#and my thesis has been published and is open access!

[thunderc1an]

Goosefeather ⭑

[psychhound]

announcing spiritkeep: a therapeutic ttrpg

howdy all! some big announcements!!!

first, im nearing the end of my master's program, studying rhetoric and writing, games, and educational psychology. im about halfway done with my thesis, and figured it was time to make an announcement …

my thesis, entitled "designing ​spiritkeep​: therapeutically applied RPGs as a discourse community" is … about what it says on the tin :) in it, I look at the practice of TA-RPGs, which are TTRPGs run for the express purpose of inducing therapeutic growth. TA-RPGs are usually run by a clinician, like a therapist or counselor, or a certified therapeutic game master. my thesis is looking at the needs of therapeutic game masters as a community and asking … what do they need from TTRPGs that isn't currently available?

the thesis takes concepts from rhetoric, linguistics, game studies, literature studies, psychology, and more to ask the question … what would a TTRPG specifically designed for therapeutic use look like? i examine concepts like bleed, close to home characters, dramatic rehearsal, performative speech acts, fixed vs growth mindsets, information processing theory, and more. i also look at criteria set forth by current TA-RPG practitioners for what makes a good TA-RPG, and examine five current games against those criteria. then, i put together the research into a foundation for spiritkeep, a dedicated TA-RPG

spiritkeep is designed around the goal of helping teens and adults heal from complex trauma

that said, its perfectly suitable for a homegame as well, as long as everyone is on the same page and approaches it with the mindset of collaborative growth. all in all, it's still going to be a fun game and a good TTRPG!!

in spiritkeep, you play as a smalltown taskforce with the shared goal of restoring your currently struggling community to a thriving state. you go out on missions like finding resources, diplomacy with neighboring cities, researching ecological problems, and more, while you slowly make your town a better place to live. spiritkeep includes collaborative worldbuilding, a large assortment of playbook options like the Wayfarer, the Knight, the Ghost, or the Shepherd (all designed to hit where it hurts, at least a little!), and a brand new system inspired by PBtA, FitD, BOB, WoD, and more. while the game is designed around grappling with identity and learning how to grow, it can also get a bit tactical and crunchy!! the new dice mechanic makes you think on your feet with every roll

this announcement is also to say that i am beginning the initial crowdfunding of the game through itch. right now, im trying to raise funds to pay the fee to my school to make my thesis open access, meaning anyone can read it. then, remaining funds will go towards things like resources, consultants, art for the kickstarter, and everything else i need to get this project off the ground. ideally, ill be able to team with a publisher to cover the logistics of business while i can focus on the game itself. once the game is finished, there will still be plenty of playtesting, consulting, and other work to do. but!!! this post marks my first steps towards what has been my dream for years now

this sale is how im starting the funding process. it includes the zine preview of my thesis, covering my chapter outline and big concepts, and also my first TA-RPG: with breath & sword, a solo game to help players calm down from anxiety. both items have community copies available: please feel free to grab one if you can't contribute !!

questions, comments, or partnership offers can be sent to psychhoundgames @ gmail(.)com

thanks y'all!!! wish me luck!!!! 🥰🥰🥰

[hinge]

Hinge presents an anthology of love stories almost never told. Read more on https://no-ordinary-love.co

[darlingofdots]

I know that it won't change anybody's mind but I do think it's interesting that when we're talking about the discourse around romance novels and "spicy" books, it's people on social media who are sooooo concerned about the potential impact while people who study this stuff academically just roll their eyes whenever somebody goes all Think Of The Children about it

What really gets me in this conversation (and I've talked to fellow romance scholars about this!) is the oh-so-sincere concern that women will somehow get the wrong idea and be more vulnerable to domestic abuse because they read the wrong books. It shows such a disregard for women's intelligence! Why do you think women are so impressionable that they can't separate their entertainment preferences from their life experiences and more importantly, why do you think this is somehow a novel argument? People have been claiming that romance novels Give Women The Wrong Ideas for centuries, and we had to spend several decades just disputing that nonsense so we could finally get to some real scholarship.

The Flame and the Flower came out in 1974 and was hugely popular, and one of the most common answers to "how did you get into romance novels" is "I found my mum's/grandma's stash when I was a teenager." There’s not even any good data on whether romance readership has significantly increased in the last decade* and yet you would think that a wave of romance reading swept the globe and turned every woman into a mindless spice addict. I am so so willing to critique the romance genre for its continued heteronormativity, the racism perpetuated by prominent industry organisations, and even cringy covers. I have in fact published two articles* in that direction and am currently working on a PhD thesis. But if your only contribution to the conversation is "but what if women read The Wrong Books," you need to seriously re-evaluate your opinions.

*You should generally be skeptical of any specific numbers about readership or market share because a lot of the info you see floating around does not come with methodology or data sets attached to back it up. Preliminary data suggests a slight uptick in romance readership during and after the pandemic.

**I will not share the details because I am practicing separation of church and state on this blog but I highly recommend checking out the Journal of Popular Romance Studies, which is an online, open access, peer reviewed journal focusing on popular romance media.

[dawnfelagund]

Hello!! A while ago, I read your article on the transformational + affirmational values in the Tolkien fandom while I was researching for my thesis :P And just now I’ve very randomly stumbled upon your blog and I saw your post about your new article with JTR (congrats!!), and I realised, “wait hold on, I know this person”. So that’s vv cool!

I feel like the rest of this ask is more the kind of thing people do over email, but, well, chance brought me here, so… I’m wondering if you, as a published (!!!) Tolkien scholar, have any advice you’d be willing to share with someone (me!) who wants to get their work published as well? I’m also a bit lost about what the best, reputable journal for something Tolkien-related would be. Off the top of my head, I can think of Mythlore, JTR, and Tolkien Studies — except I’m very confused about whether Tolkien Studies is peer-reviewed or not… Any help at all would be appreciated!

What a fabulous question, and I LOVE to see Tolkien fans interested in presenting and publishing their work. I started as fan before I was a fan-and-scholar, and I currently keep a foot in both pools, and I think it's important to recognize that many Tolkien fans are discussing ideas that are not currently part of the scholarship. Many of us are engaging with the texts deeply and in ways that align well with scholarly work, and dare I say that many of us know the more obscure texts (like the HoMe, for example) better than many Tolkien scholars who are coming from the more academic side.

So Tolkien fans who want to become involved in Tolkien scholarship absolutely should. You have the ideas, the knowledge, and the skills!

There are a few steps that I'd recommend for the Tolkien fan-turned-scholar:

1. Familiarize yourself with the published scholarship. In fandom, we tend to engage with other fans, their fanworks, and their meta, and of course, we spend a lot of time in the books. While Tolkien studies has not traditionally been a field that leans heavily on familiarity with the published scholarship, that is changing. There is growing awareness that scholarship is being published that is rehashing ideas that have already been written, or published works are leaning too heavily on outdated literature, so I expect that journals will be increasingly rigorous in their expectations here.

Thankfully, of the four peer-reviewed Tolkien studies journals, three of them are open-access (only Tolkien Studies is not). Even if I do a search through Google Scholar or my alma mater's library, I always visit these three as well and do a keyword search, as anything published in them, being open-access, is really going to be seen as doing a bare minimum of due diligence: Journal of Tolkien Research | Mythlore | Mallorn

Of course, the state of academic publishing is still unfriendly to independent scholars, though it is better than it was ten years ago. Some publishers let you check out a small number of articles per month. I have luck finding academic books in Archive.org. If you live near a good public library system or a college/university library, interlibrary loan may be an option for books and articles. (Note that this is US-centric.) If you can find contact information for the author of an article, they will often share it with you. Scholars and academics want their work read and cited. They do not benefit from the status quo in academic published. (With three peer-reviewed articles and three book chapters to my name, I have netted a total $0 for my publishing efforts!)

Belonging to fan communities that tend to welcome scholarly approaches is another resource, as members who have access to academic databases and libraries are often willing to help find hard-to-source materials. @silmarillionwritersguild is one; I have definitely asked for help myself on our Discord server! If there are others, please recommend them!

2. Present your work at a Tolkien conference. This can occur at the same time as Step 1 and certainly isn't required, but beginning to attend and present at Tolkien conferences will give you access to feedback from other scholars and help you to refine your work for publication. There are a number of hybrid events that are primarily fannish and so tend to be friendly, approachable venues for your first presentation: Oxonmoot, Mythcon, and Mythmoot (which also has smaller regional moots) are three that I would recommend for first-time presenters coming from fandom. Local Tolkien societies may also put on occasional conference-like events, which are increasingly hybrid. When the SWG's newsletter editor (*cough* me ...) remembers to include it, we do a monthly round-up of calls for papers and proposals in our Around the World and Web section of our weekly email newsletter. This would include the events listed above, as well as more academic-oriented conferences, as well as calls for proposals for book chapters, journal special issues, etc. (Which reminds me that I need to post the June roundup ...)

We just did a three-part series as part of our Master Class column called "So You Want to Present at a Tolkien Conference?" that covers writing a proposal, putting together a paper and presentation, and actually giving the presentation.

3. Publishing your work. As noted above, there are four peer-reviewed journals with a heavy Tolkien studies focus: the Journal of Tolkien Research, Mythlore, Mallorn, and Tolkien Studies. Of course, journals with a broader focus (such as scifi/fantasy or British authors) might be viable as well, as would journals of other disciplines that may overlap with your focus (e.g., fan studies, narratology, film studies, etc.) And there are generally several calls for proposals each year for chapters in anthologies with a specific focus (e.g., I am currently working on a paper for an anthology on women and Tolkien). Robin Reid is a retired academic and Tolkien scholar and an incredible advocate for new and fan scholars. Her Substack publishes CFPs as she becomes aware of them.

Other advice and resources, please add as a reblog or comment! But, to wrap up, I want to say one more time to Tolkien fans who want to present or publish their work:

We, as fans, are talking about ideas right now that scholarship has not yet dreamed of.

We, as fans, engage consistently with the texts in deep and detailed ways.

We, as fans, are not less or inferior to those scholars who took a more traditional academic route. We have important contributions to make to the field of Tolkien studies! You can do this!

[scriptstructure]

About & Guidelines

About the Blog:

In the fashion of ScriptMedic and cohort, this blog is here to answer questions about how to structure your story, and develop your narrative, and themes. If you’ve got your research, and you’ve got your plot, and then you’re stuck on how to make it fit together, or how to use your awesome research, then this is the blog for you!

This blog can provide assistance from simple tips regarding writing itself, through to recommendations for further reading and research. If I’m able I will provide links to relevant texts, or at least attempt to provide ways to find them.

Guidelines for Asking:

FIRST! An important note: I will not read your manuscript!

MS reading is time-intensive and is the sort of thing better left to dedicated beta readers or paid editors, please do not submit part/ all of your MS, and ask me to ‘tell you what’s wrong with it’ or ‘help fix it’.

Sending your ask:

ask box is preferred! Submit box is available if you absolutely can’t fit your question into the ask

I’ll be keeping messenger open in case I need to ask clarifying questions, but I would prefer that initial questions NOT be sent via messenger.

You’ll probably need to put 1-2 sentences of context about your story, and ask about the specific issue you’re having difficulty with

Generally speaking, the more specific your question is the better I will be able to help you – figure out the area that you’re having difficulty with and ask about that in particular. Sending a long rehash of your MS and then simply asking how to make it work is impossible to answer. Tell me what You think the problem you’re having is, and we can work from there.

As this blog grows, there will no doubt be posts related to troubles you’re having, I’ll be making sure to keep up a consistent tagging system so that all previous posts should be simple to find, simply head to the navigation page and look to see if your question has already been answered. If it hasn’t? Then ask away! If I’ve answered something similar to the question you have but haven’t quite hit the nail on the head? Ask away!

