#what can i say i love dramatic codependent gays

[cupofearlgreytea]

[tr4nscel]

Just filling these all out right here for August.

Misogyny- maybe not, but he would be good at it! He's too quiet and anxious and stuttery to actually host a TV show but I could see him on some rigged game show.

He had a super cheap acoustic guitar that had a huge hole in it but some of its strings ended up snapping and he gave up on it. He hasn't really touched anything else since.

August was a very random choice that just popped into my head, but it fit nicely. Otherwise a feminine name could work? As a sorta thing of his parent wanted a girl and sorta neglected him. That's almost his lore right now, except for being born in August so instead of him being Jessica or Emma he just got named August.

He's fine with the dark and doesn't really turn on lights most of the time (he's sorta sensitive to brightness). He doesn't have like perfect vision but it's not the worst.

Bad. Very bad. At everything. Terrible around children and just not good at anything- wouldn't be able to keep up with marking and stuff either.

Single father who probably would've fawned over him like a doll if he was a girl- but pretty much neglected him. They don't share any interests and his dad on occasion tries to talk to him or do things, but has learned that it's easier to just give August space.

Sensitive to light, loud noises, rejection, etc. Allergic to cats.

Completely alone, no doubt about it. Refuses to talk to anyone unless they initiate a conversation (and then will proceed to bitch about how people don't talk to him haha). He craves attention but will make no moves to get and tends to make an active effort to stay in his shell. If he does get it, he's not really a huge fan. Very awkward. Huge asshole.

Doesn't talk to (and hates the majority of) people. Small handful of friends with similar interests met on the web.

He doesn't try new things. He hasn't left his room in over a month.

In my mind this event hasn't happened yet but... getting outed as bi is gonna be really hard on him. Largely embarrassing but worse than that. He probably already has pretty severe self-hatred over it once he figures it out himself and since most of his circle is probably also homophobic... yeah.

His best friend is Sage! They are codependent as fuck. August makes enemies with too many people to keep track of.

Is he actually dangerous? Not really, no. But I wouldn't say that he's all bark and no bite either. He looks through 13 year old girls on Tumblr's Carrds and sends them things in their trigger list for fun. In fact, it's a kind of sport between him and Sage.

His eyesight used to be 20/20 and it isn't like... super bad, but all the screen time has definitely made his eyes deteriorate.

Night. It's darker and quieter... and he thinks it's cool to not get enough sleep.

He loves to lie! He is a terrible person!

I guess it depends for who. He would protect one of Sage's secrets hard (given that it wasn't like... him being gay or something LOL haha that's totally not a thing) but otherwise he does not care.

He sorta just freezes up in conflict. He doesn't tend to fight nor fawn. It depends on what- but it's usually flight or freeze. For freeze he spaces out and like... will not get up from his bed for a day.

He's gonna get arrested for assault or hate speech or something.

Awful hygiene. Doesn't change clothes or do laundry or anything really. If he does it's maybe once a month.

He does not want to go anywhere.

Not talking isn't an issue. He can walk quietly if he really wants to but tends not to.

He has insomnia and really struggles to fall asleep, so he kinda stops trying. He just stays up all night on VC or jacking off to eruguro until he's dozing off on the same pillow he jacks off into. That's that!

I wouldn't call him dramatic exactly but Sage can say one word to him in a tone that's a little bit off and his wrists will look like barcodes. He will also complain extensively about things but for a lot he just doesn't care.

He gets sick a lot but it doesn't really affect his schedule or anything. He just stays at home feeling like shit and taking way too many painkillers. 

He doesn't care for fancy clothing. Function over fashion. If it fits and it's comfortable it's fine.

He really despises most transportation. Driving would be ideal but he can't afford a vehicle. Public transport is fine for him if it's not super busy and crowded.

He's usually on time or a little bit late, depending on what it is. Grandpa's birthday party? Who gives a shit. Friends want to have a movie night? Now that's important.

He's low empathy (and I'm not saying it's a bad thing because I'm low empathy as well) but he just doesn't really catch onto or care about others' wellbeing.

He swears a lot. And says slurs he definitely cannot reclaim.

Fucked sense of humour. Thinks showing screamers and jumpscares and real life gore videos to kids is funny.

He acts like he's nice and describes himself as nice but he really isn't. He loves to argue about dumb shit that doesn't matter on the internet!

Listen, he really does think he's a nice dude. He gets that a bunch of people hate his guts but assumes they're always in the wrong.

He hoards things- not super severely but if he sees something especially neat to take home he will never give it up. 

He gets bored a lot but prefers it over actually doing things. He's not quite relaxed (ever) but sometimes he can come close enough.

Ideal night out is not leaving his room! Just talking to Sage for hours. In a normal guy best friend no homo way.

He's really really picky with food and has a couple safe foods he eats for every meal but for most other stuff it doesn't matter.

No energy. He's just constantly exhausted. On the rare occasion he actually gets enough rest he still wakes up as tired as before.

Loses focus quickly- unless he's really invested in it.

Both at once! He deeply hates himself but also thinks that he's better than he is.

40 OC Development Questions

I enjoy making character development questions way too much. These ones have basic and more random ones mixed in, but I tried to make them more in-depth.

Feel free to send in some asks with some numbers! Pick an oc, or I’ll pick randomly. If you reblog, I’ll roll a few dice and shoot some numbers your way, too!

If your oc was to host a TV show, what would it be about? Would your oc be good at it? What sorts of guests would appear?

Can your oc play any instruments? Have they ever wanted to learn how to play any? Why?

If you were to choose another name for your oc, what do you think it would be? Did you choose it for how it sounds or for its meaning?

How does your oc fare in the dark? Are they scared? Do they trip over things really easily or navigate like they have night vision? (Or do they have night vision?)

How well would your oc fare as a teacher? What subject would they be best at teaching? What about the worst?

What was your oc’s relationship with their parents like? If they didn’t have any parents/didn’t know them, who in their life was the closest to a parent to them?

Does your oc have any allergies, intolerances, or other sensitivities? How dangerous is it? Does this affect their daily life in any way?

Does your oc prefer being in a crowd or being completely alone? How many people can be around them before they get uncomfortable?

How easily does your oc make friends? Do they have difficulty talking to new people? Why?

How open is your oc to trying new things? Are they the adventurous sort, or would they rather stay in their comfort zone? Why?

What is the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to your oc?  Do they still feel ashamed for it? Were there any witnesses?

Does your oc have any best friends? Who was/is their closest friend? What about their worst enemy?

How dangerous is your oc? Are they completely innocent, or someone to be feared? Do others know?

What is your oc’s vision like? Do they require glasses, are they completely blind, or do they have 20/20 vision? Does this have an effect on their life?

What is your oc’s favourite time of day? Why is this? Do they have a daily practice during this time?

How often does your oc lie? Why is that? What was the biggest lie they’ve ever told?

How well can your oc keep secrets? Is there a difference between how they handle their own vs someone else’s? To what lengths would they go to keep something hidden?

How does your oc fare in an emergency situation? Do they panic, do they freeze, do they take charge?

If your oc were to be arrested for something, what would it be for? For being too kind, for a legitimate crime?

What is your oc’s personal hygiene like? Is it important to them? What is their daily routine for this like?

Are there any public events your oc would love to go to? Concerts, plays, movies, parties, etc? What about ones that they would hate? Why?

How quiet or loud is your oc? Are they easily capable of sneaking around without being heard, or do they feel it’s impossible to stop talking?

How difficult is it for your oc to get to sleep? Do they fall asleep the moment they hit the pillow, or do they have insomnia? Any reason why?

How dramatic is your oc? Do they make a big deal over every little thing, or do they fail to react to even the most crazy of events?

How does your oc handle being sick? Do they pretend not to be? Do they complain a lot? How susceptible to getting sick are they?

How stylistically fancy is your oc? Or would they rather go for comfort and plainness instead?

What’s your oc’s preferred mode of transportation? Walking, vehicle, (or in a sci-fi/magic setting) teleportation?

Is your oc always late, always early, or always right on time? Is there any reason for this?

How empathetic is your oc? Or are they closer to being a sociopath? Any reason why?

How much does your oc swear? Or do they keep completely clean? Why is this? Is there any situation where they would be the opposite?

What is your oc’s sense of humour like? What do they find funny? Do they try to be funny? Are they actually?

Is your oc a pacifist, or someone who picks fights? Why? In what situations would they be the opposite?

How does your oc’s own perception of themselves compare to how other people see them? Is your oc aware that other people see them differently (if it’s different)?

How easily does your oc throw something away? As soon as something is through with its usefulness, or are they more like a hoarder? Is there a reason?

Is your oc a workaholic, or do they find it hard to be busy at all? Do they find it easy to relax, or must they have something to do at all times? Why?

What is your oc’s ideal night out like? Or would they rather spend it at home?

How picky is your oc? Will they not accept something because of the smallest details being off, or do they not care in the slightest? Why?

How energetic is your oc? Do they have trouble sitting still or do they feel low on juice all the time? Any reason why?

Is it difficult for your oc to focus, or do they have no trouble being in the moment? Do they daydream or zone out?

How humble is your oc? Or are they closer to royal in their self-perception? Why? Is this obvious to others?

[luci-cunt]

Hannigram??? Works???

aka: Hannibal and Will’s relationship isn’t healthy but at the end of the series its sort of has the potential to be? Or: a very long and rambly analysis of idiot gay cannibals and the power of equal standing in relationships

(1.5k words because I murder brevity with my teeth)

Trigger/ Spoiler warning for: Hannibal

-------------------

Ok I said they have the potential to be healthy and not that they are healthy because--lol, they’re not. 

In the first season they’re “friends” but Hannibal’s also gaslighting the hell out of Will/ keeping a life threatening disease diagnosis from him/ framing him for murder/ shoving their daughters ear down his throat.

In the second season they’re almost enemies? but not really? Because Will is just as fucked up as Hannibal is so he doesn’t actually consider Hannibal to be his enemy, he just realizes he has Hannibal twisted around his finger and starts jerking the fucker around and it takes Hannibal all the way up to the finale to realize he’s not the one in control anymore.

In the third season they’re struggling because they don’t know how to be equals, they’re both fucked up and don’t know how to have normal, stable relationships so they’re jsut kind of feeling in the dark, falling back on old habits (eating your problems, murdering your problems, running away from your problems, etc) when things get uncomfortable. It’s--again--not until the season finale that they both realize that’s what they’re BOTH doing and find a comfort in realizing they’re both trying, but not succeeding.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Hannibal finds people interesting he “fosters codependency” so they cannot leave him (Abigail with the Boyle murder cover-up, Bedelia with getting eaten, Will with literally all the first season). Meanwhile Will just doesn’t do close relationships. Alana is the only person he considers to be his friend but she’s constantly fighting to keep that title, same with Beverly actually. Will himself doesn’t put any effort into keeping those friendships, he leaves it entirely up to them.

But Hannibal and Will’s bond forms so easily that it surprises both of them--and then when Hannibal defaults to his need to make Will dependent on him so he can’t leave, Will defaults to his rejection of dependency and points out that’s what Hannibal’s doing but also goes along with it because he finds himself almost wanting to be closer to the man.

This--the fact that Hannibal’s attempt at closeness is recognized and accepted, and that Will is allowing himself to be open with someone--is new to both of them. Equally.

(By the way this is in the form of Abigail, Hannibal fosters codependency by putting the responsibility of Abigail on both his and Will’s shoulders and Will allows this by recognizing it, pointing it out [”You’re fostering codependency doctor.”], and then still allowing it [going along with the Boyle cover up].)

Just--ok think about Dolce. (The ep where they reunite in the third season and Will tries to kill Hannibal only to get shot by Chiyoh and then for Hannibal to decide he’s going to eat Will’s brain before the Italian’s show up and kidnap them both.)

