#yeah so i am a csh fan so what

[noobsoconfusing]

‘twin fantasy’_hamzahthefantastic

summary: just when hamzah thought he finally had a solid situation with you, the overwhelming feelings of being loved for the first time catch you, drown you.

angst, internet situationship au, hamzah being himself, kinda codependency, awkward, avoidant attachment issues.

>_<

if hamzah could describe the feeling of loneliness mixed with whatever the fuck being in love meant in only one word, it would reduce simply to: you.

it was the way your eyes glitched when you blinked in front of your low quality web cam, or maybe how you typed when you were in a hurry, always reminding yourself to maybe, just maybe, type something nicer so he didn’t feel like he was the problem.

so, as he stares directly at his phone screen, his eyes itchy and irritated from waiting to see you online, he decides to quickly type something to catch your attention.

hamzahthefantastic: the other night i cried while thinking of having sex with you

and so he waits. and waits, and waits.

the green dot next to your contact name appears and he cringes at himself for letting out an audible shriek of excitement.

y/n: hamzah!!!!

y/n: fr?

he smiles, shaking his head because yeah, it was for real, but also because he had gotten what he wanted. your attention.

hamzahthefantastic: lol. maybe. yeah. i dunno

hamzahthefantastic: wanna facetime?

y/n: hold on i’ll call you :)

>_<

silence. comforting moments between hazy stares and timid laughter. hamzah enjoyed this.

“your room is messy again, y/n” he mentions, peeking as much as he can from the position your webcam is in.

“yeah, i haven’t really got time to clean up… but yours is messy too!” you point, the camera glitches at your sudden loud voice.

“living alone kinda sucks, you know? at least i had my room clean when i lived with my parents, a warm plate of food too, and even allowance money!” he rolled his eyes, and you nodded.

hamzah and you had been friends ever since he lived with his parents, so you got to see the whole process of him moving to a different city, and you were there for him when he got his first place, and then his first job, and his first pets, and so on..

your heart wrenched when you realised you had lived a whole damn life by his side, however, behind a screen.

“wish i could live with you, hamzah..” you quietly say, hoping he doesn’t catch on, but he does, used to your quiet demeanour.

“me too, y/n.” a glitchy smile appears from his side of the screen, and you copy it.

and god, you love his smile. it’s so weird, so odd how the smile and physical happiness of someone that lives yet so far away from you can infect you with such joy. disgusting feelings arise from your stomach.

stupid fucking love and stupid fucking damned distance!

“for real? like, for ‘for real?” your voice shakes.

he nods with seriousness invading his face. “hell yeah, for real. i’d love to live with you, in fact, i do feel like i live with you even now, you know? we talk ever day, i see your face every- well, not every day, but enough to keep me going for the week!” he smiled, referring to those times you didn’t feel good enough to facetime, so he settled for texting, which made him equally happy.

“oh man…” you mutter. feelings enough, so damn enough. you don’t know what to do with your mind, and you don’t know why it’s racing so fast, imagining billions of scenarios.

he notices your manners. hamzah suddenly becomes self aware. scared he has said something wrong.

“are you-?”

“i love you.” you quickly cut him off, its not your intention though, just the lag delaying your confession.

confession that has already been confessed plenty of times.

“hey! i love you too!” as his soul finds its way back into his body, hamzah admits. joy suddenly running through his body like gasoline and fire consuming a wreck.

silence. you look up to stare at his pixelated frame. and he’s so beautiful. and you think this is all a damn dream.

“but do you like me?” the undertone of your sore voice makes its way throughout your sentence, betraying you.

he tilts his head like a confused puppy. you bite back a tiny smile.

“what do you mean? why are you asking that? do you not think i like you?” hey asks, confused and aching for a quick response.

you think a bit, not even knowing what you meant by that stupid question.

“nevermind, hah! it’s nonsense, really…” you try to sound convincing.

for your misfortune, hamzah knows you way better than you think.

“not nonsense, something is bugging you and i can tell.” he adjusts his headphones as he says that, trying to get a better listen at your reply.

“you.”

hamzah furrows his eyebrows at your quick answer.

“huh?”

“it bugs me that i am always thinking of you, that’s my issue, yeah?” you say, a bit more loose, “i always think about how amazing and how wonderful it wouldve been being your neighbour or your friend from school, but no, i am stuck here a thousand and a million more miles away from you and i can’t do anything to cut the distance short.” you sigh.

hamzah bites his lower lip, and he thinks, oh, how a thought you must have been saving for a long time also affects him in severe ways. he thinks the same.

