#which is not like the worst but it annoys me specifically bc my memory is bad but I like having consistent tagging for posts I make

[gaydryad]

new update also eradicating all icons alongside posts on my dash. also seems that they update how the dashboard url works for if you have infinite scroll off, which is BAD bc non-unique urls == more easy to lose your place (this is a problem if you are me specifically bc sometimes a bitch needs to reset the cache with a hard reload and if the url isn't unique I'm going to lose my place !! this is a problem for no one who isn't me (using a version of chrome (dont @ me) that is from 2021 (DON'T @ ME) (I KNOW)) but hrrmf rude.)

[headless-horsepossum]

ENORMOUS. ENORMOUS RELIEF. THIS IS MY FAVORITE NECKLACE AND IT HAS BEEN GONE FOR ALMOST A MONTH AND IM SO SO RELIEVED TO FIND HAVE FOUND IT AGAIN

...ykw. relatable Adult With ADHD story under the cut bc it really feels. Emblematic Of The Struggle.

So I was packing for a trip sometimes toward the beginning of July, and I specifically thought to myself, "this is my favorite necklace and it would be difficult if not impossible to replace, therefore I should not take it with me on this trip."

Now. Because I am Sick, in both head and body, my bedroom is a disaster and has been for years. The ONE, literally the ONLY, organizational victory I have had is: when I am getting ready for bed, if I remember to take off my necklace, I hang it from the empty doorframe in the middle of my room. (Old houses are weird.) I have tried over and over again to establish Places For Things, and it was never worked, EXCEPT that the doorframe is where my necklaces live. Other jewelry (or necklaces too short for the doorframe)? Gone, always, I have like three jewelry boxes and it probably isn't in any of them, there are three dozen places it could be. But the doorframe is visible no matter where in my room I am standing, and I like the way my necklaces look hanging from it, so if I 1.) Get undressed in my bedroom and 2.) Remember to take my necklace off before bed, I Usually, More Often Than Not, remember to put it back on the doorframe. And as mentioned this necklace is my Favorite, so I have an even better chance of remembering to put it back on the doorframe when I take it off.

HOWEVER.

Obviously when I got home from my trip it was not hanging from the doorframe.

So, okay, annoying, but in no way unexpected; I Have ADHD. Which means I have a shortlist of other places I Sometimes Put Things when i... wasn't standing directly under the doorframe, I guess, or wasn't looking directly at it, or got undressed in the bathroom instead of the bedroom, or whatever.

But it... isn't in any of those places, either. It's not in the bathroom and it's not on the bookshelf and i moved all the piles on my dresser enough to be pretty sure it's not there either. And here's the absolute worst part is that I REMEMBER having the thought 'I should not put this in my suitcase I don't want to lose it' and then... nothing. This is where the memory ends.

Which means that now I'm standing in my bedroom trying to reverse engineer what I might have done when I had that thought, and it's like...... well OBVIOUSLY. In RETROSPECT. what ANYONE ON EARTH would do. Is put the treasured object back WHERE IT GOES, RIGHT AWAY, because doing ANYTHING ELSE would be STUPID. But okay, I was thinking about not losing it, I have been wanting to start using my jewelry box more, maybe I put it there. (I did not put it there.) Okay, I thought I remembered Thinking This Thought in my bedroom, but maybe I was in the bathroom, I keep a jewelry box in there specifically for that, maybe it's in there. (It is not in there.) O-kay, maybe I took it off downstairs and my father put it away in his Pre-Trip Cleaning Frenzy! I'm... I'm pretty sure this would have happened before he cleaned, so that doesn't really make sense, but maybe it's in one of his many Hiding Places and this isn't really my fault after all! (No it isn't and yes it is.)

And now I'm opening the bathroom drawers and ransacking parts of my room I know I haven't touched in months and checking the kitchen cabinets because surely, surely I put it SOMEWHERE on PURPOSE.

Because if I DIDNT do that. Then I HAD THE THOUGHT. 'I don't want to lose this.' And then immediately Did The Thing. Where I stopped thinking about it while it was still in my hand and put it down I a random place because I wasn't thinking about it. Like a dumb idiot baby.

Because i am TWENTY NINE YEARS OLD. And I KNOW that my actual least favorite feeling is 'this beloved object is lost forever bc of 30 seconds of inattention. I paid attention to it for hours or days or years and I thought about how much I liked it and how I wouldn't want to lose it and I did it all right except for ONE 30 second window where I just Stopped Thinking. It was just ONE slip up, and NOW I remember how much I like that object so if I could do those thirty seconds over again I would do it RIGHT and it wouldn't even be HARD, and I would do ANYTHING to go back in time for JUST those thirty seconds and it doesn't matter how much I want that and how much that object mattered to me because the past is FIXED and I can Never Not Have Messed Up And Forgotten It.' I could instantly without trying come up with three other times I have done that, including one when I was in first grade and one when in 2019. Nothing makes me more crushingly, existentially upset than Losing Things. And the thing about ADHD is that I can know that, know that it's a mistake I often make and that I am Devastated when I make it... and that Does Not Keep Me From Doing It. At All. My parents and teachers and all the Adults around me as a kid, after they were done yelling at me for being irresponsible and not caring enough about my things, would sigh and say that At Least I had Learned my Lesson, and then I DIDNT. Not only was I as lazy and careless and spoiled as they said, I was even dumber and lazier and MORE careless because I DIDNT LEARN ANYTHING!!!! I KEPT DOING IT!!!! I AM ALMOST THIRTY AND I STILL CANT KEEP TRACK OF MY TOYS! WHY CANT I GROW THE FUCK UP????

Anyway. This one wasn't as bad as all that, obviously. For one thing as you can see I did actually find it again, for once, and in fact discovered that, while I had indeed not put it Where It Goes, I had put it in one of the very first places I checked, but by the time I checked there it had already fallen on the floor between my dresser and my bed. (One of the other advantages to the Doorframe Necklace Hanger is that it is Cat Proof, unlike literally any other place in my room.) Also because I knew I hadn't taken it with me I was pretty confident it was in my room somewhere and if I ever scrape together the executive function and Good Pain Days to clean the goddamn place I'd almost certainly find it eventually. So this incident was limited to only muted existential horror and self hatred. But every thing I have ever lost through inattention still deeply haunts me, so there was always going to be some level of deep soul wrenching dread, even if I successfully mitigated some of it this time.

Anyway. This got away from me, obviously, but the point is this: if this pattern is familiar to you, know that I am grasping your hand firmly, nodding in stoic solidarity, and saying gruffly, 'doesn't this shit fucking suck so bad at least we're in this hell together.'

And if you are a friend or a lover or, MOST ESPECIALLY, a PARENT, and your friend/partner/child is constantly losing and/or forgetting stuff. Just. Yk. Be Patient With Us, We're In Hell

[mamawasatesttube]

For the ask game: 1, 3, 4 and 5 👀👀

1. the character everyone gets wrong

okay so obviously kon. do i even need to say that one? that's a gimme on this blog i think so actually i'm gonna go for a second option and also say bart. he is also such a victim of the pendulum of wrong opinions (one incorrect fanon idea gains traction; people react by going entirely too far the other way). he isn't a complete idiot with the mentality of a toddler, but he's not a super genius that everyone just unfairly dunks on either. like, he's incredibly smart, but he is incredibly bad at applying his smarts without a very specific sort of guidance (which is also why he's not a good leader or strategist).

3. screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr

i shan't screencap but MAN are there so many contenders lskdjflkds

a) every single post that says kon (or any other character often shipped with a bat, but i'm a kon blog so that's the main one for me) would ever be afraid of any of the other bats, particularly jason and bruce. PARTICULARLY jason gets me. like. at least kon has been shown to generally respect bruce but JASON??? don't make me laugh.

b) someone making jokes about the titans calling dick a loser with no self-respect for going back to his abusive father. i generally dont like when bruce is written as an abusive parent but the idea of specifically going with that version of bruce just to crack really fucking mean jokes about dick being abused by a parent? HUGE yikes from me scoob, blocked op and blacklisted their url for that one <3

c) every single anon who tried to persuade me that no no geoff made some points with the 50-50 retcon :|

i'm CERTAIN there's more i just have a shit memory and it's better that way sdfjkjsdkj

4. what was the last straw that made you finally block that annoying person?

god i block people all the time. this morning i blocked someone on ao3 bc they were leaving comments on sotm where they picked out like... 7-10 sentences to highlight per chapter but ONLY ones about dick jason and tim. which is impressive. because of how it's a kon fic. but by the third comment of this i got mildly annoyed so bam block button my bestie it is

5. worst discord server and why

i am in no fandom discords unless you count the small friend gc type and it will in fact remain that way <3 in the words of bilbo baggins, i don't know half of you half as well as i should like, and i like less than half of you half as well as you deserve. or something like that.

"choose violence" ask game

[twinkubus]

Odds for the oc questions - for whichever you want to answer them for. They all sound v cool!

What memory would your OC rather just forget? cop out buut i answered this for lace🤪 will be answering all these for diff chars so they each get some chances

What is your OC's fatal flaw? Are they aware of this flaw? obie- too hesitant/uncertain of themselves. they're semi-aware but mostly think their hesitancy is rational and they are just trying to be prepared. however there are some situations in which it is best to act!!

How far is your OC willing to go to get what they want? also answered for lace!!

What's one way your OC has changed since you first came up with them? all these guys are pretty new so....waiting on the answer! for prev guys tho i often love to change their gender and/or genre

Do you have a specific lyric or quote which you associate with your OC? sorry i have to say this for wilhelm & vega bc i have it on their spotify playlists: "I could have torn him limb from limb, as the lion rends the antelope. But my heart sunk within me as with bitter sickness, and I refrained." -- from Frankenstein (btw @congressofspirits specifically* if you would like to read wilhelm & vega DM me. i don't think i will ever finish it but i wrote most of it when i had just started hrt so like. 6 yrs ago now jeez. but it's kind of my gregory berrycone)

*(if we are mutuals you can also ask just ftr, but im not making it publically available)

What is your OC's weapon of choice? Have they ever actually used it? obie has a sword and HAS used it but prefers not to. would only do so if pressed. prince albert owns several pistols, his fave of which are [REDACTED bc author does not know enough about guns atm]

If you met your OC, would the two of you get along? i think i can generally "get along" with most people as long as they're not doing absolutely just wild or evil things. i think obie would annoy me irl. nile & nils i would be nervous to talk to since they're ALWAYS together and also always seem like they're in on some private joke. prince albert i would distrust but could work with as long as he asks civilly

Does your OC have a faceclaim? If so, who? prince albert:

nils:

will be drawing them all eventually haha i have some sketches lined up

What is the worst thing you have put your OC through story-wise? answered for nile!

How does your OC behave when enraged? nils will just Retreat, if he gets really angry he will go so still and silent, every word precise and calculated. nile can tell when he's mad but it's hard for others to

lace gets really mouthy and also sloppy with it like sometimes she has trouble stringing sentences togther and in more than one occasion, that's resulted in the people she's mad at making fun of her, which THEN will result in them getting gored by a horn or two. she may have assault charges. all reasonably provoked though.

[twopercentboy]

I could write shit on a wall

Sign it

And you'd still love it enough to

Unabashadly say I remind you of your favorite poet (something i will cherish till the universe lays flat)

Or love something so much it makes you talk about your life

Memories

Features

Maybe subconsciously you know how much i treasure these anecdotes

Or maybe youre just that beautiful

But I adore you

And your poor vision

PoetAnon

funny enough this one also very much reminds me of my favorite poet giggle the rhythm of the words and especially the parentheses asides, though I wonder if it may just also be a modern+queer poetry thing, like assumedly similar (queer and/or specifically queer American) cultural influences and while v technically speaking I don't know for sure, I'm going to jump to the assumption that this poetry is perhaps the teeniest tiniest bit queer 🤏 but knowing the way lots of modern queer poetry is written and writing good poetry are two separate things and ur definitely the latter

also makes me realize that ur writing all these poems for me and you probably don't even know my face, which is crazy to me that u saw the way I present myself on Tumblr (not that I'm Trying to present myself a specific way, more so that I don't post about myself much I suppose) and thought I was worth writing poems for, just based on the very limited anecdotes I make on posts or in tags

and another anecdote about my vision (I could honestly just go on and on and on bc I find vision in general pretty interesting): since ive had glasses since I was 3 or 4 I didn't quite realize just how bad my eyes are compared to ppl who don't need glasses until last year. like I had no frame of practical reference how other people see until a lab activity where we had to test our vision in different ways and I decided to do it without my glasses for funsies. I learned very quickly that without my glasses my depth perception is jack shit, which explains why I always have trouble with walls in the middle of the night, and I also realized how badly nearsighted I am without my glasses too. like yk the letter charts? well most ppl when standing 20 ft from it can read the 20/20 vision line (normal vision acuity), I could only read the 20/100 line with complete accuracy, which means i can see at 20 feet away what most people can see at 100 feet. and I was doing those tests with a bunch of my friends around so for the next like 3 weeks they kept bringing up how bad my eyes are, especially my very much lacking depth perception 💀 and the worst part is the depth perception test I mostly just guessed and hoped bc i couldnt really tell so its probably worse than that test showed. oh and I realized how bad/annoying my astigmatism is during this Christmas break bc we went to Austin and there are so many more cars there and I realized I could never drive at night in a big ish city bc the headlights would just be too much 😭

[ssruis]

@shiraishi--kanade Someone with better memory/sources than I have could probably list off more things but off the top of my head here’s some early wxs specific clpl poor planning moments/fuck ups:

> wxs’s one and only hakolim gave rui the bald treatment

> the only mixed focus emu had for like 4 years was barely focused on her and gave us some of the worst cards of the game

> on this holy night gave us what I think are objectively the worst cards in the game, had 2 VS 4*s, and no tsukasa card. “Well [x event] also had bad cards” look at rui’s trained from that event and tell me it isn’t genuinely awful.

