#Everything happens for a reason?

[mischievous-thunder]

Wade explaining to Althea why he's brought home the guy he kidnapped three days ago and eventually fell madly in love with

[free-my-mindd]

Stressing will literally kill you, let it go and let it be. Everything happens for a reason. Life isn’t always fair but stressing isn’t going to make anything better.

[amg3xik]

全ては必然である?

2017-2018の年跨ぎに『KinKi Kids CONCERT 20.2.21 -Everything happens for a reason-』が開催された。

皆さんのたくさんの思い出を鍵のない箱に詰めてですね

水道橋駅に着いてから東京ドームに行くまでの歩道脇に、『ぼくらの勇気 未満都市 2017』の宣伝トラックが停まっていたので写真を撮った。会場近くにはメガフォンを持ったDJ警備員が立っていて、キンキの曲のタイトルと絡めながらオタクを誘導していて面白かった（見出しはその内容の一部です）。

♡セットリスト♡

OVERTURE（オーケストラ）／Anniversary (アカペラ始）／スワンソング／青の時代／MC／Topaz  Love／愛のかたまり／INTER／Time／Harmony of December ／MC／もう君以外愛せない （合唱有）／MC／つMC→避難／こMC／暁／SHOCK!／愛の十字架〜Promise 2U〜／PINK／これだけの日を跨いで来たのだから／硝子の少年／ボクの背中には羽根がある／愛されるより愛したい／DESTINY／Secret Code／Family〜ひとつになること／→ENCORE／全部だきしめて／Next to you／薄荷キャンディー

初の試みとなるオーケストラコンサート。勿論、演奏も含めて全て素晴らしかったのだが、一つだけ挙げるとするなら二人のソロパフォーマンスからの硝子の少年、のところ。きんきオタだけどソロコーナー大好き。光一さんらしい設計・演出の癖が出ているパフォーマンス、中でも『愛の十字架〜Promise 2U〜』は特に聴きたかった曲だったから嬉しかったし、未だに聴き直すとこの日のことを思い出す。つよしくんの自由演技っぽいダンスは結構特殊で、今思い返せばケリーでもなくキンキでもない独特の位置にいたと思う。しんとしたドームに響き渡る『これだけの日を跨いで来たのだから』も忘れられない。

『風雲再起近畿小子2001台北演唱會～KinKi Kids Returns! 2001 Concert in Taipei〜』なんかを観ると、昔から二人がそれぞれでやりたいことって全然違っていて、変わらないんだなと思って感動すら覚える。二人の相容れない部分というか、絶対に交わらないようでいて実はある点では繋がっているような。これはちょっと関係ない話だけど、人って本能的に二項対立に惹かれてしまうらしい（過激な言葉を吐くことは肯定されるべきではないが……）。きんき派の自分も二人の対極的な部分を観るのは好きだし、こういう二人が共に活動しているという事実、シンプルに人間の奇跡みたいなものを感じてしまう。そういう部分を存分に観せられてからの二人のデビュー曲"硝子の少年"、震えた。

ツアータイトルに関する記憶

タイトルに含まれている20.2.21という数字は、20周年と21周年の間に立っている二人、という意味で、こういうのみんな好きでしょ、と光一さんが言っていた。Everything happens for a reason（起こることには全て意味がある）というタイトルも光一さんが考えたものだったと思う。

それと関連があったのかどうか、このコンサート後に、つよしくんソロのラジオで「全てが必然である」という考え方に異を唱えていた回があって、何となくそれがずっと引っかかっていた。"この事務所に入ってからした全ての経験が自分にとって必要で、意味のあることだったのかどうかは分からない""耳の病気だってない方がよかった""意味のないことから何を学ぶかが重要"という旨のことを主張していた。

あと、このコンサートの元旦公演で、二人の間で意思疎通ができていたと思っていたところができていなかったのか口喧嘩になっていたとツイッターに書かれていたのを読んだ。光一さん���ソロパフォーマンスが爆音なので、つよしくんが毎回車の中まではけていたらしく、べつにそのこと自体はどちらが悪いということもないのだけれど、つよしくんが光一さんがソロをやりたがっていると解釈されてしまいそうな言い方をしたので光一さんが反論し、それが喧嘩のように見えてしまったということなんだと思った。

KinKi Kidsは喧嘩したことがない、というか本人たちが自覚することがないのだと思う。前述したことも、光一さんは耳の病気のことが必然だとか言いたかったわけでもないと思うし、つよしくんも光一さんを攻撃したかったわけではないんだろうなと思った。思い返せばあんまり心配するようなことでもなかったような気がするが、オーケストラはあくまで異例だと光一さんが言っていたこととか、次の年のコンサートが中止になったこととか、今も続いている耳の治療のこととか、いろんな考えの人が悪い方向に解釈しようとすればいくらでもできそうなことが色々あった。言葉って難しいなと思う。人生はたった二秒で何もかも変わってしまう。