Will finding Hannibal is big for both of them: because it means that Will looked for Hannibal--actively sought him out by reflecting on past conversations they’ve had--and it also means that Hannibal was where Will could find him. It’s a shaky apology on both sides because they aren’t willing to actually apologize for any of their actions but they recognize the pain they’ve caused on another.

However, Will tries to murder Hannibal because he doesn’t know what he’s doing. I mean--he does--what I mean is that this relationship is such unexplored territory for both of them that it’s uncomfortable at first, and Will doesn’t trust Hannibal to be waiting on the other side while he stumbles thru the dark rn, so he falls back on old habits and tries murdering the problem.

Hannibal tries to eat Will’s brain because he’s also falling back on old habits (eating his problems) because he’s also uncomfortable with the new territory. He’s just more open to fumbling, but he’s hypersensitive to rejection (Mizumono, Dolce, getting himself arrested when Will tells him to get gone, that “Was it good to see me Will?” scene, etc.), and he takes Will’s stabbing attempt as rejection. At least until he drags him away and they have their “you forgive like god does Will--would you have made it quick? Or would you have stopped to gloat?” “Does god gloat?” “Often.” Conversation, and he realizes he’s not being rejected BUT he reminded that he’s still terrified OF the rejection so--boop eat the man.

(Oh also Will running away from the problem by letting Hannibal kill him--which, yes, is what was happening. He could have warned Jack that Hannibal was under the table as SOON as Jack came in the door but instead he waits until the last possible second. Also you can’t blame it on the drugs either if he can complain about Hannibal’s soup and keep up with this idiots waxing poetic ramblings he can tell that Jack came in. Also also also: Hannibal told him Jack was coming and also got under the table literally there was no reason for Will to NOT call out to Jack when he came in except that he didn’t want Jack to stop Hannibal.)

I guess what I’m trying to say is that in season one the power balance is in Hannibal’s court--and season two it’s in Will’s--and then in season three it’s wildly rocking back and forth between both of them before someone hits a metaphorical pause button--aka the “this is all I’ve ever wanted for you--for us.” “It’s beautiful.” scene.

Fundamentally I think this show is about Hannibal and Will’s relationship. The cliff scene is as much an ending as it is a beginning. That “it’s beautiful” exchange is both of them realizing they’re EQUALLY having trouble finding footing in their relationship, they’re realizing they’re BOTH uncomfortable to a certain degree with the new territory and that it’s just that for both of them--new territory.

Idk, you know when you’re taking a test and you have no idea what the answer to some question is so you’re slyly trying to look around to figure out if you’re the only one being stupid or if it’s just a hard test? And you don’t see anyone else looking around so you just miserably try your best but it’s not your best becasue you’re already in the mindset that you’re an idiot? And it’s not until after the test at lunch when you hear everyone else talking about how difficult it was that you realize you weren’t the only one struggling?

THATS this.

Hannibal and Will are both extremely lonely people becasue they’re fucked up. No one can know Hannibal entirely because he’s a serial cannibal, and no one can know Will entirely because his boredom with other peoples mortality scares them. Neither of them have been seen entirely until the other came into their lives, but they’re not used to being seen so it’s scary.

Both of them react to one another hostilely first--Will blatantly being an asshole at the prospect of Hannibal psychoanalyzing him and then Hannibal putting on this guise of “I’m completely removed from the situation and just curious to wind this man up and watch him go” but he’s not removed.

Honestly to me it feels like it was originally Hannibal’s plan to just leave Will in jail taking the blame for his murders, but actually misses Will, because being seen was scary but the other option is so lonely.

Will’s going through something similar, but he’s less inflammatory. Hannibal is all action, present--Will is getting too close? Get rid of him. He starts missing Will? Get him back. He has a problem and he acts on it immediately.

Will is patient and willing to wait and watch--Hannibal frames him for murder? Set up an elaborate series of events that will end in Hannibal losing something he holds more dear than his own life--his freedom. Mason kills his unborn child? Convince Mason to kill Hannibal so that Hannibal will torture Mason for Will.

Hannibal is dramatic and Will is apathetic, they’re both danger but different brands.

If the first two seasons are them trading power, then the third is them wildly grabbing for it despite the fact that they don’t want power over one another, and that final episode--that final scene--is them realizing this.

I said it was a beginning as much as an ending because it’s now that their relationship can finally actually advance, but it’s also the conclusion of them working separately, and instead embracing the idea of fumbling together.

I honestly don’t know where people get the idea that the show is about Hannibal “corrupting” Will. If that’s the case then this final episode makes this show a tragedy. Good succumbing to evil.

But--motherfuckers its not!!!

Will isn’t good, he tells us from the first episode he enjoyed killing Hobbes, that the reason he stopped being a cop was because he knew once he started killing he wouldn’t be able to stop. He manipulates people constantly, he got Abel killed, tried to get Chilton murdered, and then a season later he gets Chilton burned alive. He’s not good, he’s fucked up!!!

This show isn’t about corruption--it’s about realization!!!

Idk I love them, I hate them, and I love them.

[lopithecusfanfiction]

We All Wear Masks Sometimes

Author: Lopithecus Pairing: Hatake Kakashi/Maito Gai | Might Guy Rating: General Audiences Word Count: 1674 Alternate: AO3 Summary: Kakashi comforts Gai after Lee gets injured during the Chunin exams Warnings: N/A Author's Note: This is for day 6 of KakaGai Week 2020 ( @kkgweek ).  I have a feeling a lot of the fics/art that are going to use this prompt are going to be Kakashi focused. So, I decided to do the opposite. This is set just after the preliminary round during the Chunin Exams. Also, it’s not made explicitly clear that Kakashi and Gai are together, but it is implied that they are. Please enjoy! Prompt: Day 6 - Mask

Gai has a habit of pretending to be okay for everyone else's sake even if he's not. He'll smile and laugh, say something with poetic prose, and then throw out a thumbs-up with a hand on his hip. Sure, on good days he actually is like that, Gai's personality having been molded very carefully and lovingly by his father, but Gai's father could only do so much. Kakashi knows this.

Sometimes Kakashi thinks he's the only one to know this about Gai.

On days that are hard, the really bad days that all shinobi get no matter how cheerful and optimistic one can be, Gai amplifies the theatrics to one hundred. No one really notices, no one besides Kakashi, because Gai never lets anyone get close enough to him to show his real personality. Sure, the man is close to his friends, closer still to his students, but he can't act weak around them. He can't let his friends' teasing bother him and he has to be the perfect role model for his students.

With Kakashi, it's different.

Maybe that is what happens when you grow up fighting a war together and lose everyone you love? You tend to latch onto the one that never left. You hold onto them like they are your lifeline and if that line were to ever get cut then you would drown.

Or maybe Kakashi is just being overly dramatic and it has nothing to do with that. Maybe it's just a testament of how long they have been friends that allows the two to be open with each other and no one else. Kakashi has never been great at interpreting attachments and he's the last person to try to make it into a healthy conclusion in his mind.

He's always been a little bit codependent on the people he's cared about.

Gai especially. 

Maybe that's why, before he goes to fetch Sasuke from the hospital to begin his training, he sets out trying to find Gai. He checks the training grounds first and finds Tenten and Neji there. Tenten is helping Neji train but Gai is nowhere in sight. Not surprising, considering where Lee is currently and in hindsight, Kakashi probably should have checked there first.

Still, just so he doesn't make a wasted trip to the hospital, he steps out of the bushes and makes his presence known to the Genin. "Yo."

They both turn to him. It's the first time Kakashi has actually interacted with Gai's students in the year that he's had them. It's shocking, really, considering how much Gai loves to challenge him. Although, Gai hadn't interacted with Kakashi's students until the beginning of the Chunin Exams either. It almost makes him want to laugh and he's kind of sorry he missed that introduction. He would have loved to have seen the little brats' faces at meeting Maito Gai.

"Kakashi-sensei!" Tenten greets him eagerly, pink coloring her cheeks, while Neji doesn't acknowledge him at all. He's not surprised they know his name. Maybe the Hyūga is mad at him for stopping him from killing that Hinata girl?

"Is Gai at the hospital?" he asks, getting straight to the point. He doesn't have all day. Sasuke is waiting for him.

"Oh, yeah! You just missed him," Tenten tells him, her smile disappearing. "He's visiting Lee but said he'd be back soon if you want to wait."

It's just like Gai to divide up his time between his students despite his overwhelming worry about Lee. Kakashi waves the invitation off. "I'll go see him there. Thanks."

Tenten slumps in disappointment and Neji crosses his arms, turning away. He waves goodbye at them anyway. He doesn't need them complaining to Gai about his behavior and then Gai giving Kakashi a huge speech about treating young Genins with more respect.

He doesn't go into the hospital once he's there. He'll be back to get Sasuke and going into the building one time is one too many in Kakashi's mind. So, he waits outside, flaring his chakra a little to let Gai know he's there. He doesn't expect Gai to come out and greet him right away and about five minutes later, he is exiting the building with a wide smile.

Kakashi can already tell it's fake.

"Kakashi! My dearest Rival, what do I owe this pleasure?" Gai strolls up to him, arms out in a gesture to hug Kakashi. Kakashi lets him, wrapping his own arms around Gai's solid frame. He has a feeling Gai needs this comfort right now.

When they separate, Kakashi gestures with his head. "Take a walk with me."

Gai's smile twitches, threatening to fall but Gai has always been a master at forcing himself to smile through everything. It stays steady on his face. "Very well."

They walk in silence and they eventually make it to outside a hot spring. Kakashi leans down on the railing of a bridge, staring at the water beneath them. It reminds him that Naruto is probably searching for him this very second to train him and a pang of guilt clutches at Kakashi's chest. He does wish he could train both him and Sasuke. They both have very different skill sets, however, and if Sasuke is going to be going up against that sand jutsu, then Kakashi needs to focus on Sasuke at the moment. He'll have to get someone else to train Naruto and, although the thought to ask Gai to do it does cross his mind, Gai has too much on his plate right now. Plus, Naruto is going up against Neji. It might be a bit of a conflict of interest.

So, instead, he settles on someone else. "Is Ebisu available?"

Gai walks up beside him and leans his arms down onto the railing, much like how Kakashi is right now. "I believe so, yes. Why?"

"I was thinking of asking him to train Naruto before the final competitions in the Chunin Exams," he says.

Gai looks out into the water. "I think that would be a great idea. Ebisu is very capable. I can ask him if you want?"

Kakashi shakes his head. "Just have him meet me at the hospital. I have to pick up Sasuke."

Gai perks up at that. "Has Sasuke fully recovered?"

Kakashi picks his words carefully, thinking about Lee. "More or less."

Gai narrows his eyes at him, suspicion playing on his face. "You don't have to be gentle with me."

"And you don't need to pretend with me." Gai stares at him and Kakashi pokes him in the cheek. "Let yourself feel things."

Gai scoffs, goodnaturedly. "Says the man who is the master at suppressed emotions."

"I think we both are pretty good experts at it, wouldn't you say Gai-kun?" Gai scowls at the honorific. It's not very often Kakashi uses it. It's mostly to try and lighten the mood a bit. It doesn't seem to work. "Gai, what I said during the preliminaries about the gates…" He trails off, biting his bottom lip. He sighs and wonders if he sounds a bit hypocritical. He’s never been a fan of the gates for obvious reasons, after all. "I meant what I said afterward. I was out of line."

Gai shakes his head. "No." Kakashi furrows his brows in confusion. "You were right. I should have never taught Lee it. He's too young."

Kakashi frowns and reaches up to place a comforting hand on Gai's back. "You were even younger when your father started teaching you how to open the gates."