> tsukasa 4* in Kamiyama high fes has no costume (forgivable bc they used to do this a lot. and also that trained card is so fugly I don’t want that costume anyways)

> no rui card in wms, which is made even funnier when they didn’t really know what costume to put him in for Tondemo-wonderz stuff so he’s just in the gay ass PIMH fit

> no tsukasa card in mermaid admiration. I’m sure other units also got the “let’s not invite someone” treatment in earlier events, but it’s funny that it happened to tsukasa twice.

> the first leaders event doesn’t have a tsukasa card (again I’m not mad this is Funny.)

> fucked up writing rmd. so badly.

> iirc they immediately proceeded to retcon parts of rmd in rui’s colofes card. I don’t think they’d even decided to keep rmd off ensekai yet. I think they’re just stupid. Smile.

> I think I’m the only person annoyed by this but it bothers me that nene is drawn in her regular casual clothes on her colofes card while rui got different clothes. I don’t know if they ever made that choice with another character, but I’m mad about it as someone who’s been collecting wxs outfits.

> nijiiro stories just doesn’t have tsukasa or emu at all. Booo.

> really funny and blatant plot hole in dollfes where it’s a major plot point that tsukasa forgot his phone at home but he somehow manages to come to the sekai anyways.

Anti slow song bias is so real I can get behind it... 🤝

I think njiro stories had Potential but ??? what happened there. But otherwise I agree with everything

Real… I listened near exclusively to emo as a kid & now my brain craves a fast bpm.

I like the little echo in realize during the chorus but I pretty much agree with that tier list

+ nijiiro was (iirc) commissioned before they had wrote on this holy night so I think “uhh Christmas” was all they had to go off of, but a lot of wxs comms that have next to nothing to do with the event are still peak so I think oster just fumbled. I do however blame clpl for the no tsukasa and emu thing I think it was a classic “early wxs thing falls victim to colopale not knowing how they wanted to do things yet” (gesturing at soad rui not getting a hairstyle).

[ot3-watch]

Episode 3: The Wedding Job

And so we begin the “The Network Fucked Up” saga with episode 7 which is SUPPOSED to be episode 3. 

Huge men drinking out of tiny teacups is hilarious and will never stop being so. 

Nate, stop being such a control freak. “I thought I pick the clients” DUDE CHILL

“No more, no less” honey you getting much more

“We’ll get back to you” FUCK YOU NATE

PARKER LOVES KIDS EPISODE 1

NATE IF YOU HAD FOUND THIS CASE YOU’D TAKE IT IN AN INSTANT YOU’RE JUST MAD YOU DIDN’T FIND IT

FBI!!! TAGGERT AND MCSWEETEN!! AHH OKAY I LOVE THEM

“They just need validation” BITCH ME TOO THE FUCK

TODAY IN THEY MAKE PEOPLE LOOK UNNECESSARILY STUPID

Hardison is so gregarious it’s so amazing to watch

“I don’t have to type anything right” oh my god

TAPES! “HARDISON HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO WALK OUT OF THE FBI OFFICES WITH A BOX FULL OF TAPES?” “pUNCH someBODY!” “oh I’m gonna PUNCH SOMEBODY” God i love them

Jersey Boys I can’t, it’s terrible guys. Do mobsters have no taste

Oh look, it’s that woman who’s in EVERYTHING

What is Parker wearing on her head

Everyone talks about bridezillas, but no one talks about mother of the bridezillas. 

WHY DIDN’T THEY HIRE A WEDDING PLANNER IN THE FIRST PLACE

SOPHIE FOCUSING ON HER PERSONAL PROBLEMS WITH NATE INSTEAD OF THE JOB EPISODE 1

ELIOT THE CHEF EPISODE 1

HOLY SHIT I LOVE HIM

ELIOT GETTING TOO ATTACHED TO HIS COVER STORY AND FORGETTING ABOUT THE JOB EPISODE 1

He’s so mad that she doesn’t like it I lovehim I LOVE HIM I FUCKING LOVE ELIOT SPENCER

“Imagine if we had bugs planted all over the house” WHY THE FUCK DON’T YOU

How the fuck is the dress so ugly? WHY IS THAT WHAT THEY WANT? WHO WEARS PINK RUCHED SATIN WITH BLUE FLOWERS

I mean, other than, like, me @6 years old. But really, no one should be wearing the clothes I wore at 6 years old. 

Also it’s just.. the worst length. Like if it was a long dress it might be better. 

Nate the pastor episode 1

God that future son in law seems like a dream guy I love him

Maria Moscone deserves better than her scumbag parents let’s be real

SOPHIE TAKING THINGS TOO PERSONALLY AND GETTING THE WAY OF THE JOB

THIS!!! THIS IS WHY THE NETWORK ORDER MAKES NO SENSE!!! THIS HERE’S AN AIMEE REFERENCE BUT IF THEY’D ALREADY DONE THE TWO HORSE JOB, HARDISON WOULD’VE KNOWN ABOUT HER AND NOT ASKED

“What did you do?” “Me? I liberated CROATIA!” *angry apple bite* i CAN’T I LOVE HIM

DO PEOPLE NOT KNOW PARKER ISN’T A BRIDESMAID? HOW IS THAT DRESS FOOLING ANYONE

Hardison in love with Parker is so pure

… Okay but shouldn’t maria and blonde n’ bitchy know that Parker isn’t a bridesmaid? Wouldn’t the other bridesmaids know? Why does no one in the wedding party question ANYTHING?

HARDISON’S SCARF THOUGH

WHY IS HER MOTHER WEARING WHITE?? WHO WEARS WHITE TO A WEDDING WTF

MARIA MOSCONE DESERVES BETTER

SOPHIE FUCK OFF!! WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS RIGHT NOW?? THIS ISN’T IMPORTANT SOPHIE!! SOPHIE STOP IT!! SOPHIE SHUT UP!

M A R I A M O S C O N E D E S E R V E S B E T T E R

The Butcher of Kiev is the best subplot of this episode but HOW THE FUCK DID THEY ALL KNOW HE AND ELIOT HAD A PAST

Sophie is so fucking annoying in this episode I hate her right now

THESE PEACHES AREN’T GONNA POACH THEMSELVES PARKER

OH MY GOD NATE SHUT UP

NATE SHUT UP

NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR THIS NATE

SHUT THE FUCK UP NATE

THIS ISN’T ABOUT YOU NATE

“In my day, no one would do business at their daughter’s wedding” WELL THEN DON’T DO BUSINESS 

Parker’s face smushed against the glass is great

Ahh yes, you don’t get the money so you SHOOT THE BRIDE. Because THAT’s not gonna cause a scene and get you arrested. 

OK be honest is there anyone who was surprised by the wife being responsible? Bc I’m not

Eliot’s face is like “TFW the guy whose face you burned shows up at a wedding you’re supposed to be pretending to but actually are catering with a cleaver and backup and the overwhelming urge to kill you”

I know that’s super specific but that’s what it is

Parker’s really good at playing drunk

But also, why did they not question what she was doing behind the curtain

Like she just happened to appear after they were finished talking about VERY ILLEGAL THINGS and they aren’t at all suspicious?

Also, Parker using Hardison as a cover is just… I love it. 

You’re laughing. Eliot brought a whisk to a knife fight and you’re laughing. 

The saddest part is Eliot has any sort of cooking implement. You should be terrified right now

Okay so let me get this straight. A guy is StrANGLING you, you get your hands on a rolling pin, and your instinct isn’t, “hey, I can use this rolling pin to clobber him over the head,” the instinct is “Let me use this rolling pin to get my hands on the appetizers?” Like, yes, lemon juice, but also ROLLING PINS ARE HEAVY AND YOU COULD AT LEAST KNOCK THE GUY OUT

But no, let me shove fucking MUSHROOMS in his eyes because otherwise how else would we get the symmetry of the butcher yelling “IT BUUUURRRNNNNSS” both times he fights Eliot

And then he uses the fucking serving tray to bonk him on the head INSTEAD OF THE DUCKING ROLLING PIN

LIKE SERIOUSLY HAVE YOU EVER USED A ROLLING PIN AS A WEAPON

I’M NOT SAYING I HAVE BUT OUCH

Like, just… If I had a choice between being hit over the head with a thin sheet of metal or a log of wood with metal inside it, I’d pick the sheet, because at least that one has some give. 

“It’s the lemon juice” How does Eliot make that sound badass

“You just kill a guy with an appetizer?” How the FUCK WOULD YOU KNOW THAT??

WHY DOES NO ONE ASSUME A ROLLING PIN WOULD BE AN OKAY WEAPON

Or like LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE IN THAT KITCHEN. THERE ARE CAST IRON PANS IN THAT KITCHEN. Or just liek… regular pans. HAVE YOU EVER DROPPED A NONSTICK PAN ON YOUR FOOT? IT FUCKING HURTS?? WHY IS THE APPETIZER YOUR FIRST INSTINCT NATE

Also, he’s clearly not dead. What the fuck

“I don’t know, maybe” I KNOW AND tHE ANSWER IS NO YOU OBVIOUSLY DIDN”T

...who honeymoons in Kansas? Is that a thing? 

They are a very cute couple i’ve gotta be honest

“Exactly what denomination are you reverend?” He isn’t

“You’re not Mary Poppins, youre a bitch” Okay pot. Okay. 

LITERALLY THAT FUCKING HANDBAG WOULD AHVE MADE A BETTER WEAPON THAN THE MUSHROOMS

How does Hardison remember all those numbers? He didn’t even hear a bunch of them, but he takes the book out so slowly? DOES HARDISON HAVE AN EIDETIC MEMORY? WHY IS THAT NOT A PLOT POINT MORE OFTEN

Like I’m just saying, someone tries to tell me their phone number more than 3-4 numbers at a time and I get confused. But hardison just… remembers

What happened to the cash? The daughter gets the fucking wedding present she DESERVES for putting up with her awful parents that’s what

Hardison appreciating Eliot’s cooking is EVERYTHING

“I left him five dollars for socks” Well everyone needs socks. 

Okay wait I just had a thought

If Nate isn’t an actual Reverend, is that marriage even legal? Does Nate just happen to also be a legally ordained minister? Did they have to get him an online ordainment? WhY did we not see that scene? WHAT IF HE’S NOT AND THEY AREN’T ACTUALLY MARRIED

And today on “I clearly think far too much about these things”

PARKER WIth KIDS IS EVERYTHING

Eliot cooking for his family I love it

ELIOT IN A TANK TOP I LOVE IT

Was Eliot’s arms the most important part of this scene? Probably not

Is it the only thing I care about? ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY

I”M A SIMPLE GIRL AND HE HAS VERY NICE ARMS OKAY

Final thoughts: 9/10. I love this episode so much guys. Points off because really who the fuck wears white to a wedding. I know that’s the point but its very off putting. Also for the bridesmaid dresses because they were ugly as sin. Actual point off for the wife secretly being awful. Very predictable, ew. Extra points for Chef!Eliot. Extra points for Eliot’s arms. Points off for Nate and Sophie being completely insufferable. Extra points for Parker being great in this episode. Points off for the FUCKING ROLLING PIN YES I’M STILL ANGRY DONT @ ME. Extra points for Eliot killing a man with an appetizer because it’s still funny. Extra points for no IYS or Sam references THANK THE FUCKING LORD. Or, at least, if there was, i didn’t notice, meaning it wasn’t egregious so whatever. So yeah, anyway I really fucking love this episode. 