“you know, y/n? i don’t think it was, you know, the amazing casualties of life that made us end up talking to each other until four in the fucking morning. you know what i think? that you were actually made for me.” he shrugs his shoulders and tries to put on a smile for you, even though he wishes he could just cry…or something.

“right.” you sigh. “hamzah, i just… i feel like my whole life revolves around you, is that weird? like, i wake up and see if you texted me while i was asleep. then i go about my day and still think about you, and then when you text me i just.. drop everything else to spend time with you.” you try to avoid the camera, or his gaze. “do you think that’s weird? am i weird?”

your face drops as he bursts out laughing.

“no! not weird at all, y/n! you see, i- okay, i do the same… you’re so pretty, inside and outside and you’re so thoughtful and so kind and beautiful and just… yourself, that i find myself thinking about you and your antics for hours, if not the whole day!” he lets out a deep sigh of satisfaction, shaking his head with a smile because letting all of his emotions out felt so fucking great.

“you’re so weird, so dumb…” you smile, even if you feel like your eyes are about to shed waterfalls of tears.

“we can be weird.” he adds. “it’s only cool if we’re both weird.” his voice is soft and low just like always. so genuine.

“right, yeah.” you smile too.

hamzah can’t help but secretly take a picture of your face, the dim lighting of your room accentuates your features perfectly and he finds himself more and more invested in you.

“yeah, right..”

>_<

hamzah’s voice fills your ears in a soothing manner.

while you carefully listen, you can’t help but dissociate from reality. your mind occupied in something you can’t really comprehend.

“…a video, like in a youtube channel, do you think that’s a good idea?” his voice slowly becomes more present, and you snap your head to his direction. “are you there…?”

“yeah, sorry, just mind fog, hah!” you reply forcing a smile.

“alright, are you okay? have you eaten today? do you wanna end the call so you can sleep?” hamzah asks and you feel a little bit dizzy from all the questions that come out of his mouth.

“yeah- no! i am fine, what were you saying about a video on youtube?” you quickly try to bring the focus to him again.

hamzah frowns so quickly that you think it’s a glitch. but he smiles right away.

“i was saying, i was thinking about posting something on youtube.” he repeats. “you think that’s a good idea?” you come to realise how hamzah always asks for your opinion, always seeking your approval.

you nod. “yeah, i think it’d be really cool, maybe you’ll get famous one day!”

his laugh fills your heart, and makes you flash a smile too.

“nah, i don’t think so, it’ll be just for fun, just to kill time, i kinda need a distraction from thinking ‘bout you all day, right?” he says.

and what he said, keeps playing in your mind for a while.

distraction. from you.

“yeah, cool!”

and you try your best to keep track of the conversation, but you’ve been so tired.

so tired.

not sleepy, somehow. just so, so fucking tired.

>_<

your surprised face comes up to the screen as this time he is wearing a grey hoodie, different from the black one he always uses.

“cute. you look like… well, something cute!” he says making the screen bigger so he can see you better.

“why?” you laugh, “something?”

“yeah, something. you know, you’re so unique i can’t even describe you or compare you to anything. i love you a lot, y/n…”

stop. please. stop.

you think. the feeling of need inside your chest hurts and burns after every word he says. after every sentence. everything reminds you that he’s so far away, that you are probably never going to touch him. never feel him.

and the screen is so cold and so hard and so lifeless, and you wonder, how can something inanimate hold your biggest desire inside? how can hamzah live inside your device? how can it hold so much meaning inside its metallic shell?

“i love you.” you bluntly say. “i love you so much it hurts and i wish you could make it stop hurting so fucking bad.” a desperate laugh erupts from your throat, one that screams for help.

“oh, baby, i wish i could hold you so close. never gonna let you go once i have you here with me, alright? im gonna glue your body to mine and we will just have to live like that…” an exaggerated version of his deep fantasy came out, but still, he was very much serious.

“sounds good.” you reply.

“fuck yeah it does” he sighs, but not defeated, just full of hope. one of you had to be hopeful, right?

“fuck yeah…” you repeated, mind fog attacking you once again.

>_<

his grey hoodie on again, and you start to think he hasn’t washed it in the full week that has passed.

it’s alright though, you love him that way.

