking into account only seasons 1 and 2), for mostly the reasons of favoring a simpler story taken with much more care and depth versus a more complex story with many, MANY imperfect elements, and I am aware I will get shot on sight for this opinion. So sue me.

[soc-characters-as-songs]

Favorite part of the interviews and a song for all?

ivy: "*he keeps a small polite smile, silently gesturing to the refreshments available as he asks* how have you been finding angeles and the palace, ivy?

*/king doof-ael,/ the title her friend alba had dubbed him with, though she couldn't possibly off that as another name. even if it was interesting, it's only when raphael sits that she notices one of the imposing figures standing a ways behind him. /the divergent man/. seven. he was here? now???"

alaska ("and I walked off an old me/oh me, oh my I thought it was a dream/so it seemed/and now breathe deep, I'm inhaling/you and I, there's air in-between/leave me be, I'm exhaling/you and I, there's air in-between")

meredith: "*he keeps a smile at her* I believe I do prefer celebrations inside, though, knowing how hot it can get in the afternoon here in angeles.

*she feels a bit insensitive when he answers because it's such a huge "duh" moment and she kind of just didn't think about it before she made the comment about all the parties. but she can just add it to her mounting list of little mistakes. she grimaces and nods, murmuring* right, sorry, of course. *she shifts again, reminding herself that she needs to focus more* it's um... colder in northern angeles too. at least where I grew up *she breathes in a sigh because somehow she's turned this into a conversation about the weather, which she feels like is what you do when you're stuck in a waiting room with a stranger and even if that's what the interviews could be likened to she was hoping it wouldn't be like that. she squirms a bit more and honestly a bit of desperation is setting in and meredith unclasps her purse, finally looking down so she can see what she's doing. she hesitates a moment, then reaches a hand inside and pulls out an assorted bag of gummy bears, which she pilfered from the pantry the night before. she quickly closes the purse again, then her hands go to the bag as she opens it, the bag makes that loud plastic crinkly sound. meredith finally looks up at him again and gives him a weak smile, holding up the bag between them, with the opening facing his way* would you like some? *her eyes dart to sam and the cameras, then back to him* it has all the flavors, I think"

good as it gets ("just leave it up to me, to be sad in paradise/I got a good heart but f*ck it for the art/had a good life, I could never really see that/got so bad, lookin' for love in the trash/if I had it, I wouldn't know how to keep it/well, maybe i'm a mess/and maybe I'm depressed/and maybe I'll just find out who I am and I won't like who it is/and I'm a wreck"

diana: "*he shakes his head at her question, not dismissive at all but offering only this* I'm not the cooking or baking type. reading, you could say, is a hobby of mine - basic as it sounds. *he knows it's probably not enough as an answers so he also adds this* podcasts are a good alternative too if I'm moving around on vehicles *he leans back, putting his elbow on his arm rest as he thinks about the baking thing but wanting to confirm his guess he asks* if you don't mind me going back to the cupcakes, were they in celebration of something?

*she shakes her head when he calls his hobby basic* it's not basic at all. I love reading, honestly, it's a luxury to be able to pick up a book on any topic and learn about something new */especially when you never got a formal education past high school/. she thinks it but doesn't say it out loud*"

blind ("but you're a little like me, same type/cancels every date night/stays home, never leaves/just can't find the energy/I stay pretty numb/never fell for anyone/you seem similar/always end up getting hurt/I haven't felt a thing this year/and I'm only tryna be sincere")

dahlia: *elevator music*

alassie: "*he shakes his head at her question, unsure also of how she's approaching this either but he lifts a shoulder up* not exactly, since it was accidentally spilled on me. it's a shame, however, that I don't have the time to change until a few interviews after this. *he waits for her to take a seat properly, gesturing to the seat again* I do ask for your patience to look beyond that for the next five minutes of your time.

*she raises her eyebrows at his gestures, and settles a little more in her current position by crossing her legs. all his fuss over his jacket makes her want to roll her eyes, and she says sarcastically* I'm not sure I can. *she looks towards the camera crew, sounding more polite as she addresses them* can anyone bring us gin? and a dry cloth?"

entertainer ("you thought you had me, didn't you?/when you lied to my face, I could see the truth/every step of the way I knew/how you fooled me, boo/guess you didn’t know that/you were my favorite entertainer/I'd watch you, I'd laugh, I would fuck with you/don’t you take me for a fool/in this game, I own the rules")

ramona: "*he presses his lips together at her last statement, a wry smile on his lips* nothing that the palace laundry couldn't handle. though, it was my lucky shity that got stained.

*she quickly gives him a more sympathetic smile, replying in an almost joking tone* I hope that wasn't an omen for the rest of the day"

meet me at our spot ("i'm not getting younger/but when I'm older/I'll be so much stronger/I'll stay up for longer/meet me at our spot/caught a vibe/baby, are you coming for the ride?/I just wanna look into your eyes/I just wanna stay for the night, night, night")

rhea: "maybe you'll get to work into developing the shows themselves in the artistic team side now *he tilts his head* I'm sorry that you don't get to perform anymore.

*she waves the apology off* developing shows looks like fun - you get some more creativity. *this is what she had rehearsed for. random fact, something near embarrassing, to make her memorable - not something her mother ever said, but something guy of all people had suggested. she leans in with a sly smile* this sounds incredibly nerdy, but I- well, someone I know back home and I- started work on this musical about aliens"

honey ("'cause I'm a beautiful wreck/a colorful mess, but I'm funny/oh, I'm a heartbreak vet/with a stone-cold neck, yeah, I'm charmin'/all the pretty girls in the world/but I'm in this space with you/colored out the lines/I came to find, my fire was fate with you")

cornelia: "I still think invitations are a nice touch, if not the tiny umbrellas stuck on the cherries of the black forest cake. *he bobs his head at the mention of her friends, curious about them* did your friends get to send you off the other day?

*she chuckles because of his words* the tiny umbrellas /are/ a great detail. I didn't know those were something I needed in my life."

like real people do ("I knew that look dear/eyes always seeking/was there in someone/that dug long ago/so I will not ask you/why you were creeping/in some sad way I already know/I will not ask you where you came from/I will not ask you and neither would you")

kaden: "*he thanks her for the coffee, holding it with both of his hands for a bit to let it cool* my previous shirt and jacket have seen better days, and this is a new set of saucers and cups but thankfully not many other casualties *he shakes his head, lifting his mug up* I'd prefer to be drinking coffee or wine rather than have it accidentally on my shirt.

*she finishes to serve her own cup* a thrilling morning you're describing. *she looks up from under her lashes, still amused apparently* perhaps getting rid of the small talk would be for the best."

slow burn ("born in a hurry, always late/haven't been early since '88/texas is hot, I can be cold/grandma cried when I pierced my nose/good in a glass, good on green/good when you're puttin' your hands all over me/I'm alright with a slow burn/takin' my time, let the world turn/I'm gonna do it my way, it'll be alright")

andreia: "*should she look closely, there are coffee stains on the place setting of the coffee table while raffy is in a different shirt and jacket thanks to the wine incident earlier. around them, there are still cameras going off around them, documentation crew really going at it. still, raffy's standing tall with his hands clasped in front of him as she approaches, only offering her his hand when she's close enough to him so he can guide her to her seat. he tries to give her a small smile despite being tired* lady andreia, thank you so much for waiting. my name is raphael, it's a pleasure to meet you.

*being outside all day, with the sun being bright, has not been /ideal/ for andreia, but she's trying her best to ignore the budding headache. she takes his hand when she reaches him, but keeps her other hand in her pocket for the time being, and gives him a small smile in return* just andreia is fine. it's nice to meet you. *once the handshake is done, she takes the other hand out of her pocket, and smiles a little sheepishly before explaining* in iberia, it's rude to show up to someone's house without a gift to give the host *she holds out her hand and in it is a small origami corgi* I know it's not much, but... *she shrugs a little, still with the same sheepish smile*"

valerie ("well, sometimes I go out by myself/and I look across the water/snd I think of all the things of what you're doing/in my head I paint a picture/since I've come home/well, my body's been a mess/and I miss your ginger hair/and the way you like to dress/oh, won't you come on over?/stop making a fool out of me/why don't you come on over, valerie?")

arely: ??????????????

suzy: "*he waits for her to take a seat before taking his own, making a gesture for plato to follow like the besets boy he is and he stays by raffy's feet* he gets mad when he feels underdressed for an event. *he nods at her response to the food, understanding of her wanting to save space for dinner, but is very pleased to hear that she likes the food. he glances at the table, looking for his recommendation and gestures to a green tea bag* I believe some hot green tea would be nice before dinner. cleanses the palate too. *he tilts his head* any favorites from the selection of food earlier?

*she raises her eyebrows, surprised since she tried to dress up bom several times but she ultimately hated being dressed, even if it's a simple bow. she turns her attention to plato and looks down at him* a true gentlepup I see"

505 ("not shy of a spark/the knife twists at the thought that I should fall short of the mark/frightened by the bite, though it's no harsher than the bark/the middle of adventure, such a perfect place to start")

[mostweakhamlets]

Spain, 1918 (Chapter 1)

This is the fic that is being posted on my Patreon on tier two among other stories. If you would like to access updates first and read ahead, then you can do so for $3 a month! There will be weekly updates on Patreon, but the entire fic will end up here and on my AO3. 

Summary: The second, deadly wave of the Spanish Flu hits Europe in the summer of 1918, and it was not mentioned in the memo Pestilence sent to Above and Below. The world is trying to cope with the Great War and the new pandemic while Heaven and Hell are overcrowded and behind on getting new souls admitted. Aziraphale and Crowley take it upon themselves to try to find the rogue Horseman. 

An establish marriage fic that leans more towards Book!Omens and features Crowley disguised as a nurse and Aziraphale disguised as a priest. 

“The Americans are calling it the Spanish flu now,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley shook his head. He raised his glass to his lips and drank the harsh wine with a sneer. He didn’t know why they had been drinking all night (or, rather why he had been drinking all evening as Aziraphale’s first glass was mostly untouched). The wine wasn’t very good—it was a cheap red from one of the only markets still open when they returned from their journies to Above and Below that evening.

There was anxiety filling the bookshop. While Aziraphale had voiced how pleased he was with the lack of customers, he was visibly unsettled to see so few people on the London streets. The city he had always known to be bustling with energy was growing quieter and quieter in the midst of the panic spreading across the globe.

Crowley had hoped to learn more about the pandemic when he met with Beelzebub. He hoped to bring back news to Aziraphale to try to put an end to the nervous hair-twisting and foot-tapping (while he ignored his own nervous habits). But Beelzebub looked tired for the first time since the plague and said that there was nothing they knew. They pushed a new assignment at Crowley and told him to get back on Earth. Now, Crowley waited for the right time to tell Aziraphale about what the manila folder said.

“And what do we make of that?” Crowley mumbled.

“Humans don’t know what’s going on. They don’t know how their own homes are being affected.”

“The ones at war are censoring the newspapers,” Crowley said. “For morale or something. That’s what my lot said. They asked if I was responsible for it.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I took credit for it.”

“Of course.”

“They don’t have time to check if I actually did. They’re busier than usual—”

“So is Heaven.”

“With all the new people and trying to find—”

“To find Pestilence.”