Also, you might notice that I’ll often advise people to read certain texts, or recommend stories, shows, films, novels, etc that are similar to what they’re working on. Reading is the best practice for writing, you’ll learn a lot about writing by reading attentively, and it is a process – all writing is a process! There’s no quick fix or cheat sheet that will work for everyone.

If you must send a question longer than the ask box allows, use a browser to access:

www.scriptstructure.tumblr/submit

About the Blogger:

My name is Mason and I’m all about character and narrative development, I’ll be doing my best to try and work through the thorny problems that come with the writing part of writing!

I have a degree in Creative Writing, a minor in English Literature, and an honours degree in Creative Writing (thesis focused on character structure and narrative). I’ve lectured on Character development in adaptation, and I’ve taught general creative writing, as well as writing for the stage.

I have several short stories published, as well as a self published novella, you can find my personal/ author blog [HERE]

[superlinguo]

10 years of a PhD

August 2023 marks ten years since I was awarded a PhD in Linguistics. I submitted the thesis for examination in February 2013, it was examined by around May, and the final version with corrections done by some time in the middle of the year. August is when I dressed up and the degree was conferred, so that's the date on the testamur that now hangs in my office. The weirdest thing about this decade is that it means I've spent longer having a PhD than doing something that was such an important time in my life. My work has continued to grow from, but still draw on, my thesis research. I have been working with speakers of Syuba as well as Lamjung Yolmo, to continue to document this language family. I've moved from a focus on evidentiality to look at reported speech, discourse and gesture. These all still require an approach that looks at both grammatical structures and how people use them, directly continuing the kind of approach I took in my PhD. I'm particularly proud of the gesture work, as this is a return to an older interest. I didn't publish my PhD as a single monograph, but turned it into a number of revised and refined papers. I publishing the descriptive grammar as a book, which was an expanded version of a slightly absurd 30k word appendix to the thesis. Below is a list of those publications, as you can see it took me quite a few years to find homes for all of this work. I've also been lucky to take my research in other directions too; my gesture work has expanded into emoji and emblems, and I've also been writing about the data management and lingcomm work I've been doing. This work has increasingly been happening with collaborators, I love how much better work becomes when people talk each other into do their best thinking. I know I'm very fortunate to still be researching and teaching a decade after graduating, and that I have an ongoing job that lets me plan for the next decade. The thesis work informed a lot of my research, but these are the publications taken directly from the thesis:

Gawne, L. 2016. A sketch grammar of Lamjung Yolmo. Asia-Pacific Linguistics. [PDF] [blog summary]

Gawne, L. Looks like a duck, quacks like a hand: Tools for eliciting evidential and epistemic distinctions, with examples from Lamjung Yolmo (Tibetic, Nepal). 2020. Folia Linguistica, 54(2): 343-369. [Open access version][published version][blog summary]

Gawne, L. Questions and answers in Lamjung Yolmo Questions and answers in Lamjung Yolmo. 2016. Journal of Pragmatics 101: 31-53. [abstract] [blog summary]

Gawne, L. 2015. The reported speech evidential particle in Lamjung Yolmo. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, 38(2): 292-318. [abstract][pre-publication PDF]

Evidentiality in Lamjung Yolmo. 2014. Journal of the South East Asian Linguistics Society, 7: 76-96. [Open Access PDF]

A list of all publications is available on my website: https://laurengawne.com/publications/

[hinge]

Hinge presents an anthology of love stories almost never told. Read more on https://no-ordinary-love.co

[probablynottola]

20 Questions For Fic Writers

Tagged by @beckstraordinary

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

9 completed works, some of them multichapter but nothing tooo long. one series.

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

More than my actual thesis... that i should have been writing... for my actual work... (almost 85k)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Ted Lasso and Tedpendent specifically! But I am a multishipper, so you'll find some TrentBeard in there and some TrentRoy too.

I'd love to write for Midnight Mass but I'm scared of how to write all the religious talk. I thought about writing for OFMD and BBC Ghosts but sort of didn't find the inspiration. There's something about TedTrent that just has that sort of grip on my brain I guess!

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

So... Michelle’s Bisexual Bureau of Investigation seems to be the most liked. I mean, it's basically about Trent being a gay disaster on social media so I think many of us out there can relate (it's actually largely based on something I personally did). It was fun to write and I can sort of see why it's a fun read.

Second, third and fourth place we have 🪄The Smut Fics🪄. It's all private on ao3, so you'll need a profile to access them cause, well.

Fifth place we have Bicycle Day Surprisingly Not About Cycling, which is about divorced dads with a mutual crush doing LSD together. 😇 It was so hard to write but I had one (1) idea and had to stick with it!! Also it was for a challenge so I was extra determined to get it out of my system.

Ironically (in the Alanis sense of the term) some of my personal favourites have the least kudos.

5. Do you respond to comments?

Yes! I love recieving comments and I wanna let people know I really appreciate them. Also, I love commenting on fics and treat the comment section on ao3 as a sort of community-building place. People have been so nice and lovely in the comment sections, it's amazing, really.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

The ending is not angsty, cause I like to give some happiness to my fictional babes, but this one is sort of angsty and has the least explicit happy ending: Can you still edit a written book?. It's about Beard and Trent being sad and miserable about Ted leaving and hooking up about it. I also wrote a short sequel here: A different pace. This is a wip series and it's the most emo / earnest i got with fic writing. I don't mind it tho!

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Inside of me there are two wolves. One wants to make a sex joke out of the question and thus recommending smut, the other wants to link a wholesome future fic written from the Crimmlet's pov. The duality of humankind.

All of my fics have happy endings, so I'll re-interpret the question and I'll link A very special Crimmlet Diary entry for Coming Out day because it has a glimpse on a very cute and happy family future for Ted and Trent together.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Only from my own brain when I feel down about my writing! 🙃

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

YES. I. DO.

More open than the jar of peanut butter on my kitchen counter is a multi-chapter multishipping madness of a fic I thought about orphaning many times and which I keep as a testament of my own progress in writing fics. I am still grateful for having had some help with beta-reading it but it's just such a mess and very self-indulgent. There's some fun sexy parts including potentially problematic dirty talk, public sex, platonically holding your hands with your bff while you both get head... Ops.

I also wrote an alternative chapter for it which became a one shot, called Cowboys are secretly frequently fond of each other, which is about Trent getting horny over Ted singing karaoke.

But I think the only one I really like it's You’re an angel I’m a dog (Or you're a dog and I'm your man). It's a nasty (you've been warned!) PWP pup play fic. I just think those men deserve to be freaks once in a while. I debated over publishing this as anon but my lack of shame won.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

No... but I do think Trent deserves boyfriends from every corner of the multiverse.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

No, don't think so.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No, but I'd love to. My DMs are open!

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

💙Ted and Trent💙. Truly a perfect ship. My losers. I love them.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

The Midnight Mass AU that lives rent free in my head and that most likely will never see the light of day (...wink wink, pun intended).

16. What are your writing strengths?

I don't know! I think I can be quite funny. And sometimes poetic, even accidentally so, in the way non-native speakers sometimes can be, using language in a different way. I think I can also write pining quite well (gay water sign talent).

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I hate, HATE, writing dialogue. I am terrified of it. I am afraid it will sound fake or artificial. I also feel insecure about English not being my first language and it showing in fics, in them sounding weird somehow. Not seeing mistakes etc. But I also lack the impulse control needed to wait for fics to be beat read and I sometimes just post the second is done. Which. Not ideal.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

The bane of my existence. Hell on earth. Help. (I willfully misinterpret this question and answer implying that all dialogue is in another language for me).

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Somewhere, on EFP (Italian fanfic site) there are some original works of mine from AGES AGO, and even (if memory doesn't fail me) some Harry Potter wips that I hope are long gone, since fuck that TERF and her work.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

Probably the last one I wrote for the AFC Richmond discord server bingo challenge. To love flowing in different directions. it's about queer chosen family and love. It has puns about sex toys, drunken confessions, fantastic wing man action, lots of mutual pining. It was fun to write!

No pressure tags: @bookqueen101 @leeofthestone @thistableforone @rootingfordorks @crimmcakes @carduelisfinch @tinylilemrys @jamiepoptart

[hexjulia]

i started putting together my own Paradoxygraphy reading list together but then!! i found this site. there is also a twitter. neither seems to have been updated (no new likes either) since 2022; i really really hope the author is okay and just busy with other projects. (update yes they're probably fine! i took a closer look at the twitter acct and found a linked one :) )

"The primary purpose of the site is to provide online English versions of the paradoxographical texts in one place. When this project was started, only three of these texts had been published in English translations: the pseudo-Aristotelian περὶ θαυμασίων ὰκουσμάτων (De mirabilius auscultationibus – On Marvellous Things Heard); Phlegon’s περὶ θαυμασὶων (On Marvels) and περὶ μακροβίων (On Long-lived Persons), made accessible through a translation with commentary by William Hansen; and the compilation of the anonymous Paradoxographus Vaticanus, with translation and commentary by Jacob Stern. Antigonus' ἱστοριῶν παραδόξων συναγωγή (Compilation of Marvellous Accounts) has been translated with commentary as a PhD thesis by I.R. Ciuca, but this has not been published. More texts are becoming available (see the Core Bibliography), but I will still provide my own translations on this site as not all of the published versions are freely available. My translations are based primarily on Giannini’s 1964 critical edition of the texts. Giannini's Greek text and a framework of cross-references will also eventually be added, but will lag behind the translations themselves, since the latter are more useful to the general reader. It should be stated at the outset that the translations fill the gaps in the literature in the manner of sand-bags rather than dressed stone: they have their origin in reference versions put together as an aid to private study. Nonetheless, in the continuing absence of more scholarly translations of the complete corpus in open-access form, it seems useful to release them into the wild as they are. The first translation undertaken was that of Anigonus, since this is the most substantial of the paradoxographical works yet to be translated into an accessible English text. The remaining texts will be translated in turn, leaving till last the two most easily accessible in existing translations: the Loeb translation of Ps-Aristotle On Marvellous Things Heard is already in the public domain, and Hansen's translation of Phlegon is available in print in a very affordable edition. The site is intended to be a true online resource; thus, in making cross-references, I will link to versions of texts in the public domain rather than necessarily citing the best available (though these will, of course, appear in bibliographic details). So the user will be directed for purposes of comparison to, for example, D’Arcy Thompson’s translation of Aristotle’s History of Animals or to William Smith’s comprehensive but outdated dictionaries of classical geography and biography rather than to the current best resources. Those readers who have access to academic libraries will know where to look for the most up-to-date references, while those who do not will be saved from the frustrating experience of being directed to material that they are unable to see or use. For this reason, as well as the provisional nature of the translations themselves, the site can make no claim to be an authoritative resource; however, I hope that it will prove to be of some use, particularly to readers with little or no Greek—at least, until something better comes along."

[maverick-werewolf]

UPCOMING BOOK - Werewolf Facts: A Guidebook to Folklore vs Pop Culture

You’ve seen the blog series, now it’s time for the book!

That’s right, Werewolf Facts is getting published!

It’s been years since I started my Werewolf Facts series, which has essentially become my branding, and it’s become so popular beyond my wildest dreams that it’s high time I announced my plans to publish a cohesive guidebook to all the facts you need on werewolves.

This book will be essentially what werewolf facts are now: a cohesive section-by-section look at elements of werewolves, comparing historical folklore and mythology from all around the world to those elements in popular culture, how werewolves have changed, and what is and isn’t folkloric about the werewolves we see in things today. I touched upon this some in my thesis book that I published last year, because it’s a very big life mission for me and always has been, but I created Werewolf Facts as a more accessible means of talking about similar topics and issues with a more casual and less academic air and more easily-accessible and categorized information, as opposed to a lot of argument.

The working title of the book is Werewolf Facts: A Guidebook to Folklore vs Popular Culture.

