#what I said about Britain also goes for Japan

[summerblueringo]

*cupping my hands around the mouth to yell from the other side of the continent* How do you rank the GPs of this year on a scale of 'hot chili' 🌶️ to 'not so hot chili'?

I've decided to take some cheeky inspiration from Nando's for this ;)

On to the reasonings!

Extra Hot

Singapore! The first GP I’ve watched live where my favourite driver won, and let me tell you, the feeling is amazing. We literally jumped for joy and hugged when Carlos crossed the finish line, and the DRS trick was so so spicy. Often imitated but never replicated etc etc, the only non-Red Bull victory of the season yet still a Red Bull junior, the narratives in my head appreciated it very much.

Spicy

Interlagos the iconic legend that you are, literally everything happened. The Pérez vs Fernando drag race was chef’s kiss, one of the best wheel to wheel fights I’ve seen, it was beautiful and so much fun, I hope we get more of it next year!

Monza also makes it here because of Carlos’ amazing pole that sent the tifosi’s spirits through the roof and his amazing defense against Max that reminded us that dreaming is for free and set the stage for his victory at the next race :’)

Australia was SO FUNNY TBH it was a MESS and Carlos sounded sooo hot pleading on the radio and his big sad eyes were <333

Mild

Bahrain got some flavour with Lance hitting Fernando and the engineers refusing to tell Nando who did it lmao.

I’m obligated to put Miami here based on the quali alone.

Canada. Albon P7!

Britain. My boys didn’t do that well but yours did and I think it was around this time that I started to notice Oscar more! Plus it gave us the iconic pobrecito saga.

Hungary. Daniel was back but Ferrari still need to hire me so I can destroy them from the inside.

Netherlands. It rained, and the marshals knew how to party, and Carlos was very sexy from what I remember.

Japan gave us Sebzuka but ofc I overslept and missed half of the race, but from the highlights it was a bit messy and the Pérez penalty thing was so funny but I still feel cheated by the McLaren boys not kissing the trophy!

Austin. Late penalties DO have rights sometimes :^) Also Max’s PLEASE no talking when I’m breaking!!!!

Mexico. Ohhh that was heartbreaking for Sergio…. but the entertainment value.

Lemon and Herb

Saudi Arabia… I could not tell you what happened in this GP. I’ve watched the highlights and I still can’t remember, but it’s not Flavourless level so it’s here.

Azerbaijan… I legit fell asleep during the race but the exchange between Max and George after GR torpedoed Max’s car in the sprint was funny.

Kimi was right about Monaco, enough Monaco, we as a society are past the need for Monaco, no more Monaco! Carlos had spicy radios and we got Estie bestie on the podium baybeeee, but I cannot put it higher based on that alone.

Spain. Another one I can’t remember, but I don’t remember hating it either so it goes here.

Flavourless

Austria. What do track limits even DO??

Belgium. This race lasted one lap. Brundle gets paid to explain things and said he couldn’t be bothered to do that.

Qatar has no rights. Oscar in Qatar is separate and he was very funny and spicy but the GP itself stays here.

Las Vegas has no rights. Not even “send them my regards” can save it.

Abu Dhabi has no rights. Maranello delenda est.

[canyouhearthevoices]

I was reading your analysis of the BOUNCY MV and loved it (your comments also made me laugh eheheh)! Also since you said you weren't sure about the red lights in the bike part of the MV, I was talking to a friend about the MV and they mentioned how SeongSang's shots are very reminiscent of AKIRA (the manga/film). The plot goes something like post-apocalyptic Tokyo which is corrupt and there's anti-government protests, terrorism, and gang violence etc etc. There's a bunch of biker vigilantes etc etc etc~ And the scenes are also very reminiscent of the MV itself, which I found super cool (I once mentioned how it'd be super cool if ATEEZ had footnotes for all the references they make lolol)

Ahh thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it :)

Yes, I completely agree with it being similar to AKIRA. I've never actually watched AKIRA (which is probably why it didn't come to mind) but I agree that the themes and aesthetics are similar. The shots you have included are great examples. I imagine that KQ/ATEEZ/the creative directors did this on purpose - AKIRA is very influential and impactful on anime media, so this is yet another visual shortcut they've used for storytelling. Thank you for bringing this to my attention... maybe I should watch AKIRA.

We know that ATEEZ have a lot of inspirations from influential texts from various cultures - Britain, America, Korea, China, Japan - so it makes sense that they have done this. I think it's amazing, because, as I said, it synthesises and plays with older media to make something new, and it uses those medias to make the story easier for the audience to understand.

One of my film professors is big on the idea of using conventions of a genre to make your story easier to understand, while adding a unique flair to it - and that's exactly what ATEEZ do.

As far as their references - yes I would love to see them (although I think we can get a pretty good idea just from the way they express these inspirations). Believe it or not, I have had a not insignificant number of dreams that just involve me grilling Hongjoong on the storyline and begging him for the answers. I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes and see my ATEEZ poster and break out in a cod sweat because Hongjoong is staring at me and I know that he knows all of the little details of the storyline and gleefully watches us get it wrong but will never tell us...

It's a love-hate relationship.

Cromerteez also added this;

I think I probably forgot to add this but the Z logo on the wanted posters is very zorro logo-ish 👁️👄👁️ (again, I'm pushing the footnotes agenda lol)

For those (like me) who don't know - the Zorro logo looks like this;

Or at least, I hope this was the one you meant.

Yes I definitely see it. I had a little Google and it seems that Zorro is about a man who is hunted by the authorities but continually outwits them, and uses his sword to carve the 'z' into his defeated enemies. I can definitely see the similarities to ATEEZ's storyline. The only question I then have is - did they write the symbol on their own Wanted posters - to show that they would never be caught? Or is someone/something (Guardians?) else hunting them and has put the symbol on the posters as a threat?

The scene is ambigious enough that it could be interpreted either way - and we might need to wait for another MV, the Diary version of the album, or the next comeback to get an answer.

But thank you so much for sending this ask in! I really appreciate it and it definitely sorted out some of the questions I had about the MV. And reinforced my point about visual shorthand in storytelling.

<3

[kukuandkookie]

I don’t know how but in a tired/sleepy, nostalgia-induced haze, I ended up watching “Beijing Welcomes You” (《北京欢迎你》)—the 2008 Olympics song which is, you know, very catchy. It also just makes me happy and warm and fuzzy inside. But the thing is, I ended up on a version from years ago that happened to have English subs, and I scrolled down to see some comments like “Oh, this is such a good message, but I’m so sad about how things turned out now :( ”

Naturally, that made me go 🤨 because “are you saying you miss when the US hadn’t ruined its relationship with China, or…?”

And yeah. The answer was not that lmao.

People were responding with stuff such as “Yeah! It’s so sad how China’s become so aggressive and authoritarian now” or “I do still want to visit China, but the CCP is just too aggressive” or “it’s a pity what China’s become” etc.

And it’s just like. Hello??? China didn’t just one day turn around and decide, “Hey, fuck the world, I want to threaten everyone and cut all ties and never again welcome newcomers into the country.”

I mean, sure, the nation is a lot more disillusioned with foreigners, but again, it’s not as if that shit happened without a reason. China isn’t unfriendly. Anybody who goes would tell you that Chinese people are very open to community and making friends, and back in the day, they did really love when foreigners would come visit.

It’s just too fucking bad the west had to ruin that!!!

Basically, I’m too tired to articulate this properly or intelligently (forgive me, I have been doing difficult and lengthy readings for my classes all week and I am so sleep-deprived), but it really is exhausting seeing people label China as “being bad without reason.” They always treat the country like it’s just naturally or inherently or essentially evil in some way. And sure, these commenters suggested instead that China has become evil, but it’s still the same message: they’re acting as if China became this way for no reason.

But that’s seriously not it!! I mean, if you provoke a nation enough, it’s going to fucking retaliate!!!

The US really took one look at China’s growth and said, “That’s a threat” and then immediately set out to discredit China in every way. As someone who got more interested in my Chinese roots because of the sinophobia surrounding me, I’m not fucking surprised China retaliated!!!

I feel like I’m sitting here gesturing wildly at the sign of “Let China Sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world”—because clearly, Napoleon fucking warned everyone all those years ago, and yet the world (and the US especially) went, “Fuck it! Let’s poke the sleeping tiger!”

And again, China’s not even that aggressive right now. Like yes, there’s a degree of nationalism and patriotism fuelling the government’s moves now as they work to secure and maintain their rising power and potential as a superpower, but many nations try to do that (and some were even worse about it, like the US and Britain and Japan and Germany and France and the USSR etc, because idk countries that get strong enough just seem to have a habit of trying to get a little too colonialist. So at least China isn’t too much to that degree).

Like if it wasn’t for the global pandemic, China would still be fairly open to foreigners. Perhaps still less, as again, Chinese people have grown increasingly disillusioned and/or desensitized to the presence of foreigners, but that doesn’t mean the country would shut itself off and/or attack all the visiting foreigners (again, if it wasn’t for the pandemic and all the extra ensuing hate following that).

So there’s perhaps a sense of vindication I get, knowing that the China of 2008 that these westerners are so busy lamenting no longer exists. I mean, I remember 2000s China. It wasn’t that bad, but it wasn’t necessarily all that great either. Pollution was still a major issue, as was cleanliness, and I did notice some “uncivilized” behaviour from citizens some of the times I went back. There was always this sense of distance and even disdain I kept, separating myself from the nation despite me being of Chinese descent myself.

But it’s hard not to, when you’re surrounded by reminders that China makes rip-offs and is dirty etc etc. And truly, back then, foreigners were a much bigger rarity, and Chinese people would flock to them with curiosity and excitement. I used to get satisfaction getting special attention on the communal playgrounds just for speaking English with my brother, basking in any of the praise and awe I received from parents and children alike.

So there was this…admiration of the westerners, you know? These trendy, powerful, wealthy, intelligent, pale people that looked so different from the Chinese, who were curious enough about our culture that they bestowed the nation with their presence.

It’s just too bad that there were—and still are—so many foreigners that never actually had any real respect for China as a nation.

Idk. I guess I’m just salty that even before China was being painted as a monstrous creature or one of the worst James Bond villains to ever James Bond villain, China was still viewed negatively. Back then, the country was something poor and dirty, with what just so happened to be brainwashed citizens who were also poor and dirty and uncivilized—but back then, that was more okay, because at least China was weak. It was something to be pitied, not something to be hated and feared.

It’s why my salt piles up even more knowing that these YouTube commenters are going, “God, I miss the old China,” because the old China they speak of (~2008) would be the China that would happily welcome—as the song says—yet also deeply admire them. And it is a little bit like…these kinds of people probably don’t deserve to be admired, you know? At least, not that much.

Sure, it’s always nice when someone takes interest in your country and your culture, but not everyone who does is necessarily viewing you as an equal.

I know I can’t fully say these guys are sinophobes—perhaps they’re just misinformed—but it’s still frustrating. Like I can’t help but be reminded of shitty assholes that took advantage of China’s “we welcome you” attitude such as Laowhy86 and SerpentZA (I think that’s how you spell their fucking usernames. I hate those fuckers so much I’m not going to bother to double-check because seriously, fuck them. The less space they take up in my brain, the better). Because it’s people like that that give me some schadenfreude that people have to contend with a China who won’t just solely and unconditionally welcome you.

I mean, even my younger brother’s growing disdain for white men who expect Chinese women to be submissive and devoted and worshipful of them (and with his disdain of Chinese women who actually do fit these expectations) demonstrates how there are frustrations with the way the west treats China versus how China treats the west.

And again, China really isn’t even that hostile!! If you want to go, you can still go and people will happily welcome you, but just know that you’re a lot less likely to get special treatment. And sure, that sucks, but I’m glad, in some ways. I’m glad that China is really growing back into its own—even though of course there are flaws, as there are with every country. After all, China really did get torn down during the 20th century and had to really build itself back up.

Hell, even China itself has been getting more and more in touch with its roots. You can see it with the hanfu movement but also with the viral Douyin videos where different shaoshu minzu (people in any 1 of the 56 recognized ethnicities within China) dress up in their traditional clothes. We’re not all just wearing qipao/changshan-inspired clothes anymore—and don’t get me wrong, qipao and changshan are great too! It’s just that such clothes became such a commercial and stereotyped sign of China that it’s refreshing getting more diversity in the portrayals of traditional Chinese culture. And I mean yes, the “Beijing Welcomes You” song definitely does also demonstrate Chinese culture, but you know. Chinese people embrace their heritage(s) now more than ever, and it’s nice.

It’s kind of like…if the rest of the world won’t appreciate them, Chinese people will appreciate themselves. 😆

Anyway, to get back to my initial point: as long as you’re not an ass and you show some interest in the country’s culture and everything, Chinese people are more than happy to “welcome you” the way the “Beijing Welcomes You” song claims.

As for the rest of the west, for the ones that keep treating China like shit and then get all surprised when China throws their shit back at them? Well, they can get a proper, warm, open Beijing welcome when they learn to fucking play nice.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Do you have any advice for writing a setting that would basically be a look into Earth 20-30 years after Animorphs happened? I like your exploration of post-canon so I'm curious about your thoughts about what further in the future might look like.

Biggest piece of advice: research galactic suburbia, and then figure out how to avoid it.

Galactic suburbia refers to any work of fiction set in a time and/or place that has no logical reason to reflect the social divisions of the author’s own time and place, and yet does.  It’s more obvious in works from earlier eras, such as how 2001: A Space Odyssey is filled with people acting out mid-1960s white American gender roles... in space!  But it’s definitely still present today; everything from Mistborn to Kingkiller Chronicles to The Expanse to Six of Crows will either pretend that sexism doesn’t exist in that universe or that sexism was solved years ago, while still portraying female characters as concerned with ornamenting themselves and male characters concerned with being in charge in order to ascribe to gender norms.  Obviously, this can be applied across identities — don’t get me started the way some sci fi works decide to address ableism through removing all disabled people from existence, because if that’s not American eugenics then I don’t know what is.

Some books that do an excellent job of breaking out of this trap: 

City of Thieves takes place in a culture that definitely has sexism, but cut along different lines than contemporary American culture — women are the source of all bloodlines, men are considered more expendable, and family units are comprised of adult siblings working together to raise children whose fathers are usually unknown.

Ancillary Justice is narrated by a character who comes from a culture with no conceptualization of gender, who frequently makes gaffes while navigating a culture with gender norms.

The Left Hand of Darkness takes a society where all people change sex as they age, and plays out that thought experiment into every aspect of the culture.

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is about a crew from a variety of cultures working together, including one character who comes from a culture with no nudity taboos where group sex is an everyday pastime and a different character who comes from a rigidly conservative Earth society, both of whom have to learn to respect each other’s differences.

Please note: I’m just rolling with the sexism example because it’s what came to mind, but it’s not hard to extend this to Inexplicably Homophobic Fantasy Cultures, Kingdom of White = Might = Right, etcetera.  All of those examples also have excellent subversion of or commentary upon racism, heteronormativity, classism, ableism, or all of the above.

ANYWAY, Animorphs.

A few ways I could see the technologies and cultural shifts of Animorphs having a long-term impact:

At least some people, at least some of the time, can change their bodies into completely different bodies.

Plus: probably greater ability for trans or disabled people to transform themselves for their own comfort and quality of life, with interesting implications for gender confirmation.

Minus: probably greater pressure upon disabled and trans people to “just change your body!” while ignoring all of the reasons they might be perfectly happy how they are and/or not in a position legally or financially to take on a whole new appearance.

Turns out, mind control is a thing.  And it’s perpetrated by alien slugs.

Plus: probably interesting neuroscience research implications, if all participants involved give their fully informed consent first.

Minus: everything I explored in Eleutherophobia.  Outsized fear of morph-capable hosts.  Inappropriate jokes about “I didn’t scratch your car; aliens made me do it.”  Suggestions that some people (i.e. no one I know) should just let yeerks control them because they can’t run their own lives.  Legal messes around intentionality.

Humans are not alone in the universe, and a lot of our neighbors are sentient.

Plus: cross-seeding of ideas, probably to the benefit of all cultures’ science and technology and arts.  Redefining of rights and protections, ideally to include hork-bajir and taxxons.  Broken view of humans as the center of the universe, or even the most important species on the planet.

Minus: whole new batch of prejudices.  Probably some people straight-up wanna annihilate the hork-bajir and taxxons, and feel comfortable saying so in public.

Andalites and humans canonically swapped z-space technology for Krispy Kreme recipes.

Plus: lots of new opportunities for humans to learn from andalites with regard to interstellar travel, peaceful breakup of urban centers, and how to run a society filled with lots of morphers.

Minus: you know that one American friend we all have who is, like, uncomfortably obsessed with British culture?  To the point of writing “colour” and saying “petrol”?  You know how that one person treats British culture as automatically being more valid and sophisticated than other cultures, and doesn’t take constructive criticism about that view being just an eensy bit imperialist as fuck?  Yeeeeaaaah, now just imagine it’s a human doing that with andalites.

That’s not meant to be an exhaustive list, just a bunch of spitballing to give you an idea of what I’m talking about.  Rather than asking how cars and cell phones would change in light of z-space technology, instead consider asking how flying and intergalactic phones would change us as a society.