Gai huffs and pulls away from Kakashi. "And maybe he was wrong, too."

"Gai…"

"He died because he used the gates and… and I'm not condemning him for it. He used them to protect something precious to him, to protect me, and that is something to be proud of. But maybe… maybe I was too young, too?" Gai bows his head. "Maybe he should have never taught me it… because now Lee has almost died from using the gates."

"Gai," Kakashi pulls him closer so that their sides are pressed together. "That wasn't your doing. It was that kid from the Sand. He is the one who almost killed Lee."

"Lee would have given up sooner if he didn't have the gates."

"No, he wouldn't have." Gai looks up then, surprise written all over his face. "Gai, that child, is exactly like you when you were his age. You wouldn't have given up, would you?" Gai shakes his head. "Exactly. So gates or no gates, there is no doubt in my mind that Lee would have fought with everything he had and would have never given up."

"So, then you're saying it's a character flaw?"

Kakashi chuckles with exasperation, laying his forehead down onto Gai's shoulder. "No, I'm saying it's admirable." He lifts his head to look Gai in the eyes. "Stupid sometimes but admirable."

It gets Gai to laugh, a real laugh, and Kakashi's heart warms at the sound. He pulls him a little closer, carding his fingers into Gai's hair. He ruffles the strands, messing up the bowl cut and Gai tries to pull away in complaint. "Kakashi!"

Kakashi lets him escape and watches as Gai tries to smooth his hair back down with his lips set in a pout the whole time. It's adorable and he's glad he's managed to make Gai feel a little better. He's not very good at it most times but when he succeeds it makes him happy. Especially if it's Gai.

"Gai." Gai stops his ministrations on his hair, looking up at Kakashi. He's much more relaxed now, genuine seeming. "Lee will be okay. He's stubborn like you. Nothing will keep him down."

Gai stares at him for a few seconds, thinking, before a real smile breaks out on his face and he sticks out a thumbs-up in Kakashi's direction. "Most definitely, Rival!"

Kakashi chuckles again and, with an amused shake of his head, he throws an arm around Gai's shoulders, walking back to the hospital with him.

—————————————————————————————————

A/N: Don't worry. I didn't forget about the fact that Gai needs to have Ebisu come to the hospital. I just didn't write it in. What I imagine happening is, once back at the hospital, Gai uses a messenger turtle to instruct Ebisu to get to the hospital. It probably scares the shit out of Ebisu at first, thinking something bad might have happened to Gai until he gets there and Kakashi explains everything to him. He is not amused. XD

Thank you for reading!

[yurimother]

LGBTQ Manga Series Review - Kiss and White Lily for My Dearest Girl

The tenth and final volume of Kiss and White Lily for My Dearest Girl is finally out in English, and honestly, I expected this moment to feel more climatic. This long-running series debuted in 2013 and quickly became one of the most consistently popular Yuri works in the current era. However, perhaps because of its relative longevity, it always felt like the background; The consistently safe and trope-filled home I could return to after exploring new and exciting Yuri works. There is often something comforting about home, and many of the cute kisses and relationships featured are joyful and entertaining.

Kiss and White Lily for My Dearest Girl is a Yuri manga series by Canno. It follows numerous couples at Seiran Academy, a fictional middle and high school with a sister university. The common themes and tropes of the Yuri genre riddle the work. Some are seen in individual couple’s stories, while others, such as the all-girls school, style of uniforms, and repeated girl meets girl then love narrative. While these tropes are by no means a negative, being a fan of this genre would be impossible if they were, they are such old hat for Yurijin that they become dull, and Kiss and White Lily does little to forward or subvert them. In this way, the series feels like a showcase of the genre, a series I can thrust at people and say, “you want to learn about Yuri? Then read this” (an honor I usually reserve for Whispered Words). In short, the series is enjoyable but tiring and predictable.

Before I get into the spoiler-filled breakdown of each couple, there are a few overarching elements to note. It is achingly sweet, not in a heartwarming way, but an “I just a bit down on cake and have a cavity” way. Nothing in the first few volumes has any real consequence or impact; it is just cute and stupid. Now I like cute and stupid, but it has to be fun and enjoyable to read, and at first, this is not. Many characters lack chemistry, and often, the drama is caused by their own nonsensical choices rather than from the complications that come with relationships or friendships. If I do not like these characters together, I do not want to see them hugging and kissing and being cute.

You may have noticed that I spoke of how I enjoyed the series but then went on a rant about how weak the plot is. Fortunately, as the series goes on, the writing improves drastically. Characters who are in or are moving towards relationships, mostly, have compatible traits, and with stakes grounded in some form of reality. The What’s Behind the Story!? Sections, single pages devoted to the perspectives of random other characters and couples, are another welcome addition. Here, the lack of consequence or chemistry works, as each is given only a few moments to give a one-liner or snapshot of service. 

The artwork in Kiss and White Lily suffers from a similar problem as the plot. It is too adorable for the sake of being adorable. Kurosawa reacts with a huge smile and sudden anthropomorphic ears far too often in the early volumes. There are other inconsistencies also, mainly in tone. For example, in the first volume, there is a moment where one character is being introspective and dramatic, when suddenly, in a moment of metaphoric imagery, another is holding a gun to her head. This scene is awkward and unnecessary. No other moment uses such visual tricks to illustrate emotional conflict, and it is completely removed from the rest of the work. Finally, the artwork is cluttered. Almost every panel has so much crammed into it feels overwhelming.

However, just as the problems with art and story are similar, so are the solutions, time. As Canno continues, the art drastically improves. It takes on a more consistent tone, relies less on visual tricks, and quickly becomes one of the series’ highlights. Seeing the characters be gentle and affectionate will put a smile on all but the most begrudged reader’s face, especially with the more likable characters. Canno also makes frequent use of beautiful double-page spreads, many of which I have bookmarked so I can refer to them when I need a smile.

Now that I have gotten those points out of the way, I can get down into the meat of Kiss and White Lily for My Dearest Girl, the couples. There is an explosive plethora of pairings in this series, and I love it. Each feels unique, has a compelling story (mostly), and a satisfying conclusion. Every reader will easily find their favorites or see their own life reflected in one of these cute couples.

Ayaka Shiramine and Yurine Kurosawa are the principal couple of Kiss and White Lily, and their courtship spans all ten volumes. Unfortunately, they start out as one of the weaker couples in the story. Shiramine is the model student, working hard, helping out at the school, and getting high grades. However, she is consistently ranked second in all tests (teacher’s side note here, publicly posting student’s grades has been shown in research to be horrible for student achievement by multiple studies) behind Kurosawa. However, unlike Shiramine, Kurosawa does not try at all; she usually sleeps through class and does not participate in school activities, and succeeds only by her “genius.” Kurosawa’s effortless achievements anger Shiramine, and she confronts her about it. However, Kurosawa is pleased by the notion of Shiramine beating her and begins to aggressively pursue a relationship (the aggressive gay woman is the worst trope. Consent and enthusiasm are a central part of romance).

In what seems to be a running theme for this series, Shiramine and Kurosawa’s relationships improve as the books go on. First, Shiramine becomes less of a stereotypical tsundere character, as her motivation for being the best is revealed, a cold and frankly awful mother who scoffs at her daughter’s achievements. Likewise, Kurosawa, who starts incredibly inconsistent, moving from peppy to cruel to bored within the span of a few pages, settles down into a more calm character, with her enthusiastic love for Shiramine intact.

The beginning of their romance was weak, mainly due to their personalities and lack of chemistry, but the end conclusion was incredibly satisfying. Kurosawa realizes that she came to love Shiramine because she thought the perfect student could beat her and make her a normal girl, not a genius. However, in the end, she realizes that it was not their grades, but the ways Shiramine drew her out of her shell and THE FRIENDS SHE MADE ALONG THE WAY that made her a better person. Shiramine changes too, becoming more courageous and finally standing up to her horrid mother, thus breaking the spell the woman had over her and freeing Shiramine of her burdens.

In the final volume, Shiramine realizes that she likes being with Kurosawa and that their rivalry was her favorite part of the school. These feelings are all admitted in a fantastic speech she gives to the incoming students. I was smiling throughout the whole second half of Volume 10 as their relationships reached its inevitable conclusion, and for that, I offer praise.

Mizuki Senoo is the star of the track team where Moe Nikaidou, her longtime friend, is the manager. These two are one of my favorite couples, but they also have the most problems of any. Both girls are entirely captivated by and devoted to each other, so much so that they become codependent. However, the way they address this codependency is horrible. Moe suddenly stops talking to Mizuki, which severely distresses the athlete and leads to poorly written angst. There is no logic, only nonsense choices made for the sake of plot. Of course, they resolve the issue, everything is happy and pleasant, and they decide to be together forever. And then (and this is my favorite part) they graduate and go to university and live together! This action is perhaps the one time that Kiss and White Lily manages to forgo the conventions of the genre and begins to approach queer representation. Mizuki and Moa are no longer bound by the walls of the high school, the confines of Catholic school style uniforms, the tropes of Yuri, but they are free adults who love each other and are together. It is a perfect ending, which does not excuse the atrocious middle. 

Volume 2 introduces to Chiharu Kusakabe and her roommates Maya Hoshino and Ai Uehara. These three are close and live together perfectly. However, as Maya is older than Ai and Chiharu, she will be graduating soon and leaving them behind. Chiharu struggles with her conflicted feelings for her senpai, with whom she has fallen in love. On the one hand, Chiharu wants Maya to be happy and go to a good university; on the other, she selfishly wants her to stay close. Chiharu begins to close herself off, but then she meets the stubborn (idiot) Izumi Akizuki.

The two girls start a sort of reluctant friendship, where Chiharu waits outside the school each morning to chastise Izumi for riding her bike, which is against school rules. However, Izumi does not stop riding her bike, and Chiharu never reports her. They grow closer, and Izumi helps Chiharu reconcile her relationship with Maya. Eventually, they start dating. It is all cute and wholesome. As these two get together early in the series, the reader has lots of time to enjoy them being together as they appear frequently. The conflicts in their relationships are grounded in reality, and working through them together has a clear positive effect on the character. The only complaint I have is that after they start dating, they mostly keep it a secret for no reason.

Towako Mita and Yukina Ooshiro are one of the worst couples in the manga. They are the only members of the gardening club, although they eventually recruit Kurosawa. As the club is so small, it is always on the edge of dismantlement, as the student council wants to move resources elsewhere. While Ooshiro works to save it, Towako is actively working behind her back to end the club. Her reasoning, she does not want things to change. That’s it, full stop, it is complete nonsense. Of course, they make up and decide to be together with an equally illogical apology. If characters are going to hurt others and then be forgiven there must be effort, reason, and care put into them, traits all lacking in this story. It is all awful.

The fourth volume is a mix: containing some of the series best moments and its worst, by which I mean, most boring. Moe and Mizuki’s romance reaches the spectacular crescendo previously referenced. But, half the volume is spent depicting Kaoru Machida, Kohagi Inoue, and Momiji Shikama. The relationship between these three is focused more on friendship than sexual or romantic desire (cough cough S). Actually, I do not mind this at all, but they. Are. So. Boring. I honestly forgot they existed in the first draft of this review and had to reread Volume 4 to remind myself of them. The fact that I am writing about this process instead of the actual characters says a lot about their lack of appeal.

Sawa Itoh and Itsuki Nishikawa are equally forgettable. They are easily the most mundane romantic couple in the series. The two knew each other long ago, but Sawa forgot about their friendship, much to Itsuki’s disappointment. However, they bond again as high school students and vow to make up for the lost time. Their story ends with Itsuki confessing her feelings for Sawa. Sawa returns those feelings in kind FIVE VOLUMES LATER. That is far too long to wait for a dull ending. NEXT!