IYS Count: 2/3

Sam Count: 2/3  AND WE ARE ALL BETTER OFF FOR IT

[bi-demon-ium]

37. have you ever been the principal's office 👀

OKAY SO. technically this was the vice principal both times i think but i'm not sure. either way. yes. two times in my memory.

the first time is short and funny, so i will leave it above the cut:

namely. i was a hyper adhd Gifted Child(TM). i was generally unusual, loud, fast, annoying, etc. very hyperactive and weird, generally the school freak, etc. however. amazingly. this led to someone genuinely and actually reporting me (in like, MIDDLE SCHOOL) for being on drugs. like, cocaine drugs, or meth, or whatever, not even just like "that kid got some weed". and me, despite being a weird-ass little bitch, being this like. goody two shoes nerd too awkward to actually do anything remotely "bad", having never even Seen A Weed Before, was just like huh

literally the principal called me in and was like [obviously not serious about this] okay do you do drugs

and i was like "..........what? no????" and he was like "yeah i didn't think so. okay, go back to class"

which. amazing.

the SECOND story is the far more memorable one and is also far less funny and more just like ah! fun fact! so i'll put it below the cut.

so STORYTIME! my high school vice principal fuckin hated me and the feeling was mutual. that guy was a huge bag of dicks, enormously prickish, always insisted on calling me specifically out in particular on dumb shit (no hats indoors, so if i didn't take my hat off the instant i got inside instead of just. when i was allowed to go to my locker. he'd get on my ass even tho DEADASS HE NEVER DID THIS TO ANYONE ELSE IN MY HEARING even when there were other people with hats on, one time he made me take off my hat while i had arms full of two trays of cupcakes and did NOT offer to help and they got mildly squished in the struggle) and he was just generally the worst

now one day, my spanish teacher--and that's a whole other can of worms we don't have time for, but let's just say while i don't hate him as a person, he was deeply insufferable and definitely at least lightly sexist--basically made some comment that was kind of sexist. it was something about how he would accept friend requests from male students after they graduated but not female, lest anyone get ideas, which like. i kind of get where he was coming from, being cautious and all, it's not like i was calling for the guy to be burned at the stake, i just pointed out it was a little sexist and heteronormative to presume that, and i wasn't even mad, i was just kinda like "HA! SEXIST, DUDE!" because that was kind of the energy you know? i don't think i'm explaining this well, but the point is, i made a very offhand comment about my teacher being sexist.

end of the school day i'm told to stay after school and go to the vice principal's office. he proceeds to close the door behind me and ask me why i'm trying to ruin a good man's career. i'm talking full lecture about me trying to get him fired, about me being irresponsible and stupid and selfish, intimidation factor through the roof, tells me not to accuse anyone like this ever again, etc. (also, apparently i didn't make a jibe at him being sexist but in fact "grabbed my chest and yelled SO YOU WOULDN'T FRIEND ME BECAUSE OF THESE? which i promise you i didn't do, it's possible i misremembered and said something like so you wont accept a friend request from someone because they have tits MAYBE but i definitely would not have grabbed my chest and made a lewd gesture because despite being closeted i was very aware of my Transness and VERY self-conscious about it, so like. i KNOW that was a lie and idk here that came from bc my spanish teacher was a prick but i don't think he'd lie about that for no reason either, and i never asked him, so. not sure what was up with that actually)

anyway like in retrospect, even only days later, i was spitting mad, like, i wasn't even that serious nor had i accused him of anything or like, spread it around or something (if i was going to try and make him out to be a sexist prick maybe i'd talk about him 100 percent seriously planning to give away his tiny daughter's future hand in marriage for a truck, okay) but you should never react to someone saying "my teacher is ___" with "never accuse anyone of anything ever again" and so on, but like, at the time, this was big scary authority figure man with power over me and my life is yelling at me and i'm trapped alone in a room with him" so i was like. full in tears. and i do not cry easily. i remember just coming out of there trying incredibly hard not to cry and i sat down waiting for my mom to pick me up and the secretary deadass was like oh my god are you okay and i was like [fully about to have an emotional breakdown] [doesn't answer] so she offered me a muffin. i think i said no because i don't like a lot of muffins and i was crying too hard to eat anyway but i appreciated the thought, she seemed very concerned/confused at the teenager dissolving into tears in a chair near her desk

anyway i heard a few weeks ago he got fired for being a dick to some kids or something lmao

[tabriscadash]

I was asked this on my old blog right as I set about transitioning to this one, so...

The first character I ever fell in love with: for DA:O, dare I say Daveth? What can I say -- I irrationally got incredibly attached to him. otherwise, DEFINITELY Morrigan, and I have crystal clear memories of my first run through Lothering and looking at Morrigan like 😍 the whole time. For DA:2/E, Carver -- unless you count Anders & Justice since I knew of them from Awakening beforehand, in which case probably Justice. For DA:I, it’s a toss-up between Vivienne or Cole -- I technically liked Cole first but SPECIFICALLY in the supporting material (Asunder), and didn’t vibe with him anywhere near as much in the game, AND I got him as a companion after I got Vivienne, so probably Vivienne.

A character that I used to love/like, but now do not: for DA:O, I guess Oghren? I never loved him, but I liked the idea of him because I really liked the dwarves/Orzammar side of DA’s worldbuilding -- but he’s such an unlikeable character that I just.. don’t vibe with him at all. I debate recruiting him every single time now, and I don’t think I ever do his personal quest (in the base game OR Awakening). for DA:2/E, I don’t really have anyone that fits -- but I REALLY wanted to like Merrill and Aveline more than I did, and especially in Aveline’s case, I can’t stand her and genuinely think she’s the unintended, secret Big Bad of the whole game. for DA:I, probably Cole, bc I was really into the idea of a little walking-corpse serial killer animated by a spirit as per the book, but that’s not really the vibe in DA:I, and combined with the somewhat patronising/ableist language and how significantly he is infantilised (including by the fandom) I just got put off him. I do still like him, but not as much.

A ship that I used to love/like, but now do not: for DA:O, I don’t really have one? I guess see my DA:I answer, lol... for DA:2/E, has to be Anders - I don’t think he’s OOC in 2, but I think his writing does so little with him and he feels v. reductive. Where his relationship could be SO interesting and angsty, it instead is written in a really dull and/or cringey way. It would have been nice to see Anders more like the Anders of Awakening near the beginning of the game (rather than random, infrequent and questionably rare snippets), and then see the progression of his relationship with Justice as the game went on -- I want more interesting abominations, PLEASE. for DA:I, listen I cannot express to you HOW EXCITED I was for my planned Lavellan to romance Sera… also I used to be way more tolerant of Cullen x Amell/Surana ships because, like, hey dark ships are fun, right? But since Cullen’s ~wholesome whitewash~ in DA:I, and his fandom clamouring to absolve him of any wrongdoing ever.. it’s boring to me.

My ultimate favourite character™: for DA:O, probably Sten? or Morrigan. They’re both fantastic, and also are significant comfort chars for me. for DA:2/3, honestly, probably my own Hawke -- I feel so hugely proud of her, and can’t imagine I’d enjoy the game anywhere near as much had I not played it as my Hawke. If not her, maybe Sebastian or Carver? for DA:I, I really love Vivienne, as well as Blackwall, and Solas is a great character even if I probably would not say I liked him.

Prettiest character: for DA:O, we all know it’s Zevran. for DA:2/E, I think Aveline -- although her aggressively bland colour-scheme lets her down in a major way (although I respect her dedication to all orange all day every day). There’s just something about her arms -- very Abby from TLOU:2. for DA:I, maybe Josephine? Ser Barris is very pretty, too...

My most hated character: for DA:O, I really didn’t like Alistair, Wynne and Oghren, and of my companions - Oghren is probably my least favourite. He’s vulgar and also profoundly uninteresting. for DA:2/E, it has to be Aveline. There’s just something about ineptitude and a complete, wilful refusal to take accountability for your actions that I can’t stand. It would be okay if it was an intentional character flaw, but the game/narrative treats her like she’s lawful good and it really annoys me. for DA:I, maybe Iron Bull? He was a huge disappointment for me. I also really dislike Sera, Cassandra, and Varric. I’m so sick of Varric - I never want to see him again.

My OTP: for DA:O, I really loved Zevran’s romance -- but I am also very amused by the fact that Leliana got to ‘love’ status with Kallian accidentally, AND I got the ‘love’ glitch for Justice (👀) and Velanna. I do sometimes wonder about an AU where Kallian is forced to make a politically expedient marriage with Nathaniel Howe for diplomatic reasons in order to consolidate her position as Arlessa, and it being an entirely platonic arrangement (it’s not like anyone expects an heir from an infertile Grey Warden) -- and maybe Zev and Nate kiss sometimes, who knows? I also LOVE my Darkspawn Chronicles AU where Kallian and Nelaros are a happy, married couple each hiding their skills with weapons from each other like dumb, cute sweethearts. They shelter Zevran when he fails to kill Alistair and a poly couple evolves. for DA:2/E, I love the IDEA of a Seb romance that isn’t so strictly conditional around the structures that abused him -- he should be allowed to love, chastely or otherwise, but free from the Chantry OR his position as prince/heir. I’d LOVE to actually have a romance with him where you can actually challenge the abuse he’s experienced. for DA:I, Malika doesn’t have a canon romance (although I think when I replay, I’m going to romance Josephine!) but I think Blackwall has an amazing romance. Solas’ is also iconic, it must be said. 

My NOTP: for DA:O, I really dislike Alistair in a shipping capacity; he’s immature and says a lot of misogynistic shit and I don’t think he’s the worst for it, but I don’t really vibe with shipping him, having played the game as a female city elf. for DA:2/E, I wouldn’t say I have one, particularly? although I really dislike Aveline’s relationship with her husband simply because it seems incredibly inappropriate, given that they work together and she has power over him -- and because I dislike her, generally, I don’t feel inclined to do something nice for her. for DA:I, I suppose Sera/Lavellan -- although I’m not AGAINST it, it just really isn’t for me, having attempted it. I also don’t really vibe with Dorian x Iron Bull. Something abt the way the game handled BDSM and their relationship banter specifically I don’t really like.

Favourite episode quest: for DA:O, probs Orzammar/the Deep Roads. I really love the dwarven lore! and, of course, Fort Drakon is really funny, even though it’s not canon in my game iirc. for DA:2/E, maybe the murder mystery with the serial killer, where ultimately Leandra dies? I also really enjoyed all the companion quests. for DA:I, The Descent (just, all of it, lmao) and everything to do with the Avvar. Crestwood also BANGED.

Saddest death: for DA:O, it’s frankly a fucking INJUSTICE that Shianni gets murdered if you make her Bann of the Alienage -- the idea of that happening whilst Kallian is in Amaranthine and unable to protect her :( genuinely very upsetting. I go back and forth on who is made Bann, tbf, so idk how canonical it is: I think maybe Cyrion would get it, but I’m also endeared to Soris holding the position, with Shianni as Hahren. for DA:2/E, Bethany. I wish both twins had had the chance to reach Kirkwall :(. Let Leandra die instead. for DA:I, maybe not the saddest death, but the most memorable for me was that one sleeping dragon in the Hissing Wastes.. leave her alone. Stay out of a womans’ business.

Favourite season game: DA:O!

Least favourite season game: DA:I.

Character that everyone else in the fandom loves, but I hate: for DA:O, Alistair. I cannot deal with his complacency and hypocrisy. for DA:2, I really disliked Merrill but I honestly cannot remember why. DEFINITELY Varric -- I hated how the game forces you to be his best friend, and if you’re low approval, you have to endure these pointless pissy little comments with this little anti-dwarf centrist pissant. After the expedition, I literally have no reason to put up with him, and I NEVER take him out. I hate that he plays the same role in DA:I, too. for DA:I, the Iron Bull was hugely disappointing, and I also really don’t vibe with Cassandra. She just seems very wishy-washy and complacent and hypocritical, and many of her comments about other cultures seem snide for literally no reason other than bigotry. 

My ‘you’re a piece of trash, but you’re still a fave’ fave: for DA:O, lbr probably Sten. Mans is gonna launch a HORRIFYING invasion in the next game iirc and frankly, I’m ok with it. Just wanna see that big bastard again ❤🥵. for DA:2/E, I LOVE Gamlen, ok? for DA:I, I am not sure if I have one.

My ‘beautiful cinnamon roll who deserves better than this’ fave: for DA:O, if any of you so much as LOOK at Velanna wrong, it’s hands. That includes Bioware. I also feel incredibly protective of and sad for Morrigan. for DA:2/E, probably Sebastian -- I feel so sad for him, and so frustrated by the limitations with the game. for DA:I, I’m honestly not sure.. maybe Josephine? I don’t really feel this way about Sera, but I do think she deserves better from the game and its writing, and also from fandom: there are valid criticisms of her, but the hate she gets is not proportional to any valid issues with her -- and gee, I wonder why that is.

