#which is interestingly exactly what it's like to be a golden child

[good-to-drive]

hiiii ur one of my favorite beatles analyzers and i know you have some Knowledge about family systems and ur interested in the psychology of paul... I was wondering if you had any thoughts about paul's role in his household and how that changed after the death of his mom? Often he is described as taking on an "eldest daughter" role ie more domestic work/emotional labor after his mom's death but I'm not sure if that's an accurate description. If you have any thoughts about Paul and Jim's relationship specifically those are also welcome :)) (this post got me thinking and i wanted to send it to you to see if you had any additional thoughts: https://www.tumblr.com/sleeper9/763295193962283008/from-this-ask-you-answered-a-few-days-back).

Answer at your own leisure ofc!

Thank you so much for sending this to me!!! (And thank you for calling me one of your favorite analyzers, that is so kind!) This is all SUPER interesting, because I can honestly say I’ve never thought of being parentified or placed as a Golden Child as gendered traits. 

It does make sense, though, that "oldest daughter syndrome" could be a product of girls being more often parentified and placed on a pedestal during their childhood than boys, though I know these more as phenomena that affect the children of addicts in general, not girls specifically. But that's more about my own cultural touchstones than anything else. It would be so interesting to look at these roles based on gender and who is more likely to be elected to (and accept) such and such a role.

That being said, I do think womanhood/domesticity might be a bit of a red herring here – taking responsibility for a toxic system isn’t an inherently female trait, nor does it have to express as caretaking or domestic responsibility.

(And, a bit off topic, but I generally think the desire to read slightly gender nonconforming cismen as women, or slightly gender nonconforming ciswomen as men, is a bit misguided. They're really best understood as slightly gender nonconforming cis people. Which is its own thing).

If Paul spent his childhood feeling overly responsible for preserving his family system, it would explain his anxiety, his perfectionism, his emotional repression, his need for control and constant validation – I actually talk about that a bit re: self-esteem here. But to my eye what I’m seeing is that Paul was probably a Golden Child, and that's actually something I've been wanting to think a little about, so more (and more and more) thoughts below the cut.

I know this tends to get distorted or misunderstood, but put simply, a Golden Child is the child withing a toxic or tumultuous family system responsible for redirecting the system to a positive in order to avoid potentially destabilizing discussions or conflicts. Admiring and praising the Golden Child distracts everyone from the real problem, the real pain, for long enough to push it into the drawer of things they don’t think about. 

I will also say, though, that this quote from Paul expressing financial anxiety after his mother’s death implies a sense of responsibility for their financial situation. So in terms of actual, practical responsibilities and a more straightforward kind of parentification, that was probably there, too. It wouldn't be incompatible with being a Golden Child -- in fact, it's so common to be a parentified Golden Child that this role is referred to as "The Hero." On the other hand, worrying about money doesn’t seem gendered to me, so I still wouldn’t really project this as a female experience.

As a Golden Child you are never allowed to be in pain, never allowed to be confused or afraid, never allowed to make mistakes, never allowed to bring anything into the family but success and happiness and a certain inherent superiority that can be very isolating. They're the one who’s always praised and admired, but at the expense of being allowed to be a child. They're the one who can’t mess up. Whether because they aren't allowed that luxury or because the system won't recognize their mistakes -- it's hard to say, exactly, but I think it's often both.

I'll reiterate, too, that destabilization of a family system is pure deadly horror to children. The best explanation I know for this is “If the mother abandons the young, they perish.” On a very fundamental, just-coming-out-of-the-caves level, children know that being abandoned is death. That even a slight hint of being abandoned is maybe death. And, within a tumultuous system, every disruption of that system is far more than a hint of abandonment. It’s abandonment breathing down your neck, telling you it’ll be here soon. And, in that way, it’s death creeping at the corners of your childhood, being the monster under your bed in a way that people from a healthy family system will probably never understand. It’s no coincidence that so many people with an addicted parent grow up to have brutal anxiety. 

I do feel like a lot of Golden Child traits are present in Paul's adult behavior -- the sort of "flagship" traits of a Golden Child are anxiety and depression, perfectionism, people-pleasing, control issues, fear of failure, workaholism, a deep need for admiration, and being incredibly, almost inhumanly good at suppressing any vulnerable, honest confrontation.

It's also interesting how Paul seemed to actually reenact this role within The Beatles, to thrive on praise, attention, and perhaps a slight sense of being a martyr, while also struggling with control, possibly because he felt responsible for things outside of his control. And it was never his job to be a truth-teller/squeaky wheel -- one of the biggest things that struck me after Get Back was how deeply he relied on suppressing vulnerability, his and others', to maintain homeostasis.

It’s also a good time to mention that we’re elected to our roles within a system, but we also choose them. If Paul was forced to be a Golden Child, he also wanted to be a Golden Child. So in the question of nature vs nurture, it’s very much both. You’re “elected” to the role, not as a conscious choice but as a sort of collective desire to perceive you this way, but you still have to “accept” the role (also subconsciously). 

People choose to accept because playing that role reduces the overall stress level of the system, and as adults they often have it marked very deeply in them that playing this role is how they’re going to survive. They’ve adapted to rely on the things that it provides, because that’s what they had. On an emotional level, that’s why people reenact their childhood roles as adults – not just because they don’t know anything else, but because it feels essential for their survival, and on an emotional level it maybe kind of is (although you can always change – this is psychology, not fate!)

I also think his dependence on praise -- not just preference for it -- is underexamined. A lifetime of constant adulation makes you expect adulation, and then demand it. This is the guy who said in 100 years people will listen to his music the way we listen to Mozart. And I do think people often believe these things because they have to.

So when people talk about how Paul didn’t seem to resent this role in his adult life, what they’re describing is very normal and expected, especially for someone who might still often feel like he’s inside that toxic system (as most of us do). It’s very true that Paul thrived on additional responsibility, constant praise, feeling like a martyr for things he chose. As much as framing a Golden Child as a spoiled child is disgusting behavior, framing a Golden Child as fully innocent of the toxicity of the system is a deep misunderstanding of human relationships in general. Paul made his choices, and he likely made them that way because it tended to get him what he wanted. They were a way to get his needs met. But it’s so naive to think this means he never suffered or struggled with those wanted things. 

I also want to add that society’s (reddit’s?) current conversation around Golden Children is pretty fucked up. The Golden Child experience might even be up there with narcissism as a brutal, life-changing trauma that has been repurposed to an insult. Which tells us a lot about how our society views people who had a difficult childhood.

To be clear, a maladaptive schema like being a former Golden Child can express in very ugly ways, many/most of them unintentional. The people subjected to the toxicity of any system a Golden Child is a part of, any system forced to structure itself around praise and reinforcement of that ego, aren’t wrong for feeling misused or even brutalized by it. Sometimes this is the kind of pain that splatters like paint onto everyone who tries to love you, and that can be just as bad, or sometimes worse, than what you yourself are experiencing.

I like the expression, “It isn’t your fault, but it is your responsibility.” Pain is a heavy thing to hold, and to cope with that in a healthy way is a responsibility all The Beatles failed (and they were ALL responsible for the toxic Beatle system, by the way – it was largely structured to meet John and Paul’s needs, but it was everyone’s responsibility to uphold it and they all did.) But the fact that they were holding that pain in the first place was never their fault, even if they sometimes failed to handle it with grace. Even if they weren't very good victims, and created other victims, and those victims weren't very good either.

I don’t like when people use Paul’s pain as a way to minimize how he hurt other people. A binaried mentality that sees experiencing and causing pain as incompatible is incredibly toxic in regards to mental health, and basically precludes the capacity for compassion. Paul was (and probably still is) a very difficult man.

But he’s also very normal. Very expected. Very human and real in a way that ought to make his kindness, his courage, his dedication, his endless well of love for his family more meaningful, not less. We can continue to see those things in him – and ourselves – even after reality has set in. Because that’s also reality. 

[goblins-riddles-or-frocks]

Getting some Berserk thoughts down, because the last time I was in my feelings about Griffith and the Golden Age arc, I’d promised at least one anon that I’d talk about it later and then I didn’t shfhff

But dam the Primrose Hall speech is such Wuthering Heights level miscommunication! It makes me ill!

Griffith positing that: a) having a dream is thee most important thing in the world and b) he cannot respect or consider a friend anyone who does not have their own dream (implicitly a dream different from his, so those two spheres never need interfere or threaten each other) or someone who is subordinate to him and therefore in danger of dying for his dream.

And then like five chapters later we get Casca’s flashbacks about Griffith and that immediately establishes that he is a lying liar who lies when it comes to his own emotions and guilt, but also that we can’t really know what he’s feeling in the present day, exactly, because he’s a different person now.

Contrary to what Griffith stan nation might say lol, I don’t think the dissonance between his two reactions to a child’s death directly resulting from him striving to achieve his goals is actually him just being a better liar by the Golden Age era.

He’s become indelibly crueler over the years and like, twenty is not fifteen.* He’s older and spent the entire time in between at war, killing other people, and commanding his own troops to die, for his dream. Age has hardened him. Meanwhile, him succumbing to that cruelty, to steel himself against personal grief, is literally the culmination of the Golden Age arc!

*caveat that the ages are messy, but he appears to be a teen and at least four to five years older by the Primrose Hall speech

But that flashback sequence is truly the key to Griffith’s character. It establishes both that he feels a general guilt over the blood on his hands, but also that he is motivated by a catastrophic level of sunk cost fallacy.

I also think him musing that the child must have really admired knights and wanted to be a knight himself, and that he always looked at Griffith like he was a hero out of a story is more indicative of Griffith and his initial perceptions of glory/his dream when he was younger, than simply an element of his guilt for leveraging the sense of hero worship he invokes in his followers (which is def an element at all)

It’s just very telling that this comes on the heels of Guts’ guilt over Adonis’ death and being reminded of his own younger self when seeing him.

Griffith’s own dream likely started out of naivety and simply wanting glory/to be a hero/to ascend when he started the Band of the Hawk as an adolescent. I think that child’s death represents him understanding the cost of being a mercenary, and leading people to their deaths for his own gain, when it’s far too late and he’s already sitting on a pile of corpses. And the only way to make it up is to keep grasping at his dream so that at least those deaths weren’t for nothing. I really don’t think he’s particularly torn up about Adonis’ death in the moment, but the larger abstract sense of guilt very much threatens to crush him if he ever falters.

And you know who has historically made him falter and put himself at risk, threatening his dream?

So, I think he’s very deliberately talking about Guts here actually, rather than the usual shipper line that he’s not even considering Guts when he says this.

And I think he’s very deliberately bringing up the key differences between himself and Guts (having a dream; Guts viewing himself as nothing but a tool to him despite!!! Griffith trying to convince him that they’re equals) and trying to convince himself that Guts shouldn’t mean much to him/that he cannot respect his life.

Because what’s one thing we know Griffith does? He pretends he doesn’t care while visibly caring very much.

And interestingly, what Griffith claims not to respect at all when speaking to Charlotte, seems to be what drew him to Guts in the first place. I’d argue, part of how Guts makes him falter, aside from an emotional connection, is potentially that he’s envious/tempted by the concept of being so uniquely unburdened with personal goals, considering Griffith himself is practically drowning in his own ambition.

Which, arguably, could simply be traits he values in any subordinate but not an equal. But we’re told several times by Casca that Guts is a unique case for him, that he’s never deliberately sought someone out to join him. And ostensibly, in that moment that observation is the only thing Griffith knows about him.

And it’s also worth noting that he initially simply asks Guts to join them. (More specifically he just says “I want you.” Super normal). The dual and its terms are something Guts sets, resulting in this moment.

But even after that point, he keeps trying to nudge their relationship into a more personal dynamic. Confiding in him, making it clear that he doesn’t tell anyone else these thoughts. And of course the famous scene where he insists that his own life isn’t worth more than Guts’ at all.

But Guts views himself as a sword to be wielded by Griffith (something we see Casca echo too) and keeps reinforcing the fact that he only does as Griffith demands.

And Griffith is very willing to leverage that and use Guys’ obedience to his benefit. At the heart of it, Griffith has always been mercenary even about this relationship. He’s very much trying to have his cake and eat it too, where his close personal friend and confidant is also his dog who he can bring to heel whenever it suits him.

It is very telling the way Griffith reacts when Guts tries to leave him. Where when he realizes he can’t talk him out of it, he decides to make him stay.

To me, this all ties back to the Primrose Hall speech, and how Griffith is trying to distance himself from his feelings for Guts, because he’s so much closer to his goals at that point. And ostensibly both the Princess’ favor and the attempt on his own life have made him really reevaluate how close he is to achieving something real and to not let something petty like feelings get in the way of that.

…and then Guts breaks up with him and everything falls to pieces.

[polyhexian]

My extremely basic bitch owl house theory:

They went out of their way to establish every ingredient of creating a grimwalker and how it was attainable, and specifically that the selkidomus scales obtained were not fresh. They've set it up perfectly for belos to theoretically be able to produce another grimwalker, and for something to go unexpectedly wrong. It's possible that was something planned when the season was longer and it's not going to come up now, but it might. Unless belos has a second grimwalker lab, I think we can confidently say he doesn't have any more currently actively growing. Maybe at some point the plan was for belos to take over his growing hunter replacement and be like haha yes sweet new body only to realize that due to the selkidomus scales it's already rotting and his only chance is to take hunters and for that to be a more protracted subplot. It sure would have been cool to see two hunters fight! But who knows. Anyway I think they've put too much time into setting it up to totally drop it, I think it's going to be relevant.

Second thought! The grimwalker we see belos consume in ftf is clearly an adult- or at least, not a child. And there are SO many dead grimwalkers, we see SO many bones and masks. Belos is only 400 years old, and hunter is the youngest golden guard ever. Which means all the others were at LEAST 16- the numbers make it impossible for all of them to actually BE sixteen or more real years old. My thought is that before hunter, every Golden guard was born as an adult. But they never did what belos wanted- they always turned on him. My thought is that hunter is the first one to be picked as an actual child and raised and groomed to be exactly as belos wanted him to be. He is the closest to perfect because he spent the most time on him.

Follow up thought: I don't have much basis off this but I still have it in my mind that potentially, the grimwalker ingredient that is currently the biggest problem for belos is the bone of the Ortet. Caleb died literally centuries ago now and he's made so many grimwalkers. He's gonna run out of bones eventually. Perhaps the reason he actually raised this one is that he is running out of bones- perhaps even ran out awhile ago, and while he carelessly tossed most of them into a death pit, the last few he has been careful to bring back to his lab to "recycle." Break back down into component parts somehow. He needs to retrieve the Ortet bone he used to make them to make the next one. Puts an interesting spin on why he wants him back SO badly. It's not just that he wants to make sure no one knows what hunter knows, or that hunter is now a danger to him, or even just that he's furious at him. It's because he can't make a replacement unless he kills hunter. Could also interestingly expand this into the particular bone being something that wouldn't kill him to remove, like, perhaps, a bone in his forearm. He could get his arm cut off or something, in a TV friendly way like Eda's arm loss was I'm sure, but the bone could be reused without killing hunter but potentially destabilizing him.

Ohhhh. Wouldn't it have been neat if that was how belos possession ended. Like instead of throwing it into the water hunter severed his arm, the one that was holding the vial, so it fell somewhere he couldn't reach, and then collapsed, because without the Ortet bone his body was destabilizing, so belos ditched him and ran, but hunter was still going to die- maybe turn back into palistrom wood or something? Disney friendly, you know, no blood. And then flapjacks sacrifice sort of... You know. His eyes changed. He's got magic now. He's been fundamentally Altered. But belos took the severed arm with him, brings it back to his lab and uses the Ortet bone to finish an in progress grimwalker body he can take over. Fun fun fun.

Anyway I don't really think this is super viable because he DID try to kill him in hollow mind which would have killed him theoretically without leaving a body behind? Which would have been a problem for that. Still. Fun idea.

[ashesandhackles]

Harry And Personal Conflict: A Meta On Evolving Dynamic With Ron and Hermione

One of my last metas on Harry was how his abuse at the Dursleys informed who he is as a person and a lot of his main personality traits. This time, I want to explore Harry's relationship with conflict, mostly in regard to his best friends - Ron and Hermione.

First things first, because of his abusive upbringing where he is constantly in conflict with his caregivers, conflict is seen as Bad Thing when we first meet him as a 11 year old. And it informs how he reacts to both Ron and Hermione at first. He instantly relates to Ron because Ron is an underdog - a boy who feels neglected and passed over in his large and boisterous family. Harry shares his own experience of neglect with Ron and they both bond instantly.

His initial impression of Hermione is that she has a "bossy sort of voice" . The bossiness is an important characterstic to his impression of her - she reminds him of an authority figure and he does not particularly take to her as easily as he does Ron. Before the troll incident, he is frequently annoyed by her interventions because "he can't believe anyone would be so interfering". It's her vulnerability and the fact that she may be in danger that makes Harry, and by extension Ron, go after her. And she pays it back in full with a demonstration of loyalty to them in front of people she wants to impress: teachers. This sets the tone of his friendship with Ron and Hermione.

There is sense of easiness to his friendship with Ron, especially in earlier books that he doesn't quite share with Hermione. This is a bit gendered as well, of course. His relationship with Hermione evolves as Ron's own equation with two of them changes, more specifically Ron's cognisance of his romantic feelings for Hermione. So how does this inform his relationship with personal conflict?

Let's look at it Book wise.

Book 1-4: Since Harry tends to see All Conflict As Bad, when Hermione becomes his friend, he tends to ignore traits of her that he particularly doesn't take to. Specifically her argumentativeness - which he usually leaves Ron to deal with. For example, look at when Hermione drags him off to the kitchens in GOF. When he realises what this is about, he nudges Ron, and Ron does the protesting: "Hermione, you are trying to rope us into that spew stuff again!".

Often, you can say he is amused by Ron's more ..let's say colourful.. reactions to Hermione being overbearing. So when Ron and him are not speaking and Hermione gets a Quidditch term wrong, it causes him "a pang to imagine Ron's expression of he could have heard Hermione talking about Wonky Faints". It's that deeply ingrained into the dynamic.

While Ron acts buffer and protects Harry from stepping into a potential conflict ("skip the lecture", "don't nag" he tells her), Harry's world view remains quite the same. Part of Harry's growing up is integrating conflicting points of view and gaining nuance. For example, he can't understand why someone like Snape, who seems to hate him so much, can also save his life at the end of Philosopher's Stone. This is his first venture into trying to integrate two conflicting things about a person into nuance. Dumbledore gives him a very easily digestible story, one that appeals to his ideal of his father and Harry is sated.

Again, Harry's world view is tested when he finds out that he relates with Tom Riddle - for their "strange likenesses". He doth protest too much at Dumbledore's office: "I don't think I am like him! I am Gryffindor!". And Dumbledore offers him a wisdom nugget: "It's our choices which define who we are" (paraphrasing). Harry is uncomfortable that he empathises with Tom Riddle, his parents' murderer, at this point in the story.

In the first four books, his only proper personal conflict has been with Ron.

It is depressing to think about in these terms - but Ron is Harry's first experience of unconditional love (we can even put Hagrid here, but he is not the one who spends most time with Harry). And when Ron and him fight, Harry is so hurt by the prospect that he proceeds to abandon Ron before Ron abandons him. (the whole chucking a "Potter stinks" badge at him and making a jab about having a scar is what he wants, or the fight in DH where he yells "then leave! Pretend you have gotten over your spattergoit and have your mummy feed you up"). It's an interesting defense mechanism and he feels "corrosive hatred" towards Ron during these times because Ron and him aren't supposed to be like this. Ron is a certainty in his life. It's also why when Ron comes back, Harry either doesn't need him to apologise (as in GOF) or quickly forgives him in DH - although I do think Harry thinks the locket bit was punishment enough. But even without the whole locket, I think Harry has trouble holding Ron accountable in general beyond few slaps on the wrist - especially if Ron and he are on good terms.

5th Book: This is the transition point for Golden Trio friendship. Harry has come back from an immensely traumatising night at the graveyard and his PTSD isolates him from his best friends. This is also the point where Ron, especially after GOF, is aware of his romantic feelings for Hermione ("the perfume is unusual Ron", Hermione tells him in this book). So in this book, we often see Ron and Hermione on one side, with Harry on the other.

Ron is unwilling (quite like Harry in that respect) to engage him in a direct conflict, but he is also unwilling to shield him from Hermione's nagging in this book. This is why, OOTP is the book where you see Harry ignore or avoid Hermione and lie to her more than usual to avoid conflict. For example, he tells her that Snape thinks he can carry on Occlumency once he got the basics - that is categorically not what happened. Or the entire day he spends ignoring Hermione's warnings about breaking into Umbridge's office. (The description here is comical - about Hermione vehemently hissing so much that Seamus Finnigan is checking his cauldron for leaks. ) If he cannot lie to her or avoid her, at the end of the rope, he will treat her to display of his frightening temper.

Interestingly, OOTP is also the book that his world view goes through a tremendous upheaval: mainly, his ideal of his father and having empathy for Snape. It is unnerving for Harry to see Snape being the "boy who cried in the corner" when his father shouts at a cowering woman. Similarly unnerving is that his intense empathy for him - "he knew exactly what Snape felt when his father taunted him and judging by what he had seen, his father was every bit as arrogant as Snape always told him".

While he is placated that his father grew out of it, this memory of his father being a bully is something he cannot bear to watch again in DH. Few chapters later, he grins at Ron "sweeping his hair" back to make it look more windswept, just like his father - suggesting that Harry is beginning to integrate two conflicting things he knew about his father: from the people who loved him vs the people he was cruel to.

6th Book onwards: It's interesting to me that his better appreciation for Hermione comes after OOTP (one, because she is the one who challenged the whole Ministry plan and she followed him into a trap knowing it was one anyway) but also the timing of it is in line with Harry having a more nuanced understanding of his father. He struggled to hold conflicting information about him into one cohesive person - the boy who was a bully vs the man who joins Order of Phoenix to fight a war he could very well have sat out. The pedestal crashing helped Harry gain nuance (he thinks of his father and mother with pride in HBP - of them walking into an arena with head held high). HBP also sets up his deeper understanding with Snape in DH. There is lovely meta by about this by thedreamersmusing. Read it here. HBP is also the book he feels "sorry" for Voldemort and also feels "reluctant admiration" for him - both of things he is less defensive about.

And this nuance informs his relationship with conflicts - especially the kind he has with Hermione. He is more confrontational with her and does not lie or sneak around her as much as he did in OOTP in the Half Blood Prince. ("Finished? Or do you want to see if it does back flips?" He asks her when she takes the book from him to check if it's jinxed. Or the "I hope you enjoy yourself" he calls out irritably when she declares intention to find out who HBP is. And "do you want to rub it in Hermione? How do you think I feel now?" He tells her when she says she was right about HBP).

The fact that he is willing to be confrontational with her is a big step in his character - a step up from his unregulated outbursts in OOTP, which is a function of him not knowing how to put his anger across in normal ways. He is also more willing to stand up for her in front of Ron too - "You could say sorry" he tells Ron bluntly. This is in contrast to his more quiet standing up for her in POA: "Can't you give her a break?" Harry asked him quietly. In POA, he lets the subject drop after Ron flatly refuses. Here, he presses on more : "What did you have to imitate her for?" "She laughed at moustache!" "So did I, it's the stupidest thing I have ever seen".

His relationship with Ron is an interesting contrast to his relationship with Hermione, which functionally teaches a very important lesson for an abused child who thought all conflicts are bad: That his friendship with her is challenging, and frustrating, filled with conflicts but their love for each other isn't disputed. It's a very important thing for brain development in general - to hold conflicting information in one space. The defense mechanism abused children do to avoid this is called splitting.

So, Ron allows Harry to be the age he is: a teenager and it's foundation for his further development, and Hermione teaches him how to be an adult, and therefore, spurs his growth. (In esoteric terms, if you look at Ron and Hermione as proxy parents - Ron is the Mother archetype, the one who offers unconditional love. Hermione is the Father archetype - one who demands best of him, and guides him).

Additional reading: Harry, Prongs and Prince - Harry's Inner Struggles For Forging An Identity. By u/metametatron4

Harry Identifies, and Reluctantly Admires Snape Even Before The Prince's Tale by thedreamersmusing

[shihalyfie]

A meta and analysis on Hurricane Touchdown

Hurricane Touchdown sure is one of the Digimon entries that’s really difficult to describe. Often said to be “confusing” and “like an acid trip” (for pretty good reason, honestly), it somehow also manages to have a lot of hold in public memory, partially due to being one of the three movies that got widespread international distribution via Digimon: The Movie. Moreover, its relevance has started to re-emerge thanks to Kizuna, the director of which has stated Hurricane Touchdown to be his favorite movie (multiple times). Rather recently, there was even an editorial written by a journalist who had been covering Kizuna, professing that he had watched Hurricane Touchdown as a kid and hated it, only to rewatch it as an adult and appreciate it much better.

With all that, plus the fact that the movie recently got a new translation, it’s probably a good time to go back over the movie and analyze it! Despite what popular sentiment may have you believe, the plot of the movie isn’t that fundamentally incomprehensible, just buried under some rather unusual production and execution decisions. But there’s a lot to be said about the themes and story of the movie, so let’s dig in!

(All screenshots and quotations from the movie are based off the Hudie translation.)

Hurricane Touchdown in meta franchise terms

The full title of the movie isn’t technically Hurricane Touchdown by itself, but rather “Digimon Hurricane Touchdown!!/Transcendent Evolution!! The Golden Digimentals”. (The Japanese fanbase tends to shorten it to “Digimon Hurricane”, or, for even more shortening, “dejihari”.) The double-titling there is because of how it was originally screened; it was the 02 “summer movie”, screening in July (between the airings of 02 episodes 14 and 15). Functionally, the franchise has thereafter treated it like a single movie, but at the time, the fact it was technically “two” movies gave it the longest running time of any Digimon theatrical movie, clocking in at a little over an hour. (The tri. movies are officially considered OVAs and not theatrical movies due to their limited-screening nature, so as of this writing Kizuna, at 95 minutes, is the only theatrical movie to break this record.)

The movie itself has a pretty fascinating development history – for one, Akiyama Ryou was originally planned to be the starring character instead of Wallace. It’s also the first Digimon movie to be in “questionable canonicity” territory – this is very normal for Toei tie-in movies, since development for these kinds of movies usually starts at the same time or even before the TV series itself, making it hard to reconcile canon, but unusual at the time for Adventure, which had both its first and second movies be plot-relevant to Adventure and 02 respectively. It is generally understood that the movie takes place in “summer” – possibly between episodes 14 and 15, at the same position it screened in real-life – but, interestingly, the Western and Japanese fanbases’ opinions on why it’s questionably canon tend to differ: in the West it’s usually based on the appearance of Tailmon and Patamon’s higher-level evolutionary forms (which shouldn’t be possible as per 02 episode 27), but in the Japanese fanbase it’s based on Wallace’s existence posing a timeline contradiction (according to Adventure episode 45, there shouldn’t be any Chosen Children before 1995, but the movie states that Wallace had been one before then). Add to that The Door to Summer, which seemingly contradicts the ending of the movie (in which Wallace and Gumimon find what’s implied to be Chocomon’s egg, whereas The Door to Summer has the line “Chocomon isn’t here anymore”), and everything is just a tangled mess.

Despite that, it’s pretty remarkable how lasting the movie has been in public memory. Even with all of the factors working against it – the fact it’s often accused of being confusing (or, by many a Japanese kid, boring and slow) or an acid trip – Wallace is a very popular character, more so than you’d expect for a “guest” character in a one-off movie, especially one so controversial. 02 fans often even consider him an honorary seventh member of the 02 group. His article on the Pixiv dictionary wiki is pretty surprisingly thorough, at that. Questionable canonicity aside, the fact The Door to Summer even exists is pretty significant – how many one-off questionably canon movies have you seen getting an actual sequel?

As an aside, Hurricane Touchdown has a bit of an interesting relationship with Ojamajo Doremi, which is in some sense classic Digimon’s sister series (it aired at around the same time as Adventure through Frontier, and was also headed by their producer, Seki Hiromi). Wallace was voiced by Miyahara Nami, a voice actress who grew up in an international school in Austria and thus speaks fluent German and English, thus often putting her in roles that require speaking one of those. (If you listen to Wallace’s Japanese speech through the movie, it has a very heavy accent, which is deliberately affected on Miyahara’s part.) A year later, Miyahara would be cast as major character Momoko in Motto! Ojamajo Doremi, and The Door to Summer would prominently feature Nat-chan, a girl voiced by Shishido Rumi, who voiced Ojamajo’s Onpu (who is generally agreed to be Doremi’s most popular character, and Shishido’s most famous role). Coincidence? Opportunistic casting? Who knows.

The movie itself

But that’s enough beating around the bush. Let’s get to the movie itself!

I’m not going to dwell on this too much because I’m going to be going more in detail about it below, but our story starts off in Wallace’s hometown of Summer Memory, a fictional rural village in Colorado, in 1995. (As mentioned earlier, this is a bit of a timeline contradiction; Adventure episode 45 establishes that “the one who wishes for stability” and the Agents didn’t get the idea of human Chosen Children until 1995, whereas the events of Hurricane Touchdown imply he’d been one before then.) Chocomon suddenly vanishes, and a gust of wind is left behind, implying that he must have been kidnapped. It’s not exactly said by what he was taken by (Digimon: The Movie ties it into Our War Game! by having both be traced to a “virus”, but no mention of such is made in the original Japanese version).

The mystery of what it is that took Chocomon away is never fully elaborated in the course of the movie, but as it goes on, it becomes increasingly apparent that it doesn’t actually matter. Why? Well, stay tuned.

So, timeskip to 2002!

As Takeru and Hikari are visiting Mimi in New York, Hikari, who is known to have a bit of an empathic connection to Digimon, senses that there’s a “crying Digimon” (this will be important later), and Mimi suddenly vanishes – as do the other Chosen Children.

I think part of the reason this movie is often pinned as feeling like an acid trip is that the demeanor and attitude the 02 kids express in this movie feels a little too laid-back for the very urgent situation of their seniors having suddenly up and vanished (which is also not helped by the movie’s overall soundtrack being a lot more laid-back than the events on screen should suggest). This is especially odd because it’s absolutely not like the kids aren’t worried about their seniors at all! Rather to the contrary; “getting Taichi and the others back” is the major motive driving the whole group for the rest of it, and it’s constantly brought up as their goal in dialogue, shaping their actions throughout the rest of the movie. The execution of the dialogue and the overall direction create a bit of a tonal mismatch, but on its face, the actual storytelling checks.