Ryou Hiramu, Nina Yuunagi, and Amane Asakura make up Kiss and White Lily’s only three-person relationships and is one of the best. Polyamory is not everyone’s cup of tea. Still, in the context of fiction, their relationship works well and develops excitingly, complete with a healthy dose of melodrama. Hiramu begins to grow close to Asakura, much to the anger of Asakura’s roommate Yuunagi. Yuunagi wants Asakura all to herself, a point made abundantly clear to Hiramu. However, things get more complicated when Hiramu realizes that Yuunagi is an online friend of hers.

Yuunagi feels incredibly lonely, and her only real friend is Asakura. But, when Hiramu shows her kindness, Yuunagi begins to fall for Hiramu. Yuunagi feels incredible guilt over this, swearing that she should only need Amane and not wanting to compete for Hiramu’s affection. Their tale ends when a distraught Yuunagi runs away before being confronted by Hiramu and Asakura. There, in a tearful confession, she released her jealousy, her guilt, and her confusion. Despite being overblown, it is one of the most relatable and truthful emotional moments in the manga. The solution, Yuunagi does not have to choose; she can have more loves. It is a mature answer that, while not ideal for most, makes sense here and is healthy for all the characters.

The next volume focuses on Haine Aoi and her close in age aunt Aika Yukimura (who is more like her sister). Before anyone breaks out the pitchforks or plants this volume next to Citrus on their bookshelf, the relationship is not sexual. This intention is explicitly shown in a scene where Aika contemplates kissing her sleeping niece (creepy) but decides against it, saying, “I don’t actually want to kiss her.” This moment deliberately and awkwardly setting the parameters of their relationships as not sexual. However, there are clear romantic implications. As the two struggle with the idea of drifting apart as most “sisters” do, they decide that this will not happen to them, and they will only grow stronger together. Ultimately, they declared themselves to be soulmates, albeit platonic ones.

This relationship is the most divisive of the series. There will be some, such as myself, who can acknowledge the apparent class s ties and the familial relationship yet can still enjoy the wholesome and grounded story. However, many others will understandably have difficulty overlooking these aspects of the narrative. I invite readers to give this volume a look and decide for themselves. Even if it turns out that Haine and Aika’s storyline is not for you, Shiramine and Kurosawa are at their best here and will save the volume for you. However, whether or not you like this couple, can we all agree that the decision to feature a major story act about a piano player (Haine) and NOT include a piano duet is INSANE!! Canno is not at all coy with Yuri tropes in this series, and this exclusion will not stand!

Nagisa Tatsumi and Hikari Torayama are rivals, opponents in the student council president election, and secretly roommates. The two live together by necessity, with their adorable kitten. Neither one can stand the other. However, when given the opportunity to separate, they decide they would prefer to continue living together. There is not much here. Even though one is labeled as “nice” and the other “mean,” Nagisa and Hikari have the same personality. The other “tsundere” type character in Kiss and White Lily, Shiramine, works because she is given time to grow and develop as a complicated character and because she is paired with someone different than here. Unfortunately, aside from some cute trope-filled moments like an accidental kiss, these two are insignificant. But. perhaps I am too hard on them, as I am conditioned to expect Yuri featuring characters named Nagisa and Hikari to be far more dramatic, grandiose, and interesting

Asuka Sakurada and Mikaze Hagimoto are the final couple introduced, as the next and final volume is only concerned with wrapping up previously established relationships. A shame, as they are the single most problematic and dysfunctional couple presented. Sakurada and Hagimoto are both cosplayers, which is how they meet, and the younger Hagimoto quickly asks Sakurada out. Sakurada is awful. She is cruel, detached, and rude to almost everyone. After an injury forced her to repeat her final year at Seiran Academy, causing her to be somewhat jaded, to say the least. What little the reader sees of their romance, which last all of a dozen pages, is appalling. Sakurada is mean and unaffectionate, and Hagimoto attempts to force her into activities she does not want to do. They break up quickly, and the rest of the volume plays out like a tragic love story, as Hagimoto pines for her senpai, and Sakurada says dramatic lines about how she “can never go back.” Of course, by the end, they have made up and are together again.

Not only are we giving this vile relationship, but excellent moments of emotional distress are wasted on them. For example, Hagimoto delivers a tearful and moving speech on a train platform. There is also a rare moment of clarity from Hagimoto, where she realizes that she did nothing to make the relationship work, followed by an admittance from Hagimoto that she just wanted to be more like Sakurada. Now, characters realizing their mistakes and faults to move forward and become better, as individuals and a couple is incredible; however, there needs to be a solid foundation. The unfortunate truth is that such tragic and dramatic relationships take time and investment. The reader needs to want to see these characters get better and make up, something notably lacking here. This awful partnership tarnishes the beautiful scenes present.

Fortunately, Volume 9 is not a total loss, far from it. Shiramine and Kurosawa complete their personal arcs described previously in this review, thus clearing the way for Volume 10 to finally have them get together, perform a quick survey of the other characters, and tie up any dangling story threads in a bow covered with cute kisses and gentle service.

Kiss and White Lily for My Dearest Girl is an incredibly mixed bag of a series. It gives a wide variety of couples and tropes for the reader to enjoy, but many of the relationships suffer significantly from weak characters or uninteresting storylines. Its mediocre start does not help the series. Early outings are noticeably lacking in all categories from plot to artwork, which provides a difficult barrier for entry. However, there is a lot to love here. It is a spectacular showcase of Yuri and an absolute classic of the genre’s current era. Kiss and White Lily is THE YURI MANGA, a title that bears both the great and terrible of the genre.

This series concluding publication feels appropriate for the genre’s centennial. The tropes it features, which have paraded the genre for the past hundred years, will not go away. But, the conclusion of Kiss and White Lily feels, at least for the moment, like their last hurrah before stepping back to let a new century’s worth of newer and queerer works make their mark in the genre.

Ratings: Story – 6 Characters – 4 Art – 7 LGBTQ – 8 Sexual Content – 2 Final – 5

Kiss and White Lily for My Dearest Girl, Vol. 10 review copy provided by Yen Press ( @yenpress​ )

You can get the series digitally and in print today: Kiss and White Lily for My Dearest Girl, Vol. 10 - https://amzn.to/34k8sAj

[nellie-elizabeth]

Supernatural: Carry On (15x20)

Oh my god. Lol. So... did Andrew Dabb forget to read back through his finale script one final time before deciding it was finished? Because like... Dean says "if we don't keep living, all that sacrifice (Cas and Jack) will be for nothing." Cut to a comically short time later, where Dean dies and is just like "time to go, let's not keep fighting, I'm tired lol."

Like WHAT did I just witness. I'm so grateful, in this moment, to a little show called The Magicians, because in April of 2019 they ended their fourth season with such an egregiously terrible decision that I literally couldn't sleep for a week, I was shaking and intermittently sobbing, I had never felt so betrayed and devastated over any piece of media before. After that, I've sort of become numb to bad endings, and this is no exception. This episode was absolutely terrible and I'm just sort of like... meh. I'll ignore it. Whatever.

I do want to forego the usual "pro" and "con" sections in this review, and do a more traditional full-on ramble about my thoughts, because they're kind of convoluted, if I'm gonna be honest.

The first thing I want to say, is that this wasn't the worst finale I've ever seen. Objectively, it was a terrible episode of TV and an insulting wrap-up to a fifteen-year-show. But I have a very specific category for the worst finales ever, and those are the ones that provide endgame states for the characters that are... unfixable in a post-canon but still-canon-compliant world. So, for example, the How I Met Your Mother finale killed off the titular mother and betrayed years of buildup, and that's a real-world sitcom. There's no resurrecting people from that shit. Or like. Game of Thrones being an obvious recent example. The Rise of Skywalker is a good movie example.

This? It's a little different. The endgame state of Sam and Dean and Cas is that they all die and spend eternity in Heaven, where they get to be with all their loved ones. I mean, sure, we don't get to see that, we only get a throwaway line to imply that Cas made it out of Super Turbo Hell The Empty, but that's the endgame state of the characters. And that's more or less what I would have wanted, as like a... years after canon situation. Right? So yeah, this was a bad episode, but if I edit in the shit I wanted to see, none of it contradicts the canon in a way that's not workable. It's a sad world we've come to where this is all I can really grasp at, but there is a perverse sort of comfort in that.

So, should we talk now about how Dean dying is a betrayal of what they said this whole season, and maybe whole show was about? Ha. It's so ridiculous. It's embarrassing. I watched Dean's final moments and I was embarrassed for Jensen. For Dean. For all of us watching.

Just. Watch the end of 15x19 again, okay? Watch it, and hear what they're saying. Yay, we killed God, we killed the author of the story, which means we get to write our own stories, finally. We get to do that. After all this time, we're finally free. And what does freedom look like? It looks like Dean dying on a run of the mill hunt.

We get this little montage of Sam and Dean at the Bunker, you know? They're doing laundry and going on jogs and cuddling with Miracle the dog, and they're brushing their teeth and going on hunts, I guess. And the emotional resonance from that scene was just kind of... ennui? And boredom? And that's what's so terrible and depressing about this ending. It's so empty, because Dean didn't get to do the thing he said he was fighting for. Sure, he was always fighting for Sam, but he should have been able to fight for himself, too, right? He should have been able to fight for a life after the years of programming. He should have gotten to be a rock star or a chef or worked at an animal shelter or become a foster parent or grown old as Sam's brother, as an uncle to his kid. He should have been able to find love, if he wanted that.

Look, I'm not even mad that Dean died in a "mundane" way. It's not like "nooo Dean is too coooool to die in such a laaaame way, he's a bad-ass and he should have gone out in a blaze of glory!" That's actually not what I'm mad about at all. Sam died old in his bed, and Dean should have been able to do that too. This whole season, since finding out that Chuck was the ultimate big bad, was supposed to be about free will, and Dean never got to figure out a way to be happy and find peace. That's fucking dour and stupid.

I kept saying, in the buildup to this finale, that a depressing, grim-dark ending to this show would be a failing of the themes they set up, and, hey, they didn't go grim-dark, because the writers did not think this was grim-dark. They thought it was powerful and emotional and resonant. You can tell they thought that, even though they're... uh... what's the word. Wrong? Yeah. Wrong. You know what I realized while watching this? It was just a lamer, less resonant and appropriate version of Sam's sacrifice at the end of season five.

Right? Because after Sam yeets himself into hell to save the world, Dean just has to keep going, and as Cas says, "you got what you wanted, more of the same." Just... more of the same. And Dean couldn't hack it, he was miserable without Sam, and Sam came back and we got ten more years of the fucking show. And now... what, we just get that in the other direction? Because Sam is the strong one and can soldier on without Dean because his codependency was a little less crippling? Wow, what a great ending for him, I guess. It doesn't work because we've seen Sam without Dean, and he falls apart too.

And now the show ends with Sam alone. Sure, he gets married to a blur in the background and has a kid, but let me ask you a question, here. Did Sam... want to be a father? I didn't know that was a thing he wanted, that would make him happy, honestly. I had no idea. So this doesn't seem like it works as something even remotely satisfying as an endgame state for him either. It's bleak.

And it's bleaker because there's nobody else in this fucking episode, y'all. The other big theme in all of Supernatural, after "free will" would be "family don't end in blood." And guess what? Apparently it does? Apparently Sam and Dean are each other's whole worlds and nothing else matters? We get... an implied wider world but we don't get to see it. We don't get to see Eileen, Jody, Donna, anybody left alive for Sam. So from the standpoint of characters that we know and give a shit about, Sam loses Cas, Jack, and Dean and lives the rest of his life lonely and sad. Nobody else even comes to Dean's funeral. It's just Sam alone with the dog. Like... that's bleak.

