#anyway a lot of my most favorite teachers were; looking back; incredibly kind and considerate people

[rubberbandballqueen]

looking through my 8th grade science notebook n reflecting on that teacher's style and personality, and man, i think i might cry hahaha

#in a good way bc he was always so kind and earnest and forgiving #i think some kids thought his sincerity was cringe but *i* let myself have fun n now he's one of the teachers i most wanna be like #during study group today my classmates said they thought i'd be a good teacher someday bc of how clearly i laid out the processes #so now i'm going back to ye olde teacher thoughts bc i mean. that's gonna be real someday #n i'm finally writing down a lot of the things i realized through the years i learned from various teachers #what i liked abt their styles before i may have realized why they worked #i really don't know quite how to talk to kids in a way they understand (which is why i know i'm not gonna teach elementary school lol) #but i remember being in 8th grade n loving how clearly all the information was given to us-- it was obvious that the teacher had #written them himself just for us-- n like. this is basically my model for explaining things to kids #anyway the first thing i wrote down abt what i liked abt this teacher is 'made stories out of science n out of us as scientists' #n like. how can i not respect and admire the hell out of that as someone who love love loves story and art? #the way science and art became one... fucking immaculate dude!!! #anyway a lot of my most favorite teachers were; looking back; incredibly kind and considerate people #and i'm glad to have had the privilege of learning under them growing up #the man's not that old he's probably still teaching. i could like. add him on fb n ask to hang out at some point #bc now *i'm* curious abt how he got into teaching n how he developed his style #the worm speaks

[that-bi-bitch-writes]

A Cursed Reality- JJK x Male Reader (Ch. 3)

This has a couple time skips. They aren't huge and I didn't know how to format it so I just put little dashes to imply there are time skips.

A lot of this material is taken straight from the manga and adapted a little to fit [Name] and there's a hint to his greater power/purpose in the story as well as his background. Enjoy!!!

Previous // Next

Chapter Three: In hindsight [Name] probably should’ve minded his own business. Actually, NO. He was going to blame everything on Gojo. If Gojo hadn’t sent him on that mission to play dutiful senpai [Name] never would’ve gotten involved with Sukuna’s vessel beyond being his upperclassman. But noooo. Now [Name] actually feels something for Itadori, including an obligation to check on the kid. Yuji would most likely be fine, he was being protected by Gojo, and like [Name]’s favorite Sensei, Yaga seems to at least consider Gojo’s opinion when making decisions. His power is well respected regardless of whether or not the blue-eyed Sorcerer is liked. The problem, in [Name]’s own words, was ‘that damn principal’ who liked to torture some of the more problematic recruits. Yaga of course called it a form of vetting. He didn’t want to enroll any students that would die way too easily or cause more problems than they were worth. With people like Yuji and [Name] the whole vetting process became troublesome. Straightforward but complex. They didn’t hide anything really and didn’t have any secret motives, but there were a lot of unknowns in their lives. Especially about where they came from and how they would act in the heat of the moments. ---------------- “Whoa! It’s in the mountains? Is this really Tokyo?” “This isn;t actually out of the ordinary for a tokyo suburb” “What about Fushiguro?” “He’s fast asleep after receiving jujutsu treatment” -------------------------------- “Fushiguro-kun!” “Hmm” “Fushiguro!” “[Name]-senpai” “Where is Gojo-sensei? Is he back with Yuji yet?” “I’ve been asleep, but Gojo-sensei said he’d leave at 6am” “That was three hours ago” “Yeah” “Good! So they haven’t made it to the principal yet. Sweet dreams Fushiguro-kun” “I’ll come with you” “You’ll need your rest” “But-” “Sleep” and with that [Name] darted out the door hearing Megumi’s body hit the mattress once again. [Name] had to warn Yuji about the principal. Knowing Gojo he’d probably stress the kid out and throw him to the gorilla. Yaga of course being the gorilla. ------------------------------------------- “First thing’s first, Yuji--” Gojo started “You’ve got an interview with the principal.” “The principal?” “If you mess up, you might get rejected for admission, so stay frosty, okay?” “WHAT!? DOES THAT MEAN I CAN GET EXECUTED RIGHT AWAY? Yuji shrieked “What a disappointment... I thought you were the leader… A hierarchy not based purely on strength is boring if you ask me” Sukuna raged on before being slapped into silence. “Sorry Sensei, He comes out sometimes….” “What an interesting body you have now.” Gojo noticed “I owe you a debt, after all” “Not again” Yuji shouted Sukuna ignored Yuji and continued “When I make this Kid’s body mine… You’ll be the first one I kill!” “Silence” “Me a target of the great sukuna? What an honor!” Gojo continued as if nothing had happened Sukuna hadn’t disappeared yet but couldn’t open his mouth. [Name]’s cursed command had a little more strength in it than normal. Gojo may have been immature, unfairly attractive (something that pissed [Name] off for reasons “unrelated” to jealousy) and extremely annoying, but he was the closest thing [Name] had to family. He was there to drag [Name] from out of the wreckage after the accident and he was the first person to welcome [Name] to Jujutsu Tech. So yeah, Sukuna’s threat pissed [Name] off a bit. Yuji finally shook Sukuna off and continued to talk to Gojo. About what [Name] has no clue, the two of them were easily excitable and all over the place. In the meantime he was trying to think of advice to give to Yuji before he was thrown into Gorilla territory. Yaga wouldn’t let [Name] stay for the interview and [Name]’s not exactly sure he’d want to anyway. “Hey Puppy!” “Puppy?” ‘Oh shit’ [Name] thought ‘I totally meant to say Yuji. Okay [Name] just breeze past it’

“You’re going into some dangerous territories/ That old man will be looking for a reason to throw you out. Don’t screw up. Just be yourself... but like the you on ADHD meds” Gojo couldn’t help but snicker and [Name] shot him a look as if to communicate ‘the same can be said about you Satoru’ before walking away. “Thanks [Name]-san!” Yuji called after the retreating boy. He then became incredibly serious “Sensei. You said you’d win. But between [Name] and Sukuna… would he lose?” “I don’t know if he’d win” Gojo said before a pregnant pause “But he wouldn’t die. I know that for sure.” Within Yuji, Sukuna hummed in curiosity. That boy had no trouble overpowering Sukuna. And with one word at that. Of course, right now he had only the strength of one finger, but for the boy not to break a sweat. He couldn’t help but think things were getting interesting. ----------------------- “This is your room, you can do whatever you want with it.” “Whoa it’s huge” “The second- and third-years are out right now. You’ll meet them soon enough. Though there’s not many of them anyway” Yuji whistled, putting up a poster of a woman in a bikini before pausing. “What about [Name]? He asked “Is he out too?" “I actually don’t know. It depends. You see [Name] has a very special relationship with the other second years and sometimes that means trouble for missions, so it’s a 50/50 chance on whether or not he’s still here” Yuji hmmed and Gojo stared at him in silence. “Yuji you don’t need to fight, you know. Fushiguro and I can go and retrieve Sukuna’s fingers. Why don’t you just wait here?” Yuji faced the wall and seemed to be immersed in thought. In all honesty both he and Gojo knew what the answer would be. Only one day was needed to figure out the type of person Yuji was. “No! I said I’d do it didn’t I? But it would be hilarious to see a beaten-up Fushiguro bring the fingers to me while I relax” Both he and gojo thought about it a little. Gojo agreed it would be funny. “Okay! To be honest there’s no way you’re not fighting” “Hey! Was that a test?!” “If they were that easy to find we would’ve found them already! There are some with a large overwhelming presence. Others that keep quiet. And some that have already been consumed by a cursed spirit. “With regard to searching for these things… It’s gonna be a pain. But now we have you. In order to regain its power… The sukuna you consumed will direct you to the whereabouts of the fingers. You’re a vessel as well as a radar. We’re gonna need you in the field” “I don’t think the guy inside me’s that considerate...” “I think we’ll be able to come to a win-win agreement” Gojo concluded “Huh you’re next door? There’re a bunch of empty rooms aren’t there?” “Hey! Fushiguro! You finally look better! And [Name]’s with you” “What kind of an upperclassman would I be if I didn’t check on the first years. It’s my responsibility to make sure you’re all happy and healthy” [Name] said trying to keep up some charade of being a good student. “You woke me up very aggressively” Fushiguro countered “That’s neither here nor there” “I thought it’d be more fun and lively this way. And obviously I was right” Gojo answered Fushiguro’s question pointing to an oblivious Yuji who was looking at [Name] with pure adoration in his eyes. [Name] looked at the pink haired boy with well hidden fondness. If you didn’t already know [Name], you’d think the blank look on his face meant he hated the kid Fushiguro stared at them for a moment before realizing he’d rather argue than let Gojo be right. “Classes and missions are more than enough!” “Anyway… It’s fine!!! More importantly we’re goin’ out tomorrow!!” Both Yuji and Megumi stared at Gojo. Yuji in surprise, Fushiguro in annoyance “We’re going to get the third first-year student. “Count me out” [Name] spoke up reminding everyone that he too was still there “I’ve got somewhere to be” “Ooh [Name] has a daate” “Can it old man. I’m just going somewhere with Toge” “How is that any different from what I just said”

[Name] ignored the teacher and stalked off toward the second year dorms. “See you later puppy, emo kid”

“Wait for me!” Gojo called out chasing after the second year “I’ve got something to talk to you about”

----------

“So who’s Toge?”