My ‘this ship is wrong, nasty, and makes me want to cleanse my soul, but i still love it’ ship: for DA:O, I did use to find Cullen x Surana/Amell intriguing as a dark ship -- I actually hc that Neria Surana is actually Nelaros’ sister, and have dabbled with it as a dark ship. I also am interested in Loghain/Alistair - which each pretends the other is someone else. Alistair is wooby, hate ships are, in general, fun -- so long as we acknowledge that they are, indeed, unhealthy ships. for DA:2/E, I kind of feel like Sebastian romances are, invariably, kind of dark... and, similarly, Anders romances -- especially with certain red Hawkes, The way it ends is, invariably, bordering on fucked up. ALSO Hawkecest is weird and wonderful: GET WITH IT. 

My ‘they’re kind of cute, and I lowkey ship them, but I’m not too invested’ ship: for DA:O, I joked about Velanna x Leliana once and I’ve not been able to stop thinking about it ever since… Velanna x Sigrun is also something that can be so personal. Ariane x Finn is adorable and are paid DUST by Bioware AND fandom. I actually am really into Anora x Nathaniel & NO I will NOT explain myself; it’s a crackship but it’s MY crackship. for DA:2/E, Isabela x Fenris is super cute, but I don’t pay enough attention to them to really have super committed thoughts & feelings on them. for DA:I, Blackwall x Josephine is cute as a background ship; I also think Maryden x Cole is sweet.

[dead-byte]

I kinda… maybe wanna play a Final Fantasy game? Maybe? I know it’s probably weird for me to say as a JRPG buff, but my relationship with the series is very complicated.

I’ve never really been that interested in it, and I’ve tried to get into it multiple times just bc I feel like FF is that franchise every JRPG enthusiast needs to play as a right of passage or smth, but every time, I just couldn’t get invested at all.

… that is, until my old boss badgered me to play Final Fantasy VII Remake, and I loved it. I’d never had that much fun with a Real-Time Action RPG before.

So… I kinda want to give the franchise another shot, but I don’t know where to start, bc I’ve played several of them, and couldn’t get into them for specific reasons.

I’d heard from numerous sources that 10 was the best entry for beginners to the franchise, so I picked it up on PS3 forever ago, and the story pacing was just way too slow and confusing for me, and while I liked the combat well enough, it felt pretty vanilla to me as far as turn-based combat is concerned, and didn’t really motivate me to keep playing.

I’ve tried the original FF7, and I kind of liked what I played, but overall, the game just really didn’t age well, and I got really annoyed with the clunky UI, how difficult it was to navigate all the low-resolution maps where doors and pathways are often too LQ to discern, and the lack of direction on where I’m supposed to be going ( I hope Ever Crisis comes to Switch eventually, bc I think I’d really enjoy that ).

I tried 15 as well, and I actually quite enjoyed what I played. I think I just got interested in other titles and never went back to 15, but I don’t generally have any major complaints on my experience with that.

For what it’s worth, I’ve tried Kingdom Hearts too, and just… really didn’t enjoy it. I played through the entirely of the first game, which was a thoroughly unpleasant slog the entire way through, mostly bc of how clunky and stilted the combat was. Then I moved on to Re: Chain of Memories, and hated that even more. I’ve heard it gets better as the series progresses, but given what I know about KH’s story and how important it is to consume all the games to understand what’s going on in later entries, I really don’t want to go back to Chain of Memories. That game is like “Hey! What if we took all the worst qualities of the first game, and made them much, much worse. Also, we’re adding card game mechanics to a real-time combat system, bc fuck you”.

I think… I need new RPG to play

IDK what’s wrong w/ me lately, but I’ve been so uninterested and burnt out on a lot of the RPG franchises I usually obsess about ( Fire Emblem, Xenoblade, Persona/SMT, Octopath Traveler, Pokemon, Megaman Battle Network, among others ), but I’ve been trying to play them and I’m just so uninvested in them lately. It feels like nothing new that I’m interested in has come out lately, and I could really use a fresh new RPG title.

And I don’t mean just any title. I need something I can just chew the hell out of. Something I can go absolutely feral for. Not just any cookie-cutter fantasy plot, but characters, stories, and gameplay that will have me frothing at the mouth as I play.

Y’all got any suggestions? Particularly any for the Switch?

I generally mostly enjoy turn-based RPG’s. I’m not opposed to real-time action ( like Nier: Automata ) or a hybrid ( Xenoblade ), but I really prefer turn-based RPG’s. Tactical RPG’s are good too ( Fire Emblem, Valkyria Chronicles, Shining Force ).

[you-have-made-a-fatal-error]

Could you rank the Nancy Drew games from your least favorite to favorite?? I’d love to know!

ok! in the form of a tier list bc otherwise i’m sitting around arguing w myself about whether i should rank game x at 22 or 23 or 24 etc etc- and that’s just a mess tbh

untouchable tier: scarlet hand and shadow ranch - tbh i enjoy scarlet hand just a little bit more BUT. on the whole. these two - all the elements that make up these games work together to create a whole greater than the disparate parts. and also having a ‘super extra god-tier’ would be dumb. so we have two.

real güd games: ghost dogs, deception island, blue moon canyon, castle malloy (fight 🔪🔪🔪 me), shadow at the water’s edge, alibi in ashes - all build a strong atmosphere but each for whatever reason doesn’t make me see god. alibi in ashes maybe a touch lower than the rest but only just.

(you might have noticed that i have crystal skull straddling tiers 2&3 - look i know that i like it but it has been a long long time since i’ve gone back to it - for no reason really except that it’s not currently installed on my pc and installing it would involve.. you know.. waiting until it’s installed? anyway it’s there bc i don’t trust my memory on this)

tier 3 games i enjoy but know are flawed: og secrets can kill (self-explanatory really), treasure in a royal tower (because honestly i’ve played it so many times the atmosphere doesn’t really build for me anymore, it’s too automatic and too easy to race through now i know how it’s progression works), blackmoor manor (i just - this game has a lot of elements that don’t quite come together nicely for me. some of them are just a bit too much i think. it’s not even that i don’t enjoy them - but maybe silly ghost hunt AND serious gaslighting AND witchy alchemical shit AND a snarky parrot are too much for just one game?? i understand WHY there are huge tonal shifts bc don’t wanna get too dark n scary in what it ultimately a kids game - but they can be. a bit much.), kapu cave (which i tbh kind of love, but i’m not gonna argue it’s top-teir quality - aside from quigley i mean), and trail of the twister (lot of fucking annoying characters, little to no snooping - but i kind of enjoy just about all of the tasks)

‘meh’ teir: haunted carousel, secret of the old clock, danger by design, phantom of venice, captive curse. captive curse could honestly be lower, but thing is anja is by far the most memorable bit and she’s also far and away the best bit? danger by design could maybe be higher, and then i remember it went ‘nazi romance’ with it’s historical backstory? but jj and the catacombs and honestly the vendors and weird minette- but nazi romance. also every time i play it i’m forced to contend with the fact that i absolutely owned heather’s brown-with-pink-pinstripe pants in ~2006 which is not something i like to revisit. haunted carousel, secret of the old clock, and phantom of venice are the games this tier was made for. there are good elements, sure. but there are also elements that are jarring and/or annoying as fuck.

if this tier list was a pass/fail course, this would be the line separating pass from fail.

‘nah bro’ tier / the ‘i could probably split this into several tiers’ tier: stay tuned for danger, message in a haunted mansion, the final scene - all feel weird to me, they don’t really jibe with the rest of the series. they very much yell “we’re still figuring this shit out”. which is fine and neccessary - but not what i’m looking for most of the time. at the time they were made stay tuned for danger and haunted mansion would pass, but we’re not there anymore. icicle creek is, well. honestly it’s ‘meh’ in it’s truest form, even though i called the last teir meh. the characters all kind of suck, tino the douche shows up again, you have to cook at specific times and that’s a bitch and a half. and there’s no big, stand out element that might bump it up a tier. i don’t actually hate fox and geese though. waverly academy is ass honestly, and if i had added a tier below this waverly would be in it. it’s not quite the worst, but ohmygod it seems to hate teen girls - who are also the target audience for the game, which makes it even worse tbh. and all the puzzles are shit. tomb of the lost queen just kinda sucks. i like it marginally better than waverly, and I do enjoy the hierogylph-decoding puzzles even though they’re absolute NONSENSE bc that type of puzzle appeals to me, but the characters are bad hotchkiss is bad the new interface is bad and i can’t use any of the 800 million oil lamps when nancy needs a light. bad. thornton hall and sea of darkness would be in the waverly tier below this one if i had added that extra tier. thornton hall has atmosphere but absolutely fucking nothing else and the writers straight up did not do their jobs, nothing makes any sense at all. the definition of fake deep tbh. but... atmosphere is enough to save it from the ‘utter shit’ tier below. sea of darkness has nothing going for it and then it had the gall to add chrismas bullshit as though it wasn’t a game released in MAY also I oppose the holidays in general, BUT at least they got a new fucking writer. still not great though.

THROW IT IN THE TRASH tier: secrets can kill: remastered - obvious trash. ransom of the seven ships - no suspects, terrible game mechanics, shittier version of loulou who was honestly already skating on thin ice with me - trash. deadly device - deirdre is shitty, the new interface is still bad, i can BARELY interact with the environment, the characters are nonsense, nothing is appealing, everyone has weird stick-thin gumby arms - TRASH. silent spy - TRASH and also NONSENSE, get your spy/international intruigue/terrorism out of my nancy drew game. alibi in ashes is prime nancy is personally involved in a case material, and spy is the fucking anti-ash. TRASH. labyrinth of lies - TRASH and NONSENSE and peak fake-deep nic-era dialogue - hopelessly up its own ass and doesn’t realise it actually has nothing to say. TRASH. shattered medallion - awful fucking nonsense, somehow nancy cares even less about her friends than she did in ransom, nothing means anything and no one has any clue how tv shows work. also, and i feel like this isn’t stressed enough, turns fuckin nancy into the type of person who would appear on a reality tv show. and why is bess even there? why would she be literally anywhere near this tv show production? it’s bad, it’s nonsensical, and it’s TRASH! throw all of these in the garbage, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

...and i left midnight in salem and the two dossiers out of the ranking bc i haven’t played them. (haven’t actually played secrets can kill 2 either but lbr i don’t need to in order to know it has no redeeming qualities)

erm. ta-daa?

[tora-the-cat]

Phantom Troupe Members in order of who I'd be least to most upset to see die

No one asked for it but I just want to be clear on my opinions on the phantom troupe and no one’s been able to stop me yet <3

Disclaimers:

a. if you like these characters then yes I think thats objectively funny but like. it doesn't make you a bad person, cringe culture dead, like what you like, I'm just someone on the internet, etc etc. go ahead and leave angry rants/dissmissive insults/'umm actually's/etc etc for me to not read anyway tho <3

b. I refuse to look up anything about them, including their names, because I don't care enough. And also because I'm going to spell their names from memory and then laugh when people correct me. So, like, know that I'm not messing up any of the names on purpose, and might not mess them up at all, but I'm not doing a joke or anything with the spelling I just really care that little

c. Also!! Mild manga spoilers?? idk why you would care because it's literally just about the phantom troupe but if that bothers u for some reason then goodbye have a nice day <3 this WILL spoil deaths that I'm pretty sure happened. Maybe. No I haven't read the manga I have ADHD and haven't properly hyperfixated on HxH since I was 13 and didn't know what Manga was.

d. I lied through my teeth! I'm a Gemini bitch, if someone somehow actually cares enough about my correct opinions about the goddamned phantom troupe to leave a mean comment I'm absolutely going to read it.e. also if u actually somehow want to talk about the phantom troupe in a civil way (excluding H*soka) PLEASE hit me up. I don't know if reasonable Phantom Troupe stans exisit but I assume they do and I promise I'm funny and nice and surprisingly conflict avoidant and I'd honestly luv 2 study u. I'm not mean the worst I'll do is ghost u I'm an Aquarius mars I swear <3

Hisoka. I hate this clown man so fucking much. Like he has funny moments I guess but it doesn't make up for how uncomfortable I am every time I see him. The rest of this list will be funnier because the rest of them are funny and obviously shiny plot devices and not much else, but the fact that this clown man is alive makes me so angry. Also there'd be no entertainment value left here after the emotional exhaustion I'd have complaining about Illumi and also I forgot he joined until just now, so I'm grouping these bitches together and moving on.

