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strawbubbysugar · 6 months

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Coming off anon for this one cuz oh boy it’s theory time and I’m feeling very silly

(I just woke up at the time of writing so sorry for any typos, rambling, or confusion lol)

Alright! So, I’ve been thinking a lot about the existence of Eclipse and the theories popping up about them lately mainly: that Clipsey is a recycle of Moon’s broken body. Which I’ll touch up on first.

The issue that was presented with Moon by this definitely-not-at-all-suspicious engineer was that his processing unit was smashed and ‘unsalvageable’ (which we know to not be true), and aside from the obvious injuries cause by Trap, no major problems with Moon’s case are brought up. His *internals* were destroyed, aside from his battery which was reused.

Continuing forward, the SOMA comparisons. Reading through a plot synopsis of the game, I can’t help but link the destruction of Moon-man’s processing unit and Simon’s brain injury together a bit. Considering that that is the partial cause for Sun and Moon combining and the reason for Simon getting his brain scan copy. Both undergoing heavy ‘brain’ damaging and being brought to very odd circumstances because of it.

With the assumption that this is *actually* Moon’s body, “Uploaded into a modified corpse” is a *very* apt description for what Eclipse is. They’re a copy of someone (two people technically) inhabiting the dead body of the original, almost like Pry/ncess in a weird way.

That’s where the comparisons for the game and Bethroned end to my knowledge however, so time to move onto the more ‘looking too far into things’ section of my theory,

The design and color scheme!

Starting off, I noticed that the coloring of the Sun side on their face was reused from *post incident* which makes sense, that’s how Sun would’ve been seen last before running away with Pry/ncess, the eyes obviously match up as well.

Though the tops of the rays have noticeably sharper points to them if that’s anything at all, it’s impossible to draw the something the same way every single time after all so that can be easily written off.

The same can be said for Moon as well, the coloring of his face matches up with theirs, however his other features are… very much not intact. Very close but not quite.

The coloring and patterning of the hat is entirely different, the cape maintains the same coloring but the stars on Eclipse’s are much smaller and more faded than Moon’s as well.

What’s throwing me off though is the eyes, for both post incident and for Eclipse the right eye gained a black sclera, Moon’s pupil turned white, but Eclipse’s stayed red.

If Eclipses body was Moon’s then this could’ve happened naturally, the eye could’ve simply underwent the same damage/change as it did with Moon’s form in Sun’s body. Though do to this being his actual form the pupil could’ve kept its regular eye color.

Their lack of a mouth could also mean that they can’t speak, another drastic contrast in characterization to our boys. From the artwork we’ve been shone of them they see, cunning, clever, but very, VERY distressed. (Be a bit weird to consciously design eye-bags on your new king after all, right? That’s their own fault.)

And for my last point, their crown and the Opal.

This is the most obvious ‘combination’ in their design, it gets the rounded bottom of Sun’s and the gem formation and top shape of Moon’s. When overlayed on top of each other you also get similar colors to Eclipse’s crown, though more cleaned up and appealing on the eyes.

The gem in this crown has been confirmed to be an opal (if my memory serves me right I can’t find the post anywhere to confirm, tumblr search engine is bleh)

There were a few pieces of folklore and symbolism relating to the opal that I found particularly interesting with what little we know about Eclipse.

Mainly, it representing loyalty and goodluck as well as royalty. A lot of other interpretations I found pointed to it granting foresight and being responsible for prophecy, something you’d certainly want your king to have after the huge string of ‘bad luck’ that befell both of them.

Loyalty to prevent another incident like Sun choosing Pry/ncess over his kingdom and trusting them first, foresight and prophecy so that they can avoid incident like King Freddy dying and, well, Sun and Moon’s incident. and royalty is obvious.

Though the loyalty interpretation and foresight/intelligence can vary widely in intention depending on if Chica or PeePaw (maybe both, stares at Trap) is responsible for their existence. Cant speak that much on it before they’ve even appeared in the story.

Alright so what am I getting at with all this? Well, put simply, Eclipse’s design and name are very very intentional and combining the Princes was clearly in mind when they were (re)built by whoever their creator is. I believe that they attempted to program, be it from scratch with parts of Moon’s processor or with some kind of backup of Sun *somehow*, Sun into Moon’s body and combine their ai together in order to make a new heir.

Again, can’t find the message, but Eclipse’s existence was described as ‘decidedly uncomfortable’ which is very understandable if this were true, having you and your brother’s brain and memories COMPLETELY sewn together, not even with semi separate minds or personalities like with the actual Sun and Moon, would be very, VERY lacking in the ‘good for your mental health’ department, especially if you knew you aren’t the original ‘you’, just a clone, a do-over, a combination of two other failures that you need to clean the mess from up.

Put simply, I believe Eclipse is a combination of Sun and Moon, but not THE combination of Sun and Moon. If that makes any sense. They’re a replication of both placed inside Moon’s old body and used to fill the empty spot on the throne and potentially-maybe-hopefully-not help Afton.

Hands down my favourite ask ever. Like oh my god you did it. You got everything. You caught all the little secrets I put in and I’m flabbergasted. WOW. I AM. SO HAPPY HSFSG

THANK YOU FOR PUTTING SO SO SO MUCH TIME AND EFFORT AND ENERGY INTO THIS ANALYSIS BECAUSE I JUST. I MIGHT CRY. THIS MEANS SO MUCH TO ME SOBS :;;

#ask #bethroned #bethroned fanart #COUNTING IT AS THAT BECAUSE THIS WAS CLEARLY A LABOUR OF LOVE #YOU CIRCLED AND OUTLINED THINGS AND EVERYTHING IM SO HAPPY

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singswan-springswan · 2 years

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Kanera Faerie AU because I think that would be really fun and my brain won’t shut up so here we go.

Kanan first meets her at Okadiah’s place, where he runs the bar sometimes and ubers people around after hours. She is stunning when she walks in. Her long, mysterious cloak flutters in a heavy way, accentuating every motion with a regality that doesn’t belong in this part of town. Kanan does his best to keep his composure. he makes it a total of .3 seconds until he hears her speak and that’s it, he’s whipped. flirtatiously, he tells her that her glamour has slipped, and he thinks she must be fair folk because her voice is enchanting, and her beauty is a rich allure---but she pays him no mind, and Kanan can’t feel magic in her. she’s just an ordinary woman.

haHa uNleSs---

Her name is Hera, and she’s travelling on secret business. She can handle herself in a fight, thank you. She doesn’t require assistance of any kind. And kriff, Kanan knows she can’t be fae but she sure can act like one. Her words are clever, and everyone she meets is caught in her gravity, pulled in as though spellbound.

Against his better judgement, Kanan finds himself involved in her secret affairs. He knows, instinctively, that Hera is a grand kind of woman. She will do things---great things, immense things, things that draw attention---and it won’t be a safe bet for Kanan to have any affiliation because ever since the Emperor rose and slandered the fae, Kanan’s people have been undergoing a slow, silent slaughter.

He doesn’t want to be ousted and risk the hunt that’s sure to follow. it’s safe to pass as a man, to hide in plain sight, to construct a magic façade around his inhuman looks and devastating presence, to pretend that he can’t pour fire from his hands or heal fatalities with song. He’s lost count of fae who couldn’t pretend, who couldn’t hide. The horns of a fae sell for more money than jewels or silks; if carved out just right, they still hold magic. These days, many bounty hunters and the like spend their time sniffing out fae to kill. Fae weren’t beloved to begin with---more mythical than tangible anyway, feared for their power and rumors of abduction, entrapment, illusion, and other obscene acts---but the Emperor’s open enmity with them only seemed to justify the hatred now common throughout the land. it wasn’t safe to be fae.

The way Hera behaves, someone will find out Kanan’s secret; it’s only a matter of time. but he has nothing better to do. besides, Grandfather Windu didn’t approve of the uber hustle, so joining Hera on her secret adventure is a good way to give Okadiah the slip on that one.

This is the part where I get snagged on the worldbuilding because I want to parallel events from A New Dawn for this AU but like it’s hard in a fantasy setting lol. I just want Kanan to have dark, wiry horns and eyes that could literally drown a soul and pointy ears and serious kriffing cheekbones and force powers except he can bend light to his will and turn it to fire or sparkles and such and I want him to be this cocky gunslinger guy who’s trying to be a rebellious grandson and not hide way deep in the mystical woodland of the courts like the remainder of his family wants him to because he knows his people aren’t safe grouped together they’ve been massacred that way before and charming humans and toying with them and amusing himself by trolling them is part of who he is as a faerie so he’s gotta be near them not holed away and disconnected.

I want Hera to be doing some dramatic espionage work and I want her to be annoyed by Kanan tagging along and his uncanny ability to charm everyone they come across. I want her to be vicariously hyper fixated on her cause to the point that she shrugs off serious issues like the genocide of the fae and the way that this racism married to the irresponsible industrialism of the empire is poisoning their land and draining away its magic. I want her to ask Kanan how old he is and watch him flounder for a good response (he’s only 100 something-ish. baby boy). I want her to stare at him in utter bewilderment as he whistles (he’s bored) an eerie tune and proceeds to get escorted by a murder of crows for the next few km of their journey. I want her to bat her eyelashes sweetly and talk to him in low tones so she can con him into giving her that cool shiny thing the crows found (it’s the key she uses to access her lockbox with reports and intel exchanged between her and her contact kriff Kanan hand it over). I want her to toss him a weapon during a fight (a dagger? a gun? do they have guns in this time period?) and have him hiss like a feral cat and duck to the side to avoid touching it (iron). I want her to be flabbergasted when Kanan is revealed to be fae because it really catches her off guard.

The angstiest way to stage the reveal is to have the villain figure it out and expose Kanan in front of Hera and whatever other friends they’ve accumulated along their quest (ghost crew maybe? unless you want to keep this set in the A New Dawn stretch) since they got captured in all their spy osik and possibly threatening to torture him and mount his head on a wall or something or other classic medieval shenanigans. Hera is forced to watch while she’s still shocked and trying to process the fact that he’s not human.

Alternatively, Kanan reveals himself like he did in the book by using his powers to save Hera and it’s the spur of the moment so she’s shocked obviously, but there’s no time to sit around and chat about this new development so Kanan’s hauling her up by the arm, yelling at her to keep moving (I’m sure there are explosions in the background), and she trips a little doing as she’s told because his glamour has burned up like mist in the morning sun and he’s so... ethereal, and it’s hard to look away and her brain is short-circuiting. Kanan flashing a cocky grin and winking to hide how much he’s panicking internally 🤌Him reconstructing the glamour after the fact while also having a meltdown and trying not to hyperventilate because he wasn’t sure how Hera felt towards fae before and even though he’s sure she’s in love with him (he’s very hard to resist) there’s still a chance she can expose his identity.

But this whole thing has been a learning experience for Hera. She’s finally able to forage up some convictions about fae, despite being heavily wary of them in the past, like any sane person. and she already cares very deeply about Kanan so she’s willing to protect his secret.

hmm anyone please write this I would do it but I have too many other commitments lol send me the story I will drown you with kudos any takers?

#kanera #kanan jarrus #hera syndulla #kanan x hera #star wars rebels #star wars rebels au #star wars au #kanera au #faerie au #fae #fae kanan jarrus #star wars imagine

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mrs-gucci · 3 years

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A Different Kind of Urgent {Charlie Barber x Reader}

author’s notes: hellooooo! my penpal friend, a fellow adam driver rat, sent me a print of a charlie picture (that I’d seen a gajillion times before, mind you) and for some reason, I thirsted hard. so, naturally, I wrote a fic inspired by the picture. the reader in this story is a college professor, but it doesn’t really contribute to any ‘essential’ parts of the story (aka the smutty parts). it’s just her job lol

warnings: smut. some fluff. masturbation. semi-public smut. the sending of nudes (well, lingerie pics, to be specific). charlie’s dad outfits™️. cigarette smoking during sex. uhh tennis shoe kink??

(possible) tw’s: semi-public sex. semi-public masturbation. tobacco use (as is canon for Charlie’s character). implied age gap (everyone’s over 21, no more than 10 years).

You’re in the middle of class when Charlie texts you. Your phone buzzes and buzzes on your desk so much so that you have to stop your lecture for a few seconds, worried that something urgent has happened.

Well, something did happen, and it was pretty urgent, but not exactly in the way you’d expected.

-Charlie: I know you’re teaching class right now kid.- -Charlie: But I need you.- -Charlie: Right now.-

A shiver runs down your spine as you read his words on the screen.

-Y/N: I’ve got like 45 more minutes of lecture, baby, I can’t.-

He growls under his breath, cock straining in his tan khakis.

-Charlie: Fuck.- -Charlie: Can you send me a picture? Just need to see your pretty body, kid.-

-Y/N: Say please, Charlie.-

Charlie groans in sexual frustration, hips bucking up in his desk chair.

-Charlie: Jesus fucking christ, fucking brat. PLEASE! PLEASE send me a picture!-

You smirk, picking out one of the lingerie photos you’d taken when you were home alone one night. You’ve been waiting for the right time to whip them out and...well, this seems like the right time.

-Y/N: Attachment 1 image- -Y/N: Knock yourself out. Take a picture when you’re done, and I’ll be over as soon as class is finished.-

His shaky hands scramble to type in his phone passcode and click on your message, a strangled moan leaving his lips at the picture you chose. He’d never seen this one before, never seen this set of lingerie before. He unbuckles his belt and almost tears the button clean off his khakis as he pulls his cock out, tip already red and drooling with precum.

Before he starts anything, he quickly runs over to his office door, locking it to keep anyone from walking in.

His navy cardigan suddenly feels almost suffocating and he sheds it without hesitation, unbuttoning his dress shirt and parting it, revealing his undershirt.

Wait...you want a picture. Fuck.

An idea comes to him and he whimpers, equal parts aroused and nervous about giving it a try. God he hasn’t touched himself since the divorce proceedings, just needing to blow off some fucking steam, but you’ve reignited his sexual passion, overwhelmingly so, and seemingly even more than before. Maybe even more than ever, if he’s honest with himself.

He feels like a teenager again, both completely smitten with you while at the same time incredibly horny for you.

Charlie stands up on shaky legs and shoves all the paperwork off his desk, clearing a roomy spot right in the center. He bites his lip as he props his phone up on his desktop computer with the picture of you pulled up. Jerking off with just his hand wouldn’t be enough this time around, a small part of him just knew it. He needs to fuck you, fuck something.

He positions his hands around the edge of his desk, leaving his thumbs right at the top, putting them in a wonky sort of ‘o’ shape. He adjusts so that the sharp edge is pressing against his palm before experimentally thrusting his length forward into the hole he’s created with his thumbs, immediately groaning in pleasure.

“O-Oh, kid.”

He whispers, picking up a slow thrusting rhythm, eyes squeezed shut as he imagines your pussy.

“Such a good little pussy, my good f-fucking girl.” A line of sweat has already begun forming on his forehead as he moves a bit quicker, growling wildly with each thrust. He’s embarrassingly close already. “God, j-jesus fucking christ, gonna make me cum so f-fast, kid. I’m already s-so close, damnit.”

His hips grow desperate, bucking erratically into his grip. The drag of his cock against the faux wood surface feels absolutely incredible, and he barely even hears the desk begin to groan and shift against the floor of his office, too consumed with his impending orgasm.

“Yeah, you ready? Y-You fuckin’ ready for my big fat--fuck!--load in this pretty little--shit!--k-kitty?”

Just hearing him say the word aloud, his nickname for your cunt, has him cumming within moments. His vision blacks out for a second as his hips rut forward, a seemingly continuous stream of warm white cum painting his desktop.

“Ahhhhh, fuuuuuuuck.”

He has to bury his mouth into his shirt arm to hide the cries that come from him, eyebrows knitted at the center of his forehead. His breathing is heavy as he begins coming down from his high, eyes flitting open and looking down at the mess he’d made.

His load had gone across the entire width of his desk, and his eyes widened for a moment as his brain somehow comprehended to grab his phone and take a picture of the spread.

-Charlie: Attachment 1 image- -Charlie: Come straight to my office when you get to the theater.-

You take a quick peek at the message from Charlie as your students pull out their workbooks, jaw dropping when you open the picture full-screen. Holy shit, he really did need it.

-Y/N: You sure you still have enough to fill me up with when I get there?-

-Charlie: I always have enough for you, kid. Gonna have it leaking out of you when you leave.-

You chew your lip, thinking of a quick yet clever response.

-Y/N: Is that a promise?-

He groans under his breath, chuckling lightly with a small smile.

-Charlie: Absolutely. Can’t wait to see you, kid.-

-Y/N: I’m excited too. I’ll be there in 20.-

The twenty minutes it takes for you to finish class and walk over to Exit Ghost feels like some of the longest in Charlie’s life, knee bouncing impatiently and eyes glued to the door. He twirls the Marlboro package in his hand, the clock behind his desk tick-tick-ticking the seconds away.

Finally, a soft knock comes and, just in case it isn’t you, he stuffs the carton into his pocket. “Come in.”

Your head pokes through the door and you smile at him as you walk in, shutting and locking the door behind you. You immediately notice his outfit, specifically his shoes, which are propped up on his desk.

He knows that you like how he dresses, especially when he dresses very dad-like. And those sneakers he has, the white ones with the blue lines on them...god, they drive you absolutely crazy and you have no idea why.

Your bags are quickly shoved off your shoulder by the impatient director, pulling you into his body as his lips attack yours fiercely. He notices the way you’re eyeing his outfit, and it’s then that he realizes what shoes he has on, the pair that you like so much. Oh, he could use that.

His grip on the meat of your hips tightens increasingly as the kiss heats up, lips eventually moving down to your neck.

“Well, hello to you too.”

You say, laughing softly.

“Mmmm,” He hums onto your skin, lips littering kisses and small nibbles everywhere they can reach. “I missed you, kiddo, feels like forever since we’ve had time for something like this.”

Charlie’s large body presses you up against the door, hands eager to rid you of your pants. He quickly yanks them down to your ankles, fingers finding your clothed folds.

“I’ve got a staff meeting at two, baby. We h-have to be kind of quick...sorry.” You breathe, hand wrapping in his hair, tugging at the silky raven locks.

A small and slightly disappointed sigh leaves his lips, but nothing more is said on the matter. His movements do become a bit more rushed, though, digits dipping beneath the fabric to shove up into your entrance.

Your legs spread instinctively, knees shaking as he finger-fucks you, thick digits scissoring inside you to prepare for his girth. Meanwhile, you try to focus on getting his belt and pants undone, but it’s awfully hard when his fingers feel so damn good.

He pulls away suddenly, sucking the juices off his fingers as his hungry eyes roam your figure. The carton of cigarettes presses against his thigh and he smirks, pulling his digits out with a lewd pop.

Charlie suddenly pulls you off the door, putting himself in your spot instead. He smirks, fingers running under your chin, keeping your head tilted up at him.

“Will you go open the window for me please, beautiful?”

You nod, rushing over to push it open, then come back over to stand in front of him.

“Good girl. Thank you.”

His pointer finger twirls and points to the floor while the other hand grabs the pack and lighter from his pants pocket.

“Now, turn around and bend over right here, hold your ankles or feet, or whatever.”

As you position yourself accordingly, he leans back against the door, legs spread and sneaker-clad feet planted on either side of you, right within your line of vision. He’s almost fully hard again already as he moves to free his cock from its khaki confines, undoing his pants just enough to have it out.

Again, his cardigan feels suffocatingly hot, so he quickly pulls it off and tosses it away. He rolls the sleeves up on his button-up, a sight that makes your insides clench.

He jams a cigarette between his teeth, jaw clenching when he looks up and realizes that you’re bent over for him, in just the way he asked. Your glistening pussy’s on full display as you wiggle your ass a bit, his cock bobbing and twitching with excitement.