“Inumaki-senpai’s a second year and the one of the only people [Name] likes in this school. I can count them all on one hand.”

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

“So,” [Name] paused “What did you want to talk about?”

“Yuji’s at risk. I can tell you kinda care about him and Megumi so I’m going to use that. When I’m gone you have to protect them. Any means necessary. That includes cursed storytelling”

[Name]’s eyes widened at the mention of his technique. The power itself wasn’t as strong as a domain, but in [Name]’s hands it was deadly. Only he and Gojo knew about it, and if Gojo wanted him to use it, he had no choice.”

“Okay”

#male reader #x male reader #male reader insert #reader insert #a cursed reality #jjk x male reader #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen x male reader #jjk x m!reader #male!reader #jujutsu kaisen #inumaki x you #that bi bitch writes

[geekmedium]

Favorite Doctor/Companion Teams

Because I want to spread some Doctor Who good cheer for Christmas. Also, I’m not doing the 9th or 13th doctor because they’ve really only had one team. Anyway...

1. The Original Team 

The ones who started it all. They would win by iconography, but even with that, they’re just a lot of fun to watch. This is the doctor at his most curmudgeon; he’s rude, fairly detached, and very much not the hero we’re use to. So they gave him a granddaughter who he cares for, and two teachers who act as the parents and honestly more noble, likable people.

It’s a family dynamic, one which we don’t see often. I appreciate that they were a team who grew to care for each other, but still had radically different approaches to whatever situation they found themselves in. And it is through this team up that the Doctor could mellow out and be a more straight up heroic figure. He learned from them just as much as the reverse.

2nd, Jamie, and Zoe 

Where the first team had a family dynamic to it, the second doctor had a more “bro” relationship with his team. He and Jamie are famously close, and if I’m not mistaken, Jamie is still one of the longest lasting companions. They joked around, had each others backs, and were just great pals. While Doctor Who was meant to be a teaching show, I believe these two turned the tone from edutainment into one full of Wonder.

As for Zoe, well I just like her. She was probably the first companion who could be considered of super intelligence. I like the Doctor and Jamie as two bros hanging out, but Zoe can be in there to keep everyone from getting along too well. Her intelligence could lead her to be smug, but she was truly loyal to the Tardis team. And I loved her interactions with Jamie as brother and sister.

3rd and Jo Grant 

I kind of like the Doctor with a ditzy companion. Despite not being remembered very well, I think Jo was able to occasionally pull her weight and she worked well with the Doctor. Plus their last scene together, when he says goodbye? Man, you could tell how sad that made not only them, but their actors as well.

4th and Sarah Jane

There were so many choices, but ultimately I can’t help thinking of this one as the best. Not only is Sarah Jane still considered one of the best companions, her dynamic with the Doctor was one of equal love and exasperation. She would often debate with him, grow frustrated with him, but still be with him through some of the most terrifying threats any companion had to deal with. And when it was time to go, she took it with good grace; she would always remember her time with the Doctor fondly, and only asked that he do the same. Magical.

5th, Adric, Tegan, and Nyssa 

Here we have the family dynamic back again. I just really like the Doctor acting like a mentor to Adric, with Tegan and Nyssa as best friends who act like the big sisters of the group. I feel that while the first Doctor’s family was a generational thing, with each passing something to the next, the fifth Doctor’s family was a group of siblings. They were kind of equals with each other, and they got into plenty of small arguments, constantly annoying each other, but with a kind of affection that made them want to be together even when they were mad.

I know it’s hard to write Doctor Who with more than 1 or 2 constant companions, but I personally like family dynamics the best. With the 2nd through 4th, there isn’t a ton to say because they got on very well. There were disagreements sure, but for the most part, they were great friends and always happy with each other. A family dynamic, like with the fifth ensured a lot more dynamic back in forth bickering, with everyone's different backgrounds playing off each other in a way unique to Doctor Who, that could bring people from different timelines and planets together.

6th and Evelyn

I’m going to cheat a bit by going off the grid into the audio dramas. No offense to Peri fans, but Evelyn is everything a companion should be. Tough, strongly opinionated, and incredibly empathetic, she provided a good foil to possibly the most selfish Doctor.

But what I loved most about her was that she was elderly. It provided a different dynamic to the Doctor, who occasionally acted the part of student to her mentor, instead of the usual status quo which is the reverse. Even more than that was her role in the story; she wasn’t there to be a young companion who realizes her potential under the Doctor. She was there to show that even if your bones don’t work like they use to. Even if you’re not most people’s ideal of good looking. Even if you’ve lived a life full of joys and sorrows, you’re never too old to start over. To gain new experiences, new joys, new pains, and new love.

I think that’s really beautiful.

7th and Ace

I struggled with if I wanted to add Bernice Summerfield to this team, because she’s great. But then I realized so much of what I like about the 7th Doctor and Ace works when they are a two person team.

The 7th Doctor is believed to be the most manipulative, actively using his own loved ones for the greater good. He can be cold and calculating in a way few other Doctors ever approached. And so that made his relationship with Ace all the more heartwarming. Here was this little delinquent of a girl, who thought she was worthless, and yet she was the only person in the universe who could bend the 7th Doctor to her whim; he loved her like a daughter, and the scenes where they interact is all the more special when you contrast them with the cold Doctor.

Having another companion kind of intrudes on this very intimate bond. I think Ace should be special to this Doctor. The one person who he would sacrifice himself before he sacrificed her. A companion who can be horrified with his more manipulative acts, but nevertheless stuck with him out of a loyalty to the first person who ever took a chance on her. Hurt Ace at your peril; the 7th Doctor will come for you.

8th and Izzy (plus Fey) 

Ignore that Izzy’s a fish, she isn’t usually.

This one is pure nostalgia. The 8th Doctor’s comic strip adventures were my first real introduction to the WHO-niverse. So while I’m sure Izzy is probably last on most people’s list (if they know her at all), she’ll always be my companion. She was probably the first pop-culture savvy companion who could offer a quip that stumped even the Doctor with how contemporary it was. She was finding herself on her journey with the Doctor, and had a character arc that I think inspired RTD when it was his time to reboot the series. Plus, from what I’ve read of other 8th Doctor material, he tends to be romantically linked with most of his other companions. Some people might like that, but I think you can tell from this list, I like my Doctor as a more celibate fellow.

Fey is someone who I think of as an intermittent companion. She helps out the Doctor a great deal, and her position within the universe is very unique and imaginative, but I wouldn’t want her in for more than a story arc or two at a time before moving on to another spatial-temporal James Bond style adventure.

10th and Donna

Like the fourth Doctor before him, I had plenty of options. I was even gonna pull a fast one and pick another comic strip companion, the self-centered businesswoman Majenta Pryce. But the 10th Doctor and Donna are special.

Not only is she one of the only companions the Doctor has called his best friend, when you get down to it, she was who he needed at the time. After the last two companions had ended in a sort of tragic romance, the Doctor was walling himself off again. Donna, however, came into his life as purely a friend. Someone to pal around with and banter with. For the Doctor, this must have been a godsend. No drama, no hassle, just true companionship in every since of the word. And she still has possibly the saddest exit for any companion to date.

Goodbye Donna Noble. You definitely lived up to the name.

11th, Amy, and Rory (plus River Song) 

The last family companionship on this list, and quite honestly, my favorite Tardis dynamic in the whole series. Why? Because it’s such a glorious mess that should collapse in flames but becomes something that’s just so interesting to think about.

The Doctor was Amy’s childhood crush she never quite got over. She eventually grew to love Rory, but both she and the Doctor were kind of dismissive of him. But does Rory angst and get into a love rivalry with the Doctor? Not really. He grows into himself, faces numerous dangers for them both, and by the end both Amy and the Doctor love the guy to pieces. And then you have River Song, who should turn the whole thing into a kind of Jerry Springer prize winner. I won’t go into spoilers, but what could have seemed creepy is actually a very interesting relationship with the Doctor. Though like Fey above, I think she works best as an intermittent companion who often goes off on her own adventures.

Still, they are the best family and if that’s controversial, it is the hill I will die on.

12th and Clara

The final companions are another friendship. In a lot of ways, this is pretty fun, because the 12th Doctor is an old curmudgeon like the first. But with all that he’s been through, it is interesting to see how they contrasts, especially in their companions. Because while the 1st Doctor was happy to play the cranky grandfather type, 12th had a genuine friendship with Clara.

They didn’t always get each other. They frequently disagreed, and could even be resentful. But when the chips were down, they would follow each other into hell together. The Doctor always tried to be a little more considerate for her than most others around him, and Clara tried to defend him against his critics. And while the end to their companionship could have been handled better, it was still an impactful parting between two friends.

So do you agree or disagree? Who are your favorite teams? I would love to know.

