#this one hit home ngl

[dumplingsjinson]

List of “presenting: an overthinker” prompts

“Do they actually like me?” 

Mind racing with a million thoughts about the possibility of things, and being scared they’ll actually happen, even if they are irrational as all hell. 

“So I… You know what, don’t worry about it.” “Are you sure? Because when you say that, that makes me worry more.” 

“I don’t know if I can do this.” 

“Do I even deserve any of this?” 

The constant need for reassurance, and even that isn’t enough to keep your thoughts at bay. 

Feeling the need to apologise for something you didn’t even do wrong.

Sitting in your anxiety and muddled up thoughts for hours when you don’t get a reply from that one person in a timely manner; wondering if you’ve fucked it all up with whatever you’ve said.

Reaching out to them multiple times and making your spiral worse when they stay silent on you.

It gets to the point where your overthinking feeds into your already growing anxiety, overwhelming you and eventually drawing tears out of you.

It gets so bad to the point where your chest feels tight, you feel numb and the world around you eventually becomes a monotonous blur because you’re too focused on this one thing you’re overthinking about. 

The rational subconscious of yours tries to drag you back to the side where things are okay and it’s really not that bad because it really isn’t that bad, but that small, irrational part of you takes ahold of you and continues to anchor you down.

You try to redirect your thoughts and it works for a bit… But then you eventually come back around to those thoughts. Sometimes, redirecting doesn’t work so you end up drowning in your own head.

Wondering if you’re being annoying by reaching out, even though you’ve been holding yourself back quite a lot, knowing you’re not being too much at all. Far from it, in fact. 

There are days when you so desperately wish you can escape your brain. Crawl out of your own skin, be someone who isn’t… Whatever the fuck this is. 

“I don’t want to be too much. I don’t want to need constant reassurance. It’s as suffocating for you as it is for me, maybe even more so, because I’m living in my own head, constantly. And it’s not something I can fucking just get out of overnight.” 

“I need to end this for my own good.” 

Drowning in your own never-ending spiral of negative thoughts. 

“Do you even care? Do you still love me? Does any of this even…”

“I’m sorry that/I hate that my brain is wired this way.” 

Join my Discord server: Steaming Dumplings Nation

[hp-hcs]

HEYY I SAW U WANYED SOME THEODORE REQUESTS SO I WAS WONDERING IF YOUD WRITE SOME ANGSY W FLUFF AT THE END?

promise — theodore nott x gn!reader

Requests open

‼️ TWs: references to past domestic abuse & violence: emotional, financial, and physical ‼️

U.S. National Domestic Violence Hotline: 800-799-7233

Text line: Text START to 88788

YOU DESERVE SAFETY. YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Theodore Nott had his suspicions.

You’d never told him about any of your past relationships, but some of the odd things you did helped him draw his own conclusions.

Like that one random Tuesday night, when you were making dinner together in the kitchen, just chatting and laughing like usual. Theo had finished washing the dishes and shook his hands dry while reaching for the hand towel hanging from the oven handle, when you violently flinched back.

He froze, looking at you with wide eyes. You’d just laughed and patted his shoulder, apologizing for startling him.

Or that one time Theo had been trying to organize some bank statements, and had innocuously asked you if you’d bought something from a certain store when he couldn’t remember having made the purchase himself. You immediately froze up at the question, staring with a deer-in-headlights expression. You had timidly apologized, looking meek and like you were playing dead, to protect yourself, Theo had realized.

Or that time when you were going to a group get-together at a friend’s house and assured him there’d be no other men there.

Or when you couldn’t find your house key before work and panicked.

“I’m working from home today anyways,” Theo had reassured confusedly. “I can just let you in when you get back. I’ll be here all day.”

“You won’t lock me out?” You had asked, genuinely bewildered.

Theo hadn’t known how to respond to that.

But when you had accidentally been decked in the mosh pit at a punk show and rushed home in hysterics, Theo opening the door at your frantic knocking and finding you in the middle of a panic attack, he knew he needed to find out the truth. While trying to calm you down from the attack, you accidentally called Theo the wrong name, pleading with him to not hurt you further.

Theodore’s lips thinned and the blood drained from his face as his suspicions were only solidified. “I’m not going to hurt you, Y/N. Did somebody use to hurt you?”

You had nodded shakily, still beside yourself with anxiety. Theodore skimmed his thumb across the knuckles of your hand, shushing you gently.

“It’s alright, darling. What’s the bastard’s name?”