“i keep having these… dreams about you” he says. “odd dreams, not nightmares though, just weird dreams”

“me too.” you say. the guilt of the neediness inside your tummy makes its way to your brain. eating you up.

“what about?” hamzah asks, more invested now that he knows you dream about him too.

“you first.” you deadpan.

“fantasies. really fucking good fantasies, though.”

“about?” you ask again.

“sex and… whatnot.” oh. he’s so serious and so direct and so honest.

you can’t hide your surprise, nor the blush that creeps up to your cheeks.

“oh, i guess… me too.” and your voice shakes because it’s so odd to say this out loud.

“i don’t know. im so used to you, i just imagine whats like to… well, be with you. and touch you and just feel your body against mine.”

“sometimes i feel like i crave a touch i’ve never felt before. how can i yearn for something i have never tasted?” you ask, and he opens his eyes, already wide.

“yeah, i feel the same.”

“need you, though. very badly.” a deep feeling of emptiness swallows you up. how can your bed be so empty yet you’re laying on it? how can hamzah be your twin fantasy yet he’s so far away?

“i wanna be inside you, just feel you and melt over your body and maybe then, i’ll feel complete.” hamzah has a hard time expressing his emotions with coherent thoughts, but this time you understand him completely.

>_<

it’s been minutes. and you are about to freaking win the contest. again. like the last four times.

hamzah’s eyes are red even over the bad quality camera he’s using. “y/n! please just let me win this time!” he begs, his eyes squinting. he struggles to keep them open.

and you’re perfectly fine, nonchalant even. but as you see his struggle, you give in.

“fine!”

you blink. tears fall down your cheeks from how dry your poor eyes were. you laugh.

“finally!” he celebrates. “oh god, thought i was going blind…”

“well, we’ve been on call for like five hours, the screen is gonna make us blind sooner than later” you laugh, and he does too.

“i just like talking to you.” he admits and you swear you can see a slight red tint adorning his face. he’s so adorable.

stupidly adorable. your heart aches.

“i like it too.”

you loved it, actually.

did you?

>_<

that damned grey hoodie again. and you think, it’s the third consecutive time that week.

you, however, just despised the way he looked absolutely fucking stunning in it. as if he knew it did things to you.

“what are we?” you ask, breaking the comfortable silence that surrounded you both.

you tended to do assignments together on call, sometimes he knew things you didn’t and he helped you, and viceversa.

“i am hamzah, you’re y/n and you’re my everything.” he replied, still focusing on his excel sheet.

“but what are we?” a situationship. that was it. hamzah would constantly call you pet names and tell you how much he loves you, and then drop the most horny messages about you.

“we are everything, i just said”

“that’s not an answer, hamzah, what are we? like, are we best friends, friends, lovers, or just people who talk to each other about their deepest secrets and feelings?” you closed your powerpoint and stared at the webcam.

“you’re everything to me, right? all of the above, every option, you are.” he said, still focusing on his work but at the same time on you.

silence again.

you nodded. a smile forming on your face.

“everything, then.”

>_<

your cheeks flushed at his words, you were a second away from turning your camera off from how embarrassed you were.

“you want- hamzah! you wanna what!?” you put a hand over your mouth in a surprised expression.

he laughs.

“i said i wanna fuck you, i just said!” he repeated himself, a smirk plastered on his face.

“why would you say that?” you laughed.

“because you were sad and i wanted to cheer you up!” he held his hands up in defence, his screen lagged at the sudden movement. “i’d rather have you happy than sad!”

“now im sad and flustered…” your hands went up to your cheeks, just to feel the warmth that spread across.

“hey, that’s better than sad alone.”

“you’re so dumb!”

>_<

handling your emotions was something you never knew about. and hamzah seemed to be so down to earth about what he wanted, about what he felt, that you couldn’t help but feel left behind in the emotional management area.

“gonna call it a night, im really tired, hamzah.” you said, a yawn escaping your mouth.

“oww, but- but it’s only been three hours..” his big puppy eyes stare at you, and you beat yourself up when you look at his sad face.

stop. stop!

“sorry…” you apologise. “we’ve been talking all week and i’ve been staying up till late the whole week too, we can chat during the day, though.”

he frowns but nods at the same time.

“fair, love you, have a good night!” he waves, waiting for you to say you love him back.