Shortly after, Chocomon – now evolved and corrupted into something – appears, and Wallace and Gumimon confront him.

The fact that Wallace refers to his partners by their Baby-level names (Chocomon and Gumimon) even after they’ve clearly evolved brings up a lot of interesting implications. One is that, not having been privy to any great adventure in the Digital World before, Wallace doesn’t have a lot of awareness of names changing after evolution the same way his Japanese peers do. But another important thing that comes out here is that, through the course of this movie, Wallace primarily sees his partners the same way he did as a young child. A lot of this movie’s story centers around Wallace’s difficulty in moving on from the past and accepting that things aren’t the same way that they are anymore – and so, just like how he has a hard time swallowing that the circumstances have changed, he has difficulty seeing his own partners as having changed, and calls them by the same names despite everything.

Takeru and Hikari catch on, and Hikari’s psychic sense catches on that something’s happened to her brother, too.

Oh, and incidentally, said seniors aren’t in a pleasant place to be in at all.

The fact that the older kids are clearly Not Having a Good Time in the realm they’ve been kidnapped to – it’s depicted as cold, lonely, full of negative emotions, and eating away at their ability to even bodily function – is very heavily connected to what we later learn about what’s been going on with Chocomon through the last seven years. Moreover, the one truly coherent thing Taichi and Yamato can spit out at this stage is concern for their siblings – i.e., love. Keep that in mind for later!

Wallace drops a line to his family (”Amy” presumably being his sister) saying that he’s going to head to Summer Memory, and skips town. Repeat: Summer Memory is in Colorado – he’s doing something as drastic as going out of state to follow Chocomon, which naturally does not amuse his mom very much (as we find out later in the movie). Patamon eavesdrops on the conversation and relays the information to Takeru and Hikari, who contact Daisuke in turn.

So the remaining three kids nyoom all the way to the US using frequent flyer miles (which makes you really wonder whose those are, or what on earth they told their parents to allow three elementary school kids go around unassisted in another country) to go save their seniors, which apparently doesn’t fund their trip all the way to Colorado, forcing them to hitchhike from New York.

(We also get a quick scene implying that Daisuke has better proficiency in English than Iori and Miyako, as he translates some of the statements for the guy they take a ride from. This is pretty surprising, given that Daisuke hasn’t really been portrayed as particularly book smart…but then again, language skills sometimes just happen to come naturally to some people regardless of skill in books, and hey, it might just come in useful for his future ramen chef career in New York…)

We get our first major scene of dialogue between Gumimon and Wallace, and we learn quite a bit about their characters in the process. Gumimon has a similar laid-back attitude to the more prominent Terriermon in Tamers, but beyond that (and a shared voice actress), it’s important to note that they have very different personalities otherwise. In this scene, Wallace and Gumimon get in an argument over how to handle Chocomon, with Wallace insisting that they shouldn’t have attacked him and that they should have just “talked” about it – even though, as Gumimon correctly points out, he was pretty obviously trying to physically attack Wallace.

In fact, at this part of the story, Wallace is being extremely irrational and in denial. You don’t even have to watch the rest of the movie to see that Gumimon’s very practical stance on the matter is reasonable – Chocomon was very much trying to attack Wallace, and getting caught in the fight was pretty much all he could do for Wallace’s safety. But Wallace, still stuck in the past, can’t accept that at this point in the movie, and, honestly, is being a bit of a brat about it too – he’s engaging in progressively more self-destructive behavior over the course of the movie (ditching his family to set off by himself in order to hitchhike to Colorado, for one). We later find out that Wallace is specifically obsessed with going back to the flower field where he lost Chocomon, having independently come up with the idea that this would somehow let everything go back to what it was before – even though there was really no sign this would actually fix anything.

The Adventure universe generally runs on a concept that a Digimon partner is representative of part of the self, and so, tying that into Wallace and his two partners, it can be taken that Gumimon and Chocomon reflect the duality of Wallace as a character – Chocomon representing his desire to latch onto the past and hope that everything can be the same that it was before, and Gumimon as Wallace’s sense of reason, advising him about the reality of the situation and how to practically get through it (and, thus, to move on). In fact, Gumimon is the one constantly advising him about said self-destructive behavior (reminding him that his mom is probably worried about him, but also berating him for just ditching the train as a result instead of thinking about how that’d leave them without reliable transportation for the rest of it).

The symbolism is driven in even further when the only thing Gumimon has to say, in response to Wallace clinging further onto the idea that going to the flower field will fix things…is a cryptic statement that Chocomon didn’t like the heat, then suddenly offering to be a hat to provide Wallace shade. Because right now, Wallace and Chocomon are the same: clinging hopelessly to shards of the past.

The other 02 kids make their way to meet up in Colorado, but run into some snags when Daisuke, Miyako, and Iori end up missing the exit to Denver (Takeru is not amused), and Hikari and Takeru’s train ends up stranded thanks to Chocomon’s interference…

…and, making things worse, Daisuke, Miyako, and Iori try to take a plane back to Denver, only to overshoot it again. (Sorry, Taichi…your juniors are idiots.)

Fortunately, they get lucky by running into the very same boy they’re indirectly looking for on their way to hitchhiking. We learn that Wallace has never had exposure to other Chosen Children before to the extent of knowing there were any Digimon in Japan, nor has he ever been to the Digital World, so for all intents and purposes, his experiences with Chocomon and Gumimon are all he knows (i.e. he has no awareness of large-scale Digital World affairs). He also apparently speaks Japanese, which is convenient for this movie so that they don’t have to have a language barrier, but, amusingly, Wallace claims that it’s because he “had a Japanese girlfriend once”. (Gumimon, who is much more reliable of a source, says that he’d apparently put an honest effort into studying, so an interpretation that Wallace really likes anime or something is not out of the question.)

It’s also interesting to see how the others react to him, especially considering that it’s becoming increasingly apparent that he’s involved with the disappearance of their seniors. Miyako is as openly friendly as she generally always is, Iori presses him very calmly about questions relevant to the disappearances and Chocomon without even batting an eyelid (future lawyer in training here), and Daisuke is suspicious from the get-go…which is exacerbated when Wallace starts flirting with Miyako. The running gag of Daisuke getting angry about Wallace flirting with Miyako has a lot to unpack here – the most obvious standby is the shipping interpretation (or, at least, that Daisuke may be as protective of Miyako as he is Hikari), but there are other points to observe as well. Firstly, Daisuke is a rather abruptly straightforward and overly honest person, and it makes sense that he’d play badly with people who seem dishonest – after all, his suspicions of Wallace started even before he started flirting, and he also shows similar hostility around Takeru (also not a very straightforward person) when he suspects he’s being made fun of. But also, the Pixiv dictionary entry takes the interpretation that Wallace’s personality had gotten a bit “warped” by his experiences – or, in other words, he’d developed this penchant for acting like a flirt, wandering off on his own, and altogether being incredibly wishy-washy because of the trauma of losing Chocomon and his inability to get over it.

And as much as Daisuke’s being a prick about it (to the point that mocking Wallace for it gets him left there stranded with him), he’s absolutely right about the contradiction Wallace’s posing – he’s acting all high and mighty about trying to become an “adult” (meaning that going off on his own and flirting with girls presumably are part of his perception of what Mature Guys do), yet he’s being a total mama’s boy by constantly dropping everything to call her repeatedly through his trip. (It’s even worse than the subs here suggest; he calls her “mama”, the kind of super-affectionate language used by Mimi and Ken.) As Gumimon says, Wallace thinks he’s actually right, but he doesn’t actually have it together at all.

Another interesting thing to note here is that at this point of the movie, Wallace calls Daisuke “Daisuke-kun” (with honorific attached, slight distance). Remember this for later.

Chocomon appears to confront them again, but he seems to not properly recognize Wallace – because, as we later find out, he doesn’t see the current Wallace as “Wallace”, and will accept nothing less than a younger Wallace from exactly the way he was when they were separated. (It is later stated in the movie that this is why he kidnapped the seniors and turned them younger; since he can’t recognize “Wallace” the way he is now, he’s taking anyone he can find with a Digivice and de-aging them in the hopes that he’ll find “Wallace” among them.) Gumimon recognizes that Chocomon is beyond recognition, and tells Wallace to not see him as Chocomon, but Wallace refuses to accept this and continues to intervene in the fight, telling Chocomon that they’ll meet again in the flower field. Again, Wallace’s mentality isn’t that different from Chocomon’s at this point – he may not be delusional to the point he wants to literally turn back time, but he still thinks that reproducing the conditions of seven years prior will fix everything and make it all better again.

During this whole time, the older(?) kids are getting progressively younger, and it’s turning out to impact not only their physical bodies but also their mentalities. At this point, they’re starting to lose awareness of what’s happening to them, as they become more and more connected to Chocomon’s emotions.

Daisuke is smart enough to catch on that Wallace definitely knows what’s going on, and starts to interrogate him. Recall that Daisuke is completely within his rights to do so at this point – Wallace is not only acting incredibly shady, he’s also being dismissive and refusing to give Daisuke any concrete answers about something that most certainly involves him at this point. As the 02 kids keep reiterating, their seniors have been kidnapped, and it’s pretty clear to anyone that Wallace knows something about this, but he continues to blow them off.

Wallace also doesn’t seem to be very happy about the fact Gumimon had evolved during the battle – remember, Wallace is very resistant to changes in his status quo, and especially when it involves Gumimon evolving in a similar way to Chocomon.

Daisuke continues to pry into what’s going on with Wallace and Chocomon, and Gumimon, who understands that there’s no use in denying that this is a problem, tries to be straightforward about it – but Wallace, still stubbornly refusing to open up about it, won’t even let Gumimon tell Daisuke about the truth.

Daisuke realizes that they’re not going to make any territory as it is, so he decides to have Lighdramon take them to Summer Memory for the time being, bonding a bit more with Wallace in the process.

Once they reach Summer Memory, the kids learn about Takeru and Hikari getting stalled by Chocomon on the train, and the fact everyone else on it had disappeared – meaning that the responsibility that Wallace is carrying for not taking care of this problem begins to weigh further on him. Daisuke, Miyako, and Iori continue to interrogate him about what he knows.

But Wallace, still stubbornly, refuses to talk, and being in Summer Memory only drowns him in further memories of his past with Chocomon and Gumimon. We learn a bit more about Gumimon’s past, too – apparently, he was quite the crybaby…

And when Gumimon finally begins to spill the details of what’s going on – that Chocomon wants to see the younger Wallace and is kidnapping kids with his Digivice and turning them younger as a result – Wallace still continues to double down on his denial. Notice his wording – his specific insistence that things will go back to “how they used to be,” because it’s not just about getting Chocomon back, but also a fixation on recreating that happy childhood he had with him.

(There’s also a bit of a cute moment around here where Daisuke asks Wallace if he needs to call his mom – after having teased him for being a mama’s boy earlier, Daisuke really is starting to care about his welfare. It’s also amusingly mentioned that Daisuke, Miyako, and Iori are broke out of money until they meet up with Takeru and Hikari again…)

That night, Wallace tries to go off by himself to the flower field, not even bringing Gumimon with him – as he implies later, he doesn’t even want to get Gumimon involved with this because he was the closest to Chocomon – but Daisuke, having finally caught on to his suspicion that Chocomon is not only relevant to Wallace but also Wallace’s partner, confronts him about it. Wallace thus finally spills the details – that Gumimon and Chocomon were born from the same egg, that Wallace kept them from his mother and stuck with them during childhood, and that, seven years prior, Chocomon suddenly vanished while they were playing at the flower field.

Wallace: I’ve never been able to forget about Chocomon since then. Not even after moving to New York, not even once. We were such good friends…So why did Chocomon have to end up like that? Does he hate me for not being able to save him? Daisuke: So the enemy we’re fighting is actually your Digimon? Your most important friend?! Daisuke: Of course you’d never be okay with that…

Daisuke is in shock, even though he’d already started to suspect this.

I said, earlier, that Wallace is being extremely irrational and in denial. I did not say that his feelings aren’t valid. Wallace’s situation sucks, and Daisuke recognizes why this hurts for him so much, especially after putting himself in Wallace’s shoes (and in fact it’s even worse for Wallace; Daisuke’s only known V-mon for less than half a year, whereas Wallace is talking about his formative childhood friend).

Daisuke: I’d never be able to do it. If V-mon were to turn into something completely different…Even if he went on a horrible rampage…There’s no way I’d ever be able to bring V-mon down. Wallace: Daisuke… Daisuke: So then, what are we supposed to do? Wallace: It’s not something you need to be crying over. Daisuke: But…

This entire scene is an interesting one for many reasons, especially because of the position in which it aired – this was in the middle of the arc in 02 when everyone was getting their second Digimentals. Daisuke had, only a few episodes prior, expressed trepidation over “friendly fire” – fighting any friend who had become controlled by the Digimon Kaiser. This is consistent with that (and the 02 kids’ general bleeding hearts and difficulty with fighting friends), and it’s even worse – unlike before, when we were talking about evil mind control, Chocomon is pretty obviously a victim of his own madness. And although Wallace continues to insist that this isn’t Daisuke’s problem, Daisuke, for all he’s rough around the edges, is a genuinely kind person who thinks of others to the point he breaks down in genuine tears over the problem, and it’s consistent with not only his prior characterization of thinking about others’ feelings in 02 episode 8, but also how this eventually ties into his indignation over seeing others being hurt (episode 20) or their feelings being trampled on (episode 49).

Another interesting thing here is that at no point in the movie is “killing” ever brought up, but rather the word used is taosu, which literally means “defeat”. In 02 proper, its use is somewhat euphemistic – most famously, it was used in episode 44, when Miyako and Hawkmon have a crisis over killing LadyDevimon (so in short, there’s no illusions about the fact killing is in play here). But in this context, it’s not even really about killing. Wallace doesn’t even want to fight in the first place. The sheer action of physically beating up a beloved friend is painful, with killing as the ultimate unwanted outcome. Everything about this sucks. But Daisuke correctly points out that Taichi and the others’ welfare is on the line here, and everything feels like the wrong thing to do. “What are we supposed to do?”, indeed.

So that’s why Daisuke momentarily indulges in Wallace’s denial-induced pattern of thought, because it really does seem like the only out here. (Especially because, from Daisuke’s perspective, Wallace seems to understands this situation better than he does – even if he doesn’t actually.) If they go to the flower field, they won’t have to fight and everyone will be saved and it’ll be fine! Wallace is irrational and in denial, but you can’t blame him and Daisuke for really, really wanting to believe this.

And Daisuke drops this zinger of a line, too:

Daisuke: So don’t say you’re gonna go alone.

Daisuke’s characterization really is important here, because, again, this movie came out during the first arc of the series, before episode 21 and the second half that centered around Ichijouji Ken’s redemption. At this point in the series, Daisuke was still being extremely deferential to others, especially his seniors, in almost all cases, and although episode 8 was a momentary glimpse into the kind of resolve Daisuke could have when it involved something he really cared about, this movie is really the first major sneak peek into how supportive of a person Daisuke is going to develop into, especially when it comes to Ken.

And Gumimon reaffirms that he’s going to stick by Wallace no matter what – filling the traditional role of a partner that Chocomon won’t anymore.

So they go to the flower field, and everything…fails spectacularly.

Well, before that, we get a glimpse of how the older kids are doing (they’re barely even conscious now), and we finally get to see Chocomon “in his element” and not as a rampaging monster. Things really, really aren’t going great for Chocomon either. He desperately and sadly jumps among the kids, trying to find Wallace among them, and what he really, really wants is just to be with his partner again. But they’re all “wrong”…

At first it seems like Wallace is making headway – for a second, Chocomon even recognizes him as Wallace! – but he continues to insist that he wants Wallace to come “with him”, to where it’s “cold and lonely and no one is there”. The way he starts chanting that he wants to go back is represented by the young Chocomon’s voice getting progressively lost in the monster’s voice, and Wallace, starting to grasp how futile Chocomon’s clinging to the past is, makes his first statement of the movie’s core theme: you can’t go back to the past, the only thing you can do is look forward and think about what you can do from there.

So after witnessing very clearly, in front of his eyes, how Chocomon is not going to listen to reason and will accept nothing less than something he can’t have, to the point of evolving and distorting everything around him, Wallace’s denial finally hits its limits, and he accepts that fighting him will be the only option out. (Again, note the use of “defeat” here – it’s not really about beelining straight to euthanizing him as much as Wallace has finally gotten over his refusal to fight Chocomon at all.) And considering that the situation is clearly rapidly escalating, and that Chocomon himself is clearly not in sound mind and having a terrible time himself, it doesn’t take much to see why the bleeding-heart Daisuke would also end up conceding so quickly. There’s a limit to how much you can hold out with pacifism when that just happened right in front of you!

(Also, Wallace no longer uses the honorific on Daisuke. Friendship level up!)

Chocomon evolves further and further, and his personality starts to actually take a turn for the cruel as he starts toying with the Digimon. In fact, it’s made pretty apparent that they’re no match for him from the get-go – he keeps toying with reality and forcing the Digimon back and forth between forms. He ends up “altering the world” into something reflective of his own heart, and it’s repeatedly pointed out that it’s “cold and lonely” – in short, Chocomon is subjecting the world to feel the same pain and loneliness that he felt, the pain that was enough to drive him mad.

And Wallace finally has this to say:

Wallace: Like Daisuke said, I’m a big baby. But you’re not Chocomon anymore. No, you’re the one who did this to Chocomon…Chocomon was all by himself and lonely, and in that loneliness, he tried so hard…But you took his heart and locked it away somewhere! I’m going to fight. If I defeat you…If that means I can free Chocomon from you…Then I want to fight, too! I need strength…

Firstly, Wallace acknowledges that he’s been a brat – that he’s been philandering around and acting spoiled and stringing everyone around (character development!!). And secondly, Wallace finally acknowledges the truth of Chocomon no longer being recognizable anymore. The ending quarter of this movie focuses heavily on the idea that Chocomon has now become so distorted that he can no longer even be considered the same thing anymore – it’s ambiguous as to whether that “you” that Wallace refers to having taken Chocomon away is actually a separate supernatural entity, or whether Chocomon was drowning in his own loneliness to the point those negative feelings became their own entity and consumed him.

In actuality, though – it doesn’t really matter! 02 as a series would also go on to blur the boundaries between external interference and internal forces – Ken having the Dark Seed as an influence but also being personally responsible for his own emotions driving him over the edge, and having to take responsibility regardless, and Oikawa technically being possessed by Vamdemon but still being goaded on by his own fixation with the past (in fact, notice how all three of these cases have to do with a fixation on things that can’t be brought back). Right now, the only thing that matters is that Chocomon is no longer recognizable, the thing in front of Wallace is no longer the same friend he knew, and even being able to bring back Chocomon’s sense of self is something Wallace wants.

(Daisuke also throws in a more charitable interpretation of Wallace’s actions even when he’s being hard on himself, pointing out that he can’t really be called a “baby” when he also did have genuine determination to come all the way there to find Chocomon despite his age.)

Hikari and Takeru arrive on the scene, and after Daisuke loses his marbles a bit over his happiness at seeing Hikari-chan there, Hikari points out the same thing: “You’re not the Digimon that was crying.”

Chocomon starts turning the 02 kids younger too – and remember, it was established earlier that he was using the Digivice as a guide. That meant it made sense for him to target the older kids, since they had the same model of Digivice Wallace did. But Daisuke and the others have D-3s, and there’s no way to really mistake them for Wallace – so in other words, Chocomon has devolved to inflicting cruelty for no good reason, with the original motive having completely vanished.

In increasing desperation, Angewomon and Angemon decide to evolve, and…look, I don’t have an explanation either, but I have to admit I’m somewhat amused by the fact that even they don’t really seem to have an explanation beyond “well, we’re desperate and hopefully it’ll do something!”

So they evolve, and Chocomon oneshots them. But that’s okay, because they released some golden Digimentals for Daisuke and Wallace to use! So V-mon and Gumimon get shiny new golden forms –

– and Chocomon pretty much oneshots them, too. More specifically, he eats them…and within his body, Magnamon and Gumimon’s consciousness gets eaten apart to the point they start forgetting their partners. Wow, this situation just got worse.

Yeah, so, despite the movie being named after the golden Digimentals, the actual point being here is that power means absolutely nothing in this situation. Remember, I pointed out that even from the beginning Chocomon was straight-out warping reality – they really didn’t have a chance.

So basically, everything devolves into complete chaos. Everyone’s being turned into little kids, with the mentality to match. All the Digimon are being oneshotted and being tossed around like tissues. But the one constant through all of this is that the kids are constantly running after their partners.

Remember how, back when the older kids were first getting sucked into Chocomon’s world, the one thing that seemed to remain intact at first was “love”? That “love” is what reaches out to Magnamon and Gumimon inside Chocomon, and makes them remember their partners again.

And, more importantly, that “love” is what awakens Chocomon – the real Chocomon – inside his consciousness, and he wordlessly makes a gesture begging Magnamon and Gumimon to kill him. And so they do – with understanding and consent from all three involved.

So in the end, the most extreme conclusion was reached. Chocomon died, at the hands of Daisuke and Wallace’s partners. But in that moment before he died, Chocomon’s pain was relieved, and he was himself again – Gumimon says that “Chocomon was smiling”, even in spite of his usual personality being that of a crybaby. They may have failed in their struggle to prevent the inevitable conclusion of having to kill Chocomon, but they did, to some degree, “save” him – so all of it did mean something in the end. And Daisuke promises that this still doesn’t mean the end of everything – they may have not been able to bring back Chocomon, and especially not in the exact way that would make things “the way they were before”, but the future is still there for him to return someday.

So, we clean up loose ends. Taichi and the others are returned safely, and in the end, Wallace decides to still be a vagrant for a bit longer – and to flirt with Hikari and Miyako a bit before he leaves. In the end, Wallace still has a long way to go if he wants to really grow as a person. But as Miyako points out, he’s gotten a bit bolder than he was before – and he’s greeted with an egg in the end, as if opening up new possibilities.

The Door to Summer contradicts the finding of this egg, or at least opens up the possibility that this wasn’t actually Chocomon’s, so it’s ambiguous as to whether the frame of Terriermon and Lopmon at the end of the credits is meant to be taken literally, or if it’s just symbolic. But even in the case of the latter, Chocomon is seen as Lopmon, a form he never got to have in Wallace’s childhood – so, in the end, it’s about different possibilities opening up in the future, rather than replicating that of the past.

All right, let’s recap this movie for those doing a tl;dr! Or, more specifically, let’s recap the events in chronological order:

Sometime before 1995, an egg emerges from Wallace’s mother’s computer, and hatches into twin Digimon, Chocomon and Gumimon.

In 1995, while playing in a flower field in Summer Memory with Wallace and Gumimon, Chocomon disappears for unknown reasons.

For the next seven years, Chocomon is trapped in delirium, full of loneliness and pain from being unable to see Wallace, and starts to become obsessed with the idea of reuniting with him, but, in his madness, accepts only a version of that reunion that involves him being the same young child he was when they parted, as if nothing had changed since.

Wallace, likewise, develops a fixation with getting Chocomon back so that things can be like “the way they were before”, even after moving to New York.

In 2002, Chocomon begins to kidnap kids with the same model of Digivice that Wallace has, and starts to forcibly turn them younger and send them into delirium like his own, hoping that this will bring the “Wallace” he wants back. Wallace starts to chase after him and decides that returning to the flower field in Summer Memory will allow him to communicate with Chocomon and make him go back to the way he was before.

Takeru and Hikari, hoping to find a lead on their seniors’ disappearance, drop a line to Daisuke, Miyako, and Iori, who head to the United States, also hoping to find a lead in Summer Memory. On the way, they run into Wallace, who is evasive about his connection to Chocomon and the kidnapping incidents.

At Summer Memory, Daisuke confronts Wallace and learns about his story, emphasizing deeply with the difficulty in killing an important friend, and agreeing that they should reach out to Chocomon at the flower field.

Chocomon continues to fall deeper into madness at the flower field, and Wallace and the others realize that they have no choice but to fight him. As Chocomon becomes so distorted he’s no longer recognizable, Wallace declares an intent to at least save his consciousness.

As the fight carries on, the kids are de-aged by Chocomon in his madness, and Magnamon (V-mon) and Gumimon are swallowed by Chocomon. However, the kids’ love for their partners awakens Chocomon’s consciousness again, and he asks Magnamon and Gumimon to end his pain.

With everything settled, Wallace and Gumimon are able to face forward into the future in the hopes of meeting Chocomon again and starting anew from scratch.

The Door to Summer

Actually, there’s not much to really be said about Hurricane Touchdown’s spiritual sequel The Door to Summer, except that it revisits similar territory to the movie, observing it more in Daisuke’s context than it does Wallace’s. (The story is very much more Daisuke’s than it is Wallace or Mimi’s.) The short synopsis is that Daisuke, having had a pretty bad time recently, finds himself in contact with a mysterious “winter” (in the middle of summer!) that seems to reflect his own heart…and a mysterious amnesiac girl whom Mimi names Onpu “Nat-chan”, who immediately latches onto Daisuke. In the end, “Nat-chan” turns out to be “a Digimon who’s taken in a lot of evil data,” who goes on a rampage and forces the others to fight and eventually kill her.

Although the reason for Nat-chan going on a rampage is more concrete than what was given in Hurricane Touchdown (it’s portrayed as “data chips” that seem like fireflies), The Door to Summer also makes it very clear that it wasn’t just supernatural influence, but also Nat-chan’s loneliness, desire for a human partner, and jealousy of Daisuke and V-mon’s relationship. Daisuke, while showing immense hesitation about fighting her when she had befriended them, still manages to “save” her in some way, to the point she actually verbally thanks him as she dies. And in the end, Daisuke and the others decide to take her egg and find a partner for her – even if she can’t be Daisuke’s partner like she wanted, she can still start anew with someone else.

Wallace in Kizuna

Warning: The rest of this post contains spoilers for Kizuna.

As said before, Hurricane Touchdown has been said to be the favorite Digimon movie of the director of Kizuna – and certainly, while Kizuna references all four Adventure-series theatrical movies, Hurricane Touchdown’s references are the least subtle, with the plot point of de-aging kids lifted directly from it. (Except, in this case, it’s in the context of trapping oneself in blissful memories rather than being portrayed as the upfront listless torture it is in Hurricane Touchdown.) Moreover, the theme of warning against being fixated on the past is just as present in Kizuna as it was in Hurricane Touchdown, especially when Kizuna’s main antagonist (Menoa) also falls victim to something that’s part supernatural influence and part getting swallowed by her own negative feelings…so it’s only fitting that Wallace himself makes a cameo in the movie. Two cameos, in fact.

The fact that Wallace is established as canonically existing within the Adventure main timeline has thrown a lot of people for a loop, especially since recent franchise events have made it questionable as to how it’s possible for canon to even make sense anymore because consistency has just gone out the window, but the Pixiv dictionary’s chosen rationalization for this is that, at the very least, “(some version of) Wallace exists in the timeline of the main story”. I’m inclined to agree with this evaluation; the fact that people around the globe can agree that the movie is questionably canonical but can’t even agree on how, and the fact that certain franchise entries considered canon (Tag Tamers) have their own contradictions, plus the fact that it’s not like Hurricane Touchdown takes a complete knife to timeline and lore common sense and more that it has some contradictory minutiae that are really easy to sidestep, it’s not actually that hard to say that some timeline of events that reasonably resembled Hurricane Touchdown (with maybe only some minor timeline or evolution differences) happened during the summer of 2002, and thus that Wallace exists.

Assuming that the story of our canonical Wallace is mostly the same or similar to that of the story presented in Hurricane Touchdown, Kizuna provides us with quite a bit of interesting information. We’re treated to two shots relevant to him: one in the form of his name at the top of Koushirou’s list of kidnapping victims, and one where he appears in person at the very end. It’s hard to miss him; he’s wearing similar colors to the clothes he wore in Hurricane Touchdown so you can identify him even at a distance, and he’s also the only loser around here with two partners. That’s right, two! Two!! Chocomon is back – and as Lopmon, exactly like the end credits card of Hurricane Touchdown depicted him!

So it looks like that, one way or another (after Hurricane Touchdown, after The Door to Summer, whatever, make up your own story), Wallace did manage to reunite with Chocomon and start a new life with him. It looks like not all of his habits have died – he’s depicted in a place with palm trees, meaning he’s definitely not in New York or Colorado, so either he’s moved again, is still maintaining the vagrant lifestyle, or just happens to be on vacation.

The other interesting thing here is that Wallace is depicted as one of the Eosmon kidnapping victims. According to Menoa, kidnapping victims were ones who were entertaining thoughts of wanting to go back to the past and remain a child forever – something that should intuitively be against everything Wallace learned in Hurricane Touchdown. But it’s important to point out that Eosmon’s lure is depicted as working on a subconscious level – certainly, if the kidnapping victims in Kizuna were to be outright asked if they wanted to be kidnapped and de-aged and trapped in their childhoods forever, most of them would probably say “no!”, and Wallace is likely no exception! But even if he’s starting his life anew with Chocomon now, it’s not hard to believe that there would still be lingering subconscious regrets about everything he’d lost with Chocomon and the childhood they could never spend together, ones that Eosmon’s allure would end up connecting with, even if the events of Hurricane Touchdown had consciously taught him better. Alas, being a human is hard.

[owlheartt]

HAHA Hey suckers I lied Star Sanses Extended chapter 1 done NOW (link to it on AO3)

It was quite the normal day.

Unfortunately. The Great Papyrus was bored. He had already recalibrated his puzzles twice, made pasta 3 times, scolded his brother 4 times, and was trying to figure out what to do 5 and 6 times (because threes are overused) when something happened. Well, not really. Sans took one of his shortcuts to appear right behind Papyrus, something he did often to try and surprise him. Have no fear, Papyrus can’t be surprised, so his brother never succeeded.

Papyrus turned around, ready to scold his brother for not simply walking. Really, his sentry station wasn’t that far from Papyrus’s. Except… that wasn’t Sans. It was! But, well, he looked different.

“SANS? BROTHER, YOU DON’T HAVE TO DRESS UP AS ME TO FEEL AS GREAT. I KNOW YOU’RE TRYING YOUR BEST.” Sans was wearing a chest plate with a light gray t-shirt peeking out. There was a bright blue scarf wrapped around his neck, tied back rather effectively into a bow. It fit him, but Papyrus felt that scarves look better when they can flow dramatically in the wind. He had on gloves that looked identical to Papyrus’s but in the same blue as his scarf. And, interestingly enough, his eyes were not his regular white but light blue. “THAT IS BETTER THAN YOUR USUAL ATTIRE THOUGH, SO I THANK YOU FOR TRYING.”