“Oh kid, you’re dripping.” Charlie whispers, almost to himself, hand kneading one of the globes of your ass.

You chuckle softly. “Hey, baby? As much as I love hearing and feeling you, my legs are getting kinda tired.”

Laughing, Charlie says a quick ‘sorry’ before holding and pulling your hips back, lining himself up with your soaked entrance. He pulls you back some more, impaling you on his cock, head falling back against the door as he does so.

His hands shakily ignited the small flame on his lighter, bringing it up until the tip of the cigarette turned orange before flipping the cap back on and shoving it back in his pocket. He takes a long drag, groaning on the exhale.

He keeps one hand on your hip while the other spreads out on your lower back, guiding you back and forth over his shaft slowly, gently.

“Thaaat’s it, just like this, kid.”

Your eyes roll into the back of your head, the impossibly deep angle created with this new position has it feeling like he’s reaching into your guts. Plus, with the natural up-curve of his cock, he’s brushing all the right spots inside you.

“C-Charlie…”

The familiar and comforting scent of Charlie’s cigarettes fills your nostrils, a haze of smoke surrounds your joined bodies. He continues to move you up and down on his length, buttocks clenching as his hips naturally rock forward, burying himself to the hilt each time you sink down.

“God...jesus christ...love this little pussy of yours, kid.” He breathes through his gritted teeth. “Taking me so nicely, always wrapped around me so goddamn tight.”

You quickly begin moving yourself up and down his stiff rod, bouncing as fast as you can manage. The sweet burn in your thighs only grows more prominent with each passing second, but you don’t care, too consumed in pleasure.

“Mmmmmyyyeah, baby, all for you.”

His hand comes down on your ass, giving it a firm smack before taking another quick drag, exhaling through his nose.

“That’s f-fucking right, all mine. You love being a little slut for this cock, huh? I know you do, you love when I bring you in my office and fuck your pretty cunt in the middle of the goddamn work day, can’t even wait until I get home, this f-filthy slut cunt needs to be split open and stuffed nice and full. Can’t go one fucking day without my cum fucked in you, always needs to be filled up and leaking, hm?”

Charlie was never able to do stuff like this or talk to Nicole like this. She was pretty vanilla when it came to sex, just like to be fucked quietly in bed. He called her a ‘slut’ once and she almost cried, lecturing him for half an hour afterwards on how disrespectful it was.

But now, he gets to explore everything he hasn’t gotten the chance to with you. You love it all, love the way he talks filth in your ear, calls you naughty names. You love getting fucked in all sorts of places, which at first made him a little nervous, cheeks and the tips of his ears bright red when you asked him to fuck you in your classroom or finger you under your dress on the subway. But, after almost a year and a half together, you can safely say that he’s a full-on exhibitionist deviant.

Your walls clamp down around him, eyes still squeezed shut as you feel his hips begin to thrust forward. Soon, he holds you almost completely still, moving his hips as fast as he can. His cigarette is almost ashes at this point, and he kicks himself for not thinking of a good disposal plan beforehand.

“Oh baby, oh baby...f-fuck!” You whine, hips squirming and gyrating as your impending orgasm grows closer. “Y-Yeah, I love it, love everything you do to me. Wanna take every s-single fucking drop of your cum, Charlie, want it inside me, want it dripping down my thighs.”

He almost loses his mind over your comments, drilling into you at an impossibly hard and fast rate, the lewd slapping squelching sound of your hips colliding overwhelmingly prominent in the space around you.

“You’ll go back to work with so much cum shoved into you, make you sit through your stupid fucking meeting with my cum dripping out of you. B-Better hope no one notices, huh? Better hope your boss doesn’t find out what a good little cockslut you are, how much you love having a pussy-full of your boyfriends f-fucking cum.”

A few muted cries leave your lips as he pounds you harder, his own words spurring him on. He can feel your walls pulsing around him, a sure-fire sign that you’re about to cum.

“C-Charlie! Charlie, I...I’m close.”

“K-Know you are, kid, I know you are. You’re doing so f-fucking well for me, Y/N, squeezing my big cock like a fuckin champ.” Charlie growls, quickly tossing his spent cigarette in a coffee mug on a nearby table. “And now you’re gonna rub your little clit and cum for me like I know you want to. C’mon, kid, wanna feel you come undone around me.”

You quickly begin rubbing your clit and, despite the odd angle, it brings you right up to the edge. You just need something, just a little something, to push you over the edge. Your eyes flutter open to look up at him, but then, you’re met with the sight of his sneakers.

“Goddamnit!” You’re cumming almost instantly, flooding his shaft with your release. “Yes! Oh god, yeah, c-cumming for you baby!”

His hips keep pumping, taking you right through your climax before abruptly coming to a halt when they’re buried as deep inside you as they can possibly be. His eyes go wide before squeezing shut, a guttural groan ripping through his chest as he pumps and shoves his thick creamy load into you.

“T-Take it, f-filthy whore!” He groans, rutting his hips the whole way through, making sure every drop is put inside you.

Once he’s finished, having ridden out his high to its fullest, he tucks himself back into his pants before helping you stand back up. He holds you close, looking down at you with a bright, genuine smile.

“You’re amazing, incredible...just so perfect.” He kisses all over your face before landing on your lips.

Your cheeks heat up at his compliments, hands weaving through his hair as the kiss deepens.

Suddenly, someone knocks on your office door, jiggling the doorknob.

“Charlie?”

His eyes fly open and he pulls away. Shit.

“Yeah, I’m h-here, just give me a minute!”

You quickly pull your pants up and jump under his desk to hide just as he opens the door, running a hand through his hair.

He talks to the person on the other side of the door in a rushed voice, answering their multitude of questions before quickly shutting the door, sighing as you crawl out from under the desk.

“At least we both got to cum, unlike last time.” You walk up and put your hands on his pecs, rubbing them over the fabric. “I gotta get going though, baby. I wanna grab lunch from the deli before my staff meeting.”

Charlie nods, dipping his head down to kiss you one last time, nuzzling his large nose against yours.

“Come over tonight, though? Nicole’s in town and she’s got Henry, so we’ll have the house to ourselves. I feel like we haven’t spent any quality time together lately.”

Nodding, you smile. “I would love to come over. I’ll text you when I get home.”

“Great.” He smiles, pressing a kiss to your forehead. “I’ll see you later, kid. Have a good meeting.”

You laugh as you grab your bag and head out, turning back to wave and flash him a soft smile.

“See you tonight.”

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sprinklesandshatters · 3 years

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A Review on NCT 127′s 3rd Album <Sticker>

So NCT 127 just came back with their 3rd Full Album <Sticker> and this is my first 127 comeback since I became a fan last year! Neozone is such a special album for me as it was their first album that I explored entirely. I've known NCT as the group who never fails any expectations so I've kept mine up although I know they'll exceed it anyway. And guess what, they did! I absolutely love their new album hence this review~

This isn't a technical music review—as I am not a musician myself—but rather a listener's honest takes, goofy notes, and interpretation on each of the tracks in the album. I admit I've also struggled to build my own opinions on some of the tracks until I listened to them over and over again.

I have also heard there are mixed opinions on the title track <Sticker> and a lot says it's another acquired taste. But I think it's not just that, as it can be a grower, just like how most of NCT's songs were for me. Maybe after a few listens and a right passage of time, it will grow on those people. The bottom line here is, I like it a lot! 😛

So I listed down the songs according to their respective track numbers and followed each with a bulleted list of my opinions and interpretations.

(Viewer/reader discretion: before you continue, minors, do not interact as there are few 18+ contents under the cut. Thank you.)

1. Sticker

THEY DIDN'T JUST PUNCH A NEW NOTCH ON THE BELT LIKE THAT

THIS SONG SLAPS, LITERALLY SLAPS… AND WHIPS

The recorder at the intro boyyyy I thought something was wrong but then I remember it’s NCT lmao

It already stuck in my head from my first listen from the Instagram audio.

With Taeyong opening the verse with his divine rapping, I knew I'm in for a new ride.

STICK-UH STICK-UGH STICK-UGHGHGH

To those complaining it sounding like noise music, imagine it sounding generic. I don't think it would fit as the title track. Not a b-track or in their repertoire, even. They are called NCT because they define the NEO in the music culture and music technology!

It honestly was an unorthodox, just like all of their title tracks, which I’m inherently here for.

Literally, no one does it like them!

The growls and the vocal flexes and adlibs! (You can tell it has Yoo Youngjin's brand.)

The crisp metronome sound that’s consistently ticking except for the pre-chorus and the dance break adds depth to the soundscape. I love how it’s used instead of the usual snaps.

The production quality blew my mind. Like how can someone think those melodies would sound so exquisite? CAN I CALL THEM GENIUS?

The piano at the back, oh my God—Yes! It adds this mystifying element to the song.

I'm not sure if it's a midi violin at the pre-chorus, but it added thrill to the song. It was a great transition from the bass line in the verses to the combination of the flawless harmony with the same instrumental.

"You treat me like a boy, like a grown-up child chasing a dream" JUNGWOO BABY NO MORE HUH

Taeil, Doyoung, and Haechan—the bridge vocal trinity!

But why the heck are they cowboys? I dig the concept, but why? LMAO

BTW GUNSLINGER MARK I’M ON MY KNEES YEEHAW

This is easily one of my favorite tracks from NCT 127's entire discography 💚

2. Lemonade

(⌐■_■)

Jaehyun starting off this song with his deep voice eee

The song opens to a verse oozing with chill confidence. They're like, yeah you're lurking because we’re cool.

This is such a huge slap to their haters. NCT's not chillin' like a villain, nah they're the main characters!

Well maybe they’re villains, but still ya not cooler than them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Funny enough how they could have just referred haters as simply lemons whose sour/bitter to the taste, but 127 squad's success is sweeter than all the haters' spiteful remarks so yeah, SIPPY SIPPY LEMONADE 🧃

"WOOF"

I might have just barked too wOW

Yuta’s vocals hooooO his voice just sounds so glamorous mhmm

Also Mark referencing their previous title tracks such as: Firetruck, Cherry Bomb, and Regular (it's Irregular in the lyrics) in his rap part 👌💅

I just love Mark's energy when he raps. HE RESOLUTELY BITES AND STRAIGHT UP EATS EVERY TIME HE DOES.

3. Breakfast

Now breakfast time, oh jeez!

AAAHAHFU—

Summer 127's bestie!

If Summer 127 talks about dancing all night long, Breakfast is the morning after.

You know what it is.

"Even if I gulp and drink you, it's not enough for me." oho Taeyong no you ha—STOP

Sexual innuendos aside, isn't it just sweet if someone tells you they'd want to have breakfast with you every day? Okay maybe I'm melting at the thought 😩🙈💞

And I can see myself dancing to this song as I make breakfast (in the afternoon or at midnight bc I’m crazy)

This was an okay b-track for me at the first skim on the album, but boy it grew on me wildly.

Honestly one of my favorite tracks in this album.

4. Focus

Did I just invade a private call? LMAO

The analog voice filters make it like so.

Dude, this feels intimate in the level of eavesdropping a phone call between seasoned lovers. Then you realize you hear them whispering their kinks over the line and you're ooh, that's sexy! hfgklhfhf

My first listen to this, I almost went feral because,

"I can't wait to eat you…" when it's actually "I can't wait 'til we chill…" aahaha

"Baby call me when you want me." OKAY!

This sounds relaxing and chill. I'd love to play this on a late night drive or just before bed time along with Fly Away With Me, Sun & Moon, My Youth, and Long Flight.

Belongs to ‘make out session’ playlist ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

That was lowkey a playlist recommendation, huh?

I'd be kidding if I don't say I could touch myself while listening to this song AHAHAFGHFJFJ

I didn't know this would grow on me this much lol I love love LOVE THIS!

5. The Rainy Night

Ooh, the holy melancholy!

Piano at the intro—I knew I'd cry to this.

This song isn't just about break-up, but the heartbreak after one.

The yearning; the remnant pieces from the shattering of what was once there.

I think I crumbled from this one.

This hit so hard I felt like I fit in the shoes with the lyrics throughout the entire song.

What’s fascinating is I clearly forgot the title when I mentally said this sounds like a sad rainy day song from the first listen.

Something I’d turn up when it suddenly rains, just because I want to feel the blues.

Taeil and Haechan singing in lower register? I wanna cry :( they’re just one of the best vocalists in K-music industry right now.

Could have been also nice if they added Yuta to the vocals.

"My selfish heart who waits for you to come back," OKAY WHO HURT THEM?

And the fact that they sang it so good that it translated every ounce of the emotions well even before I looked up for English translations is the reason why I love this song too.

6. Far

Hmm… What the hell?! Do I like this? Wait...

Alright!

The jumpy vibe from the first verse to the pre-chorus set the mood for this song. It sounds merry and heavy. It was honestly too much to take until I’ve reached the chorus part.

Honestly, I think this song could fit NCT Dream better, as it gives off a vibe similar to Hello Future's b-tracks. If some credible source say this could have made HF’s track list, I might believe you too fast.

Also Dream’s Deja Vu where they go na nananananana na na na~

Playful yet confident! That’s what I mean!

As usual, the vocals are insane! Vocal flex from left to right!

I swear Jungwoo sounded a bit like Taemin at the second verse that I had to replay it hahaha

I love hearing Johnny as a vocalist! SM, how many signs do you need until you utilize his vocal talent???

Taeil's part where he sings, "go nuts, go nuts, 'til we go bust, go bust" IDEK BUT I SNORTED A LAUGH AT FIRST LISTEN HFCAHKFHK

Not my favorite, but still great though!

But wait it’s actually stuck in my head???

7. Bring The Noize

Yes, they never beat those noise music allegations

HERE'S SOME NOIZE, BITCHES

I love me some noisy percussions. AND THE BASS YO

This screams so much confidence!

The build up from the pre-chorus to the chorus—FIRE!

This song reminds me a lot of SuperM's Super Car, especially with the engine roar samples and the battle cry-like singing at the chorus.

JAEHYUN RAPPING? You mean Jaehyun the visual, the vocalist, the actor, the model, the funny dude, aka my everything?! (markie bb look pls look away for a moment)

THEY DELIVERED IT STRAIGHT FROM NEOCITY THAT'S SOME NCT MUSIC RIGHT THERE NO ONE DOES IT LIKE THEM

When I said I'd play Focus on a late night drive, and if I add this in the playlist, VROOM VROOM SPEED LIMIT WHAT

OUTTA MY WAY

“We got no shame” ouh TAEYONG’S FLOW IS JUST VERY HIM AND HE’S IN A LEAGUE OF HIS OWN

You know what's so clever about this song? It's how it ended with Mark's final rap without any instrumental, leaving you standing there with a doppler effect-like post experience.

A super car on a super speed just whooshed past you and you look its way as it zips through the road. It's gone in an instant but you're floored dumbfounded at a sidewalk. That's how I describe this song.

8. Magic Carpet Ride

This song… Wow. Oh gosh it's so beautiful.

Their harmony in the chorus—it makes me want to kiss someone so passionately that I'd cry.

This makes me want to feel love that transcends the universe. Literally, just please take me on a magic carpet ride :(

The background harmonies too oh my goodness—HEAVENLY.

Jaehyun's voice is so warm and soulful it fits perfectly with songs of this genre.

Okay alright Doyoung Grande!

And Taeil makes me feel like I'm listening to old school R&B.

The first time I heard this from the track video, I can't stop replaying because it's just that great.

This makes me want to love. I think that sums it up.

9. Road Trip

This is such a soothing song for me, especially how I easily become nostalgic thinking about the road trips I've had.

Whenever I listen to this, my brain immediately conjures up thoughts of my ideal getaways. Gazing at the sky through the car window, stirring up from a nap in the middle of the ride, and eventually reaching your destination.

Oh, to travel around anywhere... (curse you covid-19)

Okay that's it. I'M PACKING UP.

But where do I go—

I could also imagine Mark playing this on the guitar and the other members sing along together, something like that.

Just Wholesome™ vibes.

I love how it evokes such a nice emotion within me effortlessly.

This isn't my favorite, but I still love this.

10. Dreamer

Eyyyy such a refreshing song!

This song is so bright it makes me want to dance. I play this first in the shower!

It reminds me so much of Elevator (from Neozone)

The horns make it more lively I think!

Yuta and Jungwoo's voice suits lively songs like this.

The background vocal in low register in Taeyong's part in the first verse is so good ahhfhf

Taeil, the R&B vocal king you are...

There's this part where Doyoung and Johnny harmonized, that at first listen they seemed to clash, but it sounded actually fine after a few listens. Maybe it's just that I've never heard them do it before.

And I think it's Doyoung's laugh at the end of the bridge? Oh my goodness I really love this too!

11. Promise You

MY FIRST LOVE AND MOST FAVORITE SONG IN THE ALBUM!!!

The first time I heard this from their NCIT Sharehouse Sitcom, I fell in love with the song already.

It sounds like something you'd feel from a warm, welcoming hug.

The lyrics are so beautiful and endearing. It's definitely a be-there-for-you type of song that will touch your heart.

It definitely sounds like a promise.

A song about platonic intimacy.

This really fits to be the closing song of the album. It's like the end of it but holds a promise that says “see you soon.”

Because they cherish their fans like that.

It's also like I've watched a movie with a happy ending, where the camera pans up to the clear sky and this song starts playing.

Speaking of ending, I would love to hear them sing this as an encore stage in their concert. You know, that moment just before the stage lights die down at the end of the concert where they send final blows of flying kisses to NCTzens. Then you come home smiling and crying.

This wasn't supposed to be this long since I originally planned to write this with just simple phrases and emojis but I got too engrossed lol. I also meant to include my own ratings but I figured it’s pointless since I can’t really decide about them hahaha

I really enjoyed the whole album and I love how they're progressively defining what NEO means by breaking through standards. It's not NCT music if it doesn't make you say "WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT?" But then you realize it’s stuck in your head and you’re enjoying it already.

✨ OVERALL RATING: 127/10 💚

if you’ve reached until here, thank you for letting me share you a braincell or two 💞

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accursedkaleeshi · 2 years

Note

write the firewalls fic you Horde-playing coward /lh --Solstice

First of all, I played Forsaken so I don’t know how Horde representative they are anymore since I heard about that incident m’lady had with the tree. Unapologetic undead sympathizer, here.

Second of all I would never maintain enough focus to write a full fic like that, so I figured I could bang out a plot outline I got attached to while brainstorming for other people to write or enjoy.

Synopsis: In a moment of lucidity, Grievous takes stock of what technical systems he has access to & some things he does not. Knowing me, there would be like 5 pages right out the gate waxing poetic about his relationship with technology.

· Grievous noclips through the very particular firewalls put on his tracking systems specifically to keep him out of them because he was being nosy.

· The goths are alerted. There are consequences for his actions.

· Made to attend a Separatist HR meeting about it where they talk about him like he’s a new car & not even there. Wat Tambor is being weird. Grievous can’t tell if it is usual Wat Weird or not bc he has had some drugs forced upon him in Dooku & Poggle’s attempt to make him forget that he found the tracking signals.

o Sorry. Just. Imagined the Separatist council bitching in a conference room & Grievous is just standing behind Dooku with dilated pupils wishing he was dead. Wat Tambor keeps making eye contact that he is not registering as weird.

· Grievous was kind of used to being in altered states by then & he remembers much more than the Separatists even know about. Except for Dooku, they said all kinds of shit around him bc they thought of him as a droid. Wat Tambor dropped the name of the new encryption tech they were going to use.

· The general continues doing general things, playing dumb when it suits him. He is an Olympic gold medalist at playing dumb, maneuvering around xenophobes & the like that think he is far beneath them.

You could kind of do anything you wanted with the plot from here. A couple that would be fun were “GG succeeds in actually receiving all of the information from R2D2 in that one episode but decides to sit on some of the info for himself” or “GG decides to let witches turn Dooku into soup & strikes a deal with Ventress for Separatist Deserter shenanigans”. Most of my various trains of thought all contained Anakin being the only accessible code breaker. So here was my plot for that if you’re bored.