You mumbled it quietly, your sobs slowing to just shuddering breaths. Theodore had nodded in response, making a mental note to kill the motherfucker at his earliest convenience.

He helped you up from your spot, collapsed on the floor in the entryway of your home, and led you over to the couch, where he hastily tucked a fluffy blanket around you and all but sprinted to the kitchen to make tea. He came back with a warm mug and an ice pack for you, sitting down on the couch near you—but not next to you, so that you wouldn’t feel trapped or boxed in.

You rolled your eyes, taking a sip of your tea before tugging him over to your spot, untucking part of the blanket so he could climb under it. Theodore wrapped his arms around you, pulling you into his chest and sighing comfortably. He kissed the top of your head and whispered in your ear,

“I swear I’ll never lay a hand on you, darling. I promise.”

[stillthesunkenstars]

talked to my conniving counsel and decided to not delete this blog for the time being but just stave off posting any further fanarts before I'm comfortable enough.

since the main thing that makes me want to delete is that looking into the tag triggers my ptsd that nobody gives a shit about my art, and the main thing against deletion is that I want to keep this so future ppl interested in bs can find my blog and at least not starve with the lack of fanarts, and that I need an account to talk to ppl about the bs books that i like

[valeffelees]

only bad thing about being in a fandom where one of the characters canonically has wings is the painful lack of classic wingfic. where is my everything's the same but people have bird wings watford au where one day baz notices simon hasn't been grooming his wings bc of an injury to his ribs so he sits on his bed and makes a whole fuss about how "i'm not doing this to be nice, snow, your wings are just a travesty to look at" and then proceeds to carefully and lovingly tidy his feathers in drawn out silence while they both pretend grooming someone else's wings isn't one of the most intimate things you can do for another person. will this heartbreak never end

[jrueships]

the booger on it??? also look at his skinty little hand.. how big are these slices damn? no wonder the crust is a lil dark. the bigger it is the longer it bakes n whatnot n so on and so forth

lol man wearing leather pants lol

....

spin around for me.

im talking 180 not the Xbox 360 baby.

... jump .

[invinciblerodent]

woke up pacing up and down mentally about contrasting my Josie-mancer mLavellan Harwen, and my planned fAldwir Syl, and the ways they are going to experience their elvishness

because I think I'm going to wind up making her struggle eerily similar as the one I gave him back in the day.

(rambling under the cut)

i mean for Harwen (who initially never really had any doubts and hangups about being Dalish, he was just straight up an elfy elf raised in a forest and a useful member of his clan), becoming Inquisitor in his timeline was primarily a story about a profound loss being replaced with a subsequent gain of a new, far more personal identity than the previous.

Losing his role as huntmaster and gaining a new one as "the herald of Andraste" had allowed him to break out of his predetermined role within the clan (one that he had originally accepted without question), while more or less letting him maintain his Dalish identity. But eventually, him loving Josephine ended up working as something of a symbol of him choosing to be the individual man he became during the story, rather than returning to either identity imposed upon him by outside expectation.

(it really crystallized for me that he wants to be neither Herald nor Huntmaster when, while playing him, I decided that he chose to desecrate holy grounds of his people during What Pride Had Wrought out of fear for her -a shemlen's- life specifically.) (Simply put, he elected not to honor the rituals and run through the temple instead, because the longer he dallied, the longer would she also be in danger.)

And at the end of the game's plot, I basically had him choose to forsake his heritage in favor of staying in human society, and move to Antiva to stay with Josie- primarily for love, but on a deeper level, for the singular kind of personal acceptance he never did find with his very own people.

It wasn't an easy choice, abandoning all that he had known before and sacrifice so much, and it continues to be a sore spot for him (possibly for life- I once gave him a line that went something like "no gilded saddlery will make a wild donkey into a thoroughbred, and wrapping your elf in silks and velvet won't make him a noble suitor either"), but... well, he had always been a man who lived with a layer of glass hanging between him and the community. What's being an outsider in a different culture, if it means having honest, devoted, kind love that extends beyond his performing of a function. (which yeah, that may have been me channeling my own feelings of inadequacy and separation from my own culture through him, but yknow, what the hell, having him silently struggle with loss and the guilt of not feeling more guilty despite being actually happy continues to be cathartic to me lol.) (it's pretty autobiographical for the place I was in back then, lol.)

--

For Syl on the other hand, I've been rotating in my head some plans about a potential love triangle between her, Neve, and Bellara, and kind of using that romantic conflict as a representation of the diverging paths ahead of Syl, with either woman being sort of a representative of the two "warring" sides of her.