Aziraphale took a sip of wine, cringed at the taste, and sat his glass on the table. It wasn’t the fine vintage he was used to drinking, but it was going to have to do. Everyone was tightening their belts for the sake of the commotion in Germany, and it only felt fair that Aziraphale do the same. Crowley had yet to follow suit.

“At least War is behaving—well, as much as War can behave,” Crowley said. “Might be the war of the century, but at least she’s not going rogue and causing a,” Crowley waved his hand, “second wave or whatever they’re calling it.”

“How do the Horsemen just lose one of their people?”

“They don’t report to anyone. It’d be easy to slip out and hide in the middle of a pandemic before anyone noticed he was getting carried away. No one really pays attention to what happens on Earth. Look at us.”

Aziraphale twisted the gold band on his ring finger. A year ago they had slipped off to France together and, after a bottle and a half of wine, found a group of young students outside a bar they were leaving. Crowley, wearing a white dress, was asked if she was on her way to her wedding. The students looked up at her with half-lidded eyes and passed their own wine bottle around between giggles.

Crowley had looked at Aziraphale and made a comment about someone not committing. Aziraphale had tried sputtering an excuse, but the students booed at him and insisted on them getting married right there. One lanky boy made up a prayer and vows and declared them to be married after they laughed through oui and a kiss. The other students cheered and offered them both a swig of their wine.

The next morning as they laid in bed with the morning sunlight peeking through their blinds, they decided that that could be enough. It wasn’t a legal marriage by any means, but that meant little. They didn’t truly abide by human laws and ceremonies and so, they bought two golden bands once their heads stopped aching that afternoon.

“Well, hopefully, they find him in time before the situation gets any worse. The king of Spain falling ill has Pestilence’s name written all over it. I wouldn’t be surprised if more government heads start collapsing or if Spain as a whole has more trouble.”

“I, uh.” Crowley sunk down on the sofa. His chest tightened. “I’m actually assigned to go to Spain in a few days. They want me reporting on the deaths and all that in Madrid and to perform some temptations. Since they’re not in the war, Hell thinks I should be giving them an extra push.”

Aziraphale straightened in his chair. “Spain? That’s wonderful!”

“Why?” Crowley scrunched his nose. “I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.”

“That’s fine. My dear, I didn’t want to tell you when you were in this state, but I’m to go to Spain next week.”

Crowley sat up, clutching at the edges of the sofa so he wouldn’t fall over in his wine-induced dizziness. “Really?”

“They said it’s in desperate need of blessings with the new outbreaks and international blame. They didn’t tell me to settle down anywhere, but I’m sure if I were to learn that a certain agent of Hell was in Madrid they’d understand me staying there for an extended time.”

It wasn’t unusual that they would be assigned to the same location at the same time. Their entire purpose on Earth, they had once established, seemed to be to just cancel one another out. It was best for neither of them to carry out their tasks or for one of them to do both.

“Well, it might be time for a holiday,” Crowley said.

“We can’t holiday in the middle of all of this. We should do some work at least if we’re both going to be there.”

“No one’s going to know.”

“I’m sure they’ll actually be reading your reports this time, Crowley,” Aziraphale warned. “You won’t be able to fake your way out of this one.”

Crowley grimaced. Aziraphale had a point. If he was supposed to report numbers and act as eyes for Hell, then the chances of Beelzebub skimming his reports would be slim.

“Fine,” he said. “We’ll do a little work. But, I want to see the beaches at some point.”

“We’ll have plenty of free time once Pestilence calms down. My higher-ups told me this afternoon that they think he’ll reign in his pandemic soon. War is scheduled to stop her mess within the next few months, and he might call off his affair at the same time. Or at the very least, the virus won’t spread as it has been without soldiers moving from country to country.”

Aziraphale didn’t sound like he believed it. No one could predict what the Horsemen did. No one gave them assignments or asked for reports like low-level angels and demons. If Pestilence wanted to keep going, he would. It wasn’t regulation for anyone to confront him.

Crowley sipped at his wine. The more he had, the less he noticed the stinging flavor on his tongue. His head was fuzzy.

“You know,” he said, “we could probably look for the bastard ourselves.”

“What do you mean?”

“If there’s a fuss in Spain right now, Pestilence might be there. Think about it, he finished his influenza spree, then it was silent, and now all of a sudden Spain is being hit with fatal cases in small pockets? There’s not soldiers over there passing it around like the Americans and Brits are doing. It wasn’t a steady rise, either. It just… happened.”

“He usually works quite remote. You really think he’s lingered in one country?”

Thanks to the human need to socialize and their general ignorance of proper sanitation, Pestilence could spend only one day in a city and his most recent disease would spread to the entire country by the end of the week. Crowley saw him once during the plague ordeal. And that was how it usually went. Pestilence would infect one person and move on as his disease steadily spread.

If he didn’t cause such grotesque suffering and death to the most vulnerable people, Crowley would admire him for his work and be quick to compare it to his own. Humans had a tendency to muck things up on their own. All occult beings needed to do was knock over the first domino, and Crowley could tell when someone was knocking over all of them in one sweep and kicking them across the room.

“To spread it around as fast as he could to a country that isn’t censoring their papers or having their army move around? Yes. You know how much of an ego he has, and he hasn’t been getting any attention in most of Europe. He doesn’t have to fight for the spotlight with War over there. He gets all the headlines and all the hysteria. He’s probably thriving there right about now.”

Aziraphale hummed. “You make a fair point. Those four are really as bad as toddlers at times, aren’t they? Remember the trouble in Ireland? Famine went too far with that one.”

“I’m still convinced the English made it worse on their own.”

“Wouldn’t put it past them.” Aziraphale furrowed his brow, pulling himself back into the topic at hand. “But how do we find Pestilence? He could be anywhere in Spain—if he’s there at all.”

Crowley folded his arms across his chest and sank back into the sofa. “Might have to figure that one out later. Might have to trace death rates or something or where new cases are popping up.”

Aziraphale’s face lit up. “Like one would in a detective novel!”

Crowley smiled. “Exactly.”

“I think we can piece it together once we’re both sober. I’m sure the humans are keeping records of everything. We could make copies and look at the newspapers. We could probably find ourselves in a hospital occasionally and look around.”

“Or we could always be in the hospitals. Beelzebub told me that they’re getting overwhelmed. That’d be perfect for both of us. I could tempt the staff, put doubt in their minds and whatnot. And you can do your blessings from there. And then, we would have records and gossip, and we could narrow down where the bastard is.”

“I could pose as a priest. I’m sure there’s a need for them in hospitals. What would you do, dear? Pose as a doctor?”

“I was thinking a nurse.” Crowley wiggled in his seat, pulling his legs up under him. He was getting sleepy from the wine. “I’d be with more patients. I could scope out more of the hospital that way.”

“You’d make quite a charming nurse.”

“Thank you.”

Aziraphale looked at the clock on his desk. Crowley propped his head on his fist, blinking lazily at the angel as he began to bustle around the small room. He placed a stopper in the wine bottle and moved it, along with his own glass, onto the shelf that usually held multiple wines and liqueurs. It sat next to a lonely, half-full Moscato.  

“You must be ready to sleep, my dear.” Aziraphale plucked his glass from his hands. “Would you like to stay here?”

Crowley usually didn’t take his chances with staying at the bookshop for too long. Even if they were married by their own standards, they never risked being in each other’s company for longer than 24 hours in case someone was watching. But with the strain Hell was under, Crowley thought that maybe they wouldn’t notice if he spent one more night on Azirphale’s sofa. So, he nodded.

Aziraphale draped a blanket over him. “Do stretch out, dear, or you’ll be sore in the morning.”

Crowley laid on the sofa, his clothes turning into pajamas. Aziraphale adjusted the blanket around him and swept a loose strand of hair off Crowley’s forehead. These were the tender moments that made Crowley want to go rogue himself and run away with Aziraphale so that every night he could feel the soft, chubby fingers at his temple and light breath on his cheek as Aziraphale kissed him.

“Have sweet dreams.”

And Crowley would.

Comment, drop kudos, bookmark and/or subscribe on AO3!

[the-gedonelune-times]

New Friendship

Rumours of werewolves invading the Academy have spread like wildfire, affecting Day and Night class students alike. Persephone takes it upon herself to investigate, where she meets the blue-haired prefect; Lizzy, where they team up to unravel the chaotic mystery plaguing the Academy.

@explosiveglitterqueen I’m love your OC and I hope I did her justice UmU

“Ah, I absolutely love coming here. The marmalade sandwiches are superb!”

“Bandit, I’m honestly getting concerned with the number of marmalade sandwiches you’ve been consuming.”

“Oh come now, you’re over-exaggerating don’t you think?”

“The amount of sandwich bags with traces of marmalade on them, beg to differ. You’re addicted.”

“Well, it’s not my fault that I like a taste of the finer things in life.”

With a roll of her eyes, Persephone took a bite of her blueberry muffin while she opened up her notebook/daily planner combo, while her familiar, sneakily rasped his claws against the counter, ordering another sandwich.

“Seriously?”

“I can’t help it! Besides, we’re up rather early don’t you think? Sugar will keep me awake.”

“All that sugar is going to send you into a sugar coma, now stop.”

“Fine, fine. This will be the last one.”

“Thank you.”

“Mm…” 

The raccoon-like familiar took a bite into the sandwich and after dabbing around his mouth with a napkin, he looked over at Persephone who had her nose buried deep into her planner. Furiously writing.

“Mind telling me what you’re writing?”

“Hm? Oh. Just some notes.”

“Just notes? You’re writing so fast you’d think you were working for the Gedonelune Times.”

Persephone chuckled. “As if. No, I’m writing down all the things I need to do today. Lucious ended up getting sick, so as Deputy Prefect it’s my job to take his place and teach his classes for the day. Along with taking care of the things he was tasked with.”

“Seems you’re going to be busy.”

“Correction, we’re going to be busy today.”

“We?”

“Yes, we. In return for buying you all those sandwiches, the least you can do is help me out.”

“Such a chore, ah such a bore! But I suppose it’s only fair. I suppose I’ll go and have the rest of this sandwich wrapped for later as my lunch. Oh speaking of which, I’ll need you to take care of it.”

“Huh? Why me?”

“Because that devious feline will steal my food!”

“Devious feline?”

“That blasted cat, Chocolate Cake is his name. He’s stolen my food before. Oh, such a delicious molten lava cake. I had yet to taste it’s divine flavor because that heathen stole it from me! I have never forgiven him since. He and I are sworn enemies!”

Persephone sighed. “You’re really going to make enemies with him, just because he stole sweets from you?”

“Yes, yes I am.”

“Come on, don’t be like that. We can literally go and get you another molten lava cake. But starting issues with the other familiars is something we need to avoid.”

“Since when have you been the one to give pep talks like this?”

“Because I’d like to avoid headaches, thank you very much.”

“Yes, yes, you can give headaches, but can’t take them.”

“Why you little-”

“Oh...man…”

Just as a heated argument between the two of them was breaking out, a new voice had entered the Night Cafe. Their clothes were disheveled and they were gasping for air as if they had just ran a marathon. They stumbled a little as they took a seat in the booth in the farthest corner, prompting concern from Persephone. Putting her planner away, she got up from her seat, waiting for Bandit to hop on her shoulder before walking over to the troubled-looking student.