#Doctor Who #friendships

[absconditum-imaginaerum]

CHECKMATE | JR

JR | Checkmate | T+

Words | 4,690

Notes |  Accidental compromising situation, friends to lovers AU, game night. I have been with JR for 8 years now and he deserves a lot of love and with their comeback (I know it was a while ago now but wow I’m still not over it???) I have been flooded with JR feels so... enjoy my shitty writing lmao. Highly unedited because let’s be honest, when does Ailea edit any of her writings....

You promised. You promised a thousand times they were just going to be skittles games, that there would be no ounce of competitiveness in any of the matches you played and while the both of you knew that was going to be a total lie considering your nature with each other, JR sighed and accepted your proposal with the promise that you would make his favorite dessert when it was all said and done.

Skittle was a term JR came to understand as meaning just for fun in regard to the game of chess when you first began teaching him how to play. Ever since he started getting really good, skittles games were the norm—no timed matches, no speed rounds, just straight games for fun using all the time either of you wanted in the world. At first, he started coming over to your place because there was a nice table where the two of you could play comfortably.

It didn’t take long for the venue to switch to his place because he only had one roommate who generally either stayed in his room or was out and about and never bothered you when you occupied the living room to litter it with snacks and drinks and flip through movies while working through your games. Sometimes the movie was forgotten about, your matches getting a little more competitive. The glimmer that JR got in his eyes when he felt he had you like cornered prey was a look you came to completely adore.

You were prepared for anything and everything when you knocked on his apartment door the next day, chess set clutched under your underarm with a grocery bag full of things to make his favorite caramel apple strudel bar when the chess-playing was over in your other hand. He answered the door, running a hand through his shaggy hair as he looked up at you from under his lashes with a shy smile looking like he’d just gotten up from a nap. And it wasn’t long after that the board was set up on the living room floor. JR pristinely set the pieces while you put dessert ingredients in the fridge.

“It’s awfully quiet, no Minhyun?” you asked, noting that the younger boy had yet to make an appearance, as he often did when you arrived at their place.

JR shrugged. “He left for the weekend; didn’t say where he was going, just that he’d be gone a few days.”

“You have the apartment all to yourself?” you asked, peering over the kitchen island and across the small space to where he was sitting, fidgeting with one of his knights as he waited for you.

“It’s not that unusual.” He laughed. JR was always the quiet type, Minhyun definitely the more adventurous. “In fact, more often than not, he’s not here while you’re over. I’m surprised you even asked about him.”

You hummed in response, curious by that observation that you hadn’t made yourself. “I guess I never noticed.”

“Too busy focusing on me,” he retaliated with another laugh.

“Too busy focusing on kicking your butt!” you called back, definitely unable to help the burning that made its way to your cheeks.

The relationship between you and JR was simple, really. You’d been close friends for a number of years and from one intellectual brain to another spent most of your time with each other playing strategy or puzzle games. It almost always turned into a competition. Even though JR was quiet, he prided himself on how witty and smart he could be, especially if it meant outsmarting you. But chess was a different game. He vowed he would get good enough to beat you and after a few lessons and a lot of time spent contemplating strategies by himself, he was well on his way to doing just that. Occasionally, you went to his place to see how far he’d come, knowing full well that one day you were going to regret it. When JR was determined for something, seldom could anything stop him.

“I think today is the last day you’ll be saying that, even if it takes a couple of games.”

“Is that a threat?” you asked, looming from the kitchen as you ambled over to the board and the boy on the floor and plopped on the side with the white pieces.

“I’m thinking it’s a promise,” he uttered, peering at you from under those lashes once again but instead of humility it was conniving.

“Then you better bring your A-Game, honey,” you sassed and moved your trusty and beginning pawn two spaces.

“You’re going to be eating those words, darling.” The quiet and encouraging purr that slipped from your throat pulled the grin to his face as he reached down, matching his pawn with yours at the center of the board, and so the match began.

In all the time that you’d been teaching JR how to play chess, the emphasis on using every piece to its highest potential was of the utmost importance. To most inexperienced chess players, highest potential would be to move as far into enemy territory as possible, but what it really meant was to place your pieces to be strategically threatening and to take control of the center four squares. Control of the center four was ideal for domination of the game, especially once a player is able to get their stronger pieces out into the open to go on the offensive.

It took JR a little practice to understand that moving pieces into enemy territory wasn’t the best idea, especially in the beginning of the game when defenses were still fortified. It would be foolish to move your queen all the way out to be overtaken by a pawn—a lesson he learned very quickly. JR got a grip on the concept of highest potential nearing immediately and became a formidable opponent much sooner than you had anticipated; but JR was always a smart guy and a quick learner, so the surprise should have been minuscule at best.

Moves and counter moves and counter-counter moves had JR thinking pretty intently about every future endeavor he was going to make against your fortification. While JR busied himself with playing the aggressive game, you turned your style on its head and started playing defensively, setting a trap long in the making that would inevitably lead to his demise.

“You’re getting a lot better,” you complimented in regard to his promotion, a pawn having sneakily made it all the way across the board to grant him a captured piece of which he chose a bishop as you’d not so foolishly left your king on the end rank un-defended against an rook which he so inconveniently didn’t have to promote anyway.

“Well, I began with a great teacher and practiced my skills from there,” he replied, watching you move a piece he had actually looked over—a knight to take his newly acquired bishop.

“We’ll see if it pays off,” you replied and waited for his move.

“I think it has,” he uttered, moving a rook down to capture your knight which for a moment seemed pretty foolish to you, as the rook still had a bishop to go through before it could reach your king and should he take the bishop, your king was in prime capturing position.

A smirk tugged at your lips as you moved your queen into position, and in turn, as you expected, JR captured your bishop.

“Checkmate,” he said, believing he had your king pinned between a bishop and a rook and one of your own pawns.

“Not so fast,” you whispered back, moving your king in a retreating diagonal. “One key rule you always forget about kings is their ability to also move diagonally.” JR scoffed; he did often forget that rule which probably would have saved his own king on many occasions had you been kind enough to inform him, but he had to learn sooner or later.

With a somewhat defeated sigh, he moved his rook to a different position in the corner, having concocted a different plan with no time left, as on the next move he was in check. Pinned in the corner, his queen had no choice but to capture one of the offending pieces, but no matter which piece he picked, checkmate was inevitable. So, the first game went to you and JR sighed in defeat.

The both of you took a short break to stretch your legs and get something to drink, as sitting on the floor would get grueling for more than one game at a time since both of you were hitting that age. The floor definitely wasn’t as comfortable as it used to be when you were kids when it wasn’t that far to sit down and not that far to get up.

JR, being the gentleman he was, grabbed you a water from the fridge as you continued to stretch. Sincerely thinking about pressing the bottom of the chilled water bottle against the exposed skin of your lower back as a result of your shirt riding up, JR looked over you before deciding to just wait and hand you the water bottle.

When you stood upright, JR was standing incredibly close, your shoulder almost against his chest as he held out the bottle to you, looking at your face. Merely able to look back at him, you took the water bottle so gingerly, you almost dropped it on the floor. His warm breath was on your face, soft fingers against your own as he handed it over, and you swore a small smirk tugged at the right corner of his lips if even for just a moment.

“On for the next game?” he asked you with a raise of his brow.

“Are you ready to lose again?” you questioned, unable to stop the way your eyes glanced at his mouth—far too close for comfort—and back at his eyes a second later.

“I won’t make the same mistakes twice,” he reminded you.

“Then, bring it.”

JR settled across the chessboard from you after taking a swig of his water. As you anticipated, the game started off tense—JR was thinking very seriously about every single move he was going to make, planning as far as a few moves head and taking into consideration the multiple ways he assumed you’d move. It was a lie to say that you were entirely focused on the game, since whenever you weren’t looking at the board, you were looking at his face. The way he gnawed his bottom lip as he considered moves, shaking his head and mouthing some reasonings had you looking at him extra hard. The thought about putting a movie on hadn’t even crossed his mind since you showed up—he was so determined to show you that he could beat you; he didn’t want any distractions.

So, the game played out. There were a couple of instances in which you thought you might be in trouble, but somehow found a way out. Never were you on the offensive in this game. He diligently moved his attacking pieces in positions that also defended his king if it came down to it. He was really going all out on this game and you were getting a little nervous.

“What’s wrong?” he asked you when he caught you thinking extra hard, reaching for some pieces before retracting your hand, eyes scanning the board numerous times but not coming up with any solid plan to continue an advance.

“Nothing,” you bit through your teeth, trying to ignore the way he played with you, sarcastically asking what was wrong as if he didn’t know.

Moves were extremely limited while simultaneously being useful, but you saw their use expiring far beyond what you hoped for. You concluding that, without any other choices, you had to sacrifice some pieces to get the game perhaps moving in a direction more favorable to you—you sacrificed a knight.

“That’s unlike you,” he commented and observed the board.

“There comes a point when you need to open space, even if that means sacrificing one of your pieces,” you sighed, refusing to look at his face at this point—he had this game won, you could feel it in your bones.