[hnnyoongs]

akai shuichi headcanons

shuichi wears a beanie all the time because he's self conscious about hir hairline .... and I mean who can blame him? id be too

shuichi saw gin when he was visiting Japan in the 10 years ago flashback and was like ooh long hair is cool AND it'll piss ka-san off flash forward 5 years later when shuichi infiltrates the BO and is like fUck cool long hair dude is a psycho

shuichi cut his hair off when he heard akemi was killed by gin he kinda went into the whole mental breakdown mode and was like fuck this shit because he started growing his hair out cuz of gin and also akemi really liked his long hair

shuichi used to be a band kid when he lived in England and wanted to pursue a career in music (much to the chagrin of Mary) but after tsutomu disappeared he was like fuck that and stopped playing until he entered the BO

shuichi has a really bad memory about things that dont have to do anything with his job kinda like BBC's Sherlock but not as bad

shuichi used to find dead bodies when he was a kid just like shinichi but it wasn't as often maybe like a dead body once a year or something

shuichi named himself dai because that's what Mary actually wanted to name him when she was giving birth she was screaming die die die and tsutomu wasn't there yet so she was like aight die sounds like the japanese name dai the only reason shuichi wasn't named that was that tsutomu burst in and was like FUCK NO

shuichi was picked on when training for the FBI since compared to 6 foot jock white men shuichi was a 5 foot 7 asian with long hair and dressed like a teenage girl who frequented Starbucks in the toxic environment of the FBI for anyone who doesnt fit the mold shuichi had it cut out for him

shuichi showed signs of multiple mental illnesses but they were all difficult to pin down so he was never diagnosed with anything since he refused to talk at the FBI mandated therapy sessions

shuichi's type is someone who is kind but could wield a gun

he used to dislike kids but being around them as okiya has made SOME kids special in his heart

before tsutomu's disspeareance he taught shuichi how to hunt with a shotgun

shuichi lived off of sports drinks and bars whenever he was single since he couldn't rely on take out due to it being unhealthy which wouldn't help his FBI styled life

shuichi taught akemi simple self defense techniques but refuses to teach her how to shoot a gun saying he didn't want her hands to get dirty

shuichi and shukichi blackmail each other for favors by using the "ill tell ka-san you did that one thing that you blamed dad for when we were kids if u dont help me out"

scotch once told him that bourbon's type was a white milf (in reference to Elena who was white and was a mother) so shuichi was scared as fuck when rei met Mary's adult self for the first time

shuichi hates being compared to his mother but the truth is they're the most similar and they both started mimicking tsutomu after his disappearance

the only thing shuichi knew how to cook before meeting yukiko was plain white rice as that was the only thing tsutomu was able to teach him

shuichi mimics an American accent while talking in America or talking in English unless he's talking to his family or he's mentally shook up and his British accent slips out

he thinks in British accented English as well (idc if the animanga shows him thinking in japanese it makes no sense that western raised people like Jodie and camel think in japanese) but he does use some japanese like ka-san and when he's trying to get deep into his okiya persona

he tries very hard to keep the polite speech patterns of okiya Subaru since as akai shuichi he's very .. rude

shuichi's sniper skills were so good the fbi was willing to overlook his disrespect of authority and his tendency to do everything by himself without consulting everyone

shuichi slips into a British accent around James if he's feeling really comfortable

he felt bad about using shiho since she was only a year older than masumi and she hadn't done anything wrong so he vowed to get her and akemi out of the BO

he had a plan to get akemi and shiho out by convincing the higher ups to grant them immunity if they testified but akemi's death derailed the entire thing

he hates to admit it but his family is the most important thing to him he may not contact them that often but he's going to such lengths to bring his father back because he cares for his family so much

shuichi didnt really know what he wanted to do with his life once he took down his father's pursuers but after akemi and scotch he decided that if he solved his father's disappearance first he'd hunt down the BO next tho once learning that Haneda Koji’s death had something to do with the BO he's back at the thing where he doesn't know what to do with his life without revenge

he promised shukichi that he'd be the one to solve shukichi's death if what happened to Haneda kohji also happens to shukichi

he isn't a fan of dates in amusement parks but if it makes his partner happy and smile he'll have fun

dating Jodie was a quiet thing most likely from an attachment maybe due to a bad case or a loss of a mutual friend depending on the agency they might have been legally allowed to date each other but it is usually looked down upon I dont think they went out together often probably spending time together at home ... doing stuff

he identifies as bisexual it was normal to him in childhood since both Mary and tsutomu talked about their past relationships to their children he never told anyone due to the fact it would affect his FBI status since it was illegal in America shukichi and Mary know he's bi but shuichi has no idea Mary knows

akemi and shuichi would take strolls in parks go shopping and go to cafes

he's very self conscious about his height and whenever he goes to Japan it makes him feel good about himself since he's relatively tall there

Mary was the one who drilled japanese into his head not tsutomu

the last time shuichi talked to Mary was when he called her up to tell her to take masumi and leave Japan for Britain after masumi cornered him and scotch him and Mary had a whole argument and after that they stopped talking to each other, not that they talked to each other much in the first place

shuichi learned jee kun do by watching training videos from vhs tapes/cds/YouTube depending on when you consider detco taking place I personally believe conan shrinks in 2018 meaning that tsutomu disappeared in 2001 and shuichi used a mixture of tapes and cds to learn

shuichi can read people really well but has a hard time manipulating people by being nice he can use people by being a jackass very well but trying to be a normal person is hard for him

Yukiko and yusaku remind shuichi of his parents before tsutomu disappeared but like more upbeat

shuichi dislikes full body hugs

akemi and shiho were both anime and romance drama fans so he knows random things about the shows and uses that info to connect with the DB and especially haibara

he considered himself British first and foremost but when asked about whether he considers himself white or asian he'll always go with asian

he started smoking soon after his father disappeared since his father used to smoke and he needed to cope but didn't wanna fall into drugs like cocaine

smoking is heavily looked down upon in America and is seen as unprofessional which helped shuichi go undercover a bunch due to him being a heavy smoker

akemi would make him stop smoking around her and shiho saying that second hand smoking was dangerous and that shuichi who was smoking constantly was going to get lung cancer but he would tell her that he just couldn't stop smoking he did stop smoking around shiho and akemi tho going outside to do it instead

as okiya it makes him go wild because he desperately needs to smoke to cope but okiya cant smoke it doesnt fit his image so he smokes a shit ton at night during his nightly drives

shuichi forced himself not to smoke during his time visiting Japan when he met masumi because he knew Mary would get even more upset with him

shuichi was terrible driving American styled cars and he got so upset that he perfected his drive-in techiuque over the years just to spite the instructor that said he was barely passing

he likes to go on late night drives and speed on the high way because he's a thrill seeking idiot

he has no social media but he created on as okiya Subaru to keep an eye on haibara's higo stan account

he takes offense to the idea that he's stalking haibara he's just p r o t e c t i n g her

he wants shiho to be happy more than anything so he's an avid coai shipper and is exhausted in Conan's obliviousness

shuichi didnt tell shukichi he wasn't actually dead shukichi just walked up to okiya Subaru one day and was like shuuichi-ni-san right? shuichi has long stopped questioning shukichi's weird ways of knowing shit he shouldn't know

shuichi is a sherlockian but he's not like shinichi or hakuba in that he does not hate BBC's Sherlock and actually enjoys it a bit

one upside to shuichi living in America is that he gets to hoard guns because he's obsessed with them he thinks they're really cool it's like conan with Sherlock he starts yapping his mouth of about them

bourbon once dangled a gun on in front of a sleeping shuichi cuz he didnt believe scotch when he said that rye was obsessed with guns and started saying incorrect shit about the type of gun he was holding and shuichi just shot up and started berating him

shuichi hates that chianti is a killer because she's the only person who's as much as a gun fanatic as he is

he tends to steal Jodie's car a lot

he likes fucking with peoples heads it's very fun to him to watch them get all worked up

shuichi hasn't mourned his father yet because he doesnt believe his father’s dead

deep down he blames his father for his mother going slightly bonkers

he didnt want masumi to be a detective at first but now hes proud of her

he drinks a lot as okiya Subaru since he cant smoke as much

he's willing to go to hell if it means he can rip gin from limp to limp

he really hates gin yall I dont think I can convey how much he hates gin

[justintaco]

Can you tell me more about this...Bubuki Buranki (BBK/BRNK)? The action packed, hidden gem of a show, made as a 10 year anniversary celebration from SENIZAWA studios. With Yuuji Kaneko (the lead art director of the fan favorite show Kill la Kill) and directed by Daizen Komatsuda who's other works include storyboarding Triggers widely acclaimed movie, Promare, as well directing and storyboarding in many big shows (BNA, AoT S3, TTGL, Evangelion 1.0, 3.0, and 1.0+3.0)

Oh well I would be very glad to!

Just one correction though, it was actually an anniversary anime for studio SANZIGEN, who produced Promare alongside studio Trigger. You also forgot that the character designs are by Yusuke Kozaki, who's done designs for Fire Emblem Awakening/Fates, No More Heroes, Pokemon Go, and a lot more!

The first season did very poorly, commercially. However, SANZIGEN said that they already promised they would celebrate their anniversary with a 2 season anime no matter what. So the second season went ahead even if they knew it wouldn't sell, and I have nothing but the utmost respect for that kind of passion project. I actually thanked the director on Twitter when it finished airing and he replied!

I don't usually bring up these kinds of things when I talk about anime but I know they're very important to some people so I'll list them here. The show is impressively diverse. It features characters from Japan, Russia, Taiwan, India, America, Britain, France, and they even spend time with an Inuit and/or native Siberian girl for a bit! (it's not specified which). Team America itself does poke a little fun at US stereotypes, but their team is very diverse: the usual white guy and girl but also a Hispanic guy, a black girl, and one guy that I'm pretty certain is Algerian.

A ton of them come from different backgrounds and walks of life, and it just makes the show feel so colorful.

I also mentioned in another post, that I can't read Shizuru as anything but being on the autism spectrum. The show treats her really well but doesn't skip over some of the difficulties she goes through.

Beyond that stuff, the cast is full of really talented VAs, and a lot of ones I really enjoy. Ozawa Ari, Ishigami Shizuka, Komatsu Mikako, Kobayashi Yuu, Megumi Han, Hikasa Yoko, Tsuda Kenjirou, and Kaede Hondo to name some of the most notable (to me).

Overall really fantastic show that's been totally slept on. Everyone please check it out!!

[x0401x]

Jeweler Richard Fanbook Short Story #5

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Iolite of Cloudy Skies

Iolite. Its Japanese name was “blue flower stone”. The gem was blue with a purple tint stronger than that of a sapphire and had a unique viscosity that made it seem as if it was coated with a bit of dew. The level of hardness was seven. It was called iolite when treated as a gemstone, but when treated as a type of mineral, it was also called cordierite. It was an eccentric stone, which also appeared to have a grayish brown color instead of blue depending on the angle that one looked at it. Etc., etc.

“What happened, Seigi? Your eyes are dead.”

“How can I put it...? Surfeit, I guess.”

“Haah?”

I couldn’t memorize the stones’ names. They were too many.

The client who left just now had come because they wanted to see many sorts of blue stones, so Richard’s treasure box was packed with a great variety of blues. There were sapphires, of course, and also tanzanites, lapis lazuli, blue chalcedonies and this iolite.

Half a year before I had started working part-time in Etranger, the image I had of gemstones was limited to things such as diamonds, rubies, sapphires and emeralds, I believed. Now I knew about the existence of a stone named zircon, which shone in the same way as a diamond, and also knew about the spinel, which was red like a ruby, as well as that the color of sapphires was not just blue, having a wide range from purple to yellow, and I had seen transparent jades that were impossible to tell apart from emeralds.

If I had as much knowledge of minerals as Tanimoto-san, I would’ve managed to sort stones inside my head by the differences the in chemical composition of each, but unfortunately, I was unfamiliar with such things, and I currently didn’t have enough enthusiasm or willpower to study them. If I were to explain figuratively, it felt like going out to hunt for clams at a beach, and when you innocently dove into the lake, you’d see the Mariana Trench spreading out below. It was a beautiful world, thus also too wide and too deep. And endless. To a terrifying extent.

When I told him roughly this, Richard laughed, the depths of his throat trembling with giggles. “It is not as if you are aiming to obtain a GIA or FGA qualification or anything, right? Isn’t it all right for you to observe as much as you like?”

“That might be the case, but...”

I found myself thinking that it was a waste.

After all, I’d be on my knees listening as Richard went, in earnest, through the trouble of introducing all kinds of stones to me one by one. I often heard from my senpais that “job hunting is a connection for people”, so I felt sorry that my connection with stones remained scoreless. Regardless, it wasn’t like I was suddenly going to get any smarter.

As I said this, Richard laughed again and beckoned me with a hand gesture. He then took something out of his suit’s pocket. One of those subdivision vinyl bags that I’d often see when he was handling jewels in the back room. It seemed there was an iolite inside. There was a label stuck to the bag packed with absorbent cotton, and something was written on it in horizontal letters. “Viking sunstone,” it read. Vikings? Like the ones that you’d imagine wearing horned helmets, carrying axes and coming from the sea on a ship? As I asked for confirmation, the jeweler nodded with a “precisely”.

“The words written on this label are associated with the former ‘purpose’ of the iolite. In the past, people used iolites as sun stones.”

“‘Used’ them as ‘sun stones’...?”

I didn’t understand anything from A to Z. What did that mean? For starters, why was gem of such a cold-looking color made into a stone of the sun?

Before I even had a breach to ask, the beautiful shopkeeper began talking, a smile ghosting his lips, “You might already know this, but a portion of the people residing in the current Britain are descendants of those who went through the Norman Conquest that began around the ninth century - in other words, of the Vikings. They were famous for having the skills to travel long distances, which was unusual at the time, so Seigi. If you were someone who travels the sea for long periods, how would you know your way?” Richard asked me.

A means to know the cardinal directions in the open sea. So it was a situation where there’d be no piece of land to act as a mark. The only thing I could use in such a case was a magnet. No, wait. Richard had said earlier that it was the ninth century. The compass would be invented only much later. I recalled memorizing that this was the invention that triggered the Age of Discovery back in high school for history class. If so, I recalled the words on the label. “Sunstone”. Yeah, it connected.

“They knew the directions by using the stone of the sun?”

“Good for you. Exactly. Isn’t it clear?”

“K-Kinda!”

“Then, what about under cloudy skies, when the sun is not visible, Mr. Enlightened Part-Timer?”

Speaking of which, the weather changed easily at sea. I had also heard that England was a country where the skies tended to be overcast. Bad weather must be frequent in those coastal waters. If the sky stayed cloudy for three or four days, what should I do? Was there nothing more that could be done at sea?

When I made a puzzled face, Richard smiled as though he had hit the nail on the head, his white hands displaying the iolite under a fluorescent light. “For instance, let’s try to put a mark on any of this iolite’s faceted sides with ink. Another one on a different side. On sunny days, we would record in which direction we can see the sun from one of these two points at given times, and on cloudy days, we would look for parts where the two points overlap. When doing so, since this stone can detect even the faintest light, we would be able to tell the sun’s position,” he said.

“So we can know the position of light with that stone...? Then couldn’t it be any other stone?”

“Light refracts. If it were passing through thick clouds, the human eye would find its shine in a different direction from the sun’s actual position. Iolites acted as polarized lenses, so to speak. By using this stone, the sailors could tell the correct position of the sun. Yet the most famous sunstone is not iolite, but a type of refraction stone called ‘Iceland spar’.”

A polarized lens. Now he was talking about physics? But I did remember the stuff about light refraction. Got it; so that was why it was a “stone of the sun”.

“I don’t get it very well, but I feel the gemstone romance from it. I like that kinda thing,” I said enthusiastically, Richard giving me a calm smile.

“You do get it. Just as you said, you ‘don’t understand stones very well but like them either way’. That is exactly why your eyes were open, so you thought only about how far your destination was and felt your teeth set on edge at it. You mustn’t expect to be able to understand everything overnight. Go steady, without rushing. Do not waver at the impatience stuck back-to-back to your ambitions. That is different from having no one to depend on due to not knowing where you are headed. The hardest times are probably the ones when you have no idea where you should go, but you know the exact position of the sun.”

So, in short, I knew exactly where I wanted to be?

While I remained quiet, Richard shrugged and added, “Of course, this is a metaphor. Even if little by little, the stones should definitely be leaving a trace inside you. Aren’t you supposed to be treasuring this instead of chasing after what goes away?”

Lastly, Richard threw in the trivia that, in the world of power stones, the iolite was said to be a stone that showed people the “right direction”. Taking the backbone of it into consideration, that was indeed a convincing talk. But more than that...

“It’d be great if you were by my side forever.”

“Hah?”

“You’re an expert at noticing what’s troubling other people, aren’t you? I really think you’re a handy guy, like a compass. Aah, ‘the world’s most beautiful compass’, huh?”

“Those are quite irrational words, on top of being illogical. You were born in Japan, raised in Japan and aspire to become a public servant of Japan, so why are you calling an English jeweler a ‘compass’?”

“Well, I don’t plan to ask you about how to prepare for the public servant exams, but I can rely on you when I run into bigger problems, right?”

Richard sighed with a face of thorough dismay. I could understand how he felt. This was like a child in nursery school saying, “It’d be great if my teacher could always be there to help me out.” Long story short, I was acting spoiled. Even though he was my superior at work.

“That’s right; about the custard pie that today’s costumer brought, it looks like it’s quick to expire. Wanna eat it? I’ll make some tea.”

“If you would. Aah, the sugar...”

“Holding back on it this month, right? I know.”

“Help me with half of it. The amount of sugar in it concerns me.”

“Leave it to me.”

This guy was truly good at leading the mood around, and the same applied for the not-too-straightforward way that he phrased himself when recommending gemstones to the customers. Apparently, he thought I was feeling down.

I cut the crunchy pie in half while the tea leaves boiled, then shared it with Richard in the reception room and we both ate it. Covered with powdered sugar, the pie was a dangerous white little thing, as the colorless powder could scatter around from the pie’s surface just by us breathing on it a tiny bit, so the snack time turned into a moment of silence. I felt like laughing at the much too surreal sight several times, but if I happened to cause a big damage to the beautiful shopkeeper’s high-grade suit by doing that, my pay would be reduced. In the end, I ate the pie entirely while looking at the wall.

On the way back home that day, as I looked up at the night sky, I thought about the Vikings of over a thousand years ago. It was said that they were after new lands. What about me? Where was I headed? Would there ever be a day when I would fall into a philosophical concern, like, “I have no idea where I’m trying to go”? Perhaps Richard too? I insolently prayed that the stones may help us out at least in times like those.

Stars were beginning to twinkle in the purplish-blue night sky. There was no doubt that the stars appearing in the sky had not changed ever since the Vikings’ era. Thinking about that as I walked, I mistook one of the streets I should have turned. I had the feeling that I heard Richard’s voice, telling me to mind at least my own steps. I get it, geez.