Chrolo Lucifer: this man is so funny purely on a fandom level. Like he has half the personality of a stale potato chip, but he's hot and does atrocities and pretends to have thoughts so he lives in everyone's head rent free any way. Not me tho because I'm sexy and cool. Anyway I want him dead purely because the reactions would be hilarious (on BOTH sides to be clear, because people celebrating his death would be almost as funny as people mourning it), it's what Kurapika and the Kurta's deserve, and there's literally no reason for him to exist other then to eventually die.

sphinx: he's just. really annoying. I can't back this up because I don't remember anything he does I just remember thinking he was annoying.

nobabunga: He was mean to the boys!!!!! It's a death sentence those are just the facts. He cried and I gave a nice good chuckle. I want him 2 die then never get mentioned again until Illumi offhandedly mentions that he's Kikyo's brother or cousin or somehting so Kalluto can inherit his swords. Not because they should use them just because I think Kalluto deserves swords and also it would inspire a wave of people caring about Nobaunga WAY too much (one group hating him on principal for being a member of the Zoldyk family, one group deciding he's a Big Brother Icon and reimagining him having a cute and hillariously out of character relationship with Illumi/Kalluto/Killua/Gon, and a mix of the two pumping out psycology breakdowns with entirely too much time and effort put into them, none of which I will watch but each of which will add a week onto my lifetime out of the pure amused euphoria of knowing they exist).

Franklin: Boring. He's in the phantom troupe he can do better then overplayed-frankenstein-aesthetic and bullet fingers. uninspired. At least everyone else sucks in an interesting way.

Uvo: I can't lie his fight scenes were actually pretty dope, and I HAVE to admit that it is HILARIOUS just how much work Togashi put into overpowering/hyping up Uvo, specifically so he could have an established baseline for exactly how incomprehensibly and overwhelmingly excessive Kurapika's will and hatred is. Also that demi lavato AMV of his and Kurapika's fight is just free dopamine. Glad he's dead but he was funny while it lasted and I can appriciate what he gave to the story.

boxing gloves. I know nothing about them (including their name). They might already be dead in the manga but I don't think so.

Pakunda. I don't know how to elaborate on her bc I don't care about her all that much but some part of me can't help but kind of like her a little? I dunno. her loyalty would almost be commendable if it wasn't to Chr*llo.

Pheiten. his character concept and design is literally 'what if we combined Levi and Aizawa and then made him super fucked up' which is impressive because he was made like two decades before either of them. can't justify putting him this far up the list either because he's honestly kinda boring and overplayed but he looks cool and he's funny in a 'what the fuck is wrong with you??' way so here he is.

Kortopi. No I won't elaborate. Yes I know they're dead and I have no significant emotions about this besides >:I

Shizuku. She's cute and she has ADHD and plinky(?) the vaccum is one my favorite nen-things in the show. I'd love to study her and I honestly like her a bit more then I want to.

Machi. I love her specifically because she hates Hisoka. That's all she needs to get a pass in my book. doesn't hurt that she has pink hair and the closest thing to resembling common sense in the group. If Hisoka kills her I'll riot because she doesn't deserve that but if anyone else does it that's fine.

shalnark should be the leader of the Spiders, there, I said it. he embodies them and their narritive purpose and their nonexistant philosophy and arbitrary but unshakable rules and their faux 'emotional depth and complexity' that so many people buy into. He's so funny I love him so much. Like cholo is out here trying to double major in philosophy and theology and fooling thousands into thinking theres a single thought in his head meanwhile Shalnark's only personality trait is being a buisness major with no empathy, and if he was in charge the phantom troupe would loose all of the ambiguity people somehow beleive they have. Like Shalnark is played so straight that I can't help but lowkey love him. Kurta theory is fun in a fucked up way like tfw u become emblamatic of the group you helped kill your clan and you didn't even know because you live in meteor city. Yes I know he's dead and yes it's the closest I've ever come to caring about the troupe and yes it took me three whole days to get over it. Not my best moment I'll admit.

For the record if Kalluto dies I'm going to have at least one mental breakdown. Fuck you.

[mousehole5000]

okay im rewriting tgcf (only in my head im lazy) here are my notes on hua/lian specifically this is long bc fuck it. major spoilers obviously and same trigger warnings as the content of the book

disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer that i dont know anything about the cultural background of anything in tgcf or story tropes etc etc this is just I Think It Would Be Neat If..

there’s not really any reason to keep hc as a kid in the backstory BUT in the story in the intro (which i like narratively) it still says that it was a child who xie lian caught. it’s one of those things that got added to the legend to make xie lian seem even more noble, there are also probably a few other inaccuracies in the intro that get found out as the story progresses. in actuality hc was kind of a known troublemaker to the city guards or whatever or had been in the past. maybe his mother just passed after a long illness and his tumble off the wall was intentional. either way he’s kind of pissed at xie lian for saving him. xie lian is concerned about his health so he has to stay at the palace for a while he recovers and only interacts with xie lian a few times. there is a point where he says out loud all the things about the divide between the rich and the poor that have been illustrated by the scenes with mu qing. feng xin tells him to shut up but mq goes dead silent bc he kind of agrees but can’t say and does have his loyalty to xie lian (its a whole thing) and the resentment begins

also i think young hc’s personality is similar to his personality in the present but a bit more reserved and he’s got like this plucky streak or something. also he is unquestionably gay

anyway hc sneaks out of the palace and xie lian catches him obviously but they have a brief little heart to heart where xie lian is like “look you can go if you want here take this money food” etc and demonstrates that he has actually listened to what hc has to say and hc is like “wow no one other than my mom has ever listened to me in my life so thats what that feels like i kind of like it” and he probably is a bit awestruck by xie lian in different ways and after that is like “okay this kingdom sucks but.. that guys not so bad”

sad ironic sense that if xie lian hadnt ascended until he was older he may have actually be able to do something about the problems in the kindgom but alas we have a cycle to perpetuate

the “take me as the meaning of your life” scene still happens p much the same but xl doesnt recognize hc who is actually now at his lowest point. hc tried to find ways to make things better for people like him but he simply did not succeed (maybe his were efforts quashed by the corrupt authorities? its implied probably) and he’s more disillusioned with the kingdom and life than ever but still is holding on to those memories of xie lian as proof that it doesnt have to be like this but that thread is slipping until!! whose fucking voice is that??? thats right its the one person you ever believed was truly good and went and proved you right by ascending to the heavens at age 17!!! guess its time to stan him forever

anyway hc joins the army but legally or whatever and tbh i would have hated the flower cave scene regardless of anything i just hate any sort of s*x pollen trope or anything so thats gone (they can have a wound tending scene or something tho thats the good shit) and instead we have HL getting overwhelmed by some other demons or something together and xie lian protects hc and they both get injured very badly (maybe hc would lose a limb but im not sure how that would work once hes a ghost so thats on hold for now until i figure it out) and xl is fine but this situation ends up being part of why mq kicks hc out of the army but yes hc still ends up dying on the battlefield anyway </3

the wuming stuff is the same i think but also at some point xl is despairing and says something about that guy he saved from falling and wonders what happened to him and fire ghost wuming is like !!!!! (wait does this happen in canon? honestly it should)

in mount tong’lu i was tempted to actually have hc have a similar moment to the bamboo hat scene with the humans who are trapped in there but im not sure if i just want it to be the same as xie lian’s story... also i like the idea of hc needing to hang onto his devotion to get through his first few centuries of being a ghost so maybe he’s just inspired by xie lian’s sacrifice with the sword and the souls and thats why he claws his own eye out as a sacrifice

so this can go one of two ways from here!!! both are me projecting hardcore so take them with a grain of salt im not saying im right about the way relationships should be these a re just my thoughts <3

1. (the not fun one but it still has a happy ending) the story more or less continues the same as canon. pure and simple devotion is what carries hc through the centuries. we get to see some ghost city antics and its fun but there is nothing complicated about the devotion hc just wants to find xl and protect him. hualian eventually meet. they get along pretty well!! eventually there are cracks. when you hold someone in your mind for so long you have expectations for them that no person can meet consistently. hc thinks that since he’s seen xl during the worst time in his life that he can handle anything but it turns out that as amazing as xl is, he is also just a person and sometimes he is wrong or irrational or annoying. xl is so happy to have someone who will listen to him talk that he kind of neglects to really get to know who hc is as a person and hc is kind of like “huh i didnt expect this but im kind of hurt. i genuinely thought that i just wanted to serve and protect you but actually im my own person and this is weird” but he doesnt say anything he thinks he has to stick to his promise and it gets kind of uncomfortable!! maybe his luck goes haywire bc his faith gets rocked for the first time ever and they end up having to talk it out but their relationship is stronger for it <3

2. (i think this one is fun) hc struggles with waiting. he does it but its hard. he has doubts and when all his efforts to find xl are fruitless he starts to grow bitter and curses the day that xl saved him. his faith burns low but doesnt go out. then ghost city!! hc realizes that he can finally help people like him, even if theyre ghosts now and hes grateful for the chance to do this and grateful to xl and resigns himself to waiting. but its still hard!! he realizes that his luck is tied to his devotion and gets kind of pissed about it!!! he tries to remember all the good things about xl but its hard!!! his search becomes more about repaying a debt so he can be free than anything else, he just wants to help the common people spirits with no strings attached (this actually allows him to keep his luck bc he has the same wish as xl and thats what makes him a true believer!! is this corny? does it make sense? i dont care) and so eventually when he finds xl he’s like okay how quickly can i repay this debt/how can i keep my powers but then xie lian is... so good... and hc actually really likes him he remembers why he swore his devotion in the first place. now hes conflicted!!! dont worry they fall in love tho <3

wow this was really long if you read this hiiiii. anyway when i reread ill try to pay more attention to yin yu and he xuan for hc’s 800 years. hua cheng we’re gonna get you some friends and lore i swear to god

[jancys-blue-bayou]

Yeah so Stranger Things 3 was painfully bad

Yeah yeah big negative post about ST3 coming up. Just... holy shit, my expectations weren’t exactly high but jesus I didn’t think it’d be this bad. Wow. Mindboggling to think it was made by the same dudes who made season 1, it feels like a different show. Some of the worst writing I’ve seen in a long while, parts of season 3. This got very long because it was very bad so it’s under the cut. Starting with the few positives and then away we go...

Of course there were bright spots, I thought what we got of Jancy was generally good (just wish there had been more of it. Just like... more lines between them, a few moments could’ve gone on longer...like after the awesome hospital fight scene jesus just let them fucking desperately embrace and profess their love for each other, it was awesome how they relentlessly kept going at the monster to save the other but can we please just have a few more seconds for a comfort moment after?) I liked how they handled the fight btw, apart from the Oliver Twist comment yeah yeah heat of the moment but still felt OOC with that loa a blow. Nancy and Karen scene was nice and um... well Max and El bonding was nice. And um... Mr Clarke! And I kind of dig Murray.

My main issues with it:

- The product placement. Jesus Christ. Okay, ST has always been a show with noticeable product placement. But it’s gone from things like a Coke can prominently on display on a table in s1 (El crushing it with her mind) to literally having a straight up ad for Coca Cola in the middle of a tense scene. That’s the big offender that made me go wow you’re really doing this to yourselves huh, there are many others ofc (everything at the mall ofc, Slurpees being in hyperfocus for a bit, and a lengthy talk about Burger King. These smaller things one by one wasn’t the worst but all combined jesus it was too much, all added together and then bam the Coke commercial was wow... Congrats on the like 80 sponsorship deals and esp the new ST themed arcade hall by Coca Cola hope it was worth completely selling out for.

- Relatedly, the original fucking song. Holy christ talk about jumping the shark. That was the oddest, cringiest, weirdest shit I’ve seen in a long time. Gaten’s a great singer don’t get me wrong, but there’s a time and place for it and an original song stuffed into the middle of the tense climax of the season is not it Duffers. Just a blatant cash cow, hoping to bring in more money via the song.

- Robin. Sorry but holy cow what a Mary Sue. Hey here’s this super cool girl who’s cool™ and funny™ and super smart™ and NOT Nancy (like they seriously for real said in a scene, they actually for real had to pit Robin and Nancy against each other for no reason). And she conveniently has these specific skills needed for the plot (which she gets involved with for no real motivation other than having nothing better to do, lazy writing). Said skills were so over the top unrealistic it completely sucked me out of it. To start with, this random girl in small town Indiana in 1985 speaking French, Spanish and Italian um... does Hawkins High have the most amazing language department or what? Very un-american in that case... and okay then, her knowing those languages wouldn’t help jackshit with understanding Russian. Russian is a notoriously difficult language to learn and it is not related to the Romance languages at all, Robin knowing those languages and oh, having “a good ear” bc she’s in band (?!??! what?!) wouldn’t help her at all. Having the alphabets on the wall and listening to strange words in a foreign language she has no understanding of would never work. No way for her to understand what is she’s hearing, what letters are in the words just, nothing. It’s completely ridiculous. The good thing is she’s a lesbian, crushing Stobin that made me LOL. Btw, I don’t get what age they were writing her as? She’s still in school but later says she and Steve was in the same class, and she knows who Nancy is but Nancy, who is still in school, doesn’t know her even though presumably they’d be in the same year at little Hawkins High? Was it just sloppy writing or what?