All he could muster was a small hum in response as he gnawed at the tip of his thumb. Careful was an understatement when describing JR at this moment. He looked over multiple pieces tens of times and mapped their paths just as much, also eyeballing your pieces before finally deciding on a move, pushing his knight forward into a squeezed spot, but with the way that knight moved…

“Checkmate,” he uttered.

You almost scoffed. Such a simple move had destroyed your whole game. The only moveable spots for your king was right into the path of his bishops. It was unlike you to have your king blocked in, but it was far early in the game and didn’t think that you would have to clear your king out, based on the play of previous games.

After studying the board for a minute, making absolute sure there was no way you could destroy any of his checking pieces, you accepted defeat and reached out to push your king over. It rolled off the board and onto the carpet underneath.  He waited for a moment, hoping for a congratulations, but he didn’t get one. You were clenching your jaw, hiding a small defeated smile as you continued to look at the board.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to be sour about this, it’s about time I’ve beat you once,” he commented, trying to draw your attention up to him.

“You know what they say. Once you’ve beat them once, the wins will just keep coming,” you replied.

“You have that much confidence in me?” he questioned with a laugh as he began moving his pieces back.

“I have that much confidence in my teachings,” you answered, trying to take his light away out of playful competitiveness. But he couldn’t find the smile in your words.

“You’ve been spoiled with all of your winning,” he noted as you sat there. He would have pegged you as pouting about the game, but in all honesty the thoughts running through your head were far from the game at this point. You stayed silent for a moment before JR pushed the board out of the way. “You really are so upset about this game! I won’t have that frown in my apartment,” he threatened and reached out to you, both of his hands going for your sides when you quickly clamped your elbows down.

“Kim Jonghyun, don’t you even think about it!” you hollered, blocking his attempted tickles as he poked at you, that Cheshire grin across his lips bound and determined. You were slapping at his hands, trying your best to escape, shoving him every opportunity you got to try and scramble away.

“Oooh, busting out the full names now! This must be serious,” he teased some more, crawling across the floor to get close to you, poking anywhere he could to get some giggles out of you but you were far from having any of it. You grabbed his wrists, hollering his name and, with the help of some adrenaline, overpowered him to shove him away.

He was relentless, though, and never one to give up so easily. You’d crawled your way over to him, only making it easy for him to begin his attacks again, but you had something else in mind. You grabbed both of his wrists again, now having the proper leverage to really overpower him and pushed him over, off the balance of his legs and he crashed down onto his back, breathing heavily as you pinned his arms above his head, grip tight against his wrists. In order to get enough leverage to keep him there, you swung a leg over his body and straddle him to pin his hips to the ground, too.

In your struggling, your breathing had become labored also, and it fanned across JR’s face as you looked down at him. He was panting back just the same, but his arms never struggled out from under your grip. In fact, it was quite the opposite; he looked up at you with half-lidded eyes, tongue dancing behind his slightly parted teeth.

“Not so mouthy anymore, are you?”

He didn’t have a good reply for you, just turned his gaze away and slightly shifted his legs with a quiet grunt. That was the only time his arms ever struggled in your grip, but you weren’t about to let him up, not without a good explanation.

“Cat got your tongue, JR?” you asked, shifting a little bit to get a better grip on his wrists.

His gaze snapped back to you. “You are sitting very precariously on my lower half and I am concentrating so hard to not pop one underneath you; so yeah, I have nothing good to say.”

The blush that covered your cheeks was hotter than the sun when you realized the situation. Your hands let go of his wrists and he knew what was coming. He gave a vain attempt to stop you, but you were already convicted.

“Don’t!...Ah… fuck,” he groaned, defeated. The friction of you rotating to sit up was beyond his breaking point. All that concentration out the window with that simple of a movement; JR threw one of his freed hands over his eyes, expecting that you would jump off him, but you didn’t. You took a deep breath, your hands flat against his abdomen as the pressure grew underneath you. The fabric of his shirt was weak and pliable under the clawing motions of your fingers as they scraped against him.

JR’s legs shifted again, trying something, anything really, to relieve the pressure from you as you made no attempt to move, at least not to get off of him. The salivation occurring in your mouth was betraying you as you looked down at perhaps your closest friend, covering his embarrassed face with a shake of his head as you sat atop his most intimate parts.

“I’m so sorry,” he apologized, “I hardly have any control over it and the tiniest amount of anything will set it off at any moment.”

You didn’t even hear him, really. He was speaking, you could tell because you were looking at his face and could see his mouth moving, but as far as words actually being received in the mush of your mind—it was futile, really. As if on autopilot, you shifted your knees and rocked your hips.

The groan that fell from JR’s lips was nothing short of delicious.

“Ooh, fuck,” he whined, pushing his head back into the carpeted floor, legs shifting some more underneath and behind you. With his eyes clenched closed, he removed his hand from over his face and turned it over so that the back of his hand was staring back at him and drew his index finger knuckle between his teeth, which did absolutely nothing to muffle the next whimper from deep in his throat.

“If I’m being honest, I don’t really know why I won’t get off you,” you admitted, the haziness in your eyes just about matched his, but you were coming to some sort of consciousness even as your fingers continued to paw at his shirt, bunched against his middle. JR’s teeth ground together gently as he thought of what to say, but really all he could focus on was how warm you felt against his lower extremities and the saliva collecting under his tongue which he soon swallowed hard. His eyes opened to slits to look at you.

“How would you feel if I asked you to kiss me?” he finally uttered.

Your soft chuckle turned to a grin, then faded to you biting your bottom lip as you took both of his hands and laced your fingers with his. He watched you curiously, but threaded his fingers with yours nonetheless. You sat high on your knees, lifting from his hips and with his help, you guided his hands down to the carpet slightly above his head and watched his eyes flutter closed to anticipate you, but you moved right passed his face and into the crook of his neck.

Still, that sigh bubbling at the top of his throat spilled over when your teeth nipped at his jaw. His head tilted away and back from your mouth, giving you more area to bite at your will. Your soft lips against the curve of his jaw had him positively wild for you as you kissed along it—slow, sensual, lingering kisses down his neck.

His hisses were absolutely electrifying, hands jerking against yours, gripping them even tighter before he even thought about turning his face back to you; when he did, you swallowed the needy sigh right off his supple lips. His kiss was soft and sweet, but still quite eager and needy, especially as you drew his bottom lip between your teeth to caress it with your tongue and then bite softly before letting it go.  It returned to its rightful place just to be drawn between his teeth, and with another quiet hiss he opened his eyes fully.

JR’s soft gaze met yours, even as his fingers begged for your hands to continue to hold his when they slipped away. You were about to settle back down on his hips, the situation slipping your mind again; he took your hips to guide you to the side, gravity helping him roll over top of you. His dark hair fell forward, curtaining his face a bit as it fell into his eyes. His left hand shoveled under your shoulder while the other caressed your cheek with his thumb, eyes affectionately admiring you. His lower half was cast off to your side as he leaned over you, but that seemed to be the least of your concern now as he leaned down to slant his mouth against yours.

While one of your hands braced against his shoulder, the other delicately wrapped around the back of his neck. He tilted his head, accepting your warm tongue against his for just a second before he broke the kiss, the soft suction of departing lips loud in both of your ears. His eyes slowly fluttered open to meet your gaze again.

“Wow,” he uttered.

“What?” you asked with a soft smile, trying to stave the blush off your face.

“You have nice kisses,” he admitted and leaned down to chastely peck your lips, wet from his kiss.

The front door popped, opening slowly with Minhyun already explaining that he was back because he had a change of plans but in the middle of his rant, noticed the two of you on the floor of the living room and paused mid-sentence.

He cocked his head to the side for a minute, a curious glint in his eyes as he observed the living room. The chess board was messily cast aside, snacks and drinks littering the coffee table before his eyes settled on the two of you again.

“And how long have you been keeping this not-secret from me?” he asked curiously, shutting the door behind him.

“It’s as brand new to us as it is to you,” JR replied, eyeballing his roommate and best friend.

“Not-secret?” you questioned from under the older male.

Minhyun scoffed with a condescending smile. “You really are blind to each other, or yourselves, I can’t decide which. I’ve been making bets with Ren about how long this was going take because even he can scrape the tension off himself with a credit card. But if it is brand new as of right now, then I owe him twenty bucks.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” JR asked, finally letting you sit up properly.

“I told Ren that the two of you were already together, bet him that you’d passed this stage a long time ago, but he was right when he said that you guys were too stubborn to admit your feelings for each other.”

Minhyun didn’t waste any more time entertaining the two of you—he was better off getting his things and getting lost to let the two of you catch up on a long time coming. JR stood, helping you up to do the same to make the situation a little less awkward, but he kept you close in front of him to hide the obvious result of accidental movement which sparked this whole thing in the first place. He shifted to sit on the armrest of the chair and hulled you over, begging you to play along as you leaned against his leg with his hand entertaining your hip as you waited for Minhyun to finish rustling in his room and leave again.

The door popped again, another familiar face making an appearance. “Minhyun! We’re already la—Oh, hello,” Ren commented, noticing the two of you and waved his fingers in your direction.