“good night, hamzah!” you smile, ready to end the call, but before you do so, he quickly yells;

“i said i love you…” his hopeful eyes dance across the screen, darting from your own to the smaller square with his face in it.

you pause for a moment. swallow and blink.

“oh, yeah, me too!” and there it was. your stupid feelings ruining everything.

his face drops, but somehow manages to keep a small smile. “alright, love you more, see you tomorrow?”

“yeah.”

and as if it was a race, you rush to press the ‘end call’ button.

your head spinning had you dizzy, so you throw the phone away and lay on your bed. hamzah is all you can think about.

it was like a self defence thing that was, at the same time, self destructive. you had to run away from him, you had to stop your heart from being broken. though, you didn’t think hamzah could hurt you. it was all so confusing! so dumb!

>_<

early hours of the morning, and you are not even fully awake when your phone starts buzzing from the other side of the room.

you rub your sore eyes and groan. every time you woke up it felt like an accomplishment. it was such a struggle, you just wanted your bed to swallow you.

hamzahthefantastic: good morning :D

hamzahthefantastic: kinda went to sleep with a tiny little concern last night…..

hamzahthefantastic: are you mad at me?

the last thing you wanted was to make him upset, however, there was a certain part of his whole attention and sort of devotion –to you– that made you upset.

y/n: gm!

y/n: im not mad at you

hamzahthefantastic: for real?

hamzahthefantastic: you seemed upset last night, kinda zoned out idk

y/n: just tired ngl

hamzahthefantastic: alr it’s fine dw

hamzahthefantastic: i love you a lot y/n

hamzahthefantastic: have a good day today yeah? get some rest, make sure to eat PROPER food, and also don’t forget that i love you :)

you stared at his texts for a little too long, then locked your phone. then unlocked it again. stared some more and then bit your lip, thinking of a reply.

hamzah. yeah. you loved him! how could you not? you had been fixated on him since you two met. why, then, the feelings of overwhelming love now creeped into your brain like flesh eating amoeba?

y/n: ily too!

you frowned. the text was so dry.

y/n: <3

better.

and the reason?, simple. hamzah’s love felt like it was tearing you apart. suffocating you. nobody had ever loved you, or showed remote interest in you like hamzah did.

was he too much? no. you shook your head, thinking then, maybe, you were not enough.

your phone buzzed, and you knew it was him. but you couldn’t get to check.

>_<

per usual, at the end of the day, your routine of facetiming had to be completed. hamzah took his phone and typed a message for you.

hamzahthefantastic: hey! wanna facetime?

hamzahthefantastic: could use to hear your voice :) been thinking ‘bout u all day

11 minutes passed. no response from you.

hamzahthefantastic: helloooooooo

hamzahthefantastic: :( are you there?

hamzahthefantastic: is it ok if i call you?

hamzahthefantastic: miss you y/n

hamzahthefantastic: did i do anything wrong? please call when u see this alr?

hamzah waited. and waited. and waited some more. almost how he waited for you to reply after sending a weird message. this time though, something inside his gut felt different.

it felt like he had fucked something up. ruined whatever the fuck he had going on with you. a something that meant so much, only so much to him.

he was confused.

>_<

waiting felt like skinning himself alive.

like trying to dissect his own heart while it was still beating. beating hard. beating for you.

he opened his chat with you, the only chat he had pinned. hamzah scrolled through all the unread messages he had sent to you, and they seemed uncountable.

no reply. it’s been days.

he sighed. twin fantasy feeling like a fantasy he was only living by himself all along. were you even real?

hamzah couldn’t get himself to doubt you.

>_<

hamzah’s heart clenched. he stared at his messy room, at how the plates piled up on his night table, at how he had your chat open on his laptop to see if you got online any time soon.

he felt like a loser.

>_<

days became weeks. and weeks became a month. and a month was something so long in hamzah-time.

and he still held on.

however, he decided to type out something for you again. just as he did daily.

hamzahthefantastic: hey y/n, hi. how’s everything going? you know, i miss you a lot. more than i can take. and i miss your voice and your face. and most importantly i miss your company. it’s okay, though. i am hoping one day we can reunite, i secretly know this is one of your plans to make me want you even more -_- …but baby, please just come back, yeah? i feel so weird and out of place if you’re not here. i wonder if you’re lonely and i wish i could touch you so i just touch my screen. does that make me a loser? i love you so much, i hope you know that. hurts when you don’t reply, and hurts more realising you probably never will again. please be okay. i love you a lot. and i am sort of tearing up right now, does that make me a loser too? ily

ps. thank you for being my best friend and my best everything (you’re literally my life though) i’ll wait as long as you need!

ps2. i’ll try tomorrow, maybe you’ll be online by then

ps3. i still fantasise about you!

silly, he thought. a loser, a hopeless romantic living so far away from his muse. just a twin flame dancing on his own, by now.

a twin fantasy lived through the eyes of one, only.