It will be a long time (one or more years) before this book is compiled and completed, but I wanted to announce this because I’m very excited to see it become a reality. I hope you’ll join me for the journey as I compile, expand, and provide the professional citations for all of my existing werewolf facts - plus a whole lot more info - and turn them into a real book you can crack open in your friends’ faces when they doubt the power of your werewolf knowledge.

As of yet, I do not have an approximate release date, but I know very well it will be over a year before this is finalized and published. 2022 is a year of fiction for me (I will be publishing several fiction books, so keep an eye out for those as well), but after that, I’m going to go back to non-fiction and really get to work on putting my werewolf facts out there.

Give me a follow and stay tuned for more updates!

[katytheinspiredworkaholic]

✏, hotchreid, first kiss 🥺

You don’t just get a blurb honey, you get the whole damn night. I’ll eventually start writing blurbs and not full-length oneshots for these asks, but Cee (my love my family my favorite always) is who got me back into CM in the first place so yours was always going to be the long, fleshed out version. I love you so my dear. 

((P.S. Yes I’m still working on the 200follower asks xD I’m so sorry life got in the way and I discovered hcs but I’m being responsible and finishing all of these now I promise!!!))

Personal plot bunny: Hotch invites Reid over to help with a research paper/with Jack and Reid gets to see his boss all domestic and soft, and in turn Spencer just kind of fits in his home seamlessly and Hotch kisses him as he leaves.

Word Count: 3107

--

It’s a perfectly ordinary day in late November when Hotch opens his apartment door to Reid standing there in the clothes he’d worn to work earlier that day. Satchel over his shoulder, wrapped in jacket and scarf, and giving him a small quirk of a smile in greeting -- still very obviously thrown off kilter that Hotch had invited him over in the first place. 

When Reid said he’d lend him a hand on his most recent research paper, the younger agent had probably expected them to do it at the office. Interviews and research were all a big part of having a Behavioral Science subunit at the FBI, and published papers were a requirement from all BAU members to aid in this endeavor. Every team had to keep a steady output of resources and research studies going just to keep funding for the department afloat. He may be Unit Chief, but Hotch was no exception to these requirements, even with as much work as he has to put in on the regular. 

Usually, he can do his research and piece together papers in between his daily paperwork. But this week Jess is sick with a stomach flu, and Jack hadn’t gotten to spend time with Hotch in what feels like a month. So the easiest solution was obviously to invite Reid to have dinner with them at his home, entertain him while he read over the drafted paper and helped Hotch out. 

Obviously. 

The only reasonable option, really. 

“Thanks for coming, Reid,” Hotch greets back with a softened expression as he looks him up and down. “Did you even go home first?” The very first thing Hotch always does is change out of his suit when he gets home, shedding that armour as best he can to switch mindsets between Agent Hotchner of the FBI, and Aaron Hotchner the ever-stressed-out single dad. That evening donning worn jeans and a heather grey Henley to better accommodate himself within the space. 

“Oh -- no, I didn’t see much point,” Reid shrugs, then motioning to his satchel which is now filled with books that weren’t there when he’d left the bull pen a couple hours before. “I stopped by the law library in Georgetown and found a few more references, just in case you were using the Favero citations instead of Weston and I don’t have all of those read yet -- or I didn’t. I do now. But I still brought them--”

Hotch smiles, a real smile -- small as it is, but no less fond of Reid going out of his way to help him. But before he can thank him again Jack’s socked feet come thundering down the hall behind him. 

“Dr. Spencer! Dr. Spencer! Dr. Spencer!” And he’s slipping past Hotch, smooth and fluid as water, attaching himself to Reid’s legs and waist in a hug with a big smile that looks so much like Aaron’s own. When he’d been younger, only about three or four years old, Jack had been deathly scared of Doctor’s visits. It had been Reid’s idea to have Jack start calling him ‘Dr. Spencer’ to help alleviate some of that fear, associating the moniker with his non-threatening and familiar face. Reid had been much younger then, too, and that had helped the tactic work like a charm. Haley had been over the moon when his reverse psychology worked out so well. 

“Jack! Woah, you got taller!” Reid’s whole demeanor changes. A little more animated, more comfortable, even -- and Hotch could remember a time when Reid hadn’t even wanted to hold a child for fear of the interaction. Now, he was always the first to talk to one if JJ didn’t beat him to it. “How’ve you been?” “Good!” Jack says excitedly, barreling over the small talk in ways only children can. “Dad says you’re going to help him with his homework, can you help me with mine too?!”

Reid smiles even wider and chances a glance at Hotch that he feels in his chest. “You bet, I love helping with homework.”

Jack just scrunches his nose up at him. “Why?”

“Because it’s fun.”

“Homework isn’t fun.”

“Well, maybe you’ve been doing it wrong.” 

“Let’s let Dr. Reid in from the hallway,” Hotch interrupts with a laugh, herding his son and the younger agent inside. “Jack, go get your homework and you can do it at the table,” Hotch says as he takes Reid’s coat and watches him kick off his shoes by the door. Mismatched socks prominent against the hardwood floors. Making himself at home, shedding some of the layers and getting comfortable in the space much like Aaron does every day after work. “Hope you like spaghetti. It won’t be as good as Rossi’s.”

“Who doesn’t love spaghetti,” Spencer grins with a soft laugh. “Rossi’s is almost too fancy for me, anyway.”

“A man of simple tastes,” Hotch teases him.

“I’m easily impressed.”

“Lucky me.” 

It slips out, the low, comfortable banter, and Reid’s eyes are alight and Aaron feels himself smiling enough his dimples show, and he leads the way to the kitchen where dinner is already in the works on the stove. Filling the small condo with the smell of tomato sauce and garlic. 

-

Jack and Reid set up at the kitchen bartop where they can watch Hotch finish cooking and stay within reach of conversation. It doesn’t take long for Hotch to finish making dinner, or for Jack to finish his homework spurred on by Reid’s strange enthusiasm for math problems. With how much time they spend talking about psychology and sociology (and sometimes even philosophy) Hotch always forgets one of Reid’s Ph.D.’s is in mathematics. 

“Numbers just make sense,” he explains, when Hotch brings it up while drizzling olive oil on the drained pasta on the stove. “There’s always a right answer and the rest are wrong. It’s comforting, to an extent, but predictable -- that’s why I shifted focus from sciences to humanities. There’s no right or wrong answers in philosophy, it’s all argumentative. Always evolving. I prefer that, it’s no fun having all the answers.” 

And coming from someone who does always have all the right answers, that must mean something profound to the younger man. One conversation outside the walls of the BAU and Hotch already feels like he understands Reid more than he has in a long time.

--

Dinner runs so smoothly it’s as if Reid is always there for it. Jack even finishes all of his food and helps with the dishes before Hotch has to ask him to. Making the two men exchange a glance and Hotch ask, “You charge by the hour?” and Reid laughs into his water glass in reply. They end up talking a bit about the paper Hotch has been working on, along with about a dozen other things Reid launches into in side tangents -- from the books he’d read during his brief visit to Georgetown that afternoon, to his most recent philosophical debate he had with his doctoral advisor about his thesis paper he’ll have to submit at the end of next month. 

“Do you need time to piece it together? I didn’t know you were that close to your next Ph.D.”

“Oh, no, it’s fine,” Reid waves him off. “I just need a weekend where we are actually in town and not on a case, and I’ll get it finished.” 

“I’ve been working on this paper for the past six months,” Hotch all but balks in disbelief. “How can you write a Ph.D. dissertation in a weekend?”

“Well, I’m not the Unit Chief or a single parent,” Reid points out with a gentle grin, and Hotch feels one pulling at his own lips as well. “But it’s mostly written anyway, just all up here.” He points to his head, and Hotch bets he could recite the paper verbatim with what he writes up when he has the time.

“You could always write it on the jet,” Hotch says. 

“I do,” Reid smirks, and Hotch can’t help but roll his eyes. “In my head, someone is usually taking up the table with a headstart on paperwork.”

“I think they can be talked into relinquishing some table top space,” Hotch says, until Reid gives him a look. “Oh, you mean me?”

“You spread out everything to keep it organized in piles.” 

“I’d share with you.”

“You told Rossi to use the couch last week when he wanted to answer emails,” Reid says with a barely contained laugh.

“Yeah, well, he’s not you,” Hotch admits before he can take it back, and Reid almost answers -- mouth open and everything -- when Jack comes back and is all but begging ‘Dr. Spencer’ to help him with his science fair project he hadn’t even decided on. 

--

The rest of the evening ends up with the three holed up in Hotch’s office, Reid surrounded by Law books and reading material he hasn’t gotten to sift through before, Hotch with his drafted paper printed out for Reid’s ease of access, and Jack with his science textbook and a notebook already talking Reid’s ear off about a science project for the spring. 

But once the time starts to tip into the later hours of the night, Hotch tells Jack to get ready for bed and say goodnight to Dr. Reid. 

“Goodnight, Dr. Spencer. Thanks for your help,” Jack says politely, ingrained in him by his father and Reid smiles a little too bright and soft at the same time at how sweet it is he tries to be good for company.

“You know, Jack, you can just call me Spencer if you’d like,” he says, knowing that the older boy has already outgrown his fear of the doctor and the reverse psychology is no longer needed.

Jack looks a little confused for a moment. “Dad doesn’t.” 

“Well, your dad can, too -- if he wants,” Reid says, looking to Hotch and they share a look he once again can feel in his chest. Watching the whole interaction with a carefully guarded expression, but it melts under Reid’s glance and he isn’t quite sure what is there anymore. But whatever it is, it makes Reid smile softly at him.

“Okay, goodnight Spencer,” Jack interrupts their moment, and hugs Reid around the neck from where he’s sitting cross-legged on the floor. It jostles the younger man, and Hotch smiles wide and ducks his head down to hide it. But Reid hugs Hotch’s son back, and tells him goodnight, as well. “You’ll come back, right?”

“Of course, I’d love to,” Reid tells him, and -- satisfied -- Jack goes off to brush his teeth, leaving the two in a lull of heavy silence. “Sorry, I think I just invited myself over, some time.”

“You’re welcome anytime.” And he means that, knows Reid knows that as he looks at him a little more soundly than before. “Not just for work.” If that needed to be said. 

And if Reid’s face flushes a little darker in the low lighting, Hotch doesn’t mention. No matter how much he can’t seem to look away.

Reid looks over his entire paper while Hotch tucks Jack into bed, and is already making notes on it at his desk when the man returns. The next hour rolls into two, and Hotch drags another chair in from the kitchen so they can share his desk and work through bullet points on the paper but… it was pretty much done, from the start. Even Reid’s edits didn’t take them long. After a while they dissolve into just talking, discussions and anecdotes and sitting maybe a little too close and laughing so much and so loud sometimes they have to quiet themselves so they don’t wake Jack down the hall. 

It’s almost 10:30 by the time they resurface from each other, before Hotch realizes Reid probably needs to go home because they both have to be at work bright and early. But this was… this was the best night he’s had in a long, long time, and he wants to do it again. Soon. More than soon. More than once. He thinks about all of this as he follows Reid to the front door and helps him gather the rest of his things. 

“We should do this again, sometime,” Hotch mentions, hands in his pockets and trying to be more cool about this than he feels.

“I’d like that, I had a lot of fun tonight,” Reid answers, standing up from tying his shoes and giving him that bright, wide smile he doesn’t always feel comfortable enough to allow. It never fails to stall Hotch in his tracks, staring a little too long at his mouth than he should be. 

“What if, next time, it’s just us? And no Jack?” he continues, elaboration just in case Reid doesn’t grasp what he’s asking. Reid is watching him with this look as if he’s unsure he heard correctly, and Hotch is nothing if not patient.

“I’d… I’d be okay with that,” Reid answers, slowly as he weighs some unseen options and gauges Hotch’s facial expressions to the most minute detail.

