#this whole situation is just fascinating to me

[milo-igidk]

say what you want abt shannon but the way shes able to acknowledge how all the fucked up things gisella did affect cassius WITHOUT ignoring his part in stellarlune, his abuse towards keefe and him just being a shit person.

just fuck hes so fascinating to me recently, a lot of ppl wouldve tried to give him a redemption arc and i wouldve been pissed cause he doesnt deserve one and keefe doesnt owe him shit.

i love that he gets all the guilt and grief that came with finding out your wife has lied and used you your whole marriage and that your son is constantly in danger (largely due to shit you agreed to do to him before he was even born) 

i love seeing how messed up his head is, yet refusing to do anything to mend his relationship with his son, him sleeping with keefes stuffed animal, and continuing to insult and belittle him, telling sophie that keefe will always have a home with him if he wants it, then forcing keefe to move in by WITHHOLDING INFO ABT TWO PPL WHO WERE ABDUCTED

he is such a bad person and shannon does not let you forget it and he does not deserve sympathy from the reader or the characters for his situation

[aethesfaelibrarae]

(holy shit was I not expecting anyone to like that previous Mouthwashing post—but thank you, genuinely for reading it and this one)

The Mouthwashing brain worms speak to me again—let's talk about hierarchy and caste and the implications in Mouthwashing one more time.

Say what you will about Jimothy's cowardly ass: he's not an idiot. The apathy of the crew is, at least, in part maintained by the top of the ladder: Curly and Pony Express.

Curly starts the game at the top of the ladder, able to help out a guy he perceives in a rough spot with a snap of his fingers, able to control how much sugar anyone got.. Able to control the food, the medicine, the weapons. Curly isn't the sort of person to abuse his power.

But he also isn't the type to use it.

Next up is Jaundice. His second in command, his (traitorous backstabber) right hand man. We'll get back to him.

No, who come next in this hierarchy can be debated—is Daisuke for his youth and potential or is it Swansea for his seniority? It could be both, depending upon the lens of examination. When the chips are down.. Or when they're still able to make a bet?

I'm going with Swansea, simply because of the fact that both Curly and Catastrophic Jameson's headass respect him. Neither of them really correct or step in to ask about his behavior with Daisuke, Jaundiced is more than happy to leave the room alone until it stands in his way and up until the chase sequence is largely unwilling to get into physical altercation.

Daisuke is next on the rung—an intern getting his due hazing. Young, plucky, clumsy, the aimless silver spooned baby of the crew. He wants to be liked by people in the higher rungs and he trusts in their authority. To his own detriment. But for the most part, he's neither too high for the responsibility or too low to really suffer in forced silence. He's protected.

Anya is not. As the sole woman of the crew, soft-spoken, heavily pregnant and forced to entertain her abuser's delusions of grandeur with the wreckage evidence of how far he's willing to go to get rid of her, rinse his mouth of her, all around them.. She starts the game on the bottom of the ladder—ignored, talked over, dismissed. People's—Curly and Catastrophe Jim—eyes skip over her without thinking. It's easy to dismiss her. Empathy is extended to her as an afterthought. Her death an inevitable tragedy. Because either way of framing it, without access to the ax or the gun, the ship was Jimothy's way of shutting her up for good and she knows it. In my previous post, I touched on the difference between the situations that Anya and Curly find themselves and in all honesty, it's defined by who finds themself at the bottom of the rung when Mr. J finds himself a way to the top.

And who else would it be but our resident golden boy himself, Captain Enablement—I mean, Curly. Now that he's completely disabled, useless and helpless.. He finds himself in a position even worse than Anya's. Both of them taking on the brunt of Jimmy's worldview—he's gotten way more than he bargained for from Anya and besides, she was a means to an end. At the moment of the assault, she was an object, the lower rung of the perceived ladder. It wasn't his fault, just look at her—And afterwards.. Well, this whole thing could also be framed as spite. Sneaking behind the golden boy's back and "stealing his girl" or whatever, maybe he knew that he'd be caught and wanted to see something other than Curly's gentle understanding. He wants more. And in direct opposite to Anya, Curly is the center of his world. The spindle upon which Jaundice's last steadily fraying thread of sanity spins. And what an awful place it is to be. He gets front row seats to hindsight truly becoming 20/20 vision when it's a barrel of shotgun—and you're jealous of the fact that it's not aimed at you. He suffers being consumed and thus consuming himself. Looking into why didn't Jimothy just cut up any of the others is a fascinating exercise. By the time he starts eating Curly, this is not the first time he's imagined Curly in the place of food—of nourishment. He imagines him in the place of cake—even the way that he cuts a part of Curly's leg is reminiscent of the way that Curly cuts into the cake. (yes, what the heck Curls but then again, gelatin probably feels weird to cut). Eating someone is often a taboo form of intimacy in media like Preacher's Daughter by Ethel Cain or Tokyo Ghoul..Listen. There's a reason why vore is popular.—it's the most violent type of intimacy.

