#I just keep forgetting the other characters are wildly more popular and have their own stuff

[chaoticallyfluffy]

Me whenever I see a DC fanfiction that isn’t about Billy Batson: who would do this? Where’s my boy? Did they kill him? Why would they write about DC and leave out the boy?? Where’s my BOY???

[octaviasdread]

any girls! dark academia movie recs? i really struggle to find anything not about a group of boys (as much as I love them)

SO MANY!!! This is probably a far more detailed answer than you were expecting but this is a popular question and I want to keep a list for myself and others.

Feel free to add to it/give opinions. I've tried to give a tw for anything I can remember

Girls! Dark Academia Movies/TV Shows

Mona Lisa Smile (2003)

1950s Women’s college

Art professor! Julia Roberts

She’s legit the female Mr Keating of the art & college world

Feminism vs. Tradition

Maggie Gyllenhall x Ginnifer Goodwin; their characters were more than friends. Fight me.

Does not end how you expect

Strike!/All I Wanna Do/The Hairy Bird (1998)

MY FAVOURITE!!!

Free on YouTube under one of its various names

Comedy

1960s all girls boarding school

Young Kirsten Dunst

Group of girls plot to sabotage a merger with a boys school less prestigious than their own

Secret attic clubhouse meetings of the D.A.R aka Daughters of the American Ravioli (eaten cold, ew)

girls get political & advocate for their rights using ANY elaborate and chaotic scheme

TW: eating disorder, vomiting & creepy male teacher but the girls plot against him too

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969)

based on a short book I read for uni by Muriel Spark

1930s girls school in Edinburgh

Scottish teacher! Maggie Smith, controversial with a focus on romantic ideals

Spoiler alert, the liberal teacher is actually a fascist

Her group of fave students has cult- vibes and it’s fascinating

Picnic at Hanging Rock

1970s movie or 2018 mini series

Never watched either but I plan to

Wild Child (2008)

00s romcom every UK teen girl loves

Emma Roberts as the spoiled rich American teenager sent to a strict English boarding school

Plots to get herself expelled but oh no she’s making friends with the girls who help her

And the headmistress has a hot son, and he’s nice??? Double oh no

ICONIC SCENES

Everything! Goes! Wrong!

omg she burns the school down

Feel good, comfort, nostalgia

St Trinians (2007)

English girls boarding school

The kids are all criminals, no joke

So are the teachers

CHAOTIC

gay awakening for british girls

Art heist pulled off by school girls

Government tries to shut them down but oh no, the education minister & the headmistress are ex-lovers

Colin Firth x Rupert Everett in drag

Superior cast: Jodie Whittaker, Gemma Arterton, Juno Temple, Stephen Fry, Colin Firth, etc...

embodies the phrase 'problematic fave'

St Trinians 2: The Legend of Fritton’s Gold (2009)

Mystery, pirate ancestors, hidden treasure

omg Shakespeare was a woman

girls disguised as boys to infiltrate and rob the posh boys school

Villain! David Tennant in that ICONIC boat scene

Teen girls vs. ancient misogynist brotherhood

like the first film but MORE chaotic and BETTER!???

The Falling (2014)

1960s all girls school

best friends! but its unrequited love

Agoraphobic + distant mother aka mommy issues

Sudden death and the school suppresses/ignores the students grief, sparking mass hysteria & a fainting epidemic in the girls

Cast: Maisie Williams (GoT) & Florence Pugh (Little Women) & Joe Cole (Peaky Blinders)

TW: teen pregnancy, death, vomiting, underage s*x, sibling inc*st, past s*xual assault

READ THE PLOT SUMMARY FIRST

The Book Thief (2013)

Based on an amazing book by Markus Zusak

set in 1940s Nazi Germany

Daughter of a communist whose family were taken by the Nazis/died is fostered by an older couple who teach her to read & she paints a dictionary on the basement walls

Coming of age story about a compulsive book thief. No joke, this kid steals books from banned book burnings and breaks into the mayor's library through the window

Family hides the Jewish son of an old friend in their basement and he helps her to start writing about her experiences in the war

TW: death, bombings, WW2 anti-semitism

Mary Shelley (2017)

Overall good & roughly biographical

Pretty costumes and aesthetic

Modern feminist take on Mary Shelly in her own time period

So many INACCURACIES for the drama so don’t take it as truth

Percy Shelley slander and not all of it is justified

Cast: Elle Fanning, Douglas Booth, and Maisie Williams

The Secret Garden (1993)

Based on a fave childhood book

1901 colonial India & Yorkshire, England

Orphaned, spoilt & neglected girl sent to live with her reclusive Uncle in the English countryside

Gothic elements, mysteries, secret doors/passages/locked gardens

local boy with a flock of animals, magic, kids chanting around a fire and all around immaculate vibes

Happy ending!!!

Hidden Figures (2016)

African-American women as mathematicians for NASA

1960s space project

Women balancing a career and family obligations

Deals with racial & gender discrimination

Loosely based on the lives of Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan who worked for NASA as engineers & mathematicians

Anne of Green Gables (1985) & sequel (1987)

Adaptation L.M. Montgomery’s ‘Anne of Green Gables’ books

Canada (late 1890s/early 1900s)

Highly imaginative & bookworm orphan is adopted by a reclusive elderly brother and sister duo

Small town & school years comedic drama

Unrequited Enemies -> Friends -> lovers

Inspiring new woman teacher

Girls re-enact Tennyson’s poem and nearly drown for the aesthetic™

Dramatic poetry reading with INTENSE 👀eye contact👀

Writer! Anne & English teacher! Anne dealing with unruly girls school antics

Collette (2018)

biographical drama on french writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Collette

Victorian & Edwardian era France

More talented than her husband so she ghostwrites for him

Fight for creative ownership of her wildly successful novels

Affairs with a woman called Georgie and also with Missy, born female but masculine presenting