I decided to wait patiently for the benefits of the stone. It was best for something like that not to happen, but there was no guarantee that both of us wouldn’t lose our ways at the same time one day.

[bagadew]

The Great Ace Attorney Playthrough: The Adventure of the Great Departure (Part 1)

So it’s finally here, The Great Ace Attorney! I know practically nothing about this game, except that it’s a) set in Victorian London, b) has the themes of racism and xenophobia you’d expect from a game where you play a Japanese immigrant in Victorian London, and c) features Herlock Sholmes the himbo detective! (Also I think there might be a cereal killer plot, but I’m not too sure.)

Right away I’m being given a lot of very useful information regarding the historical setting for this game. Unfortunately I’m unable to fully process it because two seconds in and I’ve already been accused of murder!

Oh Ace Attorney how I’ve missed you.

Hello Kazuma! I like the way your headband billows even though there’s no wind, and I hope you have a much longer and fuller life than my last Ace Attorney mentor.

Ok so it seems like we’re both students at the same university, but Kazuma is the protégé golden boy, who’s about to be sent abroad because he’s just That Good. Fortunately I (Ryunosuke) am his beloved best friend, and will therefore be allowed to tag along (which is a really damn good job because I’m the one front and centre of the box).

Say what you will about incredible aura, but I’m pretty sure Kazuma’s just set up some sort of fan mechanism under there.

Hello Pink Lady from the box!

As a seasoned Ace Attorney player I am immediately suspicious of anyone from the first case who isn’t a main character. I’m watching you professor!

Ok so from what I can gather from our exchange the Professor Mikotoba is the forensics pathology professor at the university (I wonder if his daughter, or whoever the pink lady is, will be our Ema Skye), and if Kazuma the golden boy takes our case an loses he won’t get to go fulfill his dream of studying abroad.

Frankly, from all their idealistic chatter about jolly old Britain, I feel like these boys might be in for a bit of a rude awakening once they actually make it to London. And I’m not sure Ryunosuke, with all his beautiful naïve innocence, is going to do too well.

And speaking of beautiful naïve innocence...

No Ryunosuke! Don’t agree to things like that!

I’m beginning to suspect Ryunosuke’s just being used as bait for Kazuma. Like someone out there really doesn’t want Kazuma to go abroad for some reason, and so they’re using his less good best friend to trap him in the country.

Oh Ryunosuke...

In all my years playing Ace Attorney I have never been more torn by a suggestion box. On one hand, the first time I play an Ace Attorney game, I try and play it in the way it should be played. And so, even though this is an UNBELIEVABLY STUPID DECISION, I feel like Ryunosuke, a man who doesn’t seem to have the words ‘Set Up’ in his dictionary, would not even hesitate to bellow I do because Professor Mikiller told him to.

On the other hand this is an UNBELIEVABLY STUPID DECISION and Kazuma should clearly be in charge.

Ok, I’ve decided I’m going to press it (partly because I think the game might punish me if I don’t) but I will have my head in my hands as I do so.

See Kazuma agrees with me.

Oh fuck, the victims John Watson Wilson!!!

Ok, so I’m re-evaluating my assumption that I (Ryunosuke) was simply bait for Kazuma, it looks like I was instead the poor expendable mug who can be pinned with causing an international incident. Is it bad that I feel like I’ve been promoted?

My god, everyone must have had a heart attack when Kazuma the Golden Boy stepped up to defend me. No wonder they didn’t want him involved!

Ok let’s bring out Professor Mikotoba the witness, so he can explain how he’s played us like a damn fiddle-

WHO THE HELL IS THAT!?!

I would like to take this opportunity to apologies to Professor Mikotoba, who is I can only assume a beloved recurring character. I’m very sorry sir but I did not see you on the box. Yes I understand that, as someone who’s favorite character is Gumshoe, this was no excuse. Please forgive me.

Side note though: Satoru’s whole *hacks up blood* ‘It’s nothing, this just happens sometimes, please ignore it and continue’ thing is the most relatable thing I’ve seen so far. As someone with a chest condition whose lungs sometimes just bleed, this is literally the response you develop. I know this guys probably a murderer and that’s probably Crime Related Blood, but for now the two of us understand each other.

Ok, so from that cross examination we’ve got one mysterious lady the waiter says he never saw, one unwillingly received Buisness card from Satoru Hosonaga, and one coughing fit my lungs started after watching Satoru wheezing away.

WHAT IS THIS!!??!!

MORE WITNESSES!!??!!

ON A FIRST CASE??!!!

DO THE SACRED LAWS OF FIRST ACE ATTORNEY CASES MEAN NOTHING TO THIS GAME!?!??

This is a neat mechanic though, and one I’ve been hoping would make it to a cannon Ace Attorney game since the Professor Layton crossover. It seems like we’re just sticking to standard testimony listening for now, rather than checking between reactions, but I’m very happy to see it’s return.

GET HIS ASS KAZUMA!!!

(Kazuma’s quickly becoming my favourite, it’s a lot of fun to have the Edgeworth over your side of the courtroom for once)

Ok, so Kazuma (who’s name my iPad now autocorrects into all caps) has shown me how to examine evidence, meaning that if I had, shall we say, a receipt with the word Maya written on it, I could turn it over to see what was written on the other side.

So, while I now know that Dr Watson Wilson wasn’t able to have tucked into that big juicy steak behind him, I just want to check that business card Satoru was so unhappy to give away...

Interesting...

I don’t know what this means, but it sure is interesting...

Now back to slamming an old man with a stolen coin (that was probably taken by the penniless guy next to him)

I’m not sure how he’s managed it, but Auchi has somehow become the most slapable of the Pains.

GET THEIR ASS RYUNOSUKE!!!

(I like how his desk slam’s changed as he gets more confident)

DAMN STRAIGHT WE’D TAKE ON THE GOVERNMENT!!!

So there’s been a coverup! Well that explains the detective posing as a waiter, but it still leaves a huge question mark over the identity of the woman in question. Other than possibly Satoru, who I can’t see as having any reason to dress up, I don’t feel like any of the current witnesses could fit the bill. Whoever she is, though, it must be someone who’s involvement could cause more problems if she was found out, which would mean that she’s either someone with a lot of political influence in Japan, or she’s someone who followed the good Dr from England (and might well have a lot of influence there).

Either way I’m beginning to suspect that, in great break from Ace Attorney tradition, NONE OF THE WITNESSES COMMITTED THE CRIME!!! (Or at least not this one.)

Don’t worry Kazuma, I turned the receipt business card over this time!

Screenshots don’t do this justice.

I don’t know what makes this better, Ryunosuke’s cheerful mile wide supposition, or the speed at which Satoru cut him off.

...are they Satoru? Are they really?

At this point I would apologies to Satoru Hosonaga, however I feel like he might have been using me as the scape goat for this murder, so I’m going to say that I’m not sorry. (We still have a weird blood related understanding though, and for that reason I am not as hostile as I might have been)

Yeah, that’s fair Ryunosuke.

WAIT WHAT!?!

Oh, it’s just a flash back gunshot. I thought someone had just whipped out a gun and shot the detective before he could say another word!

Oh dear, this goes all the way to the top doesn’t it?

Poor Ryunosuke though, he’s not even made it to the stinky rainy streets of London and already his illusions about justice are being shattered. Given that this is effectively the prologue case, I dread to see what comes next.

HELL YEAH JUGE, WERE GETTING THE KILLER LADS!!!

SATURO HOSONAGA YOU’RE BACK ON THE CHRISTMAS CARD LIST (but on thin ice)

‘So it won’t be a problem?’ Ryunosuke, weren’t you listening, it’s going to be a massive problem! Fortunately everyone else in this courtroom has just decided that you know what fuck the government actually, and so we’re doing it anyway!

Hosonaga’s trying really hard to win me back over folks, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t working.

I like this hardass judge! I’ll send him a Christmas card too.

MADE IT TO THE FIRST HALF!

[centuriantalevevo]

A list of my MANY Draco Headcannons

Draco had an older sister who died a few weeks to a month before his first hear

His sister gave her life to save him, had she not done so, he would've been ran over. He watched her die in the hospital, after a few weeks of being in a ventilator (his father making them take her off of it), meaning he can see Thestrals.

He's bisexual and GNC (No! N O T Nonbinary. He's gender nonconforming, meaning he doesn't conform to gender roles), and is supportive of trans people, he has a younger cousin (the youngest of all his cousins) who is Trans (MtF) and woukd protect that girl with his life.

He finds Harry hot, and is jealous of him, but would not date him because he also hates him.

He can speak MULTIPLE languages, and is fluent in Japanese, he can speak conversational Japanese and can translate advanced slang. He can translate MASA songs, that tells you everything.

He has 3 different accents, he was born in Scotland grew up there for a time, then moved to Australia as a child, and then to Britain so he can do a Scottish, Australian and British accent. However, he cannot so an American accent and hates even attempting it.

He has a lot of exotic pets, a lot of tarantulas, snakes, even a few scorpions. He also has a dog, cat and horses. Of course he'd have horses, my mans he is filthy rich.

We're setting my headcannons in modern day setting, meaning like 2000s era, because it makes my life easier. With that said, as much as he makes himself out to hate all things muggle related, secretly he doesn't hate muggle things, he enjoys them but pretends he hates them because his father forces him to. He has a YouTube channel is amazing at using UTAU, Vocaloid, and other VSynths, he also works on his own VSynth and his own UTAU banks, he also is good at MMD.

If anyone dares misgender a trans person especially a trans person that is his family or friend, he will start a war

His mom is supportive of him and is the better parent. Draco favorites his mom over his dad

Megurien Luka is best girl to him and he would absolutely marry her if able to

When in around 3th year, some Icelandic kids asked him to help them start a language club, for those who wanted to learn languages, etc, because he knew the most languages, he agreed.

He's definitely had his fair share of boyfriends

Even though his father doesn't approve, he says fuck it down with approval

He more than likely finds Lil Nas X a little hot, same with CoryxKenshin and MacDoesIt, even if his gay cousin disagrees. I said what I said.

His first crush was a guy, back when he was about 9 to 10. That crush was his best friend as well, and a muggle at that. Unfortunately, the boy (who was also around his age), died of cancer. The boy was technically his first kiss. While in the hospital, the boy wanted to kiss a boy before he died, because that boy DEFINITELY knew he didn't like girls, Draco carried that for him. I made it sad didn't I?

His older sisters name was Alice

His cousins names, Oldest to Youngest, are Dominic, Darla, Demi and Jamie. Dominic is Gay, Darla is a Lesbian, Demi is Ace, and Jamie is a trans girl. Dominic and Darla are twins

Narcissa is SCARY when mad, and Draco is more likely to listen to her over Lucius

Draco loves playing Apex Legends-

He can speak Scots

This mans goes to Japan like every summer, he has some Japanese friends there, and goes to see Magical Mirai and NicoNicoCho Parties-

He likes playing VR Chat and often talks to the Japanese players, but also the French and Spanish players

He's trying to learn Chinese but is very butchered in the language

Since Hermione is a muggle, she definitely plays the game, and Draco has seen her in there over 100 times, and is often times speaking in Japanese when that happens so she never realizes.

He likes to insult her in game in various languages

This bitch made a freaking VTuber model you can't change my mind

He's good at math, and learned from his sisters friend Rowan (MAY OR MAY NOT be a reference to Hogwarts Mystery-)

He's Bipolar, has a hell of a lot of trauma, suffers from depression and has ADHD

He HAS been put in a mental facility quite a few times, and has tried to kill Lucius in his sleep

He has sleep paralysis

He definitely finds Blaise Zabini hot

He is unable to be canceled, he comes back from the grave

He hates Ron because, unlike Draco, Ron actually has siblings still (minus I think.. Fred dying, but Draco couod sympathize with George on that feeling), he's jealous if Ron because he still has his brothers and sister

My mans hates his dad so much holy crap

I plays a LOT of Project Diva and can complete a lot of songs on EXTREME and EXEXTREME mode

Common World Domination- he likes that song

His theme song(s): Rolling Girl, My Immortal, Unhappy Refrain, Unknown Mother Goose, Two-Faced Lovers, The Lost Ones Weeping, Futaride (The Two Of Us), World Is Mine

He loves Weekender Girl, Sadistic.Music♾Factory, and This Is The Happiness and Peace of Mind Committee

He definitely knows all the English Lyrics for This Is The Happiness and Peace of Mind Committee

He really wants to have like a Miku Expo or Magical Mirai esque show in Higwarts with nothing but the banks he has and holograms of them. Please just let him have holograms of the UTAU, VOCALOID, and SynthV Voicebanks he has- let this man's have a concert

Fuck you. Un-Dracos your Draco-

He absolutely goes to Pride and wants Hogwarts to have a Pride Month type of thing

He's a whole Atheist

I may or may not be projecting onto him

He's good at horse back riding

He plays piano

He for a while thought he was trans but just realized he's just GNC lol

We hate JK Rowling in this household

The Draco picture belongs to Anyeka, I just added the Bi pin and the background...

That's my lockscreen btw-

[asogisbrushwork]

Introduction/Welcome/Rules/Whatever

Hello there! This is a blog dedicated to the blog owner’s hyperfixation and character crush on Kazuma Asogi from The Great Ace Attorney games (and possibly other Ace Attorney series characters in the future). Here you will find headcanons, musing, gushing (screenshots sometimes included), and reader-insert content.

The owner of this blog is over 18 and will post content that is not safe for work (sometimes very not safe for work). With that in mind, I request minors (under 18) not interact with this blog.

My Kazuma x Reader Masterlist

Are Requests Open? Requests are currently closed.

 (3/3 Slots, Request writing in progress)

I will take requests from time to time on a limited basis, and will make an announcement when requests are open/closed, what sort of requests I’m accepting and how many, etc. I tend to keep strict caps on this sort of thing because I’m a rather slow writer and my writing motivation comes and goes, and I don’t want a long queue of people waiting around forever for a request to be filled. These are to help me be effective in filling out requests for readers in a timely manner while being mindful of my own abilities and circumstances.

Please be on the lookout, and if you see requests are open and slots are available, go for it!

Alright, with all of that said, just some ground rules/things to keep in mind:

-Don’t be a dick. Anyone whose a dick to me or other people on my blog or in relation to my blog will be blocked without notice and without exception. I am too old for bullshit. What I AM here for is to be an unrepentant sap.

-As this is a blog that’s more character/character crush and self-insert focused, I won’t be posting or discussing canon/canon content on this blog.

-The owner of this blog believes that all headcanons and interpretations of canon are welcome and valid. Unless something is explicitly stated in unequivocal terms in canon, you are 1000% free to make shit up. (Even then though, canon divergence is a thing, so go wild anyway. The important part is to have fun.)

-Reader-Inserts on this blog will usually be Gender Neutral unless considering scenarios where gender would be something that effects how things go. (The Great Ace Attorney takes place in the late Victorian/Meiji Restoration Era, albeit a heavily fictionalized version, but that era none the less. A lot of changes were happening regarding gender roles and women’s rights in both Britain and Japan for example but there was also a lot of sexism to contend with and certain cultural norms and protocols of etiquette, so that’s something that might come up from time to time.)

- For Not Safe for Work pieces that are sexually explicit in nature, the reader’s anatomy will not be specified unless it’s a request that specifies otherwise or whatever I’m writing necessitates the reader have certain anatomy or physical features. I write Kazuma as a cisgender man (having a penis) by default.

- I really love a variety of different moods for content, so you might find everything from angst, to fluff, to smut, to hurt/comfort, all that good stuff! I may also touch on heavy themes and sensitive topics, and I will do my best to tag and warn for these topics when they do come up.

-THIS BLOG WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR THE GREAT ACE ATTORNEY GAMES. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.

~

My Rules for Requests are as Follows:

- To begin with I will only accept requests for headcanons (but there’s flexibility in this, it can be about a specific topic, headcanons for a particular kind of Reader-Insert). I will open things up for scenarios, ficlets, drabbles, and the like for future calls for requests, so keep your eyes open for that at a later date if you’re hoping to request something along those lines. 

- I have the right to refuse a request if I so choose, either due to comfort/workload or whatever reason. Please respect my boundaries if my answer is no/I don’t do your request.

- I’m a bit on the slow side, sometimes due to irl stressors, other times due to preoccupation with other projects. So I ask you please be patient with me if I’m taking a while on a request I’ve accepted. I will try to have your request filled as soon as I’m able.

-You may send a request either via ask or submission. (Please specify if you want to be tagged when the request is completed/if you want to remain anonymous, etc.) You may DM me if you have questions.

I will not write this type of content under any circumstances, either by choice or by request:

- Explicit Non-Con/Rape

-Incest

-Minor/Adult Content

- Scat, Watersports, Extreme Bloodplay (Light Blood is a-okay, but otherwise fluids that wouldn’t normally be involved in sex are off the table)

- Degradation/Humiliation

-Mommy/Daddy Kink and Age Play related stuff (You Do You, it just makes me personally uncomfy)

- Content with Heavy Gore/Extreme Body Horror Elements

- Successful Suicide

I am more than comfortable with topics of depression, suicidal ideation, and attempted suicide, but not scenarios in which someone is successful.

- Anything Pro-Bigotry

Because of the nature of the Great Ace Attorney games and their themes, there may be discussions of or mention of Anti-Japanese Racism (and Era Appropriate Racism and Imperialism in General) as well as Sexism and Misogyny of the time period. However, while I may write content that touches on these topics where appropriate (properly tagged with content warnings), I will not write content that promotes or endorses bigotry. Period.

- Yandere

Special Note: While I read and enjoy Yandere content when in a certain headspace, I am not comfortable with writing it myself. I may however reblog works from others who write such content, tagging it appropriately so others may avoid it if they so choose.