“AH,” the smaller skeleton said. He looked a bit uncomfortable. Sans was never uncomfortable around Papyrus unless he was hiding something.

“SANS? IS THERE SOMETHING YOU NEED TO TELL ME? IF YOU WANT INTO THE ROYAL GUARD, I WOULD BE HAPPY TO TELL UNDYNE!!” Papyrus gave his brother a toothy grin (what else can he give him? Skeletons can’t hide their teeth, silly) in the hopes of comforting him. But still, Sans shook his head. Ah well, if his brother wanted to keep another secret-

“I’M ACTUALLY NOT YOUR BROTHER,” Sans (not Sans? Stary Sans? Blue Sans?) looked down before straightening himself. Now that this skeleton mentioned that he wasn’t Papyrus’s brother, the bigger skeleton noticed how much different he sounded. For one, those definitely sounded like all caps. Sans hated speaking in all caps, though he’d told Papyrus that it made him sound much more commanding. Next, his posture was much better. Sans had a terrible habit of slouching. His eyelights were also a cyan color, like a lighter shade of Sans’s magic.

“IF YOU’RE NOT MY BROTHER…” Papyrus scrunched up his face. This, was a puzzle. A puzzle he intended to solve all on his own. He stared down at the skeleton, who appeared to be bracing himself.

“WOWZERS, IT’S A LOT HARDER THAN I THOUGHT TO TALK TO AN ALTERNATE VERSION OF MY BROTHER,” Not Sans smiled awkwardly and looked away before quickly forcing himself to look back at Papyrus. Papyrus paused, trying to fit in what Blue Sans just called him.

“AN… ALTERNATE VERSION OF YOUR BROTHER?” Papyrus felt ridiculous repeating back what not Sans said, but he couldn’t help it. What did he mean by alternate version? Papyrus vaguely recalled a training session with Undyne. They liked to chat while they were sparring, and this particular time Undyne mentioned something Alphys was studying in her free time. “AUs.” She said. After a bit of questioning, Undyne revealed that AU was an abbreviation of Alternate Universe, but she hadn’t really been listening beyond that. Papyrus despised abbreviations, and found it so frustrating that Undyne and Sans were so intent on using them, that the words had stuck with him despite their vagueness. “ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT ALTERNATE UNIVERSES?”

Not Sans perked up, his eye lights popping into stars. His smile went from awkward to excited as he began to talk.

“YES, I AM! HOW MUCH DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THEM? USUALLY PAPYRUSES AREN’T AWARE OF THEM, BUT IF YOU ALREADY KNOW OF THEM THAT WILL MAKE THIS MUCH EASIER!”

“I’M AFRAID MY KNOWLEDGE IS LACKING. IT WAS MENTIONED BRIEFLY BY MY FANTASTIC FRIEND UNDYNE, BUT SHE DIDN’T KNOW MUCH EITHER.” Papyrus announced, slightly embarrassed. The blue Sans faltered, but quickly regained his energy.

“ALTERNATE UNIVERSES ARE EXACTLY WHAT THEY SOUND LIKE! THEY ARE ALTERNATE VERSIONS OF THIS WORLD. MINE IS CALLED ‘UNDERSWAP,’ YOU AND I HAVE SWITCHED PERSONALITIES THERE, SO REALLY, WE’RE THE SAME.” Not Sans concluded, looking adequately proud of himself for such a well worded explanation.

“…I SEE. WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE THEN, NOT SANS?” Papyrus inquired. There was also the question of how Not Sans got here, but Papyrus was certain he would learn in due time.

“BLUEBERRY IS FINE! I’M A PART OF A GROUP OF SANSES CALLED THE ‘STAR SANSES’ SO MY FRIENDS AND I ALL HAVE NICKNAMES.” Nicknames, Papyrus’s worst enemy. Blueberry didn’t seem to mind though, despite him supposedly being an alternate version of Papyrus. “BUT TO GET TO THE POINT- I AM HERE BECAUSE I NEED TO ASK A FAVOR OF YOU, CLASSIC PAPYRUS.”

“IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO ADD A TITLE TO MY NAME, THE GREAT WOULD BE BETTER, THANK YOU.” Papyrus announced, not sure what Blueberry meant by “classic.”

“NO, NO. CLASSIC IS A REFERENCE TO YOUR TIMELINE. YOUR TIMELINE IS THE ORIGINAL, SO IT’S LABELED ‘CLASSIC.’ I’M AFRAID MULTIPLE PAPYRUS USE ‘THE GREAT’ SO IT’S NOT AS DEFINING. IF YOU HAVE A DIFFERENT SUGGESTION, I’D BE OPEN FOR HEARING IT?” Blueberry sounded apologetic. Papyrus, meanwhile, was thinking hard. What other title would he like? Classic just didn’t suit him. He had to admit, Blueberry’s reasoning was sound. It might be better than coming up with his own. Still, if he could figure out a better one…

“THEN YOU CAN CALL ME COOL GUY INSTEAD!” Papyrus announced proudly. Blueberry hesitated then smiled.

“A NAME TO MATCH YOUR PERSONALITY? FANTASTIC! IGNORING THE FACT THAT I’M COOLER THAN YOU, IT’S PERFECT!” Blueberry concluded. Papyrus was tempted to correct him, but he could guess that it wouldn’t go so well. They were alternate versions of each other after all, so it would be difficult to discover who was cooler (it was obviously Papyrus though).

“ANYWAYS,” Papyrus said. “YOU MENTIONED A FAVOR? I’M FANTASTIC AT DOING FAVORS, AND I’D LOVE TO HELP YOU. WHAT DO YOU NEED?”

“MY FRIENDS AND I HAVE A VERY IMPORTANT JOB. WE PROTECT THE MULTIVERSE FROM AN EVIL GROUP CALLED THE ‘BAD SANSES.’ THEY’VE BEEN SUPER ACTIVE LATELY, AND DREAM THINKS THEY’LL ATTACK TODAY. UNFORTUNATELY, I’M BUSY ALL OF TODAY. I’M WORRIED ALPHYS WON’T THINK I’M FIT FOR THE GAUD OF I MISS A TRAINING SESSION, AND TODAY’S IS PLANNED TO LAST UNTIL LATE TONIGHT.” Papyrus had to hold back laughs picturing the short scientist holding one of Undyne’s spears with an eyepatch stuck on. He couldn’t seem to make it look anything short of ridiculous.

“BUT! BACK TO THE FAVOR, I WAS WONDERING IF YOU COULD TAKE MY PLACE TODAY. IF YOU’RE BUSY TOO, I UNDERSTAND.” Blueberry concluded.

“IT SOUNDS LIKE YOU HAVE A VERY IMPORTANT JOB. WHY DO YOU STILL WANT TO BE A MEMBER OF THE ROYAL GUARD? DOESN’T BEING A STAR SANS GIVE YOU ALL THE LOVE AND AFFECTION YOU COULD DESIRE?” Papyrus said haltingly. Star Sanses protected the whole multiverse, the Royal Guard just protects the underground. If that didn’t give Blueberry enough love… What hope did Papyrus have?

“WELL, IT DOES, BUT…” Blueberry took a deep breath. “I HAVEN’T SHARED WHAT I DO WITH MY TIMELINE YET. IT’S KIND OF A HUGE SECRET. I’M THE ONLY MULTIVERSAL BEING WHO ISN’T AN OUTCODE. IT’S NOT SOMETHING INCODES ARE SUPPOSED TO KNOW ABOUT. THERE AREN’T REALLY RULES BUT…” Blueberry trailed off, looking a bit upset.

“I’M SORRY I PUSHED. DOES THAT MEAN I’M NOT ALLOWED TO TELL ANYONE? MY BROTHER IS REALLY GOOD AT KEEPING SECRETS, MAY I TELL HIM?” Both brothers kept secrets from each other. Papyrus had his share, and he knew Sans had a pile. They had recently talked about trying to be more open with each other, and Papyrus wasn’t sure how he could keep his brother’s trust if he made a new secret. It was important to prevent new secrets from forming.

“LIKE I SAID, THERE ARE NO SPECIFIC RULES. IT’S JUST WHAT YOU FEEL COMFORTABLE WITH. BUT I WILL ASK THAT YOU COMMIT TO BEING ONE OF US BEFORE YOU TELL HIM,” Blueberry said firmly.

“OF COURSE! I WON’T LET YOU DOWN! HOW DO I HELP THOUGH? I’M NOT EVEN SURE HOW TO LEAVE MY TIMELINE.” Papyrus admitted. Blueberry looked relieved, and he stuck out his hand.

“I’M AFRAID I CAN’T OPEN MULTIVERSAL SHORT CUTS MYSELF, BUT IF YOU’D TAKE MY HAND MY FRIEND CAN BRING US OUT!” Blueberry widened his grin, and Papyrus reached out to grab his hand. There was a moment of stillness, where it was just the two of them in a snow covered forest. Some snow flurries falling from branches above. Papyrus shifted, the pause was uncomfortable. Just as Blueberry began to frown, a warm, distinctly yellow feeling began to spread through Papyrus’s bones. Blueberry even seemed to be glowing with the magic. Then pop, and he was somewhere new. It felt like a small jerk on his SOUL, more abrupt than his brother’s short cuts around the underground.

Speaking of, this wasn’t like anything Papyrus had seen in the underground. It was a large space with an orange gradient. It looked… undefinable, in the sense that it didn’t end. There were papers with small dancing images, and a number of them looked like Papyrus and his friends. Some were held up by strings while others hovered around the islands that floated about. It was a very dream-like place, like something Papyrus had imagined. It has been a long time since he dreamt something so serene, which was the only reason he could believe what he was seeing.

“Sorry about that Blue-” a new voice spoke, sounding a bit out of breath. Papyrus turned to find a golden Sans, laced with the same magic that brought him and Blueberry here. He had his hand wrapped tightly around another Sans. This one was incredibly short, he looked like a child compared to Papyrus (Not to fear! The Great Papyrus was fantastic with children!). He had a brush taller than him strapped to his back, and his outfit was all kinds of decorated- like a superhero! Both Sanses were.

“IT’S FINE. IS… IS EVERYTHING ALRIGHT HERE?” Blueberry regarded the Golden Sans’s grip on the Sans with a brush. Oh dear, so many Sanses. Someone who wasn’t as brilliant as Papyrus might not be able to follow!

“Uh, yep!” The golden Sans smiled, but he looked a bit too stressed. The brush Sans, however, snapped his full attention to Papyrus. His eyelights bounced between color and shapes before finally landing on a bright sky-blue shaped as a triangle and a Royal purple as a star.

“HELLO!!!!! I’m Ink!!!!” Ink struggled out of the gold Sans’s gasp and bounced overs to Papyrus. It was disturbing how little he resembled Papyrus’s brother. “I’m the protector of the Multiverse!! You’re Classic Paps, right?!” Ink grinned wildly as Papyrus avoided cringing.

“HELLO, INK. PLEASE DON’T CALL ME PAPS, OR CLASSIC FOR THAT MATTER. BUT WOWIE, PROTECTOR OF THE MULTIVERSE SOUNDS LIKE SUCH A BIG JOB!” Papyrus couldn’t help but be in awe of Ink’s title. It sounded more important than Head of the Royal Guard. Ink’s grin grew and his purple eyelight turned yellow. He looked like he was about to respond, but the gold Sans cut him off.

“Yep, super big job, which is why he has us to keep him on track. Anyways, hello, my name is Dream. I’m the guardian of positivity. If you don’t want us calling you Classic, what should we call you?” Dream kept his smile up, but he looked exhausted.

“HE WANTS TO BE CALLED COOL GUY.” Blueberry announced. Dream managed to look more worn out before responding.

“That’s… a fun nickname. But this needs to be like a substitute for your real name? Just, please pick something different.” Dream sounded incredibly firm, and Papyrus didn’t want to wear him out anymore. So he listened.

“WHAT ABOUT COOL BONES?” Papyrus’s smile faltered as Dream’s eyelights flickered out.

“Papyrus, please, be serious.” Papyrus had been serious, but he decided not to mention it. “Just- here, think about our names for a moment? Ink, Blue, Dream,” Dream pause, looking up at Papyrus hopefully. Papyrus did his best to reconsider. He could find an alternate version of his name? Translate it into another language perhaps. There was also the history of the word itself, which he and Sans had searched up late one brotherly bonding night. While the word papyrus is a plant, it’s also a form of paper in Ancient Egypt. Paper has simply so many uses, and it’s so incredibly important (and obnoxiously underrated). The Great Papyrus wouldn’t mind being called Paper.

“I CAN BE PAPER!” He offered, and Dream relaxed into a more genuine smile.

“Oooh!!! Like the paper to my ink!!!” Ink grinned, absolutely delighted.

“No, actually-“ Papyrus (Paper?) tried to correct him. With all the meaning behind his choice, he wanted to give it the proper glory.

“WELCOME TO THE STAR SANSES, PAPER!!!” Blueberry said, cutting Papyrus off. He tried to place his hand on Papyrus’s shoulder, but after discovering he couldn’t reach Blueberry settled for patting Papyrus’s back.

“THANK YOU NEW FRIEND!!” Papyrus widened his smile, reveling in the fact that he had made not one, not two, but THREE new friends in less than an hour. He couldn’t wait to tell his brother.

“NOW THAT WE’VE GOT THAT OUT OF THE WAY,” Blueberry said, “I HAVE TO HEAD HOME, ALPHYS IS EXPECTING ME. GOOD LUCK PAPER!” Blueberry threw a glance at Dream, then he lit up with the same golden hue as last time and disappeared. Ink’s eyelights flashed to a different color as he focused again on Papyrus, who had noticed by now that Ink’s attention was short and his focus quickly shifted.

“So, buddy, what do you wanna do now?” Ink leaned forward, almost as if bowing, and he bounced a little on his heels before performing some kind of trick jump and landing on an island floating a few feet up. He was now roughly at Papyrus’s socket-level.

“We tell Papyrus how this is going to go.” Dream said, cutting Ink off. Ink frowned, one eyelight flipping to a purple question mark while the other changed to a dim reddish-orange square.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN?” Papyrus wiggled his fingers, the fabric of his gloves rubbing. Dream sounded awfully serious, a stark contrast to Ink’s carefree nature.

“Blue’s already learned how to deal with… the Bad Sanses. Since we already know what does and doesn’t work, I’d rather skip the hard-learned lessons.” Dream gave a weak smile at the end, while Ink stuck out a rainbow colored tongue, nearly pouting.

“...WHAT MIGHT THOSE BE?” Papyrus began to worry for the first time since he accepted Blueberry’s offer.

“First of all, Blue’s already tried speeches.”

“MAYBE THEY JUST NEED MORE, OR HE HASN’T FOUND THE RIGHT ONE!” Papyrus said. Dream winced.

“Maybe, but we don’t have the time to give the speeches, and more often than not the Bad Sanses don’t even listen, they murder while you talk.” Dream said, the spot where his eyebrows would be tilting up.

“MURDER?” Papyrus faltered.

“Did Blue forget to tell you?” Ink asked. He had plopped down and was lying on his back with his skull dangling off his island, looking far too relaxed.

“TELL ME WHAT.” Papyrus didn’t want to guess this time. Dust isn’t a puzzle he ever wanted to solve.

“Our role as Guardians of the Multiverse is to protect timelines from being destroyed. The way that happens is the Bad Sanses wipe through the entire Underground, killing anyone and everyone they meet. Once they’ve killed enough, the timeline is unstable enough for them to destroy it directly.” Dream sighed, his shoulders slumping.

“Or so we think. Timelines are weird, and there could be a whole slew of reasons for how things work!! It’s really interesting. I’ve been wanting to study it all but- OOH A BUTTERFLY!!!” Ink said, jumping up to chase the shiny indigo insect. Even though Ink didn’t finish his sentence, Papyrus could get a sense of why he wasn’t learning anything. Ignoring the eccentric skeleton, Dream just looked sad. He was staring down at the ground, one hand wrapped tightly around the fabric above his SOUL.

“WHAT HAPPENS IF WE DON’T GET THERE IN TIME?” Papyrus tried to say it softly, but he could never figure out how to speak in lowercase. At least it still sounded caring.

“The entire timeline dies.” Dream sighed. He looked up, finally seeing Papyrus’s expression. “Ah! Don’t worry though!! We win a lot!! I’m just trying to explain why I need you to listen to me!!” Dream waved his hands about, trying to dispel the dark mood that had settled.

“THAT’S ALRIGHT. YOU WERE BEING HONEST. IT’S IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND ALL OF THE PIECES OF OUR JOB. I’M GLAD YOU TOLD ME.” Papyrus crouched so as to come eye to eye with Dream. He used this tactic with his brother whenever Sans was upset. Papyrus had found that it’s easier to talk to someone who’s right there with you. Papyrus reached out his gloved hands, and wrapped the bright, cheery red around Dream’s hands. Papyrus realized for the first time that Dream wore gloves too. Maybe he was a swapped version of Papyrus like Blueberry. Papyrus made a note to ask him later, when he was feeling better.

“Thank you, Paper.” Dream took a deep breath before continuing. “We pride ourselves in not killing anyone, ever. Not even the Bad Sanses. A tactic we like to use is trapping them. Blueberry does that the most, because he has the most magic to spare, so you’ll be using a lot of blue magic. Is that ok?”

“ABSOLUTELY!! I HAVE FANTASTIC CONTROL OF MY MAGIC, YOU DON’T NEED TO WORRY.”

“The butterfly flew away.” Ink said, butting in. He had a pout again. Papyrus leaned toward Dream a little and whispered to him.

“DOES… DOES HE PAY ATTENTION ENOUGH TO NOT GET HURT?” Papyrus was genuinely worried, but Dream burst out laughing. His grin widened as he turned toward Ink, who had begun to… eat… grass..?

“Most of the time.” Dream said, not particularly reassuring.

[paralumanleadmehome]

It’s been quite some time since I’ve last joined a contest and I honestly missed this feeling of trying to figure out what to write, how to write it, and how to deliver it exactly as you need to to impress the judges. It’s been so so long and welp. I’ve grown rusty and this is definitely not proof-read but all the same, thank you to @queenangst and everyone who had made this possible.

You brought me back a feeling I haven’t felt in so long.

This is my entry to queenangst’s BNHA gen contest: Finding Home 

(please see under the cut as this has 3.5k words and could be very long)

Finding Home

o.

It started out as a legend – two souls separated at creation, two souls that make up one whole, two halves of one soul completed upon connection.

Two becoming one.

But legends are legends for a reason – mythical, mysterious, only with a hint of a truth.

Soulmarks began appearing even before the dawn of quirks –little symbols that litter the body, one that you could only call your own. One that only you could share to whom you so ever desire. It varies in shapes and colors, some being a butterfly tinged in red and orange, others an ocean wave the shade of green, and to some more, it covers a palm, a thigh, a foot. Unlike its legendary counterpart, however, a soulmark does not lead you to a soulmate. Instead, it leads you to one where you can feel whole.

A soulmark is a symbol of love and friendship given in trust and good faith – one that cannot be taken, one that only be passed on.

A soulmark is a symbol of warmth and everlasting connection – one that is stronger than flesh and blood.

A soulmark is a symbol of home – one that you choose for yourself.

One person can have as many as the stars in the sky and as few as the petals of a clover.

And Izuku? Izuku only has his own, his mother’s, and the black mark of one Bakugo Katsuki.

After all, no one wants to share the mark of a useless, quirkless, little Deku.

And so, however sacred, Kacchan had cut his own connection with Izuku, both of them bearing the ashen remnants of a once golden sun and a viridian shooting star – the pain of which Izuku found more unbearable than the explosions that kissed his skin.

And Izuku no longer believed in soulmates.

Not when the world was so intent on pushing him down and pushing him away, not when no one would stand up for him and with him, not when the only love and care he had ever known came from the woman who had loved him the most.

So Izuku never shared the mark on his wrist with anyone, never the light of the shooting star that brightens up the dark sky, never the stardust that falls on the earth, never the ray of hope he had held even in the darkest of times, keeping it hidden in long sleeves, wristwatches, and bandages. And at all times he keeps covered the blackened sun that rests on his heart, refusing to see the ashes of a friendship no longer alive, refusing to acknowledge the searing pain that would accompany the sight. Instead, as always, he keeps close the mint green lotus that rests on the base of his right ear, his eyes never not seeing it each morning, afternoon, and night – the one and only reminder that he is loved.

He is loved.

He is loved.

And he lets himself be content with that.

i.

The first of many soulmarks that Izuku will treasure came from the man that he had idolized his whole life.

Yagi Toshinori, for all his time as the Symbol of Peace (and more the time he had spent alive), only carries with him four marks, not counting his own. Izuku doesn’t ask when he sees. He doesn’t think it is polite to, especially when most people aren’t interested in bonding with a quirkless child (and although All Might already knew he was quirkless and didn’t deny him this chance to train, the man’s initial denial of his dream still stings). He doesn’t ask about the faded crescent moon that rests on his collarbone (it isn’t nice to ask about the dead, after all), nor about the black spaded horse on his left ankle (he was shocked at first, upon seeing this lost connection, and his heart ached at the thought that even All Might had to bear the pain of losing someone he had once loved so dearly). He doesn’t ask about the violet sigil of a fish on his shoulder blade nor the diamond glasses near his scar. He doesn’t ask about any of these things.

Instead he asks about experiences – what was it like to be a hero of his caliber? Was he ever afraid of anything? Was there ever a time that he was unable to save someone? What was he like as a student? Did Dagobah Beach mean something special to him? Things that the world weren’t privy to – things that he didn’t know were personal.

Things that would’ve only been known if All Might had chosen him as his soulmate.

And All Might did.

One day, at Dagobah Beach, after the world had finally met the man behind All Might, Toshinori Yagi had offered his ocean blue sunflower tucked on the opposite side of where the faded moon resided and had asked Izuku if he had wanted to carry his soulmark.

And Izuku… flinched.

Because to hold another’s soulmark would mean to be aware of them at all times – to feel their warmth despite the distance, to know with one brush of a hand the feelings that lay in their hearts, to give them comfort even in the presence of an absence.

To bear a soulmark is to be eternally connected.

And Izuku had been burned by the loss of it.

And he is scared, afraid, terrified – because to be All Might’s successor is one thing. To be given his quirk and his legacy is a dream come true but to be his soulmate? To be near him? To know him and be known by him in return? It’s terrifying.

And yet… and yet… Izuku takes this fear and lets it be known.

In quiet whispers, jumbled words, and a steady stream of tears.

Because deep down, Izuku longs to be connected.

And it is in the act of letting someone close does he remember what it feels like to be loved.

ii.

The second one, surprisingly, came in the form of a little girl.

A quiet, frightened, injured little girl who had ran away from a monster of a man.

Eri bumped into him during his first patrol with Lemillion and this mess of child with a stature so small and eyes too scared clung to him for dear life – and Izuku’s soul ached.

Izuku took one look at the man with the bird mask, one look at Lemillion, one look at this little girl, and made up his mind.

“Eri,” he whispered, “do you trust me?”

It was a stupid question, he knew, but a soulmark is something to be given in trust – a treasure to be received in good faith.

“You’re good,” Eri answered just as softly, little hands clinging to his costume. “You’re warm.”

Izuku doesn’t know if Eri feels the same pull, the same fierce protectiveness that forces its way into his heart, and he knows that this is more his own desire to keep her safe than any other force telling him that she was a part of his own soul.

Because Eri mattered regardless.

And Eri was worth keeping safe.

So for the first time in a long time, Izuku removes the bandage that hides his own soulmark and he shows it to Eri.

“This will keep you safe for me,” he tells her, “this will let you know I’m here.”

In the background he hears the tense conversation coming to a halt, sees the way the man’s eyes turn to look at Eri, and he knows he doesn’t have time.

“This is a promise.”

And Eri stares at it for little while, hands reaching to the shooting star. “A promise,” she repeats, and with a little nod and hopeful eyes, Izuku places a finger on her arm, just beneath her sleeves, and let their foreheads touch.

The words come to him unbidden, the way words do when you give someone a piece of your soul – a promise to be fulfilled, a wish to be granted, a part of you that will forever be a part of them.

“I will always come for you.”

And he did.

iii.

Not counting his own nor Kacchan’s, Izuku has two soulmarks on his body.

One from his mother, another from All Might.

He didn’t ask for Eri’s and she hadn’t offered in return.

Eri was as afraid of her soulmark as much as she is afraid of her quirk.

Cursed, she calls the silver dove wreathed in yellow petals on her ankle. Cold, she thinks of it. It will still be a long way to go, Izuku assumes, but as long as Eri can feel his warmth, his presence, that would be enough.

The third one, interestingly enough, was in the image of an aquamarine heart, with its curves jagged and cornered, just as a gem so precious and true.

Kouta gave it to him as gift, as a thank you, as something for Izuku to remember him by.

Kouta didn’t ask for Izuku’s own soulmark, didn’t even breathe a word about it. Instead the little boy ran up to him, little arms wrapping him in a hug, and said,

“I’ll always be cheering you on.”

And when Izuku sees the way Kouta’s soulmark shine, he accepted it without a second thought.

And when Kouta pulled away afterwards, face pulled in a frown, Izuku tried to ignore the fear that stabbed his own heart. He wondered if he would make a world record, an ashen mark as soon as he had received it, but Kouta dispelled his fears just as easily.

“That felt weird,” Kouta said. Izuku blinked at him, his mind taking a minute to process, until he caught up. Then he laughed and laughed because he feels exactly what Kouta feels – the disappointment, the confusion, the curiosity… and the underlying overwhelming emotion of it all.

Unbridled joy.

The elation of having someone know you – of being accepted, treasured, remembered.

He also felt the embarrassment that followed as Kouta turned as red as his shoes.

iv.

The soulmark exchange with Shinsou had been quiet.

It happened on the night of their second year when they both stumbled upon each other in the kitchen at the forsaken 2am hour did Shinsou spring up the topic.

“You don’t have that many soulmarks, do you?” the question was genuine, as far as Izuku can tell, and although the boy was rough around the edges, he knew it was due to the fact that Shinsou had so little support in life and was untrusting of all that Izuku had felt a kindred spirit in that regard.

They have observed the people around them, of course, and have noticed that everyone at least had five. A family member, a best friend from childhood, a classmate they never got lost in contact with.

Izuku stole a glance at the back of his right hand, at the blue heart settled at base of his forefinger and thumb and hummed an agreement. “No, I don’t,” he agreed, letting stiff fingers be warmed by his tea. He doesn’t return the question to Shinsou, knowing that it was a touchy subject for the other boy, but he did wonder, “Why do you ask?”

They don’t talk about it much, these colorful marks on their skin. They don’t talk about how a brush of hand over the little symbols can feel as warm as an embrace, how fear isn’t so scary when someone else sends you courage, how silence isn’t deafening when someone knows to listen.

It is in moments like these that they listen.

Izuku listens to Shinsou’s own quiet humming, the way the gears in his mind seem to move, the way he figures out how to phrase the words he wants to say next. And Izuku has been thinking about it – had been for the past few months.

Will his classmates ever want a piece of his soul?

He could tell that Uraraka does. He could tell that Iida would want one, too, but a soulmark is something that’s rarely asked for due to its sacred nature – it is freely given, after all, and never to be taken lightly. And Izuku had never offered. He had wanted to, of course, but he knows how messy his mind can get. He knows how anxious he can be. It’s why he had given his to Eri in a pace that is both hidden and seen, something she had to reach out for so she could feel. Izuku could not yet know what Eri is thinking or feeling, nor will he ever have inkling to unless she so desired, and Izuku is completely fine with that.

After all, a soulmark is a connection of souls – but it didn’t have to be an exchange. What it did mean though is that for one who bears the soul of another is to be aware of them – to be able to feel their warmth and develop an understanding of their soul. It is not to read their minds nor to know everything about them, but it is about the intimacy of knowing someone and being known.

A commitment.

A promise.

Like an artwork waiting to be completed, like a dance you can take to heart, a soulmark is connection that bridges the gap between someone you know and someone you choose forever.

“I don’t get it,” Shinsou finally said, and Izuku turned his eyes to him, the question lost in his tongue. “You have a strong and flashy quirk, you have so many people who love you and would fight the world for you, heck Uraraka and Iida would probably murder someone for you if you ask them, and yet you don’t have their marks and… they don’t have yours. I know I’m not good at this thing but at the very least, people give their marks away as easy as they’re giving candy. And you guys are pretty close, so I don’t get it.”

And the pain of burning that bridge is the same as losing a piece of your soul. Izuku absentmindedly reaches for his heart, the ashen remains of Kacchan’s soulmark embedded on his skin still, and he tries his best to forget.

Izuku looks instead at the clock in the kitchen, noting that it’s only 2:17am, and asks if Shinsou would like to listen to a story.

And they left the kitchen at 5:00am, only to crash in the couch, heart heavy yet full, mind settled and secured, souls at ease, and both boys sharing a mark they never expected to kiss their skin.

v.

The night Izuku had laid bare his soul for someone else to see, when it was him who had reached out first before someone else had offered, when he had done it so willingly and freely, it felt as if something has shifted within him – and in all the remaining years he had spent in UA, he was able to garner a couple more soulmarks for his own. He finally had the pink milky way that was Uraraka’s, the red lighting storm that was Iida’s, and Todoroki’s fiery white snowflake.

And to think that before all of this, before meeting All Might, before knowing these people and being known in return, Izuku was afraid and alone – afraid of the vulnerability that came along with letting people in.

To think that all he had ever thought about when he thought of soulmates were fireworks kissing his skin, long fingers bruising his arms, and taunts and jeers haunting his every waking moment – but now he is surrounded by love and warmth. Now when he thinks of soulmates, he thinks of mochi in the common kitchen, tea in hand; he thinks of morning jogs and healthy breakfast; he thinks of cold soba and cats; he thinks of unicorns and sprinkles and little kids and coloring books; he thinks of training sessions and laughter and peace.

Now when Izuku thinks of soulmates, he thinks of home.

And speaking of home, he can’t wait to get back to their apartment and give his mom the biggest of hugs. They had always called even when he was away and even when they would consistently send little taps through their soulmark, nothing still beats the warmth of a real embrace – and this is what Izuku fixes his mind on as he cleans out his dorm room, packing away every picture frame, books, notebooks, clothes, and figurines. Graduation is in a few days and after that, their debut to hero society. None of them would have enough time to clear out by then.