It's the only type of intimacy Jimmy engages with on screen and yet—There's an equally fascinating intimacy in consuming yourself. And even that is ruined.. Being forced to eat your bile-covered offal again and again and again.. A memory that would scar on its own. But. With the implications of this being the one type of intimacy that Jimmy feels comfortable sharing combined with what the game says about rape culture have "good" men protect and enable their friends.. There's another angle of their friendship there.

Jimmy loves Curly as much as he hates him. He wants him to suffer. He wants him to live. He wants him dead. Who is saying I hope this hurts?

The hierarchy traps them in so many ways—and the first time we see it for what it is is with Curly. Not Jimmy. From Curly's perspective, we see him unfocused and exhausted and Anya offers him a helping ear and he can't accept it. He's the Captain. He can't be seen asking his subordinate for help. Jimmy was removed from the hierarchy in Curly's eyes. Maybe even at the same spot. Co-captains. Two peas in a pod—except one is a festering open wound and the other has his eyes tightly closed, quietly muttering he can fix it if he just gets a little bit more time.. Can't tell the difference between who's who?

Top or bottom of the hierarchy—awful and isolating for two men who claim to take responsibility. Both have some level of inferiority complex—a complex that I'd argue is the becoming the bread and butter of modern day society but is steadily starting to show the signs of where it's been baked into the perceptions of being a man—there is the fear of someone bigger, better and more capable of you.. But there's also that small quiet part that gets told men don't cry that desperately, desperately, wants to have no choice. Almost takes comfort in the idea of someone better than you.

And everyone in between their rungs gets crushed as collateral.

In a caste made by white supremacy, white able-bodied young men who meet societal standards for being in their prime are at the top. Old enough to know better, young enough to play stupid have potential. Just look at all our promising young rapists men with their whole lives ahead of them.

On a ship like the Tulpar, that hierarchy gets a necessary edge—the Captain is the most useful person aboard the ship, the most needed. The man of the proverbial house. The co-captain is like being called vice president—made only as important as the person in that role can make it. Otherwise it's a hollow consolation prize. And Jimothy can't work an honest day in his life. So it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Then would be the nurse but.. It's a feminine job, a pink collar job through and through. If Anya had been a man, the jokes would have been targeted at her masculinity but as she is a woman, the role and her usefulness to the crew are invisible necessities. The quiet labor and genius that keeps great men going. I think people underestimate how much work goes into even passing the N-CLEX to become an RN. Anya was trying to get into medical school—she studied the human body extensively and in all honesty, the way that I've read it is (especially with the context clues of her being overlooked continuously) she just wasn't important enough to help out. Medical textbooks are expensive on their own and tests can be upwards of 2,000 dollars (my sources: my mom had to take the N-CLEX 3 times when I was much younger and the financial strain was ridiculous especially if you want to get in on a study group).. And Anya clearly worked for that goal. You don't throw that kind of money at anything else but the goal—the one you could just swear would make it all worth it. Maybe if she was Doctor Anya, the crew would've treated her better.. Her usefulness cemented and people would question how such a nervous woman made it through medical school.. Maybe it would have made Jimmy worse. There's nothing hollow about being a doctor after all.

But Anya is Anya and so Swansea, the mechanic is useful. He keeps the ship going and Daisuke in line. Bitter Knowledge and the Dog Days of Youth.

Wasted Potential (double entendre) and Boundless, Wasting Potential.

Immediately useful and eager to be useful.

Then there's Post-Crash Curly. And I must stress, your usefulness is not your value as a person. But then again, where would ableism find its footing save for such a sad hierarchy? And let's call a spade a spade, once Curly loses his ability to interact with the world as he once did, his skin literally peeled open to expose the soft inner flesh to the cruelty of the world, his small bit of usefulness as a Captain gone.. Most people on the ship act accordingly. Daisuke and Swansea, their places on the ladder's rung unchanged fairly quickly become enured to Curly's cries of pain. Anya, the closest to the his newfound rung.. Continues to care for him, unable to free him as he was unable to free her. Jimmy is all too happy to grind his boot in Curly's face as many times as he can. Until he feels better.