>_<

sorry i took so long and sorry this is proper shit. i wanted an excuse to write something other than fluff or smut. i hope you ppl like dis one! (my shitty take at angst) raise ur hand if this ever happened to u totally not based on a true story

[traanarchist]

Review of The Best™ Car Seat Headrest Album, How to Leave Town

As a certified Car Seat Headrest Homosexual™, I am contractually obligated to have at least one hot take of my own to add to the pile that is CSH Discourse. Luckily for you, it's not only correct, but also pretty chill compared to some others I've seen in the abyss that is r/CSHFans.

As somebody who isn't a huge fan of the numbered albums (The first four albums Will made), I split up CSH's discography into two parts when thinking about it as a whole: the big (in both size and scope) albums, and the smaller ones. I consider Twin Fantasy (Both Versions), Monomania, How to Leave Town, Teens of Denial, and Making A Door Less Open to be the 5 "big albums". I don't declare this with any authority, just that I find it easier to think of these 5 as the more focused and more album-y albums than something like Nervous Young Men or My Back Is Killing Me Baby.

Anyways, the reason I say all this is to say that, of the 5 "big albums", my favorite is How To Leave Town, which I feel like is one of the more underappreciated albums of his discography, and especially out of those 5. Why is that?

The Vibes

As with most Ephemeral things, be it gender, sexuality, or the fiction ideas you get while stoned out of your mind at 1 AM, vibes are very hard to explain. For me, How To Leave Town just has an energy about it. It's dark and melancholic but also bittersweet, depressing but hopeful. It carries the ambivalence that I get when I'm sitting on my bed, just thinking, and I suddenly feel my perspective switch and suddenly look at a part of my life in a completely different direction. When I listen to the 5 Minute Long instrumental intro to the first song on How To Leave Town, The Ending of Dramamine, I start to feel this weird pulsing feeling in my chest, like the onset of an anxiety attack, but not in a bad way. It's not that I feel sad or happy or any emotion, it's that I just feel. And that's really cool. Am I reading too much into my own reaction to some weird electronic beats? Yup, but it's very based pog of me to do so.

The Lyrics

Will is a goat lyricist, and I feel like he represents that nowhere more so than in How To Leave Town. The Ending of Dramamine has my favorite verse pretty much ever:

And in the sky, there is a place Where it's warm, and you're there And I've got the power now Yeah, I know what to do To make you feel something besides pain 'Cause it's the love That we've come to expect, to deserve And then we fuck and it's nice It's not a complicated mess And my back doesn't hurt And your head doesn't tell you to kill yourself So we smile and embrace Until we don't know who we are

Like this is a major mood ngl. Will is able to build a story of leaving home and being in this place of extreme change and how that makes you question everything around you, not through plot points but through lyrics that create that emotional response.

You can drive across the whole thing in four days if you really wanted leaving custom thank you notes in all the houses you ever haunted

in this whole solar system we've only met one type of life it's the living kind of life and it's not one I recognize

Of course, change isn't always bad! In You're in Love with Me, How to Leave Town gets a fully happy song, where Will happily sings about falling in love, as well as when he had a dream where Obama came to his birthday party. It's weird and silly and sweet and I love it so much.

The Instrumentals

I'm not a musician, and I don't know shit about music theory, I just sing and listen to a lot of music. However, even I can tell that man oh man, the synths in this album slap, along with all the other instrumental work. Can I say anything beyond that it's really good? Nope!

The Conclusion

I'm planning on using this blog (when I'm not reblogging Homestuck Fanart) to just post little essay thingies like this on albums I really like. Please add any albums you think I might like in the tags/comments (do people use comments on tumblr? I'm very new to this) or just send me an ask and I'll post some tiny thoughts about it if I get the time to listen to it! Anyways that's it peace out gamers

[chromsai]

i didnt want to answer this using the actual ask because since the full, untagged name is there, i just know that tumblr will find a way to get it into its main tag and just out of courtesy to its fans, i don’t wanna be that person.

that said, and out of courtesy to any of my followers that like it, i’ll put my actual opinion under the cut as extra precaution because, again, i dont wanna be that rude ass person.