Soft Nos (Stuff I will probably say No to except in Special Cases and/or Stuff that I won’t accept requests for but I might write myself):

-Infidelity/Cheating

This one I will only write/accept requests for under certain circumstances. I am not comfortable writing a more standard cheating scenario, but I may write some scenarios that tow that line/have extenuating circumstances. Examples of this are when one party was forced into a marriage they didn’t want and their love interest is not the person they’re married to (and they don’t love the person they are married to), or if a person is on their way out the door in another relationship but has loose ends to cut and tidy up (like someone is broken up/legally separated from their spouse but isn’t legally divorced from them yet, a person’s current partner is abusive and they want to break off from them but they’re having a hard time physically/legally leaving them, etc.).

-Dubcon

I’m kind of touchy about this one. There are certain scenarios I’m okay with when writing myself (Sex Pollen, Both Parties are drunk/under the influence), but as a general rule I won’t except requests for these.

- Consensual Nonconsent

ie role-playing non-consensual scenarios where everything is discussed and planned ahead of time, everyone is clear on what the safe word is and what is still absolutely a no go under any circumstances, and everything stops as soon as someone says the safe word.

I will not accept requests for this but I might write this for myself if in the right headspace.

-Somnophilia

Will only write if Consensual somnophilia (everything is discussed/consented to ahead of time, everything stops the minute someone says stop).

- So I’ve made it clear what I won’t write or accept requests for, so what will I write?

     -As mentioned above, fluff, angst, smut, hurt/comfort are all on the table.

     -Monsterfucking is also on the table. I am myself a monsterfucker and will   happily write something like that for you. (But I may be more comfortable with certain scenarios than others. Vampires, Werewolves, Demons, Angels, etc. Hit me with what you’ve got!)

    - AUs. Please give me your AUs. I will eat that shit up with a spoon.

     -Polyamory between Kazuma, the reader, and another character (both general romantic stuff, threesomes, etc.)

     - Reader Inserts where the reader is a particular gender or have a particular characteristic (Fem!Reader, Male!Reader, Tall!Reader, Short!Reader, British!Reader, Japanese!Reader, Scientist!Reader, Clumsy!Reader, Forgetful!Reader, that kind of thing)

    - If you’re unsure if I’ll accept a request or not, just ask! More than happy to let you know if it’s something I’m comfortable with/able to write.

This post will be updated or edited as needed.

[askaceattorney]

Dear Anonymous,

I still have yet to play (or watch) DGS2, unfortunately, so we’ll have to save that part for another time, but I’d love to delve into the shared adventures of this adorable duo in the first game.

When Ryuunosuke first meets Susato, she’s nothing more to him than an ally in his defense in court.

He doesn’t see her again until he and Kazuma find themselves at the end of their rope.

It makes you wonder if she’s the one who founded whatever School of Interrupting at Just the Right Time so many Ace Attorney characters apparently went to, doesn’t it?

When she appears, “calm and dignified, in our desperate final moments,” to use Ryuunosuke’s words, she causes quite the stir.  Luckily, the five minutes granted to her by the judge to present some crucial evidence is all she needs to help him and Kazuma pull off the first turnabout in Ace Attorney’s history.

The mysterious legal assistant’s wish for Ryuunosuke’s good fortune was granted, apparently.

Thus Ryuunosu--  Um...  Is it okay if I call him “Ryu” for short?  Thus Ryu’s life was saved by a humble young woman who had the courage and decency to collect, summarize, and present the evidence that turned the case around in the nick of time.  After leaving to finish his acquittal procedures with a humble bow, she disappeared, never to be seen by him again.

Or so he thought.

Similar to Phoenix and Maya’s first encounter, Ryu and Susato's second meeting occurs under the most tragic of circumstances.  His close friend and classmate has been found dead in his cabin on the ship he managed to smuggle himself onto.  Unlike Phoenix and Maya’s situation, however, it’s the lawyer (or soon-to-be lawyer) who is initially blamed for his death.  To make matters worse, the young woman who helped to save his life isn’t feeling quite so compassionate this time around.

Her anger and distrust are understandable, considering that the evidence seems to point to Ryu as the culprit, on top of the fact that Kazuma was her foster brother.  Luckily, she’s polite and reasonable enough to hear Ryu’s side of things, and even claims that she wants to believe him, so the two of them are at least able to treat each other civilly.

That is...until he tries to start investigating.

There’s a bucket load of energy beneath that demure countenance of hers, it turns out.  Her move even has a special name -- the “Susato Toss.”  Who would’ve thought she came straight out of Street Fighter?

Thankfully, she still has a reasonable side.

By presenting evidence of his innocence, Ryu not only vindicates himself, but finally starts to gain Susato’s trust.

Sadly, her trust only lasts until a certain world-famous detective shows up to accuse Ryu of being a Russian revolutionary.

It’s hard to blame her, of course.  Who wouldn’t trust THE Sherlock Holmes’s logic?

Nonetheless, her determination to find out more about Kazuma’s death is strong enough for her to begrudgingly continue the investigation with Ryu.  One notable moment occurs here when he attempts to gain favor wither her by appealing to her love of mystery novels.

She’s no fool, of course, and only dislikes him even more for expecting her to fall for it.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this was the “main characters don’t get along until they’re forced into a situation together” cliché.  This situation may not fit that cliché perfectly, but it’s not too far off if you ask me.

When Ryu is finally allowed to investigate outside the cabin, Susato begins to show a bit more sympathy for him.

I have to give her some credit for that -- it takes a special kind of person to show compassion for a possible murderer.  It also seems like she’s beginning to see Ryu as more of a human being than a heartless criminal.  Baby steps, as they say.

From that point on, their dialogue begins taking on a more friendly tone.  Thus Susato, whether on purpose or by fate, takes on the role of the first official assistant in Ace Attorney’s history.  And boy, does she pull it off like a pro.

To make a long story short, their cooperative efforts combined with the ridiculous logic of a kooky detective (as well as the assistance of the less kooky Detective Hosonaga) bring them to the truth of Asougi’s death in the end.  While this clears Ryu of the crime and offers some much-needed closure for both him and Susato, his death still affects them deeply.

Something wonderful stems from this tragedy, though -- a crucial moment, not only for the two of them, but also for the Japanese and British Empires.

With Asougi’s passing, the exchange program between Great Britain and Japan is forced into suspension, unless, somehow, a replacement attorney can be found before the ship reaches London.

It’s a shame it has to end this way after all they’ve been through together, but that’s just the way it goes someti--

...Oh.  Well, then.  Who would’ve seen that coming?  (Besides us, I mean.)

And strangely enough, the young woman who once saw Ryu as a cold-blooded murderer has this to say about him becoming an attorney:

Thus a new attorney/assistant pair arises from the ashes of one attorney’s passing (pun fully intended), and the two of them step into a new journey in their lives together.  And thankfully, it wasn’t exactly the cliché it appeared to be -- the two of them are now trusted friends, and Susato even offers to let Ryu toss her three times as punishment for not believing him.  (It doesn’t quite end that way, but that’s beside the point.)

The first leg of said journey takes place in the “centre of the world” the incredible city of London.  What a place to begin, am I right?

Thus their incredible legal adventure begins (or adventures begin, I should say) in beautiful Victorian Era Britain.  To describe their encounters here briefly (and so I don’t spend a whole year on this essay), they learn together how the British court system works...

...about its imperfections...

...how it feels to pull off a turnabout in a British courtroom...

...and perhaps most importantly, about the value of trust.

To say nothing of their misadventures with Mr. Holmes, his young genius assistant, and several other unforgettable British folk.

And a fellow Japanese immigrant, too, of course.  Who could forget him?

You know, I’m starting to wonder if he might be one of Larry’s ancestors.

The game throws one final curveball for the great legal duo before it ends.  After telling Susato she’s the world’s best legal assistant, Ryu gets a very unexpected response from her:

When he attempts to confront her about it, all he gets is another Susato Toss.

What could someone like her, who’s already proven her worth as a legal assistant several times, be hiding?  Unfortunately for Ryu, he’s unlikely to find out soon, since her father’s illness has called her back home, leaving him to pull off his next turnabout on his own.  She doesn’t go without leaving behind as much helpful evidence as she can muster, of course.

But, as fate would have it, a storm prevents her ship from departing for at least half a day, giving Ryu and his new flatmates a chance to see her off.  On top of that, it gives Ryu the chance to find out precisely what inspired Susato’s words of doubt.

He catches her preparing to throw a copy of the British Empire’s Code of Law into the sea.  What would cause her to do such a thing?

It turns out she broke one of the rules by tampering with the scene of the crime, and another by concealing that fact.  Her intentions may have been good, but her conscience became a little too heavy for her to let it go.  She takes it a step further by claiming that, for one moment, she began to doubt the law.

She may not be wrong in stating this (she learned it firsthand in the British courts, after all), but it still caused her to see herself as a failure of a legal assistant.  Luckily for her, though, Ryu had learned some things himself in the time they spent together.

While her methods were questionable at best, Ryu recognizes something in Susato that sets her and every just person apart from a criminal: a desire to protect the innocent.  Whereas Chrogray used her tampering as a way to protect himself, her only desire was to protect Gina’s life and to ensure that Ryu would be able to prove her innocence in the end.  In other words, her faith in the system may have been lacking, but her desire for justice, like Ryu’s, never faltered for even a moment.  With that knowledge in mind, the two of them can part with a better knowledge of the law, a better understanding of each other, and smiles on their faces.

So, to sum it up, Ryu and Susato go from being friendly acquaintances, to a murder suspect and suspecter (for lack of a better word), to investigative partners, to full-fledged legal partners, and finally, to a legendary legal duo.  Will their relationship ever go any further than that?

Also, full disclosure -- it’s been a long time since I watched Dai Gyakuten Saiban, so I had to do a hefty amount of re-watching in order to remember some of these details...hence why this essay took so long.  Thanks for waiting!

And hey, how’s that for good timing?

Don’t know about you, but I’m eagerly looking forward to revisiting this unforgettable saga.  And, y’know...doing it the proper way instead of depending on fan translations.

-The Co-Mod

[t4tlawlight]

u know L is .... like 3/4 white right? 1/4 English, 1/4 Italian, 1/4 Russian, & 1/4 Japanese..

Sorry i fucking forgot that there’s a magical percentage of Nonwhite Blood you need in order to qualify as a Real Person Of Color and the moment you drop below that number it doesn’t matter how culturally involved you are in your nonwhite ancestry, everyone will just view you as white-- Oh wait. You just invented blood quantum laws again. Fuck off.

Ignoring that there are plenty of ppl who are “only 1/4th” of any given ethnicity who look more like a person of color than they do white because genes can do that, including several of my mixed japanese friends who i’ve talked to about this and think that the “he’s only 1/4th japanese” crowd is racist as hell, sure, let’s get into this.

1) You’re not even accurate. You got that from HTR13 (which is notoriously inaccurate, btw, the heights for characters change between the japanese and english translations for instance, and it’s literally just a noncanon interview half of the time. It’s as canon as, idk, anything JK TERFling ever said about wizards shitting themselves.) the ACTUAL quote is “a quarter Japanese, a quarter English, a quarter Russian, a quarter French or Italian, like that”. this is just ohba pulling shit out of his ass in the moment, It’s not nearly so clear what he’s “supposed” to be he literally doesn’t know if he wants L to be french or italian. Also nationality =/= race anyways lol

2) HTR13 is about as canon as LABB (dubiously so), and LABB has naomi say that Beyond looks japanese and then later mistake L for him, so people whitewashing him so completely in art and then pointing to a dubiously canon source for justification is racist 

3) L, when he’s afforded the choice, uses nothing but Japanese aliases. We hear about other ones that he’s taken from people, but in canon standalone (i’m ignoring the “ryuzaki-is-from beyond” retcon for a moment but beyond taking a japanese name to imitate L when LABB is set in America and there’s no “need” to go by a Japanese name is.... telling) he takes Ryuga, he takes Ryuzaki, he takes Suzuki... he knows Japanese, he knows Japanese traditions, Watari goes by Watari and he’s KNOWN as L’s Proxy Watari outside of Japan so you KNOW it’s not just They’re In Japan So They’re Using Japanese Names, and people’s responses in-text to L are “You look weird” and not “You look like a foreigner, should I be speaking English to you?” the man is clearly connected to his japanese heritage and stripping him of that? IS racist

4) Literally the only indication that hes mixed in-text even is that he was raised in britain which is pretending that there are no people of color in europe. Which is wrong. And used to whitewash history. people just jumped to whitewash him the moment they read that Ohba considers him mixed and then they read that his last name is “lawliet” (and then butchered the japanese pronunciation that he uses.) Newsflash: Japanese people can have white-sounding names, esp mixed japanese people, esp Japanese people living in the West where they face discrimination for not having white-sounding names. (This is also true of Watari...)

all of this is not to say that L being mixed isnt true because being mixed is an important part of someone’s identity and i believe that L feeling somewhat disconnected from his heritage (both as a white brit AND japanese) because he’s mixed is excellent and plays into him being so socially isolated. i love L being mixed. this doesn’t mean that i erase his japanese ancestry though. and doing so, which is what i was talking about in the first place, is racist. Point blank.

[dangan-happy]

To any of the following; Junko, Miu, Kaede, Kyoko, Kirumi or Sayaka,

I don't know if I should break up with my girlfriend because she has abusive parents and I don't want to just leave her like that... She might be seeing other girls and she's doing things to save herself that I DIDN'T know about.

She said:

"I saw someone taking their shirt off during gym

So I started crying and repeatedly apologizing to her

she said it was fine and that her friend does it all the time

turns out her friend is pan (Just like her)

I’m sitting with them again 😳

😳

👉👈"

1. Why was she looking at someone while they were getting changed...? Hopefully it was an accident...

2. Who the fuck puts "😳👉👈" and dosent mean it in a love love relationship way... I think she might be catching feelings for them and losing feelings for me... after all they must be way better than me...

She also said:

"Hhh my friend is gonna try to be there with me and back me up

I guess I’m doing this

If anything happens just please know I will always love you and that will never change

Also, if I end up going to foster care, y’all should try to get me lmao"

AND HOW WOULD WE BE ABLE TO DO THAT WHILE WE ARE IN BRITAIN WHILE SHE IS IN JAPAN????? She's doing stuff without me knowing and also knowing we had a plan to save her... it was really good and would have worked too... "lmao" does she really think this is funny to abandon our plan...? I'm not ready foe this... this is all so sudden...

Also people are getting friendly with her all of a sudden and it's scaring me... I think she dosent love me anymore....

On top of that I have school tomorrow and this is piling up on my stress... I have a really strong urge to self harm and I don't have the guts to tell her any of this... im such a coward...

please advice, comfort, hugs from any of the listed please...? Im really not in a good place right now...

You know what I think Anon, I don’t think you should be with someone that you constantly are worried about. Especially if you don’t think they love you anymore and if it’s making you uncomfortable about people acting friendly, it doesn’t seem healthy.

Of course, this is all your decision Anon, but I think it’s best to put your mental health and own happiness first. Please don’t harm yourself hun, it’s never worth it to harm yourself. It can sadly get addicting and sometimes goes too far. I will give you a hug, I hope it makes you feel just a little better.

It’s as Sayaka said, I understand that she may have abusive parents and you don’t feel right leaving her, but you have to think about your own mental health. If she is in fact hurting you and you aren’t feeling the same, staying with someone like this isn’t worth it. 

And if this is causing you stress along with school, it’s best to take a step back and realize you can not handle a relationship right now. It seems to me you already have a lot on your plate with school, worrying about a relationship won’t do you any good.

As for a hug, I will give you one. I know you aren’t in a good place right now Anon, I’m sorry that you aren’t. I hope I could help a bit, this is a tricky situation but I do believe it’s best to do what is best for you. 

[mr-kamiyama]

I’m seeing some real parallels between anti Asian racism pointed toward Japanese people leading up to WWII and anti-Chinese rhetoric that has been going on this entire 21st century. I’m gonna lay it out below:

1860s: Japan, who has only allowed trading and visitors to offshore ports because the Dutch and Portugese tried to race each other to conquer Japan in the 1600s, has Admiral Perry, sent by President Filmore, force Japan at threat to open the ports in order to force Japan to assimilate to American ways in order to create a dependency on American goods, such as oil. They get some Japanese people really into this, and this is the end of Edo/Meiji revolution.

1990s: Because Nixon took away the backing of the US dollar amid inflation, “solving” the problem by making the currency worth “whatever you want,” more or less (Google “fiat currency,” that’s very simplified, but it is part of continuing woes for people struggling to live here), Japan, which has been America’s source of labour for pennies because it was already illegal to pay people in the US too little (though the US does have a small collection of sweatshops that prey on undocumented Latinos), and America has power over Japan even today, Japan gets on even financial footing because the yen stays stable against the plummeting dollar, and along with good STEM education, becomes a maker of high-end tech and is able to be a developed country. The wealthiest Japanese start buying real estate in the closer parts of the US. This is spun into “Evil Japs will conquer us all” rhetoric (plenty of books and movies are soaked in this, and that’s where that Styx song came from). Amidst all this, the US pivots to China as a source of unfair labour.

Meiji period (whole period was 1868 to 1912), Taishou period (1912 to 1926): Japan builds and develops Western style. The US, France, Britain, Spain are all divvying up East, South, and Southeast Asia among themselves and and raping and pillaging their way across the land. Japan wants in on this (“we were here before they were, ergo, it’s our right!) similarly rapes and plunders through Korea, Sakhalin, part of China alongside everyone else. The US flips out and has a fit because “the US would never uwu” (the Philippines, the Kingdom of Hawaii, Mexico, and a whole bunch of Indigenous Nations are calling...)

2000s and 2010s: The US throws fits over the sweatshops it’s hiring itself to make goods cheaper as a complicated circumvention of laws against inhumane treatment of labour and minimum wage. Mind what I said about US sweatshops. “The US would never uwu” The US starts bombing half of West Asia because of a major attack by a hate group that was opposition to the government of one country there that President Regean helped rise to power purportedly to fight communism. Islamophobic hate crimes against West Asian and North Africans in and even born in America become a reality for many years. The US is still bombing West Asia as of this post, in 2021, some 19 years later. China interns its mostly Muslim ethnic minority, the Ughyurs. America is suddenly a paragon of love to Muslims and “would never uwu” (Never mind Latino families being ripped apart and interned at the US border for four years, albeit that not being current policy) US goes to Japan to stoke anti-Chinese sentiment with the current ruling party that likewise is pro-war, pro-colonialism.