But he won't. He can't.

The game touches on the haves vs the have-nots a lot as well as the creeping sense of human work becoming obsolete, that body horror in being made useless by your own complicity but where it absolutely shines in Jimmy and Swansea—especially Swansea's final speech—is the messaging about the never-ending demand for more, for greener pastures leaving you hollow and bitter. Curly seemed well-aware of Swansea's thought process and leaves him be but internally agrees and fears that ending if he stays in the Captaincy for too much longer.

And that's where I think Jimmy really thinks it was a win-win for him and Curly. He truly doesn't think of the pain that Curly must find himself in, worsened by the constant beatings and continual medical assault. He doesn't think about it as anything more than Curly being a nuisance. One more way that Curly just didn't trust him not to fuck up his eyes eternally trapped in the cold hate and fear as he watches Jimmy proceed to ruin the one thing he took pride in as the metaphorical man of the house: keeping the crew safe.

Jimmy thinks of himself as the son who stayed faithful, worked himself to the bone, only to receive scraps while his undeserving brother is celebrated and lauded.

Within the hierarchy, the system is only as "good" as who remains on top. And "good" people, blindly faithful and eternally forgiving, aren't ruthless enough to stay up there for long.

Jimmy's not a good person but he's not stupid. And he's very ruthless. While there may have been somewhat of a hierarchical situation before he joined the crew, it's clear from his conversations with Anya, Curly valued a more lateral role system as he felt trapped in Pony Express's all-consuming ladder over Jimmy's rigid rungs of better and worse.

But over and over, he isolated the crew to their sectors. Over and over, he demeaned Anya, insulted her and Curly. Leaned into the insults of Daisuke. Left Swansea alone for the most part.

Anya, as much as it pains me to admit this, could have worked with Swansea earlier. But would that have worked? What about Daisuke—the younger version of Curly's eternal optimistic "I've never seen the dead pixel" attitude? The isolation absolutely worked. There's no imagining a world in which it doesn't work unless you imagine the crew as better than they are.

And that's just one more tragedy we can't rinse out of mouths with mouthwash.

[mesothulass]

losing my mind over how the longer this series goes on and the more and more people dedicate themselves to flint's war, the more obvious it is that silver is losing all his escape routes. that whole convo with madi over the english leaving in exchange for the urca gold is literally his run away with me speech. this man is caught between natural leader 1 (raised in the military, captained a ship for a decade) and natural leader 2 (born and raised to lead, is a princess, probably knows more about politics than anyone else on the show) and all he wants is to live on a countryside somewhere and never have to work again. "would i be enough for you? you know what, you don't have to answer that" oh honey

[idle-flower]

Amy Madison is one of those things which, like some of the subplots of DS9, I assumed that I'd missed something the first time around and that there was a lot more to it, and was disappointed on a rewatch to find that... no, not really.

Like, I thought it was super-cool that there was this tiny minor character with stuff going on in the background who would resurface seasons later instead of a "remember the new guy" plot! And obviously Willow cared about this girl and there was a whole story there, right? I wasn't religiously watching the show when it first aired so I'd probably just missed whatever her story was!

So then I did a big rewatch with a friend who'd never seen Buffy before and... ehh.

(Now, I never watched season 7 and have stricken it from my personal canon, so that already limits me.) I want Amy to make more sense and to have more story. In those few appearances there are just enough threads of a story that I can totally build a bunch of ideas, but they rapidly diverge from canon.

Because yeah, there's the "Amy decides to delve into witchcraft". Many good reasons why she might, protection from someone messing with her again being an obvious one, dark fascination and love/hate with her mother being another, but she's never given the chance to tell that story.

There's the "Amy back from the dead" which was HORRIBLY disappointing how glossed-over it was. Amy's real-world situation is more fucked-up than Buffy's was! Was she declared legally dead? How many people had any idea what had happened to her? (What happened to that Michael kid who was also in their witch circle? He knew, right? Did he used to visit Rat-Amy?) When she finally went to find her father how did she explain this to him, or did she panic and mind-whammy him because she *couldn't* explain? There could have been more detailed connections here with both Buffy's problems and Willow's problems, without having to go the ridiculous route of...