二人組を続けるのってきっと絶妙な均衡の中で成り立っていると思うけれど、コンサートでは難しいことなんにも考えてないみたいに愉しそうにしてるから、いつも心の中で二人がいるコンサートの空間だけが別世界のようにぽっかり浮いている。

[egophiliac]

YOU MANIFESTED THE TWEEL CARDS CONGRATS

YOU'RE WELCOME EVERYBODY!

seriously though I was probably like. 60-80% thinking we'd get at least one tweel for chapter 10. but I was NOT expecting it so soon! both of 'em! in August! a shame we're not getting a Coral Sea event after all...but I guess I can be resigned to that and ALSO excited for getting shiny sparkly glowing(!!!!) mertwins along with Azul fighting his inner demons and going right for the eyes! AHHHH I CAN'T WAIT

(also heeeey I recognize that rowboat... 👀)

[ghosted-jazz]

Did Cosmo and Wanda have a fairy Timmy back in the day? I hadn't watched A New Wish yet but iirc their relationship was strained by Timmy, I think because of the whole "no one aged for 50 years" thing in Timmy's Secret Wish. So would that mean Timmy messed up their marriage?

Yep! Timmy was Cosmo and Wanda's first fairy!

Cosmo and Wanda were newly weds with no support systems thus miserable enough to get their own fairy!

For the first few years, the three of them were perfect but Timmy overstayed his welcome, none of them wanting to lose this new family they created. Timmy used his magic to try and force a magic solution to make Cosmo and Wanda happy again, to varying levels of success.

New fairy management notices that Cosmo and Wanda seem to be getting more miserable despite having Timmy, so they get assigned a new fairy:

Chloe is here to fix all of Timmy's mistakes. But their happy little family isn't going to be separated so instead of being replaced, Timmy and Chloe end up as coworkers.

But even with two fairies, Cosmo and Wanda keep getting more miserable. With a fresh new set of eyes and someone to talk to, Timmy finally admits that the Fairywinkle-Cosmas might be better off without him since most of their conflict does seem to revolve around magic. So both Chloe and Timmy resign, erasing Cosmo's, Wanda's, Poof's Peri's and Sparky's memories of magic.

That day, the Fairywinkle-Cosma's pet goldfish, the one they got when they got their first house, dies. The whole family is very torn up about it, crying even though they don't know why they feel so strongly about losing this goldfish.

As for the whole 50 year time loop thing:

After granting that accidental wish, Timmy does not come clean about it for 50 years in fear of getting into trouble. A swap version of Timmy's Secret Wish does happen and undoes the time loop but yep, that wish absolutely contributed in the decline of their marriage. Not that Cosmo and Wanda would remember it anyways

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

anyone else have multiple traumatic memories associated specifically with holidays/family vacations? because that is a topic I never see discussed in all the So You Had A Shitty Childhood, Now What? self-help books i've been reading. but for me, it was a significant thing. and the more i think about it the more it seems like this would be an (unfortunately) common experience. would be grateful to hear if this matches other peoples' experiences...

[blushouyo]

EGO DEATH

[lygma-nygma]

Being a batfam fan is funny because people will make a post like “here’s my headcanon-“ and it’s just something that’s directly canon to the story then post about major canon events and get everything wrong.

[shewhowillrise]

DC x DP

Jason never made it to the Lazarus pit or the league of assassins.

Bruce gave him that excuse for his green eyes and short temper.

Jason knows he didn’t crawl out of his grave with the giant Y that scars his chest.

Jason knows he’s a revenant.

Jason knows he needs to kill to stay sane. To stay whole.

A soul sucker they called him.

Jason agreed not to kill, because he misses his family. No matter how much he starves himself, it’s worth it to get Dick’s hugs, experience Tim’s genius, see Cassandra’s award winning performance, to help Damian experience a childhood.

Jason didn’t realize Bruce doesn’t know what he is. Jason didn’t realize Bruce meant Black Gate when he said he’d take him in the next time he killed. Jason didn’t realize Bruce had no idea about the anti ecto acts.

Jason swore to stay in line, so he’d never end up on that metal table again.

[bunnieswithknives]

Gore, Violence and Blood under the cut

What a mess

[marikodraws]

equipping Akechi’s tie to fight Shido 👊🚢

[little-pondhead]

Your Ancient History, Written In Wax

-

Danny knew he should have put better security around the Sarcophagus of Eternal Sleep. It wasn’t even Vlad who opened it this time! The fruitloop was too busy doing his actual mayor duties because for some godforsaken reason, the man got re-elected.

No, it wasn’t Vlad. And it wasn’t Fright Knight, either. Nor the Observants. Who opened the Sarcophagus, then? Danny didn’t have time to find out as Pariah Dark promptly tore open a hole in reality and started hunting Danny down.