Cast: Keira Knightly, Dominic West, Eleanor Tomlinson (Poldark)

Enola Holmes (2020)

Netflix book adaptation

Younger sister of Sherlock Holmes

Victorian era! feminism/suffragettes

Mother-daughter focus

Mystery, adventure, secret codes, teens running away & escaping from (and eventually fighting) assassins

Cast: Helena Bonham Carter, Henry Cavill, Sam Claflin, Fiona Shaw, Millie Bobby Brown

Ginger & Rosa (2012)

1960s England

best friends since literal birth navigating troubled teen years

poet & anti-nuclear activist! Ginger

off the rails but also catholic! Rosa

Shout out to Mark & Mark the gay godfathers we all want

family troubles 

TW: older man has an affair with a 17 yr old

Testament of Youth (2014)

based on WW1 memoir by Vera Brittain

young woman (writer & poetry lover) escapes traditional family & goes to study at Oxford University

abandons to become a war nurse

romance, tragedy and war trauma

Cast: Alicia Vikander, Kit Harrington (GoT), Taron Edgerton (Rocketman), Colin Morgan (Merlin)

Little Women (2019)

Writer! Jo & Artist! Amy

Mother/daughter focus and sister dynamics

the March sisters’ theatre club is *chefs kiss*

champagne problems edits of Jo x Laurie are a mood

Ambivalent ending perfectly captures Louisa May Alcott’s dilemma with the book the movie is based on

set in 1860s America

ALL STAR CAST and a Greta Gerwig masterpeice

Lady Bird (2017)

coming of age in early 2002/2003 Sacramento, California

all girls catholic school

writer! Christine aka Lady Bird wants to get outta town and start her life again at college 'in a city with culture'

Mother/daughter dynamics - so realistic!

I live for that Jesus car stunt & the nun's reaction

school theatre program

Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Timothee Chalamet, Beanie Feldstein

Another Greta Gerwig gem

Beguiled (2017)

Virginia, civil war era

Girls school with only five students and two teachers left

Find an injured Union army soldier & bring him inside

Women & teenagers want his attention (v. problematic) before uniting against him

(tbh you'll either love it, hate it, or watch once & forget it)

Sofia Coppola film so its very feminine gaze

TW: violence, death, underage

Legally Blonde (2001)

No questions will be taken

Elle Woods was the blue print

TV series:

House of Anubis (2011-2013)

I know it’s a kids/young teen show but I still unironically love it

ANCIENT EGYPT!!!!

Modern day with Victorian era links to treasure hunters & Egyptian research expeditions (stealing from tombs)

Chosen one plot lines, curses, kidnapping, mysteries, secret tunnels under the school, elixir of life

Teens have investigate & protect themselves cus oh no the TEACHERS are involved in some shady stuff

new American kid at British boarding school is the actual premise not just a fanfic au

Nostalgic, light-hearted, funny, and kinda cheesy but I will accept no criticism

The Alienist (2018 -now)

Mid 1890s, New York

Woman’s private detective agency (Season 2)

Serial killer mystery

Woman secretary turns detective and teams up with a criminal psychiatrist and a newspaper editor to solve crime

TW: violence, child pr*stit*tion

Cast: Dakota Fanning, Luke Evans, Daniel Bruhl

The Queen’s Gambit (2020)

Woman chess prodigy

1950s & 1960s

TW: drug & alcohol abuse

Gentleman Jack (2019 - now)

Based on the diaries of Anne Lister

Victorian Yorkshire, England

Upper-class lesbians

Confident, suit wearing! Anne Lister x shy! Ann Walker

Business woman! Anne running the family mines

Cast: Suranne Jones (Doctor Foster) & Sophie Rundle (Peaky Blinders)

TW: violence

Gilmore Girls (2000-2007)

bubbly/ambitious single mom + intelligent daughter

bookworm! Rory Gilmore gets into a prestigious private school and then an Ivy League college

Small town drama is comedic gold

Fast dialogue packed with pop culture and literary references

Comforting & nostalgic

TEAM JESS

Anne with an E (2017-2019)

Loose adaptation of L.M. Montgomery’s ‘Anne of Green Gables’ books

they completely change the plot lines but it’s still very good content!

Orphan girl with trauma and a love of books/poetry is adopted by an elderly brother & sister duo, bringing light and fresh ideas to a rural community

Feminism, girls writing club, lgbtq safe spaces, girls eduction, black/indigenous representation

Miss Stacy as THAT inspiring teacher

Aunt Josephine’s lavish gay parties have my heart

TW: creepy male teacher tries to marry a student, racial discrimination, indigenous assimilation school

Victoria (2016-2019)

Adaption of Queen Victoria’s life

Victoria navigating her political, royal, and personal life

Albert’s involvement with The Great Exhibition, 1851 (on cultural + industrial innovations)

Alfred Paget x Edward Drummond is exquisite

Gorgeous costumes and aesthetics

TW: bury your gays trope

Derry Girls (2018-now)

1990s Northern Ireland during the troubles

Comedy, episodes 20-25 mins long

English boy sent to an all girls Catholic school with his cousin

✨Dead Poets Society parody episode ✨with a free-spirited female teacher

Sister Michael, the sarcastic nun who hates her job & reads the exorcist for giggles

Wee anxious lesbian! Clare Devlin (plus her friends wearing rainbow pins)

Badass with bad ideas! Michelle Mallon

Main Character! Erin Quinn

Lovable weirdo who would fight a polar bear! Orla McCool

Wee English fella & honorary Derry girl! James Maguire

Dickinson (2019-now)

Loose adaption of the poet Emily Dickinson’s life

Set in 19th century Massachusetts, US

Historical drama with modern dialogue & music that works SEAMLESSLY

gives a great understanding of Emily Dickinson’s poems

💕Vintage gays! Emily x Sue💕

Theatre club, writing, poetry, dressing as men to sneak into lectures, love letters, teen drama, feminism, and an underground abolitionist journal as a brief side plot in season 2