"Amy's magic druggie problem" Even leaving aside that this entire plotline is horrible, stupid, and horribly stupid, I don't for a second believe that a girl who's been stuck as a rat for years could instantly find the super-secret floating lair of the local druglord. She clearly didn't have that sort of hookup before and it wouldn't be that easy for her to find it now. She's years out of touch! And she should be struggling with magic now. She was not as powerful as fully-juiced Willow to begin with and the trauma of being ratted ought to be giving her the yips. Even if she knew this guy existed and never told Willow about it in high school for some reason, it ought to be a difficult quest on her part to find a way in.

"Amy wants revenge on Willow" A perfectly good plotline idea if they'd actually worked with it in the show, which would require making her more of a major character for a while. Because yeah, getting mad at Willow for 'ruining' her life is plausible, but we need to see Amy's life falling apart first. Even if it's almost-all offscreen because she's not a Real Scooby, it should take time for her to develop this hate-on for Willow. Because at first she'd be grateful for being saved, and then as she slowly realised how screwed she was, then she becomes resentful. Sort of an inverse of Buffy who wasn't happy about being saved and then comes to terms with it, Amy slowly gives up on trying to have her life back and decides to throw in with the dark side.

Just spitballing here. Willow, desperate to prove that she can do good things with her magic powers, de-rats Amy. Amy is thrilled at first but becomes more and more distressed as she realises that life has left her behind. How's she going to fix things with her dad? And Willow suggests magic. Willow takes her home, makes her dad accept everything with a mind-whammy, zap-zap-zap's Amy's long-turned-into-storage bedroom into something cool and modern and witchy, and leaves Amy there, feeling super proud of herself. See, it's easy! Magic really can fix everything! Cut back to Amy, alone in the dark, twitching in terror at the sounds of cats, trying to cast little spells and having them go wrong...

Reverse Unpopular Opinion: Amy Madison

[Reverse unpopular opinion meme.]

This is an interesting one because I think there’s a solid argument to be made that the character of “Amy Madison” does not, in fact, actually exist on the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

By which I mean … look, okay, yes, obviously, there is a character in an early Season 1 episode called Amy Madison, played by Elizabeth Anne Allen.  And there’s a character with the same name in a Season 2 episode, and [in an admittedly weird coincidence] she’s also played by Elizabeth Anne Allen.  And there’s one in Season 3, and a one in a few episodes of Season 6, and one in an episode of Season 7, and all of them are played by the same actor.

But … I mean, come on.  There’s no way these can all be the same character, right?  They don’t have the same basic back story or the same relationship to magic or to Willow; they certainly don’t have anything resembling a definite personality or set of motivations or a consistent character arc.  No, surely what’s going on here is that there are several different “Amy Madisons” in Sunnydale – just like there are several different characters called Anne or Nancy on the show – and in a bizarre in-joke the writers simply decided to cast the same woman to play all of them.

Now, ordinarily, simply being written inconsistently over a handful of episodes and not having anything resembling the same personality from week to week would be no obstacle to having a few die-hard fans.  But – as far as I can tell, anyway? – there’s no “fandom Amy” either.  She never really gets mentioned when people want to talk about how all the Scooby Gang had awful mothers [even though Amy actually did, explicitly and inarguably, have a very, very awful and openly abusive mother!].  There’s very little in the way of Amy/Willow shipping going on here or on AO3 [even though witchcraft is heavily coded as a metaphor for being a lesbian and Amy, one of the first witches we meet on the show, is repeatedly linked to Willow throughout the show’s run].  There are no adorable drawings of Amy as a rat staring out of her cage at Willow and Tara (or if there are, they aren’t getting as many notes as they should be getting).  

No, it looks like most people who are still watching and talking about the show twenty-five years later have about as much interest in poor Amy Madison as the writers did.  She’s a plot device.  A punchline.  A cipher.  A blank slate.  She’s whatever the plot requires her to be to further the stories of the actual characters on the show, and she’ll never ever be anything else.  Which is a little sad, if you think about it.  I think Amy – or, well, most of the different Amys: The Killer In Me’s smirking evil-for-evil’s-sake Amy I’m not so sure about – deserved better.

[As I write this the thought occurs to me, belatedly, that I might be one of Amy Madison’s biggest fans.  Pretty grim news for her if so.]

OK. Enough stalling.  Five positive things about Amy Madison [with, as ever, the usual caveat about the comics, which I’ve still not read anything about and still don’t exist].