There does seem to be a degree of realisation that “Asian Americans living in California are not actually in China making policy as a CCP official” this time from the US government unlike making it illegal for Japanese people to even think of being Japanese people in 1942 or the failure to realise “Iraq is not Afghanistan” in the early 2000s, but I am seeing US capitalist greed being turned into two-faced rhetoric against an Asian country *again* (twice in the 21 years of this century alone, noting Islamophobic hate—I wasn’t alive in the first half of the 20th century, despite being part of a church community that mostly was and was here, and my own dad and grandparents were all alive for WWII) and especially amid all the rampant violence against us already, I just want people to think and notice patterns. We should absolutely not think positively of the Meiji government, the current ruling party, the LDP, of modern Japan, and the CCP 1949-present, but we should also note all this bogus rhetoric coming from the US government and all the enemy rhetoric that’s actually just about the US wanting more money (and no, the average citizen won’t see that money, either. It will not change the 1,200$/mo for a one room infested shoebox where all the neighbours spew your pick of hate group ideology) I just want people to think about this for once.

[courage-a-word-of-justice]

Higurashi New 2 | Wandering Witch 2 | Moriarty 1 | Taiso Samurai 1 | Kamisama 1 | Munou na Nana 2 | Golden Kamuy 3 1 (25) | Yashahime 2

I’m trying a seasonal challenge this time...so that means I have to leave some Crunchyroll anime to the side. That’s why I’m putting in the tags now.

Higurashi New 2

Apparently, now this Higurashi is called “Gou”…I dunno what that means in the context of this series, but *Saitama face* OK.

Is this girl…Rika? Or this Hanyuu girl I heard of on ANN? Update: Wait a bit from that point. You’ll get your answer.

Do they ever examine why the girls in Higurashi are what they are? Rika seems to have something supernatural going on, but Rena…is just a psycho girl right now, so it’s hard to care.

LOL, I was wondering where this “nipah” Rika meme came from, but it is present in the dialogue.

I predicted that Gilligan cu-er, transition far too easily…

Why is that kid’s face so tanned (?) in comparison to the rest of him???

How did these girls get up the building so fast??? (LOL?)

Wow, the cicada noise was pretty loud there, so…props to the sound guys for making that sound stifling.

Can we really trust what Mion is saying about Tomitake…?

I thought we were going to see Watanagashi in ep 3, but…okay.

Satoko speaks rather formally. She says kochira de gozaimasuyo! instead of kocchi! or kochiradesuyo!.

Who’s that blonde lady? Someone from Umineko?

The bright colours really help to sell the ominous nature of this ED and anime. I don’t think I understand everything that’s happening in said ED, though…

Gonna pause it here because I heard you need to watch the OG and Rei to understand this, now that the new Higurashi is operating under its “proper” name.

Wandering Witch 2

…Elaina’s a bit full of herself still…

…what the heck was that instrument playing over the titlecard? Bagpipes…?

LOL, it’s the Attack on Titan world!

Did Elaina lose her hat when she fell? That must be a very stable hat indeed.

Ooh, particle effects! However…there’s CGI here, although it’s only kinda noticeable.

Have you never heard of money…?

Wait, witches get discounts???

It seems Saya comes from Japan.

LOL, this is basically Quidditch without a snitch!

I like mushrooms, so I don’t get why people kick up such a fuss about them.

Saya seems to act like this is yuri bait…*sigh*

Saya’s crying like her sister died…c’mon, it’s not that bad!

I’m hitting pause. If this is actually how the series is, then it’s primed for a drop, but I can’t help but keep it on for the spectacular visuals and the fact it’s basically anime Harry Potter.

Taiso Samurai 1

I keep swearing I’ll finish my old simulcasts…but then new ones pop up like daisies…(I guess it’s better than having no anime to finish, right?)

I just realised how pretty Jotaro’s eyes are…! The fact he just sort of splats and then doesn’t get up shows how weary he is, unlike Sakura from Moon Land, who would’ve probably gotten up and never tried doing gymnastics again if he were in the same position.

Just by glancing over the results when I google for this Montreal gold, it seems it was done by a Kouhei Uchimura, but I might be wrong on that front…oh wait, there are 3 golds, so it’s not necessarily just that one…

You can tell this is 2002 because of that flip phone.

Intai Zamurai…it’s constructed the same way as the anime’s title. Two characters and then “samurai”.

BB (Big Bird) on the side there is so goofy, he’s…kind of distracting. <- Note the official website refers to Big Bird as BB, hence my use of it.

I was wondering if Rei was the daughter or the wife…so it’s the former.

Kinugawa Ropeway…it rings a bell, somehow. Maybe the Boueibu crew went there as DVD/BD extras.

…does everyone know that a ryokan is like a mini hotel with a traditional set-up?

*snorts* LOL, Keanu (Reeves, obviously).

That montage was a bit worrying…maybe the CGI took out part of the budget? I was a bit worried when I could tell there was CGI in that one starting segment.

…LOL, wut. Agent Smith (from the Matrix)?

Yamakasi seems to be a parkour thing which has its own movie.

…I’m sort of wondering: was that ninja a woman? If Jotaro gets another wife…I dunno if I’ll like the anime as much. Things could become far too dramatic if he did. Update: You do find out later in this episode.

I think – from lip reading – the ninja used -de gozaimasu. I remember getting it drilled into me that people don’t use that these days, but in the time of ninja and samurai, they did.

…another anime set in Ikebukuro. I knew from the station, but…’bukuro must be a nice place if people are reppin’ it all of a sudden.

Was Tomoyo an actress…?

“Kinugawa, as in the river where ogres get mad?” – See, that’s the pun I made about Boueibu’s Atsushi years ago…

This Takizawa guy’s so expressive, LOL.

Gotta love a man in a suit, yes…

…they keep building up to this retirement, only for him to not retire??? Which is it?! (LOL) That declaration works better in Japanese because the -shimasen goes at the end of the sentence so the weird sentence structure in the English translation actually makes Jotaro look like he really messed up due to nervousness speaking in front of crowds. Update: He just sounds like he stopped in the middle of a sentence in Japanese, which he obviously did.

There’s no time travel for sure, but there are ninjas! Plus dudes in jumpsuits!...plus, of course, gymnastics! It could still work, but I keep swearing there’s something supernatural coming around the corner for this…Also, this “gymnast trying to retire” thing seems to be drawing me in because of my whole current lack of direction in basically everything, much like Rikuo of Sing Yesterday for Me.

Kamisama 1

Hmm…Kamisama ni Natta Hi…it doesn’t say the subject stating this became a god, so the pronoun could be “she” or “you” rather than “I”, which seems to be the current standard for it. Update: It says on the title card “I”, so it should have an I then…I guess(?)

There’s a fish on the logo.

…this girl, I already know her name is Hina. That’s the 2nd Odin this season (the first is in Sigdrifa…or however it’s spelt)…she’s gonna be annoying, isn’t she…?

What’s this about a date…?

There are two Izanamis this season, too. The second is Hifumi from HypMic.

Looks like there was an accident, according to one of the signs.

…This feels exactly like a visual novel. I’m surprised it’s an original.

I was wondering why “Key Ramen” (Kagi Ramen) sounded weird…then it hit me. Key! You motherf**kers!!! *shakes fist* You were hiding right under my nose all along!

Hey, Potato-kun! (I know his name is Youta, but…eh, aside from having a possible girlfriend candidate and being a Nice Guy, he’s still a Potato-kun.) Stop staring in disbelief and do something!

…Why Potato-kun, anyway? Is it because his name means “become god”???

…This Izanami is so emotionless…it’s hard to imagine her cheering, Youta was right on that front.

…that style in Hina’s background…I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it for Sailor Moon Crystal, but I’ve forgotten what the artist’s name is (the one that inspired that artstyle)…

I almost expected Hina to interrupt the confession, like Leo from Taiso Samurai.

I kinda just shrugged near the end of the episode and finished it just to see if the confession would be interrupted, so…big fat drop there. I must not like much Key beyond Angel Beats (and even then, it’s only okay because it’s the relic of a time gone by).

Moriarty 1

I’ve been picking up Sherlock-related things left and right ever since I was a fan of Detective Conan…not Sherlock, Elementary or that Robert Downey Jr. movie, but the stuff Conan Doyle had his hands in. (I’d also like to keep an eye out for that Miyazaki movie, but I don’t know if I can/should go out of my way for it.) Therefore, I was a pretty easy mark for a bishonen Moriarty.

Who’s this “El” guy anyway?

…That OP is basically Black Butler all over again. I admit I went, “Oh, stuff this” for a second when I saw Rasmus Faber’s name on credits – when I went to entire series for him, they always ended badly for me – but I couldn’t stop watching the episode (since I skipped forward to the actual episode due to background noise), so this might be the anime to change everything.

I’ll be real with you – aside from Japan, America and China (the former two of which I’ve gone to and the latter I’ve technically gone to Hong Kong, which I have stronger ties to anyway), I honestly don’t have anywhere on my bucket list. That said, anime (obviously, the London arc from DC was a big factor) and this one movie called What a Girl Wants have been pretty instrumental in making Great Britain…almost make the list of places I want to go to. Key word: almost.

…I want a dub. With accents like Princess Principal.

Also, I forgot Soma Saito was our Moriarty…LOL.

“…for Man of Standing” (sic).

Turn the other cheek, Mr. Tailor.

The eyes really tell you everything about a person in this anime.

Ooh, this has absolutely no holes in its logic. It’s a strong contender!

Yashahime 2

Holy s***, is that Kagome’s brother?(!) He kinda reminds me of Takagi from Detective Conan for some reason…

Come to think of it…writers like Takahashi don’t normally have androgynous leads like Towa, do they?

That was…not the best fight scene, man.

Ooh, naginata. I’ve read a bit about them, but I’ve never really seen one used in an anime before…not to my memory. Not even the naginata in Touken Ranbu (plural) can help with that.

…this Rainbow Pearl business reminds me of Sailor Moon’s…uh, whatever they’re called…Rainbow Crystals, that’s right.

There’s something oddly comfy about predicting the “it won’t be my crying face, it’s yours you’ll get!” line, as bad as that sign may be for predictability on the whole.

I’ve felt in the years leading up to now, the progressive nations are slowly causing the entire gender binary to unravel. The more I think about my own relationship with my concept of gender – I accept gender-neutral third-person pronouns because initially I wanted to be anonymous on the internet, but now I’m just generally fine with it, for instance – the more I can agree and yet also disagree because of the progress the LGBTIQ+ community has made in recent years.

Munou na Nana 2

Ah-hah! People were calling it that the enemies of humanity were actually the superpowered kids and this proves it.

Ah, I think this Shibusawa is Masuda. I was here for him, so here he is.

Nana just says konnichiwa, which is the most basic of Japanese greetings. I don’t think it was phrased as a question, so…why did the subbers go with that?

Nana keeps breaking her chopsticks by leaving a bit at the end.

Lemme guess…Shibusawa’s talent is actually reversing time, not stopping it.

Is…that Shibusawa Nana’s giving flowers to…?

Golden Kamuy 3 1 (25)

If this is episode 25, was this always planned as a split-cour with season 2? I wonder…

Lingonberries! Oh, lingonberries! They’re those berries Ikea puts into their jam, right? (I’ve never tasted a lingonberry, but…yeah. That’s how I know of them.)

The sign says “Hurep Honpo” (backwards, as some older Japanese/Chinese things do), so it really just says “hurep” (since “honpo” = main shop). Update: Hurep actually means “lingonberry” and not the berry wine like I thought it did here, so it says “hurep wine” after all.

Thank goodness for 2D bears! (LOL)

Ratel?...uh, honey badger! That’s what they’re called in English!

…uh, and then it turns out to be a wolverine. I don’t know my Mustelidae, it seems.

There’s nothing like someone throwing a wolverine to know this is Golden Kamuy…(as weird as that sounds.)

…what was that random line about boobs about…? (Maybe it was just said to be random…?)

…ohhhhhhhh. These yellow eyes work much better than the standard red eyes you see in Munou na Nana or Moriarty. They’re so sinister.

Why did it suddenly change to an interview style…? Weren’t we waiting for a fight? Update: Seems the answer is “padding”. Not that I mind, I think it was interesting actually. Do more of that if you can.

[countryshitposts]

You’re Shooting Your Bullet the Wrong Way

One Night and One More Time, Thanks for the Memories

Trigger Warnings: child abuse, mentions of rape and assault, violence and gore, suicidal thoughts and mentions of a suicide attempt

AO3 Link

First

Previous

-

Name Guide:

Nippon Koku- Japan

Nippon Teikoku- Japan Empire

Ost- East Germany

Osterreich- Austria

-

It was a rainy day when our first encounter with Him happened. I was silently examining our files for Teikoku, the rain pouring down on our office slowly but surely. I was smoking on a pipe, smoke coming out from it, the curtains drawn as I am plunged into a dark setting-

"Australia!", Kiwi's voice shatters the tone of Aussie's voice, and his brother glares at him. "You weren't smoking a pipe when Britain called us! You don't even smoke a pipe at all!"

"Psh, Kiwi, let me narrate the story since your sheepfucker brain couldn't start one sentence!"

Kiwi looks offended, clutching his heart dramatically. "I am not a sheepfucker, how many times do I have to tell you! Fine then. Go on with how we got a call from Britain!"

The door opens, and I raise my head up from the documents to find my sheepfucker of a brother enter the doors, coffee in one hand and carrying a tired expression on his face. His eyes show as if he didn't sleep for a few days, wrinkles underneath his eyes. I raise a brow as he steps forward and gives me the cup of coffee I've yearned for the entire morning.

"So what's the news?", I ask, puffing up smoke to white billows in the office, and he sighs.

"Nothing", Kiwi replies with a small sigh. "America's been working me off and I really need a break."

I nod agreeably, also releasing an exhausted sigh. We love our sister very much but sometimes... she's overbearing. "Is it about those mafia mobs running around the whole city?"

"Apparently so", Kiwi nods, as I sip on my coffee. "America is getting restless."

"It's because she's the head of the police", I reply, "she has to do a good job y'know."

Kiwi shrugs, "Yeah..."

Suddenly, my phone starts ringing, and I look at the name of the person who called before my heart starts to beat out loud, even louder than the rain pouring.

With a deep breath, I pick up.

"Hi!", the beautiful French accent speaks from the speaker of my phone, and I immediately sigh as the entire world around me becomes as warm as the feeling I am feeling in my heart. I wish I could see her again in real life and not in my phone, but her voice is melodious.

I can feel Kiwi rolling his eyes from in front of me, but I don't care, since I'm talking to Villers, the love of my life, the angel to my heaven, the moon to my sun, the French to my English-

"The 'French to my English'?", Canada mimicks Aussie's voice while the others snicker, and the narrator glares at them.

"Oh shut up", he grumbles, crossing his arms and looking the other way, before smiling mischievously, "you just don't have any girlfriend or boyfriends yet."

America glares at him with malice and envy, the same way she's glared at him when he said he and Villers are a thing; Canada crosses his arms and raises a brow, not really hindered about how Australia keeps taking jabs at their status, while Kiwi rolls his eyes tiredly, already knowing his antics.

"Can you just go back to the story?", Kiwi asks, "or I'll continue it myself."

Australia's eyes flare as he goes back to the main plot.

"Are you done with work?", Villers' sweet voice asks me again, and I find myself smiling stupidly and my heart beating once again, fiddling with my pipe.

"Unfortunately, no", I say dejectedly, looking at the downpour at the windows. I hear her let out a breath of longing that made me want to find her and tell her that I'm free for her, always.

"Alright", she says, sounding despondent and I now want to cuddle her up in the fluffiest of pillows and coziest of blankets, showering her with kisses as my arms envelop around her like a swan. "Tell me if you're free. Au revoir!" She hangs up and I can find myself missing her already, expecting myself to run across the rain towards her home.

"So", I turn back to my brother, "what's the news?"

"Surprisingly, no major news except a few more mobs clashed once again", Kiwi replies in a professional accent, as if he's professional or older. "Like France and Reich had a shootout again. This time Netherlands' mob got into this crossfire."

"Netherlands?", I repeat, "isn't she the mob boss that has a vendetta against us?"

Kiwi shrugs, "Yeah, I guess."

Just then, when lightning streaks the sky and lights up the gray surroundings for a bit, the power in the office turns off, and Kiwi shrieks a womanly shriek while I caress the gun hidden in my coat-

"First of all", Kiwi interjects, a red tinge on his cheeks, "I did not scream; you did. Second, we both don't have our guns at the time, and third you were the one saying we're gonna die."

"Leave it to tell New Zealand the truth", Canada sniggers to America.

"Don't worry Kiwi, I'll save the both of us-", but before I can continue, the lights turn back on and the fan on my desk starts to twirl, as if nothing happened. Then I look onto the wall, and I gasp, almost dropping the gun to the floor.

Because there was something on the wall.

Something written on it with cursive handwriting, as if they had time in the world for such a thing.

It was in crimson red, a message haunting me to this very day,

"The first step is for your love to surprise you, the next is to look at the edge of her dress."

Me and Kiwi glance at each other with wide eyes before going back to inspect the writing on the walls. I approach it while my coward of a brother is shaking and telling me to be cautious, believing it's booby-trapped. I examine the handwriting once again; how can anyone have time to write such a message just seconds after the power went out? I put out a finger and smear the message, blinking once it smudges with the wall.

"It looks like our vandal used lipstick", I mumble before going back to Kiwi, who was silent, meaning he was thinking of something. I reread the message again, still quite confused to what the vandal means.

"I think I know what it means", Kiwi says with realization striking in his glittering eyes. "Maybe we need to plan a surprise party for someone we both love! And then- oh."

"Disgusting!", I bellow, my eyes flaring. "We are not surprising America and checking underneath her skirt!"

"I have no idea who really said that, but I'd beat you both to Sunday if you do that", America pipes up, crossing her arms while glaring at her brothers. "Also, it means wait for your love to surprise you, meaning they'll be the one bringing the note to you."