I'm thinking of her so far as an Orlesian-born city elf (her backstory is a bit foggy still, but I kind of want her to have met and become utterly infatuated with Neve in some context before the start of the game, partly because sapphic yearning, and partly because it'd represent her upbringing to a degree) who later elected to join the Veil Jumpers as a desperate attempt to try and connect with the culture she was always told was supposed to be hers (the Dalish). As one such person, she would have experienced a lot of rejection from both sides: always too Orlesian for the Dalish, and too elvish to be more than "just an elf" in the eyes of the Orlesians. She is, in all respects, a woman in-between.

I think I'd like either outcome a lot, and it would either play on the same theme as Harwen's story, or be pretty much its opposite. And I know nobody but me cares about this, but fuck, I'm just vibrating with excitement over getting to play with new dolls in Thedas again, lol

And now I'm toying with which way I want her to go. Which means that choosing between the human- and the Dalish woman will probably represent which part of her own self she is going to choose to embrace: Is she going to end up as a city elf in Tevinter (potentially a bad time) by Neve's side, or will she remain a Veil Jumper and embrace Dalish tradition (which skin will never truly fit as it should) by Bellara's?

I think this is going to be a situation where change and complacency are kind of all mixed together in this odd soup where the two options are somehow both representative of both those things at the same time, and it'll ultimately come down to how resistant Syl is going to be to everything, and which person she is with either woman she likes better.

[esdithequeen]

Faraquill AU where teens @/yatagarasu2 and @/twistedsamurai are online friends who frequently play online multiplayer games until one of them goes offline for seven years without any prior notice. Cue pining (bonus points if they don't know each others' real identities)

Also cue @/yatagarasu2 roaming their favourite MMORPG world after it's basically become a ghost town, cautious but hopeful. Seven years later, she finally stumbles across another player near a random tavern. Who might not be as much of a stranger after all.

Oh my god what if Kay became a streamer. What if she was live on twotch.com

[smtown-tourist]

The rest of the word: *listens to Mariah Carey to get into the spirit of Christmas*

Meanwhile Ahgases:

[unhinged-greed]

Guess who had an attention spam to watch an animated movie about transforming robots? This guy!!!

"Geez, Megatron is mood. Fuck that goodie two shoes Prime or what fucking ever. Would punch that cunt in his throat"

[cafemilk-tea]

I’ve got some heavy evie angst chilling in the drafts🚶‍♀️🚶‍♀️🚶‍♀️🚶‍♀️🚶‍♀️🚶‍♀️🚶‍♀️🚶‍♀️🚶‍♀️

[s-sputnik-k]

the lobes stay ON during sex

[maladaptivedaydreamsx]

[wonderlilane]

everyone go watch the new gundam

[tiredassmage]

*inhales*

iT’S FREE REAL ESTATE.gif @eorzeashan​ I’ll bite because I would also really like to rotate this idea in my head, ponder them in an orb, etc. Also - I have no idea if any of this makes sense, but they sure are some thoughts. Hopefully even half of it checks out, lol.

Like, honestly, I’m a little obsessed with rotating the psuedo Alliance alert situation in my head, it’s delicious. And I think it’ll also found my opening statements. I might just end up walking us through Tyr’s thought process in response, tbh. It’d be important to him to resolve in some fashion or another before they get to figuring out what they want with each other in the long-term.

So, firstly, Tyr is hellaciously ride or die when it comes to fellow Intelligence operatives. Agree or disagree on how the fall of Intelligence should or shouldn’t have been handled, how the Empire runs, whatever the debate of the day might be, but they were the only family that ever mattered to him. Intelligence backed him, they looked out for him, they sought his success.

Tyr never has a reason to balk at abandoning his name to be Cipher Nine because what, structurally, was his family in his youth wasn’t much more than that - a structure. It wasn’t a home. It was a place.

And for all I’ve pondered about Tyr being more loyal to ideals than individuals, it’s maybe a weird mix of both. Tyr burns his ideals for people, yet he’d still go behind someone he loves for a long game of protecting them - these are all things that make it difficult for him to deeply bond with someone that wasn’t either present for what he went through and who somehow remained largely non-judgemental (we’re looking at you, Vector, the greatest MVP the agent ever has), or someone who just... gets how it is to be an agent.