- Too. Much. Plotting. What happened to “this season is about the characters” um there was just so much plot stuff and action sequences and barely any character driven moments at all. Those intimate moments that made s1 amazing. Generally regarding plots felt the Russian plot was messy and not well-written also what happened to the US government as the big bad? Unless they’re setting up a big Cold War thing for s4. And felt the zombie thing was wasted, could’ve been used differently like I’d have thought it’d be used like the MF spreading it’s influence over vaster areas and being harder to keep track of etc.

- Too little Will. Will’s whole thing with feeling left out etc was just dropped halfway through it felt very undercooked. His arc was just dropped wtf.

- NO BYERS FAMILY INTERACTIONS WTF. The sequence in the first episode when Jancy has overslept and Joyce wipes the lipstick off Jonathan was cute (but could’ve been even cuter I’d have preferred a short fluffy Jancy moment here just as they wake up before they realize they overslept, bc we didn’t get much pure fluff, and then it’d been awesome if Joyce would’ve just called Nancy into the house to mess with them). But like... that’s kind of it. For the Byers family. Talking to each other in the whole season. When they partnered Jancy with the kids many thought awesome we’ll get Byers bros talking and teaming up (and Nancy and Mike) but there was just nothing. Not even a family hug after the battle at the mall, just Joyce hugging Will, with all this tightknit little family has been through you telling me Jonathan wouldn’t join in?

- No Will and El bonding wtf? SUCH a wasted opportunity. They’ve built this unique awesome connection over s1 and s2 and now in s3 would finally be able to bond normally for real and... nothing.

- Turning Hopper back into an even bigger jerk than he was at the start of the show, neglecting all his character development. What was the point of the whole El and Hopper thing they devoted so much time to in s2 if Hopper’s back at it with the yelling and all now? And jeez his constant whining to Joyce about every man she interacts with holy christ that got annoying. Generally Hopper was such an annoying asshole this season I was so tired of him by the time he “died”.

- TOO MANY CHARACTERS. Jeez, I know I’m on about it all the time but jesus christ there is way way too many characters in this for 8 episodes which hurts the narrative and screentime for interesting characters is just... yeah.

- Speaking of screentime, did we really need that many identical generic fight scenes between Hopper and the Russian guy? Jesus Christ it’s so boring watching fight scenes like that, so repetitive (compare to the hospital fight scene which was dynamic and awesome). Also regarding screentime did we really need to devote so incredibly much of it to Steve and Robin being comedic relief while drugged? Yeah yeah mix light and dark and all that but jesus christ at that point in the narrative shit has hit the fan lean into the dark.

- Totally expected of course but still, the furthering of Steve Memeington. My god they actually had him literally call himself daddy... christ.

- The Billy and Karen/all the other middle age women remains gross and bad in a billion ways. Also completely pointless for the plot, they could’ve come up with any other way to get Billy to the factory. And what did it give Karen in development? Just the realization that yeah I’m tired of my husband but I’m not leaving my family and I’ll stick with him just ‘cause? Okay but did we need her almost sleeping with a kid a year older than her daughter for that? Icky. Also the editing of the scene where Billy hits her was so weird. Also that was weird as fuck.

- The ending. Okay christ my main gripe with this is because of a point above: No Byers family interaction at all! Joyce and Hopper talk briefly about her thinking about moving once or twice but she never talks about it with her kids... obviously she did in the timegap but we need to see that to build to the thing. Having no Byers interactions the whole season and then just oop we’re moving is so weird. I’m also not sure if Joyce’s motivation for moving (her bad memories of Hawkins) would be enough. For sure an argument for it, but an argument against is the one Hopper presents to her (and though he’s not around still there’s still a support system around them there, especially for her kids which she loves above all). Speaking of her loving her kids above all, she knows they love their friends/girlfriend/boyfriend to bits, have walked through fire with them and are each others support system as mentioned, would Joyce really just uproot them from that? There’s also some purely practical things that stuck out to me immediately: the timeskip for the epilogue makes it so they move when the schoolyear is already well under way and Jonathan has started senior year, feel bad for Jonathan there in a number of ways. Also, how the hell did Joyce manage to sell her house and what did it fetch? Her rundown house on the outskirts of a now infamous town with an incredibly bad rep? Even if the buyer bought it for the land the land doesn’t look special, just find it hard to believe she could get much for it. And where did they move? Where did she find a place? And work? Did she have something lined up or? I guess we’ll see.

- Oh and speaking of work, that was another thing that was just dropped, the mall killing downtown and the protests just fell out of the story. But, with what happened to the mall wouldn’t business come back to downtown (possibly reason for Joyce to want to stay if Melvald’s going out of business was another reason to move).

- Sorry but Mileven took way too much space.

- Again, no Jonathan and Will actual brothers bonding. But a whole lot of Steve and Dustin meme fanservice wank.

- Erica is just the sassy black girl trope non stop the whole season and nothing else and it’s so grating and... I was gonna say disappointing but I had no faith in the Duffers regarding this. Just because a bit character becomes a meme doesn’t mean they need to become a main. *cough* Steve *cough cough* Sorry.

- Last but not least, the woobiefication of Billy. Uggggghhhh. Disgusting. And having Max cry over him WTF?!?!?!?!?! staaaaaaahp.

[lookwhatilost]

24

i. i must’ve passed out unintentionally at some point. im not happy abt it. I didn’t take my makeup off yet. my teeth aren’t brushed. I do this a lot and I worry abt how damaged they must be getting, jst bc I’m stupid and drink too much. I dnt think I drink that much, I mean maybe in general, but not last night. I had, what? the flights at area two, the spiked seltzer and Moscow mule at cityside, the two beers when I got back to the apartment—wait, no, that actually is kind of a lot. im not sure when I got so desensitized. I check the clock—2AM—so i actually haven’t been knocked out for as long as I thought. two hours, probably. it could be worse. the cat is still awake and still being credulous with me. he’s warming up to me again, but it’s a little disheartening to redo this dance with him each time I see him. remember me, dammit. i remember you. I dnt think I’m being entirely fair to him, though. he’s a cat. i can’t rly apply my human understanding of anything to his behavior. either way, he’s waiting outside the bathroom for me when I go in to attend to my teeth and makeup. he follows me. he falls asleep next to me. i feel a little bit validated. part of me thinks being the kind of person that animals like effortlessly is the mark of some inherent goodness, but I know it’s illogical and this took effort. i want to jst believe there’s goodness here, and in my absence of any real examples, I’ll assign depth to something like this. sometimes it’s all you can do.

ii. the sun doesn’t have any business being up at five-something, but it is, and I dnt think there are shades in this room. well, I’m not sure, maybe there are, but I didn’t have the foresight to look for them or close them. llewyn has moved, he’s in his actual bed now, but he seems to have taken notice of the fact that I’m awake. I try to rest my eyes a little bit. i know i won’t be able to sleep with the sun in my eyes, but it’s restful anyway. I have a long day ahead of me and i want to ease into the morning. i think i drifted back off but I can’t tell. llewyn has moved again. it seems like he wants to cuddle now. impeccable timing, as always. ive heard ian’s alarm go off a few times in the other room but they’ve still not come out of it. i have to leave soon. i wanna actually physically say goodbye but I’m worried they’re avoiding me. the last time we had a goodbye moment, i kissed them on the cheek and that probably made them rly uncomfortable. I’m not even sure why I did that. i think they’re the only person im comfortable showing any kind of affection towards but that doesn’t make that action any less weird. especially given... i dnt want to think abt that shit anymore, actually. i can’t without feeling ashamed and very, very stupid. it’s not like that anymore, but i wonder how much has to happen and how much time has to elapse for something like that to not actually matter anymore. i wonder if it ever won’t. it’s probably not personal. not everything that affects me is abt me, sheesh.

iii. the iced coffee at cumberland farms tastes the same as the iced coffee everywhere else, but i can’t get it here often, and it’s very inexpensive. it can’t help but occur to me that 24 ounces of coffee is 7 calories, and the calorie counts are printed on the packages of the food I got—250 for the sandwich, 150 for the hash browns. i marinade on the thought for a little bit before deciding what to do with it. I eat my food and drink the coffee and try not to remember. I do anyway. I’m trying to think of different numbers. this is a pretty substantial takeaway breakfast for $3 and change. better than what i probably could have got at mcdonalds. the sandwich is kind of soggy but it’s not bad. the hash browns are better.

iv. five hours in the car fly by my nose and im back home, kind of. i think I’m still trying to figure out what “home” means. this place is familiar. it’s where i live. my roommate’s dirty dishes from yesterday morning are still in the sink. mail that the cat knocked off the counter on my way out is still sitting on the floor. 24 hours have passed since I was last here, but it looks like nothing has been touched. I may as well have just stepped out for a cigarette.

v. very rarely does anything change in a days time, but when enough of them pass, everything is suddenly different. i slept on this couch more times than I could count before i was even on the lease, like I’d known I’d someday live here and wanted to warm myself up to it. and I’ve lived here for a while now, going on 8 months to be exact, but it simultaneously feels much longer than that, and as though it hasn’t actually been that long. a lot has happened in that time, but mainly to evan. ive witnessed many things that he’s done but have branched out very little myself. i transferred at my job abt a year ago but im still doing the same work I’ve been doing since i was 19. i still have the same friends but i see increasingly less of them. i get into the same car and travel the same roads that take me the same places. i still drink jst as much.

vi. my body has changed a lot, but the things I’ve always hated abt it are still there and the changes have jst given me more to resent. i look in the mirror when I get out of the shower and it’s all the same. the face with the perpetually stupid, bovine look plastered on it, the same masculine jaw, broad shoulders, breasts that are too far apart, more noticeably so since they’ve gotten smaller, the laparoscopy scar on my navel, the clusters of freckles that are jst pigmented enough to make my skin look blotchy, the perpetually inflamed hair follicles on my thighs, the knobby knees, always covered in bruises, the leg that’s slightly shorter than the other. the counter in the bathroom is high enough that I can’t see my labia but I know they’re there. I want to go a day without debating whether to cut them off with the sharpest knife I can find. it’s not today. the weight loss did little to make me feel better abt the way it all looks—the size of my jaw and shoulders is more apparent now that they are less hidden, my eyes bug out, it’s hard to contort so that my ribs aren’t visible somewhere, my hipbones poke through my clothing. I dnt think I’ve ever looked so bad in my life. Im going to cover up.

vii. I look at the date on my phone and saw that it was the 24th and for some reason identified that this was the last time I’d see that number on a calendar before I turned 24 myself. It doesn’t seem to make sense that I’m that old now. I know it’s not old, too, but it doesn’t seem like that should be me. I still think I behave like a child in a lot of respects, and the thought conjures a memory of my old therapist insulting me, saying that I had the mental tendencies of a child in grammar school. when she told me this initially, I replied to her sarcastically: “well, shit. maybe I should see a therapist abt that” and she told me not to come back to her practice. I cried on the way home despite how cognizant I was of the absurdity of the situation. “grammar school”—who even calls it that? it stuck with me nonetheless. it’s hard to have a therapist fire you, even with the knowledge that the therapist in question was not very good, without wondering if you’re a basket case, if help will always be lost on you.

viii. my job isn’t the worst but the labor feels pointless and it rly intensifies my feelings that I’m fighting never ending monotony to wring out very little in the way of satisfaction. i think you rly have to love this job to do it as a career, or maybe you need to have a specific personality type that makes it easier to engage w. im not very good at socializing and i think im getting too old to keep making excuses for myself abt that. meg and ash are always nagging me to sell more but i dnt feel comfortable enough to make small talk w these people, let alone sell them stuff. i feel like i sound so stupid when I speak aloud. i use a lot of fillers in my speech and it’s rly hard to talk abt hair without sounding like a bullshitter. something is very insincere abt the language that’s involved. i know i know what im talking abt but I dnt know how to sound like i know what I’m talking abt, and it’s hard bc the latter is a lot more important.