“He owes you twenty dollars; don’t let him forget,” you commented, a little salty with him for walking in on the two of you a little busy on the floor. You could feel JR relaxing a bit behind you, taking particularly calculated breaths to calm himself before he could make eye-contact with Ren.

“Ohh, so the truth has been discovered. That’s so cute, you guys have always been so good for each other. I told Minhyun that if he was wrong, I was going to set the two of you up for real. Glad to see you’ve opened your eyes,” Ren explained. “Minhyun! Tick-tock!”

“I’m coming! I’m coming. Jeez. Don’t you think the lovebirds will have enough time for themselves? No need to rush me out of my own apartment,” he grumbled, hulling his bag towards the door.

“Toodles, my little doves. Don’t have too much fun,” Ren commented with a wink as he pulled Minhyun through the door, slamming it behind them.

JR relaxed into you, slouching into your back to bury his face. “They are so embarrassing,” he commented, muffled in the back of your shirt before you were pushing off his lap. You looked at him, a little curious about Minhyun’s comment about you having plenty of time to yourselves.

He must have sensed it, because he took your hands and drew you back to him, bringing them up individually to kiss the back of them. “I have every intention of starting this right and taking it slow. Don’t listen to Minhyun, you know he lives to get under people’s skin.”  

“Do you want to help me make your caramel strudel bars?” you asked him, stepping to him and slightly between his legs to drape your arms across his shoulders—it felt so like home, it was almost indescribable; as if your hiraeth had been cured.

“If it means standing behind you, nestled in the crook of your shoulder while I watch you make it… I’d be happy to,” he replied while looking up at you. He adored the way you pushed his hair back, tucking the longer strands back behind his ears, generally caressing his face as you admired him just the same.

Looking at him now brought a different sense of joy. Of course, you were always happy to see him before, but now… now it was ecstatic. Now you felt completely at ease. He made your heart full, and the way he looked at you about had your toes curling, goosebumps raising on your skin because you knew he looked at you for altogether a different reason. Instead of looking at you and enjoying your company as his closest friend, he looked at you and appreciated your place by his side.  So, with a soft smile, you laced your fingers with his and turned to tug him off to the kitchen, but not without a sweet, contract sealing kiss that he was yours now, and there were no take-backsies.

#kim jonghyun #jr #nu'est #jr scenarios #jr imagines #nu'est scenarios #nu'est imagines #nu'est kpop #kim jonghyun nu'est #kim jonghyun scenarios #kim jonghyun imagines #kim jonghyun nu'est scenarios #jr nu'est #jr nu'est scenarios #nuest

[paulisweeabootrash]

Retrospective Review: Rewatching Azumanga Daioh as an Adult

This may seem hard to believe if you are a younger reader or one who got into anime only recently, but there was once a time when recommendations spread by word of mouth, it was absolutely commonplace for anime seasons to last longer than 13 episodes, and the vocabulary of the anime fandom wasn’t nearly as full of internet-originated in-jokes.  A time when the internet-savvy congregated on forums dedicated to specific topics instead of social networking sites, and the imageboards that generate so much of the internet meme landscape were just starting to take off among lonely nerds as an obscure haven for perverts, racists, and assholes instead of the role they have today as… uh… well... a well-known haven for perverts, racists, and assholes.  A time when there was no such term as “weeaboo trash” because that Perry Bible Fellowship comic hadn’t been published yet, let alone used for that meaning.  It wasn’t some golden age, but it was different, and today I’m taking a self-indulgent trip back to the end of that period, when I was in high school in the mid-2000s.

Azumanga Daioh (2002).

1. Why is this show important to me?

My introduction to anime consisted mostly of Pokémon and Sailor Moon, and took off with scattered episodes of several other shows that aired on WB and Cartoon Network, which were generally driven by action and combat.  I can’t remember the circumstances or even who did it, but someone who owned, or perhaps pirated, a copy of Azumanga Daioh must have shown me a few episodes at some point.

Here was a show that had been on the leading edge of the moe trend a few years earlier, and although certainly available, such things were not yet common.  Moe has, of course, taken over a large chunk of anime since, to mixed reception since it can range from innocently delightful to extraordinarily creepy.  Azumanga is close to the innocent end of the spectrum, and absolutely delightful (as, BTW, is the author’s current ongoing manga series Yotsuba&!), with a softer, cuter art style than I was accustomed to and instantly-lovable characters.

It was clearly in a different genre and had a different sensibility about how to make a show, too.  It had few repeated or filler elements, unlike any of the shows following the “monster of the week” formula.  It was broken up into several vignettes per episode — a practice that I was familiar with from the format of many Nicktoons, but while American shows with that format told multiple self-contained stories, the short segments here were typically parts of larger episode-long stories, often focusing on different parts of the same event or different anecdotes about the same character.  It showed us, the foreign audience, something about life in Japan, and at least for me was the first time I’d heard of distinctly Japanese school practices like applications for public high schools, students cleaning classrooms, or the particular kinds of seasonal festivals they have.  It lacked story arcs driven by overcoming some enemy and instead was driven by character relationships themselves and the instantly-relatable experience of school.  It was an encounter with something utterly different — and it made an excellent first impression.

Eventually, I bought a copy of the complete series of the manga it’s based on.  Azumanga Daioh was originally, well, a manga, written by Azuma Kiyohiko and originally published in the form of a 4-panel comic strip that ran in the magazine Dengeki Daioh.  See, it’s Azuma’s manga in Dengeki Daioh.  Azuma manga, Dengeki Daioh.  Azumanga Daioh.  Ha.  Clever.  Anyway, in there, I encountered largely the same characters and interactions, a mix of believable school life and quick gags, just presented in a different format.  I eventually got the DVD box set of the show, too, and I’ve rewatched a few favorite episodes several times, but this review is the first time I’ve revisited the whole series in years.

2. Who are all these people?

Rather than focusing on a small core friend group like Three Leaves, Three Colors, another much more recent adorable high school slice-of-life I greatly enjoy (and should maybe review?), Azumanga has a pretty large ensemble.  Most of them are students and the “story arc” such as it is follows them through three years, from entering to graduating from high school, over a single 26-episode season.  So rather than cover a plot synopsis, I think it would make more sense to dive into specific characters and their relationships.  The show its at its funniest and sweetest with the dynamics of certain combinations of the main characters, and there are a lot of combinations available.  Covering all of the recurring named characters approximately in the order we meet them (except a few characters who show up only in an episode or two each and another classmate named Chihiro who shows up on the periphery as a friend of Kaorin), let’s look at the relationships that stand out:

Yukari and Nyamo: Yukari Tanizaki, the English teacher who is the homeroom teacher to most of the cast, is unprofessional and insensitive from the first moment we see her, traits which are elaborated in later episodes into a sort of impulsive over-the-top-ness that clashes with the fact that she actually is a pretty good teacher.  Emphasizing her less-serious attitude, students even refer to or address her by her given name (although the subtitles exaggerate this a bit by consistently calling her “Miss Yukari” when she’s usually just addressed as “teacher”).  Minamo Kurasawa, the gym teacher, is a long-time friend of Yukari.  She and Yukari (who calls her “Nyamo”) were even classmates at the same high school they currently teach at.  In addition to being central to the gym class/sports-related episodes, she’s also Yukari’s more caring, approachable, and professional foil, which sets up interactions where Nyamo tries to be helpful and manage situations in the face of Yukari being antagonistic (and, outside of school hours, drunk) towards her and the students.  Yukari in particular prods at Nyamo’s sore spots: being single and having done embarrassing things in high school.

Tomo and Yomi: Tomo Takino is 100% genki girl.  I mean, come on, she’s the illustration for the TV Tropes article by that name.  She’s not only enthusiastic, but loud, intrusive, and pointlessly competitive to the point of being just plain mean.  She’s the kind of person who might mature into a less competent Yukari if she burnt out a bit.  Koyomi Mizuhara, on the other hand, is much more serious and self-conscious, and although she still genuinely is Tomo’s friend and goes along with some of her silliness, she barely puts up with Tomo’s teasing and flurry of bad ideas.  She is the Nyamo to Tomo’s Yukari, complete with Tomo enforcing a nickname on her, so she’s almost always called “Yomi” throughout.  Yomi is much more considerate than Tomo, too.  This often comes out in Yomi scolding Tomo’s insensitivity, but it’s also seen less directly when they are giving Chiyo (more on her below) birthday presents — Tomo offers first a joke that doesn’t go over well, then a magic wand she apparently expects Chiyo to believe will make her grow taller, which Chiyo dismisses, while Yomi offers a book which Chiyo enthusiastically accepts and says she expects to enjoy.