“Cyrus?”

“H-Huh?! Oh...Persephone? What are you doing here?”

“The usual. What’s up with you, you look like you’ve been through hell and back.”

“It seems like it, huh? I guess the courtyard is...like a battlefield.”

“Like a battlefield? What do you mean?”

“I…” 

Cyrus paused, seemingly not wanting to describe whatever it was that caused him to be in the state he was currently in. Instead, he just slowly put his head down, telling Persephone to go check it themselves, before waving them off.

“Well, that wasn’t very helpful.” Bandit commented.

“Well, he at least gave us a little info. We know that whatever it is that went down, happened in the courtyard.”

“Yes and he called it a battlefield. I’m not sure I like where this is going. It sounds like a lot of work if you ask me.”

“True, but aren’t you curious?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Well, I am.”

“In other words, you’re just excited to see the chaos with your own two eyes.”

“Pretty much.”

“This right here is why you constantly get into trouble!”

Persephone smirked. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

The pair had just started their journey to the courtyard when a figure came flying down in their direction. Clearly not paying attention, they ended up running right smack into Persephone, sending them both flying to the ground with a loud thud.

“Oh goodness, I-I’m so sorry! I just couldn’t bear to stay there any longer!”

“Huh? Millie?”

“P-Persephone?! Ah!” Without any hesitation, Millie through her arms around Persephone. “I’m so glad you’re safe!”

“Safe? What do you mean? What happened?”

“O-Oh, well, you see, I was offered some extra credit if I could attend some Day Class lectures and on my way back I heard a terrible noise! It was like a ravenous beast. It started snarling and howling, i-it sounded like a werewolf. S-so I ran and ran until I couldn’t, to be honest, I was even sure that I would even make it back down to the Night Class.”

“Oh dear…” Bandit mumbled.

“How bothersome.” Persephone sighed as she got up. Once she dusted herself off, she held a hand out to Millie, helping her to her own feet. “Millie, go ahead and head back to the dorms, we’ll take care of this.”

“Huh?! By yourselves? Persephone wait!” 

Her cries were nothing more than a whisper. Persephone had already taken off running, summoning her staff in the process, while Bandit held onto her shoulder for dear life. They had just turned one of the final corners and were about to head up to the ground above when a figure had stopped right in their path. 

“Persephone, slow down!” Bandit cried out.

“No, if they want to get in my way then they can get run down!”

“Why are you so reckless? Oh, dear!”

Bandit, unable to watch, used his tiny paws to shield his face from the impending disaster. He was relieved when Persephone had come to a stop, the tip of her staff pressed up against the chest of the Night Class student who held their hands up in surprise.

“What the hell Sephie?!” Viggo exclaimed while wearing an annoyed glare.

“I could say the same thing to you, Viggo. What the hell are you doing up this early?” Persophone asked while lowering her staff to her side.

“Hard to sleep with all the commotion.” Viggo sighed. “I’ve heard a few students already screaming about magical beasts attacking. What about you?”

“Same here. Cyrus and Millie were pretty shaken up by it all.”

“Tsk, so you’re going up to help those Day Classers?”

“As a deputy prefect, it’s my job to offer assistance. Besides, it’s affecting the Night Class too.”

“Never thought I’d see the day that you’d be taking your work seriously.”

“Unlike *some* people.” Persophone clicked her tongue before using her staff to jab Viggo in the shoulder playfully.

“This is nice and all but Persephone, shouldn’t we get going? After all this incident isn’t going to clear itself on its own anytime soon it seems.”

“Right. We better get going.”

“Wait, I’m coming with you. I want to check out this chaos for myself.” Viggo smirked. 

“I think not!”

“Bandit…”

“No, Persephone no. This is the same hooligan who fed me food with hot sauce so hot, it was called ‘The Devil’s Lament’. He reeks of trouble and furthermore-”

“Sure, you can come.”

“WHA? Did you not hear what I just mmph! Mmm...such a sweet and delicate taste.” 

Bandit, content with having a piece of marmalade sandwich shoved into his mouth, sank down lower onto Persephone’s shoulder.

“You’re forgiven, for now.” Bandit huffed as he licked his paws clean before hopping on top of Persephone’s head, curling into a small ball.

“Your familiar is strange…” Viggo whispered.

“Careful, he might hear you and then you’re in for it.”

Persephone smiled and led the way out into the courtyard; Viggo trailing behind by just a mere couple of feet. Their walk was in silence but the moment they had stepped foot outside, screams could be heard. With a nod, they both took off towards the source and what they saw was truly a chaotic sight. Right smack in the courtyard was a student who was trying to calm down the other students that were running away while screaming.

“I heard there are werewolves!”

“If we don’t run t-they’ll eat us too!”

“Why are classes not canceled?!”

“Everyone, please calm down There are no werewolves in the vicinity!”

Despite her best efforts, the blue-haired prefect just couldn’t seem to get her words across to the terrified students. 

“I swear, when I find the one who started this then so help me I’ll-”

“Excuse me?” 

“AH!” 

Startled from Persephone’s sudden voice, the girl reached into her pocket with lightning speed before throwing it fiercely at Persephone. Had it not been for her quick reflex, she would have been hit directly in the face. Instead, she dodged it by mere centimeters and watched with wide-eyes as the object hit Viggo right smack in the face with a pop. Immediately after, blue shiny glitter exploded out, covering his face and his clothes with it. Oh the sight brought Persephone to tears with laughter that she didn’t realize that there was another glitter bomb in the prefect’s hand.

“Who are you?” She asked while taking aim.

“Lizzy, don’t!” Viggo shouted out while rubbing at his face, trying to rid himself of the glittery substance. “This is a friend of mine. They’re from the Night Class.”

“That so?” Lizzy looked over at Persephone and then put her bomb back with a sigh before smiling. “Sorry about that! You kind of startled me back there.”

“My master is a reckless one, so allow me to be the one to apologize on her behalf.”

“Bandit…” Persephone lowered her voice and glared at her familiar who was now sitting upright on her head.

“Oh how cute!” Lizzy exclaimed while holding out her hand towards Bandit. “Who’s this cutie?”

“That’s Bandit, don’t be fooled by him, he can be a little shit.”

“Now, now! That’s not very nice.” Bandit exclaimed while walking along Lizzy’s arm to rest on her shoulder. “Perhaps you should learn some manners from this young lady. It might do you some good.” He huffed.

“Why you little…”

“Alright, alright, I hate to break up the fun fest but I want to know what’s happening.” Viggo spoke up.

“I’d like to know that as well. I’ve already talked to two Night Class students who seemed to be a little shaken up from the situation.” 

“Oh, right, you must be talking about this whole werewolf situation.” Lizzy sighed. “There’s no werewolves on the premises, just a wolf familiar who was provoked into becoming feral. His owner has managed to calm him down, but it seems that the rumor has spread like wildfire through the Academy.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me…”

“A familiar being provoked into becoming feral? Hah, how weak.” Bandit snickered.

“Pay no mind to him.” Persephone sighed. “Back to the issue, do you know who was the one who provoked the wolf?”

Lizzy shook her head. “Not a clue, I’ve been trying to ask the students but they just keep running away, claiming that they’ll get attacked if they don’t.”

“Well considering that this place is pretty much a doomsday magnet, I can see why. Even so, it’d be nice to get some answers.”

“Yeah, it’d be nice to find the person who made Seth angry.”

Persephone raised an eyebrow. “Seth?”

“How did you know it was Seth?” Lizzy asked.

“You said wolf familiar.”

“I did, but if I recall, you don’t hang around the Day Class, in fact, you sometimes claim that you’re allergic to them.” Lizzy pointed out.

“Viggo, what did you do?”

“Nothing-”

“Bullshit! What. Did. You. Do?”

“Okay, okay, fine. I confess it was me.” Viggo said cooly.

“What?” Lizzy suddenly reached and grabbed a glitter bomb. “So you’re the person who tied the meat to my boyfriend’s ankle?!”

Suddenly, Viggo’s eyes widened. “You’re dating Rex?”

“Don’t change the topic!”

“Wait, hang on a second.” Persephone ran a hand through her hair. “So basically, Viggo tied meat around your boyfriend’s ankle, provoking Seth into going feral. People heard the commotion and thought the ACademy was under attack so now a vast majority of the students are on edge?”

Persephone inhaled and then sighed while facepalming. 

“Hey, Lizzy, right? Mind handing me one of those bombs of yours?”

Lizzy smiled. “It’d be a pleasure.”

“Hey…” Viggo, now realizing the situation, began to slowly back away. “We can talk about this, right?”

“Oh sure, let’s talk about it right now!”

Lizzy shouted as she threw the bomb in her hand, hitting his face perfectly. Persephone followed suit and within seconds, the two of them were coating Viggo and the ground in nothing but glitter. Viggo’s screams were an indication that their attacks were effective and after a few more tosses the two of them looked at Viggo. He was sputtering out glitter as he tried to speak.

“Are you satisfied now?”

“I think I have a few more bombs in here…” Lizzy went to reach for more but Persephone stopped her.

“Don’t waste them on him. Save them for later, you’ll probably need them.” 

“Well if we’re done here, then I’m going to go take a shower.”

Viggo turned on his heel and began walking away, meanwhile, Persephone began to chuckle.

“He looks like a walking glowstick in the sunlight.”

“Pfft, he does!” Lizzy whipped out her phone and snapped a quick picture without Viggo noticing.

“Please send me a copy of that.” Persephone smiled.

“Sure thing.”

“Hey, it’s technically lunch for the Day Class right?”

“Yes, why?”

“Well, my breakfast was pretty much ruined because of this ordeal, so I was wondering if you’d like to come to the Night class and get something. I’ll pay. Besides, think of this as a gift for the start of a lively friendship.” Persephone held out her hand and Lizzy gave a firm shake.

“To a new friendship.” Lizzy smiled.

“Oh hey, what’s this?” 

Viggo’s voice rang out as he picked up a wrapped object. Persephone squinted, trying to get a better look at whatever it was that was in Viggo’s hand. With wide eyes, she suddenly started feeling around in her pocket before coming to the horrifying realization.

“Viggo, put that down!” 

Persephone screamed but it was too late. A blur zipped past Lizzy and Persephone and headed straight for Viggo, landing a kick to his face. Bandit, who had been at Persephone’s side had gone feral and was now attacking Viggo for the marmalade sandwich that Persephone had saved. 

“Let’s get out of here.” Persephone said while taking Lizzy’s hand, leading her away.

“Wait, is he going to be alright?”

“Yeah!...probably.”

Persephone laughed and the two of them ran towards the Night Class cafe. It was truly the start of a brand new and chaotic friendship.

[jq37]

[obligatory recap ask]

**spoilers for subway skirmish and borough of dreams**

@kickmuncher3 and @galfast: ty for your asks, I’ll use them for the next two recaps. this is probably the least efficient way for me to handle this but I want to keep all of these visually consistent dammit. 

One of the funniest things about this season of D20 is most if not all of the cast has lived in NYC which manifests as very specific references and in character complaints that you just know come from a place of truth and experience. Which is to say we got a lot of that in these episodes.  