(long rant ahead tbh)

it’s my least favorite ygo. i mean, setting vr aside for now just to be fair since it’s still not done yet, it is without a doubt my least favorite ygo because its writing is just that piss poor. 

tl;dr: it’s a fucking mess of a show, it doesn’t appeal to me, i find it to be (ironically) superficial (in terms of themes and messages), i dont like the decks, character arcs? god they’re wasted, the writing is just a bunch of asspullery nonsense, and “foreshadowing” is actually just spoon fed self-fulfilling prophecies. it’s my least favorite show and it almost made me quit yugioh altogether. but i still don’t discourage anyone from watching it. because maybe it didnt appeal to me or click with me, but maybe it would for someone else, and i’m not afraid to admit that. because people have different tastes.

its characters overall get little to no development, what little development most of them get (like shark and ........i wanna say kaito, but i dont wanna include kaito in here because i think his development was the only one that was actually decent, but idk who else to put here since... most characters didnt actually get development? as/t/ral, i guess?) is completely ruined sooner or later when the plot decides to inevitably asspull. i will admit i did like where shark’s development was going but the fucking moment he was revealed to be na//sh is when his development went completely down the fucking shitter. oh so JUST cuz some “destiny” says you’re “destined” to fight against yu//ma you just... go with what it’s telling you? you don’t even like your own destiny or some of the people you’re working with but... like... just cuz you remembered some memories of your past life you gotta finish the mission? even tho... 1) you didn’t actually want to, 2) you can just talk this all out (seriously this plot CAN be resolved with just talking things out, the card games are notably forced up this plot’s ass), 3) wtf happened to yu//ma being your friend??? you don’t wanna fight him but you will because you must, it’s your destiny?!? what kind of fucking non-explanation is that. fygdshbjkl honestly there are so many more questions that can be asked about just na/csh’s logic for fighting ALONE and i am still left dumbfounded. the amount of utter STUPID going on in this writing is incredible, honestly that i’m left without words.

ze//al’s plot & writing is NECK DEEP in allll that kind of stupid nonsensical logic, literally i could probably go on all night asking so many questions about where the fucking common sense went while writing this show. like i have so many fucking issues with ze//al II’s writing i just don’t understand how people think of it as legitimately good? it was all drama for drama’s sake with no real consequences since everything was reversed back to normal anyway??? fuck, i have less issues with ze//al’s first season and i actually liked it better. but anyway, moving on....

the aesthetic... is ... well before vr, i would say it was horrid, but at the very least ze//al gives us colors... it’s very colorful and the animation is pretty nice, ngl... but do i care? not really. not when i didnt really like almost any of the character designs... IV, Kaito, Mi//sael, and A//lito, Du//be, Rei/Vec//tor’s designs imo are nice... the rest... “what about the other arc//ights or [insert character here]”. no, if i didnt mention them by name just now, i didnt like their design. Yu//ma’s design... it’s... it’s very generic shounen protag. he is definitely, imo, the worst design of all the ygo protags, but i don’t think he’s HORRIBLE to look at. at least not most of the time, anyway. and actually you know what, i’ve never been into alien stuff but As//ral’s pretty, i’ll give him that. i guess perhaps that’s why i didnt like the aesthetic... too... alieny for me (gross, imo....... i just... absolutely hated the Ba//ians).

the little foreshadowing it gives us from the beginning through the end is spoonfed to us, and you literally gotta be foolish to not understand what it means straightaway. not only that, some of it uses retcon as a mechanism to seem like it’s foreshadowing (that fucking door from the first episode telling Yu//ma that he’ll lose his most important thing... and then at the end it turns out it was As//ral?? did Yu//ma not have anything important to him at the time he dreamt of the door??? or like... wtf is this door a prophet or smth or is it trying to make a contract, which is it??? make up your damn mind!!)... so yeah... it doesn’t actually give us any real “foreshadowing” as much as it uses self-fulfilling prophecies...