Osaka, Tomo, and Kagura: Ayumu Kasuga is a distractible and soft-spoken transfer student from Osaka whom Yukari, Tomo, and Yomi pester with misinformed questions and assumptions about her home city.  Tomo, naturally, saddles her with the nickname “Osaka” as if that is her entire identity.  The nickname quickly catches on, with even Yukari calling her that instead of her actual name in class.  She is accepted as a friend by the other students who still consider her eccentric and baffling, but not annoying or embarrassing like you might expect.  (In fact, the other girls react more and more to Tomo as the annoying and embarrassing one.)  During the second year of school,  she bonds with Tomo and Kagura (introduced as a star athlete from Nyamo’s homeroom during the first year, she becomes a major character in the second year) over their similar incredible forgetfulness and poor academics.  Yomi calls them “bonkura”, translated as “knuckleheads”, and the three of them adopt the name for themselves as they study together — an idea which is doomed from the outset.  The three of them together, or any two of them, play off each other wonderfully.

Chiyo and Osaka: Chiyo Mihama, a child prodigy who is only 10 years old at the beginning of the series, is so academically gifted it can upset and embarrass her classmates, but on the other hand is naive, and not just because she’s a child.  She is in fact clueless about the outside world.  She fails in the first summer break trip (ep. 5) to understand that the other characters’ families are nowhere near as rich as hers, and in the second summer break (ep. 14), even after a year and a half of being around high schoolers, she entirely fails to understand Nyamo’s off-screen explanation of “adult relationships” (kids innocently being oblivious to what sex is seems to be a common basis for jokes in Japanese media).  Chiyo being five years younger than her classmates — and on the other side of puberty from them — also makes her lag far behind them in athletics.  On the one hand, this makes her very self-conscious and afraid of being a burden on her classmates in team activities, and on the other, it sets up a running gag of Chiyo and Osaka teaming up to be by far the worst pair of athletes across the board.  Oh, and Osaka’s dream about Chiyo’s pigtails in the New Year’s episode is one of the weirdest and most authentically dreamlike dream sequences I’ve ever seen.  Although maybe that just says more about my own dreams than about the show.

Sakaki and Nobody (or, Multiple Kinds of Unrequited Feelings): Sakaki is considered effortlessly cool and somewhat intimidating — Kagura calls her a “silent lone wolf” — but she’s not big on that reputation.  Students openly admire her, especially for her athletic talent, and treat her with distance and respect by almost universally calling her “Miss Sakaki” (since this is apparently her family name, not given name).  She does not enjoy this treatment, but is also too private (and perhaps too insecure) to complain about or discuss it.  She is indifferent to sports despite excelling at them, and doesn’t even recognize Kagura when she proclaims herself Sakaki’s rival, presumably because the first-year sports festival just didn’t stick out in her memory the way it did in Kagura’s.  Despite calling it rivalry, however, Kagura quickly inserts herself into Sakaki’s life in a friendship that Sakaki responds to more with quiet tolerance than reciprocation.

Kaorin, meanwhile, mistakes Kagura’s one-sided friendly rivalry for a very different kind of attention, and accordingly treats her one-sidedly as a romantic rival (although she does eventually calm down about it).  Kaori (family name not mentioned), usually addressed by the more affectionate “Kaorin”, is shown at first to ambiguously admire Sakaki, but it quickly becomes clear that she is infatuated with her.  And, despite the insistence of many fanfic writers since, Sakaki never catches on to this, even with Kaorin gazing dreamily at her while dancing with her, or clinging to her arm while posing for a picture together.  I'm sure, given how over-the-top she is, that Kaorin’s unrequited feelings are supposed to be funny, but I find it sweet and sad and end up rooting for her.

Sakaki and Cute Animals: Sakaki is not unfriendly, or even very socially inept, though.  She gets along well with the main cast, especially Chiyo.  But she is aloof, not just because of shyness but because she has a secret love of all things cute, especially cats and dogs, and gets caught up in her own thoughts about cute things.  Although she loves animals, they don’t necessarily love her back.  There is a series-spanning running gag with a cat in the neighborhood whom she repeatedly tries to pet, no matter how many times it bites her for doing so.  In fact, in that very same episode where Kagura declares her rivalry, the strongest emotional reactions we see from Sakaki are horror directed at Kagura for scaring that cat away and, later, being moved to tears by a story she’s constructing in her head about another cat while Kagura is trying to talk to her.  Sakaki’s thoughts on cute animals also yield a second running gag: "Chiyo's dad".  An orange cat-like doll (evidently some kind of character or mascot in-universe?) that appears numerous times in the background early in the show appears in Sakaki’s New Year’s dream and introduces himself to her as Chiyo’s father, so Sakaki refers to the doll as “Chiyo’s dad” for the rest of the series without explanation, much to the confusion of the other characters.  While he’s an inanimate object in the background before the dream, afterwards he appears as alive and magical, sometimes in Sakaki’s imagination and sometimes intruding into the real world as short transition clips between scenes.

Kimura vs. Everyone (mostly Kaorin): Last and certainly least, let’s consider Mr. Kimura, the literature teacher.  Within a minute of the first time we the audience see him, Tomo asks him why he became a teacher and he blurts out that it’s because he likes high school girls.  Which a group of creepy boys in the class call “brave”.  Ugh.  This presages chronic inappropriateness of varying levels from Kimura — from unsolicited suggestions for cheerleading uniforms to hanging out during gym class to watch the girls swim to heaping unwanted “favors” on Kaorin, to whom he is obviously attracted.  Beyond the increasing variety of his inappropriateness, he doesn’t really develop as a character.  He is, interestingly, shown as an otherwise decent person outside of school, but this is not portrayed as excusing him.  Rather, it’s made clear that his creepiness is contextual, and his role throughout the series is consistently as a grotesque comic relief, not a sympathetic character.  Kaorin even consciously tries to improve her opinion of Kimura because his wife is so nice, leading her to believe that this means Kimura himself must have good points to deserve someone like that, only to be immediately shown otherwise.  We the audience are laughing at him, not with him, and at some points are genuinely upset at him on the girls’ behalf.  Or at least, I hope that’s how the rest of the audience takes him.

3. Yeah, but there's some kind of progression, right, even if it's not really a story arc?

Again, it's not the kind of show that has an overarching goal or conflict.  The goal, such as it is, is the characters' graduation from high school.  The topic of what they'll each do after graduating comes up several times, as you might expect, but isn't that much of a plot point.  Not all of the main characters even have clear plans laid out that we know of, but the plans we do know about match their established personalities well.  Tomo changes her mind repeatedly between several half-baked ideas.  Osaka decides at the last minute to try to become a teacher based on Chiyo straining to think of something fitting Osaka's... unique way of looking at things.  Chiyo is perhaps overconfident, planning to study abroad in America despite being only 13 when she graduates.  Sakaki anonymously showed interest in veterinary school early on, but didn't discuss it with her friends until much later, after she started showing her weakness for cuteness in front of them.

The main progression that happens is some evolution in the characters' relationships and attitudes.  There is of course the progression from strangers to friends among the main cast, but also some character development growing out of things that started as gags.  Osaka, for example, begins as the butt monkey of the class, but by the end of the first year, she is very well accepted by her classmates, and she even gets along particularly well with Tomo, who was originally shown teasing and stereotyping her the most but has now toned it down a bit.  Nyamo’s miserable singlehood, previously a running joke, leads her to open up to the idea of trying matchmaking instead of dating.  Sakaki becomes more willing to express her love of cute animals in front of the other girls, starting with Chiyo, and her running gag experiences with the hostile cat play out to a resolution when she adopts, of all things, an endangered wildcat which is the only cat that doesn’t bite her, then has a final encounter with the hostile cat where she tries to make amends.  Chiyo's academic talents were met with light irritation and mockery at first, but by the end, her new friends are grateful for her help and rise in applause when she is recognized for her grades during the graduation ceremony.  Kagura relaxes her Tomo-like tendencies more and more, and shows a degree of gratitude and sentimentality towards her new friend group that would’ve been shocking when she was first introduced.  Even Tomo, usually the show's last bastion of immaturity, shows tiny bits of improvement: self-reflection and regret during a serious conversation with Yomi over what American audiences would call "finding your passion", and later leading the applause for Chiyo.  To compare Azumanga to Three Leaves, Three Colors again, it’s true that this show doesn't go into as much depth in character relationships as that one despite running for more than twice the number of episodes, but I don’t think that’s a flaw in Azumanga so much as a combination of Azumanga’s larger main cast, gag comedy focus, and choice of a different “zoom level” on the main cast’s lives.

The show itself evolves a little bit, too.  As it goes on, more episodes have segments that flow together and they contain more references to events in previous episodes.  By the last few episodes, with graduation looming, it almost feels like it has become a conventional plot-driven show.  The shift from shorter to longer segments, shorter to longer jokes, etc., is seamless — and pretty typical of comic strips where perhaps the author hasn’t “figured out” their own characters at the beginning.  Surreal elements also get more common, like the “Chiyo’s dad” running gag and increasingly-elaborate looks into what characters are imagining.  As I recall, these changes reflect the stylistic evolution of the original manga, but... uh... my copy of the manga is with my parents at the moment so I didn’t check myself on that.