Izuku packs away the memories, just as he did each item that reminds him of it, and keeps them close in his heart. He packs away the ten million headband, the plushies from the cultural festival, the cards he had received from Eri and Kouta, and he tries his best not to feel emotional. He didn’t want to flood the dorms one last time, after all, but he did think it would be nice to have Aizawa-sensei scold him for being a problem child through and through but ultimately, it was the knock at his door that helps him succeed.

A knock, quiet and soft, and he opens the door to find Kacchan standing at the other side.  

Their relationship had improved over the years.

Kacchan is… less angry now, more settled. He’s still fiery and explosive but he doesn’t lash out anymore. Kirishima, Kaminari, the Bakusquad had been good to him and for him and Izuku had never been gladder about it. He had long stopped dreaming of the day that their relationship would be fixed – he and Kacchan had grown up, grown apart, and even when they drift back together, he is well aware that it would never be the same way again.

He doesn’t ask for it to.

He loves Kacchan, yes, with all his heart, but Izuku now knows that love does not have to be reciprocated for it to be real – but to still be loved in return is a precious treasure he keeps close.

“Hey, Kacchan, do you need something?”

And Kacchan looks at him, face pensive, mouth opening and closing, thinking and grasping and failing to think of the words he wants to say, and something in Izuku feels warm. After some time, the other boy settles with, “Are you busy?”

And if it was at any other time before, Izuku would’ve dropped everything that he had been doing and say no, he wasn’t busy, of course he had the time – but Izuku’s eyes sway to soulmarks on his arm and he steals a look at the digital clock by his table.

“I have thirty minutes,” was what Izuku told him. “I promised Todoroki we’d drop by the store to get his favorite soba since they’re not available near his house. I have time tomorrow morning thought if that works for you. I can cancel the morning jog with Iida if – “

“Thirty minutes is fine,” Kacchan answered back, cutting his rumbling off. It wasn’t harsh or angry. Just… very Kacchan-ish.

“Okay. Do you waant to step in? it’s a bit messy though, I still haven’t finished packing.”

And when Izuku heard the small tsk as he moved aside for Kacchan to pass through, he knew that the other boy won’t mind his mess. He felt a little grateful at that, to not be judged within the confines of his small room. They were silent for a few more second but it wasn’t the kind of silence that would make him uncomfortable. It was companionable, to say the least, and Izuku began picking up the pieces he had left before Kacchan had knocked and continued his packing. In another minute, Kacchan was helping him.

“Are you bringing the bookshelf home?”

“Nope, Aizawa-sensei said I could leave it here. Are you taking yours?”

“Thinking about it. Mine’s too small and I don’t want to waste money on something I can recycle. Do you have bubble wrap for the merch?”

“In the third drawer by the study table. I have newspapers too if that’s better.”

“Oh, Kacchan, that one goes in the other box.”

“Why? What’s the difference?”

“All my signed books are in one place.”

“Just how many posters do you fucking have?”

“Oh, come on, don’t pretend you don’t have just as many.”

“I’m not a hero-worshipping nerd like you, dumbass.”

“Says the guy who zonks out at 8pm.”

“Fuck you, asshole!”

“Kacchan, that’s limited edition!”

“I’m sorry.”

“…”

“For everything.”

“…”

“It was pretty messed up, the things I did, and I know sorry won’t fix this.”

“Can you pass me the tape, Kacchan?”

“…”

“Thank you.”

“You don’t have to forgive me.”

“Please put this box by the bed.”

“Okay.”

“…”

“…”

“You’re right, I don’t have to forgive you.”

“…”

“But I already did.”

“Deku…”

“It won’t fix what’s broken and it won’t stop the sting from the soulmark but…”

“…”

“We’re better now, aren’t we?”

“…”

“Kacchan, we’re better now.”

“You missed the night light.”

“Oh, thanks.”

“…”

“…”

“And it’s only going to get better, right?”

“…”

“…”

“Of course.”

“You’re still a sappy piece of shit.”

“Well, I’m not the one who’s crying, am I?”

“Fuck you.”

“Whatever you say, Kacchan.”

[kazuzuha]

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ part three

part one ; part two ; part four ; ...

this work is protected by copyright. copyright © kazuzuha ™ 2021

It took me another two years to find a new goal and remember my past one - the latter being that of me exploring the world, meeting new people, seeing the archons, eating new foods, feeling the wind of the highest mountains in Teyvat...

Interestingly, this goal that I had forgotten coincided with the one I had now; running away.

That was all I had in mind in the time gone by, all that truly kept me breathing in that suffocating place. My own mindset was an opposition to my mother’s, her traditional perfectionism trying to mold me into someone flawless, yet, not better than her. My own set of unbearably high standards wore me down, then were further pushed by her hand which ignored the fact that our pressures came from the same place. But I knew. I knew. 

It was at fifteen that I fully understood that knowing you are in an unhealthy situation does not call upon the Archons to help. 

Father was not around, busy with climbing ranks and taming the snowstorms. If he knew of my ambition, he would have agreed to that marriage proposal I had been given years ago, suspiciously immediately after the Tsaritsa’s interest in me was expressed. It was not that my father did not love or care for me; the opposite stood true. However, he was unaware of how deeply the mental scars inflicted by my mother ran. She was a good wife, a great wife for a Snezhnayan especially. But she was not a good mother. All I had tried to explain, he had already known of, but from a completely different perspective; words convoluted, actions exaggerated - after years of hearing second-hand stories about his child, his image of me became exactly what my mother intended. Therefore, hoping and begging for his help would be redundant. I had to get away on my own two feet.

That being said, I still needed outside help and financial freedom. I made acquaintances amongst my peers, though being taken into a circle of Snezhnayan kids was a difficult task; due to my family’s high standing and my mother’s foreignity, I was either avoided or sneered at. No one dared say much, but those that did were not speaking in welcome. The odds would be stately against my success, if it were not for my observance. Most children were homeschooled and the only way to meet others my age was at a very occasional party or in organised training. There were certain aspects that I saw were well accepted in their eyes; strength, resilience, beauty and charm. I trained in strength, my mind forced resilience, the beauty and charm part could be subsistuted by wealth and social standing. It should have worked. Unfortunately, I did not consider my gender.

After beating a boy twice my size in combat, I was not revered as I had previously expected. I was not suddenly accepted into a friend group, was not offered the bitter alcohol they hid under their shirts. I was a foreign girl they could not touch, could not win against. And that pissed them off. The spreading of rumours seemed like a simple childish act at first, but the way people began to view me was set in stone before they even met me, painting me as unattainable, arrogant. A sense of déjà vu made me realise that I was once again losing an exit out of this place. But I was a quick learner.

Instead of my peers at the training grounds, I looked elsewhere. Tagging along with my father under the pretense of learning his strategies, donning my most modest dresses and tint on my lips, I met the younglings of aristocracy. They recognised my situation as their own, shunned for being better than everyone else. The mindset of superiority deeply ingrained in their small heads made it laughably easy to appease them and get piles of information that I made sure to memorize. My graceful actions, soft-spoken words and dainty visuals… all crafted to fit the perfect standard of a young girl beloved by the Tsaritsa. 

Manipulation was effortless to replicate and after shedding a false tear over an acquaintance’s loss of a parent, the apprehension of the lack of my care about using others sent shudders down my spine. I hated it. I hated being forced to do the same I had been an object of. Most of all, I was horrified by how good I was at it. A secret account provided by a lovesick fool who turned out to be the son of the main manager of our biggest bank. Five sources of income through illegal trade business from Fontaine. A shy girl who wished for one good friend, the daughter of the biggest weaponry corporation, owning over fifty industrial factories in Snezhnaya alone. In less than two years, I was the biggest shareholder of two major companies. 

All I needed was a good public reason to leave and never come back - if I had run away in the middle of the night, the powerful people around me would send hundreds behind me without a second thought. The only ones who can facilely leave are the Fatui - Tsaritsa’s dogs - and, of course, her Harbingers. I have seen my fair share of Fatui, especially when I was still dealing with the mess that was the illegal trading with Fontaine’s machinery. They were soldiers, but they were also people; until you gave them enough power to be drunk on. As for the Harbingers, two of them I had met on multiple occasions; the man I had momentarily seen at Tsaritsa’s side on that balcony was presented as Dottore, or Doctor, though his unhinged expressions pointed to him being a rabid predator, not a healer. He was a shadow; never seen, but always… there. The second Harbinger was my father’s old acquaintance known by the title La Signora, or more favourably, The Fair Lady. As a visionless female aristocrat, I was expected to marry quickly and provide many future soldiers to the armies of Snezhnaya. When I was younger I did not understand the disgust and abhorrence I felt at the thought of my set future. Without dreams, I only wandered. It was not surprising that I began to look up to the notoriously powerful Signora, especially since the silver shade in our eyes was of the same empty shine. Fascinated by her bold disobedience of our land’s customs, I caught myself imitating her walk; young and impressionable, sure, but I also knew that without a Vision, I would never be able to stride as freely as she could. 

That is why I spent so much energy and time on getting Mora. In complete honesty, I could have left Snezhnaya a year into my socialisation. In only a few months, I had enough financial security to start a business in the faraway Liyue which flourished past my expectations. Despite resigning myself to using others, the human mind sometimes cannot help but create bonds of affection to others and so, after the first time hearing “comrade” or the late-night conversations with a painfully vulnerable and lonely teenager, I could not help but want to stay longer, although merely subconsciously. I began finding reasons to stay; perhaps visiting Liyue to oversee my business after a scandal was not a good enough plan to leave, perhaps I should save just a bit more before I go on a long journey, what if the branch deal suddenly fails, I need to manage this project myself… The excuses piled up, my very few friendships strengthened and then, I thought; living here for the rest of my life would not be the worst. This idea was proven wrong time and time again, the glares like daggers in my back, enviness of others putting poison in my cups, the bloody display of the rare bunny I was gifted by a prominent and popular merchant, my mother’s slap at the word “Liyue” leaving my mouth.

I was woken up by news of the forgotten childhood marriage proposal being reconsidered.

“My clever girl is all grown up now!” my father spoke loudly, his fork sounding on the golden plate as the guests around him followed his proud tone with interest. Turning to his closest comrade, another one of Tsaritsa’s most trusted, he spoke as if confiding a secret though all invitees could hear him clearly: “Nobody is ever going to be good enough for my dove, but I’m considering accepting that proposal. They’d make a good match, both of their heads full of coins.”

Booming laughter ensued as my smile froze on my lips. He had never discussed this with me beforehand, so why now?

As if he had read my thoughts, Father’s eyes found mine, his bright and naive, sure that I would simply go with it as I had with everything until now. I decided to keep the illusion intact and made myself smile wider. 

“Girlie that plays with coins, hah! If that’s what he needs to tie him down, I’d get on my knees myself,” the other man spoke, raising his glass towards me and eliciting another round of hollers. 

Not one to stay quiet in rage, I spoke with a light, pretty tone: “Sorry to say this old man, but I’d prefer for the man to kneel down for my hand himself. Your legs might just give out from how long you’d have to be begging on the ground for him.”

The hidden jab of my not even knowing who the man proposing was went past their ears.

“As expected!” the man yelled over the ear-wrenching laughter, slapping my grinning father on the back, while another man, whom I recognised as my only female friend’s absentee parent, spoke up; “She’s really your kid, through and through. Shame you didn’t make a boy, too, with that spunk he’d be one of Tsaritsa’s best warriors by now.”

“No kid of mine would be any good as a soldier,” Father countered, the alcohol in his glass disappearing. “Us Silvers use our heads.”

After he playfully headbutts his comrade, the conversation moves elsewhere and I take my leave. Again, I find myself on the balcony, heaving deep breaths, desperately trying to calm my racing pulse. Vaguely, I think about my wild expression and how others would react if they chanced upon me at this moment, but my unbearable fear does not allow for a stoic attitude. 

Ah, right, I wanted to run away.

It is needless to say that I got my plans in order just that night.

I only let my closest friends know of the finality of my departure, sent a personal letter to the Tsaritsa and prepared an entourage of people who wanted to permanently leave Snezhnaya as well.

Tsaritsa’s reply was swift and curt; a permit to leave for business. There was not any mention of a permit to return, but that was exactly what I had been looking for.

I mentioned my journey East to my parents at a rare shared dinner, as if passing news. My mother would have dragged me by my hair if we had been alone; having my father present was imperative. With my mother’s forced silence, I explained that, due to the scandal - which I had painstakingly created myself - I wanted to take charge of the business in Liyue Harbour for three months until I found a capable enough manager to take over the decision-making.

“It is unsavory for women to make the main decisions in a business,” I sighed, massaging the side of my head as if troubled by this gravely. My father nodded, sympathetically, while my mother coldly glared at my theatrics. It was not her that I needed to convince, anyway; she would follow whatever her husband decided. Holding Father’s hand, a physical contact of seldom, I continued: “I want to get this over with quickly, that is why I am going myself. After all, the marriage should not be put off for too long, should it? You told me a few days ago that you wanted a grandson, after all.”

I left three days after that.

The tearful farewells were done in secret, only polite nods were given in the public eye. More people have come to bid me a good journey than I would have expected, my ties reaching further than those of the usual Snezhnayan. I decided to speed up my leave before anyone else could notice.

White mountains and the creaking of snow beneath the heavy feet slowly turned into browns and greens and sloshes of mud. We stayed the night at a guesthouse in Fontaine, the waterfalls washing away the prints of our path. I wished I could have run away immediately, but arriving at the Liyue headquarters was a necessary evil to maintain our facade; if we did not send word, it would have been no different from an escape without planning. 

The warm water felt wonderful against my cold skin, accustomed to the harsh weather of the land of Cryo. It was a few hours after sunset and only the sounds of nocturnal butterflies were present. The unchanging moon shone down, reflecting its light into the lake, its shape sometimes a copy, sometimes a caricature. 

TBA

[trashyswitch]

The Hopeful Nightmare

Chris has been having the same nightmare for years, and it's scared him terribly each and every time. So when the creepy animatronics start turning protective for him, Chris starts to see the animatronics in a new light.

For thelightofdarkness.

Thanks for the prompt! And I hope you enjoy!

Chris was nervously holding a stuffed animal in his hands as he looked around his room. It seemed to be safe enough, but...the moment he looked behind him, a creepy looking Freddy Fazbear was showing up on his bed! Chris yipped in surprise and stared at it in horror. It was super run down! And there were mini Freddy’s surrounding him! But just as fast as it appeared, the big freddy and the mini freddies hid under the bed. All that was left, was his little Freddy plush in front of his pillow.

Chris let out a sigh of relief as he looked in front of his room. Which spot should he check first? The left side? The closet? Or the right side? Chris decided to go for the right side first. Chris grabbed his flashlight from the dresser and carefully looked through the door. It looked like no one was there, but eyes were always deceiving. Chris listened carefully for sounds. And, there were sounds. It sounded like they were coming from the kitchen. Maybe Chica’s in there, trying to make a pizza for him? Chris listened a little more, and closed the door just to be safe. When he opened it, there was still no one there. So, he speed walked back to the middle of the room.

Chris moved to the left door and looked through the creak. Turning on his flashlight, he found there was no one there again. But listening closely, Chris heard footsteps getting closer and closer to the door. As quickly as possible, Chris closed it and listened. The animatronic Bonnie seemed to continue coming closer till he was right at the door, and waited a little. Chris gasped quietly as a knocking sound on the other side of the door could be heard. He waited anxiously for Bonnie to leave. All he could hear was a breathing noise. But soon, Bonnie walked away and left Chris alone. Chris let out a breath of relief and ran away from the door to the middle of the room.

Chris walked up to his closet, and clicked the flashlight on. Foxy was in there, and staring at him. So, Chris closed the door. There was no way the poor kid was gonna stare at THOSE eyes for long...those eyes were much more scary than his older brother’s eyes that peeked under his fox mask. He opened it again, and turned on the flashlight: Chris let out a sigh of relief. It was just his foxy plush. So, Chris ran back to the middle of the room and looked up at the doors.

Chris quickly took a look behind him and flipped on the flashlight. The mini bears had been building up, but there were only 2 this time. These bears quickly disappeared under the bed once their cover had been blown, revealing only a Freddy plush. Chris turned back around to face the doors again.

‘Which one do I go into now?’ Chris thought to himself. He looked at the left door, and decided to go look through that. Chris turned on the flashlight and looked through. Listening closely, it sounded like there wasn’t anyone there. But suddenly, Chris gasped at a chime sound! As the chiming sound continued, Chris cooled down. It was just the big clock chimes. That was it. Chris checked the door one more time.

BONNIE! IT’S BONNIE!

Chris screamed and slammed the door shut. HOLY! THAT WAS CLOSE! Chris took in the air that he had just lost, and waited for the knocking and the robotic breathing to stop. It was a struggle to get his own breathing under control as well. Soon though, the animatronic seemed to have walked away. Chris opened the door again and observed the empty hallway once again before turning off the flashlight and running back to the middle.

Chris decided to go to the right hall this time. He ran up to the door, and turned on the flashlight. Thankfully, there was no one visibly there this time. But, he did hear running. So, Chris quickly closed the door. Chris tried to keep himself calm while the animatronic knocked on the door from the other side. Chris could also hear fast running and a closet creaking sound. Wait...Did Foxy just sneak himself in from the other side? Soon though, the animatronic walked away and started making kitchen noises again. Chris let out a sigh of relief and moved back to the middle.

Chris needed to check the closet next. So, he ran up to the closet and turned on the flashlight-

FOXY’S IN THERE!

Chris shrieked as the fox jumped out of the closet and tackled the child onto the ground. Chris dropped his stuffy as he screamed in horror! “HELP! HELP! MOM! DAD! MICHAEL! AAAAAAAHH!” Chris shouted as much as he could.

“Hey guys! We have a tiny yeller!” Foxy yelled.

Suddenly, the other animatronics walked into the room while Freddy Fazbear jumped off the bed. “He’s certainly tiny.” Freddy reacted in a somewhat lower voice.

Chris paused his screaming and panted heavily. The animatronics were so broken and scary looking! They looked mostly decayed, they all had 2 sets of teeth and none of them even had proper eyes! All they had for eyes were white lights that occasionally turned red! It was TERRIFYING!

Chris whimpered and wailed like a toddler. “HELP! PLEASE! DON’T HURT MEEEEEE!” He screamed, sounding traumatized.

Suddenly, the animatronics turned their heads towards the being that was walking up to them. A black, thin being with a white mask and white stripes on the...ends of the arms. What were those? Fingers? And...Why was it so tall? And THIN?!

“Put h-him d-down.” The voice ordered.

Whoa...The voice sounded super deep...He did NOT like it. Before Chris could think, Foxy put Chris down onto the floor and backed up a little. “He’s mine.” The black figure picked him up with its super thin fingers and brought him close. Chris was visibly shaking, and chattering his teeth.

“Hmmmmm...So-o fearful…” He said to the child. “Do I scare you?” He asked, leaning closer into his face.

Chris’s eyes immediately welled up with tears. He started to whimper and squeeze his eyes shut, letting out all the tears that filled his eyes.

A few of the tears fell onto Nightmarionne. “Pathetic.” He spat.

Suddenly, a burgundy head with oval ears came up behind Nightmarionne and smacked him against the back of the head. Nightmarionne paused what he was doing, and froze. Did...did someone just hit him?

Nightmarionne dropped the child and turned to face the animatronic. “You disgu-usting FOX!” The creepy puppet animatronic wrapped his fingers around its throat and lifted him up. Filled with rage, Nightmarionne threw the broken Foxy animatronic into the closet. Deafening metallic crashes filled the room for a few seconds before Foxy finally sat against the wall of the closet.

But not even a second later, a creepy-looking golden bear walked up to Nightmarionne and with no remorse, grabbed the creepy puppet’s torso and threw him right out of the room. Nightmarionne made loud crashing sounds down the hall as he stumbled and smacked against the four flat surrounding walls.

This golden bear was known by the animatronics, as ‘Fredbear’.

When Fredbear turned back around, Nightmare Freddy was holding Chris back lightly with his hand and keeping Fredbear from so much as stepping towards him. Chris knew exactly who Fredbear was. And there was NO WAY he was getting anywhere near him.

Chris whimpered fearfully and hid his face from Fredbear with Nightmare Freddy’s hand. Freddy, in an attempt to reassure the child, lowered his other hand down and patted his head. Though, the head patting was a little jagged, and a tad too rough. But, Chris generally understood what he was trying to do.

“Leave him alone.” Nightmare Freddy ordered to his golden counterpart.

Fredbear nodded and slowly turned himself around to walk out of the room. Once his feet reached the doorway, Nightmare Freddy and the original four animatronics straightened themselves out.

Chris stared at the door for a few more minutes just in case Nightmarionne came back...But he didn’t. So, Chris turned around to the animatronics. Chris was still terrified of them, and was super nervous to give them any trust. But, Chris tried to, at least, look closer at them. But...they were very big. He had to look up in order to see their eyes.

Nightmare Freddy looked down at the kid, and tilted his head. Chris tilted his head as well, mirroring his movement. Nightmare Freddy straightened his head and tilted it to the right this time. Chris tilted his head from the right, all the way to the left to mirror its movements again. Next, Nightmare Freddy moved his bear ears up and down. Chris, who was unable to do this, grabbed his own ears and made them bounce up and down with a small smile. Nightmare Freddy opened his mouth a little, attempting to give him a smile. But Chris’s smile dropped as he saw the teeth, and grew scared of him again.

But things grew a little more interesting when the three Freddles started walking up to him. The Freddles were quite a bit smaller compared to him. So, they didn’t scare Chris as much. He was used to the Freddles making a higher pitched, metallic screeching sound whenever they showed up. But interestingly enough, the Freddles weren’t making the sound as much. They were just staring at him curiously.

What were they gonna do?

Chris brought himself down to their level and sat on his own feet. “Hi.” He greeted. “I’m Chris.”

The Freddles walked closer to him one by one. One of them reached their arms up, like they wanted to be picked up. So, Chris lifted him up and held onto him. While the Freddle was carried, it started kicking the air and making growly noises. These were not angry growls. These were actually happy growls, if you could consider that a thing. Amazingly, this didn’t scare the child.

In fact, it made him giggle! “I used to kick too!” Chris told the small Freddle.

The other two Freddles on the ground, grew eager to be held so they could kick the air too! But Chris wasn’t bringing its triplet brother down fast enough for their liking. So, the two other Freddles started climbing up the child’s legs, grabbed onto his PJ shirt and started pulling on it impatiently. Chris looked down and giggled at the two Freddles. “Do you want up too?” Chris asked.

Both of the Freddles nodded their head and jumped up and up at him with their arms raised up like toddlers. Chris smiled, put the first Freddle down and picked up the jumping one on his left. The Freddle’s white pupils seemed to light up a brighter white as it was lifted up. It even clapped its hands at Chris and kicked its feet excitedly! Chris smiled and kept holding Freddle number two in his hands while the other Freddles stood below Chris. Chris started to smile a little more as he held the bear in his hands. It was being surprisingly cute right now, for a creepy, tiny nightmare version of Freddy Fazbear.

Soon though, the third Freddle was feeling really left out. He hadn’t been lifted up by Chris yet, and he was growing super impatient. To show Chris he was mad, the impatient Freddle grabbed the side of Chris’s shirt and started using it to climb up. “Hey!” Chris looked down at his side and saw the Freddle climbing his shirt. “Stop that.” Chris ordered with a giggle, shaking his shirt. But the moment Chris’s hand grew any closer to the mini animatronic, the Freddle reached up, threw its arms around his wrist and held on tightly. The Freddle was now being lifted up off the ground, allowing himself to have fun and kicking his legs. But it’s swinging feet happened to start tapping the boy’s belly. “No kicking my belly!” Chris ordered.

The two Freddles on the ground, looked at Chris curiously. No kicking the boy. But...was climbing the boy allowed? To test this theory, the two Freddles went to one side each, and grabbed each side of the shirt to start climbing. But suddenly, Chris squealed in surprise! “That tihihickles!” Chris giggled as he swayed back and forth to get them off him. Now, the Freddles knew exactly what tickling was. They’ve seen it many times before! So the moment the child mentioned tickling, the Freddles quickly fell into a rare fun time mode!

The two Freddles on his sides, immediately started tickling the boy while the dangling Freddle let one of his hands free to tickle his neck. Chris squealed yet again, put the Freddle down right away and covered up his own neck with his hands. Chris’s squeals quickly turned into childish giggles as the two Freddles continued to tickle his sides with their tiny, metal fingers. The third Freddle, now free from the boy, waddled itself up to Chris and started tickling his belly. Chris’s giggles started to include squeals as he doubled over a little bit to protect his vulnerable tummy. But the Freddle wanted to keep tickling his belly! It was squishy and fun to play with. So, the Freddle grabbed onto the front of his shirt, pulled itself up, and tickled his belly with one hand while it kept hold of the shirt.

Chris squealed, threw his head back and let out a big fit of laughter! In one quick motion, the Freddles pulled the boy’s shirt towards the ground and waited for impact. When Chris’s back hit the ground, the Freddles let go of his shirt and climbed up to his belly to keep tickling him. “HAhahahahaha! Yohohou sound like dohohoggihihihihies!” Chris told the Freddles. Suddenly, the Freddles paused their movements and looked at Chris, before looking at their leader: Freddy Fazbear.

Freddy tilted his head before he looked down at the voice box below his tie. The voice box made a static sound, before a barking sound could be heard coming from the voice’s speaker! Chris gasped and sat up. “Doggy!” Chris declared happily. The Freddles, not at all ready for the kid to sit up, came tumbling off of his belly and flopped onto his legs. Chris giggled at this and lifted them up onto their feet. “Sorry.” The Freddles stood there, looked at one another and nodded one at a time to each other. Chris was about to ask what they were planning, when all three of the Freddles came jumping onto Chris and hugged him. Chris giggled and hugged them back happily as he started to fade back…

“Chris? Christopher?” Someone called him.

Chris opened his eyes and sat up. “Yes?” Chris replied to the familiar voice.

Chris looked to the left door, and smiled at the lady who was sitting there: It was his mom. “Was that you making noise?” She asked.

Chris looked around himself and found all his Fazbear stuffies in his arms and on his bed. “Yeah. Sorry.” Chris said to her.

“It’s alright.” She replied. “It sounded like laughter. Did you have a funny dream?” She asked.

Chris nodded his head. “Yeah! The tiny freddy bears ran up and tickled me!” Chris told her.

“Tickled you?” She asked with a smirk.

Chris giggled and nodded. “Yeah, yeah! They were Freddy Fazbears! But very small! They love being lifted!” Chris explained. “And they tickled me when I was holding one.” Chris said with a giggle.

Chris’s mother hummed curiously. “Sounds like someone had been visited by a couple little tickle monsters.” She teased. “And it sounds like someone’s getting less scared of the pizza place! You’re growing to be a big, brave boy!”

Chris laughed. “Yeah! I’m a very big boy!” he declared, showing off his muscles.

Chris’s mom giggled. “Alright. Big boys need sleep. Good night Chris.” She said to him.

“Good night Mom!” Chris said, quickly flopping under his covers to get to sleep.

As Chris began to fall asleep again, Chris’s Mom found one of Chris’s stuffies in the hallway. Picking it up, she realized it was the puppet stuffy! So, Chris’s Mom brought the puppet into his room, and placed it on the bed with him…

Chris drifted off softly, until he suddenly heard a deep voice. “You th-thought you could r-run away f-from me-e?” it threatened.

Chris whined and squeezed his eyes closed more.

“I’m talking to-o you. LISTEN TO ME.” Chris was grabbed by a pair of nimble hands and lifted right out of his bed. Chris opened his eyes right away and screamed at the sight of Nightmarionne and his fingers wrapped around him again. “I-I’ve been waiting f-for you.” Nightmarionne told him, bringing his face closer and closer to his muppet mask. “You thought y-you could get away-y? Even i-if all the a-animatronics throw me o-out again, I STILL COME BACK.” Nightmarionne shouted at him.

Chris started breathing quickly and deeply as his eyes welled up with tears again. He was right back in the clutches of his evil nightmare. What was he supposed to do?

The stuffies he was sleeping with, were no longer on his bed and all the animatronics were standing there and trying to find a way to get Chris away from Nightmarionne again. The Freddles were climbing up the skeleton puppet and trying to get Nightmarionne to let go. “GET OFF ME!” The nightmare puppet screamed before throwing the Freddles off his arms and torso.

Nightmare Bonnie picked up Nightmarionne by his thin torso, much like Freddy did, and pulled Chris out of his grip. “Hands off him.” Nightmare Bonnie warned.

Nightmarionne growled and shoved his fingers into the animatronic’s arm. With one quick swipe, Nightmarionne ripped a whole bunch of the wires out of Bonnie’s arm, forcing the hand to let go of his torso and leaving Bonnie’s arm completely immobile. But none of the animatronics were having it. Freddy Fazbear and the Freddles kept Chris safe, while Bonnie, Chica and Foxy all tried to get rid of Nightmarionne. But the puppet was very smart. He found a way to immobilize all of them, one at a time.

Finally, Chris decided to do something he never imagined himself doing: he shouted for help. “FREDBEAR!” Chris shouted.

Quickly, Fredbear came walking through the right hall door, and walked up to the fight. Grabbing the creepy puppet, Fredbear used his teeth to bite down on the puppet’s mask, cracking it and revealing the pitch black head underneath. Then, Fredbear threw Nightmarionne into the top of the closet and closed the door for good.

Chris, feeling super thankful, ran up to Fredbear and hugged his leg. Fredbear looked down and tilted its head in surprise. Just earlier, the kid had been scared to go near him. But now...the kid was hugging him? What changed? Did...did the kid like him now because he saved him?

Chris soon let go of Fredbear and walked back to the Freddles. The Freddles definitely helped him calm down over the creepy animatronic nightmares. And, Chris was slowly getting better with the dreams! The original four nightmare animatronics have slowly proven themselves to be not nearly as killer as they look, and Fredbear was always around to save him if he couldn’t save himself against Nightmarionne and the others. Chris grew proud of himself for finding a sweet side to his nightmares of the pizzeria. Maybe when he fully outgrows the nightmares, he can visit the animatronics and see them on the stage again.

But for now: Chris will take big boy steps to grow less and less scared of his nightmares. Perhaps a Foxy Pirate Adventure would be a good dream one day...