I’d be fascinated to be a fly on the wall when these two would talk about ideals though, when the subject of Jadus inevitably comes up because it’s an almost inseparable notion.

Sure, dealing with Sith is something that still manages to set Tyr’s nerves on edge in a general sense given everything, but Jadus in particular can almost shut him down. It’s one of the first things that flashes through his mind when Jadus talks about fear - operatives do not thrive on fear. It can’t be what controls them or it doesn’t matter how good you were in simulations or training, it’ll all leave you to your own. And I think it eventually loops into how he balks at the idea of losing control.

Unfortunately, he kind of trips into a self-fulfilling prophecy when that’s his gut reaction to Jadus’s philosophy. Eight doesn’t. Perhaps ironically, Tyr would call it his conviction that he’d admire (he’d mean every word). It’d be such an interesting conversation for someone to be able to walk Tyr through the view that knowing fear is perhaps the first step, but to overcome it is, in a way, to know it - and, no, while he still wouldn’t like the idea of dealing with Jadus, that re-frames it tactically, strategically. It should have been his next instinct to kick in that generally does in the field - sure, feel things, but feeling and doing are two completely separate matters. One isn’t going to resolve without the other. Jadus isn’t... exactly normal though, lol.

In that way, how could he not respect Eight for doing something he failed to do? (There’s that idea of conviction again) And, also... the inevitable guilt of not being able to finish the job himself. Tyr hates leaving people behind. He doesn’t just give up on people he cares for or respects in some way. Come hell or high water, he’ll figure something out - even if it’s supernova self-destructive to pursue.

Kinda... short way around all of this, does Tyr trust Eight to catch him when he trips? Unquestioningly. Does he let Eight lead him into that cave despite the way his throat constricts at the very thought of facing Jadus again? Yes. He doesn’t have to trust Jadus. He does trust Eight. (Tyr and his... odd capacity to trust fellow agents despite their largely untrustworthy profession)

Is Eight pretty? Yes. : P

There’s a part of this that will likely feel like the same grief and regret the Minister has about what Eight had to become in all of this, but Tyr doesn’t have to leave things lie and he’s certainly no quitter. Whatever else he is or isn’t, the need to try to understand won’t let him leave it lie. Because he’d never be comfortable living with himself if he walked away. It was his job to start, he has to be there for however this ends.

But he’d also need to figure out if he’s robbing Eight of something if they pursue Jadus. Because if he is, can he really live with that? Tyr lost everything when they shut down Intelligence. Hell, it’s part of why he’d be so damn driven to find Eight, find someone else that made it out of all of this to whatever other side ended up awaiting them. The apprehension might be worth living with if he’s got at least one person that can understand what the hell it all was to go through.

And stars knows Tyr needs someone who can keep up with the way he can’t figure out himself. Hold on I wrote a line in a recent wip that I feel like I could also fit to whatever they’d have going on:

In the dark, it’s easier to hide and easier to tell the truth.

Something something not needing to be that honest in the shadows because it might hide your tells, something something that lack of pressure and established intimacy makes it easier to share nonetheless. There is an undeniable draw to someone who understands that experience that, ironically or not, makes Tyr far more comfortable with trusting his soul to those individuals.

Anyway, I have no idea if they’d do something good or make each other worse, but it’d be pretty neat of them either way, I think. xD Honestly, once they come to some sort of consensus about Jadus, Tyr won’t think twice about trusting him and I think they could have a lot of fun being obnoxious chameleons rising to whatever challenge meets them. Just expect Tyr to keep checking in occasionally. He can’t exactly figure out what he wants beyond all of this spy business stuff, so it’s important to him to keep a pulse on what a partner wants. In a way, that similarity in them might lead to a lot of “I don’t know’s” about it, but, hey... That’d be okay, too.

[todayisafridaynight]

Right??? Thanks so much! I actually first fell in love with Jo's character when RGGJo's voice lines came out haha, so it's super fun to be able to share them.

But I can think of a couple of reasons for the wild personality gap, and for me it starts at their respective roles. Obviously main antagonist and major supporting character are going to draw different levels of attention to themselves, but I think it's chiefly that RGGJo is not just Jo, but he's both Jo and Masato as one character.

RGGJo is much, much closer in age to Ichi, and though they're not "twins" like Ichi and Masato are (RGGJo is a little more than 2 years older), it's thematically there I think. The whole "twin dragonfish," dark and light, two sides of the same coin kind of thing.