4. How is it different in retrospect?

As I said, I first saw this in high school, so I was about the age of the main cast.  Perhaps this was one of the things that made it so enjoyable.  The characters seemed relatable, and I lacked the aversion to depictions of ordinary life that some people had because I didn’t have a particularly negative high school experience despite being decidedly uncool.  (I was, in fact, neither interested in being cool nor in being self-consciously uncool, and was content with the set of people I got along with.  I was never really an angsty teenager so much as a sad one.)  My experience of the show is, if anything, even greater appreciation now.  Some of that difference comes from knowledge and some from aging.

I’ve become a bit less of a poser and/or snob about some things since then.  I’d seen a lot of obviously-atrocious dubs growing up, and they really put me off the idea that anyone actually cared about dubbing into English well.  Since then, I’ve lightened up a bit, partly because it seems like nowadays distributors do a lot less 4Kids-style butchery of shows when they’re translated and partly because I’ve realized that there is plenty of bad Japanese voice acting, too, so sometimes the English version is just plain easier on the ears.  So I’ve watched this mostly in the English dub this time around (some episodes in both to check the different versions of specific jokes) and I really enjoy it.  The voices are character-appropriate and the English lines fit the lip movements better than the original Japanese voice track while only rarely resulting in rhythms and stresses that sound unnatural in English, which really impresses me.

Just from the sort of vocabulary one picks up by being weeaboo trash, I occasionally notice differences in meaning between the dialogue and subtitles when watching the sub version.  And I even picked up on an interesting translation choice for a joke I hadn’t noticed before.  When Yomi tells Osaka that Chiyo is a child prodigy in ep. 2, Osaka responds comparing Chiyo to a boy she knew growing up, resulting in her expressing a different misunderstanding in each version about how the boy was described by adults.  In the English dub, Osaka says something about him “smarting off”, the joke being she thinks that means he’s smart.  In the English subtitles, she says he was “precocious”, to which Yomi says she doesn’t think that meant he was smart by calling him that.  This time around, I finally caught that the Japanese dialogue there clearly uses the phrase “otoko no ko”, insinuating that the boy is a crossdresser and/or gay.  Even though I don’t understand the full Japanese joke, the implication is clearer than it was in English (because I, um, also didn’t think of the double entendre on the word “precocious” until now), as is the degree of the misunderstanding.

I appreciate now how many scenes are psychologically-savvy.  Just in the episode in which the main cast of students move up to their second year of high school, we see two scenes that just click with me as “yes, people do this, and I don’t know why we don’t seem to notice it!”.  I mentioned above Kagura wanting to compete more because of the sports festival while Sakaki thinks nothing of it at all, which hinges on the simple difference in the sports festival having been a memorable event in Kagura’s life but not Sakaki’s.  That episode also features a scene in which Tomo eggs on her classmates to eat their lunches early because it’s a thing that (according to her) second-years do, which sets up Mr. Kimura to arrive the room for literature class, see everyone eating, and therefore assume he must be the one who has the time wrong and go back to the faculty lounge for his own lunch.  This tendency to defer to others in decisions in our own lives, not through peer pressure per se but through assuming that something done commonly or confidently must be correct, is just something I don’t see portrayed or acknowledged much in Japanese or American media.  And I love it.  For those two scenes alone, this is one of my favorite episodes in the whole series.

As far as the characters, I still find the students charming and relatable, and I’m willing to bet that everyone knows someone like most of them in real life.  They fit Japanese character archetypes to a certain extent, but are also developed enough especially in their interactions with each other that they come off as realistic to me.  So they hold up well.  But mainly, I find I have much more appreciation for the teacher characters as an adult.  I can think of times when I’ve been the Yukari in a situation, whether that means being overbearing and inconsiderate when I think I’m being funny or whether it means or digging through a messy desk swearing that I know exactly where something is before creating a landslide.  And I can think of times when I’ve been the Nyamo accidentally antagonizing the Yukari by trying to be helpful.  I even appreciate Kimura, not because I think he’s relatable or a good guy, but because he’s distressingly realistic.  His creepiness comes at the same time as genuine competence and, as far as we are aware, a normal and functional home life.  It is widely-acknowledged yet never stopped by the administration, even though it ranges from unprofessional obnoxiousness to genuinely alarming sexual harassment.  Kimura is unfortunately plausible and all-around frustratingly topical.

Revisiting these characters, I’ve also realized something about myself.  When I first watched this show (and read the manga), I got a serious crush on Osaka.  She would go solidly in the “endearingly pathetic” column if I were to evaluate her that way, and she also reminded me at the time of a few different confidently strange and spacy people I went to high school with.  And then, getting older, I realized…  She’s endlessly distractible by trivial things.  She asks weird hypotheticals and follows odd tangents to other topics.  She often misunderstands people.  She’s hopelessly unathletic and clumsy.  Oh no.  I'm the Osaka of my circle of friends.  So, uh, that’s a thing that happened, and I have no idea what to make of it.

Azumanga is relaxed, wholesome, and hilarious, and its characters and major events are believable even when highly stylized for comedic effect.  When it's not in hyper-simple comedy mode, the art can be downright beautiful.  It’s clearly an artifact of its time given, for example, the lack of cell phones (even basic ones) and persistence of film cameras, but that kind of aging happens to any show.  The situations are still relatable despite not being topical, which makes me think — or at least hope — that this can last well into the future as something new audiences find worth watching.

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W/A/S Scores: 8 / 3? / 3

Weeb: There are lots of little things that will seem odd if you go in believing that Japanese school schedules and activities are the same as American ones, but anime is so saturated with high school comedies nowadays that it is much less weeb now than it was then to expect that background knowledge.  Many non-school things like flower-gazing or the fact that seasonal fairs in Japan have different activities and expected clothing than in American ones will seem distinctly foreign but understandable to a naive audience, while a few episodes might need some looking up to “get” because they expect audience familiarity with things still obscure to most Western audiences, like lucky dreams in the New Year’s episode or the yōkai in the second culture festival episode.  Mostly, familiarity with the conventions of other anime or of Japanese culture will enhance enjoyment but aren’t strictly required to enjoy it.  The art style sometimes shifts for specific gags to a particular style of minimal-movement chibi characters on very simple backgrounds which is more at home in the 4-panel comic world in which Azumanga originated (and in pre-moe-era comedy anime, or at least the few I've seen) than in other manga formats or newer anime, creating an additional small hurdle even for those with different Japanese media exposure.

The show runs into more of a barrier with hard-to-translate jokes than anything else, leaving the viewer the choice between replacement jokes with similar general ideas in the dub vs. the occasional feeling that there should be a joke but you’re not quite getting it in the sub.  One particular joke that they made no attempt to adapt ended up being utter nonsense in both the sub and dub unless you get that "Mr. Yukichi" refers to 19th Century Westernization advocate Fukuzawa Yukichi, who is on the ¥10,000 bill, and I gave the show an entire extra point on the Weeb scale just because I had to look that up.

Ass: Unless you’re Mr. Kimura, probably no “ass” score at all as far as sexualizing the characters, but there is the occasional sexual joke or implication.  Even the obligatory beach episodes aren’t fanservicey in the way or to the degree that a contemporary moe high school show often is.  Probably the single most sexual-looking thing is characters holding their skirts down in the intro, which is tame by comparison to anything released in the last decade.  Kimura, however, does make the show unsuitable for audiences… well… younger than the show’s main cast, probably.

Shit (writing): I have very little problem with the bulk of the content.  I think the show works and the characters are relatable and delightful.  But I do have some gripes about translation, mostly in the dub.  Although I still maintain the dub is unusually good in acting and synchronization, they do take more liberties than I’d like with changing jokes, and the dub and sub both lose some subtlety in how characters address each other, as mentioned before.

On top of that, there are some odd localization choices in the dub.  For example, the way Yukari, their English teacher in the original Japanese, is not portrayed as teaching a foreign language at all in the dub, while still making a big deal of her foreign language skills outside of class, or how characters repeatedly say “taiyaki pastry” in the dub instead of just establishing once for the English-speaking audience that taiyaki is the name of a specific style of pastry and using the name “taiyaki” from then on.  Also, I know this is very small and specific, but I noticed a place in ep. 17 where they inserted a strained pun in the dub where there was intentional awkward silence in the sub, so that’s just… weird.

Shit (other): The animation is often sparse, and although this is usually fine, it does sometimes come off as cheap.  The biggest problem visually is that the DVDs I’m watching have noticeable and pretty frequent combing, which I was able to reduce but not eliminate by fiddling with video player settings.  On the other hand, kudos to the director for hitting a sweet spot on shots that are lingered on or actions that are repeated for “too long” (e.g., Nyamo demonstrating chopstick use, or any of the scenes of Chiyo and Osaka failing at sports, or Osaka trying to wake up Yukari) because they end up hilarious when they could have been tedious.

Oh, and I love the soundtrack.  Some people may also find the frequent use of recorders annoying, but those people are (1) wrong and (2) not writing this blog.  The soundtrack is appropriately lighthearted and/or relaxing.  The opening theme “Soramimi Cake” is catchy and accompanied by an opening credits sequence that decently shows who the main characters are.  But “Raspberry Heaven”, the ending theme… ah… the sequence accompanying it is a beautiful dream and the music is movingly bittersweet for reasons I lack the music theory background to articulate.  Like, this is a really weird example, but it conveys my feelings: have you seen Soylent Green?  You know the scene where Sol is listening to a medley of classical music while he’s being euthanized?  If the last thing I ever heard were “Raspberry Heaven”, I would die totally content.