ix. I can’t tell if people sincerely aren’t making sense today or if im foggy bc i kept waking up and going back to sleep. this guy keeps saying that the last woman who cut his hair used a 5 on the sides and a 9 on the top but she cut it all w scissors. that definitely doesn’t make sense. i dnt think they even make a 9. why would she be using clipper settings to describe a scissor cut? the top here is at least 3 times as long as the sides and back are. im not going—oh my god, i can’t deal w kids who scream during their haircuts—insane, right? stuff like this makes me rly doubt myself, too, like there are bigger gaps in my knowledge than—wow he rly jst is not tiring himself out w this screaming, huh—i feel there are. what if this actually is a coherent way to describe a haircut? maybe he rly is jst stupid, but I also think that when you write people off as “stupid” all the time, it reflects—god, why is his baby sister screaming now too? nothing is even fucking happening to her—worse on you than it does on them. it’s always the biggest idiots who are so self-satisfied to think that. but im not self-satisfied at all, im very insecure and it’s constantly apparent, but everyone is insecure abt a lot, and that doesn’t doesn’t equal intelligence. I wish I had a sounding board. and i rly wish that kid in Niya’s chair would stop crying.

x. everyone in the salon today seems like they’re in a bit of a weird mood, it’s not jst me for once. the phone is annoying me a lot more than usual today. i feel like it’s ringing every 20 minutes. niya is always very avoidant when it comes to taking haircuts, but meg is lagging today which is unusual. it was busy, too, but i keep getting shafted where tips are concerned. most of my regulars who were due to come in around this time came earlier this week, and usually they’re the ones who tip me the best. the radio station that’s on is very weird too, distractingly so—it’s gone from bowie, to panic at the disco, to nirvana, the police, florence and the machine, neil young, lord huron, rhcp, crowded house. it’s not intolerable, but i can’t seem to follow any sort of genre or time period theme and im paying more attention to figuring this out than i am what im supposed to be doing. it’s that point in the night where people generally stop coming in and I know I haven’t made very much. I’ve counted... $24. weird. are they playing “brick”? that’s a throwback.

xi. i remember my ex being rly into mystics despite not understanding them very well. i forget what he was doing w my natal chart, but he told me once that 24 would be a rly significant year for me. i asked him why and he said that’s all he could figure, there was nothing in the way of further details that he provided. i know I said something back to him abt hoping that id be married by 24—so stupid. granted, i would have been 18 or so at the time and 24 seemed very distant at the time. but that was 6 years at the time, now it’s less than 3 weeks. ive changed a lot, mentally at least, but my circumstances haven’t rly. maybe on superficial levels. yeah, i support myself financially and i have a job in a field i could realistically work in for the rest of my life if I wanted to do that. but im still jst as unsure abt what I want and what’s going to happen to me. i feel like I’m more “sought after” in a few ways, but my phone is jst as dry as it’s always been. i was hoping the move would have been good for me but im very scared abt doing it alone. and i might still do it, i jst dnt know what the timeline is going to look like and there’s no promise of me turning over a new leaf for real and finding my inspiration jst bc my scenery has changed. every time ive moved when I was younger, it jst dug me deeper into loneliness. but i was a child and it wasn’t my choice. but there’s no way for me to rationalize asking my actual lived experiences. maybe that’s the big thing that’ll happen to me at 24? or maybe instead of getting married, I’ll break a marriage up. i know that’s not going to get that far, you know, w kenny. i probably shouldn’t joke abt it, though.

xii. it looks like Evan is home from friday’s already and i rly dnt want to be around him right now. im still feeling rly hurt abt him pulling the plug on the massachusetts move without making any effort at all to sort his finances out or secure some additional income that wasn’t the precarious extra dollars he’s been getting from porn. he keeps sinking all of his money into bar tabs and impulse purchases and takeaway food. and his cars. i wish he would jst be honest w himself abt the cars already. he needs to sell the honda and be done w it before he has to replace the engine and drop another two grand on repairs. i dnt know why he never listens to me. im rly growing to dislike him, but we’re in this together whether i like it or not, and im not going to lead him astray when his financial problems are dragging me down w him. i think i am going to be a hypocrite and go out alone tonight. kenny’s bar is doing that bottle opening thing tonight, right? but i dnt rly want to be around kenny right now. but he might not be there. but i also get a weird satisfaction from being around him I’ll bet it’s going to be a madhouse there, too, and i rly hate crowded bars. but it’s something to do. maybe i will get lucky and someone will talk to me and we’ll have a decent conversation and I’ll never see them again after. why is that my ideal?

xiii. god, running out the last hour on the clock is always hell. no one ever seems to come in, so it feels like a huge waste of time, but when people do come in, i get very irritated. so I’m not sure what i actually want from my time here. i think im jst too fixated on how being stuck here until close almost every night is hurting my ability to expand myself socially. but what would i even be doing if i wasn’t here? i think i would jst be finding a way to waste time. id be sinking hours into doing nothing like I do all the time. i have a lot of time on my hands, in the grand scheme of things. i have literally no idea where it all goes. i drink a lot of it away bc i am generally too uninspired to participate in my hobbies, and i think that feeds the darkness bc they make me very happy. at least w cooking, yknow, i have to eat. i have an organic need to engage w that one. all else has been falling through the cracks, though. i dnt think ive picked my bass up in 3 weeks.

xiv. Kenny’s bar looks like it’s absolutely mobbed and I’d be upset if I went all the way out there only for me not to be able to sit down anywhere. it looks like Evan went back out. that works. i have beer at home. I’d be smarter to save the money anyway. i want to support kenny and the rest of the guys, even though I dnt have a lot of nice things to say abt him. his brewery is cool. it’s cool to have something with so much potential come out of your home town, even if i dnt entirely identify w that place as being my home town. but it’s better than saying that im from alabama, even though i feel like my childhood is more tethered to mobile. i think people would make weird assumptions abt me if I said that. people are rly unfair to what the south is actually like. i dnt know. but their growth has been nice to watch. seeing something you’ve supported since the beginning grow to the degree it has makes you feel pride even if it has nothing to do with you personally. and ive had so many good moments there, w ian, w my family, in general. i met justin there and im happy abt that, even though i dnt know what’s going on w justin. i dnt think justin knows what’s going on w justin. 

xv. looking at my shelf of ian souvenirs is making me miss ian, even though we were jst together, even though we’re seeing one another again in 2 weeks. I wish I could engage w them in a more stable way. seeing them reminds me of being a teenager and breaking into the apartment i used to live in on governor’s island. and since the base went out of commission not long after we moved, i was the last person to live in that apartment. i went back into my first bedroom and the evidence that it used to belong to me was still apparent, but the floorboards had been warped and the wallpaper was very faded out. i felt weird being back, nostalgia and warmth pitted against the instinct that i wasn’t supposed to be there. i wasn’t supposed to see it—a rosy memory colliding w irrefutable proof of the passage of time. ive been very unfair to them, ian, in so many respects but it’s all very mixed and complicated. i look at this person, and i see so many years worth of history, but the familiar messy gold hair is framing a slightly different, slightly fuller face. they talk abt people i dnt know very well, stories set in a city ive spent very little time in. it’s disorienting. i feel like when im here alone, im always confronting their ghost, in places we used to go together, in things we used to talk abt doing but never did—a final hike on a trail that closed before we got the chance to go together, their name scratched in the wall of a dive bar, things they’d always point out on the side of the road, small pieces of their essence scattered across a place they are no longer a part of. i wonder what I did to deserve any preservation, too. i see this person who I truly am proud of, who i rly do think is going places, and that respect gets interpreted into feelings of inadequacy. that there’s no way someone like this can look at me and see anything other than an unstable failure. i dnt think any other person knows me more fully, for better or for worse. worse is dominant. i know it is. my intuition is always screaming at me that they hate me, that they left bc they wanted to get away from me. literally none of that makes sense. i know they dnt lie to spare my feelings, but i feel like they almost have to be. i wonder why i can’t trust that im cared for. i wonder why I can’t have an evaluation of another person that i dnt immediately relate back to myself.

xvi. it took two beers for me to realize that I haven’t eaten anything since i was in boston. i need to stop doing this shit, but im still getting my calories if im drinking them, right? i feel like it doesn’t make sense for recovery to be as difficult as it is, but my emotions have always interfered w my hunger cues, and my body is so accustomed to constantly being hungry that it’s not something i even notice that much anymore. I’ve been getting weird pins and needles feelings in what I’m assuming are my intestines as I’ve upped my intake and I’m afraid of them rupturing and me bleeding out internally when I’m home alone. such a pathetic way to die—having your own blood and bile and shit poison you. I doubt I’m on my deathbed, i think my system is jst on the slow path to returning to normal, but i wasn’t expecting physical symptoms aside from weight gain, which on its own, i could live w. my ednos was never as restrictive as it was until somewhat recently. my problem was generally concerned w binge eating and compensatory behavior, usually fasting or short periods of restriction or exercise. all punishment based. i can’t help but find it ridiculous that i ended up w an eating disorder despite never caring abt my weight. even when I was a high school freshman and overweight, i didn’t care. i think it’s because i dnt outwardly self harm anymore, and that self-destructive need has translated into other conduits. the scars this leaves are much more socially acceptable than what I was left w when I was younger and carved “dumb whore” into my thigh. i can’t believe i did something so stupid. im glad that finally isn’t visible anymore. i can’t believe that i’m almost 24 and still, to some extent, do shit like that.

xvii. i still have that vacation time that I took to look at apartments in massachusetts, and since that isn’t going to happen, i want to take a poorly planned solo vacation. i looked at places to stay in DC, in chicago, in nashville, but i left discouraged. nashville is too far, Chicago is too expensive, DC seems too dangerous. i think my perpetual anxiety prevents me from taking full advantage of my freedom. and I can be free. 24 hours ago, I was in Boston and I didn’t have to tell anyone I was doing that. I’ve navigated a strange place on my own. I lived to tell the tale, but I also wonder what the point is of stuff like this if I have no one to share it w. No one to reminisce w. it feels like a waste of money. almost nothing feels worth what I spend on it––time, money, calories, stop thinking abt calories.

xviii. i open another beer, basically on an empty stomach. i need to stop drinking like this, it’s not even negotiable anymore. i know this is a problem. i need to stop. i dnt know if I want to stop. i want to drown in bliss but I feel none. alcohol amplifies everything I feel, and when I’m feeling good, it’s generally very good, but when it’s bad, it gets very bad. i feel weird now so it’s amplifying the negatives. they do not need that. no, i dnt need that. i know this is an addiction. im scared, but not scared enough to do anything abt it.

xix. i still have Rebecca on social media despite everything. she’s moved, she’s no longer in my proximity, but i still have her on things even though I have no motivation to keep any sort of peace with her. I remember when things happened, when i was too drunk to stand up and she insisted on forcing herself on me anyway, after the fact she kept saying all this stuff to me abt how she wanted me to be her girlfriend and i jst sort of laid there and said nothing. i had nothing to say. i wasn’t processing what’s happened, i jst kept thinking “this is bad. that was bad” to myself. and then she never rly follows up, a small acknowledgment of culpability, maybe, but she’s moved in w some boyfriend now. it’s weird that people can do awful things to you and move on like nothing happened, and you have those moments stuck in your head, keeping you stunted, keeping you away from living uncorrupted, uninhibited, the way you should engage w it. i think of how demoralizing it is to have your perception shattered by a 30-something woman who still laughs at nyan cat shit. i think of how most discussions of sexual assault in the mainstream act as though only men are capable of it, as though it’s only ever happening in heterosexual contexts. i think of how everyone who bullied me in high school probably does not even remember it. i think it’s absurd to compare the two things but I dnt laugh.

xx. i want to talk to Justin but i have nothing to say. i dnt know what I should talk to him abt. i dnt know how you’re supposed to do this stuff. im comforted by the fact that, since he was w someone for 10 years, he’s rly out of the dating loop, and he have no idea what he’s doing either. but it’s a red flag, you know. I think we’re jst friendly. and I’m okay w that, I need friends. i want friends. i never see fati anymore these days. things w evan are polluted. ian is very far away. it occurred to me that i know very little abt him, aside from us getting along, but do we actually? how would I know? it’s not uncommon to have good conversations, for most people. but he knows more abt me than I do abt him. i dnt think i could name a single one of his interests if prompted. he probably couldn’t name one of mine that isn’t “drinking”. I’m not sure if I’m willfully ignorant of reality or if im jst assigning negativity to something without a lot of basis. i wonder why im incapable of living in the moment and not thinking too deeply abt what happens to me. i figured out what I’m doing w all the time on my hands.

xxi. everyone has been telling me lately that i should try to monetize my cooking and I dnt know if I believe them. i can’t imagine I’m as good at it as people say. i dnt trust it. im not even sure if it’s a passion, rly, i think my eating disorder has corrupted my relationship w food and i have to push harder to be interested in it normally, and this is how i cope. i might jst be on a kick. and if it actually is a passion, do i want to ruin it by making it into a living? i didn’t feel one way or the other abt hair when I went into it. it was a neutral activity. to grow to hate it is not a loss. i only care abt being good at it bc directly dealing w people makes my failures feel very personal when they happen. i know good food is something you can’t fake. i made ian spring rolls yesterday and they insisted I not watch them eat. i respected the request, but i needed to see the look on their face. I’m annoyed I didn’t. everything was eaten, I know they wouldn’t have done that if they hated them. but I only have my family to go off otherwise, and they would definitely lie to me. so i dnt know. i feel like support is untrustworthy. i know the people who won’t be honest w me, i dnt entirely trust praise from the people who I know who aren’t shy to say “it’s not my thing, I’m not crazy abt it”. i dnt know why i can’t accept that I’m good at anything.