And just as Ichi was initially conceptualized as a sort of "greatest hits compilation" of the previous protagonists' most compelling traits, I think there's a strong case for RGGJo being the same for the previous antagonists--specifically Nishiki, Ryuji, and Mine, who are pretty clearly Yokoyama's favorites anyway lol.

I have a feeling casting has something to do with it as well. RGGJo's actor, Hiroki Takahashi, is actually the exact same age as he is, and he's voiced his fair share of fun, flamboyant villains. If I wanted to speculate, he's also voiced his fair share of BL, so that may be why RGGJo's voice lines have a Certain Slant to them; directing his delivery to capitalize on his established appeal (although he has quite a range) makes sense.

Tsutsumi is also only a few years off from Y7Jo, and he was cast for having the dignity and screen presence to "make every word feel like it might have a deeper meaning." Yokoyama (and Takeuchi) wrote the games, he and Nagoshi handled the casting, and Yokoyama generally handles the voice direction for the main story, so a lot of it's specific to his vision.

Within that context I think it's relevant that he wrote Y7Jo while picturing Tsutsumi specifically. RGGJo was more malleable and less "consequential" in terms of the franchise, so, y'know, why not have a little fun with it? I think that's reflected in their designs as well. RGGJo's is larger-than-life while Y7Jo's is relatively subdued.

Overall, I get the sense RGGJo's role is more akin to "son" and "brother," (aniki, if you will), like Masato, whereas Y7Jo's role is more akin to "co-parent" and "father" and I guess "Evil Stepdad" in a Cinderella kind of way. It's not exact across the board, it's not literal across the board, but it's the archetype, right? And I think that does, exactly like you said, have far-reaching consequences for their backgrounds and who they've become as a result.

BTW, you actually are up to speed on Ichi's story, because uh… that's where it stops lol. It was discontinued at roughly the equivalent of the start of Chapter 12 in 7; the rest of the story was written, but not published. It Kills Me.

But I think, despite any concrete backstory, the implication for RGGJo is that (if I assume he joined earlier than Ichi, which would make sense given he's captain), he was at most 18 or 19 when he joined, and he's exactly the same kind of Arakawa fanboy Ichi is. The 15th anniversary book goes on to say he "was purely in love with [Arakawa]'s greatness" and so cannot tolerate the idea of allowing him to live and die in obscurity at the bottom rungs, of Arakawa being in a position not equivalent to his "greatness" in his eyes.

But Ichi thinks that's regardless of what Arakawa himself may want, since RGGJo is apparently not going to stop until he makes him chairman, which the Arakawa Ichi knows wouldn't really care about. I think there's an interesting mix of selflessness and selfishness in his desires that reminds me of Mine.

And that's explicitly as opposed to Y7Jo, whose loyalty remains the same, but whose feelings and motivations are complicated by the existence of Masato; the usage of "purely" before is notable here, as another suitable translation would be "uncomplicatedly," which to me would suggest that degree of admiration is a component of his loyalty in 7 as well.

So I think you're absolutely right the circumstances with Masato are a major aspect of what's going on with Y7Jo. It's inextricable because he's got this immense gratitude towards Arakawa for raising his son and also a need, a primary driving force, to be a part of his son's life at (almost) all costs. The natural result of that is going to be reluctance to do anything that tips the balance.

I think that's one of the things that make him so compelling, he's forced to make a lot of tough, meaningful decisions and there's often (but not always) no right answer. And that's really clear to see with Aoki, as you say.

(Kind of a side note, but somewhat contrary to the above, Masato may actually have existed in RGGO's timeline. There was a comment from Yokoyama or Takeuchi suggesting he's not in RGGO not because he simply "doesn't exist, but specifically because Arakawa may not have opened the right locker or may not have made it to the lockers in time. I guess the other implication would be that Masato would've been Arakawa's biological son in RGGO instead, since RGGJo would've been too young and there was no need for a switcheroo? It was just an off-hand comment, but it's interesting to think about.)

Also, loved your tags haha. It's SO funny you start off like you're going to say something crazy and then it turns out to actually be something I wanted to write about in the previous ask, but that I cut out because I couldn't make it flow. I guess it might just be the case that I'm crazy on the same wavelength?

But yes! I think a lot of the time, impressions of that aspect Jo's backstory sort of begin and end at Evil Stepdad Perpetuates Cycle Of Abuse, perhaps understandably, but there's genuinely so much that's established in both his and Arakawa's backstories that have clearly stayed with them that I'm positive your take on it is at the very least least true to the character, whether or not it's intentional.