Content Warning: Kimura.

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Stray observations:

- I think Kaorin may have been the first unambiguously gay character I saw in any anime.  Sailor Moon or Cardcaptor Sakura would’ve beaten Azumanga to the punch with representation, but I grew up on the butchered-for-pearl-clutching-audiences versions of those shows.

- Kimura has, incidentally, produced one piece of lasting weeb culture.  While trying to save his illustration for a proposed magical girl cheerleading outfit, he drops a picture of a woman.  Tomo picks it up and wonders out loud who it is.  Kimura responds, in heavily-accented English, “my waifu”.  So… yup.  We have him to thank for the whole waifu/hasubando phenomenon.  Or, well, the terminology, since attraction to fictional characters is probably a phenomenon as old as fiction itself.

- More of a fun fact than a stray observation, Kuricorder Orchestra, who collaborated with Oranges & Lemons on the Azumanga soundtrack, recorded two Yotsuba-inspired concept albums, which are also adorable.  They’re hard to come by in official copies, but I can’t help but notice that nobody seems to be stopping anyone from uploading them to YouTube...

- The background music in the cheerleading scene in ep. 6 is the “Grandpa Polka”, a.k.a. “The Clarinet Polka”, which fans of various other weird geeky media may recognize as the melody for the Candy Mountain song in “Charlie the Unicorn” and/or as the song between “Love Shack” and “Pump Up the Jam” in Weird Al’s medley “Polka Your Eyes Out”.

- My junior high, oddly, did have sports festivals somewhat like those depicted in anime, but I don’t hear much about other American schools doing similar things.

#weeaboo trash #retrospective review #anime review #azumanga daioh #this post is way too long

[gaijinginger]

Days 8-9: Hiroshima, Back to Tokyo

Yesterday morning I got up at around 9:30, and went over to a restaurant near Kyoto station for breakfast. I still have yet to figure out exactly what Japanese breakfast is, and so I opted for a heaping plate of rice, curry and chicken, with a side of cold udon noodles and some iced coffee. Segmenting food by time of day is arbitrary anyway. After that, I boarded the Shinkansen bound for Hiroshima. On the way, I mentally prepared myself for what was to come with a soundtrack of Steely Dan, Talking Heads, and The Mamas and The Papas. Again the views proved incredibly scenic, and again I was so taken by them that I neglected to document any of it. The train ride took about an hour and a half, and I arrived in Hiroshima around 12pm. Even stepping out of the terminal, I was struck by how new the city looks- every building is incredibly recently built. Obviously this is about the farthest thing from a coincidence. I was also struck by how kind, friendly, happy and generally “genki,” a Japanese adjective used to denote positive energy, everyone was. It recalls the old aphorism that the most damaged people smile the brightest. Perhaps the people of Hiroshima, with their extremely dark past, have a greater appreciation for life and all of the good in it. The Hiroshima Peace Museum was the most impactful place I’ve ever personally visited. Every single westerner, myself included, left looking like they’d been shot in the stomach. I nearly burst into tears inside the central museum complex while watching a documentary comprised of testimonials from victims, which I’ll refrain from attempting to replicate here for fear of not doing them justice. The area around the epicenter of the blast now makes up the grounds of the greater Hiroshima memorial, comprised of several monuments to the 140,000 victims of the bombing (the overwhelming majority innocent civilians), a museum where chilling artifacts are kept, and a single structure that predates the bombing, known as the Atomic Bomb Dome. The structure looks exactly as it did in the moments following the bomb’s impact, a once-proud multistory building crowned by a western-style dome contorted into a mass of twisted iron bars and rubble. Apparently the dome has been the subject of considerable debate in Hiroshima over the years, with some demanding its demolition due to the painful memories it evokes, and others demanding it to stay exactly where it is, on the grounds that history must be remembered if lessons are to be taken from it. Luckily, the latter crowd officially won out at the end of the last century, and the structure will be preserved in its exact state going forward. As it should be. What I found perhaps most fascinating about the museum were its patrons- half of them the saddest Americans/westerners I’ve ever seen, and half cheery Japanese elementary and middle school students on school trips. I was “interviewed” by a few of them, clearly for a school project, and happily recounted to them my name, where I was from, and how and why I got to Japan. In the end we took a group photo which was unfortunately captured on a disposable camera by their teacher, so I’ll probably never see it. Perhaps most of the kids were simply too young to process the enormity of the museum’s subject matter, but it left me with a lot of hope to see so many Japanese children so clearly undaunted in the face of perhaps the most painful chapter of their national history. The Japanese remember, but they don’t wallow. After the museum, I stopped by yet another noodle shop (by my count I’ve conservatively had 4 different types of Ramen here so far) for some Hiroshima-style cold noodles served with seaweed and a poached egg. I sat next to four Japanese guys my age, each of them with bright red dyed hair. While none of us said anything, their feelings of inadequacy in comparison to the gingery locks of yours truly were palpable. After lunch I hopped back on the Shinkansen to Kyoto. About halfway between Hiroshima and Kyoto is Himeji, home to Himeji Castle, world renowned as the best example of Japanese castle architecture. If you’ve ever cracked a book about feudal Japan/Samurai and there are pictures in it, you’ve probably seen it. When the train stopped at Himeji Station and I saw the castle out my window a few blocks away, after having seen it in probably hundreds of books, movies and shows, I knew I had to make a stop. Unfortunately I never made it inside, since the gates closed at 5 and I arrived at around 5:15. So at least I have something to do the next time I’m back here. I was able to walk around the outer courtyards for a solid 40 minutes though, taking in the surreality of physically seeing the place up close. It’s nothing short of a breathtaking structure, and wasn't an early admission to the UNESCO world heritage registry for nothing. After getting my fill of the place, I walked back to the train station and grabbed some more curry short rib and rice at a place inside (no, YOU have a curry short rib and rice problem). I hopped on the next train back to Kyoto, and got back about an hour later (just in time to catch up on Sumo Sports Center). I finally bought some Pocky when I got home, too (chocolates covered pretzel sticks renowned worldwide as a symbol of Japanese culture (and more acutely, as a symbol of weebs)). For all the hype behind them, they’re really pretty average. This morning I checked out of my hotel at 10, then hopped back on the Shinkansen to Tokyo. The train was packed for the first few stops, but when things freed up at Nagoya I scored a window seat on the side facing inland. When we passed by Mt. Fuji, I was not disappointed. Pictures and video will follow, none do it justice. One of the most moving and evocative landmarks I’ve ever seen. You get why it’s such a fixture in Japanese culture immediately upon seeing it (initially, over 30 miles away in the distance). A thing I’ve noticed upon arriving back in Tokyo that I haven’t really mentioned up until now but deserves special mention- Japan takes the concept of marketing to its logical conclusion. Ever surface is absolutely plastered with physical advertising, and speakers shout jingles and commercials at you everywhere. This point comes from a YouTuber called “Abroad in Japan” whose videos were instrumental in helping me prepare for this trip, and I thought it was worth repeating here. It’s really pretty insane, and I’ve seen nothing like it in my life. Once I got back to Tokyo and dropped my bags at my hotel (I’m back at MyCube by MyStays Asakusa Kuramae, which was my favorite of the three capsule hotels I stayed in last week), I headed over to the Tokyo Odaiba Oedo Onsen. TOOO is what would happen if you combined Water Country with a traditional Japanese hot spring- the minute you go inside you strip naked, put your things in a locker and don a kimono and a barcoded bracelet which everything inside is charged to (you pay a corresponding amount when you leave). Inside you can get everything from beer to ice cream to sushi, and there’s massage services, a TV room, and even a few capsules for overnight guests (the place operates from 11AM to 9AM (yes, you read that right) every day, and I can’t imagine what late nights look like inside). Everyone walks around barefoot inside, and when you go into one of the massive hot spring rooms, wherein you find several different varieties of indoor and outdoor hot tubs, everyone is naked (again, I can only imagine what the place looks like after midnight). The hot spring rooms are separated by gender to avoid any major controversy, although I wouldn’t be surprised if unsegregated versions of such places exist somewhere in Japan. Out of the hundreds of people there this afternoon, I was one of only about five westerners, and the only redhead. Suffice it to say that in the hot tub area, people were pretty stunned to see me. Pretty hilarious, mostly for me. They don’t allow pictures inside the resort, but it’s really worth googling to get a sense for what I went through for about two hours earlier this afternoon. I’m back at my hotel now in my fourth and final capsule room of this trip, currently trying to figure out what my dinner plans will be. Tomorrow I’ll probably go to the Studio Ghibli museum and give that another shot, and maybe try to get out of Tokyo into the country (where I hear people unapologetically stare and photograph westerners like rare animals- to some that may sound horrible, but I’ve been anticipating the experience for quite some time). More to come soon!