[dazais-guardian-angel]

This post has been sitting in my drafts since like mid-November around when I finished replaying the game, long enough for me to write and upload a fic about some of the concepts I wrote here, what the fuck. DGS brainrot is real. But aNYWAY finally, here are my massive thoughts on Unwound Future, the golden child of the PL series. This is literally *checks* 8k words, because I can never shut up!! and because there is just SO much going on in this game at all times, so many different interweaving plot threads and funny moments and incredible, fascinating characterization, especially combined with the games that come after it; I just had SO much to say. So much analyzing and headcanons and crying galore. :’) There’s a reason this is considered the best game, and that’s why I had so damn much to talk about.

behold the incoherent, rambling, unconnected mess of a novel that I hope makes a modicum of sense under the cut:

Continuing the trend, this game has simply AMAZING graphics/art/music, with a huge uptick in cutscenes and voice acting, and I feel like the sound/music quality is greatly improved too? I love the main bgm for London in this game, never really remembered loving it before, but it’s just *chef’s kiss* and so is the song that plays in other areas like the hospital and subway

Quickly mentioning the gameplay, I really love all the minigames, and the storybooks are especially hilarious to play with putting the wrong things in the spaces to create mad libs-esque crack that makes no sense; it’s so fun lmao

The beginning flashback segment with the time machine demonstration is honestly just so funny, for so many different reasons: Dimitri droning on and on with time travel technobabble while Luke, Bill, Chelmey, and Barton represent the definitive last four brain cells. Hershel being skeptical about successful time travel after all the magical shit they went through just like a year or two ago. The way that Bill’s sprite slowly and nervously shuffles onscreen after Dimitri calls him to the stage, like omg I don’t know why that cracks me up so much but it does. Dimitri’s lowkey savage shade he’s throwing at Bill throughout this whole thing. The way Bill says “wHAT” when Dimitri asks him to help, clearly about to shit his pants. Dimitri just standing there completely unfazed as the smoke from the machine flies past him. And of course, “sOmEtHiNg’S gOnE vErY wRoNg!”

…okay but in all seriousness, am I just stupid or do they never explain how they get Bill to the underground city, like the machine CLEARLY explodes with him in it, there was no secret elevator built into the thing like at the clock shop, so…???

also the presenter’s voice is really funny lmao

Still disagree that this is the biggest mystery they’ve ever encountered, despite being near the top; Luke you say that literally every game!! so what is the truth!!

Spring’s face is terrifying as FUCK in the two cutscenes in the clock shop… why they decided to show both of them in ominous, shadowed lighting in those scenes I do not understand a;lskdl;fds

I need someone to draw a diagram of how exactly the shop looks as a giant elevator because frankly I still can’t wrap my brain around it-

THE FACT THAT WE NEVER GET TO MAKE UP WITH HAZEL IS A TRAVESTY, HONESTLY

Belle… why…… ugh

Wish they’d had “Schrader” drop a casual nod to the events of Diabolical Box; it would have been cool :’) (especially since this is Paul so he’d know about all that)

College-age Hershel is just….. the pinnacle of adorableness. someone protect him from all the pain

One of the few flaws/plot holes in the story of Unwound Future that I only noticed during this replay with more media under my belt, is the that the developers didn’t really decide on what kind of time travel they wanted to portray, or more likely just didn’t scrutinize Clive’s fake role enough when writing it. This is blatantly obvious upon the very first meeting with Clive where he desires to test Hershel to make sure he’s really him. Obviously in a closed loop scenario, everything Luke and Hershel are doing “Future Luke” should remember doing himself in his past, so a test would not be necessary; this is a major trip-up on his part that it’s very odd Hershel doesn’t notice for how smart he is, imo. However, later on when meeting “Future Layton”, Paul calls Dimitri out on this exact principle, proving that he’s not actually Future Layton because he doesn’t remember the absence of a pen in Hershel’s pocket in this moment in his past, and it’s a nice little touch that Paul, on the other hand, an actual scientist, would mention this. Back to Future Luke, though, he should know how everything goes down with stopping Future Layton, because he lived it all as a child with Hershel, which makes it even more dubious to the fact that after seeing all this, Hershel still goes dark and everything plays out the exact same way it’s portrayed in the “future” of the game; it’s the idea that destined fate can’t be changed, but the suspension of disbelief is quite high, especially since we already doubt that Hershel would ever do such a thing, knowing what kind of person he is. Of course this wouldn’t be the case in an open-loop/branching timelines universe, but since the game uses the former type with the pen argument (and something else important I’ll mention in a second), I feel like the rest of the game should have adopted this idea as well and addressed it. Because Dimitri is outed via the fact that he should have memory of things he doesn’t, so it would have been easy to simply add Hershel adding that argument into his final explanation in the bar (”my suspicions were first raised when we first met Big Luke, and he didn’t know if I was really who I said I was- [etc etc]”). Even if they didn’t want Hershel to bring this up early else the entire story would fall apart, they could simply draw attention to the fact that he notices something in these moments, like with a “...” or “Hmm”, and then he explains it at the end like I said. Interestingly enough, Clive actually addresses these concepts at one point in the game with Luke in the statue plaza: he doesn’t want to tell Luke how things play out in his future, so that… things play out the way they’re supposed to…? Even though his entire story here is that he wished Hershel hadn’t gone dark and distanced from him, and ruined the city? But then he makes the suggestion that they could instead be operating on an open-loop/multiple timelines system, where in his past he never travelled to the future, but in our Luke and Hershel’s timeline they do. This is only a hypothetical he gives though, with him seeming unsure of how things truly are, which… again, in this story he’s concocted, he should know for sure, because if he doesn’t “remember” time traveling and how everything went down, then they’re operating on different timelines and it shouldn’t matter how much he tells Luke about his future. You can definitely argue that in-universe Clive didn’t think all this through when planning his dialogue for this role (but I honestly find that hard to believe, since he’s so intelligent, and he nailed the realism of everything else to a T), but it’s obvious just that the writers didn’t think it through, because like I said Hershel really should have picked up on his blunder when they first met, as well as later when Clive is surprised to see Flora suddenly with them and didn’t know for a fact that she and Chelmey/Barton would arrive there. Since the time travel scenario in 99% of the game isn’t actually real, I don’t entirely fault the writers for not getting every single detail right… and yet, that 1% exists where time travel is real, with Claire’s situation. It’s a very isolated incident though that wouldn’t be replicated, with only her going to the future… and yet, she does return to the past again, if only for a split second before dying and thus not enough time to do anything with her future knowledge, the real thing to note here being that they took care to show that she was wearing the same outfit when she died that she gets in the future, one she wasn’t wearing when she entered the lab originally. So they DID think about some things very well, like such a minor and easily-overlooked detail here (but that blows your mind once you realize it). All this is hardly enough to ruin the game or break the immersion completely though, especially since the player is already predisposed to heavily doubt everything with PL’s “the town is a lie” track record lmao, but I can’t help but be bothered by it now after playing games like Zero Escape and watching time travel shows like netflix’s Dark, which have bootstrap parodoxes and timeloops galore looool. My friend who watched me play the game blind this time around brought up all these questions as Clive said things, as someone who didn’t know if it would end up being real or not, and so I spent a lot of time puzzling (har har) it out with her… even though it wouldn’t matter lmao.

……In short, if it wasn’t obvious, despite Unwound Future’s time travel setup being completely fake, I’m really fascinated by the notion of how it would all work if it was real. >.> …and I mean, I know I’m not the first one; monocle Layton aus are popular, after all, but I don’t really care quite as much about the allure of an “evil Layton” as I do just about how everything else would be, I think.

Because, like, lets be real? taking the prequels into account with Unwound Future’s proposed setup, the potential is endless. It honestly KILLS me that the prequels didn’t exist yet at the time of UF, because!! so many people from Hershel’s past!!! SO MANY REASONS FOR HIM TO WANT TO HARNASS TIME TRAVEL AND CHANGE THE PAST, NOT JUST FOR CLAIRE’S SAKE. FOR RANHENGELA’S SAKE. FOR LUKE AND EMMY’S SAKE. FOR HIS PARENTS’ SAKE. FOR DESMOND. listen, listen, you don’t understand how much the idea of Desmond being involved in UF’s concepts destroys me. I wrote about this in my last fic but. imagine if Desmond learned about Hershel going down a dark path for his sake and everyone else’s, just like he did. Or imagine if, instead of Hershel being the one to do it, it was Desmond himself; he’s willing to play the bad guy once again, one very final, this time definitely final, time, if it means he can undo everything that caused all of them so much pain in the first place: his betrayals, the death of his former wife, he and Theodore’s separation, their father’s betrayal, ALL of it, and Hershel would never know. When Luke first is like “oh it’s gotta be Don Paolo right” and Clive says no, i LITERALLY screamed “BUT IT COULD BE DESCOLE!!”. JUST. PAIN. And where would Randall be in this future; what would he, too, think if it was Hershel going after time travel? Imagine him trying to smack some sense into him just like Hershel does in MM, trying to tell him that despite those lost 18 years of his life, despite everything wrong he ended up doing, he’s still happy, and so are Henry and Angela. So is Desmond. And Emmy, she wouldn’t want undone those years she had with Hershel and Luke and then Aurora and Desmond, despite how sadly it ended. Just… so much pain. So much potential. I hurt :’)

and adding on to this, i love love LOVE the idea of Clive knowing about some of this stuff in Hershel’s past, in order to faithfully play his role as Future Luke. Like obviously he wasn’t in Misthallory with them all, he wasn’t on the island in ED, he wasn’t at Monte’dor, and he wasn’t on the Bostonius or at all those Azran ruins that I can’t remember the names of right now, of course he wouldn’t know the intimate, specific details of what all went down, but if there was just one npc who was in the right place at the right time at any of these locations, who knows what beans they could spill? Maybe even an ex-Targent person or something. Hell, fucking Bronev is in jail for at least a little while before the events of UF. There are possibly MANY people Clive could have gotten information from to pull off this role - he’s a reporter, he’s skilled at digging for stuff. Not to mention just reading and hearing about large incidents in the news. And this makes his character so much better because he’s admired Hershel for so long, grateful that he saved his life all this time, to the point that he asks him to unknowingly come and save him again… and he most definitely didn’t know back when he first encountered Hershel that he’d already experienced so much loss and pain as well (some of which Hershel hadn’t even gone through yet by that point), but learning about everything he’s suffered? I think it would really affect him, and possibly contribute to why he asks him for his help in the first place in UF: because Hershel has suffered just as much as he has, and he feels a connection to him, feels like he can relate to him, and wants someone who can empathize with him, and show him how to cope. All of these reasons and emotions would probably be completely on an unconscious level, but they would exist - he’d use this limited but meaningful knowledge to try to connect with Hershel more when he’s still in Future Luke mode, to try to convince him he’s really Luke, at first, but unconsciously it’d be an effort to get closer to him emotionally, which is what he truly desires deep down, until his so-called act somewhat stops being an act, and talking about these things makes his vulnerabilities start to show (again, i wrote a fic about this). This all just adds to why Hershel is the perfect person to help and support Clive - the prequels make their similarities even stronger, more than just with Hershel losing Claire, and those accidental parallels when the writers hadn’t even conceived the prequel trilogy at the time of UF are just *chef’s kiss* beautiful.

THE CASINO SCENE IS JUST ICONIC, IT’S SO FUNNY. LUKE BEING SCARED OF THE SHOOTING AND HERSHEL JUST DITCHING HIM. CLIVE’S LITTLE HOP AND ROLL BEHIND THE SLOT MACHINES. THE SLOT MACHINE GUN IN GENERAL. THE CLONE FAMILY MEMBERS FALLING OVER LIKE DOMINOS UPON BEING HIT. BOSTRO CRYING AND SPLINTERS AND LOCKJAW RUNNING IN CIRCLES PANICKING WHILE LAYMAN JUST IS LITERALLY PUSHED BACK SLOWLY WITH ONLY A CHAIR TO DEFEND HIMSELF, I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH HOW FUNNY LAYMAN AS A CHARACTER IS TO ME. it’s just so glorious, oh my god. this series is ridiculous i love it so much lmao

Luke wanting to use the time machine though… there are so many reasons why he might want to, mainly from Azran Legacy. :’)

The statue is the worst thing ever for multiple reasons. The fact that it represents Hershel & Luke’s relationship, the two main characters, who have been through so much together and have such a strong bond that can never be broken, and how it ties into the whole Evil Layton scenario and seems to foreshadow that their bond does end up breaking, as “Future Luke” seems to be proof of (though the game doesn’t really put much emphasis on this; Luke is more worried about the fact that he’s moving away soon straining their relationship, and not the whole Future Layton thing. imo it would have been interesting to see his actual thoughts on/feelings about it, since he’s surprisingly calm throughout the entire game before the reveals happen; you can argue he just has complete faith in Hershel and doesn’t think he would ever go dark, but then why doesn’t he bring this up, insist that this can’t be true? I think he should have). The fact that as I just said it foreshadows how Luke will leave Hershel at the end of the game, something that Luke worries about later on in the game. And most of all, the biggest, worst thing it foreshadows… Hershel’s relationship with Clive. Clive had that statue made himself, put it in his giant set. He WANTS that kind of mentor-student bond with Hershel, that’s how he sees them, just from their one interaction in front of the exploding buildings… or at least, that’s how he wants to see it. He sees how close Hershel and Luke are throughout the entire game, and he yearns for that kind of bond with Hershel, too. The fact that the boy in the statue story has an illness that he eventually dies from, but that their friendship withstands… it’s probably meant to represent Clive’s insanity, that he hopes Hershel will save him from - he is Clive’s light of hope in his despair. Or, to be more accurate to the statue, even if Clive’s madness ends up killing him (which it very nearly does, and by that point he fully expects that it will), he’ll still have had those memories of that time he spent with him, and Hershel will never forget him, and that will mean something special. man though can you imagine an AU where Clive is literally terminally ill too, and that’s why he’s yolo-ing this entire thing so hard and doesn’t care if it ends up killing him in the end, at least he got to be with Hershel one more day; ahahahaha turn up the angsttttttttttttt-

Shmelmey and Shmarton do not at all look like Chelmey and Barton, smh

For everything Clive accounted for with his role and setting, he’s honestly way too rude and crass sometimes to be Luke lmao, even if you try to imagine a world where Hershel did go dark and Luke was changed by it… at least imo

the like 4 puzzles that give Clive’s solving animations/dialogue are the most serotonin-boosting things in the world

“you will come back, won’t you?” Clive asks Hershel about his trip to visit Chelmey, desperately wanting him to stop him before it’s too late :’)

Rosetta and her....... sessions....... with Hershel........ hajkkALSKDLD

Okay but Hershel is kind of dickish sometimes though, despite his whole “gentleman” thing??? There’s the elephant in the room which I’ll Get To, but like first he guilt-trips Chelmey into getting him access to confidential information about the lab explosion, and then he has the absolute balls to tell him “Bill Hawks is being held in the future” and that’s IT. No explanation, nothing else, just THAT, and then he LEAVES, after he’d promised to share every last detail with him. I don’t blame Chelmey at all for tailing them and barging in to get information himself, like damn Hershel, why so savage sometimes in not a good way

which brings me to Ranting About Flora’s Treatment, Part 3: The Finale. Y’all I literally cannot even BEGIN to describe how much the way Hershel and Luke treat Flora in UF specifically makes me seethe..... It was already bad in DB, no doubt, but in this game they are straight-up rude to her, mostly Hershel, for absolutely no reason, and I CANNOT fathom why. He constantly makes the excuse that he’s concerned for her safety, and that the places they’re going to are too dangerous for her, but it all exudes a level of thinly-veiled annoyance, even confusion as to why Flora is so upset that they never bring her along and wants to go with them at all... almost like her “frail” feminine appearance (which isn’t helped by how the games make her feel sick or dizzy or tired multiple times), compared to someone like Emmy who could fight and has more masculine traits, means she’s less capable in Hershel’s mind, which, like, even if it’s unconscious on his part... how about no?? I could accept being worried about her, even if I’m still frustrated at her being left behind, and her constant kidnapping (which isn’t Hershel’s fault, even if he probablyyy could do a better job both times at protecting her), but I CANNOT excuse how short and dismissive Hershel is with her in this damn game; it honestly borders on ooc to me for him, I don’t know what the writers were thinking; do they just hate Flora that freaking much??? He treats her like a burden the entire time, apologizes to people for her, acts irritated at having to accommodate for her, when poor Flora just wants to spend time with him and feel like an equal to him and Luke. Meanwhile Clive of all people is the first one to treat her with kindness and respect and pleasure to see her when they first meet, like when Luke bitches about Flora being excited to see the river and not taking things seriously and Clive tells him to go easy on her (Clive, the one who has been rushing them along this entire time himself). honestly can see why it’s so easy to ship them, when literally everyone else treats her like crap It’s SO depressing honestly. Flora asks them if they thought to wonder where her future self was, and Hershel is just like hhhhh we’re kinda busy thinking about... you know.... important things... sorry not sorry....... like BITCH I WILL STRANGLE YOU, BE NICER TO YOUR DAUGHTER!!! Luke at least is a kid, but Hershel??? there’s no excuse!!! Luke be like “damn I hope Becky doesn’t look down on us for leaving Flora behind... >.>” THEY KNOW. THEY KNOW IT’S NOT RIGHT BUT THEY DON’T CARE AND DO IT ANYWAY. I’M SO MAD

Beasly just gets... straight-up murdered yo... between him and Subject 3, what were they smoking when coming up with the animals in this game, jfc. Test subject animals?? that’s unnervingly dark, despite how glossed over it is and how hilarious Subject 3 is a;lksd

LUKE LOVES SHERLOCK HOLMES THIS IS NOT A DRILL. THE DGS CROSSOVER IS WAITING, LEVEL-5 AND CAPCOM. MAKE LUKE’S (AND MY) DREAMS A REALITY

the intentional zoom-in on Clive’s sinister face in front of the tower will never not amuse me, and baffle me as to why they drew attention to it lmaooo

And okay back to time travel bullshit shenanigans, WHY the fuck does Dimitri not pick up on why him not remembering about the pen is such a big deal as soon as Paul first brings it up?? bruh. bruh. aren’t you a fucking TIME TRAVEL SCIENTIST. WHY DO YOU NOT KNOW SUCH A BASIC CONCEPT THAT BREAKS YOUR WHOLE FACADE IN SECONDS. It’d be one thing if he just couldn’t provide the right answer, but no, he straight-up HAS NO IDEA WHY HE SHOULD HAVE TO KNOW ABOUT THE PEN. “HOW THE FUCK SHOULD I KNOW-” bruhhhh. Dimitri. my dude. i love you but you are actually so dumb sometimes, like holy shit (more on this later though)

Paul talking to Dimitri about his plan is really good; he has a “...” moment before telling him what he’s doing can’t be excused, like “oh shit let me jump on board, wait fuck i gotta stay in character, Layton is a wuss he would never agree to this god dammit Layton-”. jokes aside though, I’m honestly confused as to how much he actually knew before Dimitri’s exposition in the pagoda, and why exactly he goes along with helping Hershel stop him... and what Dimitri was thinking roping him into this. Because I can’t really figure out Paul’s motives here and how they changed, if they did at all. The only information we get about how he first became involved is that Dimitri was paying him a lot of money to get Hershel to the pagoda and to him - he knows that “future London” isn’t real, he knows Future Layton isn’t real, so the extent of his knowledge seems to be that “this man wants to screw Layton over somehow and is giving me $$$ to get it done; there’s no downside here, never mind this suspicious as fuck fake London and all these people that shouldn’t be here”, but then Hershel gave him more information, probably that Claire was involved in what Dimitri was doing, and his concerns about a traitor being involved if he had already begun to suspect Clive by that point, and then he suddenly decided to turn against Dimitri? Even though you’d think saving Claire would be a reason for him to want to help him...? Or did he plan to turn against him from the very start, and wanted Hershel to come because he knew he could stop all this (part of his character development)? The latter is the most likely, though I still don’t entirely understand or maybe I’m just having a brain fart, that’s very likely too. And Dimitri on the other hand, did he know that Paul liked Claire too and would want to save her (and maybe about his salt for Hershel too), and that’s why he got his help? That makes more sense... but also doesn’t, cause as I said it seems like Paul didn’t know Claire was involved until Hershel told him and then Dimitri told everyone at the pagoda, so maybe he literally just said “here’s some money, help me fuck over Layton, not telling how” and just trusted in him that much, even though Paul is an evil genius who could and does put a stop to all his plans with his machines... once again, Dimitri looking dumb....

Clive, in the most deadpan voice ever at the top of the pagoda: oh no, the prime minister is in danger, someone help him

Flora as they’re escaping the tower: “professor no please take me with you instead of future Luke” Hershel: *ignores her feelings and makes a decision for her yet again* Clive: “shhh don’t worry Flora; i know i’m going to kidnap you in like an hour but i’m just trying to rescue you from these insensitive jerks. not Don Paolo though; he’s a gentleman.”

It’s interesting to me that Luke and Hershel keep acting as if Future Luke and future London are legit even after Future Layton has been revealed to be a fake. Hershel at least probably knows none of it is real by now, even if he hasn’t exactly figured out Clive’s role in everything yet, and is just not revealing his knowledge for now, but Luke is still rolling with it... wonder what’s going through his mind by this point. again, it frustrates me that Luke really has no emotional reaction to anything in UF, aside from the statue and his worries about leaving Hershel soon and how that in particular will affect their relationship

I also wonder what Clive is thinking by this point. Now that the Future Layton jig is up, what kind of story is he going with now? We never find out because Hershel reveals everything completely the next time Clive joins up with them again, but in the (unreasonable) case that he hadn’t, would Clive have just acted like he didn’t know that Alain Stahngun was actually someone named Dimitri, who was actually pretending to be Layton, and that the real Layton was somewhere else out there that they needed to find? I don’t know WHY I’m so interested in details like these that don’t matter at all in the long run a;lksdfklfd, but I am... he tells Flora to continue the “investigation” without him, so clearly he still had something in mind, and didn’t expect Hershel to out him quite so soon after that even if deep down he wanted it

Chelmey really cares for Barton and it’s actually so sweet, oml :’)

I didn’t really praise Paul’s character development in this game enough before, but I really do love it, even if I don’t quite understand the circumstances that started it. It’s not something I would have expected with how he’s presented in CV and DB, but it’s very nice to see this be the culmination of his character, and it’s kinda sad that it feels a bit more natural than Descole’s sudden shift in backstory/character between ED and MM/AL... It’s very funny and good to see him and Luke bicker at each other, and how he seems to have a soft spot for Flora... it’s all cute. I just wish there’d been a bit more time for him to talk to them, but that’s what fanfic is for

Don’t make me have to see Hershel beaten up in the street :’(

The sprite of Dimitri standing in the bar is incredibly hot.... damn why are all the older male characters my type >.>

Alright but it’s about time I finally talk about Dimitri without dissing him for being stupid sometimes and say that in short, I love him. He might even be my favorite new character in UF, even more than Clive; I don’t know if it’s just the Liam O’Brian Tragic Sexy Tired Villain effect or what (nah let’s be real, that’s a huge part of it lmao), but he’s fantastic and utterly breaks my heart, in a much more understated way than how the game shoves Clive’s angst in your face, but his tragedy is nonetheless impossible to ignore. The flashback with young Dimitri is my favorite scene in the entire game, it is devastating and feels so cinematic, so raw and painful, and I’m glad they animated that part because it humanizes him so much more. Claire was his everything, he loved her so much, but it is so obvious to me (and to a lot of the fandom too, I think) that his love was entirely selfless - he might have been a little sad, but he was still mostly content letting Hershel have her, and when it comes to after her death, Dimitri would have been absolutely happy not being able to have her if he managed to save her life; he just wanted her to live. He was in love with her, yes, but he also loved her, as a friend, as a scientist, as a person whose time was cut far too short for entirely selfish and unnecessary reasons, and the majority of his anger and bitterness and drive came from a desire to fix such an injustice - to save an innocent person’s life. And the saddest part of him doing all this and trying to sustain Claire’s existence in the present once he finds her, if you go with the closed loop time travel theory, is that Dimitri should already know it’s impossible for him to succeed in this as long as he remembers finding her body in the past - him succeeding would create a paradox, thus, he can’t save her. But he’s so deep in his despair and obsession and insistence on preserving her life that I don’t think he ever stops to think about this - or he does, but refuses to acknowledge it. I’m sure he was incredibly sweet and kind and soft in the past, with her, and with his passion, and it’s heartbreaking to see how broken he is now, how miserable and tired he is, how much everything changed him. And wanting to get back at someone like Bill, who had it all to begin with and then carelessly used them to gain even more, well, I don’t blame him for that. >_> Not to mention his relationship with Clive, which is all kinds of fascinating to think about: the most chaotic, dysfunctional mess of a half-business partnership half-father/son relationship there is, ahaha... Both of them are unhealthy to the extreme in different ways, but with how much time they spent together, it’s inevitable they had vulnerable moments around each other... Clive is the only other person Dimitri would have around during his research to possibly grow to care about, even if it was entirely unconsciously. Learning he was using him would, well, ruin their relationship even more than it was already messed up, but maybe he would visit Clive in prison at least once, assuming Hershel was. I just crave content for them, ugh. Dimitri just deserved so much better, he makes me so sad </3 and I honestly hate that we don’t get to see him say goodbye to Claire at the end before Hershel; sure it would have utterly killed me, but surely he deserved that much...

The utter, frankly amazing, stupidity of Flora’s kidnapping has been stated everywhere, we all know it, but just.... yeah. smh

Seeing the mobile fortress be like *war flashbacks to the Detragon* “Not This Shit Again” Hershel why tf you putting Luke in more danger AGAIN???

The car scenes with the mobile fortress are, at least to me, the funniest parts of the entire game, even better than the casino, oh my god they’re AMAZING. Luke screaming and flailing his arms while Hershel deadpan flings the car towards the fortress, all the bumps they hit riding across it later on, the car just FALLING and Bill almost falling out of it, and then the plane, all the while Hershel displays no more than mild frustration while everyone else is PANICKING... “a plane? This is an automobile!” ...iconic. top PL moments ever. Luke don’t you recall the time when Hershel built an entire mini plane out of a chainsaw and a barrel in ED, come on now

Onto Claire. Claire doesn’t get much screentime, but some of the moments she does have are very good; she’s one of the best and most fleshed-out female PL characters imo, and like a lot of things, I appreciate her a lot more after this replay than I did years ago... LayClaire is a cute ship and all, but I was never really obsessed with it; rather, I’m realizing now I’m more invested in what Claire has to offer by herself. I hate to use the term “strong female character” cause that sounds so cliche... but she really is strong. The entire part with her wanting to save Clive, their conversation, and her bringing him out... god it gets me, it really does. She’s known she’s going to die for ages, and at this point in the game she knows it could be any moment now, so she has no reason to try to keep herself safe; she’s doomed no matter what, so she might as well spend the last few minutes of her life saving another life, and not just anyone: someone who’s just killed countless people, who anyone else would see as insane, who doesn’t care for her, doesn’t care if he lives or dies - but Claire is compassionate enough that, despite everything, she fiercely believes he deserves to live. Because of her own guilt and sins she believes she bears, yes, but also simply because she believes he can still change, and doesn’t deserve to die, despite the HORRIBLE atrocity he just committed. She’s just that good a person. It’s no wonder she and Hershel loved each other and were made for each other; both of them are such kind, loving, selfless people who see the best in anyone no matter what. Perhaps she hoped and suspected that Hershel would look out for and care for Clive once he was in prison, so she wanted to make sure that could happen, even if she wouldn’t be around to ever see it.

sorry I just get really emotional about this part, about the entire mood and tone of Claire desperately trying to save this kid, and the way the camera focuses on the massive scale of the fortress and how it dwarfs them in size... It’s a really powerful and melancholic scene (just like Dimitri’s flashback scene; have I mentioned how much I adore the atmosphere and cinematic direction of this game? cause god I do) with the knowledge of her real identity and circumstances, the visuals and the music are so good, ugh i just have so many feels. mom Claire hurts me </3 she’s so good... Despite the fact that she dies, and so much of what everyone is doing is because of her death, her presence in the story is so strong, and it never feels like her only purpose is to die for everyone else’s development and that’s it (unlike... well, a lot of other pl females :’); she has her own things to do, she stops the fortress alongside Hershel, and literally saves the main antagonist’s life. Seriously I just adore the fact that she of all people is the one to rescue Clive in the end even though she wasn’t at all obligated to (although I’d be interested and cry over an AU where Hershel saves him instead; it honestly surprises me that he wasn’t going to until Claire said something...), because Clive is the only character (of the adults) who doesn’t have a direct relationship with Claire, but they’re still connected by the explosion, and so it makes for an interesting and terribly sad dynamic, even if they only have a few minutes with each other, for all the reasons I said earlier. Claire doesn’t think what he did was right, but she knows what she and the other scientists did wasn’t right either - and it’s too late for her now, but it’s not too late for him; she knows he has a kind heart, deep down, and that he needs help if he wants to redeem himself. She feels responsible for him, feels like she owes him that second chance, after indirectly taking his parents from him and causing him such misery and brokenness... She’s so brave and strong-willed to be able to do and admit all that she does; I just love her. It clearly kills her to leave Hershel, I don’t think she intended at first to ever let him know who she was (hence Celeste), but she’s not too upset in the end, because she (rightly) knows that he will be all right. ;; She’s so beautiful, too... wish we could have seen her interact with so many of the other characters </3

and so my favorite “insert Descole into the main trilogy” AU is where Descole intercepts Claire and makes some sort of body for her, like how everyone headcanons that for Aurora post-AL. (or/also just mobile fortress vs. Descole robots, that’s cool too lol)