Witch, Amy’s debut appearance, is a solid episode!  One of that season’s best, I think (though not, of course, one of its very best).  And I think the duo of Elizabeth Anne Allen's Amy Madison (and Robin Riker as her mom Catherine) is a big part of why that episode works: no, they haven’t got a huge amount to work with, but I think they both do a pretty good job switching between evil witch Catherine and innocent victim Amy.  Catherine’s bodyswap spell foreshadows (albeit unintentionally) the bodyswap artifact that the Mayor gifts Faith in This Year’s Girl / Who Are You? and I’ll always have a soft sport for it because of that.  And I really like that the episode ends with Amy alive and hanging out with Buffy in a way that suggests that they are going to stay friends, even if we don’t see any evidence on screen that that happened.

Sarcasm aside, I’m really glad the writers brought Amy back in the second season.  To me, part of the appeal of the high school years are the recurring minor characters – I talked about Principal Snyder before, but also Jonathan and Devon and Percy and Harmony and … yes, Amy too.  The show obviously doesn’t care about her very much, and you have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to fill in the missing pieces of her story and make her arc make sense (why is she starting to do magic in Season 2?  When does she start hanging out with Willow?), but … well, I do care and I have done those gymnastics.  At least Amy didn’t end up like Marcie Ross or Buffy’s old flame Owen or any of those poor kids who must remember eating Principal Flutie. 

I’ve been reading a few old interviews Elizabeth Anne Allen gave recently (here and here, for example) which I think have some pretty interesting insights into how the character of Amy developed.  Had you ever heard there were persistent rumors at one point that Amy was going to be one of the starting regulars on Angel?  It’s mind-boggling to think about a world where that happened.  Allen seems to have put a huge amount of thought into her character, too, at least for her first few appearances, which … uh, I guess makes me feel a bit shitty about those opening paragraphs. [Not enough to delete them though…]  Also in one of the linked interviews she says that she “hopes she won’t be a rat much longer” – and that’s an interview she gave before the Season 3 finale had even made it to air, which made me pretty sad to read.  Forget appearing on Angel, imagine if Amy had been de-ratted in Season 4.  Imagine if Superstar was about Amy instead of Jonathan.

There is a second or two in Season 6’s Smashed – no more than that – when Buffy and Amy are catching up again (“How have you been?”  “Rat.  You?”  “Dead.”  “Oh.”) and you can, if you’re quick, delude yourself into thinking that the show is going to do something interesting with the obvious parallel it’s just set up. Willow has now not only brought Buffy back into the regular human world [and left her struggling to live and find meaning as a college drop out with a dead mother and an absent father last seen on screen about five years ago], she’s also brought Amy back into the regular human world [and left her struggling to live and find meaning as a de facto high school drop out with a presumed-dead mother and a presumably-now-absent father last mentioned about five years ago].  Surely this must be deliberate?  Well, no: the show doesn’t do anything with this idea ever again, because Marti Noxon had very different [worse] ideas for Amy’s character this season, but if you pretend it might be about do something like that it’s a pretty exciting couple of seconds.

The fact that “Amy Madison” exists as a (technically!) canon character means that I can write (or daydream about writing) fanfiction in which Willow has a friend in high school who is also a practising witch. One with a vague but miserable home life, who is secretly in love with Willow but too afraid to admit it (and so she keeps professing to be interested in men who she can’t possibly ever expect to date, either because they’re unpleasantly vile toward women or openly gay or both). And I can do that while, just about, pretending that I have not created the most embarrasingly psychologically revealing OC you ever heard about in your life.  Thanks Amy!

[givemewallywestorgivemedeath]

So my highschool girlfriend literally lived next door to me and my college boyfriend lived in the same dorm as me and both relationships lasted maybe two weeks? And, uh, what's the opposite of recommending something? Cause I gotta say, nothing worse than walking back from a long day at school, hefting a heavy backpack full of books over your shoulder just to realize that the person who you used to date is beside you and you are walking in the same direction. It's just a whole lot of staring at trees and sidewalks and anything but faces.

[im-smart-i-swear]

webby would have LOVED mystery flesh pit national park

[akkivee]

naughty busters drama track: youthful riot summary

i’m not good enough to give a line by line tl of the track but i tried to make it as comprehensive as i could without it. you can listen to it here but if you can buy dawn of divisions vol 3, please do!!!! cdjapan has it in stock still!!!!