"Yeah, that's where I was getting at", Aussie replies, "until you manage to interrupt us."

"I don't know", Kiwi says with a thoughtful look in his eyes, staring and examining the message once again, "maybe it's your love, Aussie."

I blink, processing what my brother just said before blushing red and ruffling my brother. "I am not going to look under her skirts Kiwi!"

"You say that but you've been watching her whenever she bends down to pick something up", Kiwi states with an emotionless look in his eyes. "So maybe, just maybe, Villers is going to surprise you."

"Now that's absurd!", my voice slaps, "a message couldn't tell the future!"

"Not if the future is happening now", Kiwi replies ominously, pointing to the windows.

I follow his finger and, there she is, my soon-to-be-wife, engagement ring and all, holding an umbrella over her head while on her other hand she was holding a picnic basket despite the despondent weather. Her beautiful and striking dark eyes roam each window, before meeting my eyes.

My arms go slack and my legs turn to jelly once again, as I hold her loving stare as she smiles warmly.

Not even the rain can get rid of my sunshine.

"I'm just really worried for you, mon amour", Villers says as her arms wrap around me like a loving embrace. "And I was lonely in my home all alone."

"But I'm here now", I say, soothing her nerves like she was doing with me. "You don't have to be lonely."

"I love you", she says softly, and the whole world implodes and creates the Milky Way between the both of us.

I tilt her chin up, our eyes shining bright like diamonds. "I love you too."

I kiss her right then and there, feeling nothing but her body and warm lips on mine, time standing still and not moving on as I can feel the both of us floating, floating to the skies then to the cosmics, no space between us. She runs her hands over my back as she leans in for more, and my hands roam her light hair with my fingers as my hand reaches the edge of her skirt, hearing her gasp as I touch what was beyond her clothing.

"Disgusting", Kiwi says, face souring as his mind replays the scene without his permission, while Aussie looks so enamoured at the fact that he almost had the chance of doing something with his fianceè.

"Please just, censor the explicit scenes, Aussie?", America asks with a sigh.

Then I feel something with my other hand, which had stopped at the edge of her dress. Puzzled, I kiss her deeply once again before letting go, a piece of paper I extracted from her skirts in my hand.

Meanwhile, Villers was still looking dazed and love struck from the touch and kiss we shared, until her eyes land on the card on my hands.

"Did that come from...?" I nod awkwardly, biting my lip as my love's face turns bright red and inspects her dress for more stray particles. "I am so sorry!"

I kiss her forehead reassuringly, "It's fine." I glance at the card again as I read the entirety of the message, still written in the enthralling cursive from the walls.

"Let the birds come to you once you are at the highest peak of The City."

"What?", Kiwi says from behind me; he must've also been reading the message. "What does that mean?"

"I don't even know Kiwi", I reply, rereading the message again. "Maybe it really means what it means?"

Kiwi meets my eyes, "And what does it mean?"

I shrug, my brain coming up empty. "Maybe we need to find the highest peak in this land? Like climbing a mountain and let the birds do the rest?"

Kiwi scoffs as he rolls his eyes at my answer. "And what are they gonna do? Fly us towards our destination? And why a mountain? We're in the middle of a City, Aussie."

"Maybe it means the birds will point us to our next target!", I give out another suggestion. "Or they'll crap on us like the barbaric birds they are and not give us any clue to where or who this message leads to."

"Maybe they're trained", Kiwi muses as my mind launches off to new theories on what this all means.

Perhaps it means that the 'birds' are aeroplanes?, my mind processes, or maybe this is all a big prank from some asshole who think it'd be funny to prank people doing their job...

Meanwhile, Villers was silently reading the message with her big eyes, moving on from how the card got into its destination the first place, before looking at me with those big eyes I get lost in every time. "Well, the messenger said 'highest peak of The City', right? Maybe it means you two have to scale the highest building here."

Me and Kiwi exchange looks, before my face morphs into a huge smile before hugging my beautiful and smart future wife. I shower her forehead with kisses once again, emitting a beautiful laugh from her mouth as she looks at me with joy.

Kiwi's eyes light up, "Maybe that's it! I think we need to scale the tallest building in The City!"

"Which is?" I think for a moment; there are tonnes of tall buildings in this City.

"Deutsche Towers", Villers responds with a breath, and I know what it means- she was reminiscing the times where she had been caught in a crossfire between two rival gangs; mostly against the Deutsches Family. Her eyes had a clouded look, as if controlling those horrid memories surging in her, but I couldn't help but remember how I had saved the girl who would become my future wife. The event was awful, of course, but it made the both of us responsible and more in love with one another.

"Please don't tell me you were going to tell the story of how you met her", America interrupts surly, "because we were there when you both met."

Aussie rolls his eyes, "Okay, okay, I won't. Although the readers might be disappointed at the lack of a love tale."

America blinks, confused, "Readers?”

Aussie ignores the question and continues,

Kiwi breaks the silence by saying, dejectedly, "Looks like we're gonna have to ask those stingy rich upper class men entrance to the Towers, huh?"

I nod with a look of exhaustion on my face, "Yep." I look at Villers once again, "are you coming with us?"

Villers fidgets on her place, looking from left to right then back at me with those beautiful eyes I always see in my dreams. "Maybe it would be better for me as a lookout."

I grin at her, "You bet."

"Oh come on!", I cry out to one of the guards in the area, pacing back and forth until I glare at their faceless beings underneath their uniforms, "you guys are always open!"

"Sir, I understand your confusion", says one of the guards, not breaking out of their stride, "but Mister Reich ordered us not to let anyone onto the top of the building."

"And why?", I pry, raising a demanding brow at the both of them, who both sneak furtive glances before playing stoic guards. "Even his father of all people let strangers into the top of the Towers!"

The guard shakes his head, still straight-faced, but there was a glint of sadness in his eyes. "His father is dearly departed."

Me and Kiwi's eyes widen in shock, and we both know what we were thinking: Deutsches Reich? Dead? Shouldn't this be on the news?

"Shouldn't we know that Deutsches Reich died?", I ask the guards. "Why are we only hearing this now?"

"Because, gentlemen", a new, frigid voice adjourns my and the guard's conversation, and me and my brother turn the other way to find a man with messy blonde curls posing in front of a painting. His dark green eyes stare right into our souls, as if we were the jewels he has been looking for and he has succeeded. He smiles at us in a peculiar manner, as if he was a serial killer finally meeting his target. "I ordered them to keep my father's... tragic death a secret."

Once again, Weimar stares at me, his grin growing larger. I swallow down the feeling that something is very wrong with the man that had once been afraid of his own shadow.

I give him a smile in return (although it was nervous and awkward, and I hope he’d never make eye contact with me again), and saying, “Mister Weimar, please let us pass. And your secret will never reach the public's ears.”

Weimar only smiles as a reply, a breeze sweeping into the room, telling me oh, how wrong I was to even ask him such a pathetic request. He takes a step forward, slow and calculated, as if he is teasing his prey step by step until he jumps to them and gnash his teeth. I try to move backwards, but my feet were stuck in the ground, not cooperating with me.

He was a few inches from my face, lips curled into an off grin, his emerald green eyes a vision of my death. There was a cold and dark air enveloping him while he embraces it with a haunting sigh.

“You’re ordering me?”, he says with gritted teeth, still in a smile that I will not shake off, even in my nightmares. “I’m not your slave. I’m not someone to step on. I’m nothing like him anymore. I’m not that coward you know.”

We have a silent stare off for God knows how long, Weimar poised for the kill as his emerald green eyes glimmer with intent, intent to see my dead body, as Kiwi looks on to the both of us.

“Papa!”, a voice breaks through the air, and the whole room turns to the source; a young boy holding a girl’s hand who resembles him. A taller, older figure stands behind them, grey eyes tracking the room, strawberry blonde curls concealing his eyes before he fiddles with it.

Weimar’s smile slowly loosens as he turns to glare at the newcomers, specifically the elder. His green eyes bore hatred towards the twins’ guardian, but instead of shivering like I am now, he stares back at him with an unreadable expression.

“I told you to keep them confined in their rooms, Österreich”, he says with a slight snarl.

Österreich shrugs, “They wanted to play, Weimar. And who can deny them? I can’t.” He chuckles as West and Ost gossip to each other, naive children in the world.

Weimar scowls at his children, which makes me confused because everyone knows that Weimar loves his children to hell and back. I clear my throat, and once again everyone looks back at me, Weimar’s glare redirected towards me.

“You’re still here?”, he asks, looking at my form, then forming a smile on his face once again. Jesus Christ, I’m a little intimidated by this new Weimar. “Why the rush to go up my towers, dummkopf? Is it to make you feel like you scare me? But I’m not scared of you anymore. Never. Never again will I be scared of gun-wielding hooligans.”

“Please, sir”, Kiwi speaks up, voice small, “we just needed to see something on top of the Towers.”

Weimar stares at him, a grin still plastered across his face like a mask, not saying anything as if he was considering his request. He shrugs playfully, “Well then, since you asked so nicely-” his eyes glint to me for a second, “I will let you to the top of my towers.”

“Oh my god thank you so much Sir!”, Kiwi says with a look of relief.

“But”, his voice is abrupt, static jumping upon static, “you will have to take the stairs.”

My jaw drops, “Wait… are you serious?”

Weimar just smiles in reply, his eyes looking towards the stairs as me and Kiwi stare at it for a bit, before finally noting that he is - indeed - telling us to take the stairs.

So, with our feet raised, we take the first step to heaven. Before that, however, there was something on Weimar’s hand that almost escaped my eyes: a necklace of pearls that I know belonged to his mother.

“Let’s just say that climbing thirty-one floors wasn’t a dream”, Aussie says, sighing, as Kiwi nods. “I’ll skip to only the important details.”

I heave an exhausted sigh as I unbutton my shirt and fan myself with it, while I hear Kiwi panting from behind me and I can’t blame him- we were only three floors high and I feel my lungs starting to collapse underneath the pressure. Once we reach the fourth floor, we both spot Teikoku and Koku lounging around the lounge, hearing them speak, before moving on.

“Jesus this place loves spirals”, Kiwi says between pants as he takes of his silver fern jacket to fan himself with.

“Yep”, I agree, Teikoku and Koku’s voices already fading now-

“Wait”, America interrupts Aussie’s tale, much to his irritation. “Teikoku and Koku were there? Did you hear them say anything?

“Alright, fine, I’ll go back to it”, he says.

[RECORD SCRATCH, FREEZE FRAME, REWIND THREE SECONDS]

“Isn’t that Koku and Teikoku? In Weimar’s building?”, Kiwi points out, voice a soft whisper to not attract their attention.

“Let’s get closer”, I whisper back to him, as we break away from the steps and into close distance with one mafia mob boss and his brother.

Koku was leaning on the sofa, messy dark hair covering one of his grey eyes like he was a popstar emo goth boy model while he checks his phone. Teikoku, on the other hand, was sitting on the sofas with an imperious way, as if he owns the place. He was biting his lip, muttering something in Japanese as he looks around with his crimson red eyes, searching for someone.

Koku spots him impulsively sitting on his ‘throne’ and sighs, “Look, I knew this was going to be a bad idea.”

Teikoku’s piercing gaze redirects to Koku, “You don’t have a say in this matter, okosama.”

Koku’s eyes flare up in anger at the last word, “I’m not a child, Teikoku. If anyone’s the ‘child’ here, it’d be the girl you’re forcing ME to marry!”

I blink, not knowing that Koku would have the courage to even look at his brother with anger in his eyes, but Teikoku abruptly stands from his seat, looking forward to murder someone with his words. “You dare talk back to me?” His shadow looms over Koku, whose eyes are now tinged with fear and regret for speaking up against his brother. Before Koku opens his mouth once again to answer that no, he wasn’t disrespecting him, Teikoku pins him to the wall with a sound resonating from it.

“Were you questioning my authority?”, he seethes, his fingers digging deep into Koku’s skull, who was looking choked and suffocated.

I was watching this with an ignited fury in me, I raise from my hiding place before Kiwi pulls me back down, shaking his head. We only came here for one thing and it was to know who was sending us these messages.

“At last”, I breathe, fresh and moist air from rain colliding with my face like a soft blanket. “We’re free!”

“And look!”, Kiwi points at something on the dark grey skies, “a flock of birds are coming!”

I glance up in the sky, and Kiwi was right: dark-colored specs were dancing across the sky, growing larger and larger, until they were above us. I let out a gasp of joy as I see what kind of birds they were: robins, with one of them having a slip of paper in its beak, opening it and letting the slip of paper drop into my open palm, before pivoting to one corner and soaring to the direction in where they came from, with Kiwi waving back at them.

Meanwhile, I was already reading the slip of paper:

“The trains might show you the way, yes, but that doesn’t mean you have to get on it, because the houses near the railways are watching you. Be smart and follow the signs.”

“Okay, now this is bullshit”, I say, back in my office, as Kiwi paces back and forth, muttering possible interpretations of the messages.

“Maybe the signs mean the train station signs?”, I can hear one of his murmurs, “And the ‘houses near the railways’ watching us are just other mob bosses… maybe.”

Meanwhile, Villers was snacking on one of the foods she brought in her picnic basket, also lost in thought. I siddle up next to her and she cozies herself on my body, and we both share warmth.

“So”, I whisper, lips on her ear, making her shudder as she holds on to me, “what are you thinking, hm?”

“À propos de vous, bien sûr”, she whispers, red lips staining my face, her voice making my insides heated and red. “And the message to help you too.”

“Of course, but first…” I kiss her once again, exploring the caves of her mouth, her arms swinging around my neck as I hoist her up to sit on my lap, my hands roaming every single part of her body, loving the way she gasps and shudders once I touch what was meant to be sacred, my arousal growing-

“Australia!”, America says, glaring at Aussie, “I said censor the inappropriate parts! That wasn’t appropriate!”

“Alright alright!”, Aussie says, arms up in surrender, “I’m just going to continue…”

“I get it now!”, Villers says as she reads the message once again, “the trains won’t give us the signs, the sender of these messages is going to be the one giving us! But we still have to watch out for the houses near the railways, maybe they’ll give us a hard time getting to our destination.”

“Alright”, I say, getting up, “let’s not waste anymore time and meet our sender.”

“We wasted time”, Kiwi deadpans as he tries to struggle against his binds, glaring up at Belgium, his captor. Me and Villers, on the other hand, were tied up together by Luxembourg, who wasn’t looking at us and was rather looking at his reflection in the mirror, rambling about how he won’t look ‘pleasant’ in his date.

“Mon Dieu, Luxembourg”, Belgium spits at his direction and he scowls right back at his sister, “quit your egotistical self-care routine and help me take these klootzakken to Moeder!”

Luxembourg glances away from his mirror and replies, “Fine, fine, whatever.” He pushes me and Villers away from the railways, and we hear a train coming into the tracks like it was nothing. I hold Villers’ hand when we finally felt our touch next to each other, our pulses becoming one as our heartbeats only call for each other. I fell in love with the right woman, and she fell in love with the wrong man.

We were forced to follow Netherlands’ kids into their hideout, their men looking at us with dark eyes full of intent, and I see some of them staring and sneering maliciously towards my love, and I glare back at them. One wrong move, my eyes say, there will be a bullet through all of your heads. No one will touch my wife the wrong way, no one.

“Op je knieën!”, Lux orders, voice hard and low, and we all follow because we are not sparing a bullet in our heads. I can feel Villers shivering and fearing her death, and I soothe her by rubbing discreet and unseen circles on her back.

“Moeder”, Belgium says as she approaches a swivel chair, concealed by the dark, but I can see smoke forming, and a pale hand holding the cigarette with two fingers. “We hebben Britse zonen gevangen genomen.”

“Ik kan dat België zien”, comes her mother’s reply, a voice of reason and peace, yet I’m not feeling peaceful now. She turns around to face us, blonde hair and stormy grey eyes highlighted into the dark room, and her two kids stand right beside her, her lieges in battle.

“So”, she speaks once again, puffing out more smoke, but I can see her arms shaking and eyes looking as if she had too much cannabis to snort. “Looking for the bastard, hm?”

I sigh, signalling the start of a fight with her once again, “Netherlands, we aren’t here to fight. And who’s to say we were looking for our Dad who left us to our devices?”

It’s not like my dad would come back for me, though, a horrible thought enters my mind, as I stare at the ground once again, feeling Villers’ body warming me.

Netherlands laughs, her voice unstable and shaking for some reason, as if there was a quake happening on her seat. “You boys are idioten if you don’t believe your father isn’t the one sending you messages.”

“He’s the one… sending the clues to us?”, I ask, disbelief evident in my face, a cold feeling now lying in me. “But why? He left us!”

“Oh ik weet het niet!”, Netherlands says exaggerated, throwing her arms up as she shoves her now dim-lit cigarette into Luxembourg’s hands, who was busily checking his hair for stray strands in his reflection.

Kiwi sighs, and I hear him slip into his native language, “Ka patu ahau ki a ratou.” I remembered that back in the old days when we were still living under Britain, he had taught himself how to read, write, and speak Maori, in which Britain retaliated by burning his books and hitting him repeatedly. I can’t ever get it over with.

“Mom, why do we have them?”, Luxembourg asks as he fixes his dark blonde curls, “we don’t care about them anymore, don’t we?”

Suddenly, Netherlands’ hazy grey eyes respond with fear, as she grips onto her chair even more. “Because he needs them.”

“‘He?’”, I repeat, “who’s he?”

Netherlands didn’t reply, and only stared into the distance, before her gaze hardens once again as she looks back at us with hatred.

“Luxembourg, take them to the cells”, she says, and with one pause from Lux, he nods before pulling at our binds. “Belgium, stay here while I go check outside.”

Belgium looks at her mother, bewildered by her sudden anxiety and paranoia. “But… why?”

Netherlands glares back at her, “You know why.”

Belgium’s face clouds over as she nods, disappearing into the curtains behind the throne. I didn’t really have a say in anything, since I was literally being pulled into a stinking cell, but then I feel the tight binds around us loosen, as if someone had snipped it all away.