leading us to my next ironic point: this show is superficial af. as i just said, everything is literally spoon fed to you. literally all of its themes are plainly spelled out to you and laid out on the surface, you don’t really need to actually think to to get its message, and there is certainly no point in digging deep to find richer subtext... because there is none. there literally is none. and you know what? i know this is a very subjective preference; i personally love to delve deep into the symbolic and get analytical with the stories i enjoy because my brain is just naturally curious like that... but... even with a naturally curious brain... i just... no matter how much i try... this show is all bones and no meat. there is an established foundation of a message and it’s nice but it’s... way too straightforward and, as i said, spoon fed for my liking.

if you like that kind of story-telling, that’s completely fine, i get that. we’re not all here to watch YUGIOH, of all franchise, trying to give us some deep, meaningful message. hell, that’s not even the reason why i’ve enjoyed yugioh ever. i’m here for the same appeal that everyone else is here for: teens saving the world with stupid ass card games. but i just strongly prefer when a story, ANY story, shows enormous amounts of attention to detail and hints at deeper meanings in its context that i can use my brain to work around with and delve into. ze//al doesn’t give me even a hint of this. past ygos have, but ze//al doesnt even try. it’s meant for a younger audience tho, even for ygo’s usual demographic, so i get it. but... it’s because of this that i find it so lackluster.

speaking of the card games.... this show literally... has my least favorite decks. i’m not so into the OCG/TCG that i’m an expert about it so i dont wanna delve into something idfk much about, but just... that’s my taste... this show’s decks are terrible for the most part. the card effects are all too particular and disturbingly OP (one OP card after another... it always happens and it always makes the duels a drag to watch, even if they’re just one or two episodes long at the most)... plus... aesthetically... i guess they’re not all terrible, but still none of them wowed me either...

i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again... this show nearly made me give up on yugioh. my logic was “if they’re just gonna keep making ze//al after ze//al, i’m just gonna stop.” thankfully... well i think you know what happened next...

even after all that’s said and done and i’ve pretty much ranted and ripped this show a new one, I STILL DON’T WANNA DISCOURAGE ANYONE FROM WATCHING IT IF THEY REALLY WANNA TRY IT. because i know that maybe this show just wasn’t for me and it didnt click with me, but it might for someone else. i’m not here to tell you that it’s a piece of shit abomination that should never have happened and it should be whipped out of existence and you should go watch something else instead (HUR DUR GO WATCH VANGUARD INSTEAD) . i’m not here telling you what you should and shouldn’t like. if you like this show, that’s awesome. tbqh with you, i still enjoyed some of it and i’m not afraid to admit that. but overall? it was super lackluster and unimpressive, IMO. at best, i’d say it’s forgettable so for the most time i’m just like... “oh ze//al? yeah it happened i guess” and move on without a second thought and let its fans enjoy it as if its the best thing in the world even tho i personally do not see it that way at all. 

but again, i’d say watch it and make up your own opinion over it. i think that’s honestly the best course of action for any media that might even slightly interest you. don’t let people spoon feed their opinions to you. this was all MY experience of the show. go have your own.

p.s. (more of my opinion) i LOVE music and soundtracks of things. they’re always also a big factor of my enjoyment of the media i consume. the soundtrack for this show is decent at best. no track really stood out to me (like maybe one did) but for the most part... the soundtrack is just... i wouldn’t say it’s bad, it’s just... again not memorable... not my style... and my biggest gripe is that a lot of the tracks have this pseudo-grandiose feeling to it that just ultimately fall flat and don’t convey actual emotion. it mostly just seems like it’s music for music’s sake. personally, i think good soundtracks should be able to tell a story or convey an overwhelming feeling without the context of its source material being present. i... i just never got that with ze//al’s soundtrack. maybe once, as i said, but... even then i dont remember it.

on a more positive note tho... i have to admit all of the ED themes are really good (Challenge the Game was literally too good for this show, who the fuck allowed this). i’d listen to them way more often if i didnt associate them with ze//al tbh. not a huge fan of any of the OPs tho. no, not even the second OP. like it’s nice for the first few times but then, to me personally, it starts getting really grating and wangsty.

[shivroy]

🌟 for seetsu!