And finally, Clive, the infamous star of Unwound Future, thought I talked about him a bit already (and also in this post a few weeks ago). Clive is probably the PL series’ best written villain Anton excluded, I absolutely love him, like everyone does. Nothing really about him hasn’t been done before elsewhere, but that’s not a bad thing; when I was younger and first played the game I really only paid attention to his sympathetic side, but now I’ve also grown an appreciation and fondness for that kind of unabashedly awful, manic, evil insanity a villain like him has, it’s just SO entertaining to watch. If PL was a more mature/higher rated series I’d love to see his chaotic crazed energy played up even more, just to really hammer in how messed up he is, ahaha, but of course that would make it harder to sympathize with him..... and unfortunately, it already is kind of hard, because.... shit, the number of people he must have killed? It’s a LOT. A FUCKTON. The level of sympathy the game gives Clive and the way it presents him at the end is not at ALL relative to the astronomical amount of people that had to have been squashed to death by his machine, to the point that it honestly makes me uncomfortable, and I try to just retcon that in my head, as hard as it is to imagine a scenario where that thing could have come up to London and not hit any houses, because like..... There’s no coming back from that. He knew exactly what he was doing, madness or not, and I honestly just... don’t want him to be such a mass murderer. Maybe it’s wrong to ignore it, but the game wants me to feel sorry for him and see his potential for redemption, and his relationship with Hershel is so good... dammit game, why’d you have to show those houses being crushed. Ugh. Because Clive is so compelling as someone who feels betrayed by people in power, who desires revenge not only for himself but for all the people who suffered just like he has that he says he bore witness to as a reporter; it’s a very relatable position and a good story, for his well-meaning intentions to be skewed and lost in the midst of his rage and despair and hatred and insanity, where his very valid point of “hey people in government are fucked up and don’t give a shit about us and that needs to change” gets turned into “they all need to die even if the very innocent people I want to save get hurt by this as well”, and I really wish that whole angle of it had been played up a bit more, and there had been more of an opportunity for Hershel to reason with him and argue that in the midst of his blind need for revenge, he’s become even worse than the people who need justice handed to them (cue some Descole allusionssss). He wouldn’t have to win him over, Clive is already too deep by that point despite how much he wanted to be stopped, but just having more of that than just what happens in the surveillance room would have been sooooooo good, I love that conversation. It would have made Clive even better and really drive home that he’s 1) kinda right about some things and wants better for people 2) still very fucking wrong and selfish at the same time and has taken it all way too far 3) very fucked up and broken. Not that the third point isn’t already abundantly clear, but... yeah. It would have given him even more depth, made him more sympathetic, and helped juuust a little to offset how much the game handwaves his mass murders... just a little... One of my favorite Clive scenes though is when the fortress is breaking down and he’s still there, desperately trying to save it, still in denial about the fact that all his plans have failed and that everything he’s done (and himself) is about to go up in flames; I know everyone loves making fun of him and that that scene is pretty memeable (he does get bodied so much in the game, lmaooo), but it makes him look so vulnerable, all alone in there by himself, like a child, which is what he really is, deep down: he never truly wanted to do something so abhorrent and evil, but his emotions and mind spiraled so badly out of control and it led him to such a dark, horrible place, where he couldn’t stop himself, no matter how much he wanted to, and in the end all he can do is watch helplessly as the reality of what he’s done and his unwound future all comes crashing down in front of him, never to be salvaged. And he believes wholeheartedly that he is going to die, that he deserves to (this is my favorite Clive scene; he’s so hurt and resigned, the voice acting kills me ugh), he doesn’t understand at all why Claire wants to save him, especially if he knows she’s one of the scientists (as his line of “why are you of all people helping me” implies), because he always thought none of them ever cared about him and people he saw as like him, thought everyone was like Bill Hawks, but Claire still cared enough to want to save his life, even though she was one of the people he was actively targeting with his revenge... I wonder how he would have felt at the time if he had known about her situation and that she was dying. </3 I just want so many good things for him, as so much of the fandom does. He’s so messed up but that’s what makes him so interesting, and his potential relationship with Hershel that the ending of the game suggests could happen is so touching and lovely and uplifting, one of my favorite kinds of relationships in fiction: Clive’s issues would persist for so long, for forever, really, but Hershel would support him and help him heal, and be there for him always, no matter how much Clive would feel like he didn’t deserve it. I eat this dynamic up, I really do, every single time I encounter it in a story, and it’s made even better by the fact that as I’ve said, Hershel has so much in common with Clive, and so they would get along very well for that reason, and Clive could unknowingly help Hershel just as much Hershel tries to help him. They’re so good for each other. Add Luke too, and Flora, and Desmond...! just ahhhhh........ there’s so much goodness. Clive you absolute glorious, fucked-up mess of a character, I love you. :’) and I love fic writers who explore facets of his personality and write about him. He’s only in one game, and there’s still a few hiccups, as I said, yet he’s handled far better than Descole or Randall in my opinion (though I love them too)... just an amazing fucking villain, and character. I wish UF could have gone deeper with him than it did, but even so, the possibilities with Clive are endless. I love him, so much ;;

and some of the themes of the plot in this game, uhh, hit a little close to home in good ole’ 2020/21 time we live in? :’) #FuckBillHawks

Hershel saying goodbye to Claire.... god. One of the top scenes in the entire series, probably the #1 most iconic I’d even go so far as to say. I don’t even really ship LayClaire, but there’s an indescribable emotion that finale gives me... it’s just breathtaking, in the most gutwrenching, nostalgic, beautiful way. I still maintain that Diabolical Box’s ending is sadder than this one, for a multitude of reasons, just comparing the stories and situations the characters are in, but I 100% don’t blame people for bawling at this scene more than any other, just because of the way it’s done yes I know I won’t shut up about the cinematography; the lighting, the camera angles, the pacing of it, Hershel’s fucking kicked puppy faces, the dialogue oh god the dialogue; it ALL hits like a TRUCK and comes together beautifully. At this point in his life Hershel has been through so much loss, so much so that it is unbearable - when he cries that he doesn’t want to say goodbye again, that he can’t say goodbye again, that he refuses to, nothing in the world is more true: this man has been through too much, and he’s hit his breaking point. even if you don’t have the prequels in mind when watching this, as most people don’t/didn’t the first time through, the overwhelming sense of burden and loss Hershel is feeling is so palpable, so painful - you get the sense that this isn’t just about Claire; Hershel has never shown emotion like this before up to this point, so for him to finally break down like this... it speaks volumes. After so many years of holding everything in, he finally can’t take it anymore, and basically stabbing me in the fucking chest would hurt less </3 I complain about Hershel never showing emotion like this (never crying) in the prequels whenever he’s hit with an equally horrible bombshell, and I still feel that way, but at the same time a part of me is also glad that’s the case, because it makes the very last (two) scenes in the entire series hit so much harder, knowing that he finally loses his composure after dealing with so much. As the titular character of the series, Hershel’s development is very understated and subtle, so it’s all the more meaningful when he actually snaps, because it makes him feel so much more real and human than he ever is the rest of the time, when he maintains his facade of being a perfectly composed, calm, and together gentleman; this scene finally say that, no, Hershel is a person, and he is broken in a lot of ways, because some puzzles you just can’t solve no matter how hard you try, and it’s so sad. And this sad tone of loss and longing permeates the entire cutscene; the way the title is dropped in Claire’s dialogue (both versions equally haunting imo), and Hershel taking off his hat for the first time ever, and the pan up and transition back to show the falling snow as “Time Travel”, my favorite instrumental in the series, kicks in... y’all there is no other feeling in the world like the feeling that elicits, there really isn’t ಥ⌣ಥ ❤️💔 the only thing that might even come close to it is the ending of Azran Legacy with Surely Someday, simply because it was the ending of the series, but the ending of Unwound Future hits me harder knowing it’s the end of the timeline, and with everything else in hindsight. And then an unknown amount of time later, even with Luke gone and Hershel only having Flora there with him anymore unless we headcanon DESMOND COMES BACK BECAUSE OF COURSE HE DID RIGHT, Hershel is still no longer wearing his hat, to show that he’s finally started to heal from his pain, and accepted the loss(es), because throughout all of UF Hershel had never really gotten over Claire’s death no matter how much he tried to pretend like he had, but you don’t realize that until you see the ending, until he got one final chance to see her. I just... ugh I love it so much, so much. It means so much, for Hershel and for the series, and that’s why it makes me cry (and don’t even get me sTARTED on Luke’s goodybe, and how upsetting yet beautiful THAT is. yes, Luke isn’t a gentleman yet, and Hershel finally learns that maybe he doesn’t always have to be one, either :’’’’’’)

Unwound Future is a masterpiece. Diabolical Box has my favorite characters and story for the new characters, and favorite settings, personally, but Unwound Future is such top-tier storytelling and writing; it feels so epic and sweeping and (here i go again) cinematic, it’s so polished and everything flows so well, the pacing is wonderful, everything ties up so perfectly and there’s very little I would change Flora bitching aside and practically nothing that feels like filler, even though some of it technically is. The tone stays consistent and they really push the boundaries of how serious and heavy these games can be, and it works, and doesn’t feel silly or glossed over or too unrealistic or too heavyhanded like some of the other games are at times; the plot twists/reveals feel the least absurd and the most grounded in reality, despite still being wild, and it focuses on some really relevant stuff and themes (again, it feels really grounded and raw, and the least fantastical, which isn’t a bad thing for the other games/movie per se, but being more realistic works in this one’s favor. No one is going to have their family separated and murdered by a criminal secret organization working to unearth ancient advanced civilized ruins, or lose years of their life and memories in said ancient ruins, or have their life ruined in an eternal unaging state from hallucinogenic gas, but being screwed over by people in government who will do anything to make sure they never have to face consequences? now that’s a mood). It’s just a really fucking good game, by far the best Professor Layton game, and I’ll always stand by that, despite preferring DB just a bit more cause it hits more of my personal tastes (DB is still very good too though, don’t get me wrong), and it’s also enhanced even more by the prequels, though it stands perfectly on its own. The perfect culmination of Hershel’s character arc, and the absolute high point of the series. It’s one of the ones I keep coming back to the most, just because it has so much to offer; as someone who is absolutely enamored with near-perfect stories of this caliber, I couldn’t ask for more. ❤️

[pernatius]

Lost in Space Part 6: Ch 4

Ch 3

Summary: With the fate of the universe resting in her hands, an unnamed Space Explorer and Saamuki first must find Syco to get back their friends.

Lost in Space on Tumblr

Lost in Space on ao3

“There’s a computer chip attached to the back of her head and there’s also an address somewhere embedded in it. I want you to find the address without hurting her and the chip sending any signals.”

Leaning forward and resting his hands on his thighs, he sternly looks at Saamuki. Saamuki looks back unphased by the change in character. “That’s not too much of a task, but, Saamuki, this is a human. You know that and you also know that her homeworld just got detained. That, of course, should mean all of humanity is being tried as we speak. If they find out one is missing and that she’s in our hands, your hands especially-”

“Don’t worry. We’ve been careful, Sakhra.”

“I hope for the sake of the two of us you are. For your sister’s sake, I hope so. I don’t have the same obligation towards you as I did with her, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have morals. I’ll do my best. I won’t ask why, but I could only hope it’s the safest route for you.”

“I owe you again, Sakhra.”

“Let’s hope this is the last time you will.”

Another surprise is that Sakhra had things other than rocks, a hyper-realistic painting of what I later learned is of a deceased lover and a random splotch of green in this muddy colored setting that rested between the two couches. He has quilts that depicted what I assume to be ancient history. White-colored beasts breathed out golden flames onto a town. The townspeople reacted by either throwing spears or running away screaming. Interestingly, the former have similar red symbols as the ones Sakhra just painted on. Death is depicted as well. There are symbols off to the side, also similar to the symbols on him, that I assume are explaining in depth what’s happening in the various images. Again, I’m unable to read the alien language. My now rock ally mounted them over the windows and ceiling. That’s not to say he’s a ten-foot giant. He used a ladder for that part. Then, moved aside the couch he was sitting on, which revealed a translucent screen. Some typing and clicks later and he’s walking towards us with the screen and has his eyes on me. Motioning me to turn the other way, which has me to look into Saamuki’s eyes for reassurance, I do so after I get the needed response. Still, that doesn’t stop the quickened pace of my heart. I’m trusting a stranger I’ve only met once before, but even with that instance, I’ve only known this man for an hour. In that hour we haven’t shared any words. It’s only now we’re sharing looks. 

“This shouldn’t take that,” he interrupts himself as he kneels, “Actually, no. This might take a bit. There’s been some code added.”

“Complex code,” Saamuki added. 

“For the inexperienced, yes. It’s nothing I can’t handle. It’s similar to the type of code used for military personnel. No, actually, it’s much more similar to what Space Pirates use.”

“That’s not surprising.”

“I’m not going to ask, but it is worrying that you now have a connection with Space Pirates. Well, a deeper connection now. Ah, I got it.”

She grabs the screen from him. “That was a lot faster than I expected.”

“You’re surprised, yet you came to me? Wait.” Still turned away, I get the sense his face turned pale. 

In the corner of my eye, I see Saamuki smiling at the screen. I’m not surprised I can’t read any of it. 

As her eyes move further down the line of alien symbols, her smile fades. “Wait. Why there? Why is he there?” She looks at Sakhra then looks at me as if either of us knows something she doesn’t. She looks at me like she’s expecting me to tell her there are cameras hidden everywhere and I and Sakhra have been planning this prank for weeks. Like she was then expecting our friends to come any minute now with streamers, confetti, and laughter. “Syco is above my dead homeworld.”

With her grip loosened, the screen falls from her hands. Sakhra catches it before it can hit the floor and shatter. “Syco? Why in the universe are you connected with the man that started the second war. It’s because of him our supplies are low. We’re both criminals, yes, but even those on this world don’t claim him. By now even most Space Pirates wish not to associate with him as well.”

“I thought you weren’t going to ask,” she snapped. 

“And I thought you quit drinking, Saamuki.”

“If you weren’t at that barbaric ceremony that I’m certain my sister has made it clear to you she hated as well then I would’ve kept my promise. Besides, it was only one drink.”

“Firstly, no one else knew she hated it besides the two of us. It would look suspicious if I didn’t go. Also, I had to go for other reasons. Secondly, you might not be as intoxicated as last time, but that doesn’t mean you’re no longer a lightweight drinker. I’m going to get you some water and maybe medicine if I still have any before you get even fussier.”

He got up and left the room. A late huff came out of Saamuki with a shout, “I don’t get fussy!”

Not too long after he came back with a glass of water and a small patch of what I presumed was the medicine he mentioned. He placed both in front of her. She looked up at him, offended, and then snatched both from his hands. My serpent-like companion peeled back the plastic from the patch and stuck the pink square onto her right arm as she gulped down the water. “I’m not owing you for this, but that doesn’t exactly mean I’m not thankful.”

After letting out a snicker, he takes the empty glass and replies, “No need. You having to suck it up and admit I’m smarter is payment enough.”

“I didn’t say anything like that.”

Teasingly he voices out, “That being I have more up here than you.”  He taps the side of his head. “No, Saamuki, you didn’t say it, but you did admit it the moment you chose to see me again.”

She gets up and grabs my hand. “We’re leaving.”

As she turns around and wraps her hand around the doorknob, he grabs its wrist. “No, you’re not. Saamuki, I’m not exactly sure what you’re planning to do, but what I am sure is that I can’t let you do it because it means getting yourself entangled with Syco even more.”

“You’re trying to stop me? I’m an adult, Sakhra. It should be physically obvious I’m a fully grown woman now. You can’t tell me what I can and can’t do anymore. I thought the last time we spoke had you finally see-”

“See what? The last time we spoke it cemented the fact you haven’t grown yet. You’re still a child, Saamuki.”

It felt weird watching this familiar circumstance as a third party. I kept my eye on Saamuki, but I so desperately wanted to just run out of there without her in hand before the future I know is going to happen becomes the present. 

Exploding, yanking her hand free from the doorknob and his grip, she turns around and jabs a finger into his chest. “You don’t know shit about how much it hurt me and you definitely don’t know shit about being an adult. Sure, okay, maybe I don’t act like one here and there, but I could tell you for sure I know I did at that moment. At that time I would’ve risked her life. If the same were to happen right now I’d still be risking her life. It was one of the toughest decisions I’ve made in my entire life and it would’ve been childish for me not to do otherwise. Now I’m making another one. I’m going to do what’s best for everyone and even you, a sad excuse for a father, whether you let me or not.”

“Saamuki,” I begged for her to stop. 

Ignoring me, “You always try to talk all big, but that’s just to overcompensate for your insecurities. You’re projecting onto me because I was able to do what you couldn’t do. Maybe I would’ve ended up like your wife, dead, and what would’ve been the father of our kid would’ve ended up like you, grubbling for love from a man that only used him for his lustful desires. Maybe he’d take care of his painting better than you by getting less handsy on it.”

Everything has blown out of proportion. I wish I could’ve acted quick enough, but I still grab both of her shoulders and ask for her to stop before what’s even left can be blown away too. She’s still heated, but I get the sense she went down a few pegs by the look in her eyes. 

“I’m sorry,” Sakhra apologized. 

I let go of Saamuki and turn around to him.

She asks, “What?” 

“I’m sorry, Saamuki, for everything. Yeah, you’re right I am projecting onto you. I’m jealous of you. My wife and I knew too late about the complications. Both of them are now dead and I couldn’t do anything about it, but even as I grew jealous I still helped you do it because I care about you, Saamuki. You and your sister were the only ones I had left in this cruel place we call the universe. Now you’re the only one I have left.”

Turning back to Saamuki, her head is down. Then, in a heartbeat, she runs forward and wraps her arms around him. Both he and I are surprised. The former of which had stepped back and raised his arms. It took him a moment to relax and wrap his arms around her. Just like with Mikrovos he’s trying to hold back as much of his weight and strength as he could in fear of crushing her. For me, I’m just a bystander. 

“I’m so sorry, Sakhra, for everything that I said. I knew how much it still hurts, yet I stupidly tried to use it against you.”

Resting his head on top of hers he concludes, “It was just the alcohol talking. It’s okay. Besides, I deserved all of that. I needed that. Thank you.”

“I wish I could make it up to you by avoiding Syco.” 

This wasn’t my chapter to finish, but I wish it was. Their moment of reconciliation is cut short with the sound of blasters being fired. Breaking his embrace from her, he motions for all of us to stay silent as he approaches and moves the recently made curtain away from the window closest to him. Doing so, and he quickly finds what’s responsible for the noise.

Closing the curtain and turning back around to us to relay, “Space Pirates. Lots of them. They’re fighting against some of my brothers and sisters.”

“None of them are Tauvoxes, right? Syco, specifically,” I asked. 

“No. A large group from two different factions. Although, things are getting messy out there. I’m going to escort you two back to your ship, so you can get off-world before things get any messier.”

Saamuki interjected with, “But you’re going to get hurt, Sakhra.”

“You know better than anyone that I don’t get hurt easily. Besides, it should be physically obvious.” It was at that moment I got a good look at the scars underneath the red paint, reminded by the aftermath of him going toe to toe with The Commander. “Please, Saamuki, let me do this. You won’t have to owe me for this either.”

“Fine,” she sighs, “We can’t afford for me to argue more than I already have.”

We’re off. Saamuki is in the front and I’m in the back. Sakhra is our shield at our right as a battle between two types of criminals, ones who are Space Pirates and who aren’t, wages on the other side in front of the memorial. One faction looks octopus-like as their tentacles, which each have a streak of purple paint, snake out of their shimmering cloaks as they shoot at the residence of this planet. The other faction is covered in red armor with streaks of yellow. A blue, rectangular forcefield that’s been manifested by the armored faction acts as a wall between the two groups. I get snippets of names being called, nothing important. Blasts stray away, bounced off, and hit our bodyguard. Saamuki of course notices and becomes worried. We both saw what happened in the bar, but she’s understandably blinded my emotions. He brushes her off by reminding her we have to keep moving. 

By the time we get to the ship, he’s covered in blackened spots. While dusting them off Saamuki apologizes profusely. He tries to tell her he’s okay, but she’s not having it. She becomes overbearingly concerned and eventually scolds herself, which Sakhra tries to tell her there’s no need. If the world around me was some summer blockbuster then everything seemed to go frame by frame, slow-mo, as the climax hit. Everything went ridiculously slow. I couldn’t mouth my warning fast enough. It all came with a long pause between each word. Sakhra, midway through his efforts trying to recompose Saamuki, became impaled. A familiar dagger flew right through his chest, missing where I assume is his heart by a few inches. The owner of the weapon, which the other two are slowly finding out, is the very bitter brother that wanted nothing to do about waging war on the Lords. 

[chibivesicle]

Golden Kamuy chapter 222.  The next arc is about to begin with the factions re-defined (again).

I have to admit, I’m going to complain about the recent pacing again - chapter 222 is acting as a pause to help the readers reorient themselves to the shifting factions and alliances.  I really wish this was spread out a bit more over the past 10-15 or so chapters.  Chapter 222 is a good point to begin the shift to the next story arc.  I had predicted previously based on pacing, that the next major arc would start around chapter 230.  It is looking like that will be the case.  For right now, I’ll hypothesize that the next arc will be the gathering of all of the skins and Asirpa will see them allowing her to connect them to the code and the actual location.  Asirpa will likely be the character which all of the action and events will revolve around.

Let’s dig into chapter 222.  First off, I am happy to see that Inkarmat survived her risky surgery.  Noda started the chapter out with a various clear page with her telling a fortune for Koito.  After everything that she has been through, I find it interesting that she is still performing her fortune-telling after the events of Abashiri.  Just like Shiraishi, the fox jaw hits him in the eyes, but when she reveals that his fortune is good, he’s super excited with the results.

Koito looks excited and much better than we last saw him injured on the ship so that is also good to see!  Even better the next page has a blushing Koito asking for Inkarmat to do Tsukishima’s fortune too.  I love how cute and excited he looks!  Unfortunately, we don’t get a good look at Koito’s left arm which is under he duvet cover, but his right arm is okay.  Of course Tsukishima’s fortune is bad luck (isn’t his entire life “bad luck”?) so he blankly turns away while Koito is excited - in a similar way to when he wanted Tsukishima to notice how good his acting was in Asirpa’s film.  Tsukishima looks 100% deadpan since Koito was injured - what is he thinking now?  What happened to him?

The middle panel then focuses on a soft and introspective looking Inkarmat.  The final panel then fills in the gap when Tanigaki refused to follow Sugimoto and Asirpa onto the ice floe and talked back to Kikuta.  He told Kikuta that he is Tanigaki, the Matagi which resulted in a “WTF?” moment from Kikuta since he didn’t serve with him in the during the war in the 27th.

This time Tanigaki acts differently than we’ve seen in the past - since he doesn’t know Kikuta, he uses this lack of a connection as a reason to disobey an order from a superior officer (recall he is a Warrant Officer a higher rank that Tsukishima for an enlisted man/non-officer).  Keep in mind that even though he hates Ogata, he always called him Superior Private and was much more hesitant to flat out just ignore him.  If anything, his connection to Ogata meant he felt comfortable enough to talk back to Ogata, specifically in the swamp when he tells Ogata his only solution to problems is to kill others.

With no information on Kikuta, Tanigaki is even more brazen as he turns away from him and firmly states that he’s leaving.  This comes to a quick halt as soon as Tsurumi catches up to him.  After revealing that Inkarmat is no longer in Abashiri he makes it clear that she is a hostage of Tsurumi and that Tanigaki can’t find her without his help.  Tsurumi doesn’t even try to seduce Tanigaki with any sort of sweet lies anymore.  He knows Tanigaki went AWOL once, there is no point in winning him over per se, instead he just needs to make his relationship transactional.

Of course the transaction is that Tanigaki wouldn’t want to make Tsurumi kill Inkarmat. . .  Tsurumi’s facial expression is already pretty terrifying but Usami copying it in the background makes it even more concerning.

Tanigaki tries to reason with Tsurumi that he’s not cut out for any of these things, he’s a simple man who wants a simple life (yet, he’s been running from a simple life for the entire story).  He created his Asirpa side quest to avoid going home and now that he’s lost Ryu and Cikapasi as well as been dumped by Asirpa, Sugimoto and Shiraishi - he’s trying the exact same thing he tried after he was injured in the hunt for Retar.  Just disengage from everything.

Interestingly, in response to Tanigaki’s pathetic excuse (sorry, that is what it is - he’s been more than capable in the quest for the gold so far) Kikuta speaks.  It seems that Kikuta is trying to reason with Tanigaki to get him to understand that since he is a veteran he isn’t an ordinary person.  Therefore, Kikuta sees Tanigaki’s desire to return to civilian life as betrayal of his comrades.   Kikuta looks upset as we see his teeth as he says this; Kikuta is a career solider part of his feelings make sense - we may get a flashback to show that he served also in the first Sino-Japanese war, yet he is distinctly different than Tsurumi.  He’s not the type of man to threaten someone and he hopes reason and logic will work.  I think this is par for Kikuta - he’s a smart guy - he’ll try to rationalize out an argument with others as we’ve seen before.

Tanigaki, still tries to paint himself as sad and pathetic (again, he went to Karafuto to kill Kiro!) and even tries to say he’ll negatively impact everyone else but Tsurumi knowing how Tanigaki thinks - that he would assume Inkarmat would leave on her own.  Yet, she can’t - Tanigaki loses his cool asking what he’s done to her -  and the next page reveals Inkarmat from the front with no speech bubbles blocking a view of her body to reveal that she’s pregnant with Tanigaki’s child.

Wow - Ienaga was not only a skilled doctor and surgeon, but despite her terrible wound she didn’t lose the fetus!  If the only time Tanigaki and Inkarmat had sex was during the otter meat stew incident it was awhile ago now.  As that was the warmest time of the year - recall that Ogata didn’t wear his jacket - it must have been July or August.  The attack on Abashiri was likely August/September as it was aligned with the salmon run.  There is a great variability in how pregnancies develop between women, but based on how much she is showing we can conservatively say it has been say 6-7 months so the current time has to be around January maybe February (1908?).  This is all a rough estimate so don’t hold me to my math.  

Back to the chapter - Tanigaki is beyond shocked at this information.

I’m not at all honestly surprised at how Tanigaki doesn’t even know how to respond.  He is a simple man after all! After another panel of Inkarmat holding her belly, it shows Tanigaki barely able to respond with the question of “My child?” as he sweats profusely - his actions now have even more ramifications than before. 

Tsurumi then pulls him in close as he reminds him of his side quest to return Asirpa to Huci, if he were to return to this goal, Tsurumi would let Inkarmat and Tanigaki go.

This portion of the chapter ends with Tsurumi handing a pistol over to Tanigaki and tells him that he’s one of the few people who can get close to Sugimoto without him putting up his guard.  It is clear that, Tanigaki’s job is to kill Sugimoto for Tsurumi.

And in regards to Tanigaki’s simple man concept/personal vision of himself is true in the fact that he’s so simple that Tsurumi knows exactly how to handle him and he’s been playing him since the beginning.  Yep, Tanigaki you are so simple everyone with a brain and predict you. . . .  hence Ogata warning Tamai and Co. about trying to convince him to rebel, as he’s simple.

Sugimoto’s profile then leads to a conversation between the members of team Asirpa-Sugimoto-Shiraishi + Vasily.  I just can’t help but roll my eyes at Sugimoto’s comment about how surprising it was that Heita was a tattooed convict.  *sighs* Sugimoto really needs to get his bad guy radar re-calibrated.  Come on Sugimoto, you know many samples of bad and evil people - you can make a standard curve to be able to identify dangrous people by now!

Sugimoto takes this to mean that they are back on track for the goal of finding the gold, while Vasily silently watches him and Asirpa chat as Heita’s skin is being tanned.  I really wish at least for Vasily we got some internal dialogue since he can’t talk.  What does he think is really going on?  Right now he might be thinking - I found people associated with that weird cat sniper guy who owes me a rematch.  So far, I’ve watched them shoot a bear in the butthole, run around a fight a man with mental health issues and NOW they skinned him and are regrouping for something and there is a young girl at the center of all of this.  Will this really lead me to my sniper rematch?  Where are you Mr. Lynx sniper?

Asirpa calmly replies that they are also back to finding out what happened in the first place to the gold and the murder of the Ainu leaders too.  Asirpa finds some platinum in Heita’s Ainu tobacco case and Sugimoto and Shiraishi revert to absolute children fighting over it in front of Asirpa and Vasily.  I’m not super keen on this gag joke - it seems misplaced as they were being serious. 

Action then shifts again to HIjikata’s hideout at the house of Nagakura’s relative.  Kadokura and Kirawus are playing cards and having a bit of a riot as Kirawus is beating Kadokura at the game and having a blast.  As Kadokura has such shit luck, he tries to cheat by looking at the bottom of the deck.  Similar to Asirpa, Kirawus interestingly uses “osoma” as a part of his speech.  This then allows for Kirawus to give him more shit about being a butthole peeker (in reference to looking for the poisonous plant in the convict’s anus while in prison).  Kadokura then becomes embarrassed and tries to deny it as  Kirawus’s sweaty hand is accusing him of cheating.  The middle panel reminds me of a typical BL manga where the uke is terrified of a seme about to come onto him.  That look of KIrawus has that nervous look as his hand comes to his mouth as he looks back at Kadokura.

The next panel then not surprisingly has Kadokura jumping onto Kirawus as he pins him down telling him to shut up.  Yeah, definite BL energy going on there - I’m surprised Kadokura gets to be “on top” so to speak.  You’ve read a fair bit of BL haven’t you Noda?

Nagakura remarks how they are essentially useless before Ushiyama looks like he’s about to say something with interest.  That the stray, Ogata, has come back.  Ogata is embracing his full cat persona as he bakes his beans er - ahem - hands on the charcoal stove and he scratches at it with his feet.  Hijikata flat out asks him what he’s been up to since Abashiri.

So we now know his smug expression was him arriving at the house before Hijikata returned from Otaru.  So this invalidates my hypotheses in regards to where everyone in the Hijikata group were in the last chapter.  They have all regrouped at Nagakura’s place.  Where is Ariko now?  Is he with them?  The wee babe Kantarou?  Tell me where they are Noda. 

Ogata then has to explain his actions to Hijikata. 

He confirms that Asirpa verified the identity of Nopperabou to be her father.  He then states that both were hit by stray gunfire.  Hijikata knew that Ogata was not involved on the action directly during the “original” plan which everyone pretty much broke for their own gains.  He then continues to state that everyone scattered but that Kiro took Asirpa so he chose to go with them.  He’s got his hand on his hair as he explains this - a common behavior when he’s talking both to Hijikata and others who make him uncomfortable.  He touches his head when he confronts Tanigaki in Asirpa’s kotan, and also when he has to deal with the group in Yubari and the last time Hijikata asked about his motivations.

He continues to explain they went to Karafuto with the intent for Asirpa to meet Sofia, as Kiro thought meeting Sofia may help her to solve the code.  He states that Sugimoto caught up to them, Kiro was killed and they lost Asirpa and that he was also injured. 

Let’s break down everything Ogata has said on this page. 

Things that are factually true:

1.) Asirpa identified her father. -  Yep.

2.) everyone scattered in the chaos - pretty much, Hijikata ditched everyone else as well.

3.) he joined Kiro and Asirpa and went to Karafuto - Yep.

4.) Sofia was a key for the code and Asirpa - Yep.  Whole wolves thing.

5.) Sugimoto did catch up to them - Yep, Ogata spotted him and panicked resulting in him separated from Kiro and Sofia resulting in a huge disadvantage.

6.) Kiro was killed as a result.  - Yep, Ogata left him on his own where he was killed since Sugimoto ran off with Ryu and Tanigaki, Koito and Tsukishima followed which lead to the Sugimoto “indirect assist” in Kiro’s death.  Did Sugimoto actually kill Kiro? No, but his and Ogata’s own actions lead to his death.