“Good. How about Saturday?”

He can see the moment it all clicks into place.

“...Are you asking me on a date?” Reid asks, a little winded. 

“If that’s alright with you,” Hotch says with a half smile. Once again sounding more confident than he should in the face of how Reid’s eyes start to dart around and he licks his lips nervously.

“I don’t know how -- how good I am with dates.” There’s a story behind that, and Hotch wants to know it, but he does his best to press Reid gently. Because… he’s been holding off asking the younger man for a long time, now, but after tonight he gets the feeling that he might not have needed to be so hesitant, after all. 

“Oh?”

“Just -- the ritual of it all always throws me off. Dressing up and going out, and making conversation over dinner while trying to eat and maintain the other’s attention, and then keeping it all going if you manage to do that I just don’t always do so well one-on-one and --”

“Reid.” He pauses, then -- “Spencer.” And that stalls his stream of thought to words, catching Spencer’s attention and snagging it in the best way. “...we just did all of that. And it was great.” Hotch knows his own expression has softened around the edges over the course of the night, smiles easier to hold, eyes more expressive, and Spencer takes in every change and nuance with a well-practice eye and is… very obviously stunned by what he finds. “So -- I’d like to do it again. Saturday?” 

Shocked, eyes a little wide, breath lost to the wind, Spencer waits a beat too long to answer. Enough to make Hotch nervous, before he answers in a sound that could have been a whisper if it had been quieter. A slight crack to it that betrays his emotion.

“Okay.” 

Hotch gets a turn to be stunned, because he thought this had been about to take a very different turn. “Okay?”

“Yeah.”

“--Okay.”

Intelligent men that they were, that was the extent of the conversation, and then Reid is smiling that bright, sunshine laced smile and Hotch is trying to contain his own and -- Reid still needs to go home. So, biting his lip, Reid turns as if to leave -- is just about out the door when he stops and turns back so quick he almost runs into Hotch on the threshold. 

“So… technically, that means this was our first date, then. Right?” he looks so goddamn hopeful, and like he has something further to add, that Hotch smiles outright and this time doesn’t bother hiding it.

“Technically, yes.” He supposes it was. And it really had been… a great night. Not a bad first date, at all.

Reid takes far too long trying to string together words after that. Keeps looking to Hotch then away to gather his thoughts, then back again as if in search of something; and it’s after about the third time that Hotch realizes what he’s getting at. What he’s trying to find a way to ask. 

It hits him so silent and hard it about knocks the wind out of him.

Oh.

He can do that.

Hotch steps closer, about the same time Spencer opens his mouth like he’s finally figured out the right combination of words within the range of the English language to form a coherent sentence, and they all die on his tongue the moment Hotch guides him back with a hand on his hip. He’s done it before, gentle leading when Reid strays the wrong way or needs to be shifted in a crowded room on cases, and this time is just as easy and no different.

Except this time, Hotch isn’t maneuvering them to get past him. This time, he presses Spencer’s spine to the doorframe and leans in to capture his lips with his own. Right there, in the open doorway.

Hotch kisses him, and it’s perfect.

The gentle slide of lips is over before either know it, lasts longer than his racing heart can measure, and before Hotch can decide his next move Spencer tilts in closer and kisses him back, slow and methodical and Hotch feels that. Feels it the way he’s felt every moment they had and shared the whole night. His free hand finds that sharp jaw framed in messy curls getting longer all over again, and Spencer doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands beyond grasp at Hotch’s shirt at his sides and then -- 

Then Hotch pulls back enough that he can nudge his nose against Spencer’s carefully, a punctuation that ends the kiss soft and apologetic. Silently says that’s all they can do tonight. That there’s more, awaiting them, but that… 

That had been one hell of a good first kiss.

“See you in the morning, Spencer.” 

For once, Dr. Spencer Reid is speechless in an entirely new way, and he merely nods with lips still parted and a little darker from the kiss. From kissing him, and Hotch knows he stares more than he should, but that’s been a frequent occurrence lately. It’s just getting harder and harder to turn away, watch Reid -- Spencer -- smile at him in that quiet way only ever directed at him, and then walk away. But he lets it happen, feels every step even as he shuts the door behind him.

Because Hotch will see Spencer tomorrow.

And, one day, maybe he won’t have to watch him walk away at all. 

[plaidbooks]

Dark Secrets: New Beginnings

A/N: This is the first installment of the Vampire!Sonny x reader fic. This chapter is only setting the stage; next chapter will be more about the vampire aspect, I promise! This covers the Bookstore square in @adarafaelbarba​ moodboard bingo!

Tags: mentions of sex

Words: 2233

Taglist: @witches-unruly-heart​  @beccabarba​  @thatesqcrush​ @itsjustmyfantasyroom​ @permanentlydizzy​ @ben-c-group-therapy​  @infiniteoddball​ @glowingmess​ @whimsicallymad​ @lv7867​ @storiesofsvu​ @cycat4077​ @alwaysachorusgirl​  @glimmerglittergirl​ @joanofarkansass​ @caracalwithchips​ @berniesilvas​​  @reading--mermaid​  @averyhotchner​  @mrsrafaelbarba​ @detective-giggles​ @crowleysqueenofhell​ @dreamlover31​

You spent hours on the computer compiling resources for your thesis. After years and years, you were finally getting your Ph. D in History…if you could just finish this damned thesis. List complete, you headed to the local bookstore; you always checked them first before going online, since they were cheaper.

You were intimately familiar with the bookstore; you went there often. And you had double and triple checked online that they had these books. You had a small basket, four books in it, while you looked for the fifth and final book you needed. But its spot on the shelf stood vacant; a perfect hole where it should be.

Shaking your head slightly, you started to search the shelves around it, in case someone didn’t put it back correctly. But you were coming up empty. And this was the book that you needed to buy here; the shop had it for $20, while online was a couple hundred.

“Looking for Making the Revolution: America, 1763-1791?” a voice asked from behind you.

You turned to find a pale, lanky, attractive man, his hair slicked back, his bright blue eyes watching you intently. He was sitting at a table, open book in his hand. Seeing the cover, you knew it was the book you needed.

“I am, yes. Were you intending to buy it?” you questioned, praying he said no.

The corner of his mouth twitched upwards. “I was debating it. Why, do you want it?”

“I do; I need it for my thesis. If you let me buy it, I promise to give it to you when I’m done, free of charge.” At this point, you were just desperate for that book.

His eyes seemed to bore into you as he thought about your proposal. Finally, he smiled, saying, “I think that’s a noble reason to buy this book. You’ve got yourself a deal.” He held the book out to you, and you gently took it from him.

“Thank you so, so much. You don’t know how much this helps me,” you said, placing the book in your basket.

He held a hand up. “No problem. There’s a lot of inaccuracies in that text, anyways.”

You blinked in surprise. “There are?”

“Oh yes. For one, it perpetuates the idea that Christopher Columbus came here to ‘escape tyranny’ in England, which is a load of crap, if I’m honest.”

You took a step closer to the strange man. “Do you have a source on that?”

He thought about it, chuckling to himself about something, before he answered. “Well, I am in the process of transcribing a manuscript from the man himself. But it hasn’t been published quite yet, so I doubt it’ll be of use to you for your thesis.”

“Wh—who are you?” you asked in awe.

He held a hand out for you to shake. “Dr. Dominick Carisi Jr., but you, my dear, may call me Sonny.”

Your eyes widened in shock, and you quickly shook his hand. “Dr. Carisi? Oh my god! I’ve been reading your work in class; I loved your thesis on slavery!” You had never seen a picture of him, had no idea he was so young; he was about your age. You had expected him to be an old man, at least in his 80s, not this attractive man in his early 40s at most.

He barked out a laugh. “You’ve really been reading my work? I’m flattered. I didn’t think anyone put stock in my texts.” While it was true he was a world renowned historian, his work was seen as highly controversial. He had a knack for citing manuscripts and journal entries, things that no one had discovered before he brought them to the limelight. But every authenticator had proven that the writings were from the time period. And that was enough for you.

“Please, sir, er, Doctor. Could I spend a day with you, pick your brain for my thesis? I’ll—I’ll buy the drinks and food, just…please?” you asked, suddenly embarrassed.

But Sonny’s smile grew. “I’d like that. But only if you call me Sonny. If you’re doing your thesis, then I assume you’re almost done with your doctorate?” You nodded, and he continued, “then in my eyes, we’re equals, and you don’t need to call me ‘Doctor’.”

Your heart beat a little faster when he called you equals. “Thank you so much Doc—Sonny. Does the coffeeshop next door work for you?”

“It does. And I’m free all week, whenever you need me.”

“How about tomorrow morning? I don’t have class until 3pm; I hope that’s enough time to chat.”

He gave you that heart melting smile once more. “Sounds good. See you tomorrow.” Then he took your hand and kissed it. As he walked away, your knees felt weak. You were infatuated within five minutes of talking to him.

 **********************

Sonny turned out to be an incredible source of information. Plus, he brought books that he thought would help you, letting you borrow what you needed. And, like yesterday, you found yourself completely enamored with him. He didn’t have a ring on, so you assumed him unmarried, but you didn’t know how to bring it up without being weird. Sure, you were close in age, but he was done with school, became a published historian, while you were still finishing up college. But he never talked down to you; on the contrary, he seemed highly interested in what you had to say.

Like before, you had been nervous—star-struck, really—when you met up with him. But as the hours ticked by, you found yourself more and more comfortable with him. He was highly intelligent, especially about history. You had found it hard to find someone who was as interested in history as you were, without sounding like a pretentious asshole. But Sonny checked all those boxes for you. You were just unsure if he felt the same.

“When is your thesis due? I feel like it’s still early in the academic year,” he asked.

You cleared your throat. “It is; I still have months and months to work on it. It’s due next year, but I want it to be perfect, you know?”

“I do, I do,” he agreed, nodding. “I hope you’re taking some time off, though, as well. Don’t let this paper take up your whole life; you should be out, appreciating everything this life has to give you. Don’t get stuck in the past.”

You looked at the table, letting his words soak in. It was like he had looked right through you; for the past month or so, you’ve been deep in your studies. You had friends, sure, but you hardly saw them. And you’d given up on dating until after you finished college, anyways. But maybe Sonny was on to something. You should seize the day, capture every moment in memories.

“Would you like to get dinner with me, Sonny?” you asked, trying to sound as confident as possible.

It was his turn to look surprised. “Oh, uh…sorry, you caught me off guard. In all my years, no one has ever asked me out; it’s usually the other way around.”

You chuckled. “You’re not much older than me,” you joked, and he smiled. “Maybe it’s time for something new. For both of us…that is, if you want?”

“I’d love to go to dinner with you,” he said, and your heart soared.

When it was getting close to 3, you bade him goodbye, and he told you he would be eagerly awaiting your dinner date. You felt your face heat at the words, and you swore your face never cooled off for the rest of the day.

*********************

That date with Doctor Carisi turned out to be the best decision of your life. You both felt the spark between you, and you said yes to a second date before he even finished asking. Now, it’s been ten months of loving bliss between you. You completed your thesis, got your doctorate, and Sonny couldn’t be more proud of you. And you learned that while he was a historian, he was also a detective. He said he wanted to help people now, by giving them both access to history material, and by putting absolute monsters away.

But there were little things with him, quirks, really. Though you’ve been to his place, and he yours, he never made a move to get you into bed. Sure, you’ve kissed—and sometimes this escalated to a full-blown make out session—but he didn’t seem interested in sex.

He also didn’t seem interested in moving in together…or a future at all, really. Whenever you tried to bring it up, he would just nod along with you, agreeing to whatever you said and adding on a lot of “one day’s”.