The battle was longer this time. He didn’t have the Ecto-Skeleton, as that was the first thing Pariah had destroyed. The halfa had grown a lot over the past few years, and learned some new tricks, but apparently sleeping in a magic ghost box meant that Pariah had absorbed a lot of power. The bigger ghost acted like a one-man army!

Amity Park was caught in the middle of the battle, but the residents made sure it went no further than that. Vlad and the Fentons made a barrier around the town to keep the destruction from leaking. Sam, Tucker, and Dani did crowd control while Danny faced the king head-on.

Their battle shook the Zone and pulled them wildly between the mortal plane and the afterlife. Sometimes, residents noticed a blow from Pariah transported them to the age of the dinosaurs, and Phantom’s Wail brought them to an unknown future. Then they were in a desert. Then a blazing forest. Then underwater. It went on like that, but no one dared step foot outside of Amity. They couldn’t risk being left behind.

It took ages to beat him, but eventually, Danny stood above the old ghost king, encasing his symbols of power in ice so they couldn’t be used again. He refused to claim the title for himself. Tired as he was, Danny handed the objects off to Clockwork for safe keeping and started repairing the damage Pariah had done to the town. The tear he’d made was too big to fix, for now, so no one bothered. They just welcomed their new ghostly neighbors with open arms and worked together to restore Amity Park.

Finally, the day came to bring down the barrier. People were gathered around the giant device the Fentons had built to sustain it. Danny had brought Clockwork to Amity, to double check that they had returned to the right time and dimension.

Clockwork assured everyone that they were in the right spot, and only a small amount of time had passed, so the Fentons gave the signal to drop the shield.

Very quickly did they discover that something was wrong. The air smelled different. The noise of the nearby city, Elmerton, was louder and more chaotic. Something was there that wasn’t before, and it put everyone on edge.

Clockwork smiled, made a remark about the town fitting in better than before, and disappearing before Danny could catch him.

Frantic, Danny had a few of his ghost buds stay behind to protect the town while he investigated.

He flew far and wide, steadily growing horrified at the changes the world had undergone. Heroes, villains, rampant crime and alien invasions. The Earth was unrecognizable. There were people moving around the stars like it was second nature and others raising dead gods like the apocalypse was coming. Magic and ectoplasm was everywhere, rather than following the ley lines like they were supposed to.

Danny returned to Amity.

The fight with Pariah had taken them through space and time. Somewhere along the way, they had changed the course of history so badly that this now felt like an alien world.

How was he supposed to fix this?

-

In the Watchtower, The Flash was wrapping up monitor duty while Impulse buzzed around him, a little more jittery than usual. The boy was talking a mile a minute, when alarms started blaring an alarming green. Flash had never seen this alarm before, and its crackling whine was grating on his ears.

Flash returned to the monitor, frantically clicking around to find the issue, but nothing was popping up. No major disasters, no invasions, no declarations of war. Nothing! What was causing the alarm?

Impulse swore and zipped to a window, pressing his face against it and staring down at Earth. “Fuck! It’s today isn’t it? I forgot!”

“What’s today?” Flash asked. He shot off a text to Batman, asking if it was an error. The big Bat said it wasn’t, and that he would be there soon.

“The arrival of Amity Park. I learned about this in school; the alarm always gives me headaches.”

Flash turned to his grandson, getting his attention. “Bart,” he stressed. “What are you talking about?”

Impulse barely glanced over his shoulder. Now that Flash was facing him, he could see a strong glow coming from Earth. “The first villain, first anti-villain, and the first hero,” he said anxiously. “They all protect the town of the original metas. They’re all here.”

“Here? Now??”

“Yeah? They weren’t before, but they are now. The first hero said there was time stuff involved, which was what inspired me to start practicing time travel in the first place.”

“I’m not following.”

“It’s okay. We should probably go welcome them before they tear apart Illinois, though. The history I remember says that some of them freaked and destroyed a chunk of the Midwest during a fight with each other.”

“WHAT?”

[free-my-mindd]

[claraoswalds]

It's racist, my dear, to be blunt. People come from outside, they think we're all witches and druids. For God's sake, child, you walked into a piece of string!

[wildflowercryptid]

please enjoy my analysis of these two's dynamic bc i can't stop thinking about them.

bonus w/ their actual in-depth feelings on their dramatic ass divorce :

i also feel like i should clarify what i mean by "florian's main goal." in mjverse, (aka my interpretations of the game's universe,) florian & juliana are siblings and essentially act as co-protagonists. while juliana is the more talented battler of the two and ends up serving as the main protagonist of the victory road & starfall street storylines because of that, florian wants to become a pokémon professor so he focuses on helping out arven in the path of legends storyline while filling out the pokédex. the only reason why he's a competent trainer is so that he doesn't get completely bodied by wild pokémon in the midst of doing field research. and yes, knowing that probably ends up making kieran's complex about his own skills as a trainer even worse.