Because like, Arakawa and Jo both came from abusive households. And they're both affected by Aoki's "parental abuse" (although Aoki doesn't know it himself, I guess he doesn't need to). But the way Arakawa has always dealt with abuse is defiance; I think the implication of one of the first scenes is that that's how he got his scar. Jo, on the other hand, has always dealt with abuse with avoidance. Running away. Brushing it under the rug, like he says he and Ikumi had done all their lives; I think that statement's fairly clearly linked to abuse and neglect.

And I think that shows both in Arakawa and Jo's respective responses to traditional authority figures and in how they choose to handle things with Aoki. Arakawa defies Aoki's plans in his own way at every turn, and he ends up getting killed for it. Jo, on the other hand, ignores it until there's nothing left to do but sever himself completely, in the same way there was nothing left to do back then but run. IT'S SO. Ugh.

Each Jo's respective role in the overall plot of their stories definitely plays a part in why they turn out different from each other the way they do; it's interesting to see how RGG decided to handle Jo's character to sort of 'adjust him' to fit better as more of a background figure than The Big Bad, and to especially see how his relationships end up is spectacular. Choosing to divide that devotion between his son and his boss in Y7 is something I'm just positively obsessed with: it's clear he joined the yakuza predominantly for Masato's sake, but the concept of Jo gradually coming to genuinely respect Arakawa as an individual opposed to someone that he just happens to have to follow after because his son's involved heightens him as a character for me (I might have to write a side piece on the psyche of Jo- there's just a bunch of aspects to him that I want to explore better and really intrigue me, but I refuse to try and squeeze any of that into this long-as-is answer lmao).

I definitely recognize Ryuji and Mine the easiest in RGGJo (Mine's influence still persists a bit in Y7 to me, if not solely for his devotion and his own version of The Knife Scene existing as The Eye Scene; though Jo's anger wasn't purely due to Arakawa's death in that scene like Mine's was due to Daigo's 'death', it was clear Arakawa's passing was a sore subject). Jo's dedication to Arakawa in RGGO really is totally reminiscent of Mine's devotion to Daigo: both willing to take drastic measures to secure the ones they idolize the spot they feel they deserve and to exterminate any opposition to that dream (if I'm remembering Mine's RGGO story right wherein he partakes in the Okinawa deal as a HUGE ploy just to secure Daigo remains chairman should he wake up, but I don't have to clarify how that didn't go as planned).

As for Nishiki, it's clear Jo borrows his 'position' in the story, just as Ichi obviously takes Kiryu's. To yoink a phrasing from another ask I got, they're 'dark parallels': though they both clearly want the best for Arakawa, they're going about it in different ways (in that sense, Y7Arakawa's line about him seeing the Arakawa Family as his 'sons' makes this situation a little funny: just two kids fighting each other for what's best for their dad lmao). It's a shame the story didn't go on any more after the Millenium fight, but I'm a little happy knowing in that I'm not missing anything (what I will scratch my head over is what RGGOMasato would've been like. I guess it's not exactly certain whether or not he survived The Locker Incident or he was just so considerably normal he wasn't worth bringing up, but regardless I'll have a ponder about it..). It'd be rad if RGG ever decided to release at least the drafts of the rest of the story one day, but I won't hold my breath.

I've peaked over at Takahashi's past roles (I didn't realize he's voiced so many characters I know omg), and I think that's a fair conclusion to come to: he repertoire combines characters with sort of 'harsh' tones to their voices/dialogue, but as you said he does benefit from having voiced some 'lighter' characters! As for Tsutsumi, I think I've made it a little clear on my blog that I've taken time to look at his past projects, and though I haven't seen all of his roles, Jo's an interesting inclusion to his list (but by no means an inappropriate fit. If I were to compare him to one of Tsutsumi's past roles, Nobunaga Oda from Honnouji Hotel is similar in being an intimidating man with a violent reputation but still having a 'soft'/deeper side). It gets more fun when I think of it: Tsutsumi, from what I can gather, is a tad renowned for playing loving fathers (whether they're perfect fathers depends on the character, but they all absolutely adore their kid/family- this might be the only time I've seen him play a father and he isn't doting on his kid, lmao). Yokoyama and Nagoshi are definitely masters at deciding who should play who and how to utilize their talents efficiently, and having prior knowledge to Tsutsumi's roles, I feel as though audience members would have been able to get a hint at Jo's whole character early on (just as RGG had capitalized on Takahashi's reputation) which I personally find to be a fun tidbit, if not just grateful that they chose such an excellent actor to play such an intricate character. Ergo, his ability to give 'deep' performances and have that sort of presence and give his character that type of atmosphere definitely helps enhance the human aspect of Jo's character.