Wiz Khalifa plays death in a horse drawn carriage

TW: opium use

A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017-2019)

Based on great childhood books

Bookworm! brother, Inventor! sister, and baby sister with sharp teeth

Mystery, secret organisations, orphaned siblings figuring things out & fending for themselves against the villain after their fortune

Adults either cartoon evil, comedically incompetent, or SPIES

Boarding school, library owner, scientific researcher, and theatre episodes

Ambiguous time period which is really fun to try and pin point

Killing Eve (2018-now)

Classic detective who has homoerotic tension with the assassin she is tracking down

British Detective! Eve Polastri figures out the notorious assassin MI5 are investigating is a woman, is fired & then put on a secret MI6 case with a small team

Assassin! Villanelle, a psychopath with a tragic past and a mastery of both accents & fashion

Woman MI6 boss! Carolyn Martens, head of Russian section

Travel Europe following Villanelle’s killings and escaping the assassins sent by Villanelle’s organisation

‘You’re supposed to be my enemy and moral opposite but omg you’re the only one smart enough to get me and why am I obsessed with you????'

🚨 GO IN FOR A KISS AND THEN STAB YOUR ENEMY 🚨

Cable Girls/Las chicas del cable (2017-2020)

Spanish drama set in 1920s Madrid

Four young women at a telecommunications company form a group of friends and help navigate the difficult situations they are all in

Secret identities, dangerous pasts, murder, crime, lgbtq couple & throuple, trans man character, feminism/suffragists

girls commit crimes for humanitarian reasons and cover! it! up!

UNDERRATED SHOW!!!!

Gorgeous costumes and set

Haven’t finished it yet and I’m catching up

TW: abuse, violence, death

Outlander (2014 - now)

haven’t watched yet but plan to

Woman time travels to Scotland, 1743

Rebel highlanders, pirates, British colonies, American revolutionary war

Time jumps between 18th & 20th century

[love-and-monsters]

Sauriosapien

M sairosapien X F human, 6,429 words.

This story does not have a reader-insert because I wanted to focus a little bit more on some characters that I came up with. This involves an established relationship, some fluff, and four tiny velociraptors. Enjoy!

The sun was blazing hot in the sky, so much so that it was uncomfortably warm even in the shade. A heavy mugginess hung in the air, so much so that Grace felt like she was inhaling through a damp rag. Sweat soaked through her loose ranger clothes. Even with her sleeves and pant legs rolled up, she was still overly warm. Fortunately, the trees were closely clustered enough that the sun only peeped through in tiny patches, dappling a few small areas of the ground.

Despite being so hot that she barely wanted to move, her tiny pack of velociraptors was running around like their tails were on fire. Rococo was perched in one of the trees, chattering furiously at Boho, who had her head stuck under the roots of one of the larger trees. Minimalism was hunched behind Grace’s legs while Maximalism oscillated between chattering at her and trying to snatch one of the tiny amphibians crawling through the damp undergrowth.

“C’mon babies!” Grace called, her voice higher pitched. “We got hunting to do!” She lifted her clicker and pressed the button a few times.

Rococo hopped out of the tree and skidded to a stop in front of Grace. Boho was right behind her. Maximalism fell into line next, chittering eagerly until Minimalism crept up next to him. Grace cooed to them. “Good, good! Okay, here. Sniff this.”

She crouched until she was on their level and held out a chunk of eggshells. Rococo’s nose was there in a second, snuffling intently. The other three were less enthusiastic, but Grace made sure they all got a good sniff before she stood back up. “Okay, babies! Go hunting!”

She clicked the pointer three times in rapid succession. Rococo placed her nose to the ground. A moment later, she gave a triumphant croak and took off into the trees. Boho and Maximalism fanned out on either side of her, with Minimalism bringing up the rear.

Grace ran after them. Despite only being the size of cats, the raptors were fast. Only the rustling in the undergrowth ahead of her let her know where her pack was. They called back and forth, little piping noises that blended with the usual cacophony of the forest.

Running was easy for Grace. Her body settled into an easy rhythm, burning with exertion, but not agonizingly so. She kept up a steady pace, keeping her raptors just in her sight. They worked best when she wasn’t crowding them.

After about fifteen minutes, Boho sent up a hooting signal. The rest of the raptors peeled off, following her lead. Grace followed them, slowing her pace as she approached so she didn’t trample over anything important.

Her raptors were chittering excitedly when she came upon them. Between the four of them, barely concealed in the branches, there was a nest of off-white eggs. Grace crouched next to it, voice hushed. “Okay, come back, babies. Yes, yes, good job.” Treats were passed out to the whole team, with a special helping going to Boho. She chittered and preened, giving the rest of the raptors superior looks. Grace laughed. Their little competitions inspired them to work harder, and Boho and Rococo had a particular rivalry.

Treats dished out, Grace reached into one of her back pockets and pulled out a notebook. She jotted down her rough coordinates, the size of the nest, and the number of eggs. Donning gloves, she prodded and poked at the eggs, rotating them and checking for unusual shell weakness, cracks, or any other signs of disease. Satisfied, she returned the eggs to the nest and carefully covered them once more. She walked over to one of the nearby trees and scored the bark before applying a sandy substance made from a mixture of crushed insects. The bitter, acrid smell was sharp enough to make Grace shy away, but it wouldn’t bother the mother of the nest and it would let her raptor pack know they had already visited that area.

