#.... im so glad ive decided to make this a separate post. yesterday evening i thought 'oh ill just jot down some thots'

[urlocallesbiab]

ok the initial post for brotzly fake couple's therapy au has already gotten way too long, so i take this as a sign i should start posting things separately and establish a new navigation tag

so, either way, a lil background on the characters

todd: exactly the same shit as canon, just imagine that instead of the seer-of-universal-truths syndrome there's some regular non-magical neurological disease running in the brotzman family.

farah: mostly similar to canon, just a bit toned down. she's not exactly an one-woman army, but she is freakishly physically fit, combat-ready, and proficient with common types of firearms — significantly more than you would expect any random person to be; she had always wanted to become a part of the police force like her brothers and father, but never passed the screenings due to debilitating anxiety, ocd and autism (never tried to join the fbi or the military tho; both her skills and her family expectations aren't That high).

her father had gotten terminally sick when she was a teen, and that significantly cut their income and added to their spendings, usa healthcare system be damned; old family friend, successful enterpreneur patrick spring, had stepped in to support them both financially and morally. farah ended up being halfway raised by him, always hanging out at his house and playing with lydia; out of all her family, save for her father, farah was the closest to patrick.

some time before the main timeline events, maybe half a year or a year ago, farah, patrick and lydia were having a nice family outing — up until patrick had been shot to death in broad daylight. his history of rising to success hadn’t been exactly pretty, you see, and the organized crime eventually took what was due. farah still blames herself for letting that happen despite her training and her worrying habit of never leaving the house without her gun; but if you asked her, really asked her how would she go about preventing that, she wouldn't be able to give you a good answer — it's just that one second he was alive, and the next he was not.

lydia, as both the key witness and the fortune's inheritor, had been taken into the witness protection program; farah hasn't heard from her since. she misses her like crazy, possible even more than patrick. therapy was meant to help her cope with the ruinous ptsd from those events, and she's been slowly, slowly making progress. that day she was having an especially Bad One — after which she and dirk got shit-faced — was soon after her father's death.

dirk: he grew up in the foster care system, and as a pre-teen was adopted by a kind and soft-bellied, if a little strict, ex-military man on a good pension, scott riggins. dirk had always been a bright kid, fascinated by complex mathematics (oh, the patterns! the beauty chaos and order! the language of the universe!) and some strains of physics (especially quantum studies; it all started with an article on shrodinger's cat and went downhill from there), quickly picking up on underlying logic within numbers (way quicker than his little undiagnosed autistic brain picked up on most social cues); teachers always promised him a bright future, even with the chronic lack of resources. scott had made sure dirk would get access to the best education possible, be taught by best tutors available, enroll into the best school imaginable; he gave dirk everything, and all the boy had to do is put in some effort. and he tried, oh god did he try; but he didn't do it hard enough. the new schoolwork load was multiple times bigger and harder than the worst he had ever experienced before, and he would often grow exhausted, distracted, unfocused and loose-minded (the adhd never got diagnosed either). some days a new and curious configuration would catch his attention and he would crack down on it with fervor, but some days he would just sit there and chew on the same three problems for hours on end to no avail. on those bright days scott saw his potential, his true and exciting and wonderful potential, and wanted the kid to live up to it; on the brain-foggy days, when he failed to do so, scott grew dissappointed. and whenever he felt disappointed, dirk felt it tenfolds on his skin. scott wasn't violent, godforbid, he's not a monster — just a little strict: it's just that he frowned, and tutted, and shook his head, and told dirk off, and didn't kiss him, and said things that dirk deserved to hear no matter how it felt, and took his books away (if there was anything the kid loved as much as math, it was thrilling detective stories, and sci-fi, ans fantasy, preferably all at once, read in one sitting) so that he wouldn't get distracted, and sometimes wouldn't call dirk down for dinner until he was done with the homework.

it hurt terribly to have the only person who'd ever cared about dirk, who had chosen him out of everyone else, who had chosen him and stuck by him, the only person in the world who loved him, be upset with dirk. for the longest time, dirk was convinced that he simply was lazy, and awful, and ungrateful, and hopeless, and the worst person to ever live, with how he let his father down time after time. but over the years, his self-hatred got so large he couldn't carry it anymore, and it spilled onto the mental image of scott, just so that he could breathe again; over the years, he grew bitter and disillusioned. as a young adult, he still couldn't tell if scott's demands and ambitions were fueled by simple materialistic hopes of fame and monetary grants, or a vain desire for glory, or some weird roundabout way of achieving personal fulfillment, but he knew for sure: scott riggins wanted himself a pet boy genius, not a son.