· The main characters manage to be nice enough to the gungans that they agree to help them make a Sombra Ult EMP bomb with their very limited & precious booma plasma. (I hate star wars bc I spent minutes of my life on the wiki looking for what the bombs were called just for them to be called boomas).

· I don’t remember exactly how the TCW Gungan vs Grievous episode happened bc we try not to think about it but that could actually be a great point of entry. Alternative episode timeline, things would occur wherein they have a hard time keeping Grievous locked down

o Bonus: Grievous would immediately pick up on Anakin & Padme & keep calling her his wife. Maybe if she gets a second alone w/ captive Grievous, Padme would lowkey chew him out about professionalism & he actually stops bc she’s obviously the smart one lol.

o Bonus bonus: I would get to write the gungans. Grievous deadpan threatens to fry Boss Nass with citrus & scallops.

· Anakin has a big brain comms jammer that reroutes all military comms in the are to one predetermined channel & is very proud of himself until he notices there is still a signal coming from Grievous & he’s like “Hey, wtf man, turn that off”

· Grievous is like “BOY do I look-?? I can’t. Turn it off yourself if you are so clever.”

· They try to be lowkey about shoving General goddamn Grievous in their ship but they can only circle awkwardly until the signal is cut. Because Dooku was definitely coming to pick up his dog.

· Grievous debated on whether he would rather deal with Dooku given at least two more levels of sheer hatred towards him freshly added or deal with, ugh, Jedi. Has a yolo-synapse misfire & tells Anakin about the firewall.

· Anakin is a huge nerd about it. He knows what it is & has been keeping up with whatever bits of public development he could find about this same encryption.

· Kenobi calls & is like “What is happening, why did I get a call from Jar Jar that was just wailing in terror??” in the middle of Anakin hacking the world on this old fucking monitor bc he wasn’t about to hook Grievous up directly to their ship.

· “Master! I don’t know why this smart-refrigerator gave you such a hard time. I caught him the first time out, with the gungan’s help! They gave us the blue bomb for getting rid of him.” Kenobi dies a little inside.

· “But uh, the Count is coming with back up & I am trying to turn off the good general’s parental lock before he gets to us. You gotta meet us somewhere. Everything is under control but holy kriff make sure you guys have something to contain this thing- GOT IT okay bye!”

· After much Scooby-doo level cat & mouse they finally manage to get Grievous more or less contained in the depths of some ancient temple structure with a lot of industrial grade cable & a lot of jedi. His faceplate is off whether via violence or for some other reason empathetic jedi reason that I want his faceplate to be off. for DRAMA

· The cool kids of the Jedi Council (& maybe Ki-adi Mundi just so I can roast him for no reason) make it a point to gather in the room with the pissed off cyborg. Very scared clone troopers keep having to control his limbs. (Except Cody, who has been waiting for this moment his whole life)

· Its hard for them to stay in the room bc he is just radiating anguished rage into the force like a sun. He’s feral & fucked up looking from previous shenanigans. He’s pissed off beyond words like a cornered animal.

· They’re all just kind of standing there trying to look hard when Yoda steps forward. Grievous wrenches forward with all the psi his pistons have & snatches the little bastard off the floor in both/all hands.

· They hit him with the EMP from hell. All the lights died & were replaced with half a dozen lightsabers pointed at Grievous, still clutching Yoda with a death grip, as he convulsed, froze, & then jolted again. His eyes lost some edge somewhere in that full body reset protocol

· Yoda wrapped his little gremlin hands around the edges of the back of his faceplate & is like “Super fucked up, you are. Tired, you are.” Grievous goes down.

· Kenobi, whom is very perturbed by this entire situation, is like “How did you do that? You think we haven’t tried that? He never even flinched before. We couldn’t pierce the anger with such suggestions.”

· Yoda troll shrug. “Disrupted perhaps, a mechanism was?”

· Anakin is helpful, “He said the tracking chip was in his head case. If we can destroy it, the Separatist’s goons can’t get the tracker back online. Honestly… shouldn’t we just put him out of his misery?”

· Half of the jedi are like “He do be fuckt up tho”. The rest are like “He has to have a trial or we forfeit our values”. But they all agreed he must have hella information. Anakin is suddenly urgent about it, realizing that if the Sith can wirelessly back access systems in Grievous they could potentially corrupt or wipe him.

· What if he self-destructs? Is that a thing, holy shit?? We did not think this through. As usual. We have to remove his wireless access point (das a wap omg). Anakin is the best mechanic on this little planet with only a few other flight crew clones that had supplied the industrial cables. He is not a doctor.

· The clones had meanwhile started taking limbs off of Grievous. They didn’t ask but none of the Jedi generals looked particularly happy but they were not in a hurry to stop them.

· Kenobi agreed to help Anakin, if not just to supervise. He’d frowned at the clones tossing limbs to the side. He couldn’t blame them, of course, Grievous could & would snuff out the life of countless clones even without the use of lightsabers. He supposed they weren’t exactly in a position to save any of the general’s dignity.

· “Alright, boys, my life is in your hands & hopefully not…his hands,” Anakin had said to the troopers. They had sort of rested Grievous at an angle where they figured he would be the least trouble & at which Anakin could stand & access the back of his head.

[To be continued if I keep on thinking about it]

#gently bullied into making content as all things should be #solstice ask #long post #sw fic #accursed!grievous

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hopeymchope · 3 years

Note

How would you rank the 18 Class Trials from THH, DR2, and V3 from worst to best?

This is... virtually impossible for me, lol. Comparing the trials from each game to each other?

How about I just rank them within each game? That'll make it a little easier for me to deal with...

DR1

6) 5th. It's driven by lies and ultimately rushed to its end before the characters can draw any solid (pointless/meaningless) conclusions. So of course it's last for this game, and it’s probably last for the entire series as well. If there are any saving graces to this trial, it’s the surprise when your closest ally is willing to let our protagonist die... and that this trial contains the fake/bad ending route.

5) 3rd. Although the main culprit is pretty obvious from the jump, it requires some surprising twists to explain how everything got to be the way it turned out. But did I always find those twists plausible? Errrrm... not really.

4) 2nd. Pretty good trial that's hurt for me by the fact that there'd barely be any need for a trial at all if a certain third party didn't dick around with the evidence for no reason. Also, the dual nature of Toko is an incredibly predictable reveal. Without those two aspects dragging it down, though, this could easily go higher.

3) 1st. Sure, the major hint given and, subsequently, the eventual culprit are pretty obvious, but this one establishes so much about how the trials work and how much the details you observe will matter that it’s still pretty fun that first time around. The initial surprise of the first victim makes for a great way to keep you invested in the trial experience. This trial is damn near iconic now, so it feels almost mandatory to respect it.

2) 6th. DR1 still has the best "final trial,” easily. SO MANY great reveals, and they all totally work for me. Nothing rings false or disappointing, and it also features Makoto finally coming into his own and taking the lead. I nearly labeled this my top pick for DR1, but...

1) 4th. It's easily the most emotionally dramatic/satisfying for me, and there’s something weirdly inspirational for me about Hina’s incredibly harsh stance during it. This one GOT ME IN THE FEELS, and in part that was because I saw so little of it coming. After the more predictable elements of the first and third trials, this felt like the writing was firing on all cylinders.

DR2

6) 2nd. You have to accept a couple leaps of logic to make this trial keep flowing, and the fact that trial is ultimately reliant on someone noticing a candy that’s very small and hard to see while the person is also in a stressful situation and they are groggy from being drugged/asleep and it necessitates the person retaining this seemingly useless detail inside their brain .... that’s always bugged me. The “escape route” conversation even retroactively raises questions about the first trial. Oof. On the upside, the reveals it brought us about Fuyuhiko and Peko were incredibly important, satisfying, and legit surprising turns. And it’s pretty cool how it’s basically a two-for-one combo trial because you have to solve the Twilight Syndrome case before you solve the current case.

5) 3rd. Other people have pointed out the leaps of logic and missing pieces of this trial, but at the same time, the candlelight hanging is so intense and the ultimate reveal of the culprit is such a brutal turn that I have to give it some props. The culprit’s primary plan is ultimately one of the most ingenious in the series, IMO, and definitely one of the most twisted/fucked-up, which earns it some points.

4) 4th. This is probably the single murder case in the franchise that I understood the absolute least about when entering the trial, for better or worse. On the one hand, that made it really fun to see the mystery gradually unfurl, but on the other hand, it made it tough for me to provide the right answers at certain points in the trial, leaving me fumbling. A big part of those issues was how it was initially hard for me to wrap my head around the nature of the funhouse via the provided 2D graphics... but once I eventually got there, I had to respect the creativity that went into devising such a “weapon.” Also, it can be hard to tolerate Komaeda in this trial. He’s even more of a know-it-all-but-reveal-none-of-it jackass than ever before, and his turn towards overt cruelty towards the others (and Hajime in particular) left me raging. The culprit reveal is good, but the motive does beg the question of why he didn’t just come forward from the jump.

3) 6th. There are a lot of great reveals in the final trial that totally reframe how you see the characters, and some of them are deliciously twisted. There’s also a ton of great dialogue provided, and in retrospect, it’s actually sort of neat to have one endgame mastermind reveal in this franchise that doesn’t involve the “They were hiding among us this whole time” trope. All that plus the surprise return of our surviving heroes from the first game! However, this is also where they officially reveal a core element of DR2 and its setting that I've never liked. This knocks the trial down a few pegs for me. Of course, by the time you reach the trial, I'm sure 99% of players have already figured that particular "twist" out. There’s adequate evidence to predict it in the first freaking chapter, and I know this because I DID predict it in the first chapter of my initial playthrough... which further hurts the supposed “reveal” of the island’s true nature when it comes around.

2) 1st. Probably my favorite of the “first trials,” there are lot of components that go into this one. There’s a combination of two premeditated killers plus one spur-of-the-moment accidental victim, there’s a satisfying (though admittedly maybe too easy) reveal of the killer being one of the most unpleasant people to be around during the first chapter, and I really dig how audio became a very important component of the mystery due to the total blackout. This is also the part of the game where we learn just how twisted Komaeda really is, which is HUGE both in terms of its immediate shock factor for a total newcomer and in terms of its impact on the game as a whole. Of course, since it’s a “first trial,” it can’t be too complicated... but they still manage to confuse so many of us with “MEAT ON THE BONE” :P

1) 5th. Again, I will almost always give the most emotionally intense one the top slot. The “traitor reveal” is obviously THAT MOMENT in DR2. I also love how this one used the strange internal logic established early in the game RE: Komaeda’s luck to develop the eventual solution. And forcing us to make use of evidence gathered in multiple locations outside of the immediate site of the body/murder? That more complexity of that type that I see relevant to a trial, the more I appreciate it, and this one has loads of that stuff. Although I guess the investigation isn’t technically part of the trial itself... but it’s still very relevant to it.

DRV3

6) 4th. I found this whole trial to be just... extremely predictable. Maybe it’s because I was so far into the series that I’d gotten used to its tricks by this point, but this was the most predictable trial for me since the first one in the first game. The whole looping/rollover map setup of the VR? Obvious. The murder weapon? Obvious. Our culprit’s ongoing confusion at everything discussed? Obvious. There were only a couple of points I didn’t have already figured out when I walked into the trial room, and those turned out to be basically irrelevant (such as the bottle of poison). The eventual motive is at least a surprise, but I also found it hard to accept that this culprit would really kill people over it. Overall: Super lame.

5) 3rd. Another double murder trial, and once again one murder overshadows the other. The séance murder is definitely clever. Sure, you know the culprit pretty early on, but the methodology is the good part. However, the real fascinating one for me is the art lab “locked room” murder. Going into the trial, I couldn’t fathom how they were going to explain that one, and I found the answer both smart and satisfying. It’s funny to imagine how many times the culprit had to try that stunt with the lock before it actually worked, heh. This is probably the best of the three “double murder” mysteries in the series, but the trial isn’t as emotionally affecting as the 3rd trial in DR2 to me. Moreover, the trial loses points for the most infuriating Hangman’s Gambit of the series and especially for the motive reveal. When the killer’s motive can be boiled down to “they’re basically just a psycho serial killer,” it’s not very interesting.

4) 6th. The first part of the trial, which deals with re-assessing the first case? It’s pretty damn on-point. That leads to the mastermind reveal, which... isn’t great, really. It’s not a terribly interesting character to make the mastermind, they have no interesting motives or characterization to unevil, and they’re ultimately just a pawn behind another, off-screen group of masterminds. But then things get uproariously funny to me. The metatextual stuff is just so goddamn ridiculous. It’s frustrating and annoying how much of our not-mastermind’s explanation is clearly full of lies and half-truths that we’ll never have complete answers on, but that’s also part of what makes it all fascinating. We get to swap protagonists like four times! There’s a fake-out Game Over! These are really cool things. But it all leads down the road of our protagonist arguing that fiction does affect reality (yes, good), that fictional people can still matter (definitely) and that... fictional lives are equal in value to real ones? Uhhhhh slow down there, champ. That only works for YOUR universe, where fictional people can be made out of living, breathing individuals. But in light of the metatextual stuff you’re surrounded by, you kinda sound silly AF right now?

3) 2nd. Look, this is still incredibly irritating to me. Also, if you go down the alternate “lying” route at one point, you are forced to accept that these piranhas were somehow trained to only eat dead things, which is just... so deeply dumb. But what is good is the entire ropeway conceit (which is a very significant part of the trial!) and the idea of the partition inside the tank. This was a murder with an elaborate, intelligent plan that is very well-executed. And the motive reveal? It’s one of the best in the series! I respect that stuff. (If I had the right to toss the execution in as part of the soup, I’d say that it’s also one of the series’ best. Let’s call it the icing on the cake.)

2) 1st. The writing that made this trial work is undeniably clever. The way the narration told us exactly what was happening without really telling us what was happening? It was a masterstroke of both great writing and perfect localization coming together. When it becomes clear during the trial what is about to happen, it’s a huge shock. The transition to another protagonist with the lights flickering out and back on is beautiful. Even the core concept of a protagonist who was willing to step up and try to kill the mastermind immediately is just deeply interesting. And obviously this one made my emotions run high. HOWEVER! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Kaede Akamatsu was a more interesting, unique, and compelling protagonist than Shuichi Saihara ever was. Ultimately, the protagonist-swap, no matter how well-written, was a mistake because they shifted us from a unique character with an interesting new perspective to a character who is, in many ways, “Makoto Naegi with even less self-esteem.” Yes, I know he has aspects that make him distinct as his own person, but there’s still just too much there that feels like we’ve done it before, and he never fully escapes from that. It feels like a massive waste and a huge missed opportunity to ditch Kaede like this. Now, if they had just done the protagonist swap in reverse — making us start out with Shuichi before flipping things over to Kaede — we could’ve had ourselves something amazing here.

1) 5th. I know I decided that I couldn’t rank all among each other, but if I did do that, I feel confident that the 5th trial in DRV3 would rank very high indeed. You go into the trial unable to even determine who the victim was due to the fact that two people are missing and there was nothing left of the body that spoke to an identity. Going into it, you naturally figure that one of the two missing parties has to be the victim and the other one is probably the culprit. But even with just two friggin’ suspects, the amount of turnabouts in the case that made me rethink all my assumptions was insane. Sure, the explanation for how the person inside the Exisal can maintain “character” is pretty damn thin, but once you get past that, I don’t think there’s a single false note in the trial. It even breaks unprecedented ground by continuing into another Non-Stop Debate after everyone has already voted. And of course, it culminates with a lot of intense emotion. Even the execution is emotionally satisfying! ..... although I’m not sure if I should count the execution as part of the trial, but hey, still. As far as Dangan trials go, the fifth one in DRV3 is basically a masterpiece.

#danganronpa #asks #danganronpa trials #drv3 #dr2 #dr1 #drv3 spoilers

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angrypedestrian · 3 years

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THE TIME IDIOTS EPISODE ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ TITLED “Honestly I have no fucking idea what episode this is BUCKLE IN”

Previously on legends: Not gonna lie I really don’t remember. Sara’s an alien clone now? Spooner can speak alien? John’s off fucking around and so now he and Zari aren’t banging 24/7 and I’m kinda sad about that?

This week on legends: again do not recall a single piece of promo material for this episode. Are we getting Lita alien pregnancy this ep? One can only hope!

Sex, Behrad, they were having sex

but ALSO gideon plays GAMES with BEHRAD i LOVE THIS

AND SHE WISHED HIM HAPPY BIRTHDAY

spooner and behrad have like the same hair and they both look great

as a bald person i am envious

good for you astra!!! fuck these people over they deserve to do more chores

also thank you show for the confirmation that nate and behrad DID fuck and are also still currently fucking

LOL GOIN BACK TO VANCOUVER BC WE ALREADY WASTED OUR WHOLE BUDGET THIS SEASON

oh damn i was right it is the Lita alien baby episode I absolutely do know what day and time it is good job me

mick yr kinda a deadbeat, acceptance is the first step

not only Vancouver, vancouver in a year and a half so we don’t have to spend any money pretending it is the *~future~*

okay oh no this show broke my brain again does he like this show because it is still on in 2042 or whatever, giving it at least 20 seasons, or he got into it as a high teen and watched old reruns on adult swim

ah well that explains it thank you Legends for actually answering my questions for once??

i expect this not to happen again

also the second bud stuy guy kinda looks like the original behrad in the picture zari 1.0 had, i don’t think it’s the same guy, but it’s hard to tell without the beard

OH FUCK THIS THING

FUCK MS. ALF

I HATE EVERYTHING

i am....upset

but i am not upset that shayan is finally getting a real behrad episode, it is what he DESERVES

BAD BAD CGI PUPPET WALKING I DO NOT LIKE IT

and this is how we know sara can’t be trusted anymore it is NOT cute

lita fucking rules. lita for president. you know y’all you have a time travel show you CAN make aoc president

if you can make gorilla grodd attack obama you can make aoc president in the future

honestly phil it is the least you can do for me

to make up for ms. alf

the hey girl!!!!! excellence. Give tala so much money she’ll agree to play both zaris full time.

then get her and tatiana maslany on a show together, for good measure

i’ve earned this

to be fair to everyone involved time does not matter on the time travel ship so like should anyone be expected to remember any birthday?

these posters in the background are very funny. “Five Roommates?” television gold

hell yeah astra is pro-union, we stan labor in this house

can we just get a puppet moratorium on this show? i think it would solve a lot of problems

glad everyone else is getting in on the shayan has amazing hair train, canonically

astra you need to be less horny at b school behrad

fuck you nick, you’re not clever

astra honestly just commandeer the ship, you would make such a better leader than the rest of these chuckle fucks combined

BEHRAD YOU ARE A PRECIOUS ANGEL TOO GOOD FOR THIS WORLD

how much money did they spend on this fucking demonic puppet

the flash having 150 episodes feels like a crime. i’m not sure what crime, but i know someone should be tried in the hague for it

mick you can’t just murder nice young men like this

ASTRA YOU NEED TO TURN THE HORNY DOWN LIKE 2 NOTCHES

but do like the consistency of her loving a suit

every time i hear the word synergy i lose ten brain cell

and every time i watch an episode of this show i lose ten brain cells

so we’re really not doing well this week boys

oooohhhh nico’s actor is mad canadian, what an international baby you guys are gonna have

oh....no....is mick.....alien pregnant

oh god

i refuse to entertain this possibility

AN EMMY FOR TALA

NO NOT GARY SAYING TENTACLES

ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOT

the non behrad parts of this episode are the worst things i have ever heard

i am suing phil for 5 billion in emotional damages

golf cart car chase is never not funny

also what else is nick filming why does he have highlights now lol

oh you’re gonna make ms. alf into a stoner that seems irresponsible

doughnuts and hawaiian shirts that’s my boy!!!!

awwwwww everyone got him such nice presents!!!!!