The nearby undergrowth rustled. Grace drew up stiff, her raptors circling around her. Rococo sniffed at the air, head twitching back and forth. Then she dropped out of her alert posture and chirped reassuringly to the others. The rest of the raptors relaxed and Grace followed their lead. They would only be this relaxed around someone they knew. So, the person coming through the trees must be-

A flash of green and pink darted out from between the trees and skidded to a stop. He stood just as upright as a human, but he balanced on large, bird-like talons. His tail swung behind him, acting as a counterbalance. A massive hot pink crest of feathers covered the last quarter of his tail and crowned his head. Fangs glinted as his mouth stretched into a smile.

“Gracie.” There was a slight rasp in his voice, a noise that traced deliciously through Grace’s head and sent tingles along the back of her neck. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“Howdy,” Grace said, tilting her hat back. “You could have just waited for me to head back to town. I’m kind of working right now.” No sooner had the words left her mouth than Rococo charged their visitor. The rest of the pack followed her, working their small, feathered wings to propel their jumps so they could attach themselves to his chest. He staggered under the unexpected weight and sank to the ground, lifting his tail awkwardly to prevent his crest from getting dirtied.

“Seems like these guys want a break,” he said. Minimalism chittered wildly from her position on his lap while Boho buried her face into his head crest. Rococo, perched on his shoulder, made an attempt to corral her subordinates that was cut off when Maximalism started snapping at her tail feathers.

“Seems more like someone’s being a distraction,” Grace said. She gave a sharp whistle. Rococo, Maximalism, and Minimalism snapped to attention and formed their line in front of her. Boho kept her face pressed into his crest until Rococo rounded back and drove her into position.

He carefully got back to his feet, brushing dirt off his clothes. “I’m surprised you’re working,” he said. There was something deliberately airy and casual in his voice. Too casual. Grace paused, taking her attention off her raptors.

“Why are you surprised?” she asked carefully. She tried to rack her brain. Was she forgetting something?

“Oh,” he sighed, scanning the trees around him. “It’s nothing major. Only that you told me last week you were going to take a day off so we could actually spend some time together.”

Ah. Shit. Grace felt her face go hot with shame. Oops. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to- I totally forgot what day it was!” She considered blaming it on her unfamiliarity with the Sauriosapien calendar, but that wouldn’t have been true- even with the standard human calendar, she was always mixing up dates and forgetting things.

He frowned. His crest was pulled tight against his head, feathers tucked in to display his irritation. That was far worse than the aggressive puff he showed off when he was really and truly pissed; this was more akin to someone saying ‘I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed.’

“Look, I really am sorry. Uh, hold on. Let me take these guys back home and get a little washed up, and maybe change into some nicer clothes and I’ll be right there.”

He shook his head. “Don’t bother. You’re already out here and in the middle of work, and these guys are already all wound up.” He gestured to Boho, who was practically twitching with the effort of staying still and in line. “I was just coming to make sure nothing happened to you.”

Grace felt her shoulders droop. “Oh. Thanks for that.” Her eyes were stinging slightly with humiliation and anger at herself. “I’m sorry you came out all this way. Maybe we can go out tomorrow?”

He shook his head. “I took off work today.” Irritation was thick in his voice again. Grace slumped her shoulders. He worked in a particularly popular boutique and getting specific days off was always difficult for him.

“Are you sure you don’t just want me to go home? I can always do this tomorrow. I’ll just let everyone out in the yard and they’ll run themselves out,” she said.

He gave a snort, his lips twitching into a half-smile. “You remember what happened the last time they were in the yard for more than an hour without supervision.”

Grace grimaced. As many times as she reinforced the fence and made it taller, the raptors found a new way to get out. The last time, Rococo and Boho had managed to dig underneath until the chicken wire had come loose and had squirmed free. Everyone but a very lonely Minimalism had been gone by the time Grace made it back, and she’d spent much of the night tramping through the forest looking for them. “Then they can go in the coop. They’ll destroy it, but I can clean it up later.”

“That’s not fair to them,” he said, and despite the situation, Grace felt her heart surge with affection. Even pissed off, even if it would benefit him not to, he cared for her raptors. “You’ve already wound them up for work. Just let them continue.”

“Are you really sure?” Grace asked. He waved a hand at her dismissively.

“I’m sure.” He gave her a smile, though it was clearly tense and tinged with sadness. “I know you have a lot of difficulty with remembering dates and things that aren’t on your schedule, but… well, I really would like to spend time with you more often than a couple evening every week. And it’s frustrating when you don’t remember these kinds of things.”

“I know. I’m really sorry. It’s not that it’s not important to me. It is! It’s just… if things aren’t part of my schedule and I don’t have reminders, then I tend to forget them.” She pulled her hat off and ran her fingers through her hair. “You know I missed my own birthday a couple years ago?”

He looked at her a little blankly. “Er… that’s important?”

Right, egg-laying people didn’t think about birthdays the same way. “Uh. It’s like forgetting your hatching day, I guess, but birthdays have more cultural significance to us.” He nodded slowly, though he didn’t seem to understand. “Days just kind of all blur together for me. Time is a flat circle and a total scam and I don’t know dates very well and I’m sorry. That’s what I’m trying to say.”

He stared, but his lips were quirking like he was trying to hold back a smile. “We’ll have to work on this in the future. I just came out to make sure that you were all right.” He turned, waving a four-fingered hand over his shoulder. “I’ll see you when you’re home from work.”

“Velly, wait!” He paused, looking over his shoulder. Grace swept her had back up onto her head and offered him an apologetic smile. “I, uh. I feel bad that you came all the way out here for nothing. Why don’t you stay a little bit?”

Vel paused. “You’re working.”

“I know. But I mean, the pack knows you pretty well. You probably won’t be much of a distraction for them.”

He tried to give her a serious look, but his lips were twitching again. “I’m pretty sure that you’re not supposed to be on a date during the work day either.”

“No one will find out. We’re in the middle of the park. You just need to head back before I go to the ranger’s center. And it’s not like you didn’t already sneak in.”