“Alright, you’re free to go”, Luxembourg says with a huge flirtatious smile on his face, not at me and Villers but at Kiwi, who was grinning back at him as well, but there was fear in his dark blue eyes. I catch his stare and he looks back at me, eyes screaming HELP before smirking back at Lux, meeting his seductive gaze.

“So, when are you free?”, Kiwi asks in the least awkward voice he could muster.

“Eight on Saturday, lieveling”, Lux says as he kisses Kiwi on the cheek before stalking off, “also, secret exit’s that way.” He points to the right, an open door waiting for us. Then he meets Kiwi’s eyes again, seemingly never moving on from New Zealand’s body. “And I assure you that I’d bring my ‘lucky ring’.” He winks at Kiwi before stalking off and leaving us to our own devices.

“Are you saying our baby brother here bribed to be freed by asking Lux out on a date?”, America guffaws, and Canada snickers. Meanwhile, Aussie was smirking triumphantly and New Zealand was blushing red.

“How was the date with Lux, though?”, Canada asks Kiwi, leaning in, “was it good?”

“B-better than a one-night stand”, he says as he looks back at Canada, who raises a brow at his defiance. His eyes target America’s. “Better than the guys you had tried to do.”

Aussie clears his throat, already wanting to get back to his story since he can feel everyone’s eyes on each other,

“So what’re the signs Britain left for us?”, I ask, huffing a breath as a gust of cold air whispers strange sounds into my ear, knowing all about my damned desires. My eyes were roaming anywhere near the trains, reading the signs with my eyes but there was nothing outstanding with them. “I don’t see anything.”

“What if it’s going to come to us?”, Villers hypothesizes once again, a thoughtful look on her face. “What if Britain himself is going to be the one to deliver perhaps the final message to us, hinting on where to go first?”

Kiwi adds on to this, “Maybe you’re right, since it’s almost sundown.”

“We wait”, I say, nodding, looking towards the sky with wonder. When I was a young boy, me and my siblings would watch the sun set, pink, orange, purple and blue colliding with each other in perfect harmony to create a web of colours that would turn the sky to a massive garden of them. I feel Villers once again pressing into me, hands brushing mine before we both clasp our hands together, the great warmth surging towards us.

We wait.

Then we wait for some more, the pink and orange fading and giving into the dark blue and purple, the last traces of the sun dying out and giving way for dusk to transition to night.

The stars appear, one by one, signalling the reign of the moon is supreme for the night, no more, no less. Some were even free falling from the evening sky like they were tears being washed away by Nyx herself, as if they didn’t belong to hers, just insignificant tiny dots in the sky.

Insignificant like me.

But those falling stars were replaced by brand new rising stars, only they were bigger, then I realize they weren’t stars at all: they were fireworks.

Maybe this was Britain’s final message.

Or maybe this was just a fireworks display.

Then the fireworks, with its whistling and popping, starts to form words, and my eyes flare like the firecrackers Britain is firing.

“One last message to you all; meet a man with auburn hair with a black car… he will find you for me.”

“Olá”, a new voice, deep yet soothing sounds behind us, and we see a man with auburn hair and a single green eye, his other eye concealed with an eye patch. He smiles at us like a father would, “meu nome é Portugal, and I’m here to escort you all to your pai.”

It was a silent car ride, none of us really talking while Portugal was humming to the music in the radio. I, however, did not enjoy silent car rides, and so I ask the first question in my head.

“So, what are you to Dad? Are you his personal butler, slave, friend-”

“I’m his boyfriend”, Portugal says, face now clouded with dreams as his eye fogs over. Kiwi and I widen our eyes, giving each other glances of shock. Our father, who smacked Canada twice for being caught in bed with boys, is now in love with a man as well?

“I don’t understand”, I say- there was something wrong with me, there was something wrong with my insides as they give me memories of an awful father who would train his children to become master assassins, who is merciless with the gun and hands, whose judgement is never for us.

Portugal looks back at me in the rear view mirror, face full of pity, but I don’t want that pity. I don’t need that.

“We were rivals, you see”, he says in a soft voice, but it still had a paternal instinct hidden within. “When he escaped from your City and went into ours, he ransacked towns and almost risked me and my men from his hands. And then, only when we met in a civil manner, did we actually learn to like each other, then love each other. Some say it was a bond of best friends and, well… they weren’t wrong.”

“What did Dad do after he escaped from jail, aside from meeting you and ransacking cities and endangering mobs?”, I can feel my throat straining, as if the world doesn’t want me to not display my weaknesses out in the open.

“Well, he created a brand new company on his own, which impressed me”, Portugal replies, “well, not really, perhaps; he robbed his own money from the company he used to own.”

“Ah”, Kiwi deadpans, “no wonder all that money Dad supposedly ‘left’ to us suddenly disappeared one day.”

“He also aspired to be a musician”, Portugal muses, “always rambling on about his song ideas to me, and even learning how to play some instruments himself.”

I have no more questions left in me, my body going slack, the day draining me as we come nearer to the home of the man who is supposedly dead.

Or maybe I’m dead, and he was alive.

Canada frowns, “What’s with the self-deprecating comments, Aussie?”

“Self-deprecation? Me?”, Aussie scoffs, shaking his head. “You all need to know about sarcasm and how it saves a story from disruption.

Meanwhile, Kiwi was looking his way, knowing what was about to come and the sudden change in his brother’s demeanor.

We follow Portugal into the hallways, seeing dozens of sculptures staring at us, knowing what our fates were. Villers’ hand tangles with mine, and I love her every second we were here, accompanying me once we are faced with the ghosts of the past, the ghost of Britain becoming physical from my deepest nightmares, toying with me once again.

“It’s okay, je suis là”, she says in a soothing voice, and I wanted her to caress me one more time. “vous êtes si courageux.”

“But I’m not as brave as you”, I tell her softly, cupping her cheeks, “and I’m now paying the price for it.”

“No, stop saying that”, she bites, “you will always be my loving and brave husband.”

I can feel tears touching my eyes, and I try concealing them in the moonlight. “Je t'aime tellement.”

She kisses my forehead. “Je t'aime aussi.”

Portugal stops behind an ominous-looking door, and my brain forced me to recall the days I spent looking at my father’s door with fear, when I was a small child, afraid of my father, and even now I still am, because I am a coward.

“Beyond this door is your father”, he says, staring straight into my soul. “And I wish you good luck.” He leaves us in front of the door, its mahogany woods waiting for our demise.

As the eldest and the one who knew my dad well out of the three, I softly knock on the door a few times, before entering.

The entire room was surprisingly dim-lit, a lamp on a bedside table, as we were face-to-face with a desk, swivel chair behind it.

“We finally meet”, a clear voice says from behind the desk. “After a decade of waiting.”

I swallow the creeping fear in my stomach: I’m not the same person anymore. He’s not the same. We are both older and wiser, as the sayings go.

“It’s nice to meet you again, Dad”, I say, and he turns his chair around, ashen face and light blonde hair disturbed by white strands, his lips curled into a smile. He was stroking a pet corgi, who was comfortably seated and sleeping on his lap. He was wearing a business suit, shoes and all, as his dark blue eyes glinted back at me with a look of rejoice. “And you’re old.”

The smile on Dad’s face fades, replaced with a look of indignance, and I already regret the words coming out from my mouth. “After ten years of not seeing each other again, those are the words you speak to me?”

Kiwi muffles a laughter in his jacket, and Villers elbows me because I was being rude to my own father.

“E Tama, pai ki te kite ano koe”, Kiwi says to Dad in Maori, perhaps to spite him, but Britain gives him a wide smile in return.

“I missed you.” Kiwi blinks; I too expected Dad to scowl at the language, but he didn’t and only looked as if he treasured us.

Then he glances at Villers, who was hiding behind me and looking at her (unfortunately) future father-in-law with shyness. “And congratulations, my dear, you scored a keeper.” I blink at Dad, puzzled as to why he approved of our relationship. When I came home holding an unconscious girl’s body, he had almost shot me in the head.

She blushes hard, looking at me with desire in her eyes, but Dad wasn’t done yet, as his expression morphs into a thoughtful one.

“Although I am quite disappointed with your moves, son”, he tells me, and I can’t help but blink in confusion.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve seen the moves you’ve done on Villers and, quite frankly, I am not impressed.”

“Wh-what moves?”

“All of the messages contain hidden cameras, and I manage to catch quite a scenery in your office.” His eyes glance at me, then back at Villers, as realization strikes within me.

“You… oh my god…” My cheeks colour red as Villers hides behind me even more, quite embarrassed and who can blame her?

“Awkward”, Kiwi mutters underneath his breath, also having second-hand embarrassment.

“Now, I think you are all hungry?”

“Not much after you told me you installed cameras in your messages.”

“So you wish to sleep now?”

I look at Villers, her eyes drooping slightly, trying to stay awake, then at Kiwi, who was staring exhaustedly into the night. Even me, always so full of energy, need time for beauty sleep.

“Yeah.”

Luckily enough, my Dad decided to give me and Villers the furthest guest room, away from most people. Villers was nuzzling against my chest, her breaths giving me warmth, her touch comforting me. I hold her, treasuring the greatest gift of all time. I can't sleep since my mind is plagued with questions. And thoughts about how this will all end.

“You’re scared”, Villers whispers into my chest, and I sigh and kiss her forehead.

“I’m not.” I look into her eyes, the entire galaxy waiting for me. “Believe me.”

She sighs, turning away to face the dim walls, “I still remember waking up in your room, covered in bandages. I was scared and helpless, and when I saw you I thought you were going to… well…”

“I know”, I reply, “I could see it in your eyes. But I can’t blame you.”

“But here we are”, she whispers, “lovers in your father’s house.”

She looks at me once again before leaning up to kiss me, and I kiss her back, levelling her with myself, arms going around with each other’s waists and neck. I can feel lust and desire pooling in me now, wanting to tear that beautiful dress she was wearing to pieces and biting her skin to claim her as mine, mine, mine. I enter my tongue into her mouth, tasting how sweet and warm her insides are, loving every noises she makes as she clings tighter to me. I can once again feel my arousal growing, as I kiss the woman of my dreams more, deeper and deeper, and I untie the laces of her dress, not taking it anymore. I flip her on her back as I unbuckle my belt, kissing her once again.

“Guys, if only you would’ve kept it down I’d have slept peacefully”, a voice wakes the both of us up, and I immediately cover a naked Villers with the sheets. Problem is is that I don’t have anything covering me anymore. Kiwi covers his eyes, “Jesus Christ Aussie, put some clothes on!” I retaliate by covering my region with a pillow and scowling sleepily at my younger brother.

“What’s up, Kiwi?”, I ask civilly. “Or you just want to humiliate your brother?”

“You know ‘what’s up’? Your dick last night”, Kiwi sits down on a chair next to the bed. “Anyway, breakfast is downstairs, me and Dad are going to head out.”

I sit up, still handling the pillow, “Wait what? Why?” 

“He said he was going to show me something”, Kiwi shrugs, “also once he’s done showing me something he has something to tell you.”

I nod, “Alright. See you later then.”

I watch as he walks out the door, giving me a cursory glance.

“I’ll tell the rest of the story”, Kiwi volunteers, looking at Australia, who nods approvingly.

As New Zealand closes the door from the nightmare he had just seen, he exhales- there is nothing in this entire world that could comfort him now. Sometimes his mind would wander back to the days when everything was large, tall, and cruel to him, back to the days the eyes glaring down at him could burn him alive, but he cannot scream as he is on thin ice, mouth always shut, mind and body subservient to his father.

Then again, he cannot fight his own father back in his days of youth- all he had to do was to survive and do as he says, only a machine in his eyes, not a child with feelings.

He looks at his hands: back then he had held a gun with his grubby and soft little hands, only supposed to hold dirt and toys and nothing as heavy as metal upon metal. He remembers Britain’s dark blue eyes watching him, daggers piercing his small heart as he gulps and tries shooting his target.

Kiwi puts his hands in his pockets like he was hiding something, something important… but the only thing he is hiding is his fear for his father.

He hears his father’s bedroom door closing behind him, and he glances at Britain buttoning his coat up, and he smiles at Kiwi; such a rare feat back at home, when he only smiles at them during formal events but it is strained, forced, plastic, like he was swimming in the oceans full of contaminated waters and garbage, struggling to find the beauty in it.

“Well then, let’s not waste any time”, Britain says, fixing his blonde locks and puts on a cap on his head. “Let’s go meet someone.”

Kiwi blinks, “Who?”

Britain watches him, eyes full of memory of ghosts beyond, “Your mother.”

Kiwi freezes, staring ahead before swivelling to face his father, who was still lost in thought and memories. It was a familiar gaze, one that Kiwi always sees in his father’s face whenever he thinks he was alone, perched on his small yet intricate table in the gardens, gripping his tea cup so hard Kiwi had feared he will break it and the hot liquid inside of it will drip down to his clothes to scald him.

“You told me my mother was gone”, Kiwi answers, voice strained with emotion, bundles of ropes tying him up, mind clouding over with questions of the ghosts of the past.

“Gone”, Britain repeats, voice also full of reminiscing. “Not dead, my son. And it is time for you to meet her.”

Kiwi can feel his heart beating even more, as he can finally meet the half of his heart, the mystery unraveled like the curtains of a stage part for him to see the entire play that is Britain’s life, from start to finish.

The car ride was silent; only hearing the tires rolling on the road, talking and whispering in a heated conversation. Kiwi was looking out towards the window, but he can feel Britain’s gaze on him, as he drives, making him uncomfortable. The world was moving backwards as they move forward to find their destination, a finale to all. The sun was fighting against the dark clouds huddled around the corner, trying to conquer and annex all souls.

“One day, the sun will die”, Britain muses as he goes back to focusing on the road. “And when that day comes everyone will rejoice.”

“Why would people rejoice when their only life source of energy dies?”, Kiwi asks.

“Not that sun, my boy.” The message was so ominous that Kiwi reminds himself to keep his mouth shut.

Yes, this car ride is as tense and silent as the House at Number 63.

Britain parks the car just below the sweltering heat of the sun, always there, always watching their every move, the giant orb just a giant eye to monitor their every movement. Sometimes Kiwi can see crimson red tinges on it, as if the flares of the sun is its blood and it runs from its veins. Kiwi takes off his jacket to tie it upon his waist, and follows his father who did not wait for him to prepare and was already walking forward like a man who has lost his way.

“Who is my mother?”, Kiwi asks sharply and tentatively, still scared that Britain will reply with a sharp tongue. He levels his steps as he catches up with his father, eyes ahead, shielded with distraction, memories, and the foggy resistance. He was clutching his cane tightly, knuckles turning white, as if he was going through all of the horrible memories and the deepest roots of his nightmares.

“Your mother”, he mutters, “was a woman I wronged a long time ago.”

“What did you do to her? What happened to my mother after I was born?” Kiwi can feel himself becoming even more nervous as the near the establishment Britain claims his mother is working in.

Britain suddenly whirls to him, eyes shining, “You must understand; she was the best of the best, the one who caught my heart too much and she wouldn’t let go. Not even when I vanish every so often. I loved her too much, and you were the product of it.”

Kiwi blinks, not even comprehending what his father is saying and why he must care. “But who is she?”

“A woman who can fight, a woman who had many moves to keep me away from her, until I gained the upper hand…”, he opens the door to the buildings, and Kiwi finds himself face to face with cold metal walls, and the creaking and sliding of other entrances. He can feel himself becoming even more curious, wanting to scream his questions at Britain and deafen his hearing in the process. Oh how much he had wanted to talk of his ills about the man who left him, long ago.

They walk in a straight direction, and Kiwi can hear the growth of voices from a room. He watches his father, who was clasping his palms, lips curling into a thin line as the voices grow louder. They stop near a door, Britain in the position to open them, but he stays to stare at Kiwi with a look of longing.

“Your mother was the famous stuntman, Maori.” 

He opens the door, as if he was showing Kiwi the way to the secret garden but instead he is pushed into a set full of movie directors, producers, actors and backdrops onstage. Sometimes he would be puzzled at the fact that the scenes in each movie were not real; that they were made up from blood, sweat and tears of the writers and directors and actors, figments of imagination becoming real with the trick of programs and computers.

It was as if they can fabricate the existence of these characters, that they have the knowledge to exist in the same world as Kiwi does, that they can be touched and they can have the power to exist.

In the end, they are fiction; not real.

While Kiwi was busily making paragraphs and paragraphs of sentences, Britain was talking to one of the producers of the set.

“Miss Maori, our financer needs ya!”, the producer calls out to a woman near the stage, sitting with a group of actors, laughing at their own joke before her smile immediately falls at the sight of Britain, standing so casually like he had done no crime against the woman.

She abruptly stands, excusing herself from her friends as she approaches Britain and New Zealand with a surly expression on her face. Her stance looks as if she was prepared to kick Britain in his most sensitive spot, and they come face to face, with Maori’s arms crossed and Britain giving her a casual expression.

“You may be our financer, Peretana”, Maori says in a slow, calculated voice, narrowed eyes trying to see through Britain’s relaxed aura, “but that doesn’t mean I’m bound to respect you.”

“Yes yes, we all know what you think of me”, Britain yawns, “but I am not here for you.”

Maori scoffs, raising a brow, “Oh? Then why call me?”

“Because”, Britain pushes Kiwi into Maori’s view, and her eyes turn to him. He awkwardly smiles and waves at the stunt woman, “this is our son, New Zealand.”

Maori blinks for a moment, taking her time surveying the boy in front of her, of how he can be her son, when all he had are flabby limbs and nothing resembling the woman in front of him, the woman that he was always so keen to solve, the woman that is the half of her heart. She glares at Britain once she is done scrutinizing Kiwi.

“This prepubescent boy isn’t our son”, she spits acidly, “You’re trying to trick me again!”

Britain stares at her, unaffected by her sniping, “He is our son, Maori, believe it or not. And he’s twenty also, believe it or not.”

“He can’t be my son!”, she snarls at Britain, her eyes kindling fire, “He looks nothing like me! Nothing! Nothing! You’re playing me for fools! You think you can fool me once again? No! Never!” 