Also, this has nothing to do with anything but living in NY update: On Sunday, I saw a man hanging upside-down from a tree--by his feet--and playing the flute. And barely anyone registered it at all. So I really cannot stress enough how much New York is Like That.

Pete opening the fight by blasting a fireball and then telepathically calling out Kingston is--como se dice--a Power Move.

Brennan *immediately* channels the opposite of whatever energy Emily's on and goes right for Ricky's dog to the horror of everyone at the table and his absolute delight. Like, it's a spectral dog but still. Bro. Dog. 

Kingston taking the heat metal damage to get Epona to drop him is so raw. But then, for the rest of the fight, he doesn't say a single thing except for his Command spells which is a very different kind of raw. 

Question: Is Riz's mom the only good cop that exists in D20?

I know this was an RP ep and I know they knew it was gonna be an RP ep but I wonder what would have happened if they had pretended to cooperate with Epona to get more info. Probably just an extended RP ep that would have segued into this same fight eventually. But I'm curious about what information they let get eaten by a swarm of rats.

Misty's Irresistible Dance spell is very clutch. 

The gators from the last fight are back in the form of Kug's summons and one of them still has a grudge against Misty. Misty is all, "send me your resume!" because she appreciates the spunk. I was starting a sentence about what the hell play this sentient gator is going to be in but as soon as I hypothetically asked it my brain was like, "Peter Pan. Next question."

Y'all, this really was Kug's fight. Between calling the roaches, crocs, and gators, channeling Moonshine to call lightning, and killing Epona within 40 mins of the ep, he truly was on fire. Good for him. He also turns into a bear but specifically a bear that would have escaped from the zoo. It's the little details that make this show great. 

Brennan putting his foot down on tying rats together not being acrobatics is the eternal DM mood. 

Back to Epona for a second, do we think she was working for Robert directly? Someone connected to him? Something else? When her shadow split after Ricky's attack was that meaningful or just flavor? Where did that badge come from? Has it always existed? What does destroying it mean? It didn't seem to help. The bad cop ghosts were still around, just no one could control them at that point. If they had yoinked that badge, could they have had a summoning item that hey could use? Or is it bad karma to use something like that? Is it still bad if you're forcing the bad cops to do good stuff? Did Brennan anticipate this or is the Coach Daybreak 2: Electric Boogaloo? Lots of questions.

Misty's cutting words to the cop (saving Ricky) making the Law and Order "DUN DUN" noise is great. 

Emily ends up not needing to roll to make rat nunchucks because her health goes low enough that her magic ring activates but I feel like she low key wanted rat nunchucks. 

Wild that Kingston went down for just long enough for it to be cinematic before being revived by Misty ("Get up, old man,")

Also wild that this whole fight only took about 45 seconds of in game time. It makes sense if you think about it the way you would a movie and that's how most D&D fights are but that's so much play time for so little game time and it hit me this ep because I was actually keeping track of rounds. 

Anyway, I have not mentioned up until this point that the whole crux of this fight is to last long enough for Alejandro to roll high enough to summon the train to Nod but, long story short, Pizza Rat shows up to save the day. Does that make more sense in context? Marginally. 

I like that the train to Nod shows up on the wrong side of the tracks. Like I said, man. Details. 

Oh and to my above point about the cast making comments about NY as people who have lived in NY, I loved Brennan looking directly at the camera when he was going off on people who just stand at the door like idiots while you're trying to get in and then Siobhan pokes like half her head into frame so she can also stare directly into the camera. Mood.

When Ally said Pete shoots Kingston I half believed it for a good couple of seconds. I was right there with Lou. 

OK, so I don't know how many of you have watched Sharkboy and Lavagirl (and, if you haven't feel free to skip this bullet) but no movie has brought me more enjoyment overall than SB&LG. Not because it's good because it's not. But it's so insane that it's amazing. It's right in the sweet spot. I always say, if it was any better, it would be Spy Kids 3 and, therefore, unwatchable (SK 1 + 2 are dope as hell though, for the record). I bring it up because the way Brennan describes Nod reminds me a lot of Drool in SB&LG. Like, the rollercoaster subway car def could be in the same universe as the Train of Thought. This is all to say that I think Brennan could have written a version of SB&LG that was better without being worse. Idk if that comes across as complimentary, but it is, and to both parties actually. 

From the way Nod (the kid) is being framed (in this ep and the next) I know we're not supposed to mistrust him but, put in that situation, there is no way I would trust the gray faced, black eyed, creepily gliding dream child. 

Post fight, Kingston wants to offer an apology for what he said about Pete and Nod wants to apologize for putting Pete in his current situation. Also, the group decides to be more open in general. Kug, as most of us guessed, got beauty and the beasted for white collar crime by his business partner (Gabby) who is Esther's mom and a witch (also, Ricky thinks his crush on Esther is a secret which is just adorable and completely incorrect).  

Brennan cuts sharing time off because this is the combat episode dammit! Save it for next session. But, because I'm behind, next session is now! Let's get into The Borough of Dreams.

Misty, as a faerie, is instinctively mistrustful of vising other magical worlds and eating the food or taking things at face value. I love that she's playing a character where she can ask these questions and not be meta-gaming because I had some of the same concerns. 

Wildly, WALLY walks out of the train as he just happened to be on it (as conductor) at the time. Kug bursts out with the fact that he's his dad and Wally takes this to mean that Rat Jesus is his bio dad but, even after being left alone for so many years, he claims Bruce as his real dad. He's wrong but he's sweet. 

"I thought you were mad at me." Brennan, you didn't have to do that.

Murph clearly trying to not accidentally call Wally a piece of shit because that's his go to Kug way to describe things is so funny.

"We could turn me into a rat." WALLY

Kingston and Misty looking at each other like, "These absolute children," while Pete and Soph are making Brittney Spears references. 

So we find out what all of the magic stuff they picked up does. Misty's mirror can see invisibility. Pete's grill helps with persuasion. The thousand hour energy makes you immune to sleep for 42 days(!) The bagel can be used for divination or to essentially kill a person but spread their essence throughout the universe  (which low key sounds like a sacrifice someone might make to help cancel the spread of say an undead presence or a money virus). 

I want Ricky and Wally to be friends forever. 

Kingston's lack of connection to the dream world is so sad. Like, he's no nonsense but he's like NO NONSENSE. Like no nonsense possible. So he's just walking around like Eddie Valiant in Toontown. 

And, at the same time, the rest of the party is doing the MOST nonsense. Mary Poppins-ing into the sky. Misty is making out with the moon. Wild. 

SOBER SALAD

Ally drops the ketamine on the tomatoes line and Brennan fully breaks

Very sweet for Pete to bring Kingston a salad, even though that's such a random food to just have in your pocket(???). Why does salad keep coming up on this show? One more time and it's officially a motif.

So the dream world basically works on Sharkboy and Lavagirl/Xanth/Phantom Tollbooth/Wonderland/Toontown logic. If you've seen/read any of those, you basically have it down. 

"Only people with Sprint have service."/"Oh, amazing!" Brennan threw that softball out for anyone who wanted it and Emily, as usual, hit it out of the park.

Brennan very clearly knows his NY history. The mob boss (lucky Luciano, no not that one) that he mentioned during the sleeping with the fishes bit is a real dude and basically the dude who brought organized crime to the US (in the form we know it now). 

Ricky and the mints. Lord.

Anyway, the one item I didn't mention earlier is the holy grail detergent which can literally clean souls. Which sounds mighty interesting considering some of the other stuff that's come up this campaign. 

(Also, I wonder if you could use the bagel as spell components since it contains everything in the universe in microcosm).

I can't believe Pete was the one saying, "At least eat before you shotgun that 1000 hour energy." By the by, the 42 hour span of the energy drink makes me suspicious. Is that just for humor (and accurate math) or it this a Chekov's Gun kind of an item indicating some kind of time jump at some point? Ricky drinks it later in this ep so, if there's a clock attached to that, it's ticking. I'm prob reading into this but I assume if you're still reading these, this is what you're here for. 

Ally making sawing motions before being told an egg creme has nothing to do with eggs and is in fact a drink.

Pete! OK, so Pete has made some good steps in this ep, starting with promising to start reining in the drug usage. Later he works on his magic and also gets over Priya. This is the most endeared I've been to him all season. Especially his, "I try to do a good job," line. I felt that. 

"It's still open to you." Aw.

Brennan clearly saw the chance for a lore drop this ep and boy did it drop. Let's run through the highlights.

Nod dumped all this on Pete the way they did because it's super super hard to contact a Vox Phantasmus beforehand due the the natural, waking world inclination to brush off dreams. You have to have the job before you can talk to the boss. Cruddy system but that's how it goes. 

When Sophie said the thing about Robert Moses creating spaces that can't be accessed she meant by magic but it's an interesting way to phrase it because the irl Robert Moses is known for (allegedly, but like, it tracks) trying to keep black people out of certain spaces. 

Robert Moses sold his soul to Hell and Faerie which is why he's still alive it seems. No one wants to collect on his soul and anger the other party.

Whoever predicted that the golden door for Emma Laz's poem was the rectangle from episode one, collect your prize because it's confirmed in this ep. 

We learn about the ephemeral axiom which basically says, a dream can be all things but once it manifests, it's a single thing. (you might even say, "it is what it is".)

So another big thing we learn is that if a dream gets so big that manifesting them in the real world would break the game, it's called a Paragon. There are four total: Heaven, Hell, Faerie, and The American Dream. (Wild that The American Dream is the only country specific one that exists. Like, I rep my home team of course but the U.S. is a pretty latecomer to the country party. You'd think someone else might have gotten Paragon status at some point.)

"Was one of them the Grand Canyon?"

Anyway, dragging the American Dream into the waking world would fix the American Dream to mean one thing--I assume making tons of money if Robert Moses has his way. I'll admit, I was a  little fuzzy on the mechanics of this on my first watch-through because pulling the American Dream into the real world sounds like it should be a good thing. But I think, at the most basic level, it's a matter of you shouldn't put magic that shouldn't be in a box in a box. I'm still wondering about the exact implications for the waking world if he succeeds though. Like, how would that manifest? Would everyone suddenly become money hungry (lol, how would you tell)? Would people still want what they want but the American Dream would just be understood to mean making stacks and none of the good Superman-y stuff?

"It's not Protestant work ethic is it?"

Robert Moses is undead and can't get into Nod, so those are good things to note. 

I was so ready for Wally is get dispelled and for him to be a figment of Kug’s imagination or a dream or something. I braced myself so much. I was ready to set up a firing squad for Brennan for doing that to Kug.  

Who tipped the bugsters off to where Pete was gonna be? As far as I can tell, the only people that knew were the gang plus Alejandro and Esther. Maybe someone was scrying on them and that’s what the roll Zac failed during the wedding ep was. 

As soon as Brennan mentions locking the door, Ally immediately makes the connection and goes, "Key to the city." Nod "locks" the American Dream and gets rid of the lock which seems to mean the American Dream is temporarily unavailable. Which seems not good and like it's gonna have collateral damage for sure but I guess you bad is a matter of degrees and Robert getting in would be worse. But still, imagine your immigration papers get declined because some random kid decided to close down the American Dream for a couple of days. 

So, we get some backstory of Misty. She apparently just was straight up not having a good time in Faerie so she stole Titania's shoes (allowing her to be in iron-filled NYC without triggering her fairy vulnerability) and peaced out. 