ZARI TOMAZ IT’S ZARI SHE’S HERE SOUND THE ALARM

YES LET’S TRY IT OUT FOR A FEW WEEKS SPECIFICALLY THE NUMBER OF WEEKS LEFT IN THIS SEASON

Tradesies!!!!!!

i have the goofiest smile on my face watching zari get to hug her brother??????

and now you’re gonna ruin it with mpreg

every day i suffer

every single goddamn day

Next week: and now we’re gonna have to see the fucking puppet again

goddammit

at the VERY least i deserve a show with tatiana maslany and tala on it now

#legends of tomorrow #legends of tomorrow spoilers #i'm BACK baybeeee #i know you all missed my insanely long posts you have to scroll for hours to get past #you're welcome #the time idiots

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themurphyzone · 3 years

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PatB: Snowball Ep Talk

You know, I really do love the episode Snowball (my personal favorite AKOM episode) but I don’t think I’ve ever talked about it here much, and if I did it’s probably really only because of the flashback sequence.

Okay so all looks good so far. Chain letter scheme and superstition, a standard introduction to Brain’s latest plot of world domination. All looks good. Plus I just like this shot of Pinky. Don’t mind me, just starting off light here with a smushed Pinky.

I just like Pinky’s pose here. He’s so cute.

You will bow before Troz.

“I met a Snowball today! Right here in the lab!” -Pinky

You know, I just find the implications of this line hysterical. This means that Snowball was in the lab that day, waiting for the moment to strike, and he definitely pushed his stolen chain letter through the mail slot.

And then he lets Pinky see him, and no it’s not just a passing glance either cause Pinky specifically describes a tattoo with an A and a circle and points to his leg. Which means Snowball deliberately lifted the fur on his leg and showed his tattoo to Pinky.

Like, wow.

“It means, Pinky, that evil lurks among us. By the name of Snowball! SNOWBALLLLLLLL!” -Brain

Talk about a bad breakup. *Alexa play Bad Blood*

Personally I think one of the interesting visual cues is that Snowball purposely plants himself into the mice’s space. There’s a lot of that in this episode. He knows how to rile up Brain and hit him where it hurts, namely through Pinky.

Brain values his personal space, and he values a sense of control. When Snowball invades that space, Brain loses control, and his anger can lead him to make some very ill-informed decisions. Which is exactly what Snowball aims for.

“You think Pinky is an asset?”

“Anything I can take from you is an asset.”

Ah yes, Snowball’s mission statement. Crush everything Brain has into dust.

The flashback sequence. Dear God this flashback sequence. They were both so cute!

You know, it’s really sad that a younger Brain acted more like Pinky. Making silly faces and trying to get someone to laugh are such Pinky things to do. I know canon is loose but if you consider this flashback taking place shortly after Brain was captured from the wild, then young Brain didn’t gain a grasp on what happened to him until after the gene splicer.

Ok but Brain was literally right there when the gene splicer exploded. Imagine having your cranium size dramatically increase, you’re injured, you’ve suddenly gained sentience, and as if all that wasn’t enough, you see the gene splicer explode with your only friend inside.

Oh, and said friend’s mind was probably damaged in the explosion and now he hates your guts. And though you’re angry with him for his betrayal, some part of you will never stop caring about him.

Once again, Snowball needs to learn to keep his hands to himself.

This conversation here establishes Snowball as the perfect third character. He appears only in a handful of eps, but he’s fun to watch and love to hate. Snowball challenges the mice’s relationship. Snowball sees the weak points; the insults, the reliance on each other, and twists them to his advantage. And Pinky even admits he’s hurt by Brain’s insults occasionally, though he still loves being around him.

“Pinky, the Brain doesn’t care about you. He’s just using you.”

“No, he’s not.”

It’s really interesting to me how Pinky denies Snowball’s statement, yet his ears go down to show that he’s affected by the idea of being used. Pinky and the Brain may be night and day, but one thing they do have in common is their tendency to deny certain things. Brain with emotions and affection and Pinky with concepts he’d rather not admit the possibility of.

Coming back to this later.

Non plot related but Brain is teeny tiny and I love how he just trusts Pinky to catch him

Side note: I apologize if any of these screenshots look weird. It’s an AKOM ep.

WHY ARE YOU TWO SO BAD AT SNEAKING AROUND.

I just find it hilarious how they clearly run around where Snowball can see and hear them. Like they just shout Snowball’s name in the middle of the room. You’re terrible at being sneaky little mice. Please.

Those dang boomers and their old timey 90s computers. Technology is ruining boomers. Can’t even hold a conversation anymore cause they keep looking at their screens.

No touchy!

Well, it’s awful nice of Snowball to engage in nepotism and offer Brain a position in his administration...and then tempt Pinky with an amusement park when he refuses.

You really gotta appreciate the complexity of Snowball’s plans. Stealing the chain letter fails->plant seeds of doubt in Pinky’s mind, even if this doesn’t work right off the bat, the idea will still be there-> take over a corporation->impersonate Bill Gates->When the mice show up, offer to co-rule the world on expectations that Brain will refuse->make co-ruler offer to Pinky->wait for Brain to open his big mouth and drive Pinky away.

All to take everything Brain has. His dignity, Pinky, his meager resources. Like holy Snowball, Batman.

And then Snowball reveals the amusement park he had specifically built for Pinky.

And here we have the most heartbreaking line of the ep. If I had the ability video edit I would’ve put the entire line on audio because Brain’s tone is very important here. It’s about 12:38 to 12:57 in the ep if you want to see for yourself.

“Oh, go ahead, Pinky. I don’t need you. What did you think, I just have you around so I can steal your brilliant ideas and claim them as my own? That I’m just using you, Pinky? Oh yes, I’m using you for your brilliance!”

First of all, very poor word choice, especially to someone who has trouble understanding sarcasm. I just want to dissect this statement here.

The Literal Meaning: You’re an idiot to think you were ever more than an assistant.

This is what Pinky hears.

But if you listen to Brain’s tone rather than just reading the line, he sounds genuinely hurt that Pinky would ever be tempted by something as frivolous as an amusement park. It’s Pinky, so he just sees ‘ooh fun rides, cotton candy, and carnival games’!

But Brain is perfectly aware that this is Snowball’s well-crafted method of taking away the only thing he truly has, and he knows it’s working. And he’s hurt.

The Actual Meaning: Snowball’s trying to separate us and you’re falling for it, Pinky. You may be an idiot, but many of my plans never would’ve come to fruition without you. You’re much more than an assistant. You’re my friend and my world.

Unfortunately, all Pinky hears is that Brain was only using him. That Brain values him for manual labor and an extra hand only, rather than a treasured companion. The fact that Brain often falls short of making Pinky feel appreciated just adds to this.

And now that he no longer has Pinky, Brain’s spirit is crushed. Brain is persistent, but without Pinky, he has no reason to be.

As far as he knows, his only two friends have turned their backs on him and couldn’t care less if he has nowhere else to go.

Poor thing. He needs hugs.

“I didn’t think it was possible. Humanity has actually gotten dumber.” -Brain

OK I think this one shot establishes what the world would be like under Snowball. His name is everywhere, and he tells the population to do stupid things just to bask in his own superiority.

However, I can’t see Brain putting his name on every building so frivolously like this if he ruled the world. Sure, he’d name a bunch of things after himself and Pinky, but it would be more meaningful to them.

Brain wants humanity to advance, not regress.

Poor Pinky. Despite all this new extravagance and luxury, he’s also lonely. The room and bed are large, but it lacks personality. He’s sleeping with an ACME Labs snow globe, and other than a reference to Citizen Kane, it also shows that he’s not happy with this.

The worst thing in the world for these mice is separation from each other.

Suicide by cat.

Poor little guy can’t make it on his own. Luckily, he snaps out of it.

“My world. I must save MY world!”

Said while looking at a picture of Pinky. Real subtle there Brain.

“Look, you fool. You have no brilliant ideas. I’m only using you to get at him! So just stay quiet!” -Snowball

“You’re...using me?” -Pinky

He was just a bargaining chip. Never a friend.

“What do you want?”

“My friend. And MY world!”

AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

He makes martial arts noises like a dork. I love him.

I love how their characters are reflected in the mecha designs (also I had no idea Snowball was Iron Man!)

Snowball’s is overall the more efficient design. It’s also much more combat ready and violent. In comparison, Brain’s suit is simply operated with a bunch of levers. It’s alright for peaceful situations like getting around faster or simply blending with a human population, but in a straight up fight the levers take too much time to operate.

Snowball is more efficient than Brain, and while he’s got the ego, he lacks the insecurities that hold Brain back. His confidence makes him such an effective foe. And more importantly, Snowball doesn’t value Pinky’s companionship. He’s a tool and nothing more. Compare that to Brain. While Brain struggles at showing it, he ultimately wants Pinky’s input and values his jumbo-sized heart.

Somewhat off topic, but I feel like the reboot missed this aspect of Brain and made him too overly edgy and violent (reboot!Brain would probably prefer Snowball’s mecha design over his counterpart’s). The only time Brain should become violent, if not for comedy, is when he’s protecting Pinky. His plans should have a level of restraint to them, and Pinky is the moral compass.

I just like this shit-eating grin right here (I mean, he did eat shit in Welcome to the Jungle so...lol)

This is such an insanely clever move for Pinky. I feel like Brain would be like ‘oh my god Pinky!’ and then ‘wow, that’s actually brilliant what the heck is this tingling feeling’.

ACME LABS IS IN NEW YORK CITY??????

I know this is a case of Where the Hell is Springfield but gdi aren’t they supposed to be in southern California.

Ok fine I realize the ending to this ep is a reference to North by Northwest cause they somehow got to Mt. Rushmore but still

Weird tangent but North by Northwest’s ending bothers me (not gonna fault this ep as it’s just a parody)? I’m sorry the girl is barely hanging onto Mt. Rushmore, the dude pulls her up, and then they have sex in a car. The sudden transition always seemed weird to me.

I am ending this analysis post with a weird shot of Snowball cause i can and it’s his episode.

#pinky and the brain #patb analysis #patb snowball #long post

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whentherewerebicycles · 3 years

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You seem to be really amazing at executing planned changes with food and exercise (and also generally better psychological habits) - can i ask for advice on this? I’ve finished up studying for now and realise my body has turned into a twisted up, pudgy, weakened wreck! Exercise hurts and sugar/processed food feels so cosy and I can’t seem to get through this part where i have to feel discomfort for a while before i feel better!

What works for you? Should i read that atomic habits book you mention? I saw another one recommended - the Kindness Habit - do you know anything about it?

(I tried journaling btw - but it didn’t get me anywhere)

hello!! i can share some things that have worked for me when it comes to implementing longer-term changes in diet and exercise. these seem really simple but i think that actually making big lifestyle changes is much less about summoning up colossal amounts of willpower and much more about making small but important tweaks to the way you think about/approach diet and exercise. here are five things that have been helpful to me.

(1) don’t think of diet changes in terms of restrictions (i.e., “what delicious cozy sugary things do i have to deprive myself of today to be Good”). instead, approach diet changes as a fun little game of adding in as many good things as possible (fruits, veggies, leafy green things, nuts of all kinds, whole grains, beans, etc.). every single time you are preparing a meal or looking for a snack, describe it to yourself as a chance to be creative and resourceful, as you think about fun ways to add in small good things every time you eat. especially in the early weeks, don’t restrict foods from your diet at all. focus solely on finding a creative way to add in something healthy and delicious every time you eat. (i really liked using the daily dozen checklist when i was starting out—they have an app and it’s very satisfying and fun to see how many things you can check off the list each day.)

(2) narrate this “adding-in” game aloud to yourself. for example: “oh—what if i eat a big handful of berries on top of that ice cream?”, or “i’m hungry—ooh, there are carrots in the fridge, aren’t there? i’ll eat three carrots with hummus before i switch over to pita chips”). and every time you figure out a creative way to add in a good food, stop and observe yourself doing it, and let yourself feel a little spark of delight at how clever and creative you’re being. this sounds silly, but i swear it works! part of changing your habits is changing self-talk & especially changing the kind of running narrative you have in your head about who you are and what you do. you can change that narrative in part by repeatedly reframing the way you tell it to yourself, ideally aloud (or aloud in your head) to help you can better “hear” and internalize the new story. instead of “ugh... i ate ice cream again. why don’t i have any self-control? why am i someone who just eats like crap?”, you’re offering your brain an alternate story, one that focuses less on things you perceive yourself as lacking, or on things you ‘failed’ to do, and more on the creative, positive things you did do (“i wasn’t going to eat any fruit today, but wasn’t it great that i remembered we had those frozen berries in the fridge? that’s pretty creative and resourceful of me, and plus it’s a good way to use up something i’d forgotten i even had”).

the “noticing and feeling delighted” part is just as important. to successfully change a habit, you need to find creative ways to make the new habit pleasurable in and of itself. the more pleasure you feel when you do it, the more self-reinforcing the habit itself becomes. you might not experience eating healthy foods as intensely pleasurable (at least at first, especially if you are comparing them with the intense brain-hacking pleasure that super sugary foods give us). so don’t try! instead, focus on making the choice a source of pleasure and delight. "look at how clever i was! look at how creative i can be! look at what a good choice i made! look at how good i am at this game of adding in!” that act of stopping, narrating, and letting yourself feel genuinely pleased with what you’ve just done makes the choice to add something in pleasurable, which in turn can help fuel your sense that this isn’t about having iron willpower or about cruelly depriving yourself of delicious things, but is about playing a fun little game with yourself, creating little challenges or puzzles for yourself throughout the day and then giving yourself positive reinforcement when you figure them out.

(3) manage your environment to set yourself up for success. to paraphrase the atomic habits book: the people who seem to have the best willpower are the people who have to exercise it the least. and they have to exercise it the least because they’ve very effectively managed their environment, arranging things so that the desired choices are easy and “frictionless,” while the undesired choices or habits are more inconvenient or introduce more friction (it’s harder to get to them).

the easy starter version of this (from atomic habits): put the things you want to eat in highly visible places and/or in appealing arrangements, and put the things you don't want to eat in places that aren't visible or that are inconvenient to access. ice cream goes in the very back of the fridge, buried behind all the other stuff. nuts go in a bowl on your desk so that you can idly snack on them while you work. apples and bananas go in a big brightly colored bowl right on the counter, so that every time you pass through the kitchen your eyes are drawn to them. chips go in the bottom cupboard, the one below eye level that you don't use very often, and when you get them out you pour some into a bowl and put them right back in there (instead of leaving the bag out on the counter). make the choice you want to make easy, and make the choice you don't want to make harder to get to.

eventually, the most effective way of managing your environment is just to exercise total control over what comes into your own living space. for me, if i don’t want to eat it, i don’t have it in the house. i typically also place a curbside delivery grocery order so that i don’t have to go into the store—anything that comes into my house is something i made a deliberate choice about ordering, not something i wandered by a shelf and added to my cart because i wanted a treat. something i’ve learned about myself over the years that moderation is just not in my vocabulary—i’m an all-or-nothing person, and it’s SO much easier for me to just not have stuff i don’t want to eat in the house. no ice cream in the house. no alcohol in the house. no fried things, no chips, no candy, etc etc. if someone kindly brings me baked goods that i did not ask for, i genuinely appreciate the gesture, but as soon as they leave i give them to my next door neighbor or dump them in the trash. (SORRY TO PEOPLE WHO BAKE FOR ME!) if it's in the house i'll eat it. if it's not, i won't, and i also won't miss it.

i did do this pretty gradually at first, though! when i switched to a primarily whole food plant-based diet, i focused on playing the adding-in game for a couple weeks, and then when i started getting competitive about it i decided to use my grocery order as a way of creatively boosting my fruit/veggie/etc consumption even more, and in the process i started winnowing out things that took away chances to add in a good thing. i would say it took about three or four weeks to get to my personal ideal state of Nope I Don't Have It In The House.

it takes time, but i’d say that within a month of having only things you want to eat in the house, your cravings will be gone, at least within your own managed environment (going to restaurants or traveling DOES require you to exercise willpower, but there are ways to prepare for this in advance). the good news, though, is that 6-8 months or so of eating like this usually brings with it such improved sleep, mood, energy levels, skin, hair, GI function, etc etc that you start to be like oh my GOD why would i want to eat that horrifying thing?? I KNOW HOW BAD IT MAKES ME FEEL!! I WANT TO POWER MY BODY WITH PLANTS!!!!! in other words, the pleasurable side effects of eating well becomes positively reinforcing in its own right, while the negative effects you experience when you reintroduce sugar or fried things tends to reinforce the idea that those foods Feel Bad.

(4) it's not exercise, it's movement. i too used to hate exercise and found it extremely painful and tedious and horrible. so instead of exercising i just started moving. i canceled my membership at the local dog bar, where i had been taking my dog almost every day to let him run off excess energy, and started talking short walks with him twice a day instead. if you don’t have a dog, offer to walk your friends’ dogs—trust me they will lose their MINDS with joy lol. i think that starting to build in regular walks is the best way to get active again, because walking is typically quite pleasant and it becomes positively reinforcing to like, wave at the same neighbors every day, and see the cute kids next door running around, and notice all the ways that the trees and flowers are changing, and so on.

if you do not find being outside inherently pleasurable (sometimes i do not lol esp if i’m grumpy about having to walk the dog), tie another pleasurable activity to your daily walk. i listen to about six hours’ worth of hockey podcasts a week and i am only allowed to listen to them on my walks, so i end up looking forward to the walk because i’m desperate to hear people talk about My Guys. you can also walk with friends, or call a friend while you’re walking, which is even better than podcasts!! social walks are so much fun and go by so much more quickly. i started out just doing daily 15 min walks, and over the past couple years have built up to walking between 60-90 min a day when i’m at home. sometimes i hate/dread my walk; sometimes i love it and look forward to it. but regardless of how i’m feeling, i do it every day and if i miss it once, i don’t miss it a second time.

as far as activity goes, i think it’s totally ok to just be a person who walks a lot! but i’ve found that becoming someone who walked a lot helped change my own narrative of myself—I started to think of myself as a walker, an active person who moved a lot every day. and that made it easier to pick up other forms of activity too, or at least to adopt a curious, exploratory attitude towards other forms of movement. also once you start tracking your active minutes you tend to get quite competitive about it! or at least i do, lol. i keep a note on my phone where i write down the date + type of activity + total number of minutes I did after every burst of activity, then at the end of the week i add it all up and compare it to the previous weeks. it makes me want to do more, to beat my own numbers—or it makes me want to keep up a streak (like, if i have a five-week period where i’ve consistently hit a certain level of active minutes every week, i don’t want to break it!!).

my biggest suggestion for exercise, though, is to figure out what kinds of things you enjoy and what kinds of things you don’t, and then to spend all your time doing things you like. i HATE structured fitness classes and workout videos. i hate them so much!!!!!!!! but i love being outside, i love doing solo activities (as opposed to group workouts), and i love doing any form of movement that doesn’t feel like a Planned Workout, capital w. also becoming a hockey fan got me really interested in skating, so i picked up rollerblades and found that to be amazingly fun too (something i can do outside AND something that feels like gliding around effortlessly AND something that makes me feel closer to My Favorite Guys!!!!). you may not have passionate feelings about hockey fandom as i do, but i think it’s really just about being creative—finding a creative way to link something you don’t love to something you do love, or find pleasurable, so that you can start forging those positive associations.

i spent my first couple years of being more active just walking walking walking, and then this past year during the pandemic when i really ramped up my movement i added in longer walks, hikes, and rollerblading, and i also looked for ways to “habit-stack,” ie attaching an activity i don’t much care for (running; exercise biking indoors; doing squats and lunges) to one i do enjoy (i take my tennis shoes when i go skating and then go for a run immediately afterwards, before i have time to talk myself out of it). there are still all kinds of things i don’t do—i really don’t love strength training + bodyweight exercises yet, and i hate stretching even though I Know I Should, and i know that if i want to get stronger and faster, or build up my endurance, i will eventually need to introduce some element of structured training into my daily movement.