He had no family for you to meet, and yours didn’t live close. You noticed he also didn’t eat or drink much; he loved to make you dinner, and he would say that he snacked while cooking. And then, about once a month, he’d leave for 3-4 days, claiming he wanted to be alone to work on the manuscript.

You gave him as much space as he asked for, and though you still loved him dearly, you were starting to wonder if there was something wrong with you…or if it was just something he was having issues with.

“Hey Sonny?” you asked one day while snuggling on the couch at your place. “Are we okay?”

He glanced down at you. “As far as I know, yes? Why, something on your mind?”

“Well…I was just thinking about how we’ve been together almost a year and we still haven’t moved in together,” you tried.

He looked to the ceiling as he thought. “Wow, I guess it really has been that long now, hasn’t it? I feel like I just met you yesterday.”

“So, are we not connecting on a deeper level, then?” You sat up, turning to look at him.

His bright blue eyes found yours, and his expression softened. “That’s not what I meant; I’m sorry it came out like that. Time just…it moves so quickly is all. Look, I love you, I just—I don’t think I’m quite ready to make that jump yet. I’m sorry; I know this must be frustrating, but I promise you one day, I’ll…I’ll be ready.”

You nodded. “I love you too, I just….”

“What is it? You can tell me—”

“Why won’t you sleep with me?” you asked softly. His eyes widened, and you quickly added, “are—are you ace? It’s fine if you are, I understand, but I just…I feel like it’s something wrong with me, and I—”

He cupped your face in his hands, looking deeply in your eyes. “No, it’s nothing wrong with you, I promise. I’m just…I’m not ready—”

“I have urges, Sonny. And I love you, want to wait for you. But it’s been almost a year. I—I don’t believe a healthy relationship is built on sex, but well, it’d be nice to have every once in a while….”

He sighed, releasing your face. “It’s not that I don’t want to, because I do. I just want to be absolutely sure I’m ready. Call it shyness, or embarrassment, whatever you want. But I want to make sure that—that you’re the one for me, first, okay?”

You opened your mouth to respond when his phone rang. He gave you an apologetic look before answering with his stiff, “Carisi.” He mostly listened, making little noises of affirmation, before hanging up.

“I’m so, so sorry, doll. But the department needs me. I swear we’ll talk about this once I’m home, okay?” he promised, getting to his feet.

He grabbed his jacket, heading for the front door. “Sonny wait,” you called, and he stopped, looking back at you. You hurried over to him, looking up into those beautiful blues. “Be careful.”

He smiled softly. “I will be; promise.” He gave you a kiss, and then he was gone.

 ********************

You didn’t hear from Sonny again until the next morning, when he showed up on your front door, breakfast in hand. He apologized for leaving you last night during that important talk, but you brushed it off, telling him it was fine.

“That’s not all I have to apologize for,” he said, looking anywhere but at you. “I’m…going undercover. I’ll be gone for three months.”

Your face fell, and you put your fingers under his chin, tilting his face until he looked at you. “Three months?” you breathed.

“I’m sorry; I tried to decline, but the Lieutenant gave her orders. I leave in an hour.”

“Three months…” you said again, worry blossoming in your chest. This was the longest he’d be gone since you started dating.

He nodded. “I’ll text or call when I can, but don’t expect it; it may be too dangerous.”

You’d heard enough; you lifted onto your tiptoes, kissing him desperately. Your hands went to his hair, and you pulled him close, all your fear and trepidation in the kiss. He froze for only a moment before he was kissing you back, hands on your hips. He clutched you tightly enough that you gasped in pain, and he pulled away, releasing you.

“I’m sorry. I love you,” he muttered before turning to leave, but you had a suspicion that he wasn’t apologizing for leaving.

[insomniacowl]

Neon Genesis Evangelion analysis chapter 21: Kaji Ryoji Lies and Silence

Hi, it's been a while. I'm sorry I disappeared for 5 months while working on the graduate thesis. From now on I will try to upload once every two weeks at 7pm on Saturday.

From here on out, the analysis will focus on the important characters of Evangelion with 15 chapters left to go. Thank you for your patience so far and I hope you all stick with me for the remainder of the ride.

Also, I realized that Tumblr now allows maximum of 10 photos a post, so I am thinking of moving or co-posting on a different site. I'll update all of you when that happens

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Sakiel: The third angel, the first real opponent of Nerv. A portion of voice recordings of the battle attained

Shamel: The fourth angel, visual data gathered and backed up. Will send recordings of Unit – 01's battle against it.

Ramiel: The fifth angel, portion of remains attained and analyzed. Will send information about AT field.

Gagiel: The sixth angel, visual confirmation. Information attained from the UN. Will send information along with Unit – 02's battle data.

Israphel: The seventh angel, visual confirmation, will send data through channel 11-B. Attained sample of material composition

Sandalphon: The eight angels, confirmation through a still image. No further information

Matarael: The ninth angel, visual confirmation. Used the blackout to obtain a sample.

Sahaquel: The tenth angel, photographed attained. Will enter into the database through channel 57-F

Ireul: The eleventh angel, visual confirmation, data erased by Nerv. Will retrieve physically and send them over.

Reriel: The twelfth angel. Unit – 01 went berserk again

Bardiel: The thirteenth angel. Data attained from Mitsushiro facility

Zeruel: The fourteenth angel, visual confirmation. Unit – 01 went berserk. Will send video data.

---Excerpt from "The memos of Kaji Ryoji."

"2015: the Last Year of Ryoji Kaji" was written by the head scriptwriter Yamaguchi Hiroshi and was published in 1997. It contains Kaji's observations of various Incidents and set pieces in the series. It is not anything too particular; however, the fresh perspective Kaji's writings provide makes this an essential material in our understanding of the world of Evangelion. The excerpts mentioned above are essential proof of Kaji's identity as a spy and prove that the blackout during Matarael's attack was deliberately caused by Kaji and Seele.

Furthermore, it explains how Seele had attained information regarding Iruel's existence and its attack on the Nerv facility, even when Nerv/Gendou tried to hide this fact.

The memo above seems to be the observation of Nerv and the angels made by Kaji. While Kaji officially belongs under the Japanese government's command, as we have covered in Chapter 17, the Japanese government is unaware of Lilith's existence. It, therefore, has a different numbering system from Nerv and Seele.

Adding on to this point, the public in the world of Evangelion is unaware of the existence of Lilith. High-ranking Nerv officials such as Misato are aware of Lilith only as of the cause of the First impact and no more. Thus we can deduce that Kaji made the memo while he was on Seele's side, considering that he knew about Lilith in detail. But Kaji never once wholly and permanently sided with any organization. Like how his main character trait is a "flirt," he is never loyal to any organization, just like how he is perceived to be with women; two, perhaps three-timing.

Kaji: You've lost weight

Ritsuko: Are you flirting with me? Stop. A scary-looking friend is watching.

However, it is wrong to say that Kaji was a cheater by any means. His heart belonged only to Misato, and she was the one he trusted the most. His flirting with Ritsuko and Maya made others view him as a superficial person and did not take him too seriously. This got some eyes off his back. This would have given him more freedom to act in achieving his goals (but also, it might have been fun to get Misato jealous in a playful way).

Kaji: Not like you are going to repay that. I added some dummy information in case.

Now, let's take a closer look at Kaji's actions throughout the series. He makes his first appearance in episode 7, having a phone call with Gendou discussing the Jet Alone (JA) program. Because JA was developed as a competition to the Evangelion projects, its implementation would have caused Nerv's authority to weaken and jeopardize the HIP. Making it a top priority to prevent its further development. Minus the actions taken by Misato, the proceedings of JA going berserk and being miraculously fixed were likely a scenario manufactured by Gendou.

Kaji: it has been restored up to this point. It is frozen in a thick layer of bayclade, but it is alive.

The key to the HIP

We first see his face in episode 8 on a new mission: Transporting Adam and Unit – 02 to Nerv headquarters. He likely attained Adam's body in Germany, stealing it under the nose of our dear old friend Keel. The question is, how did he do it? We will never know the details, but we know that Seele's projects that required Adam were complete at this point (Creation of Evas and Tabris). They may not have had much use or concern for the leftovers. Since Adam's fetal form is small, it would have been easy to swap the original for a copy before he left. Of course, this would not have gone unnoticed for long, and it did not.

In episode 10, we see Kaji talking to an unknown woman about the initiation of protocol A-17. It appears to be a measure that limits and shrinks Nerv's authority and freeze their funds. Just like the JA plan, it shows the hostility of the Japanese government towards Nerv. Because Nerv and Seele are still on agreeable terms, Kaji is seen as a double spy between Nerv and the Japanese government. But in episode 11, the Nerv blackout happens. With clues spread over the episode pointing to Kaji as the culprit with Seele's support, we begin to see him in action as a triple spy.

The reason why Kaji undertook such a dangerous role is to get closer to the "Truth." Upon realizing the Japanese government's imbecility, he begins to walk the rope between Nerv and Seele to seek the truth.

Kaji: Is that an angel? This is not the time to be doing my job

We first see him in action in episode 13 while the HQ was distracted defending against Ireul. Here we see him collecting information around the central dogma. While doing so, Kaji notices the angel while passing through the passage in level 28 and hears the announcement that the "Sigma unit (the Eva simulation chamber) will be shut off in 60 seconds. Bearing in mind that Magi is located in level 40 and that a lower number refers to a deeper level, we can see that Kaji has already infiltrated deep into the complex. As central dogma and Lilith were information that Nerv and Seele wanted to keep secret, this infiltration was likely Kaji's initiative. With the same logic, we can also say that the information he gathered regarding the Marduk institution in episode 15 was his individual action as well.

Later in the episode, he is found by Misato as he was trying to infiltrate the central dogma. But Kaji does not seem surprised by this fact and opens the door without hesitation. What they see on the other side was the white giant Lilith. However, we hear Kaji refer to it as Adam. Why? There are two possible explanations for this. First is that Kaji knew that it was Lilith but deliberately lied to Misato.

This explanation is weak at best. It contradicts the characterization of Misato being the only woman Kaji trusts. Further, it contradicts the portrayal of their relationship in the following episodes. It is also difficult to explain why Kaji would distinguish between Adam and Lilith in his explanation to Misato.

The other possible explanation is that Kaji believed this to be Adam, and I am personally more convinced of this explanation. As we have seen in an earlier episode, Kaji passed on the Adam sample to Gendou. Both were fully aware of what he has gotten into his hands (puns perhaps intended). Then why did Kaji believe that it was Adam in central dogma? He likely at this moment believed that the white giant was the manifestation of the Adam sample that he stole. Although it looked different, Kaji, who saw Sandalphon transforming at an unbelievable speed, would have drawn parallels.

Kaji's misunderstanding is also supported by the secretiveness of the existence of Lilith. The information being top-secret accessible only to the Gendou and Seele. Even when Gendou referred to Adam as "The first man," it could be him trying to misdirect Kaji on the identity of the white giants. Although the reason for this secretiveness is not apparent, we know that Seele was ashamed of their status as the descendent of Lilith, this being the reason for conducting the ritual of atonement.

The HIP Seele type is, in essence, based on the feeling of perceived inferiority against the Adam-based angels. Thus it can explain away why Seele would want to keep the project a secret from the public. Even without such reasons, Lilith's identity as a being in the same caliber of existence as Adam might have created a need to keep her locked away and kept secret. This to minimize unnecessary friction and interference in their plans by other organizations.

To add on, let's touch on the strange phrase written on the container of Adam's sample that Kaji brought over. "Who is you? He is living. Why?". There are no explanations given regarding this phrase. It is likely written by one of the researchers in the german facility that was studying this sample. Being the only remaining Adam sample that seemed alive with the absence of a soul, it would have been baffling to look at it.