He laughed. “Well. Yes. That’s true.” His crest fluffed up, his tail swinging back and forth. “Are you going to have to take me in?”

“Hey, if you give me any trouble, I might have to cuff you,” Grace said with a grin. She didn’t miss the little shiver that moved through Vel’s crest. “Maybe I’ll just restrain you and leave you in the woods for anyone to find…”

Rococo, apparently irritated at being ignored, took that moment to nip at Grace’s boot.

“Okay, okay! Come on, let go.” She shook her boot and the raptor detached. Rococo trotted back to the others, but Grace could tell her patience wasn’t going to hold for much longer. “Like I was saying,” she continued, turning back to Vel, “I can’t trust you to leave on your own, so I guess you’re going to just have to come with me. No trying to escape or anything.”

Vel grinned. “No, ma’am.”

Grace turned back to her raptors and clicked her clicker. They all skittered back into formation, looking up at her expectantly. “All right. We found one. Go get another one!” She clicked the clicker rapidly and the raptors took a moment to snuffle at the ground before plunging into the trees. Grace took off after them, Vel following her.

The raptors pulled ahead again, stunningly fast for such little animals. Grace followed at a small distance, careful not to go at much more than a jog. She was fast, for a human, but she couldn’t maintain the speed for very long. As long as she could trace their path through the trees and hear their calls back and forth, she could track them.

The bigger concern was Vel. He was already starting to lag, even after only a minute or so of running. He was not as well-trained as Grace, nor as fit, and no sauriosapien was as good of an endurance runner as a human. He might be able to outrun her in a sprint, but the further they went, the less likely that was.

Vel looked to be on the verge of collapse by the time the raptors called out again and came to a halt at another next. Grace, slightly winded, leaned on the nearby tree. Vel hunched over, making wheezing noises like his lungs were going to come out of his mouth.

“You good?” Grace said. He gave her a thumbs-up, then sagged all the way to the ground.

“I can see why they like humans to do this job,” he said. He rested one of his hands on his chest as he panted. “I think my heart’s going to explode out of my chest.”

“Hey, humans may be better at endurance running in general, but a sauriosapien could do this job,” Grace said as she bent down to uncover the nest. “Don’t throw your whole species under the bus because you’re really out of shape.”

Maximalism had found the nest, and he was crowing over the others, holding his second treat in his mouth like a prize. Minimalism crawled up next to him, chittering anxiously until he allowed her to take a tiny nibble of the treat, then he gulped it down. Grace waved them off, checking the size and integrity of the nest.

Vel, having recovered slightly, rolled onto his side to watch her. “What exactly are you doing with that nest?”

“I told you about this the other night,” Grace said, not looking up from the nest. Vel pushed himself up into a sitting position, shifting his robes around him.

“Yeah, but I had a hard time figuring it out. I’m better when I can actually see what you’re doing.” He crept closer, though he paused a short distance away, like he was concerned that his presence would disturb the nest.

“There’s a few species of microraptors whose nests have been damaged recently. There’s some kind of disease that’s been going around and causing all sorts of problems with the shells.” She covered the nest back up and scent-marked it. “I’ve been trying to tag the number of nests there are and making sure the eggs are in good shape. If we find any nests where the eggs look weak, we’ll tag them and collect the eggs. Hopefully we’ll be able to raise them until they can hatch and be returned to the wild.”

“Oh,” Vel said. He crept a little closer. “How’s this nest doing?”

“All good. I haven’t actually seen too many bad eggs in the past couple of days I’ve been doing this. Hopefully that means that the disease hasn’t been spreading too much.” She gestured to the raptors and clicked at them. They circled up around her. “And we’re keeping our eyes peeled for any rat dens we find. If we locate those, we-”

Minimalism let out a loud peep and darted out of the circle. She plunged her narrow muzzle into a nearby bush, snapping wildly. There was a squeak, some thrashing, and Minimalism withdrew her head. A rat dangled from her jaws.

“Oh, good girl!” Grace got down on one knee. Minimalism ran over, giving up the rat in favor of another treat. “Yes, you’re a good girl! You’ve done very well!” She carefully placed the rat into a plastic bag and eased that into her pack.

“What do you do with the rats?” Vel asked. He looked mostly recovered from his mad dash, his crest perking up once more.

“Send them to a lab. They usually run some tests on them, try to do a blood panel and figure out if they’ve got any diseases they’re spreading. There’s been some concerns that the rats are actually spreading the disease that’s causing the nest weaknesses.” Grace got back to her feet, her knees cracking loudly. “Ugh, I’m like an old woman.”

“And yet, you’re still more fit than me,” Vel said. He clambered to his feet and shook his robes free of leaf litter and debris from lying on the ground. “Do we have to run again?”

Grace laughed. “I’ll see if I can slow these guys down, so we can give you a break.” She clicked at the raptors a few times. “All right, slow, babies.” Rococo chirped in confirmation, then turned and chittered at the other raptors. Satisfied her message had been conveyed, she took off, the others fanning out behind her. Grace straightened back up. “Come on.”

This time, they went at a light jog. It barely winded Grace, but Vel still struggled to keep up. At least this time, he wasn’t wheezing so alarmingly when he breathed, so Grace didn’t have to be constantly worried he was going to collapse.

Vel was at least able to keep up as they tracked down and assessed the nests. The frequent breaks they took while Grace examined the eggs seemed to be helping him keep up, but by the middle of the day, he was definitely flagging. Even Grace, with her much better stamina and training, was starting to feel the beginnings of exhaustion.

“We’ll take a break,” she said, signaling the raptors. They were starting to look fatigued as well, mouths hanging open as they panted and their feathers drawn tight against their body in an effort to calm them down. “I need to eat lunch anyway.”

Vel collapsed next to her as she spread out a mat and set down her packed lunch. “Here. I brought some dried meat with me.” She offered him a package wrapped in paper. He opened it and pulled out a jerky strip.