BUT the idea of making those changes seems kind of cool to me now, instead of Horrifying and Dread-Inducing! i feel like all the positive associations i’ve forged have made me more curious and open to ideas i would’ve resisted with my whole being not all that long ago. i found a way to make movement pleasurable, and then (thanks to sports fandom + my tendency to go down research rabbitholes) i found a way to get myself intellectually and emotionally engaged in the general concept of being a highly active person. for me, that combination of real pleasure + intellectual/emotional stimulation is what i personally need to build & maintain good habits.

(also, just shoehorning this in at the end because i like it: the “it’s movement, not exercise” mindset shift was also really helpful to me because it stopped me from thinking of exercise as like, this highly structured, regimented, torturous thing you forced yourself through for a set period of time each day, and helped me instead think of movement as something that humans are designed to do & to naturally enjoy. instead of Forcing Myself to Exercise, i looked for more natural-feeling forms of movement that didn’t feel so artificially divided from my “real life.” i think that helped with reframing my self-narrative, too! it made being active feel more integrated into my daily life, which in turn made it easier to think of myself as an active person, someone for whom movement was just a normal part of daily life and not a thing i had to psych myself up to do every day.)

(5) it takes time to build good habits, but not nearly as much time as you might think, and eventually you stop thinking about how long you’ve been doing something and you just start enjoying it (ie it becomes a genuine change in your lifestyle/thinking, not an artificial thing you have to work hard every day to maintain).

i am not yet AN ATHLETE and may never be, but i often remind myself that it took me a little under 30 years to build up a PROFOUND aversion to exercise, so it’s actually kind of miraculous that in just two years i’ve become someone who genuinely, earnestly, enthusiastically enjoys being active and feels antsy/weird/restless when i can’t get out of the house and move. every small stride i’ve made has strengthened my trust in myself and helped me reframe the narrative i tell myself about what kind of person i am and what i do/don’t do. every time i do the thing (whether it’s exercising or making a delicious healthy dinner) & happily notice myself doing it, i reaffirm to myself that i’m the kind of person who takes care of my body and mind by eating well and spending lots of time moving outside. (as a side benefit, when i spend a lot of time happily noticing things and speaking encouragingly to myself, i also reaffirm to myself that i am a happy person who treats myself kindly and who is always eagerly seeking out experiences that feel joyful and life-affirming.)

plus, the more often you do something, the more opportunities you have to have positive experiences while doing it! not every walk is AMAZING, LIFE-CHANGING, DEEPLY FULFILLING, but like, if i am walking seven days a week, that’s seven opportunities for something cool or fun to happen on a walk (not to mention seven opportunities to reap all the physiological & emotional well-being benefits of exercise!!). and if i am really conscious and intentional about noticing and actively delighting in those positive experiences, i help wire in those positive associations more deeply, and my brain/body increasingly comes to associate movement with happiness, joy, and fulfillment. as the habit of being more active becomes fulfilling in and of itself, i don’t have to expend as much energy tricking or cajoling or bribing myself into doing it.

i hope this helps!! i am literally always happy to write extremely long essays in respond to simple anon questions, lol, so if you want to talk more about your own ideas for building better habits please do share!! i can also rec you specific books that i’ve found really useful—both for just like, helping me figure out how to make big changes, and also for providing that intellectual stimulation that gets me more engaged in wanting to eat well & be more active.

(also, on the extremely slim chance that you are also a hockey fan: over in my fandom sphere, we are organizing a fun summer thing inspired by one of our fave hockey players, where we’ll be planning lots of fun fannish community things to get ourselves moving this summer. it’s going to be a good time!!)

#food #movement #mw

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perfeggso · 3 years

Text

I don’t want a lot (Johnny x Reader)

I wrote this as part of @suh-insane’s walking in a winter wonderland collab, so thanks to her for hosting! Happy holidays and I hope y’all enjoy ❄️☺️

Genre: domestic fluff

Characters: Johnny, fem! reader, Ten

Warnings: nothing really just mentions of bad things that have happened this year lol. It’s a very...2020 fic. Also I guess some language. Also, smoking pot.

Rating: teen and up

Length: 3.5k

My movie quote is “They can’t evict you on Christmas! Then you’d be ho-ho-homeless!”

December 18th 2020, 4:37 p.m.

“Knock, knock!” You pound your fist against the wooden door in front of you, then pull your coat tighter around you. You’d moved to Chicago five years ago for college, and you’re still not sure if you’ll ever adjust to the snowy winter months. It was at said college that you met,

“Johnny Suh!” You bang a fist on the door three more times. “I know you’re in there. Take your headphones off, you dumbass.”

You’re about to pull your phone out of your pocket and go to the trouble of removing a glove to text your boyfriend when you hear the door unlock from the inside, a metallic tumbling sound.

When the door opens all the way, Johnny is standing just past the threshold of his apartment, his catlike lips curled up at the edges. He’s wearing grey sweatpants and a blue flannel, and his freshly dyed blond hair falls to where his headphones rest around the base of his neck. You can hear Nirvana coming from them because you are dating a stereotype.

Johnny leans his large frame against the side of the door where he had been holding it and smirks, but there’s nothing but softness behind the expression.

“Long time no see, sicko,” he teases.

You roll your eyes as he moves to let you pass into the entryway of his and Ten’s shoebox dwelling.

“You look even more like a deadbeat than you did a month ago,” you say, not moving because your clothing is starting to drip melting snow onto the floor and you don’t even know where to begin with taking it off. “This is proof you need me around taking care of you.”

Johnny pushes off the door and closes it, pausing his music. He crowds close and starts unwrapping your scarf so you don’t have to think about it anymore, shakes some of the slush off it so it pools at your feet, and hangs it on the coat rack. He does the same with your puffer jacket.

“Aw,” he pouts, “you don’t like the new color?” He tries to remove your beanie too, but it was part of your Outfit, so you yank it back down onto your head and give Johnny puppy dog eyes, choosing to ignore the way your heart rate picks up a little from the proximity. Hey, isolation was rough, okay? Johnny tucks your hair behind your ears instead.

“No, baby,” you say, starting to toe off your snow boots. “I love it. It’s very Disney prince, but simultaneously very… Kurt Cobain.” Johnny smiles and lets you finish stripping your winter gear, walking his way back towards his sofa until he’s sitting, legs wide. Snow falls in flurries past the window behind him. “It’s just that, I dunno, you look like you’ve been spending more time on Reddit or something.” Johnny sulks jokingly at your ribbing as you hang up your purse and try not to fixate on how cold the indoor air still is. “I can tell you haven’t gotten laid in a while,” you continue. “Oh wait! I forgot you have Ten around for that.”

Now it’s Johnny who’s rolling his eyes, but he doesn’t seem too offended because he beckons you over to sit with him. You follow his gesture, skipping towards him until you can curl into his side on the couch. He removes his headphones and lays his head against the crown of yours, taking your hand softly.

“It’s not my fault my girlfriend abandoned me for a month,” he complains, rubbing his thumb over yours.

This makes you chuckle. Oh, how you’ve missed him. “If that’s what you call ‘considerately protecting you from the Novel Coronavirus’,” you joke, “then I guess, but I refuse to apologize for doing my civic duty.”

Your case hadn’t been bad, but it was a logistical nightmare. You’d spent two weeks in total isolation, nursing a cough, guzzling hard alcohol straight to see if you could taste it, sending your best friend out to shop for you, and thanking your lucky stars for having a job that would let you work from home. You’d spent the next two waiting to test negative for the virus and a positive for antibodies. Johnny was initially distraught when you told him, sending you cloying messages and calling everyday to see if your symptoms were getting better or worse. Once you’d convinced him you weren’t dying though, he went back to his usual obnoxious self, joking about planning your funeral and accusing you of faking it to avoid him.

Johnny pulls you tighter into his side. “Whatever,” he concedes. “Is it safe to kiss you yet?”

You look up at him and shrug. “Nothing’s 100% but…”

That’s all the reassurance he needs to pull you into his lap and connect your lips. It's soft and languid, and you hold each other through it. His arms are so solid around your waist it simultaneously makes your heart flutter and makes you feel like you could relax and take a nap right here and now. When you pull away, Johnny runs his hands along your figure, as if to reassure himself you’re really there. The smile he gives you glows, but only for a moment. You curl yourself into the crook of his neck and place the back of your hand on his cheek, tender. His skin there scratches yours just the tiniest bit.

“I missed you,” he says, chuckling.

“Mm-hm, I missed you too,” you reply. “How are you, anyway? You said you had something to tell me?”

“Oh, yeah,” he says. He maneuvers you off his lap to sit by his side, and from this angle you can truly tell that he’s going sheepish. Suddenly it feels like there’s an alien hand in your stomach. What could this possibly be about? Johnny’s nervous silence gets your brain spinning – a zoetrope of stupidity. Am I being broken up with? No – obviously not. Does he have a family member dying of COVID? I fucking hope not; that’d be complicated on multiple levels. Maybe it’s good? Maybe he finally got a job offer but he has to move away or something.

Johnny starts talking before your mind can come up with any other ridiculous hypotheses.

“We’re getting evicted.”

You furrow your brow. Had you misheard him? You shake your head, incredulous. Johnny and Ten had always maintained a good relationship with their landlord. It didn’t make sense for everything to turn on a dime, even if they were struggling financially.

“You’re kidding,” is all you manage to say.

Johnny just purses his lips and raises his eyebrows as if to say, “it is what it is.”

What he really says is that he wishes he was kidding, but he’s not.

“Oh my god,” you respond, crossing your arms in irritation at, well, at everything lately. “Fuck! When is this happening?”

Johnny sighs. “Technically in a week.”

You feel the cogs of your post-COVID brain start to crank against each other. A week from today would be…hold on,

“Wait,” you say, as the situation starts to appear more and more ridiculous. “Like exactly a week from today? Like on Christmas? You’re being evicted on literal Christmas?” You’re trying really hard not to raise your voice, even if it’s clear that if you did, it would be out of indignation on Johnny’s behalf. You’re obviously not upset with him.

Johnny’s eyes roll around in their sockets as if this is the first time he’s contemplated the exact timing.

“Well, yeah, I guess a week from today is Christmas…”

The absurdity of this all is getting to you, and you can’t help it, you start to laugh. It’s that kind of nihilistic, fuck-all laughter that’s been one of the few things getting you through this year.

“They can’t evict you on Christmas!” you quote. “Then you’d be ho-ho-homeless!”

Johnny looks at you blankly for a second, so you contort your face into that open expression universally recognized as the “get it?” face.

“From Go?” You hint. “C’mon, Johnny boy.”

And before his nickname can fully escape your mouth, your boyfriend is cutting you off with a long sound of recognition and doubling over his lap in giggles.

“Good one,” he says into his right knee, and you giggle along with him. “Wholly inappropriate, but clever nonetheless.”

“Why, thank you,” you say, enjoying the levity, but unable to uproot the feeling of dread in your gut at Johnny’s conundrum.

Go is one of you and Johnny’s favorite movies to watch around Christmastime, mostly because it’s only tangentially related to Christmas, it’s kitschy and ridiculous, and has a plot that is 90% crime. You’re surprised he didn’t catch the reference more quickly, but to his credit, he has more pressing worries taking up mental space.

“Where is Ten, anyway?” you ask, looking around performatively at the messy and claustrophobic room. A silver plastic Christmas tree twinkles on a table in the corner. “Have you two talked about a plan yet?”

“He’s grocery shopping,” Johnny explains. “He’ll be home soon. And yeah, we have an idea.”

“You do? Because you could always move in with me.”

Johnny scrunches his face up. “I would love to live with you.” Your heart rattles a little in excitement, even though you know there will be a ‘but.’ Johnny goes on, “but you know both of us wouldn’t fit in your apartment. Where would Ten sleep? Or put his stuff? We’d all be on top of each other.”

You nod, defeated because you know he’s right.

“Hey,” Johnny says, “but we can always have the ‘moving in’ conversation again, okay?”

“Okay,” you say, grabbing his hand. “Sounds good.”

It suddenly feels very dark in the apartment (it’s still chilly enough you think you might be able to see your breath, but you aren’t about to complain because you know there’s a very good reason for that), so Johnny pushes himself up off the couch to turn on a couple of lamps.

“So,” he says, facing you from across the room, “we’re gonna be evicted on Christmas, no matter what the cinematographic masterpiece that is Go tells us is right or wrong. Christmas is just as much of a capitalist construction as our rent, after all.”

You’re about to pipe up again about how fucked that is and how surely they can come to some sort of agreement with the landlord, but Johnny anticipates this and keeps talking.

“We tried to argue, babe, but as I know you know, we don’t exactly have much of a leg to stand on.”

Johnny is right. Again. How many months behind were they on rent at this point? They’d gotten a few months delayed back in spring, but they still owed everything that built up from that before the end of the year, and they’d blown through their stimulus check a long time ago. Johnny has tried to find work, but the theater business hasn’t exactly been booming. Ten, for his part, is able to make a bit of money doing freelance illustration and teaching dance classes over Zoom from his room, but his studio’s engagement has dropped since March and he still unfortunately gets paid per student. You can’t help wanting to punch a wall in frustration at how unfair this all is, but it’s not like any of it comes as a shock. You’re not naïve. You and Johnny met at a leftist theory club for Christ’s sake.

“We’re helping organize a rent strike,” Johnny says, calming you down. Finally, a glimmer of hope. “We’re not the only ones in the building going through it right now, and we know a lot of the tenants who aren’t being evicted well enough we can convince them to join.”

Right then, the front door flies open and thwacks a startled Johnny in the back.

“I’m home!” Ten calls from behind a sack of groceries. You can’t even see his face yet. “I’m terribly sorry,” he directs at Johnny, then heaves the bag of food onto the kitchen counter which is also sort of in the middle of the living room.

“Ooh,” he coos when he sees you, still sat on the couch. “The missus is back!” He strips himself of his winter coat, ignoring your scoffing and revealing an oversized red and white striped sweater. He shimmies against the cool air and lets out a sort of squeal. “I was not built for this actual winter shit.”

“Hi, Ten,” you say once he finishes his theatrics. “Missed you.”

Ten shoots a sappy pout your way. “I miss you too. I’m so glad you’re feeling better! You have no idea how morose Johnny got without you constantly around. Can I give you a hug?”

You nod and try to warm up Ten’s tiny frame with yours while Johnny mutters something about Ten not knowing what “morose” means. When you break away, Johnny is rifling through the week’s haul to put things away.

“I see you didn’t go off-brand for the ramen,” Johnny remarks, stacking several Shin bowls in the cupboard. He turns to Ten with a raised brow. “Big spender.”

“They didn’t have anything else but if you would answer your damn phone I could have called and asked you about it.”

“I answer my phone,” Johnny grumbles, stowing some orange juice away in the fridge.

“Besides,” Ten continues, ignoring his roommate, “since I’m the only one making any money in this household I figured I’d give myself some discretion for spending it.”

Johnny grimaces, and you figure this is where you should probably step in.

“We were just talking about the rent strike, Ten. Johnny was filling me in.”

Ten turns his attention back to you, letting Johnny house the food items in peace.

“We’ll see how it goes,” says Ten, looking out the window just past your shoulder, “but I’m letting myself hope a little bit. As far as I’m concerned, they’ll be kicking my corpse out of here before they put me on the streets.”

Johnny scoffs. “Always so dramatic.”

“Says the former theater major.”

“Touché.”

You’d missed the ‘old married couple’ dynamic your boyfriend has with his roommate.

“But really, just, please try not to get the cops involved,” you plead. “I don’t want anyone getting hurt.”

“We’ll see what we can do,” says Johnny as he closes the last cabinet and crinkles the brown paper bag up for storage.

Ten shrugs. “No promises.”

You sigh.

Once everything is good and settled a few moments later, Ten decides the apartment needs a more festive atmosphere, so that’s how you end up getting dragged down the short hallway to Johnny’s room while Ten belts Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” from the living room and accuses Johnny of being a scrooge. Even still, Johnny sways playfully from side to side as he walks backwards, shimmying his shoulders and mouthing the words with a smile between protestations that this is “not how I envisioned finally spending time again with my girlfriend!” The way he buries his hands into the sleeves of his flannel to make sweater paws makes your heart so full you want to curl up and die. But, moving on.

Once in his bedroom, Johnny flicks on a warm-hued lamp and watches fondly as you collapse on the bed.

“I really did miss you guys,” you say for what feels like the hundredth time in an hour.

Johnny’s lips press into a little smile. “Yeah. We missed you. A lot. Especially me – you have no idea.”

You laugh sardonically. “Based on your text messages, I think I actually do have an idea.”

Johnny flops down on top of you, crushing you a bit.

“Oh really?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. His golden hair is falling in your face and it tickles, but Johnny halts any laughter with a kiss, then dots tiny kisses all over your cheeks and nose. They tickle too.

“You wanna smoke?”

“Sure.”

Johnny has a pre-rolled joint on his bedside table, and you watch him light it, feeling like you’re in a snow globe with the fall of snowflakes outside. The sky is that weird greyish off-yellow that only comes with a snowy night.

After a couple of hits, Johnny lies back down next to you and hands you the joint. The smoke brings you that usual tight feeling, like your lungs are shrinking but at the same time swimming in radiant heat. You don’t know if you should technically be doing this right after COVID, but you’re young and your body is resilient; you figure you’ll be fine. Besides, you can already feel the pleasant lightness setting in around your mind. It’s a placebo at this point, no doubt, but the relaxed anticipation is nice. You take note of the fact that Johnny had started playing music while you were thinking about lungs. The Strokes’ “Under Control” is doing battle with Ten’s Christmas tunes still seeping in through the cracks in the door.

You hand Johnny his joint back and roll onto your side, supporting your head with one hand and curling the other into Johnny’s abundant hair.

“I just want to say one more time,” you begin, “if worse comes to worst, you can always move in with me.”

Johnny takes another hit and holds it for a second, leaving you in anticipation.

“I know,” he says simply. “But I really think this’ll work. I have to, right? Besides, if Ten had to hear us fucking multiple times a week we would all start to regret living together. That, I can promise.”

You laugh, burying your increasingly silly-feeling head into Johnny’s chest. “Okay, fair.”

There’s stillness for a few beats where you just count your and Johnny’s breaths, trying to synch them up. This doesn’t work though, since Johnny’s lungs are bigger. Then,

“There’s no way your parents would lend you some money?” Your voice comes out quiet. “Or let you stay with them for a while?”

Johnny looks down at you, letting out a heavy sigh. “No, no. That wouldn’t be a good idea for…so many reasons. Besides, they don’t exactly have an extra few months worth of Chicago rent lying around either.”

You nod against Johnny’s chest. “I figured,” you say. “Just checking.”

Johnny brushes his fingers through your hair and kisses your part. “I appreciate your concern,” he says, offering a slightly sly smile.

You kiss the white fabric of his undershirt. It’s been so long since the two of you just laid together, and it feels better than you could have hoped, Johnny’s body heat helping to alleviate some of the cold of an apartment gradually losing its utilities. You wish you could get closer than chest to chest. You kind of wish you could burrow into him, but not in a weird way, you know?

“I believe in you guys,” you say. “However I can help, I will.”

“Thanks.”

Apparently, Johnny is done with talking, because he pulls you in for a warm kiss. Then, he gets the brilliant idea to shotgun the pot smoke. This activity quickly devolves into a very giggly makeout session, only to be interrupted by Ten’s voice outside the door.