"She's gonna kill you."/"Only if she can get here and I have her Goddamn shoes." (**A million airhorns in the distance**)

I love that Emily is still on the souls thing. Emily doesn't believe in Occam's Razor. In fact, I'd like to propose a corollary called the Axford Axiom: The coolest path between two points probably isn't the correct one, but it should be! I want her to run a campaign so bad so I can see her be in a game where her crazy endgame is what's going on because she's the one who wrote it. 

Misty: Let's go to hell!

So much like a videogame, the map has opened up and we have three places to check out. The former locations in the dream world of Faerie (Carnagie Hall), Heaven (JFK airport), and Hell (where do you think? Hell's Kitchen). The gang splits up to look for clues (and drinks, in Misty's case). Actually, make that four places: Pete goes to the Met Museum of Memories to basically Avatar mind meld with the other Voxes and get a handle on his magic to a degree (thank God--Nod?). We'll take these in order of appearance, which means we're off to Hell with Kug and Ricky (plus Ox and Wally).

(Focus on the Pizza, baby!)

At first I wanted Ricky, the good boy, to go to Heaven, but the idea of a firefighter in Hell also has appeal. 

Re The rat holding his guts: Gross. 

Ricky holding his axe like a cell phone.

So we and Kug learn that the rat-spell that was cast on him wasn't actually a rat-spell. It was a spell that would make his outsides reflect his insides and his insides happened to suck. I'm wondering if that means that it's a static spell that reflects his outsides at the time it was cast and it would need to be recast to reflect any moral progress made or if it will just revert him once he's made enough progress. 

I'm also wondering (partially bc one of my players asked to do this last session) can a Druid wildshape into a person? I feel like no, but like, did any of you ever read Animorphs? You know how in book 1 Tobias gets stuck as a red-tailed-hawk but then later her gets his morphing ability back and then he can turn back into his human form for 2 hours at a time? What if Kug just started doing that? Just being a rat who is sometimes a dude. 

They also go to the statue of liberty (which has a French accent, natch) who shows them that there's, like, a money/greed virus infecting the Dreaming and the American Dream. Ricky smells undeath again. They think vampires. That's plausible but I'm not sure. 

OK, Heaven. 

WHOOOO, strap in y'all

(Sidenote: I wonder what would have happened if Soph hadn't chose to go to heaven. I feel like she could have easily run into you know who in hell had she chose to go there, but I'm getting ahead of myself).

Brennan actually tries to lead Emily into the thinking about Dale mindset but Emily, having reached a note of closure in Soph's character arc, pushes back on that.

honeyougotastormcoming.gif

Brennan,about to wreck her entire life: Cool.

I and the cast keep saying heaven a lot but it's like an all roads lead to Rome situation. It's heaven, Valhalla, Elysium, nirvana. Like, whatever Good Place you believe in. It's the Good Place. 

Sophie, upon being told that if she jumps into the fight at the Pearly Gates she knows nothing about, she might literally die: And what about it?

Emily's face when Brennan says, "And you see Dale," is so much. You can see the entire range of human emotion in her eyes in that moment.

Sidenote: I wonder how much of her backstory Emily planned and how much Brennan dropped on her. Like, she knew Isabella was part of her backstory obv. Did Brennan come up with all of this whole-cloth or did she say she wanted there to be something supernatural and and let him fill in the details. Very curious about the collaborative process.  

 When Dale's character art comes up, it says "Sophie's Angel" for Dale's descriptor so where I thought we were going was that Dale was Sophie's Guardian Angel who wasn't supposed to be romantically involved with her and the reason he was gone is that he was forcibly brought back to heaven. But that may be because I recently watched this.

Dale, is upsettingly sweet with Sophie, calls her "sweetie" the entire time they're together, fights a ton of angels to get to her, and says he got her text message. Emily is about to cry. *I'm* about to cry. I'm sure the only reason Brennan isn't fistpumping is because he needs to stay in character. 

Dale gives this cryptic piece of advice before he is dragged off by angel guards: When you get to the top, I know what it'll seem like, but there is someone there.

Emily, of course: I fight the angels.

The angels, hilariously, don't take it personally that she's fighting them--and very well, but not well enough to beat a nat 20. Sometimes the dice are spooky in tune with the story.

"He's got a job to do here. Who's gonna watch the deer?"

Dale also tells Soph to tell Jackson he said hi which is interesting to say the least. 

Emily gets two very dope lines in a row:

"Let me hold your hand through this Alejandro."

"I'm gonna kill her. And I don't think she's going to the great big airport in Brooklyn."

That's it for her for now, but let's put a pin in that for now and come back to it after we check in with the others. 

Siobhan and Kingston are at the former spot of Faerie, the Glamour Bar.

Zac jokingly (I think) guessing Dr. Doolittle as the thing Siobhan can't remember when she says Eliza Doolittle is so funny. 

Also, her terrible cockney British accent on top of her actual British accent is great.

I love that the two actual Real Adults are the ones who go and get wasted mid-mission. 

Brennan introduces "Bobby Goodfellow" and it takes Siobhan exactly four seconds after Brennan finishes the word "Goodfellow" to be like, "It's Puck." She knew and she knew her character would know it and she hardcore pounced.  

I meant to mention this before but it's super funny that Kingston has been around the magical block but there's still so much he doesn't know. He was surprised by a bunch of stuff in this ep that I'd think he would know about (like the Midsummer's faeries being real) but nah. He's like, "This is my specific brand of magic nonsense. That's what I know about. I don't mess around with any of *that* stuff. I stay in my lane. I stay in my city."

Ty Brennan for teaching me how to pronounce sláinte. This is the first time I'm hearing it out loud. 

I love his Puck voice. Like, the little British street urchin voice.  

No big surprise, Puck sent the mirror on the order of Oberon and Titania (who are not back together but are knocking boots according to him). 

Puck warns Misty, "The world of mortals is not long for this world," and follows it up with a seemingly sincere, "Come home. We miss you," which is an interesting thing to say after announcing that Titania is gunning for her. Who is this we, Puck? Your boss wants to bodyslam her!

Also, what do the faeries know that they're not saying? All of them in the bar seemed to know something was off but none of them said anything and Puck didn't elaborate. 

I've always liked the trope of the person from the otherworldly, magical or super advanced being like, "Idk what you're talking about. Humans are great!" because it's the opposite of the snooty elf/vulcan/whatever trope that I really can't stand. Misty showed shades of that in this conversation but I feel like there's still so much that we're missing in her backstory and I wanna know what it is.  

(Also, this is prob just me being a little pepe silvia but I would be very unsurprised if Misty got an opportunity to betray the party at some point. Don't @ me. It's just something I could see myself offering to a player for the drama of it all). 

Anyway, Kingston is extremely uncomfortable in the bar and makes a hasty exit so let's go to the museum with Pete and Nod.

Ally jumps onto the, "Suggested donations are for suckers" train w/ Siobhan. 

Turns out, Pete f'd up Robert up so much that he has kind of a brain link with him. I wonder how long that's gonna last. 

Pete gets proficiency in arcana and a choice between lesseing wild magic surges or gaining some control over them (2 wild magic rolls on a fail and ally gets to choose which effect takes place). Obv the second one is more fun rp-wise so that's what Ally picks.

It's a memory museum so OF COURSE he gets a chance to look at the memories of the rest of the party. But it's getting late so he only has a chance to check on one person's memories. He, naturally, picks Kingston. Makes perfect sense from an RP perspective but out of character I feel like Misty is the most closed book of the party. 

Pete sees Kingston's life from his childhood to the present (Brennan puts Lou on the spot to do some improv...I mean beyond the improv they're already doing) and it's about what you would expect based on what we know about Kingston but it's very beautifully described (sidenote: did any of y'all ever watch the life and times of juniper lee? where she can't leave the city bc she's like the buffy of that world? I really felt shades of that, except more self imposed).

During that montage, a character is like, "You could make hundreds of millions of dollars--I mean, I'm exaggerating," (s/t like that) and I'm not gonna go back and check but I feel like Brennan (or maybe Lou) made almost exactly the same comment in the first ep of this season in a very similar context.

Oh, also, Kingston gets dubbed Vox Populi by a dragon on Bleecker Street in case you were wondering about logistics. 

Again, Nod says that inviting Liz into his life was basically dooming Liz to be stuck dealing with the Unsleeping City but I feel like unless you have a Vox position or something similar you should be able to, like, opt out. So what you need to ignore some weird stuff day to day? May I direct you to my earlier anecdote about the flute dude in the tree. New Yorkers are good at that. And if she moved away, would it even be an issue?

Actually, that raises another question. Is NY the only place where magic is happening? It can't be because Santa is doing his thing at the North Pole. And NY has the Umbral Arcana which shields magic from muggles. Does that mean that elsewhere, magic just isn't hidden? I'm guessing that works because the bulk of magical happenings are happening in NY. Which, again, if so, couldn't Liz just move if she really wanted to? Or is she actually being *kept* there? 

Ahhhhh, that argument scene with Kingston and Liz. Ow. 

Robert's subconscious is heckling Kingston's memories the entire time. 

The party gets back together, Pete immediately lets Kingston know he was memory spying on him and hugs him (while Misty is drunk a singing over him). Their rift literally caused a kind of rift in NYC which is now healed (which causes Sophie to see the Unsleeping City/Dreaming Yin-Yang sign over their heads).

 Ricky drinks the 1000 hr energy so start the clock I guess. 

Misty, upon hearing that Dale is dead basically does that John Mulaney bit: Hey, do you want me to kill that guy for you? Because it sounds like [s]he sucks and I will totally kill that guy for you. 

It's the day of Priya's art show which I totally forgot was happening. Before that, Sophie finally goes to see her brother and we can return back to that pin I mentioned earlier.

(Also, it’s the 20th which means we’re getting really close to Christmas)

He says that their family got mixed up with the Confettis and they've been helping to launder magical items that Confetti is paying some rep from Hell (an associate of Robert's).

And by, "Some rep from hell," I mean Isabella Infierno specifically.

Emily, hilariously riffs for a while about how small it was of her to call Isabella a succubus even though she clearly knows at this point that Isabella is some kind of demon. I mean...Infierno. Come on. 

Sidenote: Which demon actually trying to be subtle would pick the last name Infierno? You wanna blow your cover for the aesthetic that bad?

Emily goes, "Oh my (beat) Nod," which I think is the exact way she dropped the first, "Oh Melora," in one of the first eps of Naddpod. 

Anyway, it turns out that Soph's family knew that Isabella was gunning for Dale (he was getting close to realizing something shady was going on) and, while they didn't call the shot, they let it happen.

Oh! He also says Dale was a chosen one from "some monastery" which, of course, fits in with Dale's comment about saying hi to Jackson. Now I'm wondering if his other comment--about there seeming like there's nothing at the top--is about whatever chosen one test he had to take to get the position to begin with. And maybe he was giving a clue to Sophie so that when she takes it, she'll for sure pass and get whatever dope powers or weapons or privileges come with the position. 

"The only reason I'm not going to go after you right now is because I'm not organized enough to give you the fucking revenge you deserve." Soph is cold as ice after hearing about what her family did. 