“Thanks.” She knew it wasn’t his favorite, but he ate it without complaint.

“I don’t have much for you,” she said, digging through the pack. “I know running around all afternoon must be making you hungry. Er, I might have a few hard-boiled eggs.”

“I don’t want to take your lunch,” Vel said as he snapped down another strip of meat. “You need to eat more than I do.”

Humans, thanks to their endothermy, needed to eat much more frequently than sauriosapiens- at least three meals a day, nearly two thousand calories, compared to the typical two-meal, thousand calorie diets of the sauriosapiens. The sauriosapiens were only selectively endothermic, with their bodies heating up with exercise and cooling down when they were inactive or sleeping. That meant their bodies could manage with far fewer calories, though after running around for a while, there was quite a large loss of energy.

“Missing one meal won’t kill me. I’ll be fine.” Grace pulled out a couple of hard-boiled eggs. They were large enough to fill her palm, much larger than the chicken eggs she’d been used to at home. She passed one to Vel, who hesitated for a moment before cracking the shell with his claws.

“Thank you.” He took a bite out of the white, eyes drifting half-shut as he tasted the rich fattiness of the yolk. A lot of food in sauriosapien culture was fixated on fattiness and oils. It was an easy way to get calorie-rich food, considering that they couldn’t taste sugar and were fairly carnivorous. Grace hadn’t eaten much in the way of refined sugar since she’d arrived, only managing to scrounge a few pieces of fruit that she grew herself. She took a piece of dried fruit from her bad and chewed idly on it.

The raptors gathered together, chittering and playing with each other. Grace watched as they tumbled around, hopping over each other, nipping at tails, and generally enjoying themselves. She could see Vel giggling at them out of the corner of her eye.

“Thank you for coming with me,” she said. Vel licked some egg yolk off his finger as he turned toward her.

“Well, we were supposed to have a date today,” he said. There was a slightly sarcastic edge to his voice. Grace ducked her head, a flush of shame touching her cheeks.

“I really am sorry about that. I’ll make it up to you,” she promised.

“I knew what I was getting into then I started dating you,” Vel said. “Remember when there was a holiday in the middle of the week and you tried to go into work anyway?”

Grace pulled her hat down over her head to hide her face. “Ugh. Please don’t remind me.”

Vel laughed into his hand. “You were messed up for the rest of the week. Kept thinking you had days off when you didn’t… and the raptors were confused too! Poor Rococo, she started yelling at you, trying to get you to go out and then you started to think maybe she was right and not you…”

Grace swatted his shoulder. “Keep teasing me and I’ll make good on my threat to tie you up.”

“Will you?” Vel asked, his voice dropping into a lower register. Grace pressed a finger to his forehead and pushed him back, causing him to break into another fit of soft giggles.

A shaft of sunlight broke through the trees and fell across Vel’s face. His green scales gleamed under the sun, glossy as ocean-smoothed glass. Grace took a moment to just take in his face. His teeth gleamed, sharp as knives, but somehow also attractive. His eyes were glistening, beautiful gold. Grace swore that when the sunlight struck them, they illuminated like a chunk of pyrite. His feathered crest twitched and flared. The motion of the feathers was always fascinating, the way they ruffled in response to his emotions. Touching them was always a wonderful experience. Feeling their slight motions against her fingers was grounding, the reassuring contact of another living being that trusted her completely.

Vel was attractive, by both human and sauriosapien standards. The human standards would be satisfied by his reasonably tall stature with smooth, lithe muscles, his flowing grace, and his fine-boned face. The sauriosapien standards were satisfied by the bright green of his scales and the brilliant pink of his head and tail crests. Not only were they an incredibly vibrant pink, but they were thick and full and expressive. Grace had seen the interested looks of other sauriosapiens when they walked through town together. Whether or not they approved of his relationship with her, she wasn’t sure. She could observe their attraction to Vel with a sort of clinical detachment, but when it came to how people viewed her, she had no idea.

“Are you still hungry?” Vel asked. She looked down. His head had migrated onto her lap somehow, and the side of his face was pressed against her middle. “I can hear your stomach growling.”

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “I know a place-” She trailed off. Huh. Maybe she could really make up for screwing up their date.

“You know a place?” Vel prompted, lifting his head. She turned her attention back to him and scratched along his crest in that just-right spot. He made a trilling noise and went nearly limp.

“Never mind. We need to get moving.” She carefully tucked any wrappers and containers back into her bag and swung it up onto her shoulders. Vel got to his feet, shaking some leaf litter from his clothes. They were in typical sauriosapien style, which meant they looked a little like a fancy hospital gown to Grace’s eyes. They were essentially robes that clipped together in the back, which gave ample space for their tail. She’d seen a few sauriosapiens try to put on human clothes before, which was always amusing. The head holes were never big enough to accommodates their stiff crests, and the pants were just a complete disaster, what with their digitigrade legs and tails.

On the other hand, humans who wore sauriosapien clothes, along with the inherent indignity of the outfits nearly always being too big, tended to have their asses hanging out through the tail hole, so it went both ways.

They started through the forest once more, this time with Grace reigning her raptors in close. A series of whistles and click signals kept them close by, though she couldn’t prevent them from running ahead at least a little bit. They jumped in and out of the undergrowth, scaling the trees on occasion and snapping at insects that settled nearby.

“Are we still looking for nests?” Vel asked. Despite the slowed pace, he was still panting a little. Going to slow was nearly maddening for Grace, but she slowed down a hair more.

“We’re going to put a pause on that for now,” she said. “There’s somewhere I want to check out first.”

“Oh,” Vel said. He fell silent, devoting most of his energy to walking. Grace focused her attention on watching the raptors jump around. Rococo snapped a bright flower from a nearby bush and bolted back to her, chittering furiously.