when the time came to attend college, dirk picked cambridge over harward, mostly because he would take any excuse to get an ocean away from scott. and he passed the exams — with flying colors! he was, after all, exceptionally smart. the teachers were delighted to have him; three months later he got booted because he missed half the classes and didn’t do any homework: drunk on the newfound freedom, stressed out by a trans-atlantic move, and lacking the only accountability system (however flawed) he'd ever had. he didn't tell scott, of course — he wasn't ready to go back home, he would do anything to avoid going there. so he took the college-student-allowance his foster father kept sending him, none the wiser, and set out backpacking across britain and then the rest of europe. soon it turned out that travelling cross-country is slightly more costly than living at the dorms, and there were only so many plausible excuses he could use to cajole more money out of scott, and coming clean about his strategical-omissal-of-crucial-information-that-wasn't-tecnhically-outright-lying was out of the question, so dirk had to cut some costs: skip a meal here, sleep on a train station bench there, get chased out by foreign policemen once or twice, a few times of staying overnight at some shady moldy place with some shady people whose language he didn't speak too well — nothing any other travelling young person hasn't seen, truly. he was coping alright. eventually scott caught wind anyway, and dirk, not that dirty and scrawny, had been forcibly dragged home. from there it's been a steep decline in the relationship: more harsh demands and more desperate pleading, more affection followed by more coldness, threats and promises from scott, and a few failed attempts at coninued education, a few move-outs followed by a few move-back-ins, plus a few ultimately abandoned career choices from dirk, who never seemed to grow out of whatever it was that was wrong with him, even as a decade slowly passed and gave way to another one.

when todd meets dirk for the first time and asks the inevitable "so what do you do for a living?", dirk introduces himself as a writer, which, combined with his rather frivolous spending habits and impressive disposable income, leads todd to assume that dirk must be some literary genius, top-nyt-bestseller, author-of-future-classics madly successful type of guy — but in reality, he sits on his arse and writes experimental-storytelling-style sci-fi/fantasy/whodunnit fusions that no agency interested in commercial success wants to look at, he's been published only once by a tiny indie house that paid him jack shit and a penny in royalties, and half his money still comes from scott. that financial dependence is the main reason dirk's in the us at the moment — he's been pulled from his latest bout of doing volunteer work for a queer nonprofit in eastern europe by the threat of cutting his whole goddamn allowance off. as a compromise, he returned to the country but not to the city, claiming that he needed fresh scenery to inspire his creativity and maybe actually write a profitable book for once; really, he just hadn't been mentally ready yet to be in the same town as scott so soon. so, settle, washington it is, why the hell not.

by the way, "dirk gently" is his pen name — legally, he's still dirk riggins. also, in the skype calls he's sometimes talked into having, dirk still calls him "father", but behind his back it's been "scott" for almost two decades now: at some point growing up he felt the need to put some mental space between himself and that man in order to stay sane.

after his fateful Big Talk with todd, where dirk admitted the less pleasant parts of his childhood and youth in most detail he had ever did in his whole life, todd convinces him to start looking for a better job to support himself, change his legal name, and someday cut riggins off for good. also get some therapy, for fuck's sake, god.

[makishinichi]

this is regarding the recent news about a seiyu related to a3. it was written before yesterday’s announcement that the seiyu will thankfully be changed and that the character will be muted. forgive me for not writing his name. i don’t want to have his name anywhere on my blog.

this is my personal feelings which i know is secondary. the victims health and support is first and foremost. no matter how i feel, its completely irrelevant in the face of a victim who is currently healing from so much pain and hurt. this post is to just make sense of my personal thoughts, just to release them in the air.

i read some blog posts where former fans of that man pour out their heartbreak and disappointment, and somehow it made me feel a little bit better.

i know that man made some sort of statement and there were fans who continued to support him, or at least wished him well and hoped for him to change.

there were also people who defended him and said "i still want to support him" and blamed the victim.

i knew that these people would continue to exist in the world, no matter how horrible the celebrity is.

but the blog posts i read were by fans who couldnt continue to support him. because what that man did was inexcusable.

they struggle to reconcile their happy memories and their hatred. a person who they loved for so long turns out to be this type of guy. of course theyre still struggling.

but in the end, they know they cant support him.