This lie about the identity of Adam and Lilith is a recurring motif. In the earlier chapters discussing the angels' identity, I have mentioned that due to the enemies being the "Angels," Evangelion fundamentally rejects the narrative of Good triumphing over Evil. During one of the sequences in the opening song, there is a frame reading "ADAM," and it is unique as it is the only one that is black words with a white background. This likely foreshadows the fact that information regarding Adam that we receive is different, thus, at some level, inaccurate or lies.

Either way, the truth of the White giant's identity is revealed near the end of the series. The audiences are made aware of it through the exposition of Tabris. For Miasto, she receives this truth from Kaji along with all the information and data he collected by himself. Through this 'Truth,' we can infer what Kaji wanted to protect and what his 'will' was. This 'will' to live is passed on from Kaji to Misato, from Misato to Shinji, and influences his decision during the end of Evangelion.

Kaji: Shinji, the only thing that I can do right now is to water these plants. And as much, there are things that only you are capable of accomplishing right now. No one is going to force you to do anything. Think for yourself. Decide for yourself. Determined what it is that you need to do right now.

So that you will not end up in regrets.

The alliance between Gendou and Seele began to show signs of schisms in episode 19 after Unit – 01 consumed Zeruel's S2 engine and became a being as though god. This was more in line with the plan of Gendou, who sought for the creation of a new god, the material conditions misaligning from Seele's plans of atoning for the sin of Lilith. Kaji was very much likely to have been aware of all this. When the schisms showed, Kaji had to choose the side he had to stand with. He seemed to have concluded that Nerv is closer to the truth that he wanted. Therefore he ended up helping Gendou achieve his version of the HIP.

I say this as Kaji played a crucial role in convincing Shinji to return and pilot Unit – 01 during the battle against Zeruel. Afterward, Kaji released Fuyutsuki, who was kidnapped by Seele, and began his pro-Nerv strategies. This leads up to his assassination by Seele's orders. To borrow Seele's words, "The bell around Gendou's neck lost its will to ring."

Fuyutsuki: Is that you Kaji?

Kaji: It's been a while.

Fuyutsuki: You will lose your life if you do this.

Kaji: I am just heading towards the truth that I believe in.

Let me talk a little more about his death. In episode 21 of the renewal version, an additional line was spoken: "They found out that I handed over Adam's sample to Gendou." This draws a line connecting the importance of Adam's Sample in Kaji's death and its role in the HIP.

Regarding the Assassin identity, due to the scene of Misato's grief being placed right after Kaji's death in "Death and Rebirth," some believed that it was Misato killed Kaji. One of the rare things that Anno came forward and cleared up was that Kaji's assassin was an unnamed individual that we do not see ever on screen. An additional argument made by those suspecting Misato as the culprit claims the evidence of interlaying of Misato's apartment door label right after the gunshot. This was later removed in the renewal version.

Kaji: No one can understand another person to a full extend. They can't even understand themselves.

But that is why people try their best to understand the other.

And that is what makes life such a fun experience.

Many of what Kaji says touches on the critical messages of Evangelion. It is also why I am starting off this section, the analysis of characters with Kaji; understanding Kaji is integral to understanding the series as a whole. He loved Misato but could not tell her his true feelings during the happiness of reunion after eight years. This was likely the greatest form of love that he could have given her, knowing that he is close to his death. The reason for Kaji's obsession with the truth and the sufferings he experienced in the past is fleshed out in detail in the comics version. He was orphaned as a consequence of the Second impact. After a failed attempt at stealing food from the military base, all of his friends were killed, leaving him alive and questioning the reason for their suffering and death. Kaji sought to avenge his friends by understanding why the Second impact happened.

But even without going into the details, we can try and understand the pain and suffering he went through as the generation living after the Second impact. Yet, his general attitude towards life and his ability to call living to be fun is his unique charm. He even managed to have a smile on his face while looking at the face of his death. His smile was not a forced fake that he made to mask his fear of death; he has probably smiled from the bottom of his heart.

Yo. You're late

Because he would have already reached the truth that he worked so part to attain.

TBC Chapter 22: Katsuragi Misato Part 1 With a cross in hand

[bao3bei4]

i have basically covered the material in this post several times on my twitter. but this is, in my opinion, the only s*xy t*mes with w*ngxian take you need. 

(cw transphobia, transphobic slurs, antiblack racism, mentions of csa and bestiality in fiction)

edit 6/10/21: hi! i’m realizing people are still reading this! this was written in response to aja romano’s vox article on the fic that was published in late february of this year. i had been frustrated with how their article seemed to miss the point in many ways, because they never talked about the substance of the fic. which, i mean, fair. i wouldn’t want to read a 1million word fic either.

but i already had, so i thought i’d write about some things that i believed needed to be part of the conversation. namely, that its author wasn’t a harmless troll, but a person i genuinely disliked who i believed should be deplatformed.

i think virtual1979 is a bad person. 

i think a lot of people mainly know about sexy times the phenomenon more than they do sexy times the fic itself. i have the dubious honor of being one of the few people who has actually read large portions of the million word fic, and that’s why i wanted to write this meanspirited hit piece. 

the fic is down right now and the author’s notes and comments have both been deleted, which is why i cannot provide screenshots. however, these are all quotes i have saved from when the fic was online, and i’m happy to talk with anyone if you feel any of these quotes are mischaracterizations of the fic. 

i also want to be clear this is not a “callout post” and i’m not trying to “cancel” them or whatever. i am just explaining why i don’t like them, why i don’t feel bad they’re being harassed, and why i do not find them sympathetic at all, and perhaps why you should also adopt these stances. 

let’s start with transphobia. 

sexy times with wangxian is transphobic. this much is apparent from the tags. virtual1979 tagged the following: F*tanari, d*ckgirl, Sh*male. they use this language in the chapters that include a character with both a vagina and a penis. 

they refer to this character (wei wuxian) with the pronouns “he-she.” the following excerpt is a fair representation of how this wei wuxian is referred to in the chapters where wei wuxian has a vagina and a penis. 

[Lan Zhan] would never be turned on by a female, and he would actually be turned off by a drag queen - but this… this Wei Ying, it’s Wei Ying, and he-she looks [...]

i know these words are common in porn categories, but they are also slurs. virtual1979 also uses hermaphrodite to refer to this set of anatomy, which is not strictly a slur, but definitely a stigmatizing choice of language. 

they have repeatedly made clear they are not open to criticism. they have also since removed the comment section. making an intersex character for the express purpose of using transmisogynistic language towards them in your million word porn fic isn’t annoying the way their tags are, it’s actively fucked up. 

fanfiction has a transphobia problem, and if we’re talking about sexy times with wangxian in any capacity, we must be clear: sexy times with wangxian is part of that problem too. 

secondly, virtual1979 is also complicit in ao3’s racism problem.

i think the way they write about chinese characters and settings is annoying and racist, but they are a malaysian chinese person, so i do have some sympathy for them. i am committed to having some patience for people who are annoying if they themselves are working through the prejudice they have faced. 

they’ve commented as much: 

Not gonna lie, this fic has been a steep learning curve for me despite my roots being Chinese as well, but I have absolutely zero knowledge in some of these aspects!

and i’m happy on some level they can get in touch with their roots. who among us has not been cringe and diaspora. any criticisms i have of their portrayal of chinese people will stay private and be made to other people of color.

i’m going to be clear here i don’t think the actual comment they made makes them super evil or anything. but this essay IS clearly in response to That Article, which did mention racism in fandom. so.

i think we have all seen the infamous karen comment they made, in which they compared people who criticized their tagging with “Karens,” equating antiblack state violence to... mean comments on ao3? and “SJWs,” which, eye roll. no ageism but you’re 41 why the hell are you complaining about sjws

anyway. i am deeply frustrated by the co-option of the word karen. a stand-in for a particular type of racist violence white women specifically can and do inflict has become fused with that reddit-type mommy issue “can i speak to the manager” internecine white resentment. 

so their trivialization of antiblack racism is another reason i don’t like them. again i KNOW it’s petty to point this out here, but this to me shows that virtual is afflicted with the same kind of fandom brainrot that aja is, where everything comes back to that same sort of self-centered bullshit. 

sorry for that jab. julian told me that aja thought that cql was about callout culture and all i could think was “wow! just like virtual thinking that--” because i also have spent too much time on twitter this week. 

this is just like. part of this ongoing pattern i’ve noticed with virtual, where they’re aware enough of real problems to acknowledge they exist (police violence, accessibility issues caused by their tagging) but are determined to double down on their minor relative persecution as king, shittily drawing parallels between like... real problems and fandom problems. equating the two or allowing the second to take priority over the former is like... par for the course for this type of person! 

third, this is just another clarification on more parallels between ao3 discourse and sexy times that went completely unremarked on by That Article. 

i would rather DIE than get into discourse. but why did they write this sentence: 

Lan Zhan’s rational mind finally broke with a tsunami of pedophilic lusts [...]

by the way that is the start of a 430 word sentence. and yes this fic does contain hundreds of thousands of words of aged down wei wuxian. make of that what you will. 

also why would you make wei wuxian teach baby chickens how to sexually pleasure him. do you hate these characters. what’s going on. i think mxtx should be able to sue virtual for that one. 

there’s a very obvious connection between mainstream ao3 discourse and sexy times that went completely unremarked on in That Article. sexy times contains multitudes and some of those multitudes are bestiality and explicit childfucking. 

this is not unrelated to fannish culture, they are not unfamiliar with fannish norms, blah blah blah. this is just normal fandom. they’re not subverting shit, they’re just a normal fan who unlike 99% of fanfiction writers on twitter, spends more time writing than posting. this has taken their fannish tendencies to cartoonish heights. 

finally, they don’t care about mdzs or wangxian. they’re literally just horny and spiteful that’s it. this isn’t a question of like... “ohh they were a good faith participant in fandom until they went joker mode” and the REAL villain is society/ao3. like no they wanted to write shitty porn, and when they found out they were annoying people, they decided to double down because they could be the main character of the mdzs ao3 tag every time they found a spare hour to write. 

here are some select receipts on that topic:

they do not care about canon: 

MDZS has quite a complicated and expansive plot and history, and enough content that one can choose to tune out certain parts and still get to the end of the story in one piece. Also, because of its source, some fans may not fully realize the nuances, cultural aspects (ooh, cultural appropriation is another triggering topic) or the full breadth and depth of the source material, such as a person like me, who is half-baked in terms of knowing what the canon universe is all about. So I end up playing with characters and settings technically borrowed from the story, and make them do things that would otherwise run counter to the original source material - and that draws quite some flak from those opinionated people I mentioned just now. It's part of what makes the fandom toxic. It's like they're the self-appointed guardians of the source material and they act like they own the rights to question such questionble fanworks, and dare I say, try to take down those that cross certain lines too.

they are just horny: 

After that giddines of extra drunken Lan Wang Ji scenes at the beginning, I'm blessed with Lan Wang Ji (Wang Yibo's, actually) fuzzy nips! Bless Bless Bless, and Amen! muahs the nips on the screen

anyway they did get nuked over wishing covid on people. 

so yeah. i want to be really clear. this is my thesis: i do not feel bad for them. you should not either. i do not like them. you should not either. that’s ALL!!!! 

[idealnreal]

Maruki palace overanalysis part III

Thanks to @appleyjuiceboy​ for helping with the insanity, and @goalexstark for requesting. Part I, Part II. Really long post ahead. Lots of feels.

Back into the palace monitoring room, the cables are gone. From this point on, we will encounter six journal pages, four memory rooms, and three will seeds. According to Morgana, Maruki likely never intended the memories to be seen. Will seeds are mini treasures -- aka sources of distortion. While the journal pages, like all diaries, are meant to be private. We have come to the depths of his psyche-- perhaps manifesting beliefs that he is not fully conscious of, or tries to keep hidden from others. And in this second-third of the palace (starting from the cables to the garden puzzle) we also see his systematic view of the world in full force. This will be a long post.