"Maybe you should have said that to Isabella before she went after me." Another mic drop line from Emily. This really was her episode. You can really see Emily channeling hr genuine emotional reactions into her character.  

La Gran Gata shows up to let Soph know she has her back to hunt down Isabella. The only other warlocks really seen played are Fjord on CritRole and Leiland on Bloodkeep so it's wild to see a character with such a chill relationship with their patron.

So, Priya's art show. They show up (to a distressingly unsafe building from Ricky's perspective) and it turns out, not only is it performance art (the worst kind) Pete *is* the art.

"I present to all of you: cruelty, a exploration of a relationship. Peter, take my hand."

major barf.

Pete goes OFF

Kingston: Picasso is art, this is bullshit!

Siobhan: Her last name is Danger? I hate this bitch.

Pete gets over Priya instantly which totally tracks because, like I said, barf. 

Sophie stealing Ricky's thing and rooftop jumping. Zac narrows his eyes when she says that.

I love Isabella's title card. It says, "Literal Succubus". It reminds me of the funniest scene in Bedazzled when the Devil (Liz Hurley) gives Brendan Frasier her business card and it just says, "The Devil".

But she's here and she's here to fight! I'm so excited for this one y'all! Unsafe building. Lots of civilians. Sophie (and Emily) going totally feral. I haven’t looked forward to a fight this much since Adaine went for Aelwen. Let's gooooo!

[lev-iano]

Love flavored with coffee and chocolate chip cookies

HQ Daily Challenge – January 16th

Fandom: Haikyuu

Prompt: Coffee

Characters/Pairing: Kawatabi Shunki/ Shirabu Kenjirou

Notes: You can read this fanfic in Ao3. And, look, yall, please, take this ship into consideration. I can't be the only one that ship them. Please. They were teammates in middle school, yall. Shirabu went to watch a game with Kawatabi (in Haikyuu-bu, but whatever! He went! There! Yall!) Anyway, have a nice reading!

Kawatabi looked away from his manga to check on Shirabu; the number of notebooks on the table was increasing every day, full of notes and post-its in a cathaired letter, as if they were hieroglyphics, indecipherable for Kawatabi. He feared that Shirabu's handwriting was becoming more and more like those of doctors, perhaps he would even have difficulties understanding the shopping list in the future.

However, he would have to worry about that more in the future; at that moment, the most important thing was to make sure that Shirabu didn't overdo his studies – again.

Kawatabi still remembered when Shirabu was studying for Shiratorizawa's exams. Shirabu had become a study monster, a worrying situation for his colleagues who, without another option, asked Kawatabi to ensure that he took breaks. As hard to believe, Kawatabi was the only one able to put some judgment on Shirabu's head in that way. After all, Kawatabi's carefree personality would be able to relieve the pressure that was on Shirabu's shoulders.

Who knew that it was thanks to those home invasions that Shirabu would begin to see Kawatabi as more than just a boring senpai?

Kawatabi's cell phone vibrated – and he quickly turned off the alarm.

"Kenjirou-kun, it's time to rest."

"Let me finish this chapter..." Shirabu replied, almost as a grunt, more out of tiredness than anything else. Kawatabi frowned, suspicious.

"How many pages?"

"... Three."

"Just finish the paragraph."

Shirabu, already used to it, let out a sigh and continued to read the paragraph. Kawatabi got up from the sofa and walked to the kitchen. He would make coffee for both of them – something that the exhausted Shirabu would gladly accept.

As Kawatabi watched the coffee drops fall, he wondered if there were still cookies with chocolate chips in the jar. Although Shirabu liked coffee without sugar, he really needed some for his brain to work. So he prepared the cookies and, as soon as the coffee was ready, took them to the living room.

"You are already reading another paragraph," Kawatabi commented; he smirked, as if asking what he would do with Shirabu.

"You were taking too long."

As soon as that new paragraph ended, Shirabu took the coffee and drank it. He let out a sigh as he snuggled into Kawatabi. Anyway, a pleasant and well-deserved break.

"Comfortable?"

"Huhum," Shirabu murmured, reaching for a cookie.

Coffee and chocolate chip cookies were the favorite combination of those two.

As a matter of fact, in those chaotic days when he was studying to enter Shiratorizawa, Shirabu consumed a frightening amount of coffee – which ended with Kawatabi forbidding him to drink the drink that, in that desperation, looked more like the nectar of the gods. At that time, it was only under his supervision that Shirabu could drink coffee, or else he would end up creating a dependency on the drink.

"Is there a long way to finish your report?"

"Ugh."

"Oh, be strong, but don't overdo it."

"I think I can still finish before the deadline," Shirabu said, but then grunted in frustration as he recalled another detail. "But I still have the internship..."

Ah, yes, the internship. Shirabu's other headache. The desire to beat the boss was huge, but he had to put up with it.

Kawatabi stroked Shirabu's head, which he gladly accepted. In the past, even before they started dating, Shirabu would have blushed and would be disturbed by the caress. Now he accepted and, in his own way, with his eyes, asked for affection. Kawatabi was happy to see that Shirabu had opened his heart to him and allowed himself to be pampered by him.

"Shunki-san."

"Hm?"

"When I finish this report, do you want to go for a walk?"

"Oh, a date?" Kawatabi smirked, letting his arm rest on Shirabu's shoulder. "Who knew you were going to invite me on a date!" Shirabu rolled his eyes, and Kawatabi noticed the faint shade of red appearing on his cheeks.

"If you don't want to go, just say it," he muttered, looking for another cookie, as if he were trying to hide his shame.

"Of course I want to go.~ When is the deadline?"

"In two weeks..."

"Then, I'm going to ask for time off for that time."

Shirabu looked at Kawatabi, who continued to smile – it wasn’t necessary to be an expert to understand that Kawatabi was delighted with the idea. After all, it had been a long time since they last went on a date or a trip together.

With that, the motivation to finish that damn report came back. He would like to hurry, but Kawatabi wouldn’t approve of such a thing. Anyway, he ate his last cookie and went back to picking up the book without, however, leaving Kawatabi's side.

“Are you going to continue? You could rest some more,” Kawatabi informed, returning to caress the other's head. Shirabu enjoyed the touch.

"I was motivated now."

“Huhuhu, do you really want to have a date?”

"Ah, shut up."

Shirabu hid his face with the book, in a futile attempt to show no embarrassment – such a gesture would only indicate that he was embarrassed, but Kawatabi thought it was adorable.

Although he was a man in love, so maybe everything Shirabu did was cute to him. But just maybe, really.

"There’s an hour or so before dinner," Kawatabi informed, looking at his cell phone. "A break in 40 minutes?"

"Okay. A 10-minute break? ”

"Right."

With that decision made, Kawatabi set the alarm and picked up his manga. It didn't take long to be immersed in the daily history of a married couple-

“Ah! I forgot!”

Shirabu looked up from the book, surprised by the other's sudden exclamation.

"I didn't do the shopping for dinner..."

"Oh," Shirabu smiled; it was a small smile, hardly noticeable. "Let's go together."

"I can go alone."

"The other time, you brought the wrong detergent brand."

"Yes, but I'll just get the ingredients for dinner," Kawatabi informed, almost immediately regretting seeing Shirabu's eyes.

That strange ability to be able to speak with the eyes; Shirabu was annoyed that Kawatabi hadn’t understood that he wanted to be with him. Kawatabi gave a nervous laugh.

"Okay, I get it, Kenjirou-kun," Kawatabi said, canceling the alarm. "What do you think of curry for today?"

"As long as you don't overdo the spicy like the other time."

"It was an accident!"

"Huh, of course it was," from the tone of voice, Shirabu didn’t believe the other's words; in fact, he believed, but he liked to see Kawatabi's expression of despair. He put on his coat, ready to go.

Kawatabi mumbled something while looking for a bag and his wallet.

"Ah, maybe we should buy more coffee?" Shirabu suggested, taking the wallet out of Kawatabi's coat pocket and showing it to him.

"You only think about coffee, huh...~"

"I also think about cookies."

There were no words to describe the expression on Kawatabi's face; it was a sincere smile, serene, but also passionate. Shirabu returned the smile, grabbing Kawatabi's hand – once, they thought to themselves how their hands were the perfect size, perfect for the other's hand – and leaving home, on an adventure of their daily lives.

At that moment, nothing else mattered.

Well, maybe coffee and chocolate chip cookies mattered; the taste of their love.

[eddieeatsass]

“Apparently all our friends have a bet going that we end up together.” with reddie (duh) maybe including said friends trying to get them together repeatedly???

It was a warm sunny day in Derry Maine. The birds were chirping, kids were riding their bicycles, and Richie and Eddie were shoved in a closet together; a place neither of them had been since Junior year.

When they’d decided to come out at the same time, previously only having confided in one another about their sexuality, the response from their group was explosive.

The entire Losers Club seemed unanimous on the idea that Richie and Eddie were perfect for each other, and now that it was confirmed that they were both into guys, there was no reason for them not to get together.

Despite Eddie groaning every time it got brought up, and Richie wiggling his eyebrows so suggestively they threatened to jump right off his forehead, the Losers didn’t quit their mission to get their friends together.

It had been four years now, and those four years had consisted of multiple attempts to get Eddie and Richie alone in the most romantic or compromising situations possible.

There were more innocent occurrences, like when the Losers would plan a movie night and then all coincidentally cancel last minute, leaving Richie and Eddie to go the night alone. Those were the times that were easy to laugh through, when the pair would stuff their faces with popcorn and rag on their friends all night, laughing into the early morning before passing out together on the couch.

But there were also moments that stirred things low in their bellies, feelings that neither of them were ready to acknowledge. The time the Losers all went skinny dipping together up at Ben’s cottage, and then stole Richie and Eddie’s clothes when they weren’t looking. They had to walk back to the cottage nude and alone, averting their travelling gazes and suppressing their urges.

The more time passed, the more fed-up the Losers seemed to get with Richie and Eddie’s untouched chemistry. Finally, they had decided that this summer would be the summer that they finally got these two idiots to confess their feelings.

That’s when the bets began being placed. Bill and Ben, the hopeless romantics of the group, had put their money down for the first month of summer, insisting that June would be the winner. Mike was alone in bidding for the second month, hoping that his 4th of July party would be the tipping point. Finally, Bev and Stan placed their money on August, pessimistic that their friends would pull their heads out of their asses any sooner.

Well, June and July had gone by in a flurry of disappointment, which lead to Bev and Stan putting together a plan of action.

The invitation to Stan’s house was presumably innocent. Stan had invited Richie and Eddie over to help him and Beverly bake a cake for Mike’s upcoming birthday. Richie didn’t know what knowledge he had to offer on baking, but he wasn’t about to turn down the opportunity to lick batter off a spoon. Eddie, on the other hand, had about as much talent in his pinkie as the rest of the losers had combined.

The afternoon had gone according to plan, Eddie took charge of delegating tasks, getting feisty when Beverly started a flour fight instead of concentrating, and scrunching his nose up as Richie licked a spoon clean while holding unwavering eye contact with him.

Unfortunately, what Eddie and Richie didn’t know, was that Bev and Stan’s plan was also going accordingly, landing Richie and Eddie in Stan’s small walk in closet as they looked for clothes to change into, their own now covered in flour (thank you, Beverly).