This ending gave the fucking Wincest shippers everything their hearts could desire, for fuck's sake. Like. Why did they cater to that and not follow through on the idea that they had created a family and community beyond each other? You know, this thing called character growth?

To take a brief break from the negativity, I will say something here about Sam and Dean. In the weird hysterical euphoria of the whole Destiel thing a couple weeks ago, I lost sight of something, which is that for me, the draw of this show has always been the relationship between Sam and Dean. I was never a brothers-only person, but it was their fucked up codependent bond that drew me to the show over the years. I loved the idea of Destiel, but I never thought it was going anywhere, so really I loved Castiel, the character, separate from the context of his relationships. Having a big dramatic death scene where Dean says "I love you so much" and there's a forehead touch and Dean saying "it's always been you and me" and confesses that he was scared to get Sam at Stanford because he didn't know how to survive if he didn't have him, and to have Sam say "don't leave me" and then give Dean permission to go... I mean, all of this is catnip, right? All of this is great, like, in isolation, it was such an amazing "broment," as the fandom says. I mean, it made no sense with context, it was utterly insulting in every way, but Jensen and Jared acted their lil' hearts out and I could tell they were really in the moment.

So let's talk about Cas for a second, while I have you here... they never should have done the big gay confession. They just shouldn't have even fucking bothered. I'm telling you, that makes this whole thing worse. It felt completely intentional and weird that Dean never acknowledged the confession, never told Sam, never had a moment where he specifically reckoned with Cas' loss. But that's what I knew would happen. I knew it in my blood and bones, and as the meta started pouring in, I knew people were getting their hopes up for nothing. See, Cas saying "goodbye Dean" and the handprint on the arm... I knew that was their catharsis, that was the writers' and Misha's big goodbye to the character of Castiel. They thought they fucking nailed it. I knew we wouldn't see him again.

Like I said before, I have to be satisfied with an endgame state that doesn't totally suck, right? So, we get this throwaway line from Bobby that Jack fixed Heaven and made it not suck, and that Cas helped. This implies a multitude of things that are... comforting. At least Cas doesn't get that dour, dark, helpless oblivion that I worried he'd get. We can assume Jack plucked him out of the Empty, that he gets to be with his son, and that, if the fic writers so choose, Dean and Cas can have lots of gay sex up in Heaven. I think Misha not being in this finale was frankly a slap in the face to one of the biggest and most important characters the show has ever seen, you know? And I think that they kept him out of it so we could have Schrodinger's Destiel. Because if we'd seen Cas in heaven, and he hadn't confessed his big gay love, Dean could have been like: "hey Cas! Buddy! Good to see you, my friend." But since we did have the love confession, whatever Dean did upon seeing Cas would have to mean something in that context. So instead we didn't get to see him at all.

Which is stupid.

Also stupid is that the big sacrifice was to save Dean's life and then a couple weeks later he gets impaled on a rusty nail and dies anyway. Thanks for making the whole thing feel so utterly pointless and empty. No pun intended. Wow, they did Misha dirty, here, didn't they.

Turning back to Sam's ending, let's just talk about that for a minute. Like I said, I'm happy he got to live a long life and die an old man, what Dean always wanted for him. But nothing about that ending was more poignant because Dean was gone. In fact, it just made it super duper depressing and lame. There was no reason Dean couldn't have gotten a happy life, too. It adds nothing that he died young and unfulfilled. Like, you know how people joke about the end of the Titanic, where you see that Rose's Heaven is reuniting with Jack and everyone else on the ship, and people will say "well, gosh, that's kind of a slap in the face to Rose's family" since she clearly got married and had kids and grandkids? This is literally that! Like, having an ending where a young-again Sam Winchester gets to Heaven, and his whole Heaven, the thing that he needed to find peace after death, was a return to his brother... look, I'm not mad about that, but what the fuck about nameless blurry wife that we couldn't even confirm to be Eileen for some reason? What about everyone else?

And did Sam... keep hunting? Did he go to law school? Maybe there were background details that confirmed what he ended up doing with the rest of his life besides becoming a husband and father, but I didn't see evidence of it because I was too busy rolling my eyes out of my skull at how dumb this all was. So Sam just gets a generic "raking leaves in the yard" ending, like we saw for Dean at the end of season five, with nothing to challenge that. Even though we've seen why life outside of hunting, life without Dean, isn't satisfying for Sam, we're now supposed to accept it as how he spends the rest of his life, without seeing him put the work in to get there?

One thing I realized watching this episode is that it tries to play the middle. Like, with the Cas thing, they didn't want to make his noble gay sacrifice totally meaningless, so they couldn't just pop him back into the story, but they did give us one single throwaway line to reassure fans that he's not still in The Empty. So, people who don't give a shit about Cas can assume he's off being Jack's assistant and doesn't really interact with humans in Heaven. People who do give a shit about one of the show's main characters can assume that he has a home in Dean's little Heaven neighborhood too, and they all get to buddy around for eternity. People who don't like Eileen? Well, Sam married some nobody who we never got to meet. People who liked her? Well, you can't prove that wasn't Eileen, can you? Even Dean driving around in the impala waiting for Sam to die so he could finally be happy with his fucking soulmate or whatever. Time in Heaven is weird, Bobby says. It's metaphorical. You could assume that the driving montage was actually intercut with other moments, with Dean getting to see dear old mom (and dad, I guess, but ugh), and spending time with Bobby, with OG Charlie, with other familiar faces, and new ones as they finally reach their own deaths on Earth and come up to party with the rest of the gang.

Like, in a better show, in a world without Covid, maybe they had plans along these lines, to get more guest characters back and show Dean getting sappy hellos to a bunch of side characters in Heaven. To be quite honest, I would not have been mad about that. If you're going to make Dean die young and never give him the chance to find out who he could have been when the choices were all his own, which is, in case I haven't made that clear, a horrendous and insulting ending for his character... at the very least you could have given us the cheesiness of seeing him hug his friends in Heaven. Jeezus.

I want to hammer in this point one more time before I wrap up: they ended the show by saying that character development didn't matter. They had Dean's dying speech be a meta reference to the pilot episode of the show, they had him saying "it's always been you and me" and then they confirmed that with everything they had. Sam became a father, but did he have a happy life? Seems like he pined away for his dead brother for decades and then died. If the pilot had never happened, if Sam had stayed at Stanford and Dean had gone on hunting by himself, you know what would have happened? Sam would have had a "normal" life and married a woman and had a kid, I guess, and grown old, and Dean would have died fighting some vampires in a barn. This show has been on for fifteen years, and the ending did not honor anything about the journey the characters had been on.

A particularly egregious example is the early scene with the pie festival, where Sam is like "I'm sad about Cas and Jack" and Dean is like "if we don't go on living it won't honor their sacrifice" like... yeah, I get it, bringing people back from the dead time and time again is supposed to be a bad thing that Sam and Dean did for each other because they were selfish. So Sam giving Dean permission to go was supposed to be a growth moment. Sam and Dean accepting that Cas was gone and not even asking Jack to make sure he got sent to a happy eternity instead of oblivion, that's supposed to mean they've learned their lesson. And what a fucking lesson to leave things off on. Jesus, this is grim.

So like. As I try to figure out what to say at the end of this review, I will point out one glimmer of light in the darkness, which is that this finale isn't going to ruin the rewatchability of the show for me. I can still come back and re-watch without feeling like the whole thing is ruined by the ending. It's more than I can say for some other shows.

But honestly, if this was the ending we were going to get? Why the fuck not leave it open-ended? I did not enjoy 15x19 particularly well, but at least that episode left them on the open road, with a wide future ahead of them. Anything might have happened. It's their turn to write the story, right? Chuck is dead, the writer is "dead", the show is over, and now the possibilities are endless. That would have been an anticlimactic ending, for sure. But this ending just turns around and slaps the whole point of that first ending in the face and says "haha bitch you thought". They don't get to write their own stories. We see exactly how those stories end, and it's lame. Leave something to the imagination, yo. Leave it vague how and when they died, what their lives turned into. Show them in Heaven, getting to their peace at last, reuniting with their friends, including Cas. Put in a significant glance between Dean and Cas, and leave it to the internet to go wild about what it could mean. And never answer when fans ask "so what happened, when did they die? Did they keep hunting?" Just leave it vague. If this was the only ending they could come up with, I'd rather be left with questions.

This finale gets a low score from me, because they couldn't even pull on the right heartstrings to make me sentimental...

4/10

But the show as a whole? Well, it was a mess, and it had some seriously high highs and some devastatingly low lows. It's a bummer that the lowest low came in how they tried to wrap up the whole shebang, but like I said, this ending isn't going to ruin the whole fifteen-year run for me. We get to make up what happens next, and we can make Jack's new and improved Heaven our post-canon fix-it haven. I don't think there's ever been a show in my life quite like Supernatural. The fandom is so bonkers. The meta narrative of the show is so convoluted and twisty and goes in so many unexpected directions. I liked watching this show for its own sake, and also as like... an anthropologist trying to discover something about humanity and American values specifically. It wasn't always a pleasant experience, but it was one I know I'll never forget. My heart tells me to give the show as a whole a high score, representing the many, many hours of joy and dread and delight and horror I got over the near decade I've personally been watching. How do you wrap up fifteen years in a score out of ten?

9/10

[shipsssssssss]

No one asked but here's my Character List for my B99 AU which, surprise, I'm still dedicated to

Roman Prince:

He/him

Gayyy

Wants to be a hero

Has the second most highest arrest record

Despite this, is a Himbo

Rivalry with Virgil, no one except the two of them knows how it started

Was separated from Remus early on in his life but eventually reunited with each other

Lowkey codependent

Will kill anyone who's a bitch to Remus

Prince to Remus' Octopus

Physically the strongest

Acts very gay but hasn't actually stated out loud he's gay so Patton is very unsure

Remus Duke:

Out of closet and is gay

He/him

Youngest Twin but is Taller

Usually gets the more grotesque cases

Angst is not allowed except for when i permit it he loves his twin very much

Got separated from Roman early on which is why their surnames are different

Both are overjoyed by their matching surnames

Highkey codependent

Best friends with Janus but is lowkey pissed at both Roman and Janus about their past

Can make Roman do anything with puppy eyes

50% chance he's more insane than the actual perps

Great at interrogations

Octopuses

Patton Peanut

Out as well

Pansexual

He/Him, they/them

Team Dad™

Brings snacks he baked every Monday

Ask about his last name and he'll tell you the god of their world wanted alliteration :)

Precinct sweetheart

Everyone can and will die for him

Managed to convince over 10 perps to confess with sheer kindness

Always knows what the other is feeling because they are a sweetheart

Precious

Willingly takes the more violent cases if Remus won't

Lowkey interested in the Sergeant

Virgil

Out only to Roman, Remus, and Patton

Bisexual

He/him

Precinct Emo™

Is an asshole but is working on it

Prefers desk work but goes out on cases a few times every month

Rivals with Roman and refuses to tell Patton how it started

Mostly deals with felonies

MCR is still together in his head, fight him

Has beef with Janus but is somehow neutral towards Remus

Logan Berry

Closeted, tho im pretty sure everyone has an idea

Asexual, Homoromantic

He/Him

Comes from a homophobic family

Professional Nerd

Sergeant

Wants to be the youngest police captain

Has the most arrests in the precinct

Childhood best friends with Roman and Patton

Became friends with Virgil during the academy

Doesn't understand the Twins' dynamic

'Remus is gross??? Why do you love him so much???? Brotherly love of course but excuse me?!!?'