So starting with this first part, we come to a dimly lit corridor with similarly dimly lit rooms full of filing cabinets and mini monitoring rooms with circular stations. In one of the filing cabinet rooms, we find the first journal entry. Before we get into the text, it’s interesting to note that the journals are signified by a mess of papers strewn about, with the metaverse logo sorta watermarked over it. We will see the same sort of mess again in the memory rooms. For someone who is quite calm, organised and systematic, these messes always signal something important or emotional for him. One can imagine Maruki, flustered and upset, searching for something, throwing the papers around.

The first journal entry is found sticking out of some filing drawer. The text is as follows:

“ Feb. 2. Tomorrow is Rumi’s birthday. I’ll be meeting her parents … My hands have been shaking an awful lot lately. Will they let their daughter marry a low-level researcher like me? Now I’m getting even more anxious… When I told Rumi how nervous I’m getting, she just laughed and said I think too much. She may not have understood my problem, but I do so love her laugh. I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep with my nerves like this, but I need to lie down anyway. I’ve been getting the worst headaches lately… I might be pushing myself too hard for this thesis. I just really want to be in top form tomorrow. I know this diary was originally just for research notes, but now I hope I can look back at it with Rumi someday and feel nostalgic.”

When Maruki set the February 3rd deadline, he said that this was the day “ I lost everything that mattered to me,”. Rumi and her parents were attacked on the night of her birthday, and on the night they announced their engagement to her parents. The night that was supposed to be happy and full of hope for the future became the worst possible night of his life.

Maruki seems to suffer from some anxiety -- but of course any person would have nerves before announcing an engagement. He’s worried that he isn’t good enough for Rumi or her parents. That they wouldn’t accept him as a son-in-law, or as part of the family because of his occupation and standing.

It also seems that even at this point, he has started to awaken to his persona, with the headaches and shaking hands. This is interesting because within this game’s logic the person needs to have at least some interaction with the Metaverse and have a will of rebellion to awaken to their persona -- or to even start awakening to it. He was already working on cognitive pscience at this point, and he was aware of the potential benefits of it’s use -- as a form of psychiatric therapy. He was already rejecting the status quo of life and of his field -- there was another way, a more effective way, to heal people. And it’s also possible that this note is hinting that he has had some fleeting interaction with the Metaverse. Afterall, we see that people who first enter the Metaverse experience headaches. But the game doesn’t give any more hints on this.  

The second journal note is also within the same area, near what looks to be some kind of video tape archive. The note reads:

“ Apr. 9. I just can’t believe what’s happened. I’ll never see Rumi’s parents again… I don’t even know if Rumi will ever come back to me. Her heart’s been completely closed off ever since that day. Why did this happen? What did Rumi do to deserve this? Do we really have to go on suffering these consequences? My headaches are getting worse -- I’m even starting to hear things. Am I having some kind of breakdown? I can’t lose it … I have to do something to help Rumi.”

This entry is dated two months after the incident. We don’t see any entry in between, or any hint or any other expansion into what really happened during the incident. As far as we are told by Maruki himself is that it was a burglary that killed two people and maimed a third. Which to me, is highly suspicious. Burglars would not kill, not even when they are desperate. And it’s even more unlikely in Japan with one of the world’s lowest murder rates.

We know for a fact that Maruki tends to lie or wave away details when it comes to his own past and own feelings. Like when Ryuji asked him if highschool is when he first found romance, and when Maruki said that he and Rumi just broke up because he was ‘spineless’. I suspect there is a lot more about this incident that Maruki isn’t admitting to us-- but neither the palace nor the game ever explains it. (I have a theory, but that’s for another day).

If there is more to it than a burglary, it’s very likely that he’s suppressed it so much and hid it away somewhere that we never get to access. It’s also telling that all references to the incident are all in relation to Rumi’s pain and how it was she who suffered that night. He never even admits that he too lost something that night, and is still suffering from the trauma.

So the two months between the entries as well as the opening two lines, also signal that he was indeed traumatised by it. It’s not hard to imagine that in those two months, he couldn’t process what happened, and even by April, he still questions accepting reality. He also thinks that he’s having a breakdown -- and one doesn’t need to be a psychiatrist to know that when one starts having auditory hallucinations, it means something is really wrong in the brain department. Of course, we can infer that these hallucinations are Azathoth trying to manifest, but as far as Maruki knew, he was indeed losing it. But he forces himself to pull it together, to suppress this pain and to hide his symptoms, for Rumi -- and for his research.

It is likely that he avoided getting help or admitting that he was suffering from migraines and hallucinations. The chances of his research being funded, accepted, and published, all hinges on his reputation as a researcher. And unfortunately, as much as Japan has come a long way -- it is still detrimental to any professional to be diagnosed with a mental disorder. We also know that at this point he was already looking for funders and backers for his research -- reputation becomes everything.

We come to a room that looks like a server room, and this is where his first will seed is. The server room is a mess of tendrils and cables -- while the door itself is barred by a holographic lock, and some branch-like tendrils. The ‘flower’ looking textures that surround the door are holograms again of what looks like circuits.

Voice tracks will usually play upon opening a will seed door, which is usually the palace ruler reinforcing their distortion, and Maruki’s voice track is one of the more audible ones. The tracks will play randomly for each door, so there’s no order to things. Thanks to Jester for making out what they say:

“R-Rumi… I-I…”

“No matter what I need to do… I’ll reach my goal.”

“What can I do to make you understand?”

“What’s wrong with an alternate reality if everyone is happy?”

“I’m so close… just a little further…!”

“Just a little more… and everyone will be happy…”

“Why… why can’t we come to an agreement…?”

The man is tired, and he’s pushing himself to keep going. Some of the tracks are also questions, probably in response to Joker and the Phantom Thieves, trying to reason with them.

Moving on from this, we find more monitoring rooms, with lots of screens, cables, and glass floors that look down into what looks to be server rooms. The rooms are typically dark, illuminated only by the neon teal lights and screens.

We also then come across the first locked gate, with an authentication question. The fact that these gates require the intruder to at the very least know some parts of his past -- signify that he does want people to understand him and where he’s coming from, as uncomfortable as it is. This is especially important given how closed off he was about his past prior to this-- represented by the fact that the only way you can get these answers is watching memory tapes that, according to Morgana, are likely memories he has tried to suppress. Speaking of which…

Before we go into the memory itself, I want to note the design of these rooms. As highlighted before, messes like strewn paper, disorganised shelves, represent something emotional or upsetting for him. And no better is that demonstrated than in these memory rooms. Papers are strewn, filing boxes and books are stacked haphazardly, filing baskets and stools lay toppled. There is no clear organisation or consistency in these rooms -- and it looks as if someone had come in, thrown everything around, as if searching.

These rooms look very old-school research rooms and are lit only by an old CRTV -- in direct contrast to the high-tech aesthetic the rest of the palace has. And most of all these rooms look abandoned and forgotten. These rooms hint at the core of his self -- before he became obsessed with healing the world, the self that was confused and lost after the Incident.

It’s also interesting to note the fact that his memories play on the very small CRTV -- while in comparison earlier Sumire’s memories played on a wide screen LCD TV. He puts even more distance with his own (grainy) memories than the memories of someone else.

Okay, now we get to the first memory tape.

It starts off in Rumi’s hospital room. And from a later journal entry, we know that this is at least sometime in August, which means its been six months since the Incident, and four months since Takuto began to write in his journal again. Rumi is in a catatonic state, and it seems that she is somewhat responsive -- even if she can’t speak or move much.

Takuto is trying to cheer her up by suggesting that he bring her snacks and flowers. His tone is cheerful and gentle, knowing that Rumi can understand him -- but is simply unable to respond or speak. He knows she’s traumatised, so much to a point that she’s too scared to move. He’s trying to show her that it’s safe, and most importantly, that he’s there for her. Being an empath, loving her as much as he does -- this would’ve been incredibly painful for him. But for her sake, he tries to smile.

He then goes into telling her what’s been going on in his life, and explaining his research and how he wants to use it. From this, we know at least one of the first uses he envisioned for cognitive pscience was to stop crime before it’s committed, by changing distorted cognitions that lead people to doing bad things. He wants to make sure what happened to Rumi would never happen to anyone else. This is perhaps going one step further than what the PT are doing. Yes they’re both stopping criminals, but in Takuto’s conception -- it’s stopping crimes before there are any victims, rather than waiting for victims to be created.

He also tells her that there are some potential investors into his research, and that theres a chance that research into cognitive pscience will be properly funded. He’s excited for it because it is the first step to bringing cognitive pscience into real practical use. This also hints that at least for the past few months, he’s been working on his research again -- and trying to hide his symptoms (re: hallucinations, migraines) because he’s actively looking for funders.

He tells her that the ‘culprit’ has been caught and that she doesn’t need to worry anymore. He then mentions ‘Family’, and Rumi responds to that, repeating ‘Family’, then ‘Takuto’. As far as we can tell, these together seem to be her triggers -- and she’s sent into a PTSD episode. She yells for her parents to be given back, and cries out for them. Takuto tries to calm her down, but is unable to until the nurses arrive and (probably) sedate her.

This is another hint that the Incident was more than a simple burglary -- and somehow Takuto was more involved in the Incident than simply a bystander who couldn’t protect her when the burglar ‘was trying to escape’. And it’s also suggested that during this Incident, Rumi’s parents were being held -- perhaps as hostages?

I have a theory that the Incident was really more of an attempted assassination of Takuto -- very likely by Shido (who we know does know of Takuto’s research). While we don’t know the exact years the Incident took place -- from the journal notes, we can safely say its AT LEAST two years prior to the start of the game. I would go further to say that this was before Wakaba’s death or even Goro’s awakening, because it seems that Shido doesn’t yet have the power to cause mental shutdowns. And because of that, he’s would try the old fashioned way to shut Takuto’s research down.

However, instead of killing Takuto, Rumi and her parents suffered. It’s also interesting to note --IF this theory is true -- why Takuto was left alive. But thats pure hc territory which i’ll leave for another time.

Also another hint to support this is basically other hints that Takuto -- like Sumire-- suffers from survivor’s guilt. He even mentions it when speaking to Joker and Goro in the beginning of the palace. It’s also hinted by the fact that Takuto has managed to change Sumire’s cognition so drastically that even he was surprised. This was because of how she spoke, and how she suffered from intense survivor’s guilt. But i’ll get into this more when we get to the third memory tape.

The doctor explains to Takuto that she was triggered, and Takuto knew that it was his own words that triggered her. He apologised for it -- and muses that she needs to be ‘set free from that horrible tragedy’. It’s at this point that his migraines return and he hears a voice. Then, Rumi starts to speak, “Takuto … Please… Stop this. I … Want to… forget,”

Rumi made her wish, and Takuto began to understand how exactly cognitive pscience can make that possible. And again, he hears the voice, clearer this time -- enough for him to understand and respond to it. In that moment, desperate to put an end to Rumi’s pain, to fulfil her wish -- he agrees to Azathoth (perhaps forming a contract and semi-awakening to Azathoth). In the Japanese audio version, he actually screams this part. Oof.

In an instant, her cognition is changed and she wakes up as a different Rumi -- a Rumi who’s parents had died when she was young, who lived with her grandparents, and therefore, a Rumi who has never met or grown up with Takuto. She’s forgotten everything that caused her pain before.

Takuto, shocked at this, begins to fumble around for a cover story -- trying to explain to this new Rumi why he was in her room and why he knew her name. Despite the dawning realisation that she has truly forgotten him, he tries to be cheerful and plays it off when she shows concern for him. He would do anything to make her happy, and anything to preserve her happiness, even if it is horribly painful for him.