It's a great blend into Jo's otherwise cold demeanor, and going off the idea that RGGJo was a combination of Masato and Jo, the decision to have Jo be a committed father to Masato (as much as he's allowed to be, anyhow) while Masato became the power-hungry villain (even if RGGJo's motivations were ironically centered around Arakawa succeeding moreover himself), it's somewhat of a roundabout way to have them still be connected: though they're not the same character anymore, there's that bond that keeps them stitched together that I find neat.

AND THANK YOU ABOUT MY TAGS I can't sugarcoat it, I'm not a very confident person, so I'm glad you've gleamed there's some validity to what I'm saying. And I'm glad you've expanded on not just Jo, but Arakawa's upbringing as well: though they both come from abusive homes, they do handle it differently, and I feel so blind for not even having wholly noticed it in how they react to Aoki- it's so brilliant I almost want to scream. It's a tragic irony that despite Jo resolving to not 'half-ass' things anymore and to face things head-on, to 'take responsibility', he incidentally falls back into trying to avoid the problem for as long as he can. It's poetic really, and I'm positively going to go insane over the fact.

[nah-thanks-m8]

Former line cook here: if you did this, I didn’t care who you were or where you were going. My knees were aching from standing there all day, everything smelled of grease and sweat, and I was furiously trying to clean and go home.

I wished violence upon you in every fold of that burrito, every bubble in that grilled cheese, every salt flake on that fry.

it was too much i had to make my own post

line cook here. ACCURATE

if you don't get the hate, here's what you don't understand.

it takes up to 2 hours to close down the kitchen.

The last 60-90 minutes before closing time you do almost no cooking because the restaurant doesn't have many people in it and you've already cooked most of their diners.

So if someone walks in during, like, the last hour, the cook is in the middle of an industrial deep clean of the kitchen.

(these numbers can vary quite a bit from place to place but i have worked several restaurants with these actual times and the concept remains the same)

Say the place closes at 10. If you wait til the restaurant is already closed to start all your cleaning duties, you'll be there until at least midnight.

More than that your boss knows that on an average night you can start your clean up as soon as the last rush ends and get out of there around 10:45, even 10:15 on a slow night if you get lucky. That means there are plenty of restaurants where if you do take until midnight the manager is going to come up to you at some point that week and ask you what went wrong that night, and you'd better have an answer.

So this example restaurant closes at 10 pm. The dinner rush ends around 8:30, and shortly after that the cook is going to start getting every single dish possible over to the dishwasher because the dishwasher always gets hit hard and late, and the machine runs for 2 full minutes and only holds so many dishes, so the way that works out is if you wait an extra 30 minutes to give the dishwasher all your stuff it can mean adding like 60 minutes to the end of his shift. And you're gonna KEEP finding shit to send to the dishpit right up until you leave probably.

all these little square and rectangle containers in this cold table have to be pulled out and changed over into new containers, replaced by new full ones, or in some cases filled from larger containers in the back, which can result in even more empty containers to send to the dishwasher.

while it's all pulled apart to do this, you have to clean up all the spilled food and sauce and juices and stuff from the joints and ledges and shelves and drip trays

Once you get your line changed over in this way, and fully stocked, anytime someone orders something that makes use of a bunch of that stuff, you have to restock and re-clean it some. It might already be covered in plastic. Some of it might already be stuck in the back to make room to take apart your cutting board counter to clean. To cook a dish isn't TOO much of a problem at this point, but you're really hoping for zero orders because you still have so much other cleaning to do.

Meanwhile the salad bar and appetizer section and server station and everybody are all doing the same thing. Even the bartenders are stocking olives and lemons and sending back whisks and stir spoons and shakers and empty 4quart storage containers that used to hold the back-up lemons and olives and things. Every section is dumping their must-be-cleaneds to the dishpit as fast as possible because early and fast is the only thing they can do to to help that dishpit not absolutely drown into overtime.

The poor dishwasher is always the last to clock out, soaking wet and exhausted.