Will challenge someone to a fist fight if they threatened Roman and Patton

Very stoic in the interrogation room and scares the shit outta perps

Was the Team Mom™ but Janus overthrew him

Janus

Outs themselves if asked but otherwise won't say anything

Ace

They/them

Regrets their past with Roman

Half their face is scarred after protecting Virgil from an accident

Is thankful that Virgil is okay, but promised themself to never sacrifice themselves ever again

Self Preservation is Key

Lowkey manipulative

Best friends with Remus, no one knows how they met

Trys to mend their relationships with Virgil

Wine Mom™

Remy

Outer than the Outer Planets

Gayyyyayayay

He/him

YAS GURL YAS!!!

Never seen without coffee

Civilian Administrator

Bonds with Roman over their dramatics

Is a bitch but loves Picani

Lives his life in mystery

No one knows where he lives

Met everyone at the precinct

Admits with great remorse Patton is nicer than Picani

Emile Picani

Is out but rarely mentions it

Pansexual

He/him

Victim Advocate

Wants to be a full on therapist but is happy with his current job

Only slightly less of a sweetheart than Patton

Very professional

Cartoon therapy

Cartoons are his one true love Remy be damned

Nice to those he likes, stone cold bitch to those he doesn't like

He's the guy that isn't exactly part of the squad but is actually Part Of The Squad

Lowkey mad victim advocates are rarely mentioned in pop culture

Childhood best friends with Remy

Highkey planning on taking Patton's title as Precinct Sweetheart.

Hahaha jk..... Unless??

Keep in mind I neither live in America, or is in the Law Enforcement so forgive me for future inaccuracies

Also ignore the fact that some have no last names i still have no idea what to put pls hlep

[hidelaney]

Hi Delaney!

Ah, yes the quarantine. It’s getting to me. Definitely. Suddenly I have no office to go to. But it’s good, I think. Make the CEO realize the upper management has no literal reasons to keep us in the office. Like at all. Seriously, everyone from my team is working from home and the level of productivity is actually better. Because guess what? Not having people breathing down our necks is SUPER helpful. So HA!

Okay, about Larry Stylinson. You’re right, I did fall into YouTube Blackhole. And Twitter. And I just watched 1D San Siro concert. By watching, I mean I actually paused the work I’m doing and looked at the screen while it played. Admittedly I was also doing chores but! It wasn’t just background music! It counted!

When I said I could put Larry Stylinson in a microwave and be done with it, I mean the theories and compilation videos are so readily available and easy to digest like, comparable to instant meals.

It’s so neatly packaged, too. Like, I was introduced to Larry Stylinson basically yesterday. Now I could recite the storyline in my head whenever I please. Or when I want to please you, in this case.

Let’s see if I can get it all summarized down here. FYI, I’m borrowing your assumption that Taylor was in on it the whole time. And Eleanor, too. Because I actually know of her existence now! Character discovery! Except they’re real people so I feel the need to point out that I’m making all the assumptions all over the place. I’m doing this for you, my dear Delaney.

Keep in mind that we all need character growths and personal developments when I make non-flattering assumptions toward your favorite people here, ok?

First up! HS & TL met in a toilet.

Now it’s debatable whether it was during an X-Factor audition or Battle of the Bands. For the sake’s of my next argument, I’m going with they knew each other before X-Factor. Likely during their time in White Eskimo and The Rogue, respectively. Their (unconfirmed?) first words to each other were ‘Oops!’ & ‘Hi’

Up next, the X-Factor audition and getting put together in a band.

So here is where I kind of needed my first assumption for this to work. Their chemistry was so obviously through the roof. It made so much sense if they were already sort-of friends and then got put together in a band. Plus, I don’t think the way Louis jumped into Harry’s arms is something a relative stranger would do. And if they only knew each other out of everyone there, it’s no wonder they were both so apparently clingy and codependent. It’s like a situation where both of them went ‘I have no idea what’s gonna happen next, but at least I know you and you know me. So we’re bestie now. No take back!”

And then there’re video diaries, twitter cams, radio interviews, and other broadcasting media they appeared in. These need no explanation because you’ve probably seen all of them and I have functioning ears and eyes. So, yes, I saw videos of them being all disgustingly cute all over the place. During the so-called ‘Fetus’ phase (a wording which I personally find rather disturbing, no offense to your anatomy textbooks or anything.) They’re so sweet. Especially whenever there’s a mention of how they moved in and lived together. Their interactions must’ve been responsible for so many tooth cavities. So many aww-worthy moments. On stage, on screen, behind the scenes, potato cams. Basically everywhere in front of everyone.

Then 1D blew up and were well on their way to become their label’s biggest and brightest BCG-metrix star. It’s not hard to see why investors’d be invested (lol) in employing every marketing strategy possible to keep 1D in the spotlight.

There’s a twofold marketing exploitation to Larry Stylinson that I see from miles away.

Hard sell the heteronormative version of the boys. (To capture major market shares)

Never had Harry or Louis explicitly confirm nor deny their relationship status. (To capture additional market shares with queerbaiting)

But let’s say Harry and Louis were actually together and making 1) too difficult to achieve. Otherwise this whole thing falls apart like a wet house of cards.

Thus, here came what I’d like to call ‘dousing a fire with gasoline’. This is where there’s a sudden drop of their interactions in public and Larry Stylinson isn’t a cutesy smashup name of two boys who got along like a house on fire anymore. This is the part where a ship turned into a full fledged conspiracy theory. And it’s MEGA COOL WICKED awesome.

I say this in the nicest way possible. A tragedy is the grandest form of entertainments. Misery loves having friends.

Also, I’d like to say this. I’m having fun thinking of this as a fictional arc. Because I still feel like it will shatter my heart in to a million pieces if anything resembling what I write next was true.

Since breaking into US market was the Kickstarter into a global one, to the US 1D went.

This was where the heavy closeting got way more difficult to handle. Elounor had the excuse of Eleanor being a private citizen and therefore should be left alone for the most part. Haylor was the complete opposite. Taylor Swift was and still is an American Sweetheart. Harry Styles might have been the most famous British Harry if it weren’t for a (former?) prince and a wizard. (Seriously, we should not call any of our hypothetical future children ‘Harry’ unless you thought ‘Albus Severus Potter’ was a good idea. Poor kiddo.)

The saddest part about Harry Styles public image was how reminiscent of Emma Watson it felt. The minute they turned eighteen, their media portrayals immediately became hyper-sexualized. Suddenly, they left the human zoo into an open hunting game. Famous lives are terrifying.

Anyhow, say, Taylor Swift knew what the US music industry was like. She’s been playing the long game for quite some time. She got to know Harry and then became rather protective of him. Her conclusion was that ‘hyping up Haylor’ would: 1) increase media exposure for both Taylor and 1D which would translate to bigger channels of revenue for all involved, 2) hold the speculation about Harry’s sexual orientation at bay because, as horrible as it sounds, gays don’t sell in America.

This one fit nicely with your ‘Out of the Woods’ interpretation. Taylor wasn’t just spending time with Harry. She was actively enforcing the lock on the closet. Which explains why Louis seemed to resent Taylor quite obviously and quite a lot. His own heteronormative scripts with Eleanor had been relatively tame. Harry’s whirlwind series of romances in public had only just begun.

As Harry started gaining a womanizer reputation in earnest, so did the Almost-Subtle Couple Tattoo Sprees.

If ‘Always in my heart @Harry_Styles . Yours sincerely, Louis’ tweet was a sign that circumstances were about to go south for them. The tattoos were signs that the circumstances had already gone to shit. The tragic package had been shipped, signed, and delivered.

This is where non-flattering assumptions rise to the surface. I think 1D had been overworked past the point of exhaustion. Self-destruction as a coping mechanism became rather prevalent and pervasive within the band. The boys gleefully collected regrets as a new favorite pastime, some more than others. Consequences were nipping at their heels.

Then Zayn left right in the middle of a world tour and all hell broke loose.

Here comes the biggest Assumption Affair!

Louis and Liam, the last to release their solo debut albums, were the most prominent songwriters for the band. I’m not going to go on about Liam because I’m here to give you Larry Stylinson. And this is already way too long as it is. But, needless to say, the first discussion of a prospective solo career probably hit them the hardest.

If each song they wrote was a battle scar, Louis was still bleeding for the band when Harry, of all people, brought up the idea of a hiatus and solo careers. Realizing how many songs Harry already had waiting in the back catalogue must’ve felt like a slap in the face. Or a punch in the gut. Whichever you think is worse/more dramatic. I’m not picky.

Remember self-destruction as coping mechanism? What about relationship-destruction as coping mechanism? Louis cheated and had a baby with someone else. Infidelity at its finest.

ALERT! THIS IS A NEON SIGN OF ASSUMPTION AFFAIR! Please don’t kill me. I told you I was gonna make unflattering assumptions toward your favorite people. I just did as I promised!!! *run for cover*

Anyway...

I’m gonna take you back a little. I mentioned earlier how Eleanor was a private citizen and therefore should be left alone. At times when Louis desperately needed to be left alone, Elounor makes so much sense. If she’s a PR-only girlfriend, she’s a stellar employee. If it’s not just a PR thing, she’s as forgiving as a saint. Just, if it’s Harry and Louis, they likely both messed up and hurt each other badly. If it’s Louis and Eleanor,... I mean... Have you seen a meme where you misspell a word so badly that the autocorrect goes, ‘I don’t know what to tell you, man’?... Louis would be that misspelled word and Eleanor would be the very best autocorrect that practically brute force through every word in the Oxford AND Urban dictionary to find out what that word was. If that’s who she is, then bless her soul. However, for the sake of this argument, we will proceed with the assumption that she’s the star employee of the decade.

Losing loved ones and grieving for them are inevitable parts of human lives. Nothing put more things into perspectives than losing someone so fundamentally dear to you. When I heard Louis Tomlinson’s ‘Two of Us’ for the first time, I remembered walking through an actual forest my grandpa planted for us because he wanted to make sure his great grandkids would have a nice home to grow up in. Do you remember when you called and told me that he died the night I got on my first solo international flight ten months after the fact? I wanted to hate you for keeping something this big a secret from me. I wanted to hate everybody at home for that. But then you told me that it was what my grandpa had wanted. That he didn’t want me to be a sad sack of an exchange student. That you decided to not listen to my parents and call to tell me just before I was due home. So that I’d have time to feel hurt about being lied to. So that I could get all the angry words out. So that I wouldn’t scream at my parents when I got home and learnt the truth. So that you could take the brunt of my grief instead.

I just took a break to have a little cry. Where was I? Oh, yeah. You did the best you could for me when I lost my grandpa. I still managed to effectively shut you out for months. Just because you were the messenger of the bad news. What I’m trying to say is that grief changes people. It changed me. For the worst for a bit. And then for the better once I came to term with what it means to me. There’s a quote from Rosamund Lupton that sums it up neatly.

“Grief is love turned into an eternal missing.”

I guess this is the part where I connected the dots back to Harry and Louis. Well, their music definitely give grief different names. Both albums talk about coming to term with it and moving forward. Every songs they wrote could be woven to fit the narrative of Larry Stylinson and events surrounding them. If you buy the theory, then the good news is both Fine Line & Walls seemed to have a positive ending. One thing I know for sure, though, is that no matter how convincing a conspiracy theory maybe, it could all be built upon a faulty assumption. I’d probably have a way easier time disregarding Elouner if I didn’t have you as a solid proof in my life that, yes, people like the best autocorrect exists. It’s funny how I feel no hesitation at all in categorizing Haylor as a calculated move. Because in my head that’s just par for the course in business. And it genuinely terrifies me in a way. Who the hell I could’ve become if it weren’t for you knocking me off the ground and pouring kindness on me.