Kiwi can now see tears forming in her eyes, as her body starts to shake, glaring at Britain with hatred and disgust in her eyes. He swallows his fire against Britain; if he has things to say to the man who claims to be his father, he lets his mother go first. He now has a sudden desire to pull his mother in a hug, hoping that maybe it can calm her down.

So he does, feeling the shock of the older woman, her quivers starting to weaken before they immediately halt, an earthquake stopped by a force that shares her own magnitude. Maori lets out a gasp of surprise, but she returns his embrace, and for the first time in his life, he feels the love of a parent that would cherish, nurture and love him for the rest of his life, something he had wished for when he was little.

Maori break their embrace to cup Kiwi’s cheek, a sad smile on her face, “Ko taku tama… ko koe taku tama.”

“Whaea”, Kiwi chokes out, remembering the words he used to practice to spite his father, “Kei te aroha ahau ki a koe.”

Maori chuckles as the tears come rushing down from her cheeks, “I love you too, Aotearoa.”

They embrace once again, mother and son reunited.

Canada sniffles as he wipes stray tears from his face, obviously quite affected from the story. Kiwi’s face seemed to cloud once again with memories, as America looked quite expressionless but there was something in her eyes. However, Australia was the only one that was not in the mood for this sob story to end, as he had one to tell. He can feel himself shaking, tapping his fingers into the table in a brisk way, eyes darting from left to right, his heart pumping and his voice becoming tangled all of a sudden.

Then his mind screams out to him.

It isn’t fair.

It isn’t fair that Kiwi can see his mom again when he can’t.

It isn’t fair that he can talk to his mother while he is stuck with a picture and a worthless father.

It isn’t fair that he has nothing to question anymore.

It isn’t fair Australia is alive and his mother is-

Australia instantaneously stands up from his chair, perturbing his siblings.

“Aussie?”, America queries, making a motion to stand, “what’s wrong?”

Australia doesn’t answer, only looking straight ahead, at the mirror, and he makes notes of his appearance; ginger hair, freckles that look like stars across the evening sky, dark blue eyes… he trembles, realizing how much he stole from his mother, how she could’ve been alive if he didn’t exist. He gulps, as he turns and runs out the room.

“Australia!”, America calls out, standing up and moving to follow her brother but Kiwi pulls her down, “Kiwi, let me go!”

“Look America”, Kiwi says calmly and professionally, “now isn’t the time for being the hero who comforts the victim; he needs some time to himself after what Britain told him.”

America lets out a breath, “What did Dad tell him?”

Kiwi meets her eyes, serious, stern and slow, “His mother.”

While New Zealand was busily spending time catching up with his dear mother, Australia and Villers were strolling through Britain’s gardens, hand-in-hand, humming tunes to keep each other company. It was a serene scenery, untouched by the war going inside of Australia’s head, as a bullet collides with his skull. One question was swirling around his mind,

What did Britain want to tell him?

Australia lets out a deep breath as he picks a rose from one of the rose bushes, carefully ignoring the thorns because he knows they can penetrate through his skin like a dozen ants trying to bite him. He puts the crimson red rose on Villers’ dark hair, and she blushes profusely, kissing him on the cheek, and he chuckles.

Her legs buckle from underneath her and he acts as her railway, letting her lean into him, strawberry perfume entrancing the man next to her.

“Did I hurt you?”, he asks softy.

“I’m fine”, she replies, “I just didn’t know you had that much pent up frustration last night.”

Australia weakly chuckles, “I’m sorry.”

Villers softly laughs, the sound of the angels from above having a choir in the gardens, the light of the moon shining once more.

Australia kisses her softly, lips on lips, never getting enough of her essence. She sighs a little, closing her eyes as she let him overtake their movements as he presses her up in one of the pillars, slipping his hand from underneath her skirt and undergarments, hearing her gasp once again, her skin growing warm as he steadily enters her with his fingers.

As they were in their moment of passion, they fail to notice a newcomer to the gardens, until he makes his presence known to all.

“Australia, my boy”, the newcomer states, and Australia and Villers squeal in surprise as Australia releases Villers from his grip and exits her, wiping his wet fingers on his shirt, as Villers covers her face with Australia’s discarded coat.

“Dad”, Australia says with a breathy tone, his tone breathy. “What is it?”

“I have something to confess.” There was something in his tone, his tone that sounds quite regretful and remorseful, as if thousands of sins he had kept in a vault are now wishing to be unleashed to thousands. He turns his back to the couple, then glances at Australia again with a saddened look in his eyes, “Come with me, son.”

Australia and Villers share a look, and she nods, supporting him from afar. If she cannot come with him, she shall be in his dreams. He nods towards Britain, and he follows him inside of his home.

“What do you want to tell me, dad?”, he asks, hands on his pockets, trying to break the heavy air around the two of them.

“Your mother”, his father replies, not giving him eye contact. “How we met and how you were born.”

Australia tilts his head, unsure of the fact why Britain thinks ‘how’ he was born was special enough for it to get a segment. He had known one thing and it is that Britain had never liked his appearance ever since his youth. He had always thought he looked more like his mother whenever Britain glared at him with those hateful eyes.

“Who was my mother?”, he asks, staring down at the floors, dreading the answer.

“A lady”, he replies, “a wonderful lady I decided to taint.”

A sense of dread starts to form inside of Australia, “What happened to her?”

“It was my fault, Australia, not hers”, Britain chokes a little, eyes shining with tears, as they stop walking. He was holding Australia’s shoulders now, staggering to meet his height now that he was old and miserable and Australia is not the boy he used to be anymore. He is not afraid of his towering father anymore, since he towers before this miserable man now.

“What did you do?”, Australia hisses softly, clutching his chest as he can feel his heart hammering to be freed from his grasp. “What did you do to her?”

Britain swallows, getting ready to tell a tale that Aussie knows will be full of sorrow and heartache. “She was one of those young ladies down in the streets, believing in the naive concept of true love. I, of course, caught her eye; a strapping young lad strutting through the streets like he owned the place. Truly, she thinks, I am her soulmate.” He meets Australia’s eyes once again, haunted and hollow.

“But there is a consequence to loving me.”

He continues, his heart in these winding speeches, “Yes, we interacted more and more, from small greetings then to conversations, and then we were kissing in the rain like it was nothing and then we were being passionate under the sheets. I had taken advantage of her emotions so easily, that I started to unravel her, no remorse whatsoever. I even planned to marry her! Can you believe that, my boy? I wanted to marry this woman who is unaware of my wrongdoings, who loved me for one layer and that layer only.”

“Of course, I ruined her life one day. Netherlands had me good; she had wounded me in several ways, and wounded me in my heart.”

“Why? What did Netherlands do to you? She’d always had a vendetta against us. And you.”

Britain lets out a shaky breath, looking towards Australia as he did with America: cautious, and all the more critical of her movements. “Because Netherlands was America’s mother.”

“What the fuck?”, America says in the present time, her eyes wild and now clear with translucent tears. “Netherlands… the woman who tried to kill me over and over again… is my mom?” She laughs a little, thinking it would lighten the situation but instead it causes the atmosphere of the entire room to sour. She wipes away the tears on her face (either she got it from crying a while or from forcing herself to laugh). “This has got to be a joke… is it?” She tentatively looks at New Zealand, but his face still hasn’t changed.

America’s plastered smile cracks and falls, as she now realizes that the person who she had hated from the first years of her life was her mother all along. America sits down quietly, biting her lip, as Canada puts a hand on her shoulder to comfort her.

Britain continues, his tone becoming even more regretful as they enter his room. Nothing much has changed the last time they were in there, but it was as if the ghosts of Past, Present and Future had swept around the place like a cyclone, their claws turning the Old to New, the New to Old, the old memories that had evaporated from every crevice of the mind comes to haunt everything. The entire room was made to look like his father’s old room, but there was now a spam of picture frames everywhere, and portraits and documents that Australia knows belongs to the past. Britain walks towards his bed, taking a picture frame from the top of his drawers and offering it to Australia.

Australia stares at the photo, vintage and all, of a woman with ginger hair, her freckles spread against her light skin as she smiles into the photo, her hands clasping a small necklace. She was wearing a white, frilly dress, and a sun hat covering most of her head. Her eyes were as green as the grass Australia used to roll on in his youth, her smile rivalling the light of the sun, and her hair as bright as fire. He gingerly touches the photo once again, feeling the glass of the frame, cold and hard, but he wishes for arms to wrap around him, for sweet words to whisper in his ear, for someone to love him.

In the end, it was just a photo of a woman who might have lived a long time ago, who was once real, but now just a figment of imagination. Just a figment of reality that died out and the only thing left was her presence in records and photos.

“She looks a lot like me…”, Australia mutters to himself, staring at the photo with eyes shining, “I look a lot like her…”

“However, her love for me seemed to fade away, over the years.” Britain’s eyes were on the photo of the woman, brilliant and bright, as if not believing that this joyful woman was one of his loves. “Someone had tried to kill her- I saved her but she was not the same ever since, paranoid and never leaving my side. I have had enough of her fear of the unknown; leaving her in our home unattended to come to work, pulling a gun towards her when she comes close, and incessantly never giving her the attention she needed, in hoping she can ‘cope’ herself. Alas, those were horrible ideas, and she spiralled further into insanity.”

“I threatened to leave her if she doesn’t get her act together, and she pleaded with me to stay, no matter how many awful women I’ve slept with, no matter how many times I insulted her and no matter how much I loathed the idea of being with her. So I gave her one condition: she needs to pay me fees for protection, or I’ll put her head on a pike.”

Australia’s eyes dilate for a moment, shaking his head as his hands shake when he stares back at the woman in the photo, years before someone broke her. Years before Britain broke her and crushed her life and sanity to pieces. She is not real anymore; but perhaps her memory is real. He can feel something within him, a pool of lava waiting to burst, but he waits for the right time, letting Britain drone on with the atrocities he’d done to his mother.

“So she works hard, day and night, to keep me by her side, desperately trying to keep me by her side, forever and ever. I took pleasure in seeing her be tortured to death. So I decided to toy with her even more, making her my slave now and for the rest of her life, as she comes in and out of my room, looking utterly more miserable and empty and haunted every time she closes the door. And then one day she comes to me with panicked eyes, handling her stomach, and she confesses to me that she is pregnant and asks me what she should do. I slapped her hard on the face, shouting at her that it was her own fault she had gotten pregnant. So I made her keep the baby; I made her keep you.”

Now the only thing Australia wants to unleash on Britain was the bile working its way up its throat, no way back, but he gulps it down, feeling acid burn his throat and chest. He keeps quiet, eyes still on the picture of his mother.

“She loved me too much”, Britain shakes his head with a small sigh, putting an arm on Australia’s shoulder but his son slaps it away. If Britain was going to comment, he had nothing to say. “So she had you in a night full of stars, almost covering the entire dark sky. Her screams had delighted me back then… sweet and beautiful and all the more melodious. And then you were born, with your ginger curls and skin dotted with freckles like your mother once had, and I knew I would love you.” Britain smiles a little at the ‘happy’ memory, but there was nothing happy about that. Then just like fire burning all too quickly, his smile fades. “Then the day after you were born, your mother killed herself. It seems that she did not want you.”

A teardrop lands on Australia’s mother’s face, as he himself can feel the overwhelming and overbearing sadness his own mother had felt through the remainder of her years. The lava that was over pouring has been replaced by a dark and stormy cloud enveloping his body. Australia shakes, his eyes shining more with tears and he tries not to blink so he could not release such overwhelming emotion. There were too many spurs of emotion inside him, different types of fire kindling and lighting up to try and out flame the other. His vision blurs, and maybe it was not from the tears but from the fact his reality has now shattered into the darkest of places.

Britain’s eyes shine with tears as well, staring ahead, brimming with shame and the wish to repent what he had done. “Maybe that is why I had hit you and insulted you from the very first years of your life… because you looked too much like her and my guilt cannot bear it.”

A memory clicks inside of Australia; when he had asked his father who his mother was, all giddy and excited since he wanted to tell his classmates of his mother. Instead of giving his son a clear answer, he got a grumble and a slap on the cheek, and he stumbled backwards with his stubby little legs. He had covered the mark where he had been slapped, tears of pain tumbling down his cheeks as he started to cry about how much it hurt. Britain had not shown him pity or compassion, however; he had bellowed at him to shut his trap or he will kick him out of the house for the day. The young boy whimpers as he walks to his room, ignoring his worried siblings.

Australia once again looks at his mother, and he chuckles sadly, clutching it closer to his chest, closing his eyes and imagining that it was his mother who was hugging him, not a wooden frame.

At least he had answers from his mother now.

She never loved him.

If she had lived, she would have treated him the same as how Britain had treated him.

She never cared about him.

If he didn’t exist, she would still be alive.

But at what cost?

Tears start to slide down the man’s cheeks, still clutching the frame tightly as he dances with it, remembering the times he’d dance to the beat, thinking everything he is holding is a mother who supports him, but in reality she had died because he merely existed. The tears stain his shirt, but more and more come to replace his damned sadness, overflowing and trying to keep the volcano from erupting. He was smiling stupidly, chuckling a little- the Past is Present and Present is Past.

He should’ve died inside of her stomach; he should’ve been murdered by his own mother; he should’ve been aborted because that’s what he was: a mistake; he should’ve killed himself when he was faced with the noose he tied, the pills he had bought, the gun touching the side of his head.

But why didn’t he do it?

Because there was hope inside him: that somewhere, he will find his mother, who did not want him to die a gruesome death.

So he kept living for her.

But she ended up dead.

And she never loved her.

So what was the point of existing?

Australia starts to sob, heart-wrenching and nerve racking sobs, crawling to a fetal position, his head on his legs as he screams for his mother, as he sobs at the fact he shouldn’t have existed and that she didn’t deserve her fate.

Britain’s voice did not help him, “My dear son, I vehemently apologize-”

The sorrowful river that keeps overflowing is now replaced by a volcano erupting, as Australia bares his teeth and stands up, glaring at Britain, fists clenched around the picture frame and he screams as he hits his father on the head with the frame with all his might, shattering the glass surrounding the photo. Britain made a pained noise, but Australia was not done yet as he kicks Britain’s chest, and he doubles over in pain. Australia glares at the cowardly man in front of him, as he hits him, again and again; he feels nothing but pain, nothing but the pain of his and his mother combined, as he kicks, punches, and hits Britain, until he is a bloodied mess on the floor. Britain chokes out blood, gasping for air, but Australia did not give him more time to breathe as he kicks this miserable man, again and again.

“Australia! Pour l'amour de Dieu, arrêtez!”, he hears someone shout, but he was now in a vengeful haze, continuing to kick his father (he would not even call him his father) harder and repeatedly.

He then feels strong arms wrap around him, pulling him away from Britain who was barely conscious, and he screams in rage, kicking the man behind him, but his knees did not buckle nor did he seem affected by this pathetic man’s attempts to let him go.

“LET ME GO! I’M NOT DONE WITH HIM!”, Australia screams, squirming under the man’s grip.

“I understand why you’re angry at Britain, filho”, comes Portugal’s unhindered and soft voice, still gripping Australia tightly, “but please, don’t beat o bastardo to death.”

“HE DESERVES DEATH! HE DESERVES TO D I E!” Australia replies, and he breaks free from Portugal’s grasp and runs back towards Britain’s mangled body, eyes brimming with tears, as he tries to hit Britain’s face.

He does not hear skin colliding with bone, but a pained gasp and cry. Australia’s blood runs cold, as he opens his eyes to find Villers massaging her cheek, a look of pain evident on her face as she looks at Australia with a poisonous look.

Immediately, all of Australia’s anger vanishes, as his arms go slack.

The entire room was cold, as the two lovers had a standoff.

“Australia, tu sais que je t’aime”, Villers says softly, calmly, steadily, “Mais tu dois de calmer.”

Australia frantically shakes his head, tears sliding down his cheeks once again. “Non ... crois-moi ... je suis vraiment désolé.”

Villers kisses his forehead, giving him a sense of calm, “C’est d’accord, je t’aime encore.”

Australia lets himself be embraced by the shorter woman, the one who had given him the chance to live, the chance to have love. He was crying, ever so silently, holding Villers’ body, as she sings him a lullaby to help him calm down, to help him remember the times that the sun was their friend and not the enemy that burns them alive. And he wonders what would happen to Villers if he didn’t exist.

He puts his lips on her ear, still streaming down tears, “I wish I didn’t exist.”

Villers whispers back, “If you didn’t exist, I wouldn’t have either.”

Australia was staring into space, but he imagines that the vacant space in front of him was his mother, that there were no walls or floors and the both of them were floating in space, with the galaxies looking down on everything and everyone, especially the both of them. His imaginary mother was staring at him, no words to speak but his inevitable doom. If Australia had just killed himself right then and there, he would’ve asked his mother all the questions in his head.

But he was staying alive, once again.

Not for his mother, the one who didn’t want him in the first place.

But for Villers, and his siblings, who were sitting behind those doors, so to speak.

Australia inhales, exhausted at the fact he was sitting here and doing nothing.

But doing nothing was fine.

“Aussie?”, a voice penetrates through the silent air he had created for himself, and with a hum, he raises his eyes at the figures in front of the door, led by his older sister, who was looking as if she had gone through the five stages of grief with him.

Three pairs of arms wrap around his body, which made him feel warm, like Villers’, but their arms were supporting, filial, familial. He closes his eyes as he cozes into their embrace, thinking to himself how lucky he must be to have them.

“We’re grateful you exist”, Canada says in an ‘older brother’ type of voice, and the others nod.

“Don’t beat yourself up ‘cause our asshole dad told you how you were born”, America replies, “I think all of us here didn’t even want to exist.”

“But here we are”, Kiwi continues, smiling at his older brother then at his siblings, who look peaceful at the fact that they were all mistakes, wrong doings their father had committed against the women in his life. “And we’re here to stay.”

Australia smiles at them, a light feeling in his chest that made him soar higher and higher across the skies, until he is ready to burst and pop to be with the others around him.

-

‘m too tired to put translations screw you this thing’s 12k