“Thank you,” Grace said. Rococo relinquished the flower when Grace offered her a treat in return and immediately bolted back to the others, chirping with excitement. Within moments, the other raptors were gathering up flowers and offering them to Grace. Her arms filled with the sweet-smelling blooms, the raptors chittering and hopping up and down around her.

“All right, all right, that’s enough,” Grace said. She waved her hand at them, dismissing them. They plunged back into the undergrowth to find some other game to play.

“Did you train them to do that?” Vel asked, looking at the flowers with amusement.

“No, they kind of trained themselves,” Grace said. “They know that performing certain behaviors will get them treats. If one of them sees another getting a treat for something, they’ll all repeat it until I stop giving treats. They know that when I make the cut of signal, though, no more treats are coming and they need to stop. I don’t want them completely stripping the forest of flowers to get treats.” She gathered the flowers in her arms into a bouquet. “Here.”

Vel blinked as she thrust the flowers into his arms. They were a cacophony of bright colors that complimented his brilliant pink crest. “Oh,” he said. He wasn’t able to blush, thanks to his scales, but his tail whipped back and forth so fast it knocked down a sapling. His crest flared, feathers spreading into a brightly colored crown. “Thank you.” He adjusted them to sit in the crook of his elbow. “I’ve never gotten flowers before.”

“Really? I find that hard to believe. You’ve got a lot of admirers, you know.” Not only was he handsome, but his shy, slightly submissive personality was considered the height of masculinity to sauriosapiens. Sure, males were typically expected to make the first move in relationships, performing display behaviors with their feathers and showing off for any females they were interested in, but Vel would have had enough admirers that one of them would have taken it upon themselves to ask him out.

“I don’t know about a lot,” Vel said, his crest twitching with embarrassment. “And we don’t really give flowers as gifts. Carved bones or teeth are more likely. But I know flowers are more important to humans.” He removed one of the flowers with the longest stems and turned to tuck it into Grace’s hair. His claws were sharp enough that any touch against Grace’s thin human skin was dangerous, but she’d never felt any sort of threat from him. He didn’t even cut a hair as he slid the flower into place behind her ear.

“Really important is an exaggeration. But it’s a common gift.” She carefully adjusted the flower so it wouldn’t fall out. “Here, let me.” She plucked another flower from the bouquet, picking a pale yellow one that would offset the hot pink nicely, and tucked it into his crest. He made a soft rumbling noise in his chest as her fingers trailed along the edge of his crest.

There was an irritated chirping at her feet. Grace looked down to see Rococo and Maximalism peering up at her. Boho and Minimalism were only slightly further back, also staring. Their impatient gazes made Grace realize that she and Vel had simply been staring into each other’s eyes, not moving at all.

“We should keep going,” she said. She waved her hand to the raptors. They took off into the trees. “Come on.” Without thinking, she linked her fingers through his and pulled him along after her.

Vel struggled to keep up with her still, so she was very much dragging him through the undergrowth. He clutched her hand with both of his as he panted. “Uh. Hah… Could… Gracie, could we please slow down a little?”

She slowed her steps just a bit and he stumbled into her, letting his body weight fall onto her. She bore it with only a little effort. He was almost exactly her height, but all sauriosapiens were light-boned and limber, so he weighed less than he appeared to. “Do you want me to carry you?” she teased, thought she knew he would say no. It was probably for the best. She could have lifted him for a while, but it was awkward carrying something the same size as her and she couldn’t carry something even only three-quarters of her body weight for a long time.

“No. You just gotta stop moving so fast. I feel like I’m going to have a heart attack.” Vel lay a hand over his chest as he straightened up. Once he’d managed to regain his breath, he glanced around the forest in curiosity. “Where are we?”

The trees were thicker around them, their canopies clustered close together so their leaves blocked most of the sun. The humidity of the forest was thicker, but the lack of sunlight added a little coolness to the air. Without as much sun reaching the forest floor, the undergrowth had mostly cleared. The raptors hopped around the enormous tree roots, even darting under a few particularly enormous ones that bulged up from the ground.

“We’re closer to the middle of the forest. Come this way.” Grace picked her way over a few of the larger roots. Vel followed, his hand still gripping at hers. The ground grew damp under their feet the further they went. Vel managed it a lot better than Grace did- his feet were broader, allowing him to balance well on the spongey ground. A couple of times, his grip on Grace’s arm saved her from falling face-first into the muck.

Grace picked her way over the crest of a small hill and stopped. “Okay. We’re here.”

Vel peeked over her shoulder and his breath caught. The raptors, chittering with delight, hopped down along the sloping ground in front of them until they hit the waterfront.

In the middle of a circle of trees, covered with tangled green vines, there was a crystalline spring of water. Lily-like flowers dotted the surface, adding splashes of bright color in the green.

“Oh!” Vel said. His crest flared and his tail whipped back and forth. Grace couldn’t help but smile at the look on his face. “Oh, it’s gorgeous. I’ve never seen this place before. I didn’t even know it was here.”

“Technically, we’re not supposed to be here. It’s in the restricted section of the park, because of these.” Grace crouched down and pointed toward a particularly thick patch of lilies. Under the plants there was a tiny, darting crowd of fish.

“Because of fish?” Vel said, crouching next to her. The fish were small, barely longer than the first two joints of his finger, and mostly tail. They had mostly dull coloration, except for a brilliant red splash on their backs. He reached his finger toward the water, like he was about to stroke them, then pulled back with a cautious look at Grace.

“I wouldn’t touch them,” she said. “They’re sensitive little things. And they’re not actually fish. They’re the tadpole stage of a kind of amphibian.”

“Like a frog?” Vel said.