xxii. there’s no reason for my scale to be out when i’m “trying” to “recover” but i will not put it away. i step on it anyway, and it looks like i’m 103lbs, fully clothed, stomach full of beer. i know it’s bad, but i get a weird amount of gratification from seeing it. it’s very hard to maintain a weight that low, so it feels like an accomplishment, even though it isn’t one. it’s been months since i had a period, and that adds to the sense of satisfaction. but it’s not good. obviously. it’s really getting in the way of me wanting to work out and actually improve my body. i’m fatigued. i’m foggy. i know the fact that i’m depriving myself is partially responsible for my terrible mood. i know i already had a heart problem, why on earth would i make that worse for myself? i’ve been having a few normal eating days, so i still won’t admit to myself that i’ve relapsed. i had a lava cake 5 days ago! there’s a quarter stick of butter in that! and an ounce of chocolate! i didn’t care, so obviously i’m doing something right. i know i’m not, entirely, but i’m staying positive. either that, or i’m extremely in denial. there’s still chocolate in the cabinet. no, of course i am not going to eat it.

xxiii. meg scheduled 6 people on tomorrow, so it looks like i’m not going to make any goddamn money again. my aunt is coming in, so i’ll get a little more from her, but the cash i take home there is so very inconsistent. i feel like the more money i save, the more i worry abt it, like i should have more by now. like i’m going to struggle forever. the stuff i’m buying now won’t matter in a few days, but that anxiety is always going to be over my head. i need a career change. i know that. i keep forgetting that pete gave me money for college, so my “i dnt want to be in debt” excuse is a lie. i keep telling people i’m considering going to college again but i know i never will bc i haven’t actually gotten any better at managing my time and being disciplined. i think i’m better at pretending i am, but i’m not. even if i seriously wanted to, i wouldn’t be motivated enough to actually take the steps required to re-enroll. it’s all too overwhelming. i feel like that feeling alone is a sign i’d fail.

xxiv. I’ve been saying this thing to myself a lot lately to self-soothe: “god’s in his heaven” and i dnt rly know what I mean by that. i dnt know if i believe in stuff like that, I dnt have any reason to believe that there’s any kind of order or force that presides over anything. is that what I’m talking abt? we’re all preoccupied w our own things, attending to our own futures, making our own peace to the best of our abilities? maybe? am i saying that we’ve all been abandoned, ignored? then why do I find it comforting? i dnt think my inner monologue makes a lot of sense, but i only ever talk to myself these days. maybe I’m talking abt myself in an idealized way, but I look back on the past 24 hours and see my good mood i woke up w descend, the 900 calories I’ve consumed today, the $24 I’ve made, the singular text thread I have w ian, the nothing I’ve done in the handful of hours I’ve been home, the three empty beer cans. i know i’m constantly in my own head, constantly picking myself apart, picking everything else apart. it accomplishes nothing. it’s useless self-flagellation. i’m constantly raking myself over the coals for shit that doesn’t matter, constantly agonizing over situations that aren’t actually that deep. i think that’s a way in which i lie to myself. i spend all day beating myself up over the inconsequential while never giving due attention to my actual flaws. even if i was, saying that i’m useless and stupid all the time still does nothing. it’s abt meaningful action, and i’m so bad at that, and i’m doing this exact thing again. i think i do it so i have something to point to, to say “i’m working on myself” when i’m jst being mean and self-righteous abt it. where has it gotten me? what do i want from it? do i think i can bully myself into change? do i rly think it will make me do anything other than resign to complacency? 24 hours, and a lot has happened, but i’ve still gotten nothing done. another will pass, and nothing will change. then enough days will pass, and i’ll notice everything is different, and i’ll still feel jst as stuck. i will be meaner to myself abt it. and that’s what i’ll do. over and over, until the end of time. Evan jst got home. he said something abt how sad i looked. he asked me what was wrong. i wish i had the guts to say any of it to anyone’s face, let alone his. it’s fine, it’s fine, i tell him, God’s in his heaven. whatever it is i actually mean by that.

[icharchivist]

(1) In Kanda's backstory, it is shown that he often sees the illusion from his past memory. The lotus he often sees is also part of those past memories/illusions. He also sees the woman (past!Alma) and his past self's death and they are overlapping with the present scene. On top of seeing them, he's also hearing them as well.

(2) Do you think he still sees/hears them even now? If so, then it must be pretty tough for him when the illusions are overlapping with the things he is seeing at present. Do you think that's the reason he often looks confused?

oooh yeah those illusions!

i think the visions were at their worst anytime he was near Alma tbh. Alma was often the one to trigger said illusions (one that comes in mind is when Alma does his round of hellos to the pools, and Past!Alma appears and says “we wanted children didn’t we”) and i could see that at least the Past!Alma visions stopped with Alma’s “death”, but not the lotus’s.

While I do think they were less frequent however I completely believe Kanda still had them for multiple reasons:

1) First the fact Zhu repeats to him a lot that the flowers are illusions and that we have a flashback to that when Kanda is an adult, far before the Alma’s arc. To me it sounds set post-Incident, of trying to have Kanda get used to it. Why? Because the reactions the scientists had to Kanda’s illusions in their past wasn’t “it’s just illusion”, it was “we need to kill him and restart his reincarnation process again”.

The fact that Kanda remembers his past life was something the scientists considered dangerous. It’s implied that it’s not the first time they had to work through that actually, that they consider that once the ressurected gain their memories back, they become unstable and likely to rebel against them and hurt them. If anything, Kanda’s major crisis and well, Alma’s breaking point were proof enough that it was true. (even if.... We will never know if, if they had told them what happened, prepared them, didn’t infantilize them to the point of also telling them they’re not really humans... Yeah I don’t think they handled it the best even if it’s to be expected the horrors of their past would be coming back).

Every Kanda’s illusions were treated by the scientists locking him up, getting him away from Alma who yet was an emotional anchor for him, considered drugs to numb him, and when Kanda was sure he remembered, planning on killing him. 

They realized the horrors they put those kids through toward the end, which is why they let the massacre happen (a bonus specifies that they forbid Fou to interfer, i suspect it was also to dissuade the rest of the Order to carry on their experiements. Irony would have that Bak’s mother died protecting Lenny who ended up being the one in charge of the Third Exorcist Projects...)Zhu, specifically, and the rest of the Chan family seen by Bak, have a lot of regrets with letting all of those happen and have extended those regrets by extra care of Kanda.

So imo, once Kanda was back in the Order under Tiedoll’s protection (so the Order couldn’t touch him anymore), Zhu would have accompagnied Kanda in a path of recovery to try to not be haunted by the visions. Because there’s no wonder those had haunted Kanda (that AND the PTSD of not only having to kill Alma, but to litterally have to tear Alma into pieces over and over to make sure he wouldn’t regenerate. Because yeah. That was a thing. That was the point that made Johnny puke. I mention it bc a translation i’ve read online missed the point. Fun fact the sound effect of that was added in the anime :) )

2) My second major proof of that is the fact that in Kanda’s room, there is a lotus flower in a hourglass- an actual one.

(it’s an omake from volume 9 btw, but i don’t find a good scan online for the whole thing)

it could be interpreted as a way for Kanda to remember the flower after the illusions ceased, but imo i think it more as an anchor type? Of knowing “this one is real, the others are not” if he’s having an episode? This could work a lot for Kanda to at least try to work through his episodes when he has to.

While i’m at it, said flower is right in front of Kanda’s bed and is the only object it Kanda’s room. So it is pretty important for Kanda to have around. while the emotional value or reminder of his goal cannot be disguarded, I think the fact it’s right in front of his bed is relevent especially after nightmares. After waking up from one and all, having this one anchor to reality.

If we reach too, the Room bonus also emphacize that Kanda doesn’t seem like he will be fixing the windows of his room anytime soon, which makes me wonder if Kanda just... ended up breaking windows by accident. We know he doesn’t train in his room - there’s training grounds around the Order for that and his room barely have space for sword practice. So unless some are due to random anger moment that have nothing to do with his trauma, I could see a harsh reaction after a nightmare or a particularly bad hallucination that left Kanda panicked enough to kick around the place.

3) Another major point toward this theory is the fact that Kanda sees the flowers again in front of Alma yet manages to remains locked into his denial that it couldn’t possibly be Alma. While it could be interpretted by... just major denial, a relapse after allt hoe years (and honestly the amount of flowers seems abnormal regardless) I could see it because Kanda had been used to see those illusions from time to time so he might think “this one is a particularly bad episode and it cannot be because of Alma.” (also we do see more illusions later during Alma’s death which make me think again Alma makes the illusion worse).

4) I also think that the fact Kanda’s Mugen abilities all are based on Illusions showcase that those illusions never truly went away. Kanda has a particular bound with his innocence dating back from that time, and I think there is something to say about how he is weaponizing the very illusions that drove him forward in life, thus i wouldn’t be completely disregarding that the illusions are still there and a fuel for Kanda.

5) Also i’m almost certain we see Lotus Flowers during Zhu’s death, way after Alma’s death, when Kanda get Mugen back. I fanything it goes forward to prove Kanda still see those flowers everywhere.

The flowers are our best physical representation of Kanda’s illusions since those are those we have proof about. But I personally would bet he had others illusions and some could have been worse than others.

I’m tending to think he perhaps stopped the That Person illusions once Alma “died”, because they were too tied to what Alma was doing at all time. at best, they faded away, each time further out of reach, so much further than they used to be. Enough to carry Kanda ahead, but still fainted enough because Alma is not around. Past!Kanda’s death seemed mostly present when Kanda didn’t know he was a man who died before, so I could see eventually those calming down after he realized what happened to him. However I think those illusions could still take him, in front of nightmares or particularly nasty akuma.atmosphere that could bring him back there. (kinda dying to see what Kanda’s reaction to be in the Campbell’s wheatfield will be like since it looks like the place he was killed (and probably is the place where he was killed).

The flowers and sounds, yeah I definitly think he still has them. I think he might have had them a l o t. Which could explain some of his habits to be more quiet and stoic, in case an illusion would interrupt and disturb him. It would explain his confusion sometime, some moments where he knows he’s having an episode but can’t make sense of what’s BEHIND that episode. Which would be a mess to have say in the middle of important conversations or in fights. Tbh that could also explain why Kanda’s patience could run thin in some settings and not in others, if some illusions makes him annoyed enough to be done with the previous conversation. I just hope the episodes are never bad enough when he’s doing an important fight.

And it’s not to count again, everything that comes from Alma and not just the past life. But those would be just supposition, but his time with Alma must have left some scars to him. Even if i think it was just a supperposition to show us it reminded him of Alma, the fact we see baby Alma near Johnny when excited from Kanda’s perspective before Kanda smiles softly loks like Alma still haunts Kanda in some sort of ways, and it would be unlikely to think it’s not the case toward the rest of the series. (mainly, Mattell, any mention of the Exorcists Projects (2nd and 3rd), his whole insistance on how “anything that is human can die” to Skinn as if to push himself to remind himself Alma died human, or having to consider killing companions in arms before they become a harm to the whole facility (I believe Kanda’s distaint of Allen by the Paris arc was a part of that tbh. Of “one day he’ll snap and it will be like Alma all over again”.))

I’m willing to bet that Kanda has all sort of nightmares and triggers, that he has a lot of illusions. 

I’m tending to believe that first, around Alma, they get more vivid, more frequent, those are where Kanda sees That Person the most. Memories of his death popping up once in a while. After he killed Alma and left, there is the time Kanda spent with Marie and then Tiedoll that is to take into account and there’s no way Kanda was emotionally stable there, even if i count on the others two to have helped. I think those illusions may have got particularly painful because too interwinded with the PTSD from Alma’s death.Then in the Order he was still adjusting himself when he got into it, and as time went by probably started to develop some coping mechanisms, some anchors, from Zhu’s reminder and the Lotus in his room, in order to deal with the episodes that would be bad.Developping Mugen and its illusions may have been a way to sieze control over those episodes in some way.But mainly, he still has them enough that he can still be in denial in front of Alma when the flowers start to bloom all over him.And he seems to still have them after Alma’s death, so they haven’t stopped. He probably just found more peace with them.

... hope that makes sense? but yeah basically what i think about it dkjhf