I know I skipped a lot of stuff. Missing names like Caroline, Danielle, Kendall, Freddie, Camille, Xander, etc. But HS and LT have a decade of history on public record and, frankly, my interest ran out four paragraphs ago. So just let me conclude this.

I think it’s tiring, spending this much time speculating on someone else’s relationship history. I must admit that I had to get it out of my chest because it was way too interesting to let go off. But now, I feel like I’m just going to stream Heartbreak Weather and listen to ‘No Judgement’ on repeat. Nile is my favorite non-problematic celebrity. I could spell his name so wrong and it probably won’t be an issue as long as I politely say, “Sorry, Mr Niall Horan”

This quarantine clearly leaves me with too much time on my hands.

Virtual hugs and kisses

Your Incredible Sasha 😘

[kanyniablue]

fic writer tag meme

i was almost finished when i lost this post TWICE!!! TWICE

tagged by america-oreosandkitkats, which tumblr is not letting me @ !  i love new updated tumblr!  it’s my favorite!

AO3 name: kat_blue, however i haven’t actually uploaded anything.  it was #newyearsresolution2020 to start uploading some writing, just to say “i’m D O N E im not going to touch it again” but...2020 got in the way

Fandoms: overwhelmingly hetalia where i set up camp back in 2010-2011 and never moved on, harry potter but only in headcanons/crossovers, Discworld but don’t test me, uh, The Outsiders, yes that book we read in middle school, Coco (2017) because im a corporate sellout

Tropes: 30 AU Pileup, Historical AU, 20 Minutes into the Past/Future, Gen, Enemies-to-Lovers, Friends-to-Lovers, Hookup-to-Something-More, Enemies-to-Lovers-But-They’re-Still Enemies, Unhealthy/Codependent Relationship (romantic, platonic, familial...), Breakup Fic, For Want of a Nail, Everyone’s Dead Dave/Tragic End, Postcredits Scene/whatever you’d call it when you write what would happen after canon says “the end,” Character Study (not sure if that’s a trope but it’s mostly what I write)

Number of fics: ...a bunch.  i write in several documents, some of which are inaccessable to me because of a computer crash.  i honestly have no idea

Fic I spent the most time on: considering it’s not even finished, Sun Down (WWI Prussia that was supposed to be PruHun but turned into an extended character study/war novel/just torturing the guy but he kind of deserves it) has been limping along for 2+ years...although mostly nowadays I just poke at it occasionally

Fic I spent the least time on: i have no idea, i’ve got a bad habit of coming back to a “finished” fic months or even years later and messing with it.  Maybe The Witch Dreaming, a weird little Nyo!EnglandxGreece fic that needed more notes explaining what it was about than it had actual words.  it was one of those *sudden inspiration* *scribble scribble scribble* “wait, what the fuck is this?” fics

Longest fic: Brother, Can You Spare a Dime (RusAme domestic fluff & death threats in the Great Depression/Stalinist USSR, burns so slow they barely manage to kiss right before WWII breaks out, ends badly) clocks in at roughly 21K and it’s not even half finished.  technically my main WIP but i don’t focus

Shortest fic: The World in the Palm of Your Hand, a tiny little Revolution!America character study, 147 words including its entire title?  i know i used to write drabbles & flashfics but that document is...problematic right now

Most hits/Most kudos/Most comment threads/Most bookmarks: yeaaaah, about that...see “haven’t uploaded anything.”  i think i uploaded a couple of fics to tumblr, possibly an old account, but if i did nobody ever read ‘em

Total word count: eeesh, probably at least 150K if we’re counting everything

Favorite fic I wrote: it changes but im still fond of Skin, a bunch of little spamano...vignettes? that i started back around 2014 and still enjoy, which isn’t something i say about a lot of my old writing

Fic you want to rewrite/expand on: ...all of them.  if i have to choose probably Take the Long Way Home, a partially-finished NorwayxSouth Italy Human!ExchangeStudent!AU that i used to love back in its day of ~2012-2014 but now is very...dusty.  writing style changed a lot from what it was back then, lots of “new to the fandom” tropes, lots of “real humans don’t act like this it’s just more dramatic” plot holes...i could do a lot with rewriting it, i just generally work on more recent things and i leave it fossilized and occasionally say “but what if”

Share a bit of a WIP or a story idea you’re planning on:  

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime:  What was supposed to happen was that they’d be met by the secret police at the train station, and U.S. Personification Alfred Jones would be arrested as a foreign spy.

What actually happened was that after giving up at the train station, one of Ivan’s bosses’ secretaries met them at the front of Ivan’s office building, where he waited and kicked his heel against the wall because he couldn’t light a cigarette without dropping America’s wrist and no amount of exasperated sighs from America was going to convince him it was safe to do so, and when the human secretary did get out there all he said was, “The police aren’t coming.”

Ivan closed his eyes.  “Why are the police not coming?”

“They say you seem like you’ve got it handled, Comrade Braginsky,” said the secretary.

“How am I supposed to handle him?” Ivan said through his teeth, waving America’s arm, “Keep a grip on him like he’s a child until they feel fit to interrogate him?”

<<Hi,>> said America sardonically.

The secretary pressed his lips thin.  “I don’t know, comrade.”

“He’s an American spy!”

“I am not being spy!” America said.  “Not!”

The human looked between them, then said to Russia, “I don’t know what else to tell you, Comrade Braginsky.  I don’t have the authority to override the chief of police.”

Slowly, Russia rubbed his eyes.  “...I know, comrade.  Very well.  Take down a message for me, will you?”

Russia’s bosses received a note, in lieu of Russia returning to work as he’d planned:  Have in custody suspected American spy, name of ALFRED JONES (note English spelling).  Contact American consulate as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, Russia would take America to the only place he knew he could keep an eye on the foreign nation.

--

[and then they were roommates.  I don’t know nearly enough about Soviet Russia to depict it with any amount of accuracy but I’m writing gay country anime boys, this isn’t the place to look for a documentary.]

i know a lot of people who follow me write fanfiction so if you do and you see this, you’re tagged!  let’s try to tag people who i know write:  @gothicmagpie @knowledgequeenabc @convenientalias uhh I don’t know how many of my other followers are both active & writers

[macdentrash]

I have some issues that I want to talk about...

Ok so I’ve been thinking about macdennis (as one does 25 hours a day) and I just wanna share something... so we all know Mac and Dennis are gay for eachother, as does anyone who’s seen them interact in the slightest, and that’s been apparent since the literal first episode of the show (this isn’t necessarily related but I think it’s cute that the literal first lines of the show are between these two gays but to continue on...) and the levels of said gayness have evolved over the seasons. We have season 1 twinks who are subtle (at least for the most part) in their homosexual subtext and this could be played off as two “really good friends” but nothing beyond that (not how I choose to see it but some do and that’s not necessarily invalid just because some of us disagree), moving on through the seasons the gayness becomes more blatantly obvious, it’s brought to the viewers point of focus in a more straight(lol)forward way and the climax of this really shows in season 5 with the tipping point being Mac and Dennis Break up. Other than the few scenes with Frank/Charlie this whole episode is devoted to the blatant codependency of Mac/Dens relationship, not to mention the sexual tension (which is completely unsubtle imo), they literally cannot function without eachother and there is NO heterosexual reasoning that can explain the extended scene (beautiful lips!)... as we progress further in the show the homosexual undertones only become stronger (I could site every point in individual episodes and have a thesis level of critical analysis but for the sake of brevity we won’t go there today) which can be seen in the double parter Mac Fights Gay Marriage/Dennis Gets Divorced, any Mac and Dennis titled episode really and many more (every episode or at least most of them shows some level of interaction between the two that makes the viewer go “hmm well that’s gay as fuck”). Continuing on though, I’m writing this mostly to get into the newer seasons (11/12 respectively) so obviously in season 11 we have the ICONIC suburbs episode where they literally move to a house together and take up their individual “marital duties” (i.e. honey do list, Mac staying at home and taking care of things in his way lol, and Dennis going to work, etc) and we learn a lot about their dynamic and see that the codependency has not in fact weakened over time but grown to incomprehensible levels, in the rest of season 11 there’s fairly limited interaction and Mac/Dennis team ups but in the 2 part finale of The Gang Goes to Hell there are some important pieces. To start Dennis in the beginning is the one who supports Mac’s decisions (saying something along the lines of “you don’t have to mean it, just say what he wants to hear” etc) and it shows how well he knows Mac compared to the rest of the gang, again we have limited interaction until the end of the first part but there’s some really interesting stuff once they do get to interact. I’d like to start with Dennis’ reaction to Mac coming out and how “he always knew”, he always knew and still acted the way he always has (and knowing that he knew, makes one doubt Dennis’ own self proclaimed heterosexuality), moving on, when the boat first malfunctions Dennis automatically reaches his hand out to steady Mac and doesn’t show any real concern for anyone else, fuck even after the boat steadies he keeps his arm reaching out towards him... there’s definitely more in part two but I’m going to skip ahead a little to the tail end of part two. Dennis hid the letters that Mac’s dad sent him from prison and he looks heart broken when Mac gets upset, showing that Dennis actually gives a shit no matter how much he tries to pretend that he doesn’t (this is pre onion that I’m talking about here) and I believe that he honestly was just trying to protect Mac from his shitty father (which could have to do with Dennis’ own daddy issues but we won’t get into that here), also in the end of this episode we have Charlie saying something along the lines of “send us a miracle” and Dennis looks @ Mac in that super love sick way (he is his miracle! i’m so soft i apologize). The last thing I want to touch on in this episode is that when Mac is shoved back into the closet at the end, Dennis makes a very frustrated face... the face of a man who just wants his best friend to come out already... wow ok this is long but let’s move on to season 12, that will continue in the next paragraph break for the sake of breaking up this wall of text...

Ok so in season 12 is where imo everything kind of culminates and comes to a head as far as Mac and Dennis’ dynamic goes...to touch briefly on Making Dennis Reynolds a Murderer, we have “Well if Mac’s going to do it... I’m going to do it” (which speaks for itself) as well as Mac and Dennis just generally being portrayed as spending quite a bit of time together. Moving on to where everything really kicks off in this season imo is Hero or Hate Crime. We have Mac finally escaping from the closet but there’s a lot that’s woven into that, Dennis encourages Mac to come out of the closet until he actually does so (we’ll get to that in a minute) and when Mac leaves Dennis is the one who encourages the gang to just let him enjoy his first day out. The importance of Dennis pushing Mac to come out and then getting uncomfortable when he actually does is because HE NEVER THOUGHT IT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN, and when it does he makes the same fucking face as he does when he’s trying to hide his emotions during the RPG scene... after this episode Dennis becomes “emotionally distant” (to quote Mac himself) and he generally is just kind of weird about Mac being out, I personally believe that’s because he’s too scared to admit his own feelings and scared to have to explore his own sexuality and how that impacts his overall identity. Obviously next we have PTSDee and Mac’s dream/subsequent reality, so at this point it’s well established that Mac has a thing for notorious 5 star man Dennis Reynolds but now we have to ask the question “does Dennis reciprocate those feelings?” (spoiler alert: yeah he does but moving on), in this episode it’s made apparent that Dennis is aware of Mac’s attraction (and has been for a long time) but even though it comes very close, he does not act on that attraction in a substantial way and we as an audience collectively heave a disappointed sigh (in gay) and hope for better next time. Next up is the The Gang Tends Bar, which is a fucking masterpiece... so from the beginning we have Dennis trying to avoid Valentine’s day and get the gang to “just do their jobs!”. Later we have the parallel between Mac trying to talk to Charlie about Dennis and Dee trying to talk to Frank about Charlie (both convos are interrupted by that intruding Jerry) and that is really solid evidence for the Chardee Macdennis Theory™... to get to my point here we have the “I have big feelings” speech and Mac coming in to save the day with his gift. So this is where it goes off, Mac who is now openly out gives Dennis a Valentine’s Day gift and makes no move to clarify this as a friendly/unromantic gesture, and the way that Dennis looks at him (other than being hella gay) is one of realization and just realizing that someone actually loves him (our collective hearts break for the bastard man), and going back to Hero or Hate Crime, he makes that same face when he glances back at the gang which is him trying to hide his emotions and how much Mac/the RPG really mean to him. Lastly in season 12 we have DDL, imo the most crucial part of this episode as far as Macdennis goes is in the beginning when they are coming up with the plan, I’ll insert the script here because it says more than I ever could: 

Mac: Look, I think the point is, maybe we got to close the emotion door for Mandy by telling her that you're gay. Dennis: Yeah, right, but I already had sex with her. How am I gonna convince her I'm gay? 