———

the drama track opens up with the end of otome’s coup speech and ichiro watching the televised event.

otome: instead of foolish, warmongering men, women will be the ones to give the world a fresh start!!

ichiro: whoever just became our leader better be powerful because nothing is going to change for us.

time passes, and ichiro’s just gotten done with his tasks of the day. he figures he might as well go home when he hears footsteps approaching.

kuukou: found ya, ichiro!!

ichiro: oh kuukou!! what’s up??

kuukou asks him if he’s seen the news and upon ichiro’s confirmation, he tells him he should know what these are and tosses him a mic. ichiro’s surprised, and kuukou explains as soon as he saw the power the mics had from the televised coup, he knew he had to give it a try and signed them both up for their mics. it’s then ichiro recalls that these are the hypnosis mics and kuukou demands they give them a whirl, to which ichiro agrees to do tho he sounds a startled by the sudden activity.

kuukou gives a self-introductory rap but when the blow lands on ichiro, ichiro comments it’s a little underwhelming and kuukou wonders how to get the output of power he’s seen. kuukou tells ichiro he’s up next and ichiro delivers his own introductory rap that similarly feels weak. ichiro speculates rapping skill may have an impact on their power so kuukou suggest they better get to practicing then!! agreeing, ichiro says that they need to get good with the mics as fast as they can because this will be the newest weapon everyone will get their hands on. kuukou sees his point and says and they need to stay ahead of the game, which is exactly what ichiro was thinking so they better get on it he exclaims!!!

—————————

we flash forward and training is done. kuukou suddenly started chuckling to himself and ichiro asks him what’s he laughing at. kuukou’s feeling good about how hard their rap training was, ichiro’s lyrics were strong and just about knocked him unconscious!!! ichiro asks if getting knocked out was really something to laugh about and kuukou tells him something along the lines of, “one should buy a lot of hardships.” well, ichiro does see benefits of their training and kuukou tells him soon they’ll both be knocking fools out together, to which cracks ichiro up a little.

ichiro suddenly gets a phone call. he answers the phone and after a brief conversation, states that he’ll be there shortly. kuukou asks him where he’s going and ichiro replies he’s been called in by mozuku.

kuukou: ah the corrupt priest huh…. guess that’s where we’re headed to next.

ichiro: it’s not like you have to follow me.

kuukou: stuuuupid. ain’t this something about your job?? what kinda partner would i be if i left you to do all the work alone?? so let’s go man.

and as kuukou walks away, ichiro pauses and quietly laughs to himself before following after kuukou.

—————————

the next scene, ichiro walks in mozuku’s office, followed shortly by kuukou.

mozuku is pleasantly surprised to see kuukou, as it’s been awhile, and asks if he’s here because he’s missed him. kuukou lets him know he’s the last person he wants to see. laughingly, mozuku says he’s so cold to him.

ichiro steers the conversation back to why mozuku asked him to come in. mozuku tells him he’s requiring a bodyguard service. for himself?? no, for a man who goes by the name osaragi, an investor known for evading taxes. kuukou asks if that’s the kind of guy that they’re guarding and mozuku confirms.

mozuku: do you remember tomabechi zakuro?

tomabechi zakuro, leader of the group Extortion, was the man who terrorised unami and her sister from dhbat manga chapter 12

apparently his right hand man, teshigawara, is after him. ichiro’s familiar with him, he’s the one who stepped up to take over the group after they helped put tomabechi in jail. kuukou asks why he’s after him and apparently he took off with all their money made in their name and left behind a wake of territorial disputes as well.

kuukou scoffs, that’s boring as shit.

mozuku: boring as it may be, i will be paying handsomely.

mozuku again tells ichiro to bodyguard this man and he’ll be sure to provide extra reinforcements.

grimly, ichiro accepts the job.