“Just pick whatever fits.” Stan offered.

“You’re a beanstalk, nothing is going to fit.” Eddie grumbled, looking through a rack of button ups.

“Hey, do not insult our kind just because you’re too short to-”

“I will never be ‘your kind’, Richie.” Stan interrupted.

“That’s right, because I’m one of a kind!”

“No one’s arguing that.” Eddie mumbled sarcastically under his breath.

“Bold words from someone who’s tiny enough to be Stuart Little’s stunt double.”

As the pair continued their quarrel, Stan slowly backed up out of the closet. He gave Beverly a nod, and then the next few seconds were filled with commotion.

Stan slammed the closet doors shut as Beverly swooped in with a chair, propping it between the door handles and the floor to effectively cage the two boys inside. Protests could be heard but Stan and Beverly began speaking over it.

“You two can come out when you’re done denying the inevitable.” Beverly stated.

“We gave you all summer but apparently you’re both too stubborn to make a move.”

“We’ve got fifty dollars riding on this, don’t let us down!” Beverly added, before retreating to the living room with Stan.

Richie and Eddie glared at the door, their irritation palatable in the tiny space.

“Well, apparently all our friends have a bet going that we’ll end up together.” Eddie stated irately, turning to face Richie.

“Those greedy little bastards will bet on anything.” Richie sighed, not too surprised to find that there was now money on this... thing the Losers had been trying to make happen for years.

Eddie let his arms drop from where they’d been crossed against his chest. He dragged his feet over to the back of the closet and slid down the wall, sitting on the carpeted ground with a thud.

“Do you think they’ll ever give this up?” He asked, nibbling on the sleeve of his sweater.

Richie took to rifling through Stan’s clothes, determined to fuck things up for him as much as possible for as long as he kept them locked in here.

“Probably not.” Richie shrugged. He began grabbing random items and misplacing them, knowing that Stan had a strict way of organizing his closet that he never let anyone disrupt.

“Maybe we should just...” Eddie sighed, letting his head bump against the wall. “I don’t know, lie? Say we’re dating to get them off our back?”

“Stan would see right through it. He’s like a bloodhound, except he smells deceit.”

Eddie watched as Richie mixed Stan’s linens with his cottons, and then began turning every single one of his sweaters inside out before hanging them back up.

“Stan is going to kill you.” Eddie commented.

“Not as much as I’m gonna kill him once he opens that door.”

Eddie stayed silent. He knew how much they both hated their friends’ antics, but at some point, Eddie had sort of started to enjoy these moments too.

Spending time alone with Richie was always way more fun than spending time with any of the other Losers. Even though the taller boy got on his nerves to no end, he always had a good time when he was around.

“Would it be so bad?” Eddie thought aloud.

Richie gave a little hum, indicating he was listening but not following.

“If we, like, got together.”

Richie froze in the middle of unlacing a pair of Stan’s shoes, a pile of laces already collecting beside him.

“Uh... do you think it’d be bad?” Richie asked hesitantly.

“You’re avoiding the question.” Eddie said. “You can be harsh, you won’t hurt my feelings.”

Richie twiddled with the string in his hands, pretending to be too preoccupied to look up.

“Honestly? I don’t know, Eds. I love the way we are. I don’t want anything to change.” Richie admitted.

Eddie had heard those words before, echoing around in his mind from his own thoughts. Richie was his best friend, and he didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize their relationship.

“Wouldn’t it be weird, anyway?” Richie asked as he began tying all of the shoelaces together in one long train.

“I mean, I don’t know. Don’t we pretty much already act like a couple, by everyone’s else’s standards?”

Richie nodded minutely. “I guess.”

“All that would really change is...” Eddie cut himself off before his words could thicken the atmosphere.

“I’d be rocking your world every night?” Richie supplied with a smirk.

Eddie threw him an unimpressed look, cutting it short to look away and hide the blush on his cheeks.

“Well, as fun as this game of ‘capture the Reddie’ has been, it’s getting a bit old. So if you ever feel like taking a ride on Richie, just let me know.”

Eddie’s face scrunched up in disgust.

“Gross.”

“Hey, you’re the one suggesting we get together.” Richie defended.

Eddie’s face flared up again, the red dusting his cheeks nearly imperceptible in the low lighting of the closet.

“Whatever. I take it back.”

“Nu-uh, no take-backs.” Richie stated proudly, using the long connection of shoelaces as a makeshift scarf and draping it around Eddie’s neck, using the ends to pull him closer.

“You want to love on me.” Richie singsonged.

“Shut up, Richie.”

“Frankly, I don’t blame you. I’m a looker. My mom says I could be a model. Your mom says I could be a playboy model.”

“Richie, I swear to god-”

“It’s not your fault you’re attracted to me, really, you’re only human.”

“If you don’t stop talking-”

“There’s a reason I’m the eye candy of the group.”

Eddie, now mere inches from Richie’s blabbering mouth thanks to the maneuvering from the shoelace scarf, did the only thing he could think of to shut him up.

Richie let out a startled yip as Eddie crashing their lips together, his eyes squeezed shut as Richie’s widened.

It took a moment, one long agonizing moment of hesitation, before Richie was pushing back into the kiss.

Their lips moved together easily, soft and pliant against one another, flavored with a faint taste of peppermint chapstick.

The kiss wasn’t deep. It didn’t last uncharacteristically long, nor did it ween off into other activities. It just, was. And once it wasn’t, Richie and Eddie both felt a distinct loss in their chests that felt both familiar and unfamiliar all at once.

It was the same feeling they got every time they had to part ways to go home for dinner. The same feeling they got when one of them left for vacation. The same feeling they got when they arrived at school, eager to see the other, only to find out they were home sick.

It was the feeling of loss when your other half wasn’t with you. And now that they’d kissed, anything less felt like a loss.

They reconnected within an instant, surging towards each other with renewed fervor. This time the kiss became more, became heavy, became wanting. It was an acknowledgement of years of repressed feelings, an apology for all the time lost, and a promise to never revert back.

Eddie let Richie pull him into his chest, falling backwards so they laid together in a heap of grasping hands. Richie’s fingers threaded through Eddie’s hair, Eddie’s hands clambered at Richie’s chest, their mouths became open caves as tongues explored new ground.

There’s no way of knowing how long they stayed like that before the doors to the closet reopened.

Eddie lifted his head, squinting as his eyes got used to the natural light coming in from Stan’s window. Richie stayed laying on the ground, tilting his head back and being greeted by an upside down Beverly.

“Stan! We made fifty bucks!” Beverly yelled excitedly into the hallway.

Eddie and Richie untangled themselves from each other, standing up slowly as their minds struggled to catch up to the real world.

“No way, they actually did it!?” Stan barreled into the room, observing the pair as they exited the closet, noticeably disheveled.

“You guys better not have had sex in there.” He added as an after thought.

Richie sighed, grabbed his art piece from around Eddie’s neck and balling it up before tucking the connected shoelaces into Stan’s shirt pocket, patting it lightly.“Thanks for the chill time, Stan the man.”

Stan and Bev stared after them quizzically as they left the room.

They were halfway down the hallway when Stan discovered the state of his closet.

“WHAT THE FUCK, RICHARD!?”

With hands interlocked, and matching giggling grins, they booked it out of Stan’s house.

[soulvomit]

We really judge women who don't fit in within gender-conforming spaces. Both right wing and left wing culture spaces do it.

We're so used to the trad flavor of gendered policing that lots of us mistake its lack for the lack of gender conformity and gendered obedience policing.

We've found social justicey and superficially feminist-flavored ways to do it: accusing those women of being "pick me" or "~not like other girls~". It's not accepted at all for a woman to have made any choices specific to her own survival, success, or comfort that don't somehow broadly benefit large groups of people. (This may be a white analysis, largrly; I feel like this is a dynamic within white feminism and don't know how it maps to other people at all.)

We aren't allowed to be gender non-conforming except in specific and prescribed ways and contexts. What's happened is that we've had some broadening of those contexts within the last twenty years (and narrowing of some) but the same basic rules remain.

Trads and leftists differ only superficially, but the basic rules are the same, and I'm going to say are some of the unspoken social rules for being a (white, middle class) woman, that are largely enforced by women and not men:

Always follow the crowd; only have an opinion or taste based on group consensus

Women are not allowed individual opinions. It's okay to speak your mind or create original content *only* as long as you're boosting a more prioritized person or group. (We're allowed to comment on things, especially by either giving our seal of approval or demanding cancellation. We're allowed to make transformative material.)

We are only allowed to do things and make career choices that benefit large groups of people. Trads expect women to be completely at the service of their immediate family and community. White middle class leftists have the same unconscious viewpoints but substitute who women are supposed to be in deference to.

We are at the mercy of changing public opinion at every moment of our lives.

Everything we do, consume, or promote has to be safe for children. This means we are expected, as adults, to consume all media at a child's level of education and development, and policed as "dangerous" if we don't.

Your lived experience doesn't count, only the authorities' opinion of your lived experience.

You're not allowed to have differing viewpoints about the treatment and dispensation of your own body and psyche, whether sexually or at the hands of the medical and mental health professions.

You're supposed to always be paying attention to rapidly shifting norms and rapidly shifting public whims and moods at all times, to a degree that men don't have to within their own groups.

You must always pay attention to a huge amount of unspoken stuff and be *hypervigilant* to these changing moods at all times within your own group lest you be abandoned (or even turned in by) the only group you can take shelter in.

You're never allowed to make broad social commentary of any kind, unless you're actively policing people or championing a broadly supported politically neutral cause.

In many cases, you're only allowed to be political in ways that don't ask anything of anyone.

You're not actually allowed to be smart except in very specific contexts.

**

And the thing is, both trads and young leftists act out these same social dynamics in their groups.

The thing is, when I was growing up in the 80s, I heard all of those same things from other girls, that I see young women say to each other now. The difference is that the girl bullies sneering at me were superficially different. They were the types who would never be suspended if we were both brought in for fighting, regardless of who picked the fight. And now there are two visible groups of middle class white girl/woman bullies (leftists and trads) instead of one (in the 80s, in my spaces, it was squares and the popular types).

Here some of the things I've been policed about by other women: working in tech, when I worked in tech. During this time, I had mostly male friends, and was judged for it. But I had mostly male friends because of how I was judged for my work! Women techies and professional types treated me like I didn't deserve to be doing as well as I was, since I hadn't gone through the same sex-specific institutional gatekeeping that is never put on men (it's not ok apparently for women to be raised in a trade or have family connections because it's not okay for women to leverage their existing advantages). But other women (normies, trads, leftists) also disapproved. Normies because why did I think I was better than most other women, who the fuck did I think I was to even try for anything other women don't get. Trads because how dare I do a non-traditional profession and or spend so much time around men. Leftists because I was taking space away from less advantaged women.

(In fact, it's only when I later worked in health care that I seemed to have the approval of a broad number of women.)

Having any friends who are men (but until a few years ago, it was okay for them to be gay men) was bad. Having friends who are women who aren't liked by other women was bad. (Notice that nerdy women and LGBTQ women NEVER EVER count in the analysis when you're accused of not being friends with or liking other women? ONLY cis homosocial women count in this analysis, as if nobody else counts as a woman?)