[sage-nebula]

Little headcanons I have about Stan and Ford's childhood, and their statuses as the golden child and the scapegoat in the eyes of their father Filbrick:

I think that, prior to starting school, there is every likelihood that their positions in Filbrick's eyes were reversed: that Stan was the golden child, while Ford was the scapegoat -- the "extra Stan," if you will. I think this is likely for a couple of reasons; Stan's personality was bolder from the outside, more confident and naturally more aggressive, and therefore more traditionally "masculine." By contrast, Ford was shyer, less confident, less "manly." And then, of course, there is Ford's extra finger -- a "deformity," an "imperfection," something that could have been seen by a man as terrible as Filbrick was as an imperfection, something he was absolutely "not impressed" by.

So it is possible that, before the boys entered kindergarten, that Stan was the favored twin while Ford was the neglected one. Of course, the boys were very young for most of these years; they wouldn't remember most of them. But they would remember some of them, and then they entered school . . .

I headcanon that Stan was hit with the double whammy of learning disabilities: both dyslexia and dyscalculia. Unfortunately for Stan, he was a child in the 1960s. Research on both of these learning disabilities was still underway, to the point where a consensus on the definition of dyslexia alone wouldn't be reached until 1968. It wouldn't appear in the DSM III until the 1980s, either. And don't even get me (someone who is afflicted with it) started on dyscalculia; most people still don't even know it exists now, in 2024, much less back then when Stan would have been in school.

So the boys are in school, and Stan is struggling because his learning disabilities make reading and mathematics very difficult for him. He is playing on hard mode. But Ford, who has neither of these disabilities, is able to breeze through his work and to the top of the class. And suddenly he is able to do something that impresses the father that, heretofore, saw him as an extra, as an embarrassment, as a weakling with a "deformity." Meanwhile, the previously preferred son is the one who is now being an embarrassment by not even being able to do simple addition and subtraction, by struggling to read books that are meant for kids even younger than he is no matter how hard he tries.

And so the positions flip. Ford becomes the golden child, Stan becomes the scapegoat.

When he's little, Stan really does try with his schoolwork. He really does. But no matter how hard he tries he still can't get it to make sense in his brain, and his father and his teachers insist that he's just not trying, that he doesn't care, that he's lazy, that he's a slacker no matter what he does, so eventually he stops trying. Because if they're going to say he's not trying anyway, and if he's not going to get it even when he does try, then why bother? What's the point? So he gives up and decides to just copy Ford's homework.

And as for Ford, well . . . he realizes at some point somewhat early on that there is something up with the way Stan processes things. Of course, as a child, he doesn't know about things like "dyslexia" or "dyscalculia" either. But he'll see Stan look at a math problem, and go to copy it down, and the numbers will be transposed. Or he'll see Stan read a word out loud and mispronounce it as if the letters are flipped. And he thinks, there's something going on here, Stan's not doing this on purpose. But he's afraid to say anything. Because what if there is something wrong, and they get it fixed, and then suddenly Stan is just as good at school as Ford is? And then Stan is their father's favorite again, and Ford is once again just the unwanted, deformed extra? He can keep Stan from flunking out of school by letting Stan copy his homework. Their father won't be impressed with him, but so long as Ford lets him copy his homework and cheat off his tests, it'll be okay. That'll be fine. Ford remembers just enough of early childhood (and sees enough of the way Filbrick treats Stan) to know that he doesn't want to be the scapegoat again. The guilt eats at him, but he feeds it the justifications that he is still helping Stanley, anyway, by helping him cheat. So he kept quiet.

Years later, when they're on the Stan-o-War II, memories of their childhood resurface. Ford thinks about Stan's difficulties doing homework, and thinks about how difficult reactivating the portal to bring him home must have been -- both the reading and the mathematical equations involved, all that Stanley pushed through for thirty years to accomplish something that, for him, should have been impossible. (And Ford feels guilty for thinking that, but it's nothing compared to how bad he feels for the nasty things he wrote about Stan's reactivating of the portal in his journal. His face burns with shame when he imagines Dipper and Mabel reading those pages, and he only hopes they didn't share them with Stanley.) He does inevitably bring it up one evening over Irish coffees.

"Stanley, did you ever get tested?" "For what, STDs? Yeah, a few times. Why, do you need to get -- " "NO, for the love of -- for a learning disability. For -- " "Whoa, time out, what're you suggestin' I'm disabled for? I know I'm not the smartest guy in the world -- hell, we all know I'm dumb as bricks -- but -- " "That's exactly -- not it. You aren't stupid. I think you have -- do you know what dyslexia is?" "Sounds like an STD for nerds." "I need more whiskey in this coffee."