7.) Ogata was injured as a result of Sugimoto catching up to them.  Sugimoto’s scream is what resulted in Asirpa accidentally shooting him in the eye.  He likely would have ended the stand off with Asirpa if Sugimoto hadn’t come rushing in.

The half-truth/half-lie:

1.) That Sugimoto and Wilk were killed by stray gunfire.  Oh hell no, that was you Ogata, but that is a smart way to try to cover your ass.  Ogata knows that Hijikata has lived this long and knew all about Abashiri. Ogata covering his ass in case Hijikata had information about those who saw Sugimoto and Wilk’s bodies.  Ogata is a shit liar, but this at least has some evidence that is factually correct since they were shot.

So out of all 8 statements on this page, 7 of the 8 are true and one is a typical Ogata omission of a key fact - the identity of the “stray bullet shooter”.

The next page continues Ogata’s information dump.

Interestingly, Ushiyama then ask why Sugimoto killed Kiro, after mulling over this a bit, I think this is a clever spin of information on Ogata’s part (I’ve binged too many episodes of “the thick of it” recently - I’m hyper aware of spin now. lol).  Ushiyama makes the assumption that Sugimoto is the one that killed Kiro, yet Ogata never actually said Sugimoto was the one that did it.  This is because he was likely not very aware of events after Sugimoto cut out his eye and ran to meet up with the others after they fought with Kiro.

By letting everyone assume that Sugimoto is the one who killed Kiro, it makes him look even more involved with Tsurumi and shows that Sugimoto’s loyalties are as fluid as everyone else’s.  Ogata then summarizes that Sugimoto teamed up with Tsurumi to get Asirpa back and that they should smartly assume that all of Sugimoto’s skins are with Tsurumi (actual fact!) and that Sugimoto then betrayed Tsurumi and went back to Hokkaido meaning he’s made himself an enemy of Tsurumi and lacks the skins he once had. 

This really is a great way by Ogata to attack Sugimoto’s character.  Sugimoto always wants people to trust him and see him as faithful and loyal - Ogata is flat out called a stray, he needs to win the information/perception war against Sugimoto.  He must lay down the foundation to get back at Sugimoto and strengthen his own position as an information broker in the quest for the gold.

He very confidently states that he has two key things he brought back form Karafuto.  1.) Sofia - he has the information on Sofia and that she is a partisan leader and she was a comrade of Wilk and Kiro.  He got to hear and see enough of her to realize she will be a force to be reckoned with and she will come for Asirpa.

A few interesting observations here - i.) Ogata’s respect for women continues as he flat out tells Hijikata that she will be a force to take seriously.  He doesn’t write her off and I’m sure he was impressed by her when he met her.  He does read people well when it comes to determining their strengths and weaknesses.

ii.) He says Wilk instead of Nopperabou.  This shows that he has more information on some things than Hijikata and he’s subtly putting it out there to tease Hijikata.  Yeah, you never knew Kiro’s original name (I did because I saw his wanted poster and I can read Russian!) AND I knew Wilk’s original name (from Inkarmat during the sea otter nabe, you weren’t there Hijikata and I saw his wanted poster and heard Sofia say his name).  This may be related to Ogata’s meltdown on ice - he clearly felt enough about what he thought Wilk’s plan for Asirpa was that he emotionally uses Wilk instead of the dehumanizing name of Nopperabou.  I also wonder if as Ogata learned more and more about Wilk he also did have some level of interest/respect [intellectual] connection to Wilk.  He always looked very interested in events surrounding him - at the fox farm when they wait in the lighthouse as Kiro tells Asirpa more etc.

The second item is this, 2.) Asirpa -  He knows that Asirpa has figured out the code to solve the skins.  Therefore, who ever has Asirpa when all of the skins are gathered will have the key to the gold.  Ogata looks so damn confident/smug/sexy when he says this bit.  He not only got more information about the partisan involvement and background in wanting to take the gold out of Hokkaido and to Karafuto/Russia.  He conclusively confirmed that Asirpa can solve the code.

Of course Kadokura is excited that they must find Asirpa and Kirawus looks shocked/dumbfounded.  I really think Kirawus knows more about this gold and he’s also playing dumb to get close to Hijikata.

Ogata returns to full on feline mode and warms his beans - er hands over the stove as he with his eyes closed in a cat zen like states Sugimoto will come to them.  They have lost all of their skins and it is impossible to return to Tsurumi now that Sugimoto has outright betrayed them.  He also clearly summarizes that only two groups have the skins so Sugimoto will have to go to the one he hasn’t betrayed yet. 

The chapter ends with a somewhat incorrect summary of the skin distribution between the groups and shows a serious looking Sugimoto that there are only 4 skins yet.

Overall, my impressions of this chapter.  Lots of questions and more observations!

1.) Will Koito fully recover? What is the status of his left arm?

2.) What shattered Tsukishima?  He’s looked the same since Koito confronted him - dead on the inside and outside.

3.) Tanigaki will continue to dance to Tsurumi’s tune and he’s still using Inkarmat to control him.  Now the stakes are higher.

4.) Sugimoto needs to be less obvious about how he’ll move, he’s about as easy to read as Tanigaki.

5.) Ogata has to walk a razor thin line.  He provided information on a need to know basis with a lie and some omissions. Hijikata has never trusted Ogata from the start - I don’t think Hijikata knew that Ogata and Kiro were working together.  He also likely doesn’t know that Ogata knows Russian, but for the love of god he should suspect it since Ogata went willingly with Kiro to find Sofia.  He is working on his own information spin to make sure that Sugimoto is not trusted by Hijikata’s group.

He omitted the following facts outright - i.) Shiraishi was with his group in Karafuto and is likely aware that he’s upset at Kiro’s death. ii.) he likely knows that Tanigaki went after Kiro for revenge iii.) Sofia, Wilk and Kiro met a Japanese spy in Russia iv.) he knows that a skilled sniper [Vasily] has joined Sugimoto’s group v.) he planted the seeds out doubt in Koito’s mind on Karafuto.

Is he waiting for a time when these can be important to him or maintaining his position?  As far as I’m concerned - Ogata is his own faction in the quest for the gold.  He’s just hanging with Hijikata for now, as it benefits him, but a cat has no true master.  A retired vetranairian told me this once “Dogs have owners.  Cats have staff.”  Ogata showed his cat like tendancies in this chapter - everyone else is just his staff.

[lord-rosenth0rne]

Just thoughts and a bit of a rant on recent events.

You can skip this if you want. I just need to get it out and don’t plan on making a discussion out of it. “You” does not refer to the reader, just to people who have done what they did. I did that on purpose. I promise that every post from here on will be pleasant and unrelated to personal crap.

LONG post under cut.

You know, I have been through a lot with my mother. Growing up, I knew she did not like me and there were a couple of instances where she did things she shouldn’t have done. I was the black sheep, something people tend to forget and what I went through, they pretended it happened to them to fuel their agendas. Half the time I wonder if they actually believe they’ve been abused by her or have taken abuse from someone they’ve dated and imposed it on her because I seriously think that is the issue in one case. Interestingly enough, all three of them were the ‘can do no wrong’ Golden Child at one point or another and one of them got very jealous when the spotlight was not on her. How easily that is forgotten. They feed on drama and like the whole ‘my abusive parent has forsaken me�� angle.

Anyway, Mom’s grown out of a lot of it, become pretty lax about life over the years and has apologized to me for what she’s done. It happened out of the blue one day and caught me completely off guard but it was a nice surprise. I have chosen to forgive her. She also went onto explain that she really did not know how to handle me as I was noticeably different than the others. I was not the girly girl she was hoping for, I had a lot of anger in me, and I did not have the same interests as her and my siblings. I will admit, I was a difficult child and a lot of the memories I had do reflect what she’s told me. She still makes me want to scream at the top of my lungs at times and drives me up a wall to the point I just want to leave but if someone was to go and hurt her intentionally, I will go feral.

I don’t care what she’s done to me and if I have forgiven her, that’s my choice.  I cannot stand hearing that woman cry. It unlocks something in me that makes me want to destroy the cause of it.  Bringing up my past with her to justify your actions against her and telling me I’m wrong to forgive her will make things worse for you. Only those who are in my inner circle are allowed to talk about it without me getting angry. Anyone outside of that circle will be told off. You need to have a damn good reason to make my mother cry. So far, I have been offered none since a lot of the reasons were built on lies and deceit that certain people don’t realize I know or forget I was present. 

Recently, this week actually, someone told a very hurtful, disgusting lie to get their way, claiming my mother threatened them and they were in ‘fear for their life with their unborn child’. That lie spread to people who want to see my mother hurt due to what they’ve done to her in the past and they quickly took that someone’s side. That someone did not realize that I was home during the event they claimed and had witnessed what they did which caused me to come forward with what really happened; Golden Child bit the hand that fed her when she was told no and do something she didn’t want to do. Also, this person is pregnant and Mom was extremely excited for a grandbaby she could actually see and hold. There was no way in hell she would have threatened her.

I also found out that this person was lying to several others. There are harmless little lies that one can tell and no one would be any the wiser. Those are told on a daily basis and mean no harm. We all do it. Then there are lies that could actually protect or save people and could be tolerated, within reason of course. I’m not that unreasonable since different situations will have varying circumstances. However, these were neither. These were tailored to hurt Mom and a severe game-changer that could potentially hurt others if they go on long enough, lies that should have never been started in the first place. They were lies to fulfill a very selfish agenda that now have a very high chance of backfiring. It was going to do so maybe later down the line but it might happen sooner now. I absolutely cannot tolerate these.

When I rectified this by going to the people who had a right to know, I was descended upon by all three Golden Children who want to see my mother hurt. I was told to ‘step off’, that it was ‘none of my business’, and to ‘stay out of their lives’. These people don’t live anywhere near us but think they know everything they need to know about what’s going on. They don’t care that I witnessed what was going and yes, it was my business that the truth got out. It is my business if someone is blatantly hurting my mother. I was not backing down. I was not going to apologize for what I had done. I feel no regret or remorse for those who had started the lies to begin with. In fact, those who supported the liar despite knowing that the accusations were lies are now disowned by me. One actually tried making the entire situation about herself and she lives states away. The fucking audacity, I swear!

I am deeply sickened by the people who thought I should have kept my mouth shut. They cannot be trusted and I feel sorry for anyone who comes in contact with them. They have done so much to hurt others in their short lives that they shouldn’t be allowed in relationships or have kids if I’m honest. They want to point fingers at my mother for past transgressions? What exactly are you doing to the people around you now that makes you any better? One thing I am extremely proud of is I have NEVER gone out of my way to hurt anyone the way they have. I don’t believe in those kinds of lies, I don’t believe in cheating, I heavily believe in Karma which I know is going to be a complete bitch when it hits, I don’t do this sort of shit and they cannot pin anything against me like I can them. Most of the conversations were them stating the obvious about me, thinking they were insults or I was supposed to be ashamed about still living at home. Was that supposed to hurt me? You have meant very little to me over the past couple of years. Even if you had something I was ashamed about, did you think it coming from you would hurt me?

Well, I guess once they realized I wasn’t backing down or out, and/or realized that me being the black sheep for my entire life has given me the advantage of gathering incriminating information that could cause them grief (I honestly have no intentions of airing their dirty laundry unless they decide to do something drastic), they blocked me and it’s safe to say they won’t be coming back even if they want to. I know at least one of them is going to come back to try to talk to me as if nothing has happened but it’s too late. The lack of communication I’ve dealt with and could deal with since we could pick up at any time (I’m not that great with keeping connections with people who don’t live nearby minus part of my inner circle), but the harmful intent is what I cannot forgive. They ‘can’t forgive me’ for telling people who have the right to know certain truths? I can’t forgive them for being horrible people who want to make others as miserable as they are. Mom, at least, apologized for her past and did her best to change. They have not done so for theirs and it will be held against them from now on. They either ignore what they’ve done or pretended it didn’t happen.

What these idiots do not realize that if someone had done this to them, I more than likely would have done the same damn thing for them. It’s one of those situations where NO ONE should go through. Needless to say, they can go back to their miserable little lives and enjoy estrangement. They are not allowed to contact me under any circumstances unless someone has died. I have my family now and I’m very happy with it. 

Though, I want them to try to explain their side of the estrangement to people or why they’ve blocked me. “Oh, she told the truth about what was going on to the right people and it was not right. She should have stayed out of it.” Yeah. Says a lot about your character. Being offended by the truth might be a sign that you need to take a long hard look at yourself and ask WHY you were offended. I just hope they’re happy with their choices and the fact they caused Mom to step back and rethink some things that they may not like to find out. That’s what lying gets you.

What I did was in no way revenge for anything. It was something that was promised to be done weeks ago and was neglected which meant another broken promise. You can hate me for it all you want but I did the right thing. I cannot say the same for you. I am not ashamed of it and I do not regret it. You ‘cannot forgive me’ for it? I cannot forgive you for harming others and trust me. I’m detached enough as it is. What you did was a death sentence with not only my trust but the potential to be forgiven and reunited. I want absolutely nothing to do with you. You’ll be lucky it hasn’t done the same for Mom.

[erenthecoordinate]

Hello. Please share your thoughts about the latest couple of chapters/Zeke's backstory.

Not gonna lie, this probably one of the most emotional chapters I’ve read in a while.  I’ve been asking for a Zeke-centric chapter that would explain his motives and we got it in the classical heartbreaking fashion that this series is known to dish out.  AND it includes an explosive cliffhanger that Michael Bay would be proud of and make a good portion of the fandom look at a panel at 200% zoom and contrast change for 3 days.

I think the last time I talked about Zeke on this blog, I mentioned that I believe there is a chance Zeke is being genuine with working on Eldia’s side, but it wasn’t yet clear how much he wanted to include Paradis in the fruits of his potential “free the people” plan.  Yeah, so, things have changed obviously.  But not as drastically as I was led to believe after chapter 112.  By ch113, I figured there was more to the story with Zeke, since it seemed that his intentions for escaping was based on a time restraint and the fact he couldn’t trust Levi in the end.  Fortunately for his fans and unfortunately for Zeke, Levi’s plot armor saved him this time.  Only for fate to be teased once more!  Ugh!

I’m going to give a few super brief hot takes that I posted before but Tumblr decided to throw it into the abyss the first time.  This is going to be the least analytical and organized list I’ve ever written so be kind:

Finally, a flashback chapter of the most mysterious guy in this series

…AND HE’S CUTE!?

Oh my god.

Grisha and Dina are not the worst parents nor bad people but hell if they aren’t misguided, radical, and negligent of their only son.

This gives me middle school flashbacks.

I didn’t expect Zeke to suck at military training, to be honest.  They really did just call him a child prodigy for his miracle abilities and the fact he betrayed his parents.

Which I don’t entirely blame him anymore…if it wasn’t his free decision, he was influenced by a replacement nurturing parental figure to do it.  Ouch.

I was mad when these spoilers came out but now it makes sense why this is Zeke’s motive.

I’m pretty confident Eren is double crossing Zeke now.

Zeke is not dead.  Levi is not dead.  Splash text is clickbait.

I don’t even think Levi lost any arms, but we won’t know until 2 or 3 chapters from now.  Hope he knows how to swim!

For wordy rambling, please read on--

As most of the fandom assumed, this chapter was going to be primarily a flashback containing Zeke’s childhood.  And it’s a heavy reveal that spirals into his present-day motives.  It opens up with another scene that illustrates exactly how mistreated and disrespected Eldians are, the janitor going so far as to question why they are “breeding” for more devils.  This is unsurprisingly traumatizing to Zeke and those words are the seeds that flourish the plant of self-hatred soon to wreak havoc.  On the other hand, Grisha vents his frustrations and feeds the idea that their only salvation is to be free from their internment.  They have barely enough freedom to leave their residence and to do so require legal permission.  At this point, we’re familiar enough with how Marley reacts to Eldians both in the past and present day and those views haven’t changed no matter the year.  The story makes us aware that other nations prefer the race to be eradicated whereas Marley’s action is to keep them controlled, though of course there are people who support the former option.  It’s demeaning enough to be ostracized but threatened with genocidal wishes from the general public induces a lot of paranoia and, in the Restorationists’ case, rage.

Zeke is considerably mellow though.  There is no contempt because he’s too busy appeasing his parents.  He struggles with his training and falls far too short from the other warrior candidates.  But he is nothing but loyal to Grisha and Dina, even lying to his grandparents about how his father lectures him about their history.  Zeke uniquely gets two different teachings, but interestingly we don’t see him doubting either of them.  He seems to absorb more of what Grisha is saying, but doesn’t confess that to his grandparents, and simply nods and follows along to whatever is being read to him.  Most of his anxiety is reaching the expectation of becoming a warrior like his parents wanted.

His parents don’t make it a mystery to Zeke that him becoming a warrior is part of their restoration plan.  It’s not out of glory or that they want to best for him, but he is already exposed to the group as the one to save them all, a beacon of hope that the whole of the Eldian race depends on.

Of course, with the pressure on, Zeke cannot make the cut.  A mix of physical weakness and mental turmoil has Magath questioning Zeke’s integrity.  This brings him trailing behind his comrades, defeated, only to run into one of the current warriors playing catch with himself.  This is where we get a first glimpse of Zeke’s hidden pitching talent.  Tom Xaver, the current Beast Titan whose main job is a titan science researcher, is impressed and Zeke illuminates.

I know he murdered hundreds in very unkind ways, but it is a canon fact he is adorable.

Afterwards, Grisha, Dina, and their restorationist friend Grice become stressed with the fact Zeke isn’t performing to acceptable standards to even qualify to be a candidate of the warrior program, let alone having the chance to harness one of the titans.  Zeke overhears this and is taken back by the urgency. Grisha takes notice and attempts to encourage his son by saying he is special and therefore he can succeed.

Immediately follows probably one of the most depressing, soul-crushing pages that doesn’t include death (unless you count the death of Grisha and Dina’s faith in their son).  You don’t have to like Zeke to feel a twinge of relatability when he nearly breaks down from watching his parents turn away in disappointment.  It’s the worst kind of rejection because there is no improving something you simply cannot do and don’t truly have a passion for, even if you fight tooth and nail for it.

Xaver comments on Zeke’s atrocious training attempt and Zeke admits that his parents are the reason he has to become a warrior.  Xaver loosely describes the “perks” of being a warrior: harness unbelievable power, fight in wars, and die in 13 years by the teeth of your successor.  Avoiding that fate doesn’t grant much freedom, but to Zeke, staying alive for as long as possible is good enough.  To survive is fine.  He doesn’t need to fight to be free.

Naturally, cruel circumstances bombarde Zeke’s world when he overhears that his parents are in serious danger of being discovered.  He attempts to vere them to safer options so that they won’t be sent to Paradis, but Grisha and Dina immediately shut him down.  Living in an oppressed system is damaging to their self-esteem.  Revolution is necessary to change the world.  Zeke is their golden ticket.  There is a fatal risk to all this, but it is all for the name of their people.  For those who died for trying to reach beyond their boundaries.  Grisha omits his guilt over his sister’s death, saying what he wanted was simple.  Did that deserve punishment?  We already know his feelings about that, though.

Zeke on the other hand is convinced that it is all over for his family.  The power others have over them is far greater than his parents can overcome.  Xaver sees his distress and Zeke is quick to surrender any possibility of a long life, grateful he can hold onto memories of him as he eternally sleeps.  Xaver is too fond of Zeke, though, and we learn he is the one who suggests Zeke turn in his parents in order to save himself and his grandparents.  Zeke objects, of course, but it doesn’t take too long for Xaver to convince him that his parents cared more about their agenda than their child’s happiness and wellbeing.  And then that all happens.

Several years pass, and Zeke has gone from adorable to totally handsome.

Err...and he has become a successor to the Beast Titan.  He’s woven a close bond with this man to know progressions concerning his research.  A lot of it is information we already know but to them it’s a mix of theory and hearsay.  The new bit of information we gather is the theory that the Founding Titan can manipulate Eldian’s genetic makeup based on paths alone.  It’s what has saved them from plagues in the past.  Zeke recalls the janitor that harassed him and his parents years ago, and laments on the idea that the Founder can also prevent more Eldians from being born.

Xaver reacts somber over this concept.  He confesses that he used to have a family under disguise as a Marleyan.  It wasn’t until after his wife found out and killed herself and their son out of shame and disgust that he ultimately decided to become a warrior-- so he could die in the most glorified way possible, I guess?  In that time, he was dedicated to his research more than anything, but overall expressed he virtually replaced the void in his heart with Zeke’s presence, which explains why he was so important to him.  It’s kind of touching that they both found  each other to fill in roles that were empty in their lives.  Xaver still exhibits a great deal of self-hatred, something that Zeke can relate to.  At this point, he declares his motive of taking the Beast Titan, recovering the Founder, and stop the cycle of suffering by effectively ending the existence of Eldians altogether.  It’s...certainly a goal, albeit a method of giving in to their circumstances and accepting that they cannot fight against this oppression, so that the best thing to actually do is not exist.  Because no matter what they do, to exist is to suffer, and what kind of life is that?

The flashback closes with Levi overhearing Zeke mutter that the only salvation for Eldia is their euthanasia, and that all the deaths he is responsible for was a method of setting them free.  Of course, Levi doesn’t buy it and prepares for another round of Chopped.  Zeke appears to be only partially lucid when he shouts for his dead mentor to watch his next move.

In a matter of seconds, Zeke jerks the string that pulls the fuse and Levi looks to try to make a quick escape.  Zeke risks it all in an explosion that splits his body in parts, though it looks like his neck and head are still intact.  Meanwhile, Levi is blown back a distance with some blood trailing from his body due to ambiguous injuries.  And there is our cliffhanger of the volume!

I know I basically just summarized the chapter with some flavor additions, but there are a few things that drove me to a pit of emotions and questions during the spoiler drop.  Context from the fully translated chapter fixed a lot of my primary thoughts.

The Zekecrets

First big gain from this chapter is Zeke’s motive!  Finally, the zekecret is out!  And it’s rooted from a traumatic childhood and is buzzing with controversy.  I can’t say I agree with Zeke’s idea of ending the Eldian race by sterilizing them and killing those that he can.  But I will say that considering his experiences as a child and that discussion with Xaver had inspired this motive and, therefore, makes a lot of sense.  We’ve seen Zeke as a kind of chessmaster with many tricks up his sleeve yet was a shroud of mystery.  He has killed without mercy, he has betrayed his country, and he has turned that people he claimed to protect into Titans.  But to him, these deaths are convenient and align to his ultimate goal.

It’s honestly hard to believe that a character that has convinced people that his empathy level is so low that he barely even forms any attachments (as evidence with his betrayal) started off as an extremely sensitive and emotionally intelligent child.  His confidence is constantly challenged because of his blood from both sides.  His parents put him on a pedestal because his relation to them is what makes him special and therefore he must succeed.  On the other front, he is subjected to harsh ostracization from the general Marleyan public for simply being Eldian.  And at training, being the weaker of the child soldiers, he is put down by instructors and his trainee peers.  And even so, he still finds a bit of salvation in learning how to pitch while having some close conversation with a kind stranger.  Where he can’t find affection and acceptance in one area, he finds it in Xaver.

Still, the reality is that he is given these expectations that he himself simply has no strong drive to achieve nor the physical strength.  He presses on for the sake of his parents, but only his success will gain their acceptance and...he is unable to do it.  I think the most heartbreaking thing about this is that he accepts that he is somewhat of a tool for their agenda yet he sticks his neck out in hopes that he gets affectionate attention from his parents.  The fact he watches a child play ball with their father on his way home show that it’s an attention he craves because he doesn’t receive it often.  Even when he knows they are soon to get caught, Zeke’s first instinct is to say his goodbyes and surrender to whatever fate has in store for him.  To him, he is useless to carve his own path.  He has failed his parents, the Restorationists, the whole Eldian race, and himself.

Parenting Contrast: Grisha&Dina v Carla

I do briefly want to say that I don’t think Grisha and Dina were bad people, they are bad (not worst) parents and were too radicalized in their beliefs to realize that their son was emotionally struggling with self-esteem issues.  Anything they knew about Zeke was very on the surface.  Their priority was the revolution.  They manufactured a child for this due to their ignorance and anger.  But I don’t think they didn’t care about Zeke at all.  Zeke, to them, was to gain just as much of a positive outcome and life of freedom if he succeeded.  They were never aware of the pressure they put on Zeke.  Grisha later assumed that their negligence was the reason for Zeke’s betrayal and he never blames him for it.

Ironically, though, Eren is the appropriate child Grisha could have had for his revolution before it rapidly failed.  Second time’s the charm?  This is likely due to Eren’s lack of responsibility.  There were no dire expectations until later in his life.  Carla parented opposite of Dina and Grisha, believing that not everyone has to be special to be great.  Eren had more options open to him. 

Regardless, I don’t think Grisha quite parented the same way as he did with Zeke, but it may have been a bit difficult to keep reactions to certain circumstances subtle.  I don’t know if we’ll ever get more insight about why Eren used to be a weird loner kid that followed life through “the strong conquer the weak” system.  I just have a sneaking suspicion that it’s due to indirect mimicking of Grisha’s behavior.  After all, a real issue in this series are ignorant adults.  Or sometimes kids are just weird and easily influenced.  Unfortunately, in the end, Grisha does resort back to pressing responsibility on his second son, most likely because of their dire situation and Eren’s willingness to break free.  Because Eren is his son, of course.

Bit by bit, however, Zeke seems to be progressively aware of the obsession his parents have over their revolution plan.  They spend very little time with him, so he is often spending time with his grandparents, effectively keeping the cover up for his parents.  And any time they do spend with him is spent reversing the studies he has learned at school.  Zeke accepts the lessons but isn’t enthused.  I mentioned that he doesn’t really seem to question which history is correct and which isn’t; he doesn’t cast doubts on either and it’s difficult to say whether Grisha’s teachings were ones he felt were more accurate or that he was just parroting in order to gain approval.  A majority of his interactions with his parents are “yes” and nods.  

When Xaver comes into the picture and Zeke projects him as a father figure, he becomes more aware of his parents’ actions.  Which is why I don’t think it was especially a struggle for Zeke to believe Xaver when he told him that his parents don’t really care about him and that it’ll be worth selling them out if it means he and his grandparents get to live.  Zeke is very good at shutting down his emotions at this moment.  He is, however, not without heart though, because he continues to nurture that fondness for Xaver, who he is later a successor to.  In fact, he is the reason why Zeke entertains the idea that Eldians should stop reproducing.

The Plan and is Eren actually part of this?

This is where things get controversial, of course.  On one hand, technically, no longer existing means that they would no longer have to suffer.  Zeke says those on Paradis are ignorant to what the world has in store for them.  This isn’t to buy more time to properly unite with other nations, it was time to stop reproduction altogether and (probably) eliminate the Eldians on Paradis.  To Zeke it’s merciful to end this.  But it’s still genocide.  And I don’t believe this is the ultimate answer nor do I believe Eren is actually going to end up accepting this plan.

Unlike Zeke, Eren grew up with an everlasting flame that urged him to seek freedom in every format.  Freedom of his environment, freedom of his choices, etc.  He too gets weighed down by crushing expectations, becoming something of a tool for the military and government to achieve victory, but it is something that he genuinely wants.  Included, he still had the compassion of his comrades.  He wished them long lives.  He believes that people deserve to live simply by being born into the world.  Their existence gives them the right to freedom.  It gives them a chance to fight.  Sterilization is a big surrender.  Death and prevention of life, robbing that choice from others, is completely contradicting to anything Eren has ever learned, said, or believed in.  And I think his reaction to Willy’s words at the festival is a key indicator that his intention is to keep the Eldians alive.  I’m not sure how far ahead Eren is in terms of double crossing his brother, but at the very least, I think that if he knows Zeke’s true intentions, he has found or is finding a way to skirt around that option and use Zeke for his own plans.

I plan to write a progression meta theorizing Eren’s motives that edits and re-publishes with every reveal in each chapter but basically my guess is that Eren does know what Zeke wants and that he has been playing along with Zeke’s orchestrated plan, festival, Warhammer Titan, prisonbreak, etc. to earn loyalty points.  Which unfortunately included him killing innocents in the process.  But if Zeke really does believe their deaths are their true freedom, then Eren has to convince Zeke that he believe the same too.  Doesn’t mean he hasn’t internally struggled as a result.  But for now, Eren’s individual thoughts remain an enigma so it’s difficult to pinpoint his exact intentions at the moment.

Explosive (haha) End

Anyway, the other big thing was Zeke’s dramatic escape act which required an enormous explosion and the splitting of his own body.  Uh, yuck!  But I can’t help but feel a bit tickled that we actually have a panel with Zeke’s detached ass in the air.  His torso, including his neck and head, are more or less together, so he can easily pull off the Reiner trick to implant his brain to elsewhere on the nervous system so that he can regenerate from there.  So, yeah, Zeke will be fine.  And probably pantless if he can’t recover his lower half.

Levi, on the other hand, has no regenerating powers and appears pretty injured if the blood splattering off his body is anything to go by.  He wasn’t as close to the explosion, so it’s possible any injuries he sustained are because of the shooting debris and/or his sword, which he still had out in front guarding his body prior to the fuse going off.  I remember when the first grainy image of this panel came out and everyone was zooming in and tracing areas to figure out if Levi lost anything.  I think it’s consensus now that Levi has both legs intact and at the very least his left arm.  The only big question is whether his right arm is there and any other injuries on his torso or face that may exist.  If you want my personal visual analysis and theory, I think his injuries are not fatal nor crippling, meaning all his limbs are intact, but he probably has decent sized gashes on his body to have him temporarily side-lined.  I think the angle of the drawing and multiple gradients to indicate fast motion and blood direction is meant to give the reader uncertainty but in the end it’ll reveal that nothing was lost.  At least, I hope so.  It would be absolutely disheartening and irresponsible to put him out of commission for the rest of the series and the rest of his life-- I think out of all the suffering Levi has gone through, he definitely doesn’t deserve to feel completely useless to do anything,  Plus it’d be extremely underwhelming to set your strongest and most popular character on the bench before the big climax.

I will say that Levi is definitely not dead, though.  None of the notable deaths we’ve seen have been obscured by body angles.  They’ve been explicitly shown without debate on their status, Erwin and Sasha especially.  I believe the only off-screen deaths the series has had was Moblit and Ymir, and even then the scenes before then leave you no doubt to their inevitable fate.  Even Marco eventually got a scene of his death.  And neither of these deaths happened as cliffhangers.  But false death cliffhangers have always been a thing in the series.  Plus, I think Levi is far more deserving of a multi-panel, half chapter death scene if he were to die at all.