i cant say that im his fan. i just liked him because of a3. i only knew of him through a3.

but i loved a3 so much.

a3 is the first game where i bought in app currency, the first series where i bought a fan event dvd. because i loved the series, and by extension its cast, so much that i wanted to support them in any way.

i think thats why i felt so upset when i found out that man turned out to be the way he is.

not because i was his huge fan or played a character i adored.

but because for almost three years, i, whether straightforwardly or not, was supporting someone who, behind closed doors was a terrible person.

when a3 introduced an actor i didnt like as a supporting cast, i got upset and took a bit of a step back from the game. but i told myself, we wont be hearing his voice often, he's just a side character. as long as i didnt support him monetarily, as long as i didnt speak about him or praise him, i would be fine.

i understand that was a cowardly move of me, but i couldnt bring myself to delete the game that i loved so much.

but now its different.

he's part of the main cast. he plays a character loved by many. i cheered for them so much, i made sure to watch every seiyu livestream. i spent so much money on that game. i spent so much money on the fan events, the live, all while thinking, even if i don’t know much about him, he was someone who fits his character perfectly.

when i saw the news, i couldnt bring myself to finish the article. seeing the headline and the first few paragraphs were already too much to bear. later on i read screenshots of the line messages and summaries made by other twitter users and i almost cried. but the moment i saw the news, i knew i couldn’t deny it. because i knew no matter how nice they are, men are capable of these atrocities. i can’t excuse a celebrity’s bad behaviour just because they were part of something i love.

but this isn’t just bad behaviour. this is an atrocity.

honestly, i understand that these negative feelings i have right now arent even about him. ive always told myself i can never trust celebrities hiding behind their good facade, and so i never get involved in their private lives. i dont buy seiyu's personal merchandise, i only read interviews relating to the series they’re involved in, or their music. always work related, never related to their personal lives. i only respect them as voice actors, as music artists. i dont want to get invested in a person who turns out to be garbage. i was never invested in that man personally. it’s not about him.

no, these negative feelings are about me.

i knew that men werent shit and yet for years i supported a game with a full male cast. i knew that celebrities might be horrible and yet i decided to pay for fan events where the focal point is about the celebrity. i took the chance that, even if they’re humans who aren’t perfect, they won’t be completely terrible people.

i failed at that.

i wasnt his fan but im an a3 fan. im a huge a3 fan. and by extension i offered my support and love to him, because he made up an important part of this game. by extension i financially contributed to and supported this terrible guy.

i feel so envious of fans who can separate the work from the voice actor. ive done that before with manga and anime. i dont watch the anime, i only read the manga. that was easy. but i cant do that with mobage. i especially cant do that with a3, because i personally paid for the fan events, i supported the livestreams. those made up part of my precious memories of a3. and those events involved him too.

people say "hes replacable!" and come up with all these suggestions for replacements. i get angry looking at them. yes hes replacable. but it doesnt erase the fact that he was there for almost four years. he was an integral part of that character for all those years. that cant be washed away, at least not until we get a new replacement.

also it makes me angry that people are suggesting names of other men to a3. look at the situation. do you know these men? are they perfect in your eyes? wasnt he perfect in our eyes too? i dont want to say "xxx is a perfect cast for the character". because that man was the perfect cast for him too. look what happened. i agree with someone who tweeted: "i would appreciate hiring someone who cherishes the character, but at the moment anyone will do". that sort of mentality makes more sense other than hyping up other men.

seeing the a3 app makes me sick now. i dont dare to turn on the sound anymore. no matter how much i know that the character is sinless, seeing his character makes me flinch. the game causes me so much heartache now, and yet i still have so much love in my heart for these characters. i dont want to throw them away.

so i think thats why i can relate to these blog posts.

sometimes i feel stupid for being so affected. its gotten to the point where seeing his face or his name makes me sick. even if i did financially contribute, so did many other people, and yet theyre able to go back to a3, even if its just little by little. i still cant do that, and sometimes i wonder why. im not even his fan, after all.

but after reading those blogposts, i think i can understand. even if i cant relate to these fans as his fan, i can relate to them as a fan of a3.

their beloved memories are tainted by his true colours, but those memories are still precious to them. they cant throw those away just yet. but they cant support him. he is irredeemable.

those feelings are something i can share.

im glad im not alone. i think i can become braver because im not alone.

but whether or not im brave, the most important thing i can do is to support the victim, and strive to make things better for victims like her.