It is really frustrating to be a woman and have any kind of inner world. Can't talk to many men (ironically, it's in groups that attracted socially othered men that *did* give me places where I was allowed to have an interior life and non-homogenous opinions).

Even leaving aside stuff we always talk about in both feminist and self help spaces, leaving aside "Men are from Mars/bla bla bla" stuff: many men just aren't allowed to introspect at that level, either, except in specific contexts, and it's not something you become an expert at overnight after a lifetime of being told that listening to women speak equals switching places as authority figures, or that sharing is gay and that's bad. But it's also next to impossible in some cases to reach out to many women because of the same-gender policing.

And what are you supposed to do as a woman who has these thoughts and feelings, just sit and accept the gaslighting?

In my own case: I feel like a majority of any peace I've come to, and actually good choices I've made, have bucked the crowds. I've had to decide for myself what I want from my life and how I want to be treated, and what kinds of spaces I want to be in.

I can't even imagine being able to do that without leveraging existing advantages. Which apparently is bad, or something. You aren't allowed to do or want anything that mainly concerns yourself.

But we all reach a point in our life where we have to ask ourselves how we want to age, what space we want to be in when we're old.

And at that point and moving forward what mostly matters is *your* happiness and where are all those Mean Girls in your life NOW?

[fanficsofmine]

Wake Me Up - Chapter 3

Summertime. Young. Single. Free.

You were living your dream life. You had a great place, amazing friends and a steady job. Independent and happy and free, what more could you ask for?

You didn’t think that meeting Chanyeol at a concert or Minho on the beach would influence your life as much as they did. They weren’t supposed to, anyway.

What exactly are you to do with whirlwind romances that show up when you weren’t expecting them?

Characters: Park Chanyeol, Choi Minho, OC’s and appearances by others.

Soundtrack: Geronimo - Sheppard

Chapter 1, 2

We couldn’t stay late this time. We had added several hours to our trip home and both Presley and I had to be at work early in the morning. It was hard to say goodbye, though. Chanyeol and I linked pinkies as we walked to the car. My heart sank more and more with every step. We exchanged phone numbers on the way, and he promised to FaceTime me from the road as often as he could.

He got to the passenger side with me, but neither of us reached for the handle to open the door. I reached down and fiddled with his shirt. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to get this back to you…”

He reached down and cupped my chin, gently forcing me to make eye contact with him. “This isn’t the last time that I’m going to see you. We’ll figure something out. I promise.”

I smiled at his promise and nodded. He leaned forward and gave me another small kiss before Kihyun, from the drivers side with Presley said, “we really should let them get on the road.” We all agreed and Chanyeol finally opened my door for me. I got into the car and, after one final kiss to my forehead, he shut it.

We started driving home, and I promised to stay up with Presley as best as I could. We talked about her future with Kihyun and what they were going from here. The only answer she had for me was a shrug.

“I missed him. It was like a wave crashed on me when I saw him again, yknow?” I did know. That feeling was all too familiar for me, which is why it made me nervous.

“You don’t think you’re just forgetting the bad to focus on the good? I mean, you told me a ton of stuff he had done to you. I just don’t want bad habits to repeat just because y’all had a good weekend.”

“If they do,” she said, “then at least I got to experience the rush of being giddy again.”

“You don’t want to experience the rush of being giddy over someone new?”

“Different rushes.” Presley looked at me and smiled. “Why? New rush overwhelming you a bit.”

I was glad it was dark, because I knew that I had blushed. I cleared my throat. “Yeah. I… uh… I’m not really sure where that came from.”

“You’re the last person I ever expected to have something like that happen to you.” Presley said. “You’ve been so shut off from the idea of a relationship lately.”

Nodding, I said, “I know. After Mark…” I rolled my eyes. “But maybe that’s why this happened; because I wasn’t looking for it? Does that make sense?”

The drive was rough. Over halfway, I ended up taking over for Presley since she was struggling to keep her eyes open. We made it back to my apartment around 4 am, and both immediately crashed out. Presley made it to the couch and didn’t even wait for me to get her a change of clothes or a blanket. I was fairly certain that I had fallen asleep while walking to my room.

My alarm rang at 7:30 and I whined. I knew that I couldn’t call in. My boss had overheard me talking about my trip, so she had made a comment in passing about “making sure I show up on Monday.” I woke Presley up so she could use the second bathroom to get ready and she rummaged through my closet for work clothes to wear. After a quick shower and light make up, I trudged my way out the door in an outfit that, more than likely, wasn’t going to be considered “professional” enough. I was too exhausted to care though.

My morning conference started out as hell. The coffee I had made at the office had run out too quickly and was taking its time in letting its caffeine kick in. There was no way that everybody around me didn’t notice my eyes flutter closed once or twice. At one point, my coworker Jongdae kicked me under the desk to jolt me awake. I appreciated the gesture, but would have liked his kick to hurt less. Eventually, though, the meeting ended. My boss reiterated the importance of finishing the reports due tomorrow and I nodded as I headed off to my desk to plug headphones in and to block out everyone else.

Punching numbers and collecting data for things such as stock increases and decreases was boring enough as it was. Add in that, tomorrow, my extra quarterly report of what the budget increases would allow for pay increases, and my day felt set up for failure. I groaned to myself that I would never, ever take a trip like that again when I heard a voice over my headphones.

“Long weekend?”

I spun to see Jongdae standing there with a venti from Starbucks stretched out to me.

“I am 99 percent sure that you are my guardian angel.” I gasped as I reached out for the coffee, without even knowing what was inside of the cup. Luckily, Jongdae and I had done enough coffee runs together that he knew how to flavor my coffee for me.

“One day,” he started as he pulled a chair up next to me, “I’m going to get you something completely different, just to watch your face when you take a sip.” I laughed, but silently feared that day.

“How was the trip?” he asked. Jongdae was my one coworker I could be completely honest with. We had trained together, and he and his girlfriend, Nikki, were one of the only other couples I could tolerate being around without feeling like a third wheel.

I thought about how I was going to answer, but Jongdae said, “ahhh! What’s that smile for?!” My hand flew to cover my mouth and I realized that, just even thinking about Chanyeol had brought a grin to my lips.

Embarrassed, I shushed him before spilling the whole story. His eyes grew wide as he said, “wait, wait, wait. Miss ‘I cancel a date because a guy called me pretty so he’s obviously moving too fast’ has met her match?”

“Shut up, Dae.” I rolled my eyes. “Let’s be honest. Now that the weekend is over, I’ll probably never hear from him again.”

Saying those words out loud settled some disappointment in my chest that I didn’t dare show outwardly.

As if the universe was laughing at me, in that exact moment, my phone lit up on my desk. Chanyeol’s name flashed across the screen and my cheeks grew warm.

“Sure. Never again.” Jongdae winked at me and stood up to leave my office. I thanked him again for the coffee, then, after a quick scan to make sure my boss wasn’t around, I opened the text.

Received text: Good morning, gorgeous.

Sent text: Good morning sleeping beauty.

Received text: hey! In my world, waking up before 11 is waking up early.

Sent text: oh the life of a rock star. It must be so difficult to be you.

Received text: thank you for acknowledging my struggle.

Received text: I hope your morning hasn’t been too rough.

Sent text: I’m pretty exhausted.

Sent text: ...but it was worth it.

Received text: I’m glad to read that. What time are you off? Wanna FaceTime before my show tonight?

Sent text: sure! I’ll try to leave by 5:30.

Received text: I’ll talk to you soon then.

I laid my phone back down and got butterflies all over again. He wanted to FaceTime?! It was only one day, but he was genuinely making an effort. I started to wonder how long that would last, but I also knew that I couldn’t do that to myself. I needed to enjoy this for what it was. Whatever it was- it was nice.

Making sure I had hit send on my reports, I grabbed my bag and bolted out of the doors at exactly 5:30 pm. Jongdae told me to slow down and shouted something about leaving when he still has reports to do. I waved my phone at him and told him I would fill him in tomorrow, which didn’t lessen his whines.

Thankful I lived close, I sped home, only slowing down for red lights and the one speed trap that I knew a cop hid behind. I don’t even remember running to my apartment and unlocking the door. Desi’s voice was laced with confusion as she asked if I was okay as I sprinted past her in the kitchen to get to my room. I said, “tell you in a minute!” before shutting the door and sitting on my bed. I took a deep breath, opened my front facing camera to make myself look less disheveled, and then pulled up Chanyeol’s contact name to hit “call.”

It only rang a few times before his face filled my screen. The giddy feeling was back. He beamed at me and I couldn’t help but smile back at his infectious grin.

“She lives!” he cheered.

“Barely! I’m surprised I’m even awake right now. You should feel special that I didn’t come home from work and just pass out.”

“Well thank you for gracing me with your presence!” he teased.

We talked about my day and my job. He asked for details on the reports I had to be done, and it was nice to talk to someone so genuinely interested in learning about me. He told me about their drive from Austin to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Apparently Kihyun and Dojoon had argued about Presley and what it meant for the band since the last time, apparently there was drama.

“It’s great song writing material, isn’t it?” I joked. Subconsciously, I got worried that this would mean bad news for Pres in the future.

Chanyeol shrugged. “Not my relationship. Not my business. They tried to bring you up too but I told them that was my business, not theirs.” I felt a twinge if guilt for gushing about him to other people when he seemed to want to keep it between us, but that faded when he finally said, “I did end up telling them that I thought you were great and I couldn’t wait to get to know you better.”

His ears turned red and he bit his bottom lip, waiting for my reaction to his confession.

“Well, Chanyeol, the feeling is definitely mutual.”

Relief crossed his face and I heard Kihyun in the background calling out to him.

Chanyeol looked disappointed as he said, “I guess it’s time for our sound check. I’ll text you after the show?” I nodded and told him I would talk to him later.

The second that we hung up, Desi threw my bedroom door open.

“Who. the. hell. was. that?!” Her eyes were wide and each word was accented heavily

I buried my face in a pillow and began laughing. She sat down and I filled her in on the whole story. I told her Chanyeol was the reason we had gone to Austin and added an extra day to the trip. I showed her his shirt that I had kept. She stared at me in disbelief.

“You hate love!” she shouted at me.

“I do not!” I objected.

“Yes you do!” Collin called ou tfrom the other room.

“Hey! I didn’t receive your RSVP to this conversation!” I yelled back.

Desi laughed but said, “this is good! This is growth! You’re opening up! That’s amazing.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not getting married tomorrow. I’m just…” pausing, I realized that I had no clue what I was doing. “What the hell am I doing?!” I looked at her and she shook a finger at me.

“Don’t you dare start that! Don’t do that thing where you overthink things!”

“I’m offended at your accusation!” I swung my pillow at her.

“Give this a chance,” Desi’s voice was soft and serious. “You deserve to be happy in love again.”

Sighing, I told her she was right.

We ordered delivery and, immediately after, I passed out. I was so exhausted from not sleeping for most of the weekend that, although I wanted to wait up for Chanyeol’s text, I knew that it wasn’t going to happen.

The next morning, I woke up and, after shutting off my alarm, saw one unread message from Chanyeol on my phone.

Received text: I hope you’re sleeping well, lovely. Talk to you in the morning.

I pulled my phone close to my chest and couldn’t help the smile that crossed my lips. Maybe this was going to be a very good thing after all.