Mac: Just go with me here. Brian's not above having a one-night stand with a woman, but he's got no room for her emotionally - because he's in love with me.

Dennis: With you? 

Mac: Well, yes, the lover is me, of course.

Dennis: Mm.

So this to me is just the writers pointing out the nature of Mac and Dennis’ relationship, they literally change the dynamic in no way and they’re almost screaming “THEIR IN LOVE YOU FOOLS”... the rest of the episode shows Dennis being confused at Mac’s actions (”why would you say you want to raise the kid?!” and showing discomfort when Mac launches into the same “he’s my bottom” speech from Mortgage Crisis) and Mac becoming more brazen with his obvious huge crush on Mr. Reynolds. Dennis leaves dramatically at the end and takes about 10 times longer to say Mac’s name than any other member of the gang, while Mac looks on with that sad puppy dog look on his face. This is how they leave it, other than Mac and the rest of the gang blowing up the Rover.

So to get to the original point I was trying to make before going the fuck off... now that we’re in season 13 we all are kind of wondering where they’re going to take this. After all the evidence I’ve discussed here, plus literally the entire roster of episodes, I just want to say that something with a capital S is going to happen. I mean, why would they be focusing so much on their relationship (to the point of it being uncomfortable *cringes and thinks about the sex doll*) and not ... take that anywhere? I mean they’ve been upping the anti since around season 10 and I feel like that character development and plot evolution is not for nothing, RCG know what they’re doing and I truly believe that we may get something at least resembling canon Macdennis this season, add in the factor of promo like “The Machelor” and it’s almost impossible that we aren’t going to get anything... also in the promo for the new episode we have Mac and Dennis holding a fucking heart shaped object between their hands...HEART SHAPED and that’s a level of metaphor that’s not even trying to be subtle... anyways I’m gonna go now but these are my surface level thoughts on the matter and if you want to hear some more specific analysis (on episodes/scenes) don’t hesitate to ask and I’ll type out something similar and not as lengthy. If you made it this far, I wish your heart luck moving further in this new season and we can all cry together

[loftec]

in none the wiser, does Ian know Mickey's gay or suspects, or it hasn't been acknowledged? I know there's been a couple of times when Mickey's made a throwaway comment but I don't think Ian has ever paid attention at those moments. I'm in such an airhead space right now I'm probably missing the obvious

Hi! I’m answering this publicly, I hope that’s ok. Let me know otherwise!

Ok, so. Here’s the thing, the following is mainly going to be about NTW as a piece within a genre, so while I most likely won’t talk extensively about Ian’s POV or ”spoil” anything, I will tell you a bit about my reasoning and intentions when I make decisions about the marginal plot of NTW.

What I have to say about that is potentially at odds with your (the general reader’s) experience of what’s happening in the story, and quite probably also really boring. What I’m trying to say here is that your experience is as important as any intention I might have, and I welcome you to not give a dang about what I have to say. Please don’t take this in any way as me telling you what you should understand or otherwise get out of this story.

Let’s get into it!

NTW is in many ways a reaction to things. As an example; the plodding pace and absence of plot, as well as the generally settled happiness of the characters, are all more or less reactions to the relentless drama and punishing unhappiness of canon. But you could also see these things as a reaction to tropes within fan fiction as a genre, in which narratives tend to focus on the romance between two (or more) people. Obviously I’m a big old softie and obviously I’m into it, but sometimes it makes me uncomfortable – when tropes get so wrapped up in themselves that they start romanticising unhealthy codependency, or outrageous jealousy, or uneven power dynamics.

Amongst the many fundamental ideas of NTW is to kind of take very basic fic tropes and kind of… dilute them, I guess. The slow burning pace is one way, the strict POV is one way… the focus on friendship first is another. I can’t tell you how many friends-to-lover fics I’ve read (lots and lots) and they’re fantastic, but sometimes I read them and I miss the “friendship” part of the equation.

That said. Making them be friends first is 100% also a reaction to canon, as a kind of reflection on how they were butt-buddies first and besties (much, much) later, and how their friendship ended up being an incidental fact, anyway. The bitterness is persistent.

Most importantly, don’t feel like you’re missing the obvious! I’m being purposefully obtuse about this whole situation, because I want the events unfolding in NTW to be a more nuanced – and less dramatic – version of these fic tropes we all know and love. 

In the end, I can only write from my own experience when it comes down to the core of things, and in my experience I don’t sit around and obsess over my friends’ sexualities, or go crazy if they don’t outright tell me how it is, one way or the other. And my reading of Ian is that he is (amongst many other things) quite chill about letting people be what they are, and open up to him in their own time (we can fight if you don’t agree, it’s ok) so it makes sense for me that while Ian obviously has feelings for Mickey (oh yeah) he also has some shit of his own that he’s working through and not currently talking about, and in Mickey he has a friend who might not be as straight as he initially thought. This does not necessarily mean gay, though. So I would imagine that Ian is vary of making assumptions, and happy to let Mickey tell him when he’s ready, if ever.

Also, and this might just be me, but they’ve only been friends for a couple of months and they haven’t really been spending that much time together yet, so it makes sense to me that there is some level of natural confusion between them as they slowly get to know each other.

Thank you for asking and sorry for taking so much time to answer! And for giving you such a rubbish answer, to boot! Please let me know if I’m not making sense or if there’s anything else you feel isn’t clear, and I’ll… most likely write another long reply essentially saying ’well yes, and no’.

[jmsa1287]

In the 'Will & Grace' Revival, the Gang is Back and Don't Miss a Beat

wrote about the new season of “Will & Grace” -- it’s good and feels like it was never gone.

It's been over a decade since "Will & Grace" aired its 194th and final episode. After an eight-season run, the NBC sitcom has been remembered as a groundbreaking and edgy network comedy, exposing millions of Americans to LGBTQ characters, as well as educating them on gay culture and paving the way for mainstream queer television.

The comedy returns to the Peacock Network on Sept. 28 but in a dramatically different political climate and TV landscape. "Will & Grace" not only has the burden of proving itself as a culturally relevant show but it will also be compared to the slew of TV revivals that popped up over the last few years, which run the gamut of being critically praised ("Twin Peaks") to totally panned ("Fuller House").

Though audiences haven't seen Will Truman (Eric McCormack), Grace Adler (Debra Messing), Karen Walker (Megan Mullally) and Jack McFarland (Sean Hayes), in a great deal of time, the new season of "Will & Grace" quickly finds its groove, feeling as though Season 8 ended just a few months ago. Not only does the revival reunite its core four characters but showrunners and creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick, as well as director James Burrows, (he helmed every episode of the show) return, giving "Will & Grace" the tone, voice, and zing it had in 1998.

Debuting nearly a year after Donald Trump was elected as the 45th president of the United States, the return of "Will & Grace" feels like perfect timing. The comedy's first eight seasons spanned the Clinton and Bush administrations, during a time when a tame same-sex kiss was considered taboo. (Now you can turn on ABC and catch a steamy gay sex scene on "How to Get Away with Murder.") Kohan and Mutchnick, as well as the cast, promised the new season of "Will & Grace" will be as politically edgy and sharp as it was in the late 90s and early 00s. (Don't forget, the new season materialized thanks to a "Will & Grace" presidential election special last September.) And judging by a New York Times feature on the show, the cast and crew also seem aware of how the comedy's sometimes edgy and offensive humor will play in today's PC conscience era.

Over the three new episodes provided for review, the "Will & Grace" revival is a return to form, toeing the line between broad comedy and what's considered edgy for a network comedy. (There are daddy jokes!) As previously announced, the show pretends the Season 8 finale never happened. Turns out, the finale was basically Karen's booze-and-pill-fever-dream. Jack explains to the audience in the first episode "11 Years Later," breaking the fourth wall: Will and Jack are single. Karen is still rich and married to Stan. Grace is living with Will and is divorcing her husband Leo (Harry Connick, Jr.). Neither Grace nor Will has kids who married each other.

"Got it?" Jack asks, looking directly into the camera.

"Will & Grace" also wastes no time skewering Trump. The LGBTQ community has made incredible strides during the time the comedy has been off the air and a gay character on a TV show is no longer a rarity. But under the Trump administration, when LGBTQ rights are being threatened, "Will & Grace" finds purpose. After it's revealed Karen is BFFs with First Lady Melania and The Donald, the whole gang ends up at the White House in typical zany sitcom fashion. Grace and Karen are there to re-decorate the Oval Office and Will and Jack show up to hear a gay Republican lawmaker speak. (Even though they are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, Will and the politician have been flirting online.) With effervescent energy, the cast destroys Trump with rapid-fire jabs, quips, and one-liners that are weaved into the whacky plot of the episode.

The premiere is politically minded but in its second episode, "Who's Your Daddy," "Will & Grace" shifts gears, focusing on the passage of time. Though the episode is still peppered with Trump takedowns, the comedy explores gay culture through the eyes of older men (the cast is now in their late 40s and 50s). Both Jack and Will date guys in their 20s, and the show pokes fun at goofy millennials who can't stop Snapchatting. The episode is also reflective and shows the gap between older gay men, who had to fight for their rights and weren't accepted when coming out of the closet, and younger gay men -- for them, coming out as gay means getting a party. "Will & Grace" never gets preachy and instead highlights the importance of LGBTQ pioneers, educating audiences, while remaining light and hilarious.

More exposition is given in the third episode "Emergency Contact, " and Will and Grace's sometimes-creepy codependent relationship is the focus. (There's also a great homage to "I Love Lucy" involving a flooding shower.) Their close friendship was often the butt of jokes and used as a plot device during the show's original run. But their odd relationship has more stakes in the revival; they're in their 40s without kids and both single.

It's a weird time for the broadcast networks; the Big Three don't have the power and cultural cache they once had. In response, they've been reaching into their back catalog and banking on the success of reboots (ABC is bringing back "Roseanne," Fox is readying a new season of "The X-Files"). NBC Entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt expressed the network's desperateness for a hit when speaking to Deadline in August. He explained he's in talks with showrunners to bring back NBC's biggest hits like "The Office," "The West Wing" and "30 Rock" even though his efforts are fruitless. The network has already doubled down on "Will & Grace," ordering the sitcom for a second season weeks before its debut.

Despite the network's thirst for hit and relevant programming, "Will & Grace" doesn't rely on nostalgia. It's there but not the crux of the show. Instead, Kohan and Mutchnick make sure their comedy has something to say and that it's actually funny! The cast may be older, times may be different, but one thing remains the same: "Will & Grace" is as funny as ever and its cast and crew are as talented as they were during the show's heyday in the late 90s. The revival earns its spot on modern TV, proving to be better than most of today's network sitcoms and overcoming the reboot stigma. The new season of "Will & Grace" shows us some sitcoms only get better with time.