“I’m opening the door in five seconds, you guys,” he says, “and if Johnny’s dick is out when I get in there, I’m evicting both of you myself!”

You and Johnny fall together laughing as Ten cautiously cracks the door. He swats at the air in disapproval.

“Stinks…” he remarks. “Oh, thank god you’re decent. Anyway, John, if the lady is staying for the evening, you both need to come help cook dinner, because I am not your housemaid, even if I do look good in a maid costume. Chop-chop.”

It takes way too long to get up out of bed because Ten, as usual, has made both you and Johnny absolutely lose it. Eventually, you manage to rise, but Johnny pulls you quickly back against his lap.

“Hey!”

“Just a minute.” He presses one last kiss under your left ear. “I love you.”

You can feel your skin tingle, although it might just be the weed. Either way, you’ll never tire of hearing that. “I love you too, Johnny.”

“I think Mariah was right,” Johnny whispers, voice displaying mock awe as if he were coming to a mind blowing realization. “All I want for Christmas is you.”

You give him a sympathy chuckle because that was kind of cute, in a corny way, and Johnny just swats your ass a little in response to get you back up to standing.

“Well, you and some basic shelter would be ideal,” Johnny deadpans. “I don’t think that’s too much to ask but I guess we’ll see.” You smile sympathetically. This strike is no doubt going to make for a stressful week, but you’re glad it’s starting like this.

“Hey, love birds!” Ten hollers from the kitchen.

“C’mon,” you say with a laugh. “Let’s not leave him waiting any longer.”

#my fanfic #my work #nct #nct 127 #nct fanfic #nct johnny #johnny suh fanfic #johnny suh fluff #johnny suh #christmas fic #neothestars #johnny x reader #nct ten #chittaphon leechaiyapornkul

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thequibblah · 3 years

Note

directors cut for WTRF? 🥺👉👈 not biased at all obviously just objective third party asking for a directors cut hmmm hmmmmm

literally how could u do this every other word in that fic is an easter egg i can't shut up about..... bestie u are about to have regrets

one thing u should know is that 90% of things in this fic have real-world equivalents and its not even like....... hidden equivalents. serie primo = serie a, for instance. this trend is going to continue and i won't apologise <3

fun fact i named the bar the Bar and the drinks after shapes because i was too lazy to come up with something actually clever

this bit

I’m grinning to myself by the time she approaches my table.

was a very intentional fakeout and if you read this and thought "she" would be lily, feel free to sue me for emotional damages

the biggest conundrum of this AU was, how are jily not going to have met in school when magic exists? the solution was, of course, having multiple magic schools. but i couldn't let one of them have hogwarts, that didn't seem fair. i know i did sort of let lily have it..... but i felt more comfortable making hogwarts a university so there was a legit reason why james wasn't there and in gryffindor (if he'd gone he absolutely would have been)

once solved, i did the fun thing of naming them! ottaline gambol's was easy, i just scrolled through the list of ministers for magic and picked a progressive one. peverell hall was a whim, made all the funnier when lily's reaction is:

Much was made at Otty’s — one of the more progressive magical schools, named for one of the more progressive Ministers of Magic — of schools like Peverell Hall and St. George’s. The latter, I know, is chock-full of pureblooded elite. Peverell Hall is supposed to be slightly better, but still.

dang, it's gonna be funny if she ever finds out james is a descendant of the guy it's named after

fun fact, i included this because peter's question was a real thought i had when reading bond and free, your inspiring writing knows no limits:

The first thing you conjure in Walking Wombat is a yellow quill... “Why yellow?” Peter asked. Eddie gave him a strange look. “Why not?”

i realised i'd put jily in the same conundrum they had in tis the fucking season here:

It’s only then that I remember she’s just bought us drinks. I turn back to my triangle. “Oh, shit.” I suppose I can pawn it off on one of the others.

...but of course the resolution is rather different, and i do so enjoy a james with no filter (aka default james)

I briefly lose control of my brain and my tongue. “Is it too soon to say I’m in love with you?”

by the way, no-filter james will be a theme. wild things sure do run fast but not as fast as this boy runs his mouth!

also, another interesting challenge here was making sure james has a reason to be the way he is in AU. i love playing around with james's childhood/background and seeing how that affects his character while (hopefully!) staying true to who he is. i did that in ttfs by having him move around a lot and not meet the marauders until after the flashback timeline, which is why he's less of a git — he doesn't have the level of comfort in a social setting that canon james has with hogwarts, which is basically his playground from day 2 of first year lol

here, james was probably a fkn nightmare all through school, but of course he gets a big ego check when his quidditch career is derailed. i imagine his years in italy as a continuation of that humility lesson.

I will fully admit I used to be a cocky prick. This is what comes of being a kid who grew up with everything. But one useful thing that the whole fiasco four years ago taught me is humility. I’ve learned how to ask nicely for another chance.

and so much of writing him in wtrf is juggling that typical confidence with the insecurity/fear of losing something he's invested so much in (and has seen slip away before). it's really new to me, because typically i give lily uncertain life circumstances, but i suppose it's both of them in this AU.

the car thing was... i swear didn't start out as smutty, it was purely because i wanted a way to establish lily as muggleborn in a world where the connotations of not having magical parents is very different. more to come on that!

also, come to think of it, by this metric...

I’m now in dangerous territory, since that adds another impressive action to her running tally.

...i think james is already in love with her LOL

this bit:

The street is considered indecent and the downstairs hallway would have our landlady come running at once, so if it pleases Your Honour, we would recommend the sitting room sofa.

...was actually because in draft one lily was a lawyer, but then it was funny enough that i didn't want to take it out, but NOW i realise it makes it sound a little like she's addressing james as your honour, which.... hm. but anyway, we move on

Marc Bolan begs us to get it on through the stereo, vocalising my thoughts exactly.

the song here was initially "you shook me" (h/t @keepingupwithpotters) but i chickened out because zeppelin is SO horny dfjkhgkjs

also, it gave me so much joy to read everyone reacting to lily thinking about her ex (the general vibe was "who the fuck is this guy!!! ew!!!!") — rest assured (or, unassured??) that he has a part to play in all this. anyway, this is one of my fave lines:

He’s just a person, and there’s such a relief in sleeping with James and not the myth of a guy.

because as any come together reader knows....

Just James. Just James. It was never just James.

wtrf lily will learn!

literally the whole world knows i'm obsessed with needle drops that have no subtlety at all, but this one...

We just laugh, tangled together in a sweaty heap, as “Heaven Is in the Back Seat of My Cadillac” plays through the car’s speakers. “On the nose, isn’t it?” James says, sitting up.

...was pure luck, because i was looking up the top hits on the uk singles chart for the week(ish) this scene takes place in so that i could find a song that would realistically play on the radio, saw this, and was like omg the stars really do align

i feel like the thing i enjoy most about writing romance is the importance i get to place in noticing/looking/observing (and sometimes, not noticing!). it's just such a powerful but simple writerly tool, and god knows i am obsessed with pithy descriptions anyway, so this bit i am especially happy with:

James is already waiting, leaning against the car with his hands in his pockets. I feel as though I’m seeing him for the first time, the faint light of the flickering streetlamp catching him in profile: the strong slope of his nose, the hard line of his jaw, the curve of his smile. He studies the facade of our building with open curiosity, and I wonder what he’s looking for.

(one can only imagine james's train of thought in this moment. perhaps "ah. here lives the future love of my life"?)

“Thanks,” she tacks on at the end. I tip my head to one side in confusion. “For what?” “For, I don’t know. Being nice.” She laughs awkwardly. “I don’t do this very much.”

it wouldn't be a quibblah original tee em without some discourse to come about the nature of romantic/sexual relationships, would it? one thing i enjoy about this AU ("one thing" i say as if this isn't the billionth thing in a list) is that i get to write a romantic lily who's squaring that romanticism with what she perceives as the culture of the times. (this is a bit of a staple in all my characterisations of lily, but it is not often paired with casual sex, the complication of all complications!)

oh this bit literally wrote itself like i didn't even pause to think just vomited it out:

In the morning — and it must be early still — the sun streams through Lily’s sorry excuses for curtains with aggression that cannot be ignored. I crack open an eye to find myself sprawled out across her bed, quite literally spread-eagled. She’s attached to my side like a barnacle. Or a very pretty barnacle, anyway.

i'm especially proud of james's voice in this story. i don't often write first-person fic and i was worried how it'd turn out, but i think james as a character/narrator typically colours his own 3rd-person narration so strongly that it ended up a smoother transition than i'd feared!

also i just. i can't resist throwing in comic relief and i hope that this whole segment was a gentle enough preparation for the awkwardness that followed LOL

All of a sudden, the balcony door bursts open. I nearly drop the mug. “What the—” Mary pokes her head around the corner, sporting a righteous smile. “Morning, handsome.” Over her shoulder she shouts, “He’s on the balcony!” I blink. There’s a sound from inside the flat, as if something very large has just been dropped. Then a swear. “Oh, shit,” I say, realisation dawning, “you weren’t looking for me, were you? It’s so loud out here—” Mary cups a hand around her mouth and stage-whispers, “Lily was frantic.” She’s quite violently yanked back, and Lily herself appears in the doorway, slightly out of breath. “Should’ve checked the balcony first,” she says, and closes the door before Mary can insert herself into the space again. “Hi,” I say, which is agreed-upon best practice for greeting a woman you’ve just had fantastic sex with and ideally would like to have sex with again.

to this day i don't know what lily dropped. let's hope it wasn't expensive!

Captained the under-17 English squad at the World Cup some years back, Serie Primo’s lead goal-scorer of last year… Only an injury in what should’ve been his first season at Puddlemere mars his record. I wince reading about it and comparing it to a heap of press clippings. James Potter was hurt, and Puddlemere didn’t fancy paying for him not to play, so they shipped him off to Milan.

(you cannot imagine how much pointed interrogation of my brother it took to gather this intel.) i constantly worry that i've got dates or timelines wrong somehow — you might notice i tweaked under-17, which used to be under-19 until i realised that made no sense (even though in terms of its career importance i would much preferred it to have been u-19.... anyway). i also found out that u-17 football squads don't actually have captains but i said fuck it on that count.

but obviously i started writing this AU for the sports possibilities, only to discover i'm going to have to interfere a great deal with the Timeline (you shall see in future instalments).

god i really went through the whole fic. like i reread the whole thing to do this. here u go clare jfbghjfd

#this has no right to be this long #wtrf #clareee75 #ask me #director's cuts

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jenivi7 · 3 years

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First Lines Tagging Meme

I'M SO HAPPY TO BE TAGGED IN THIS TWICE! Thank you @ink-flavored and @clyde-side !! (I almost just did this on my own too because I love babbling about my own fics...)

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favorite opening line.

Now pinned and under a cut because it became a really long, really good introduction to me and my stories!

Hello!

Unnecessary and overly wordy introduction/personal musings: I love opening lines so much. When I worked at a bookstore, I used to open books and hardcore judge them on their first lines. I had barely any free time to read at that point so if it didn’t grab me in the first line or two, I put it back. The first Harry Potter book is actually in my pile of really good openers. “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” (Subtle alliteration, HELLO??) So I'm super excited to see if my own first lines come even close to the standards that I apply to other people lol. MY OWN MONEY IS ON NO. I have the feeling that I'm so frantic trying to get the story down on paper before the good words disappear from my head that I'm not actually paying attention to the first line. BUT LET'S SEE, SHALL WE.

So just straight up going backwards, I've written and posted TWO BRAND NEW THINGS after being away from fandom almost entirely for 10+ years! They're drabble length but they're shiny and new! <3 (All available fics are linked!)

1. Tango:

She teaches them to dance so that they can dance with her but when Atem gets that mischievous smirk on his face and pulls Yugi into his arms, their bodies spark and the dance floor smolders at their heels.

(The fic is so short that this is a full 1/5 of it but actually, I think I crammed all the good stuff right into that first line. This already might be my favorite. Like it says there in the line itself, Puzzleshipping.)

2. No Betting:

Anzu sat at the kitchen table writing carefully calculated answers onto sticky notes before attaching them to a fourth-grade math worksheet.

(Peachshipping! This one doesn't pop off until about line five so here's the rest of that bit:)

She had the same arrangement with her spouse as most parents had. When the kids were good they were hers. When they were bad, they were his. And when they were winning at games because they picked up rules with uncanny speed and read their opponents with more insight than ought to be available to a child, they were definitely, definitely his.

3. If you wanted honesty that's all you had to say (working title):

When he realized that the figure sitting under the game shop display window and smoking wasn’t Ryou, the physical body response was as though it had discovered a coiled snake not two feet away.

(This one! It's a NEW half finished(?) WIP. I actually started this one before the drabbles but wanted to finish before posting it. Then it got out of hand, then work got out of hand, then I started a couple more projects and well. I keep putting words on it though and eventually there will be a Kleptoshipper that turns into Puzzle and Tender for your reading enjoyment. Also, fair warning - don't use song lyrics as a working title. Every time I look at the document I get the song stuck in my head.)

Now we have polished up reposts of old stories for their move to AO3, where I'll basically keep my master archive. Not full re-writes but I fixed a bunch of typos and awkward sentences and they're much stronger for it. Most of these are from a pairings contest way back when so LOTS of different pairings and lots of AUs!

4. Human:

It was like a bad noir, the thought crossed both of their minds.

(Scifi AU, Rivalshipping. That one's not bad for a first line. Actually no link at the time of writing cause the re-edit is going up in like, a half hour? an hour? a half day? It's my next project after finishing this, finishing up the edit and posting it on AO3. Now with link!)

5. Blood:

Fingers through midnight black hair, whispers in his ear, touches that sizzled along the skin, awakening nerves and senses.

(Dungeonshipping, Pegasus x Otogi, vampires AU. Oh that’s a nice first line! <3)

6. Crazy for You:

The keys are too large and too heavy for the doctor more used to more modern facilities but she doesn't say anything, just follows the orderly as he pulls the large door open.

(Manipulashipping, Anzu x Marik, Psychward AU. Still one of my favorites from that era. Big bold warning though, THIS ONE CONTAINS NON-CON)

7. Finality:

“What are you doing here?”

“Saying goodbye.” Bakura’s translucent arms swept across the graveyard. “Is this not an appropriate place for it?”

(First two or so bits of dialogue as the first first is a generic question. You can tell this is one of the really old ones just by that but it's a sweet, sad little Tendershipper that still has a special place in my heart.)

8. Pieces of You:

Glitter caught the light, leaving shimmering trails in the air as it got everywhere.

(Glittershipping, Anzu x Kisara. Another one that's special to me. Kisara is my girl and my first writing muse. <3)

9. Cambodia:

“It was summer of fifty three...”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute, it can't have been fifty three. You might be that ancient but I'm not. It must have been sixty three.”

(Jiishipping. Yes. Sugoroku x Arthur. HEY, IT CAME UP IN THE RANDOM DRAW FOR THE SHIPPING CONTEST OK. And my writer's brain hasn't backed down from a challenge yet... Another one that takes 4 lines to pop off but it's a good start. Actually, here's the rest of the bit just because I cannot get enough of these two bickering:)

“What do you mean it must have been sixty three? You don't even know what story I'm trying to tell.”

“Am I in it?”

“What?”

“So you're deaf now as well as daft? AM I IN IT?”

“Of course you're in it, y'old coot. Don't know why I'd tell a story without you in it when both grandkids are sitting here.”

10. Coffee and Cigarettes:

"Cigarettes and coffee? That's not a very healthy lunch."

Mana crossed her legs and took a refined sip of her own coffee even as her company was not.

(Mischiefshipping, Mana x Thief King Bakura. Oh this one I'm actually sad that it doesn't immediately sparkle in the first line cause it's one of my absolute favorites of everything I've written. And I think it's the only time I've ever written Mana but I LOVED IT AND HER. Oh no! I lied, I've written her at least one other time though I don't think that one quite captures her sheer chaos energy like this one does.)

11. A Million Missed Chances:

Somewhere along the line, someone made a choice.

(This one. THIS ONE. I think this is by far the most epic idea I've tackled. I still don't know if the sheer scale of the thing came across in the actual fic but in my head it was massive and I remember pounding away at my teeny tiny laptop late at night because the whole thing hit me maybe a day or so before the story was due for the pairings contest. We only had a week to write each fic and my really good ideas never came to me before the very last minute. T.T Conquestshipping, Mai x Valon.)

12. A Fear of Falling:

She drove.

Like she always did when something bothered her.

(Oh the first chapter on this is also one of the really ancient ones. Like one of the very first things I wrote. That first chapter really shows its age and is a little shaky but the others are better and the last one is what fits into the chorological order here. Polarshipping, Jou x Mai. One of my very first ships. Probably THE first actually <3)

13. What Our Creators Make Us:

"Well, well." The match flared, scattering dark shadows until it was blown out and the only light that remained was the red glow from the cigarette end. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again."

(Psychoshipping, Marik x Spirit of the Ring Bakura. With a bit of Bronze, Angst and Tender in the follow up. Old but I'm ridiculously proud of it, hence it's place in the master archive. Ahaha you can tell how old it is though by how clever I think I am. I thought it was funny to make my audience figure out who was talking and not reveal the characters for a good fourth to third of the fic. Ahhhhhhh. Sorry about past me.)

14. A Revolution of the Spirit:

It wasn't fair. It just wasn't.

That they were close was understandable (you don't get much closer than sharing headspace) but that even now, after deals were made with gods, endless arguments, compromises and the ultimate guilt trip that he had only been a teenager when he willingly sacrificed himself for all of humanity, things she had only half seen and only partly understood even though they had all been there to witness, that even now Atem continued to invade Yugi's personal space as though he belonged there got on her nerves.

(Woah Nelly! That third sentence should probably be three, four and five. Even if I just split it in half we'd continue the pattern of things popping off in the fourth line. I think that's one pattern that's emerging! A really good bit takes me about four lines to set up and deliver! Oh, the challenge was Revolutionshipping, Anzu x Atem, but the fic is actually Spiritshipping, Anzu x Yugi x Atem.)

So confession time, I haven't been out of fandom completely, I just hadn't written my own standalone stories in a very long time. There are a few (ok ok more than a few) long-running rps that @miss-moberg and I have been adding to on and off over the years. I can't resist throwing in a couple of these.

15. Cafe!

The door shut behind them with the soft click of the latch and the exhale of a breath long held.

(This opening line was from December of 2020 when we rebooted a very old Prideshipper and that is a damn good opening line if I do say so myself. I can definitely see the difference now between the newer works and the older ones. I've gotten better, she's matched me pace for pace and eventually something will be finished, I'll work up the courage to ask permission to post it and the whole internet will get to see how brilliant the two of us are together.)

16. Treasure Hunt!

"Ryou, I think you're going to regret letting me tag along on your adventuring this time." Yugi didn't bother turning away from the airplane's tiny window to see if his seatmate was paying attention. He was more thinking out loud with his friend playing the role of a convenient sounding board. "Because I think this trip is the only thing I'm going to talk about ever again."

(One more from RP because it's got that fun, four line punch that we've discovered is a pattern for me! Opening entry is from 2017.)

Also, in truth, my count is a little off when I say I'd been out of fandom 10+ years. I've been away from YGO for that long but I did spend a brief stint in Homestuck where I read a ton of fanfic, flirted with a couple group RPs and even wrote a tiny bit. 9 years without writing a new fic isn't as impressive as saying ‘over a decade’ but it is a little more accurate.

17. What You Will:

In the land of fair Illyria, along a small, sandy stretch of its rocky shore, a ship has come to ruin and one lone woman lies still as death among broken wood.

(The beginning of a Homestuck/Twelfth Night crossover that I'm still determined to work more on someday. It's only got a single chapter but it's magic though now I'm concerned about not being able to recapture that. Not a bad first line though. The style is so different it took me reading it a couple times before going, oh yeeeeeah, that's pretty good!)