I do think he will land in the river and those injuries will prevent him from fighting effectively against the current to stay in his location.  I believe the convenient landscape was rather deliberate as it gives Zeke enough time and lonesomeness to recover and seek Eren.  Really, the explosion was an excuse to remove Levi from the scene and quickly be transported elsewhere.  But I want to bet we won’t find out Levi’s fate for another couple chapters.  Because Isayama is just that cruel!

....

Sorry this got extensive.  I’m still building up on these thoughts, so nothing is definite or without possibility of change.  But to summarize, Zeke’s childhood is sad, his plan is genocide and Eren ain’t about that life, Yeagerbros are dramatic people and forever interesting to me, and Levi is alive and battered but not handicapped.

That said, I would love to hear from everyone else about what they thought of the chapter.  Were you sympathetic to Zeke’s backstory?  Is he irredeemable?  What’s Eren’s role in all this?  Does he actually subscribe to Zeke’s scheme of eliminating all Eldians to end their suffering, or does he have other tricks up his sleeve?  Is Levi alive? How bad are his injuries?  Does he know how to swim?

Will I ever recover from the emotional rollercoaster this chapter has put me though?

Thanks for sending this ask!  I haven’t meta’d in a while and this honestly is inspiring to write again!

[sleepyfan-blog]

Fandom: Darkness!Drifter by @bl3ppsn3kk Driftverse by @onebizarrekai

Characters and pairing: Underfell!Sans, Underswap!Sans, Dream, Nightmare, Underkeep!Sans, Outertale!Sans, Epic!Sans, Cross!Sans, Darkness!Dreammare

Warnings: character death, swearing, violence, manipulation, abusive relationship tw, angst 

Word count: 4,034

Summary: Darkness!Drifter, but with Asshole Nightmare.

Underfell Sans 9054’s reaction when he stabbed the other straight through the soul, pinning the other bodily as well, hissing “You arrogant fool, did you really think that I wouldn’t notice that you’ve been finding ways to slip information to those pathetic rebels in your insignificant AU?”

“F-FUCK YOU! YOU PROMISED THAT YOU WOULD LET PAP LIVE IF I HELPED YOU!” The Fell Sans cursed, struggling with his final breath to summon an attack, even as his body crumbled to dust slowly around him.

“And I did let him live - up until the fool attempted to attack me. Then he died, as all traitors do. I warned you that if you crossed me, you would pay with your life.” Nightmare smirked, his visible eye light shining brightly “I do regret not killing him in front of you. Perhaps that would have broken some of the rebellious spirit inside of you. Then again, through your bumbling attempts at stealth and secrecy have led me straight to the so-called leaders of this pathetic attempt at resistance.”

“F… Fu...Ck… You…” The Fell Sans spat, managing to gather up enough energy to summon a blaster and sending a weak pulse of pure magic Nightmare’s way.

Entirely too slowly, and the dark overlord laughs as he casually steps aside, avoiding the slow burst of the dying monster’s magic, flicking his tentacle and wiping it clean of the mustard and dust that had coated it on the other’s now empty clothes.

~

“P-Please… I-I’ll do anything! J-Just please s-stop th-this!” Underswap Sans 2166 begged, tears streaming down his face. Interestingly enough, this Sans wore golden armor, instead of the usual blue. He was on his hands and knees, trembling violently.

Nightmare hummed for a moment - the other’s magical tears were a light teal color - and he wrapped a tentacle around the other’s waist, glancing at the other consideringly. The other’s despair and fear were exquisite for the lord of negativity to feel. Besides, Dust had been complaining that his latest toy had broken recently “And what would you give me in exchange for sparing your world, hmmm?”

“I… A-any… Anything! W-Whatever you w-want of me, I-I’ll do it!” The Swap Sans begged, the tears continuing to stream down his face. On the other hand, the younger skeleton was doing admirably not to snivel and crawl up into an unintelligible ball of fear and distress - which was impressive for a swap.

“Very well. You will accompany me to another world. You will be… Trained by the person I give you too, for what he requires of you. Do you understand?” Nightmare explained, a small smirk appearing on his face.

His brother was barely conscious, and fear, hatred and distress were the Papyrus’s greatest emotions at this point in time. The other called out weakly “B-Bro… D… Don’t do it…”

Curiously, the Swap Sans rallied himself a little at the sound of his brother’s voice, wiping his face free of tears, a bit of steel entering the other’s voice “O… Okay. As long as you promise that neither you, nor any of your people will ever step foot in this world again. I will… I will go with you. B-But first I want the human released back here, so that… So that all of the damage that has been caused to this world can be undone.”

Nightmare blinked a little bit in surprise - not expecting the other to try to negotiate with him. Hmm, perhaps the other might be useful in other ways? The grin on his face stretched wider and he answered “Agreed.” He snapped his fingers, and the unconscious form of the determined human child reappeared. They were badly injured, but still breathing if only barely. The tentacle wrapped around the Underswap Sans’s waist tightened a little as he created a portal, pulling the both of them through. Nightmare paused just long enough once on the other side of the portal to strike the human directly through the chest, shattering their soul in order to force a reset.

He of course let the Swap Sans see this, and hear the human’s scream of dying agony.

~

“Nightmare, you don’t have to do this! You can… You can stop fighting, and we… We can look for a cure for the corruption together.” Dream called out from where he was crouching, perched on a sturdy tree branch, his bow strung and pointed directly at the other, his hands shaking just a little, despite the confidence in his voice.

“And just why should I stop? They never stopped trying to hurt me, no matter how much I begged them? Now I have the power to do as I wish to whoever I want. Where are those adorable friends of yours, Dream? I thought that you and Ink were joined at the hip - along with at least one mortal tagalong for cannon fodder.” Nightmare purred as he stalked closer to his other half, making his way to the other. This was a surface AU - a rather pretty one at that. It was going to be so much fun to twist.

“None of them are cannon fodder! They are my friends and allies, Nightmare!” Dream hissed, his eye light shrinking a little, shifting a bit on his perch before teleporting to the other side of the clearing and shooting at him.

Nightmare didn’t even have to dodge as the arrow flew wide and buried itself in a bush before dissipating. The corrupted guardian laughed “Come now, Dream. I know you’re a better marksman than that. Or was that a warning shot? You know I won’t stop simply because you plead with me and cry.” He sent a couple of tentacles after Dream, grinning as he watched the other dodge, leaping from branch to branch.

Dream never saw one of his tentacles move one of the branches, which whacked the other out of the canopy and sending him sprawling on the ground, landing on one of his sides with a would-be sickening crack if he cared about the other’s health and safety. But it wasn’t a mortal blow, so Nightmare didn’t care. The other groaned weakly, trying to get up, only to collapse against the ground, stunned and bleeding magic.

Nightmare sent several tentacles after Dream, intent on capturing the other again - only to hiss and draw away as several Gaster Blasters appeared out of nowhere, their raw magical energy slamming into his grasping tentacles and severing them as he withdrew them. An Underkeep and an Outerfell Sans appeared out of nowhere, similar scowls of protective fury on their faces and in their emotional auras, sending wave after wave of bones after him in a surprisingly synchronized attack. “Everything’s clear - Ink sent us on ahead to see how you were fairing! We’ll grab you and retreat back to safety.” The Underkeep Sans called over his shoulder at the injured Dream, who only groaned in response. They escaped before Nightmare could break through their bone walls.

~

Outertale 123. It was a post-pacifist AU where the monsters had been set free of the barrier decades ago in their timeline, and after some initial bumpiness, both humans and monsters grew to love and respect one another, and explored and terraformed distant stars and planets to their souls’ content. It was exactly the sickeningly sweet bullshit that his other half would be so delighted to see.

Naturally it disgusted Nightmare. These people were far too happy for his liking. A dark smirk played on his lips as he stalked after the Sans of this timeline. He’d been picking off people in the other’s life for weeks now - killing them when they were alone, and leaving their dust for the Sans alone to find. The other had gone from concerned and confused, to wary and despairing. What made it better was the fact that rumors and whispers of that Sans being the one to blame for their deaths, despite being the head arbiter of Monster kind, and a well-respected and beloved comedian.

He was on his way to talk to his brother, Papyrus, who believed in and loved his brother, and had agreed to watch over the other, in case something was happening to him when he slept. The two of them walked down a star-lit alleyway, and Nightmare couldn’t help but laugh, the dark, echoing sound causing both of the younger skeletons to freeze. “Well, well. Isn’t this just sweet?”

“Oh fuck. I recognize you from my worst nightmares!” The Outertale Sans swore, dragging his brother back behind him “P-Papyrus, run! I… I’ll handle this guy. G-Go to Undyne and tell her to bring the guard - and I mean all of them!”

“BROTHER? IS THIS SOMEONE FROM THOSE SIGHT-VISION THINGS OF YOURS?” The Papyrus asked with a frown, unwilling to leave his brother behind to this goopy stranger.

“Huh… You’re a Seer. That’s rather unusual for a Sans. But I already have three of you working for me anyways.” Nightmare shrugged “So I’m sorry, but you’d just be unnecessary.”

“PAPYRUS RUN NOW!” The Sans yelled, throwing up several walls of bones and summoning several blasters at the same time, breaking out his bold voice.

The Papyrus made it three steps before Nightmare teleported behind both of the brothers and pierced both of their souls with his tentacles, laughing darkly as he did so “Far too late, little seer. Your power is no match for mine.” They coughed, sputtered once and turned to dust, desperately trying to reach out to one another to hold hands, their fingers turning to dust and mixing together.

~

“Bruh! It’s been forever since we’ve seen each other! I’ve missed you superbad, man.” A tall, purple clad Sans called out, tackling Cross and hugging him tightly “Ink has been.. Such a cagey jerk about where you’ve been and it’s sucked! But you’re here! I’ve got so many dank memes to show you.”

“Dude! I didn’t know you were visiting this timeline!” Cross responded, a wide grin appearing on his face as he hugged the other back just as tightly “Yeah… I’m really mad at Ink for… Reasons I totally don’t want to go into, because it will bring down my mood, and with you here, I feel great. You always make me happy, E.” The normally stoic Sans’s face had light up, and his emotions were much lighter than Nightmare had ever sensed them.

What the actual fuck was going on? Curious and intrigued, Nightmare leaned against one of the huge buildings of this world, content to watch for the moment.

“Ouch, bruh. I mean, I totally get it - Ink can be such a bastard sometimes- especially if he’s forgotten to take his vials and Dream’s not around him… Wait, have you even met Dream?” E as he was so named asked, his eye lights brightening a little “The little dude is amazing, you totally should. It’s like… Just being around him makes me feel as if everything’s going to be okay. He tries super hard to help everyone and is…” The skeleton brought two fingers up to his teeth and kissed his fingers with his hand before gesturing away from himself briefly.

That had absolutely no meaning whatsoever to Nightmare, who tilted his head a little, and was further confused at the incredibly over-dramatic gasp from Cross, who’s eye lights had widened before turning into stars for fuck’s sake.

“No! I haven’t. But if he really can do something like that… I’d love to meet him.” Cross responded, his eye lights still stars. His emotions were almost entirely positive in nature, and that stupid smile was still on his face. He frowned a little, the good feelings fading somewhat “I… Have met someone else though. He uhh… He’s a scary dude. And the skeles he runs with…” Cross shudders, his bones rattling a little, grimacing a little.

“That bad, bruh?” E prodded, a look of concern appearing on his face as he pulled the other a little bit closer. The two of them hadn’t stopped hugging since the purple Sans had tackled him minutes ago. It was odd to see Cross allowing such sustained contact with someone willingly.

“You have. No idea. Dude, I… I just wanna hang with you, man. I don’t want to think about him or the jackass squad. They’re worse than Fresh and Error.” Cross muttered, shuddering again and looking around “Dude! Is that a meme store I see! We should go in! I wonder if they’ve got rubber chickens that we could fight with. That was so much fun last time.”

Nightmare wondered if this was code for something. However as Cross excitedly dragged the other into the obnoxiously neon colored store and back out minutes later, there were two rubber chickens clutched tightly in both Sanses’ hands. Cross turned to face the other, a serious expression on his face for the first time since they’d started talking “You ready for this, dude?”

“You betcha, bruh!” E called out, gripping his rubber chickens and charging Cross, whacking him over the head with one of them, an unholy sound leaving the strange toy. It sent a shudder straight through Nightmare, who suddenly teleported between the two of them “That is it. Cross, put those ridiculous things down right now. You either kill this hapless moron right now, or I will.”

The joy and happiness within Cross’s emotional aura - and the smile on his face - vanished abruptly. He took a couple of small steps back, his eye lights shrinking to pinpricks “Ni… Nightmare… How long have… Have you-” The other stuttered, fear and panic in his aura.

“Since the two of you first started hugging. Kill him, Cross.” Nightmare ordered, scowling darkly at his unruly subordinate.

“Uhhh… Who the fu-” The purple skeleton started, only to be cut off by Cross.

“Epic, p-please let me handle this!” Cross snapped, shaking a little “I… I’m s-sorry for acting s-so ridiculous in front of you, Boss! He… He’s a powerful fighter. He’s from an AU called Epic!Tale and he’s a powerful fighter. He can be really useful to you please don’t make me kill him or kill him in front of me! P… Please? He… He’s my best friend…”

Nightmare tilted his head a little, as if considering the other’s plea “... And how do I have any indication that he’s more than the ridiculous simpleton that he was when the two of you were acting like before you realized that I was here, hmm? Or is that his special ability, to make other people act like idiots?”

“It-It’s not like that boss, I swear! We… We’ve both had some really shitty lives before… Before we met each other and… And together we use humor in order to cope and relate to each other.” Cross had fallen to his knees, his hands cupped in front of him in a pleading gesture, tears gathering in his eye sockets “Please… Boss… Epic c-can be useful to you, an-and I’ll make sure that he knows the rules and everything!”

“One week. You have one week to prove that he is a useful tool to me - and if he resists any order I give him, you will wish you’d have killed him by the time I’ve finished with him. Is that understood?” The fallen guardian hissed. Cross nodded frantically and dragged his friend away from him, whispering frantically, eye lights dim and shattered.

~

Nightmare gasped a little as he woke from the memories that the strange voices had prompted him to remember. A small smirk appeared on his lips as thousands more memories of causing others fear and pain flashed through his mind. A soft, dangerous chuckle rumbled through his chest as he wondered if he was alone in this body - or if Dream resided somewhere within this body - perhaps slumbering? He froze up for a moment as another memory rushed to the forefront of his mind… However this one, was from his other half.

Nightmare loomed over him, his cyan eye lights burning brightly, the other’s fury and indignation pressing hard against Dream’s senses, causing the corrupted positive spirit to whimper a little as he cringed away from the other “N-Nightmare?” He asked, voice trembling a little as he tried to figure out why the other was so upset.

“I told you not to leave this room, didn’t I?” Nightmare growled, grabbing his wrists with one hand and pressing them over his head, the other’s grip painful and bruising.

“Y-You d-did, Nightmare.” Dream stammered out, his eye lights shrinking to pinpricks as he glanced away from the other. He flinched as he felt the negative guardian’s other hand grab his chin and yank his face so he was forced to look up at the other.

“So why did Killer and Dust tell me that they saw you in the kitchen, Dream? I don’t make these rules up because I want to. My minions are violent and unstable. While I have informed them that you aren’t a threat to them any longer, I don’t trust them not to try to hurt you anyways.” Nightmare hissed, shaking the other’s head a little “And if they kill you, that will kill me too? Is that what you want? Do you want the both of us to die?”

“N-No, Ni-Nightmare! I… I’m s-sorry I le-left your be-bedroom. I sh-shouldn’t have.” Dream stuttered, feeling a strange, tarry substance start to drip out of his eye sockets and slide along his temples, onto the other’s expensive sheets.

“Why did  you leave this room, anyways?” Nightmare pressed, glaring darkly down at him “I ask so little of you, I just thought that you might be able to follow such a simple request…” he clicked his tongue at him, shaking his head, disappointed. He suddenly let the other go, refusing to look at the other.

Somehow that was even worse than the anger and bruising touches. “I…” Dream started, his voice small and ashamed.

The lord of darkness briefly glanced at his other half before looking away again, huffing a little “I hope this isn’t a prelude to you abandoning me again, Dream.”

“N-No of c-course not! I was just… I was just hu-hungry… And w… Wanted to get something to eat…” Dream admitted very quietly, shrinking in on himself. He tentatively reached out to Nightmare, his voice gaining a little bit of strength “I… I’m sorry…”

Nightmare brushed off his touch and got off of his bed, snapping at Dream as the other started to move “Stay put. And you keep saying that, over and over again… Yet I can’t help but wonder if you really mean it, or if your apologies are completely without sincerity.”

Dream flinched but stayed put, hoping that his obedience now would show the other that he was genuinely apologetic - along with how he was feeling. “M-My a-apologies are genuine, N-Nightmare! I-I promise… I’m sorry… I’ll s-stay here. I w-won’t move… I wo-won’t let anyone in here b-but you… I’m sorry, p-please d-don’t se-send me away N-Nightmare! I… I’ll behave. I promise!” The strange substance started to flow down his cheeks again as Dream shook, waiting desperately for the other to respond.

It felt like an eternity before Nightmare responded, his voice clipped and irritated “Look at me Dream.”

The fallen guardian of positivity obeyed instantly, staring at the other with wide, terrified eye lights, waiting for the other to decide his fate “Y-Yes, N-Nightmare…”

“I want to believe you when you say that you’ll do as I say… But you haven’t been able to prove that to me. On the contrary, it’s been less than a week since you’ve come to live with me, and you’ve disobeyed me twice now. I’m afraid that I’m going to have more than just promises that you’ll behave this time, Dream.” The other sighed, shaking his head a little as he got up, walking over to one of his drawers and pulling out a set of chains. They were long enough for someone to wander around the bedroom - provided that they were attached to someone’s legs, but no further. Nightmare then attached one of the ends of the manacles to one of the feet of the massive four-poster bed, the other still in his hands as the other looked at him steady “Now, I’m going to give you a choice. Do you want one of your wrists bound to the bed, or one of your ankles?”

Dream froze up for a moment, feeling as if all the air in the room had vanished. No. He trusted Nightmare. He loved Nightmare. And the other loved him back. The other could have just forced the chains on one of his limbs without asking- Nightmare had the brute strength to do so, but he hadn’t. He crawled towards the other on the bed and, after a moment’s hesitation, stuck out his right arm for the other to chain “My… My right wrist please…” Dream couldn’t quite look the other in the eye lights, starting a little as he felt the buzz of magic-restricting runes against his bones as the manacle clicked around his wrist.

Nightmare smirked a little, gently tilting Dream’s chin so that he had to look the other directly again “Thank you for cooperating with me. I understand that these rules will be an adjustment for you… But please believe me when I tell you that I will provide for your needs, Dream? You do trust me, don’t you?”

“I do trust you, Nighty! I promise.” Dream answered quickly, nodding a little and trying to suppress a yawn and failing… He’d been a little tired before, but with the magic-restricting nature of the manacle on his wrist, it was quickly sapping him of energy.

Nightmare chuckled softly, getting back on the bed and scooping up his other half, pressing a light kiss to the other’s forehead “Rest, Dream. I have finished my work for the day, and I don’t mind watching you sleep… Besides, a nap sounds wonderful.”

The formerly positive spirit yawned a little more, nuzzling into Nightmare as he slowly relaxed into the other’s grasp. What felt like minutes later, Dream woke up with a startled gasp, flailing a little and panicking briefly as he felt Nightmare hold him… Before he remembered surrendering to his other half and being brought home. He smiled in relief as he realized that he had no chains on either of his wrists. They ached a little but he’d apparently been sleeping on them, so that made sense. Dream didn’t notice the silver manacle on one end of the bed, and most of it was hidden beneath the blankets that Nightmare had covered him by - but the other half of the end of the chain was wrapped lightly around both of Dream’s ankles.

Nightmare mentally shook himself as he pulled himself free of Dream’s memories before he could get lost in the many manipulations he’d pulled on the other. Of course the other loved him dearly and desperately… Given all that he’d manage to cajole the other into doing since Dream had surrendered to him. But it was wonderful to feel just how deeply and completely the other felt for him. Nightmare was curious to see whether or not Dream could feel his own feelings of care for the other…

“... Nightmare?” Dream called out, insubstantial and see-through. He was still wearing the outfit that he’d picked out for him, his eye lights mostly blue with hints of gold. “W-What’s going on?”

“The two of us were somehow combined into a single being. I’m not sure how or why.” Nightmare responded, a small smirk playing on his lips as he sat down and looked up at the tree of feelings, the positive and negative apples just… Hanging there. Waiting to be taken.

“Oh… At least that means that no one can ever take us away from each other! We’ll be together forever.” Dream responded after a moment, a brilliant smile appearing on his face “That makes me so happy!”

“I’m glad that we’ll be together forever as well, my darling daydream…” Nightmare purred quietly in response, reflecting on what he wanted to do next. There were so many possibilities.

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 026: Obstacle Course Part 2 (Conclusion)

Previously on BnHA: The kids of class A busted their way through the sports festival obstacle course like the young gods-in-the-making they are. Everyone was like, whoa, these kids are kicking ass. Momo made a gun and I may have cried a little. Some girl from the support course macguyvered her way through with moon shoes and a utility belt. Fucking Deku tore through the entire thing carrying a giant metal plate and just whomping robots left and right and shimmying across the floating islands of Pandora like fucking Spider-Man. He then catapulted himself onto a bunch of mines in a fucking minefield and fucking surfed the resulting explosion and I’m fucking done you guys.

Today on BnHA: Deku nearly commits a murder but it nets him first place. Todoroki spits in the face of continuity. Everyone in class A advances to the second round of the festival. Midnight announces that round 2 will be a cavalry battle. Deku has a target painted on his back because no good deed ever goes unpunished.

(As always, all comments not marked with an ETA are my unspoiled reactions from my first readthrough of this chapter. I’ve read up through chapter 48 now, so any ETAs will reflect that.) 

oh my god look at these huge text boxes. are these all Deku?? this kid is fucking twacked out on something right now I swear

yeah I guess this is Deku’s POV from when he was like “RARRRRRRRR [BOOM]” from before

seriously this kid is out here channeling the Hulk or something

holy shit he actually dug up the mines in order to jump on them??

All Might what have you done. look what you’ve created

more like blasting shounen maniac

also I forgot Kacchan’s arm was frozen and I had to stare at it for a sec before my memory filled in the blanks there

so we’re all in agreement that Deku has actually gone crazy right?

“yup this is intense” totally fucking bananas

Kacchan has such an over the top wtf expression that for a moment I actually thought Deku had hit him in the head on the way down

he didn’t think about the landing. of course not. shounens never think about the landing

well maybe this guy can inadvertently help you out with that somehow

wow look at his face. Deku what have you done

now Todoroki’s making an ice path

by the way, so Todoroki apparently doesn’t need to physically touch whatever it is he’s freezing, then? because here he’s just stomping on the ground and it’s immediately turning to ice, but he’s wearing shoes. I can’t remember if he’s done this before, but I feel like up till now it’s always been his hands

in fact, I just went back and checked his intro in chapter 11 and it specifically said he freezes things with his right hand (left hand is the fire one). so I consider this panel a plot hole unless Horikoshi decides to come along and explain it later

(ETA: not only did they not explain it, they didn’t change it for the anime either. WHAT KIND OF GARBAGE IS THIS. I CAN’T BELIEVE THE ENTIRE SERIES IS RUINED JUST LIKE THAT OMG.)

Deku seems more worried about losing time on his landing than he is about, you know, landing badly and breaking every bone in his body. I guess once you’ve already done that a few times, you kind of become accustomed to it and it’s no big deal anymore

(ETA: let’s not talk any more about Deku not giving a shit about his own broken bones holy shit.)

why do shounen people always take such a long fucking time to fall

lol the other two are rushing past him while he’s slowly drifting into the frame upside-down

grab onto them and use them as your sled dogs!

holy fuck what is he doing lmao

this kid is really out here with his HEEERE’S JOHNNY face deadass about to commit murder live on camera in front of 100,000 people

oh thank god he didn’t actually hit them. though I feel like it wasn’t for lack of trying

he hit the ground again and of course, more land mines

I feel like he ended up murdering them anyway tbh

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TEACHING THOSE KIDS ERASER HEAD” lmao sob this chapter is epic

and EH is all “I didn’t even do anything they’re just like this”

Deku actually made it back first! holy shit. and all he had to do was go completely off the deep end and murder two of his classmates to do it

oh my god his mom is watching

I mean, of course she’s watching, but it only just occurred to me. is he actually going to use his quirk here at some point or what? and if he does, just what the hell is she going to make of that?

I hope he comes clean with her afterwards, honestly. I have faith in her ability to keep a secret that would put her child’s life in jeopardy otherwise

(ETA: Deku is a liar and a thief and his poor mom deserves better)

and speaking of that, scrolling back up to the panel above Izumama, there’s this other random guy watching Deku who seems to also recognize him

what’s this about exactly? a year ago would be right around the time of the Sludge Incident. does he remember him from that? or does he somehow know Deku from back in his middle school days?

(ETA: it’s the former, I overthought this)

actually there are a lot of people who went to school with Izuku and specifically knew him to not have a quirk, come to think. what are all of them going to think if he suddenly busts one out here in front of the entire country? I feel like that’s going to seem really fucking suspicious and raise a lot of questions

anyway, moving on here, it seems Tomura is watching too. what a creep

and his hands are gone, just like when he visited the school that day and (presumably) broke in

aww. Deku sought out All Might’s face in the crowd and he’s grinning at him and he looks so proud. he’s crying again sob. and All Might looks fucking ecstatic

now All Might is having an internal monologue about how so many modern heroes are in it for the fame and so they’re selfish, but Deku isn’t like that, and that’s why he chose him. and interestingly he says he thought that quality would be a potential weakness, but he’s happy to be proven wrong

“but you gotta stop crying all the time!” aww, let him be, he’s emotional, there’s nothing wrong with that. I was gonna add “and he’s still a kid”, but that implies that there’s anything wrong with an adult being emotional which isn’t the case either. I know he’s all about the whole “smiling through the pain” thing, but Deku’s not the type to keep his feelings so hidden, and honestly I think that’s also a strength rather than a weakness

people from the business course are discussing Deku’s draft stock now, and speculating on how they would market him

yeah All Might I kind of see what you mean here. it’s all about the PR, and the actual hero stuff has almost been taken out of the equation

there’s a panel explaining how the business course members don’t participate in the sports fest directly and instead they just walk around doing boring business things. I’m not at all interested in this but I am dutifully making a note of it

(ETA: though I would be interested if they did some more shit dealing with sudden fame and celebrity and marketing deals. it’s still ridiculous to me that a country with as huge an idol culture as Japan would not be attempting to do this with at least some of these U.A. kids.)

(ETA 2: finally in the latest chapter I read we at least had someone filming a commercial.)

Kacchan and Todoroki have arrived back at the stadium out of breath as losers. sorry losers

poor Todoroki. IN FRONT OF YOUR FAMOUS DAD AND EVERYTHING

Kacchan’s super pissed but what else is new. is your arm okay bud. also you probably could have blasted your way across that final part of the course similar to how Deku did, but you didn’t. you literally have only yourself to blame

oh wow, Ochako and Iida rounding out the top five! what a pleasant surprise

(ETA: yeah this misconception will be rectified shortly, so I’m leaving it)

Iida’s depressed because being fast is His Whole Thing and he still came in like fifth. honestly I feel like that does hurt him a little more than the rest, because if any heroes out there are on the lookout for a speedster, they’re probably going to be less taken with a guy that didn’t even manage to make the podium in the speed competition. but you still have the rest of the festival, Iida. and if all else fails, you’ll still have two more chances after this

Deku is literally hiding his face because Ochako came right up to him and started talking about how great he was

it was not close, Deku

now he’s saying he got lucky. that was part of it, sure, but dude you were a fucking beast out there. honestly it was scary

Momo made it in sixth! along with this piece of drifting garbage that seems to have gotten stuck to her somehow

I’m sorry you had to see this, everyone. Momo is brilliant, but I feel like she missed a golden opportunity to make another gun or something and solve our Mineta problem for good. they did say no rules, after all. any lawyer worth their salt should be able to work with that

oh wow, I thought Iida and Ochako were fourth and fifth, but apparently that Poison Ivy girl came in fourth! Ibara, huh? I like her a lot

and this Dia de Muertos guy came in fifth!!

MY GOD IIDA, SIXTH?? YOU HAD ONE FUCKING JOB

and Ochako is #16?? EVERYONE, WE’RE GONNA RIOT

class B seems to only have a few standouts, really. thank god tbh. it was hard enough trying to memorize the first twenty kids’ names

(ETA: for a brief moment it looked like this might not be true, but then it was true again lol)

can’t believe Kaminari’s all the way down at #24. what happened?

are there... two invisible kids here?

(ETA: this literally never came up again??!)

and Aoyama barely made it. the cutoff was at #42 for some reason. they could have easily set it at the much more normal number of 40, but they just liked you that much, Aoyama!

Midnight’s about to announce the second event, but she’s dragging it out so damn much and I can’t take it

“Cavalry Battle”! yay! what’s that

Tsuyu says they’re teaming up but imma need more deets

“participants will form, on their own, teams of two to four members each” okay I can already foresee a few problems here

-- and get into a horse and rider formation, oh my god

I LOVE IT

for a brief moment I was like “wow this is really tame compared to the first event.” but then I remembered that they all have powers and will presumably be trying to kill each other and I can see this getting really fucking violent actually

that said! I’m definitely here for it lol

damn she’s still going on. apparently each kid has been assigned a point value based on the results of the previous event. so that means Deku has the highest value I guess. well, he wanted to stand out

TEN MILLION POINTS wow. this seems a bit broken to me

Deku’s face is

pretty good

what kind of fucked up olympics punishes you for doing well though

ten million points, though. damn. and meanwhile that lucky s.o.b. Aoyama is only worth five

and wow, we’ve reached the end of volume three already! well that sure was fun

BONUS:

Mt. Lady again?

she’s ordering takoyaki

she’s trying to get it for free omg

it worked omg

that’s it. that’s the comic

wow

now there’s a second comic that seems almost identical to her first comic from an earlier volume. this accountant guy is complaining that she’s lost them so much money

she can apparently grow from her normal size up to about 67 and a half feet. and that’s it. nothing in between

aside from that slight bit of additional detail, this is literally the exact same comic strip from before. I want those twenty seconds of my life back damn it