The interaction ends when Rumi asks why he won’t be visiting again and “what about your girlfriend?”, and he replies by “She … passed away,” In this moment, Rumi’s portrait disappears from the text box -- signifying a stark break in Takuto’s perception of her. The Rumi he knew and loved really has passed away, and this -- he convinces himself-- is another Rumi. A Rumi that he must not see again.

He stands to leave, telling her that he hopes she feels better soon and “ I know the people who care about you wish the same”.

So for him, just as his life was starting to get back together after the literal worst night ever -- just as his research was starting to get funders -- he loses his fiance and long time love. This follows the same pattern as before, where the night of the incident was supposed to be a happy night where their engagement is announced, followed by a horrible attack and murder (possible assassination attempt on his life too). But that’s allright, hes NOT in pain!!! and suspicious of any good thing that comes his way!! because now, she can be happy. And that was more important than his own happiness!!! 

Oof. Okay this got long and heavy. Gonna end this here ! Stay tuned for part 4.

[welcometomy20s]

January 10th, 2021

Action Button Review

Review

Tim Rogers reminds me of Hank Green. They are about the same age, they look about the same age which is a combination of young and old that feel eternal. They also have the same length of experience in writing in online spaces, interest in Japanese media, and apparently have Crohn’s disease? In summary, he might be the closest equivalent to Dave Green that exists in the real world. Well, I guess Dave Green is not apt, as Dave Green is not special in a way, while Tim Rogers is special, but his speciality comes from his failures rather than his counterparts' success.

Tim Rogers is a hypothetical Green brother who did not decide to publish that book. He’s a hypothetical Green brother who went to Japan instead of Alabama or Florida. Whose project crashed and burned rather than a surprise success. He’s forged in fire while the Green brothers are eroded by water. Both are wonderful people, but with a different ground of intensity and differing wealth of wisdom.

I encountered this series because I found a twitter post about a six hour review of Tokimeki Memorial, and a white middle-aged man talking about a dating sim for six hours with laudatory blurbs would always pique my interest, but since I didn’t know the guy, I went ahead and looked if he made other videos, and found he has four other review that were all about three hours or more. Now I knew that I had to watch all the reviews to prepare myself for this six hour review of Tokimeki Memorial.

Now, I wasn’t a stranger to three hour reviews of video games. I watched Joseph Anderson, Raycevick, Whitelight, matthewmatosis, and Noah Gervais-Caldwell. In fact, in the comments below Action Button Reviews, many people talked about a comparison to Noah Gervais-Caldwell (and Brian David Gilbert) and that was quite funny since I actually watched a recent Noah Gervais-Caldwell video.

His first two reviews were perfunctory, him opening himself up and trying out new things and polishing his review style, as he went through the Final Fantasy VII remake and The Last of Us. While I watched The Last of Us, I distinctly remembered and contrasted Noah’s The Last of Us Part 2 review with Tim Roger’s The Last of Us review. I liked Tim Roger’s defense of interactive movies (although he denies it!) contrasted with more cynical but ultimately positive connotation in Noah’s review. And Noah’s thesis pairs nicely with Tim’s observation that Ellie was the main protagonist all along. That fact makes Part 2 much more understandable, even the bad parts.

When I finished watch his first two reviews, I went ahead and also watched several of Tim’s videos on Kotaku, which were slightly shorter, the longest being just over an hour, which is a review of the best games in 1994, and does contain a short segment about Tokimeki Memorial, which his six hour review was my destination. To put in context, Tokimeki Memorial was #3. #1 was Earthbound, #2 was Final Fantasy VI, and #4 was Super Metroid. And I just watched a playthrough of Super Metroid basically on a whim, because it’s a monumental and a great game to play and watch.

And while the segment of the games that I knew to be great and monumental in my absorption of knowing video games was deeply personal and rightly claimed its stake that it deserved its spot, his segment of Tokimeki Memorial never got there. It was almost as if he was deliberately hiding behind something. In the end of 1994 review, Tim pitched an idea about a three hour Earthbound review, which probably was Tim’s idea of floating a departure from Kotaku, which would happen two months later, and I wonder if he was trying to deliberately throw a curveball by making a video of Tokimeki Memorial instead of the promised Earthbound review. This may be a far leap, I admit.

I went back and watched the video about Doom. It was much better in quality and in darkness. I was reminded of Film Crit Hulk’s writing of The World’s End and James Bond, another very long essay that was deeply personal and chapter for easier consumption. Few commenters noticed that Tim Rogers was just doing a dramatic reading of his written reviews on Kotaku and Action Button dot net, and how they liked that approach, and I found myself liking that approach as well. You might believe a video review needs more than just reading an essay out loud, but just the act of reading an essay out loud in the correct intonation and inflection adds ton to experience. And Tim Rogers sounds like he has decades worth of experience to present a dramatic reading of his essay very effectively, much like Hank Green.

I continued scaling the mountain to my goal. I went through his review of Pac-Man and was delighted by his reading of Namco games, and was impressed by the opening sequence, and just generally enjoyed it. I was getting excited to set a day aside and let the six hour review of Tokimeki Memorial watch over me and reduce me to dust.

And it sure did. That six hours was a harrowing experience. What Tim Rogers is best at is telling a story, and so to go through a let’s play was a wish I never made, fulfilled. In the end, I was left with nothing and everything. It was like finishing a really good book.

I wanted to watch it again, then again I never wanted to watch it again. It was almost a traumatic experience. Tim talked about there being endless variation of love, and the love Tim Rogers went through was not the fluffy yet melancholic one that I craved, but one akin to a devotion of an eldritch god. Love made in justification for one’s efforts in attending and maintaining a relationship. A love stronger than most kinds of love, but most draining and taxing as well. Tim Roger’s synopsis of Tennis Monster reminded me of Asking for It by Louise O’Neill, which is also about empathizing a quite hateable character because we kind of have to. Apparently one person knows the full plot because Tim Rogers rambled on about it as he was couch surfing in his house, and unbelieve as it usually is, I fully trust that the commenter is telling the truth.

I was like a heroin addict, who really wanted a different hit, like talking to friends or hiking, my mother wanted me to go hiking with her, and I didn’t because, after the pandemic started, all I wanted to be was inside. Outside felt diseased. The air outside felt contaminated to me, hard to breathe. I was stuck in this place.

Tim Rogers is an exceptional figure. He seems to be a movie protagonist, he reminds me of The Librarian, played by Noah Wyle. Tim has eidetic memory, as he has access every single autobiographical memory formed, but not other types of memory. We know that those types of memory are different because of people like Tim and people who are opposite of Tim, someone who has no memories of autobiographical memory but otherwise fine. These people tend to have very few emotions and have a hard time deciding things. Lack of emotions is correlated with difficulty in decision making.

So Tim is the opposite of that, Tim is full of emotions, complex emotions and he can make decisions and carry it out in a snap. He would be good at school, and he was, but he would be too focused on his grandeur to be under some authority, which is how he became who he was. His anti-authoritarian nature rings throughout his reviews, highlight the general Generation X vibe that Tim exudes but also the modern socialistic movement of Generation Z, which adds to this odd mix of old and new.

Not only does Tim have eidetic memory and intense work ethic that he never seems to move away from, therefore making a three hour video masterpiece at a clip that seems unbelievable for a seasoned viewer, he also has exceptional skills in fast math and language, he seems to be at least familiar with dozens of languages, and of course Tim’s experience is bounded by his decade of living in Japan.

I think this is why Tim naturally gravitates towards video games. When Tim says ‘welcome to video games’ there’s a natural supposition that Tim Rogers is the protagonist of video games, and I think he is. Tim wants to be in video games, because he needs to be in video games, instead of some almighty god cruelly deciding to plop him into a real life. He should be an video game adaptation of The Librarian and go on world-spanning adventure and romance impossibly beautiful girls instead of toiling the grime of what real life portends to. His life is dramatic, but impossibly mundane as well. It’s a simulacrum of a movie or a video game, which is pretty cool on its own.

But of course Tim Rogers isn’t the only part of Action Button Reviews. In the ensuing five videos, Tim Rogers tries to do something. Video games are a wide net. There is so much to video games, something like Gone Home and Geometry Dash are included alongside Wolfenstein The New Colossus and Farmville. What makes a video game? Actually, the more interesting question is, why do we have the term ‘video games’? Why do we put all of this mess into a single category, as if there is some throughline.

Tim Rogers starts to do that. Tim Rogers boldly states that things like Doom and Tokimeki Memorial are intimately connected to each other. And that all video games are in conversation with each other, through deep and complex meta-narratives. Tim Rogers is a cartographer, trying to map out how video games are made whole.

I’ve always strived to be that kind of a cartographer, to showcase the weave of reality, of connecting two seemingly unconnected parts, and showing to a profound implication both existing, instead of one or the other. If you don’t know, I have been trying to write something out of my current obsession with Virtual YouTubers, and mostly Hololive, and while I think I stumbled upon the six hour video review of Tokimeki Memorial outside of my interest in virtual YouTubers, this video, as I expected in the back of my head, gave me plenty of thoughts about Hololive. Its rumination of cyberpunk and idol culture is so directly connected with the peculiarities of Hololive that I was quite astounded.

From the very beginning, I wonder how Tim Rogers thinks about Hololive, especially after he has done that six hour review. I’m sure he will have a lot of interesting thoughts about the prospect. I want to get in contact with him, maybe work under him. But then I don’t want to hang out with him. I want to be near him as he talks to a crowd at a party, but I don’t feel safe to be near him when there’s less than ten people nearby. I think below ten, I would be swept in some danger that I won’t be prepared for.

Tim Rogers and Action Button Review is a fascinating review series and if you have the time, I suggest you should take the journey. It’s well worth it, just to get a different perspective on video games and the world around it.

[povvertaken]

semi-plotted starter for @hatilead

Requesting access to the archives is always dull. Professor Elisabeth Tanith has learnt, after several years at her institution, that the best way to get bumped up the waiting list is to show up early, with a coffee for herself and one for the archivist. A little bribery opens more doors than one might imagine in academia. Which is why she finds herself making her way through the damp, dew-filled morning. Mist clings to her hair in tiny droplets, almost a veil of the stuff. The cardboard cups she’s escorting to the archives warm her hands, and the smell of coffee primes her for the day of research. 

Her favourite archivist, Anna, is on duty. She sets the coffee down with a smile, feeling confident of her ability to cheat the waiting list. 

“Morning!” She leans across the desk. “Any chance I could grab those letters from the file? I know it’s cheeky, but I just need to check something so I can reply to the publishers getting on my back about this book. It’s the AT-1807 file.” 

That Anna doesn’t immediately smile back sends a nasty shock into Ellie’s buoyant mood. 

“Sorry, Ellie. Professor Aubrey is in there with it right now. He came in about ten minutes ago.” 

Ellie’s eyebrow arches, and she grips her coffee tightly.

“He’s in room 5, maybe you could ask him for it, if you only need to check one or two things?” 

Anna’s apologetic tone doesn’t really calm Ellie’s frustration, but she nods. Thoughtlessly, she swigs back the coffee. The sweet, heady mix of sugar and caffeine isn’t hitting the spot now she knows her plan has been thwarted. And by Professor Aubrey! Jac Aubrey is famous in the department for working endlessly on his thesis. What is the Sisyphean bastard doing with her research materials at 9 o’clock in the morning? She can’t help but take it personally. Like all academics, her research is her life. 

“You can’t take the coffee in, either.” Anna’s words, delivered in a disappointed tone, pierce Ellie’s thoughts. She drains the small cup and drops it in the nearest bin.  

“I guess I’ll go talk to him.”

Steeling herself for this, she draws herself up to her full height. She scrapes in at average in heels, and in her comfy sneakers she feels painfully aware of her meagre height. The door to room 5 opens with the gentle whine of hinges soon to need oiling. 

“Professor Aubrey? Sorry to interrupt, I think there’s been a bit of a mix up. You have one of my research materials.”