Around this time you probably scrub the flat top, which has turned black from cooked on grease and is still about 500 degrees. Line cooks are divided in opinion on water-based or oil based cleaning methods for this, but they all involve scrubbing with (usually) a brick of pumice stone using every ounce of your strength while you try not to burn yourself

you scrub it from fully blackened to gleaming silver and now if somebody orders something that needs the flat top to cook, you can either fuck up your cleaning job or fake it in a couple frying pans and pass that tiny fuck you down to your dishwasher (who usually understands, especially if you help them take the garbage out or clean your own floor drain later)

If there's deep fried stuff on the menu then the fryers have to be cleaned out, which includes straining the oil out into enormous and super-heavy pots full of oil so hot that if you spill on yourself then it's probably a hospital visit and if you slip and fall face first into it it'll be the last thing you ever do.

Then you gotta scrub out the fryer. Like you gotta take the (hot) screen out and reach your arm down into the weird rounded pipes and curved areas (so hot, burn you if you brush against them hot) and scrub off whatever is down there

Depending on your kitchen you might have to do up to four of these. Then you'll have to pour the (dangerously hot) oil back in

oh, and if you didn't dry the pipes and get ALL the water out of the trap and tank?

water reacts with hot oil in a sort of mentos and coke way that can send a tidal wave of oil past the open flame of the pilot light ...HUGE dangerous mess and/or burn down the kitchen if the oil lights up.

Unless! If the oil has been used too hard and needs to be changed, it's time to carry those open topped super heavy pots full of will-kill-you-hot oil and dump them in the barrel outside by the dumpsters so you can put room temp fresh oil in the fryers. whew!

The clean up is not just some light wiping down that can be easily interrupted, is what i'm saying.

You might have to do some kind of walk-in duty (moving around 50lb cases of lettuce and 50lb bags of onions to get to the stacks of five gallon buckets full of salad dressings and sauces to move so you can reach the giant metal pots and bus tubs full of prep and get it all organized and make sure it's all labeled and i have to stop now i'm having flashbacks)

THE POINT IS

by 15 or however many minutes to close, the line cook is doing an intense deep clean and probably has the whole stove taken apart to detail.

For some industrial stoves this means lifting off large cast iron plates that weigh like 20 lbs each and are still quite hot. Whatever metal burners are on there, you gotta take off and clean, you can see here the lines that indicate the large thick cast iron rectangles that sit on top of the burners to allow heavy pots to rest on. Those five (each has one front burner hole and one back burner hole, see?) have to be lifted off and cleaned with soap and a wire brush usually, and then the underneath area also has to be cleaned because a lot of shit falls through the burner holes on a busy night.

if you didn't do it when you did the flat top you have to do the grease trap (which can be like a full five minutes and is always disgusting).. You gotta clean out all the little gas jets in each burner with a wire or something so the burners all flame evenly, and sometimes you have to remove some of the natural gas piping that connects the burners to access where you have to clean.

you gotta clean out the bottom of the oven and the wire racks, and, oh gods, you gotta take down the filter vents from the hood fans above the stove.

See all the lined parts along the top of the wall?

those are hood vents, and as they pull air up they also pull a lot of grease and they have to be taken down and cleaned, then you gotta climb up there and scrub where they go before you put them back...

And then there's the mopping and floor drains and...

Anyway, that's what the line cook is doing when you walk in fifteen minutes before closing and order something that needs to be cooked on that stove. They are doing an entire industrial cleaning of a professional kitchen.

In some restaurants maybe one or two of these jobs will be every other night or even only twice a week, but in many, possibly most kitchens, ALL of these things happen EVERY night. You don't want to leave any food mess that might attract insects or rodents for one thing, so a really good kitchen is as close to brand new as you can get it every night.

IF YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO ORDER SOMETHING ANYWAY, HERE IS WHAT TO DO

open with an apology and ask the server to go ask what the cook would prefer you to order.

Any good server will already know what the cook is hoping for and what will make their line cook go into the walk in and scream. If it's significantly less than an hour to close and they say some variant of "oh anything is fine" they are either telling the lie their boss wants them to say, or they actually do not know what their line cook wants, and you can either use human connection and a conspiratorial just-between-us tone to get them to drop the customer-is-always-right act, or get them to actually go ask the cook.

It might be as specific as "the lasagna is easiest on the kitchen" or it might be a simple guideline like "nothing that requires the flat top" or "any of the sautés are easy" but a good line cook will probably have a system for if they have to make a couple of the most popular items after they start their close, so the answer is likely to include something most people like and you should be good to order that.

but for the love of all that's holy, please only do so at great need. Leave that last 30-60 minutes to the truly desperate and the crew's duties.