18. Relentless:

You pull him to the deck and then across it by the remains of his shirt. Let him say one last goodbye. His ship pillaged, his crew murdered, his hands bound behind his back and at your mercy.

Funny word, that. Mercy.

(The first line is pretty decent but there's that four line combo again! Five but I could basically fix that with a comma. Featuring the troll ancestors Mindfang and Dualscar because every time Hussey introduced new characters they were instantly my favorite.)

19. Black:

There is dark and there is dark and there is dark and then there is black. She is black. Licorice and coal. She is hate and resentment and everything that tastes bitter, the kind of black that coats the tongue like oil, drips down the back of the throat and keeps going.

(Oh wow. Am I allowed to say that about my own work? A Terezi/Vriska drabble that I'm putting as much here as I think I can get away with because it's so good that it fucks me up a little going back and reading it.)

And here it gets tricky because I think the more recent of the old, old fics are in the Drabbles and Shorts collection on ff.net and I can't see a post date. So I'll just pick a good one to end on.

20. Two Princes:

It was inevitable as the rising of Ra's chariot after a long night, as the flooding of the river banks every spring, and Atem always knew that Yugi's kiss would be as warm and gentle as the evening breeze in the summer that brought relief from the scorching day. It was.

(How about the final honor going to more Puzzle/Blind? This probably has the strongest first line of its era. Actually I'm not sure when it was written. It was just hanging out in my writing folder and, thinking about it, I probably wrote it when I was fading from fandom the first time around but still trying to hang in there. No wait! That’s too sad, we can’t end on that! Lets add one more to the list for the sake of personal narrative!)

21. Linger:

The world doesn't need him anymore. It doesn't need his sword and it doesn't need his pen.

(A tiny Princess Tutu afterward that I wrote for myself. Nice one-two punch in the opener. Also it rounds out the personal story that accidentally developed here with a line later in the fic, "Words, however, never stray far from a good writer..." Like, wait, stop. Past me, how did you know T.T)

Did that take a sudden emotional turn for anyone else or was that just me. Can I offset that a little with an honorable mention? Let’s do that while I collect myself. Here’s one more.

Honorable mention: Ryou and the Thief

There was a storm gathering and too much magic in the air. Much more than occurred naturally and magic at this level was never a good thing.

(I can’t have a list of things I’ve written without having Ryou and the Thief on it. If you click on this one though, BEWARE, it’s old, it’s silly and it has a ton of explicit gay sex that… would be written very differently if we were handling it today I’m sure! This is the first RP @miss-moberg and I ever did together and our excuse to Gemship and Puzzleship turned into us running the boys through a whole adventure based on the Osiris myth. It’s the longest thing I’ve ever completed and I’d still consider it kind of my legacy.)

And that’s the last 21(+1!) stories that I’ve written!

The clear winner of best first line for me is 15. Cafe! It’s short, elegant and manages to contain a whole mood even without the context of what’s going on and who’s involved. (Spoilers: It’s Seto and Mokuba making an AU escape from Gozoboro.) Close second is Tango, the most recent story. It’s neat to see just how much better I’ve gotten and also really cool to see that even if the first line itself doesn’t contain a punch, it’s usually because there’s a nice, strong idea being set up and delivered in the first four lines (or so). What a pleasant surprise!

AND WOW, this whole tag thing didn't need to be so long! Or personal! Seriously, if you get this tag from me the challenge is only to list the first lines to 20 stories and maybe try to draw one or two conclusions from them. You all thought I was joking when I said I loved talking about my own writing! But actually, I guess it’s fine like this as I ended up using it as a way to re-introduce myself. Like, "Hey, I used to live here a long time ago and oh my god I love what you've done with the place!" Rather than being someone who's just popped up out of nowhere a few weeks ago to creepily bother all your best of the best creators so....

^///^ Hello!

Thanks for letting me ramble!

Tags! I think I've seen most of the authors I follow do this already but on the off chance you haven't been tagged yet: @elexica (checked your blog to see if you'd already done the tag and saw that you're another person returning to writing fanfiction after 10+ years. Same! Hello!!), @danieco, @draconicmaw, @nedjemetsenen (has someone tagged you already?) and two shots in the dark, @miss-moberg and @edmondia (I'm so sorry you two. T.T Please feel free to block me forever.) And please, anyone else who wants to babble about their own writing! Do this, it was so much fun. <3

#ygo #yu-gi-oh #yugioh #yugioh fanfiction #fanfic #fanfiction #jenific #so many ships #so many characters like woah #not half bad for a retrospective if i do say so myself #thank you for coming to my ted talk #tag game #first lines tag

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elizabeatrice · 4 years

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Episode 12 - The Little Mermaid

Let’s Talk About JSHK Anime #3

Warning: Manga spoilers for The Little Mermaid arc, The Clock Keeper arc, and chapter 64!!! (just a bit, skip point no. 5, 6, and 10 if you don’t want to get spoiled) Also … this ended up way longer than I intended.

Well that was one heck of a feels trip. It’s probably my new favorite episode, just because everyone is here being wholesome lmao.

This is mostly hananene meta I ain’t even gonna lie.

Before we begin, shout out to Black Canyon, our newest anime cutie pie. Just look at him, folks. Just chilling with his sunflower seed.

He has no idea the kind of life his owner leads.

I said before that the best part of episode 12 is how it made Daydream worse, so now I’m gonna ramble about it.

“Maybe different species can’t understand each other after all.”

“Maybe it would be better if I were an apparition too.”

This is my favorite part of the episode. And no, not in the sense that I want Nene to die just so that she and Hanako can be together. But because of how Lerche actually explored deeper what was said only once in the manga.

Well, both in the manga and anime Nene ended up accepting the mermaid’s blood because of her desire to be popular, but the anime decided to revisit what she said earlier in the episode.

Not only did that make her decision kinda less selfish, it’s also just … sad. Thinking that your friend, someone you really cared about, doesn’t trust you enough to tell you things about themselves, to the point where you’re willing to go to such lengths as turning into an apparition just to understand them.

And if you think about it, isn’t this part of her true wish? To have her feelings be reciprocated? Man I just realized that as I wrote this and I am mindblown.

She thought she finally got her wish with Hanako. I mean, he said it himself in the first ep (”You wanted someone, anyone, to return your feelings, right? And as far as you’re concerned, sharing a bond with someone is the same thing, right?”). So it must’ve hit her really hard when she thought he didn’t trust her. Especially with all the wrong ideas the fishes were feeding her mind.

Then we got this little flashback. At first I was like, “Girl, you really be thinking that he doesn’t care about you while recalling the moment he apologized to you and hugged you? Are you insane?”

But after some thinking of my own, it occurred to me. Maybe she was too used to having her feelings not reciprocated, she couldn’t believe it when someone finally did. Not to mention Hanako did kinda trick her with his fake confession a while back (heh, he’s not the only one with trust issues, eh?). And that just made the entire thing even sadder.

So when Nene said, “But I thought, if I were an apparition like you, I could get closer to you. Then, maybe I’d be able to understand you, Hanako-kun. Although I know I probably don’t mean anything to you.”

That was a harsh wake up call for Hanako.

(Btw even more full circle, Hanako brought up Nene’s wish to become human again in the first episode. Nice.)

So. We got one daikon girl who’s afraid of not having her feelings reciprocated, and one ghost boy who’s afraid that daikon girl wouldn’t be his friend anymore if she knew about his past.

While in actuality, said daikon girl already decided she wanted to and would be his friend no matter what, and ghost boy had grown to care about her more than he thought he would.

He heard what she said to Tsuchigomori. He knew all about regret, too. I mean, honestly, I think if she had said no, he’d let her walk away right then and there, no questions asked. But she didn’t.

Nene’s wish finally came true here. And the best part? It wasn’t the work of magic or curses. Just Hanako finally shoving his fear aside, offering himself as he was, and letting her decide.

And she still chose to be with him.

Heh. Lemme just. Sob for a bit.

Is my hananene trash brain reading too much into this? Idk. Maybe.

So props to the production team for managing to add even more weight to this arc. Which, they had to, since it’s the season finale and all. But I love what they did!

Onto my commentaries!

1. The KouNene

Good shit. She was worried about him but he didn’t want her to worry so he just smiled it off? These two are precious. Thought they were gonna interact. Sadly not. Buuuut! (see point 12)

2. Hanako’s classroom visit

He. Is. So. Adorable. Someone please take his babey license away he’s too dangerous.

Hanako’s classroom visit is like my absolute favorite clingy Hanako moment, so I’m really happy I get to see it this season. Ugh. My kokoro. Hugging her from behind, that semi confession vibe … Smooth mf.

The Mokke brushing Nene’s hair!!! The radish hairdo tho lmao.

On a sidenote, as a history nerd I appreciate that they’re actually putting lessons in the background. And the teacher talked about Apollo 11 again??? While my boy was in the room? That ish both hurt and pleased me.

3. The Clock Keeper rumor drop

Heeeeeehhhhh? What’s thiiiiiissss?

4. This freaking thing

*flips table* Darn production team been knew I’m hananene trash how dare they do this to me.

And lookie here there’s Kodama chilling.

5. Fishies! (!!!manga spoiler for The Little Mermaid arc!!!)

Pufferfish didn’t die. Well, good for him. Also I can’t believe they just call the other fish ‘yeah yeah’ lmao what the freak. Has it always been like that in the manga?

6. AOI AND AKANE (!!!spoilers for chapter 64!!!)

I swear I did not intend this numbering coincidence.

*claps* Boi. Nene asking Aoi about cutting ties with someone she’s interested in? And then Akane just swooped in and say he’d rather cut his head off than cut ties with Aoi? What about getting impaled, huh, boy? Would that do?

The not-so-subtle call out to these two pairs’ parallel? BOI.

7. Nene and Yako

These two just chilling together having girl talk, and Yako let Nene pet her? That’s some adorable shit right there. Admit it Yako you like her.

Yako also be really hitting home with what she said. It was extra heavy coming from her, considering what happened to her and Misaki. Boiiiiii.

8. Tsuchigomori

Oh my God, his laughter. Just … oh my God.

Tsuchigomori in dad mode is always one of the highlights of the episode/chapter.

By the way, in this scene according to the sub, Nene asked Tsuchigomori who Tsukasa is. But she knew who he is already. Is it possible that the sub misinterpreted it? ‘Cause I think what she actually meant was, “What happened to him and Tsukasa-kun in the past?”

If someone who speaks Japanese could share their wisdom, please do!

9. The 5 pm bell and twilight

Look how pretty they are!!!

Lo and behold, another important hananene interaction while the 5 pm bell plays in the background. Also, twilight? Y’all giving me Kimi no Na wa flashbacks.

“Twilight, when it’s neither day or night. When the world blurs and one might encounter something not human.”

Huh … kinda fits the ‘boundary’ concept but it still hurt.

Anyway they still had Hanako tell her what she already knew. And I did say in my ‘Walking Blind’ post that it’d be redundant. But since the episode kinda emphasized Nene’s desire to understand Hanako, having him actually tell her himself, even though she already knew it, was a big deal. It’s not about what she knows, it’s about him opening up to her. So I’m super cool with it.

10. The Broadcasting Club (!!!spoilers for The Clock Keeper arc!!!)

I love how Natsuhiko and Sakura are actually decent people. When he told Mitsuba that he was free to choose to stay with them or not? That’s solid, man. Though, of course, Tsukasa might not be as kind.

Speaking of, I know it couldn’t be anything else, but I’m still not sure if Tsukasa’s drawing was confirmation for season 2. Don’t wanna get my hopes up. Imma just enjoy what I currently have.

Kinda curious, though. Because Clock Keeper wasn’t Tsukasa’s doing. Maybe he was the one who released Mirai? But tbh I’d prefer if it wasn’t so. Because having more cases of supernaturals going loco without it being one of Tsukasa’s games is interesting, and kinda underlines the need of The Seven Wonders to keep supernaturals in check.

11. Kodama just chilling

12. The Adventures of Minamoto and the Summer Vegetables

You go, Kou! I’m rooting for you oh my God you’re so precious.

And look at that ikemen smile! Him supporting Kou is just top notch sweet y’all I can’t-

Ngl this was the biggest surprise of the episode. Teru finding out that summer vegetables = Nene? Broooooo. Interesting. I don’t think this little addition warrants any changes to their future interaction, so it should be safe. Clever replacement, too, those veggies.

It’s so sweet that Nene delivered those veggies to Kou! Just imagine the Minamoto family having veggies for dinner. Awww.

(Also, Nene wrote her name in hiragana instead of kanji. Is that a reference to how bad Kou is with kanji? Lol, so sweet)

13. The Coda!!!

Look at him. Just look at him. Look how lovesick he is y’all I can’t-

THEY’RE SO ADORABLE.

All in all, I love this episode. Sorry for how long this post is. I’m just dealing with so many feels right now. Gaaahhhhh.

#jibaku shounen hanako kun #toilet bound hanako kun #hanako #minamoto kou #yashiro nene #akane aoi #aoi akane #yako #tsuchigomori #mitsuba sousuke #hyuuga natsuhiko #nanamine sakura #yugi tsukasa #kodama #minamoto teru #let's talk about jshk anime #bea rambles #hananene

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bigskydreaming · 3 years

Note

“I was human once. Where were you then?” I pretty thoroughly abandoned Teen Wolf after season 4, and even before then, I didn’t engage with the fandom much, but the voice that you give Scott is enough to keep me with one toe dipped in the pond. He’s funny and clever and kind. Even years since I’ve read anything else in TW, WTWTA continues to be a favourite. Do you feel like talking about where you were planning to go with it? I’ve seen you talk about Lightning Crashes plenty, but not WTWTA.

Thank you so much for this ask! Not gonna lie, Lightning Crashes consumes most of my remaining Teen Wolf attention just because its so freaking big and I've got so much written for it over the years that like, I will riot against myself if I don't finish it because like ugh I didn't write all that just to have it sit unread in my own damn files forever, y'know? So like, while I would love to return to Where Wild Things Are someday I'm not trying to make any claims about that one until LC is off my back. Tbh, I'm trying not to make any claims about fanfic or deadlines until I'm fully recovered from my surgery and whatnot because like......my day to day life is just not reliable and I hate not being able to keep my word on stuff.

BUT. That all said, I do still have a lot of fondness for WWTA and plenty of thoughts about it and willingness to talk about where it was headed for anyone who prefers to just hear about that on the assumption it won't ever really get returned to, cuz like, you are Valid.

And I actually have a lot of fondness for that part you quoted in particular, like, I've heard a lot of good things from people about that whole interaction being a standout for them, and its a personal fave because it pretty succintly got to the heart of some of my biggest issues with Teen Wolf's portrayal of hunters and specifically their ideology and self-justifications.

Anyway, some basics about where that fic was going below the cut, and I'm happy to go into more detail or provide snippets or excerpts from future parts as well.

So the very next chapter after what was posted is actually another Scott POV, and it has Peter showing up to his house at night while his mom's at work, Cora with her uncle as well, and 'summoning' Scott to be by his side as well while Peter goes to meet with another Alpha in a rival pack's territory. (Said Alpha being Ennis, in this case).

This chapter's actually a pretty interesting one IMO because I used it to play around with a personal headcanon I have for chemo-signals. There's actually been a fair amount of theorizing in the scientific (and pseudo scientific, lol) communities about what it might be like if humans could pick up on and interpret chemo-signals, because the science suggests that actually we DO.....just at such a tiny magnification so as to make it impossible to get any like, usable data from what little our noses do pick up.

But a popular theory is that picking up on chemo-signals would produce a physiological like, 'mirroring' of what's being picked up on, like....okay, so there's this thing in a lot of evolutionary traits that are linked to survival mechanisms. Where like, the body in the act of receiving various signals from another being about something being dangerous or threatening or to be avoided, it'll essentially mimic the very signs of distress or warning in the person or creature its picking up those signals from. Its kinda part of an automatic feedback loop, like going through a version of the same reaction a person is seeing in others is part of the body and brain's interpretative process, taking in certain stimuli and then processing it in ways that end up with the brain consciously cluing in that what its seeing is that it should be wary of danger.

I'm explaining it badly, but the basic idea is like.....you know that almost instinctive flinch of horror or fear you get almost in like....sympathy, when you see someone else in obvious distress or terror....even before or without seeing or experiencing whatever it is that's making them so distressed/afraid yourself? That's an example of what I'm talking about here. One creature or person transmits various signals - be they visual by way of stance or expression, or scent, or auditory like screams - and surrounding 'pack creatures' or basically any nearby beings likely to be part of that initial being's pack or herd or community.....they pick up these signals and the message of warning or whatever being conveyed via those signals....and in the process of translating that into some kind of actionable instinct, they ALREADY replicate and thus partially pass on those very same signals themselves.

So the thing about scents that we give off even as humans, is that there's actually a LOT of data and signals encoded into these scents or the various things our bodies produce in association with these scents, like sweat. Even though we can't discern these scents to any degree that allows us to meaningfully interpret the data encoded in them, because we didn't ever end up evolving down the evolutionary path that might have resulted in us being able to smell to that degree....like, the information is still THERE, packed into those scents and odor-producing body by-products.

And that has a lot to do with why we react the way we often do to smelling someone's sweat even to the degree that we DO pick it up.....because think of what bodily reactions tend to produce sweat. Its not just physical exertions, its also in a response to nervousness or discomfort or disgust or outright danger, etc.....and our instinctive responses to scenting the sweat someone produces is often to like....mirror those very same emotions. Just to a much more minor degree than if we were able to smell to the same degree that like, we can see.....and thus pick apart single scents and interpret the various distinct elements and emotions packed INTO those, much like how our eyes are evolved to pick apart visuals and interpret specific details about shapes we see in front of us and give a lot more nuance and specificity to what our eyes are picking up on.

So the theory is that if we WERE able to smell to this keen degree....we would be able to tell a LOT about people's emotional state just from the physiological byproducts they produce in various emotional states.....BUT there'd be a trade-off. We would also be prone to the same tendency to unconsciously mimic the signals we were picking up on.....so our own scent glands, our own expressions, would be likely to 'pass on' the indications of fear or arousal or anxiety that we're smelling.

What intrigued me about this idea, in terms of werewolves who are stated to be able to pick up and interpret chemo-signals......is that it carries with it the implication that actually, most werewolves - at least those in packs - would have EXCELLENT self-control, in contrast to what most hunters believe about werewolves and their lack thereof.

Because think about it......if werewolves are constantly being bombarded with the chemo-signals of those around them, and interpreting these smells and the signals contained within them with the same matter of fact ease most of us translate the visual signals our eyes convey to us......in actuality, werewolves would need to have exceptional control over their own reactions to external stimuli.......or else they'd constantly stand out by having facial expressions and stance cues that seem to change radically with seemingly very little reason for them to do so as far as normal humans around them can tell. And at the same time, the facial reactions they might instinctively flash to in response to picking up say, stark terror from someone who was trying their best to hide that VISUALLY due to the presence of someone they were afraid of like an abuser....the fact that werewolves seemed to often be reacting to things they were picking up on in ways that seemed completely contrary to what visual or auditory cues were evident to everyone else....this would also make them stand out even in a crowd.

So to my mind, the extent to which werewolves were shown deciphering information via chemo-signals on the show suggests that actually, werewolf packs would place a huge focus on teaching their children and their new bitten members both the importance of having firm self-control over their own reactions and emotional state - in order to counter their own instinctive tendencies upon smelling things like strong fear or arousal or anxiety in others - as well as the HOW of doing just that.

Which in turn would lead to the idea that its the LACK of a pack - and the grounding knowledge and presence of other experienced werewolves - which most often results in the existence of the 'out of control' omega werewolves that hunters use to justify the necessity of their existence.