—————————

we next cut to our boys arriving at their rendezvous point, a business by the name of ‘Lounge.’

kuukou: tf kinda shop is ‘Lounge?’

ichiro: i’m not too sure either, but apparently you buy drinks and get to talk to women.

kuukou: *gives the most exasperated sigh* people really spend their money on this?? that’s so stupid.

ichiro comments to never mind what people spend their money on and they enter the shop.

once inside, they find a man laughing uproariously. ichiro hesitantly asks if he’s osaragi and introduces themselves as his bodyguards mozuku assigned to him. osaragi grumbles at the fact they’re just a bunch of kids and wonders if they’re capable at all. ichiro audibly reels in some anger and affirms that they can. well, as long as they don’t fck up, the money is his and osaragi commands them to stand off to the side so they don’t kill his drinking vibe.

they step away and kuukou swears at osaragi under his breath, calling him a pig. ichiro feels that and let’s kuukou know it’s fine if he’s not up to it and can go home. kuukou again chides ichiro, saying a partner is supposed to always stand by his side. besides, he’s looking forward to beating up some small fries.

kuukou: so i’m not leaving

ichiro: *chuckles* well, i’m glad you have my back, aibou-san

kuukou: *softly laughs* that’s right, just leave it to me!!

the moment is ruined when osaragi beckons them over like they’re his pets. very disgruntled, the two approach osaragi, who asks them if they drink tequila. kuukou firmly tells him he does not. osaragi insists tho, they can drink and do whatever they want to the women here, since they all owe him money. osaragi passes kuukou a glass imploringly, but kuukou, in a fit of anger, takes the glass, repeats he’s not drinking and makes to make a mess—

but ichiro stops him.

osaragi sneers at them, and ichiro declines for them, saying they’re here to bodyguard him, not to play around. osasari groans that they’re so uptight and sends them back to their spot since they’re making his drinks taste bad.

kuukou is ready beat the stuffing out of a pig.

ichiro quickly tells kuukou to calm down, they just gotta put up with him for the night. not mollified but putting it aside, kuukou brings up how those girls are under his command due to their debt to him. ichiro’s concerned about them too, but they can’t make any moves that might put their situation at risk. the girls need to be the ones to ask for help. kuukou concedes with a sigh, saying that’s a rather adult way to look at it. ichiro denies this; he’s only able to come to that conclusion because of his experience in this line of work.

if something goes wrong and he’s blamed for it, ichiro would feel like crap. kuukou hums in thought.

the doors suddenly burst open and a man demands to know where osaragi is. osaragi is in a panic and yells at ichiro and kuukou to protect him. they step up, itching for a fight and to their surprise, it’s teshigawara. they asked what happened to the men stationed outside and teshigawara and his men laugh, saying they made for some good punching bags. ichiro doesn’t understand how they took out so many of them and teshigawara reveals his hand:

he has a hypnosis mic.

so that’s what it was, ichiro muses, and their men hadn’t picked up mics yet. teshigawara is confident they have the upper hand here and tells them no amount of grovelling will save them if they get in their way. is that a threat, ichiro asks but it’s the opposite really. teshigawara feels thankful to them for getting him to the top of extortion, so he’s offering them a way out.

kuukou chuckles and asks ichiro what he’d like to do and ichiro answers they’ll make their own way out.

they take out their mics, much to teshigawara’s surprise, and spit bars about climbing to the top as a diss to teshigawara hand me down position.

their rap sends them flying!!!!

both ichiro and kuukou taunt their fallen enemies and it’s then osaragi shows himself, surprised the brats completed the job but pleased. kuukou scoffs at him and ichiro, job complete, excuses them from them scene.

but osaragi stops them from leaving, and demands they stay on as his bodyguards. he thinks they’re very well suited for this kind of work and offers to pay three times as much as mozuku’s offer. ichiro refuses and makes to leave again, but osaragi instantly knocks the price up to ten times the amount!!!! and offers up the number one hostess of the joint!!!! and they can have their pick of any of women he has under his control, repeating they can do whatever they want with them.

kuukou walks up to the lady osaragi is presenting to them, and tells her,

kuukou: hey miss. if you always hold your tongue, then nobody will ever understand what you need.

hostess: …………..please help me.

kuukou huffs, satisfied.

kuukou: ya hear that, ichiro-san??

ichiro: loud and clear. osaragi-san?

osaragi: so we have a deal??

ichiro punches the living daylights out of him. no they do not.

kuukou teases him, like whatever happened to not interfering where they aren’t welcome?? ichiro quips back that times change which draws out kuukou’s gremlin laugh, oh is that so??

ichiro lets out a deep sigh and says it’s time to go home.

as they set out, it strikes kuukou that they should make a team name for themselves.

ichiro: is it really that important??

kuukou: stuuuupid of course it is!!!! it gives proof that it existed.

ichiro: *pouty* well in that case, go ahead.

kuukou: but what would be a good team name……?? well, since ichiro’s suuuch a rebel, why don’t we go with “naughty monks”?

ichiro: that has nothing to do with me at all???

kuukou: you don’t think so?? then how about—

—————————

the scene changes for the final time and a man is on the run. he very quickly runs into a dead end tho, and, exhausted, turns to reckon with his fate.

kuukou: *laughs* i gotta admit you’ve got some big balls to be acting up in our territory!!!!

man: who……. who the fck are you guys?????

ichiro: we’re ‘naughty busters’, asshole!!!!