-He has a very blasé outlook on life, which is fun and much-needed when he’s with his friends (who are basically urnamm’s gang and zander and jordan) and when he’s alone it turns into complete apathy towards most things. Him being isolated has led to major problems in his life, such as self-harm and eating disorders which he is struggling to get over. His friends are helping him in every way that they can, and they are surprisingly compassionate for a group of avidly swearing annoying boys who dare each other to put a hose on a steep road in the winter and then tape themselves to a skateboard and other stuff of equal stupidity 

-Although his isolation has led to a lot of bad stuff, it did cause him to mess around with a synthesizer and he got pretty darn good at it. He also loves messing around with midi fighters and soundboards (when he’s feeling sad he likes to make loops like this and just mess around with that, but when he’s on the happier side he makes stuff sort of like shawn wasabi. one of his favorite songs was when he remixed sound clips of a fight between torixi and jordan and the beat was jordan going “OOF” from when he tripped over the carpet when trying to lunge at tor, tor’s laughter make some good background noise and messing with the maniacal melody of that was very fun for him. he also discovered that the words “(Your body looks like a) pierogi that exploded in the microwave” has a good tempo. thanks for being so awful, tor, what fine-tempo’d words indeed.) He posts a few of his songs on the troll version of youtube, but he doesn’t get very many views. He did the ultimate overkill and managed to get internet from other dimensions, and because of that he’s a big fan of @brinytrolls‘s troll Sarkan’s channel though! He probably secretly wishes he could meet Sarkan and one day make him like inro/outro music, but he doubts it’ll ever happen. Who knows if it will >:3c 

-Related to that, him and his friends like to do dumb little band practices, and seetsu passionately denies the fact that a synthesizer, saxophone, timpani, cowbell, bassoon and detroi occasionally falling off the couch rhythmically does not sound very good. 

-Being in matesprits with zander is one of the best things that has happened to seetsu. He really believed he was aromantic for a long time but it was mostly because he lives in an apartment complex with a bunch of other snotty arrogant goldblood kids who put thumbtacks outside his door and are incredibly annoying. Even though zander is weird and off-putting to newcomers, seetsu really gets him and they make each other somewhat less creepy. Somewhat. Seetsu enjoys making robotic things with zan, and he is responsible for most of the programming for elsibot, which was so good that it became fully sentient, so… he’s very good. They also make stupid crap all the time. 

-He also gets along with teuksi and vaydra quite well, because they enjoy doing random math problems and playing video games together even though all of them are not able to see very well (or in teuksi’s case at all). They don’t care at all if they are called nerds. 

-He’s not bothered by most people, but detroi really annoys him. His constant purpleblood blather bothers him sort of when it’s just mindless talk detroi says wehn he;s high out of his mind, but when he’s saying all sort of stuff that puts down basically all bloods other than purple he almost can’t deal with it. At that point he begins to understand why jordan is so bothered by his black feelings - with a lot of younger trolls they’re really uncontrollable and awful. Seetsu can’t tell if he actually despises detroi or despises him and simultaneously wants to make out with him. Unfortunately, when zander is back at his hive which is pretty far from the CSH, seetsu gets cold at night and likes to sleep in the vicinity of someone else, and as you all know the first commandment in the purpleblood holy book is “thou shalt not sleep without holding onto a motherf***er” (so sorry) so seetsu ends up being with detroi a bunch. Dunno how that stupid frosty-veined highblood will help his notably warm-blooded self, but it’s the thought (or idiotic behemoth beside him) that counts. 

-Although he hates people pointing it out, he does talk in a very individual way of talking. It’s less of a lisp, more like how someone sounds when they have retainers in (kind of like how Sam from Moonrise Kingdom talks if people have seen that if you have you get what I’m talking about). Not exactly elegant, but not gross or anything, just particular. He also says a bunch of things to annoy people, such as he intentionally says “libary” and “pichur” when elsibeth is around because she will lose her mind, and he refers to anything plural as puppies, which can be massively unpleasant in certain circumstances. 

-He is a derse player! He sometimes thinks he should have been prospit, but then he remembers “oh yeah I am the one who locked myself in my room for three days and ate ranch Bugles and watched all of stranger things nonstop.”

-His strife specibus is a bunch of hexagonal light canons that he controls using his psiionics. I’ll draw those sometime so people can get a better idea of them. Speaking of that, his psiionics are pretty shoddy before the game and the most he uses them for is to lift half-empty bags of chips so he doesn’t have to get up and flick pencils at the back of people’s heads to agitate them. I bet you can guess who that always works on. (jerbert)

-And last but not least… He shaves his head about once a month because then it shows less when he decides to skip taking a shower for the eleventh time in a row. It’s quite a ritualistic process for him. It also helps keep his alarmingly bristly hair in check. It’s pretty pokey if he doesn’t shave it for a while!