Think how bewildering it would be to constantly be bombarded with signals and cues that suggest that the people around you are at any given moment in heightened states of panic and distress and discomfort. How much that would shred your own self-control if you weren't extremely practiced - and aided - in keeping a clear awareness of your OWN emotional state and feelings at all times, so you don't get swept away by the tide of emotional information you're picking up on all sides. I imagine it wouldn't be that much different walking down the hall of a school picking up the scent chemo-signals of a hundred teenagers in the throes of puberty, hormonal changes, and constant stress and intense feelings.....than say, if you or I were to walk down that same hall and instead of just seeing and hearing a hundred teenagers laughing and talking and going about their day, we saw and heard every one of those teenagers acting out visual and auditory cues of extreme intensity on all sides, from some of them screaming for dozens of different reasons to others being clear images of someone in pain or outright terror, etc.

Its a lot. Its easy to imagine that omega werewolves would not actually be any less 'capable' than any other werewolf, they're not wild or feral because they're lesser or whatever.....its simply for whatever reason, they never were taught the lesson of just how important it is to learn how to not just interpret scent cues, but block them out when necessary or at the very least maintain a conscious awareness of how to keep your own sense of self prioritized in your brain over just....instinctively reacting to everything being flung at you information wise.

Anyway. So a big component of what's to come there is how this might impact the world of Teen Wolf if explored in depth.....

Because on the one hand, this information would be the EXACT thing needed to really put things into clarity re: hunters and werewolves. The reality that actually, most werewolves are exceptional at self-control....that when they're a danger to others, its usually because they're that way with INTENT like Deucalion or Ennis. That most werewolves aren't the inches-from-being-mindless timebombs that hunters stress are the real reason for why they exist. The omegas are actually the odd ones out, and their lack of self-control is something that can actually be mitigated by integration into existing packs or just more avenues for educating themselves on what they are now and what differences that makes in their lives and just their very approaches to life.

But on the other hand, this information is exactly what werewolves like Scott CAN'T inform hunters of en masse.....because of the existence of hunters like Gerard and Kate who actually don't CARE about the code and the idea of just existing to protect humanity from the out of control dangerous 'monsters'....but rather just want to kill werewolves for other reasons. Because hunters who were fully in the know as to how much control the average werewolf has over their emotional state....as well as WHY its so important for them to learn and practice such exceptional self-control......because of how VULNERABLE to reacting to the emotional states of others werewolves are......they would no doubt be able to weaponize this against werewolves. After all, even exceptional self control is bound to waver if say, in the presence of large numbers of humans who are being deliberately influenced to give off certain scent cues in mass quantities......just so hunters can pick out at a distance who seems to be reacting to things none of the humans present seem to be aware of, etc.

So things like this are meant to become central to Scott and Allison's burgeoning relationship and the everpresent question they each have for how much they can really trust the other - and trust the other WITH - no matter how much they want to. Even as Scott starts to fall for Allison and believe the best of her, he's very aware of her still existant ties to her family, her own 'pack' - and despite being in possession of so much knowledge about werewolves that could most likely open Allison's eyes even further to how inaccurate most of the information she and others like her father are working off of is......Scott's equally keenly aware that giving her that information COULD still backfire and put his own pack in danger if it for whatever reason doesn't end up being enough to fully bring her over to his side.

Basically the big theme of the story has always been about who can you trust, even when you really WANT to trust them, because even people with similar moralities can have conflicting priorities and its not always enough to just be on the same page in one of those respects.

Anyway, the next chapter is big on introducing the importance of chemo-signals as Peter drives to his meeting with Ennis and tells Cora and Scott to settle between themselves who will accompany him inside (a clear position of prominence relevant to the ongoing power struggle between Cora and Scott for influence among their packmates). And most of that happens by way of the two of them 'scent-talking' to each other in the backseat. Because a side-effect of the idea that smelling chemo-signals prompts certain facial cues in response, as well as exceptional control over their own emotions and thus accompanying physiological cues, means that its possible for werewolves to have very involved silent discussions just by deliberately invoking various scents for the other, etc.

Cora of course wins that mini-battle between them, by way of the leverage she has over Scott now that she knows he's able to lie to Peter without betraying it with his scent or his heartbeat. Peter would never risk having someone capable of lying to him with no sign, so that's as good of a death sentence if he finds out. But at the same time, its something Cora knows she can't milk for too long, because the longer SHE has the information that Scott is capable of that, the less effective it becomes as leverage.....since hiding that from Peter could massively backfire and put her at risk too, meaning there's only so long she can use it as leverage against Scott before it becomes a case of mutually assured destruction and he says 'go ahead, tell Peter, and once he finds out how long you've kept that from him see what position that leaves you in.'

So Cora knows this information is best used sooner rather than later, so she leverages it off the bat, to get Scott to cave on this one and so she's the one to accompany Peter to his top secret meeting with Ennis and learn whatever they're talking about and what the basis of this alliance they seem to have formed is. Also, Peter comes out of the meeting carrying a mysterious box he got from Ennis, that seems to have been his goal all along, and has Cora troubled, but unwilling to divulge any information about what it might be.

Scott however gets something out of the meeting too, because even while left outside, he discovers some key information.....Ennis' pack includes Jiang and Tierney, two members of Brett's old pack that he thought were dead. Ennis had 'taken them in' though they really didn't have a ton of choice in the matter and were less than thrilled about it....which gives Scott the start of an actual plan. Which thickens once he learns Brett's sister Lorilee is alive as well, and a member of Kali's pack, along with refugees from another wiped out pack, the Primals.

Essentially, where this is all building towards is over time, Scott starts reaching out to the exploited and miserable teens stuck at the bottom of abusive packs they never asked to be a part of but are afraid to leave....and begins building an alliance of teens across multiple local packs. None of them are strong enough to overthrow their own Alphas on their own, but together, they could be strong enough to overthrow a single Alpha, and then consolidate as a pack of their own behind a single teen Alpha.

Of course, problem is Cora figures this out eventually as well, and begins building her own rival alliance among teens from Kali's pack and others, and it essentially becomes a race to get an alliance strong enough to topple Peter built first, before the other can make their move.

On Allison's side of things, she begins mentoring the younger teens that Scott picked out as being eyed by his Alpha as potential recruits. This involves teaching them archery at her house one weekend, only to then discover from Gerard's conversation with her parents that hunters recovered the arrow Allison had shot through Isaac's shoulder way back in the first chapter. They found blood on it, and are planning to use it to see if the person that blood belongs to is in the system at all. Which Isaac is, due to being in the foster care system, even if only nominally.

Feeling complicit and not ready to trust the werewolves yet but not willing to feel personally responsible for the death of someone she goes to school with, Allison alerts Scott to the danger. Which in turn leads to the pack under Peter's orders, like, breaking into the facility where the arrow and blood are being analyzed and destroy the sample before it can trace back to Isaac and from there, the rest of them by association.

Problem is, its Matt's first official 'outing' on a werewolf mission and he decides to revel in his newfound power by killing a guard. Welcome to Team Blue Eyes, Mattie. That didn't take long. Not that anyone is surprised, but Scott is a bit screwed by it. Because now Allison is furious and retreating from their slowly building alliance/relationship because she feels guilty that her information led to someone getting killed by a werewolf and thinks she never should have shared her intel even though Scott tries to stress that he had no control over Matt and could do nothing to stop it.

So that kinda puts a roadblock in the Scallison that takes time to work past, though it will of course get worked past.

Meanwhile elsewhere, Peter's plans for turning more freshmen are delayed when Cora and Scott both feel pressed to alert him of a surprising development at Beacon Hills High before the other tells Peter first. Suddenly there are two new werewolves at school - albeit very nervous, scared and confused werewolves - and they aren't transfer students. Someone turned two of their classmates, Tracy and Josh, and that someone was NOT Peter. So now Peter is outraged because someone is turning people in his territory which is a clear challenge from another Alpha, and he wants to know who. Which leads to Erica and Boyd being assigned to tail the new wolves and see who they lead back to.....as well as both Scott and Cora, by now accelerating their efforts to build up support for their positions both inside and outside of the pack, like both of them now make plays to get Erica and Boyd from the No Man's Land they've been residing in, and get them to finally pick a side between the two rivals for Peter's Alpha crown. With the information they glean from following the two new surprise werewolves being vital to both Scott and Cora's plans.

The Alpha in question turns out to be Deucalion, who is back in the area after years away where he seemed uninterested in werewolf politics, but now seems to be intent on building up a new pack for himself across multiple Alphas' territories in earnest.

Meanwhile meanwhile, Scott has started to worry about where Theo's loyalties actually lie, as Boyd informs him that part of what's kept him from throwing in with Scott is Boyd keeps his nose to the ground to stay very informed on what's what and keep abreast of what everyone else is doing at all times - Boyd is very big on the idea that knowledge and thus information is power - so Boyd has been paying more attention to Theo than even Scott has lately, given how much Scott's got going on at the moment. And Theo's been making some moves of his own that have Boyd distrustful of just how much Scott ACTUALLY has his loyalty, and thus Boyd is wary of hitching his wagon to the prospective Alpha who is perhaps not as well or thoroughly supported as he thinks he is, or is counting on being.

So Theo being Theo will complicate matters considerably. Note that I don't go with unnecessarily evil Theo ever, as that's boring, but I always fuck with absolutely and necessarily self-interested and amoral Theo because that's anti-boring. So Theo's not out to screw Scott just to screw him (well not THAT way at least), but Theo is big on covering his bases and he's contemplating making his own bid for power because he's not sure he trusts that Scott can pull this off and Cora's not an option given that he HAS until now been Team Scott in all visible ways, so he's seeking....other options. Just so he can have the most possible options and vet them thoroughly before deciding on a course of action, naturally.

The big tipping point to all of this will come when someone betrays Scott to some hunters and leads to him being captured and identified as a werewolf by some hunters loosely affiliated with Allison's family.....and Allison makes her choice here for good and risks everything to rescue Scott which might involve someone dying. Not a main character. But uh, there definitely is some dying and it makes Allison and Scott both feel things like guilt, regret, self-recrimination and also "I did what I did and that's that about that" with only like 60% of that being bravado to cover up omg I have no idea what I'm even doing anymore.

In order to find somewhere for Scott to recuperate that is not her house, because lol duh, and is not Scott's house, because Peter lol duh, a desperate Allison ends up looping in Lydia, Danny, Jackson and Stiles, and enlisting their help in hiding Scott at Lydia's lakehouse until he recovers. This leads to them all finally being in the know and uncomfortably allying with Isaac and some other werewolf members of Team Scott, who are of course furious at the betrayal of any werewolf giving up one of their own to hunters, let alone Scott.....which leads to the twins making a surprise shift in allegiance, because they think Cora was behind the hunters finding out and that's too far for them. It was NOT in fact Cora, but it might have been someone ON Team Cora who thought they were doing what Cora would have wanted them to do. And by might have I mean definitely and also they were Not Correct in their assumptions about what Cora would want. She and Scott are rivals and she's an antagonist here but she's not evil or even as bloodthirsty as she pretends to be for appearances, but she like Theo is looking out for number one and what she believes is best for what remains of a Hale pack, any Hale pack.

Other stuff happens, Liam does get turned, Mason gets his druidic knowledge on because that's a Trope that no Kalen story will ever be without, and the ultimate showdown between teens and asshole adult werewolves will end with Scott True Alpha level-upping but Peter definitely will still die as will several other Alphas and Scott is not the only teen who ends up an Alpha at the end of things though each teen Alpha will for now go their own way with their own pack made up of kids from the two teen wolf alliances. There will be confrontations with the hunters before the end too, beyond just rescuing Scott from the NPC hunters who are destined for Demiseville, population them, but the hunters will not be 'totally defeated' in as much as that's even a possibility, and the story was always meant to end with the McCall pack and some human allies taking to the road to find somewhere else to establish a territory and build their strength (and graduate high school) before making a full stand against hunters.

Backstory is meant to be filled in all the way through, with a focus on Scott and Derek's not-at-all-like-canon relationship as for the first year or so after Scott was turned, Derek was still around and did his best to help guide and teach Scott while acting as a buffer against his uncle which Scott greatly appreciated and his thoughts of 'fuck you Derek' should be taken as unreliable narration and mostly just cynical humor cuz he misses him. With said backstory reveals culminating in the eventual shocker of how Derek died (surprise, it was Peter in the parlor with the backstabbing and also candlestick), Cora finding out, cue Cora Not Being Very Pleased With Uncle Peter At The Moment, Actually, and like....other shenanigans are had.

Also also there may be a road trip involved at the veeeeeery end, that involves the mysterious box Peter traded something to Ennis for, which may or may not be magic and resurrection-oriented, but also definitely is both those things and aimed at a grand finale of teen Derek rising from mystical waters being like "who the fuck are you" at Scott who smiles and says "we're brothers."

And that's what you missed on Glee.

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casually-shipped · 3 years

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Jeff Wittek is DUMB! Means well, but DUMB!

That interview. Where to begin? The turn this interview took, I didn’t even want to write this. I’m more torn for metoo which is further harmed by, and at the expense of this shit show. From Jeff’s handling of this, to Ethan and Trisha’s involvement in this conversation. Jeff was thrown from the very beginning. He fucked up. As genuine as he wanted to be, Ethan dominated him because Jeff was unprepared. I am shocked Jeff didn’t refresh his memory on the situation, that he would speak out when he didn’t know fully the information to even speak out about. From the moment Jeff released his own video on his YouTube, he was working without the complete information. Which unravels anything he hoped to achieve.

I was very disappointed to realize that Jeff is, and was more interested in protecting himself (excluding his employees) his business, than the concerns of any allegation. I’m glad he realized that too, and said as much. I get Jeff, I get his history, and I see how this situation is not easy for someone like him, his self esteem, his past, secrets, and new found success. He wants to protect himself so much, but at the same time protect his friends, those he loves, and the alleged victims, and he is tripping all over himself. For the morons on the internet, in the court of public opinion, this did him and this situation no real favors.

Ethan and Trisha are master manipulators, and very smart when it comes to this. Jeff was very much out matched especially with this team up. The worst part in all of this is Jeff resorted to past problematic behavior imo. He lied! You see, when you choose not to speak truth to power, or speak truth out of fear of saying the wrong thing, or to protect someone, you lose credibility immediately. As you should. I didn’t expect Jeff to take this turn, but I can see it because he was backed into a corner, and when this happens to him, this is the result. He panicked, and fucked up. From this point on in the interview when he says he doesn’t remember the photo Ethan showed him, the interview went further down hill.

The photo was used by Ethan to trip Jeff up. It was a brilliant move, but someone with actual brain cells would know, that the picture wasn’t time stamped. That was an upload time, but Jeff didn’t realize this, nor understood that, so he doubted his own memory, which I wouldn’t be surprised is screwed up especially after his so called “near death car accident.” (EDit: Further analysis, I thought the photo was an upload from a social media site, it might actually be a time stamp.) “Which means his memory of events are very questionable, but his entire statements are in doubt regardless!”

Not only did he doubt his memory, but the situation doesn’t truly matter to him because he believes his truth, that he didn’t bother to do the work. It showed. It showed Jeff doesn’t actually believe the victim, and even if he is telling the truth, even if the victim is lying, this isn’t how you handle this situation. Believe victims, for the sake of the movement until proven otherwise. He tried to walk this line, but ultimately failed. He failed to tell the right truth because he doesn’t truly understand this. He shouldn’t have spoken at all to this degree outside of a court of law in the first place, for his sake, his friends, the metoo movement, and the alleged victim.

Once he doubted his own memory because of the photo and Ethan’s clever rues, he crumbled. From this moment it was very hard to watch. There came a point where it seemed Jeff was trying so hard to distance himself, it really sounded like, and I believe this is what he was doing, throwing everyone who isn’t him under the bus. Intentionally or not, that was publicly damning. He acted as if there was a cover up that he wasn’t aware of, and tried to protect himself which came across as confirmation of the allegations. Which again began to destroy public confidence and his credibility. As well as his character. He quickly became an unreliable source. If Jeff wants to remember where he was, if he had his location turned on his phone, he can look up his location from that time maybe? lol Just a thought! Well, the authorities will anyways.

Ethan’s way of asking questions was to project a truth that he believes or wants people to believe and plays off that. He makes people think that his opinion or point of view is fact, as well as making shocked faces, using certain tones and inflections, being accusatory, twisting words, ignore and not following up statements, moving past answers in favor of his own answers, talking over Jeff and retailing Jeff’s point of view and the point of view of the allegations, with his own narrative. At points Trisha did the same, which Ethan allowed and played off of. This interview was a hit job, not getting any other side or truly getting to the bottom of something. Ethan disgusts me! This interview DISGUSTED ME! If you can call this an interview outside of an opportunity for exploitation, and monetization. After the interview even began to make jokes was disgusting do to the serious nature of all of this.

I’m glad I powered through the interview because it was so cringe, too cringe, but I got through it. What a waste of time. I walked away knowing more than I thought I would, but I put myself through mental anguish just to end up with more questions. I have an idea what Jeff is hiding about his eye. I have many theories about Jeff, and David. These theories is pretty eye opening for me when it comes to this situation. I do still give credit to Jeff and surprisingly even Trisha for this situation to a degree. Trisha will however always be trash for me. But she isn’t wrong about how David in some ways treated her, even if it was mental health driving her physical, emotional, and mental abuse towards others and Jason. There’s just no excuse for her. No excuse for David either. David is and was a very insensitive self involved individual. To the point where his pranks deffinetely crossed a massive line. Brandon even thought he was a psychopath, he truly believed it. David had to beg for forgiveness and say even sorry to his parents for what he put Brandon through. An emotionally traumatizing moment. Shit like that David needs to own, and hasn’t.

If what happened with the victim happened, then she as well as everyone involved has to speak out. Even if it didn’t! That’s just doing the right thing for the movement. Let’s say the victim messed up her story or is lying? You still treat this with the respect it is owed until it becomes a criminal case, or defend yourself in court for defamation and we hear otherwise. If you have privilege then you will gain back anything you lost when the truth is finally known, if you are innocent. Some thing you don’t allow to play out in the court of public opinion, literally fuck the public, it’s the only way to protect victims and the movement from being destroyed by outrage cancel culture, the way it has been. David and others who were there, not speaking is a mistake. However, I disagree with how far you have this conversation. Jeff in my opinion has gone a little too far. Some truths you keep to yourself, even if it makes you look bad, until court. It comes out then not before to respect the victims involved publicly as well as the movement.

What are my final thoughts? Personally, I don’t really know what to believe. I in all honesty am not sure I truly believe the victim, but, I choose to because of the movement, and that I wasn’t there. So I don’t know shit! But if you want just my honest opinion, I believe Jeff wasn’t involved in that way, I also don’t believe David would go as far as being insinuated, he’s dumb and careless, but not that. But even then, who really knows? Anything is possible. I just don’t think that part of the story is correct, but that’s just me. I have always at that time when I saw this vlog, thought it was faked. I remember David peaking and nothing was happening. They were all dressed, but that could have been shot at a different times, again no one knows. This is edited footage here.

David in the past has been involved in edgy sexual content when it comes to consent. Heath (and I can’t remember who else it was, maybe Zane,) were in a hot tub clearly drunk, and David used that moment when they kissed for a fun video moment and that was a moment David took advantage of for content. They may have consented for that video to be uploaded after the fact, but it seems David has always had a problem with consent, AFTER THE FACT! I do believe David has grown and changed a lot, but he still imo hasn’t come far enough. There are things he still needs to take accountability for, and he never has. His video, very much wasn’t that. The whole situation is just awful. I can however mimic some of Ethan’s words at the end to Jeff. I hate Ethan, but damn if he wasn’t right. Credit where credit is do. But fuck Ethan! David HAS to treat this issue with more respect that it is owed!

#Jeff Wittek #Ethan Klein #H3H3 #Frenamies #Trisha Paytas #David Dobrik #Durte Dom #MeToo #Vlog Squad

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