[vivid-bluez]

He wants it to be like WeChat from China, without understanding why WeChat is so dominant in China.

A lot of social media sites we use are straight up banned in China. No YouTube for video sharing, no Instagram for photos, no Tumblr for blogging, no Facebook for keeping up with friends, no nothing. WeChat is the substitute for *all of these apps* it’s the only option you have if you want to use a service like the ones I mentioned above.

WeChat is also sponsored by the Chinese government.

The west doesn’t have a government that would force use of an app like this, and like the OP said; nobody wants an “Everything App”. We have dedicated apps for videos, pictures, fan fiction, hell even food delivery. Everyone’s not going to switch to an everything app when the individual apps we’ve already been using for these tasks work fine.

Not only is this a subpar business move at best, all it’ll do is drive away the remaining existing users that aren’t Muskrat Bootlickers. They came to Twitter because they wanted to use Twitter, the social app where you can share your thoughts with others. They didn’t come for X, the Everything App, and I don’t think they’ll stay for it either.

Why an "all in one" platform wouldn't work

People don't go to youtube to see their grandma's latest thought, they go to facebook. people don't go to twitter to see unrealistic beauty standards, they go to instagram. people don't go to tik tok to sell their old couch, they go to facebook or ebay. variety of platforms is important. you can't have an "all in one" because then your main purpose will be abandoned so you can focus on other features and then people will inevitably move to a different platform where they actually focus on the features that they came for.

[hero-dualies-3]

i think i finally get all those “maybe we could do with a little less shipping in fandom. this is not a complaint but a cry for help” aromantic posts

[pekoeboo]

crying because i'm thinking about the Nuance involved with my characters and their backstories and the complexities of good intentions vs selfish behavior causing harm to others and i CANT EXPLAIN ALL OF THIS via art or writing. HOW are people supposed to know how complex and deep these characters are if i dont draw or write it out tho!!!!!! ugh

[innanzituttoticalmi]

i'm sorry if you genuinely think bozzi and leclerc "copied the other driver/engineer's strategy" i canttttttt take you seriously

[moe-broey]

Idk I also just hate the future actually. My ass is Always living in the past or simply day to day 💪💪💪

[blujayonthewing]

I love that justin and I unintentionally built really compatible characters by separately designing around the same core concept: "I want this character to be both willing and eager to stick his nose into dangerous business, sometimes to the point of poor judgement"

[youraveragecatastrophe]

Can you imagine what it must all have been like for Gray though?

Like. Picture this. After getting badly injured on your job, you get out of a long, long hospital stay. We're talking months. You don't remember any of those months. You don't even remember the accident.

So you get back to your boring little life. It's the same as it was before, but after brushing so close to death you do have a better appreciation for it. Or you try to, anyway.

And then you meet this weird young woman for whom you feel an inexplicable fondness. You talk for about 4 minutes. Later, instead of meeting you again as promised, she slips away. You think you'll never see her again. Well.

A few months later, she appears out of thin air again and says she seeked you out specifically to help with her job. You want to help, so you say yes, and you fly to New Zealand. There, everything seems straightforward until it- doesn't. It looks like you've been tricked, but for what? Then you find yourself into a situation more sinister and dangerous than you thought possible, yet you're not scared. When someone threatens the woman (your friend? It feels weird to call her a friend when you barely know her, but you feel close to her), you don't recognize the voice even though it evokes contradictory feelings in you. Happiness, fear? When you're in front of that weird bomb-like device, you don't know what it is but you know how to disable it, instinctively, confidently, like muscle memory.

Back in Sydney, you still don't get all the answers you want. The woman disappears again, but it's okay. You think this won't be the last you've seen of her. And maybe then you'll get your answers.

[arolesbianism]

Yet another beautiful day to have the Maxwel tag blocked (can't see half of the posts in the Wendy tags)

[skyboxing]

i wonder if pete wentz ever gets writers block with lyrics and calls up mikey way like “hey dude can you like, lead me on a little bit? i need some new material. thanks.”