“Sort of. A little more like salamanders, actually. They’re about this big, only as long as your hand, and they’re pretty similar in coloration to these little guys. Mostly greenish-brown, with a big splash of red on their backs. They’re pretty uncommon in the area, though. Most of the time, they lay their eggs in the rainy season, when a lot of temporary puddles form. When they fully metamorphosize, they find a damp spot and bury underground until the next rainy season, when they can find a mate and lay their eggs.” Grace indicated the circumference of the pond. “This spot’s the only place where you can consistently find them. It’s fed from an underground spring, so it’s here year-round. Every year, you can find a few tadpoles here. We use it to keep an eye on the population.”

“How come no one’s allowed to know about it?” Vel asked.

“Uh, the tadpoles get hunted a lot. See the red spot on their backs? That secretes a kind of hallucinogenic substance. It’s deadly to sauriosapiens, and to most other species here, but to mammals, it acts more like a slightly milder form of acid.” Vel gave her a bewildered look. “Uh, it’s like a euphoria-inducing drug that can give you really nice hallucinations. Humans like it a lot. There’s a big underground market for it, so smugglers try to catch the tadpoles every year. But because the nests move every year, they need to look for them. We’ve done a pretty good job so far at keeping this spot safe- as long as they can’t find a regular spot to pull the tadpoles from, their hunting shouldn’t put too much of a strain on the population.”

Vel nodded. “It’s a shame. It’s beautiful here.”

Grace nodded. “It’s one of the prettier locations. If you stay here for a while, you can usually see some animals come through to drink.” She let her hands hang at her side, pinky finger just barely brushing against Vel’s. “Thank you, by the way.”

He glanced at her. “For what?” “For forgiving me. For coming along with me on my work day. For being understanding. For letting me speak about the tadpoles. I don’t often get to discuss these things with other people.”

“Oh. You don’t need to thank me for that. I like listening to you speak. You have a very soothing voice.” Vel was quiet for a second. “Oh, and you’re welcome.”

Grace hummed and threaded her free hand through his crest. His eyes drifted shut. He leaned back against her. A soft rumble sounded through his chest, almost like a purr. Grace felt her eyes closing as well. It was beautifully warm, and if she shifted a little and dangled her feet in the water, it added a cool, soothing element. Vel shifted a little to wrap his arms around her.

And then about twelve pounds of velociraptor cannonballed itself into Grace’s stomach.

She jerked, limbs flailing involuntarily. Vel’s head, previously resting on her shoulder, shot up. The soft dirt at the edge of the pond crumbled under their sudden movements and gave way. Vel barely had time to shriek before he slid sideways into the water.

Grace, sitting on a better-structured patch of dirt, didn’t slip, but was soaked anyway by Vel’s panicked flailing. It calmed within a moment when he realized the pond was only about five feet deep and he could stand pretty easily. He shook his head, spraying water from his crest.

“Ow,” Grace said. Boho, the raptor who had launched into her stomach, blinked innocently. The three other raptors watched with the wide eyed interest of children whose sibling had just broken a prized possession.

Vel spat out a mouthful of water. “Are you all right?”

“Nothing I haven’t been through before,” Grace said, fixing Boho with her sternest stare. Boho’s crest drooped and she crept off of Grace’s lap like a scolded puppy. “Are you all right?”

“Wet,” Vel said. He braced his arms on the bank and heaved himself up. “But not harmed.” He shook himself off like a wet dog. The water cleared fairly easily from his scaly skin, but his crest and tail were saturated, as was his outfit. Grace’s clothes were similarly soaked.

“I was going to suggest that we headed back,” Grace said, “but I suppose it makes more sense to wait here until we dry off.”

Vel smiled, sharp teeth glinting. “Maybe we should get out of these wet clothes, first? It might help them dry quicker.”

Grace lifted an eyebrow, but she couldn’t help a tiny laugh. “I suppose.” She smiled at him as he stood and started to undo the straps of his clothes. “I love you.”

Vel paused in his undressing to kiss her forehead. “I love you, too.” His grin widened and became wicked. “Now strip.”

[nattikay]

So I saw this post while browsing toa tags the other day. While I don’t think being obsessed with the school mascot automatically makes Toby a furry (though it is funny to joke about lol) since “being a furry” actually just means “being a fan of anthropomorphic animals” and doesn’t necessarily require any form of costuming or interest in such, it did get me thinking, hmmm...if he was a furry, what would his fursona be? 🤔 And from there I started wondering what Jim’s and Claire’s would be as well because y not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  

BUT WAIT, I hear you say--haven’t you already drawn the trio as werewolves and wolfwalkers etc.? Wouldn’t those be their fursonas??

Well yes....but actually no.

I guess it’s a little hard to explain, but there’s a nuance between “[person] but as an animal” and a proper “fursona”. While a fursona is an animal character used to represent its person, it doesn’t have to physically resemble them at all as you would expect [person]-but-as-[animal] to. For example, if you were to design me but as a cat, you’d probably give it light brown fur and green eyes like I have irl. But my fursona, unlike my human self, actually has blue fur and purple eyes. You can give your fursona matching physical traits to your own if you want to, and some people do, but most use only a pinch of their irl appearance, if any at all.

The choices people make when designing their fursonas vary wildly from “it looks like me irl” to “it looks like who I want to be”  to “I just really like this color scheme” to “this particular color/marking holds deep personal meaning to me” to “this particular pattern represents a particular defining moment in my life” to “idk it looks cool and i vibe with it” etc. etc. etc. Everyone has different reasons of varying depth for the decisions they make in designing their fursona.

Therefore, to design a fursona for Toby etc., it’s less a question of “what would this character look like as [insert species here]?” and more of “how would this character choose to present himself with his own [animal] character?”

And that’s a much trickier game than just transferring a character aesthetic to a new species. ^^; We have to kinda dive into the characters and makes some guesses about how they, if given infinite creative freedom to design an animal avatar with no rules or limits, would choose to present themselves.

So all that said, here’s what I came up with:

Starting with Toby because he’s the one who inspired the post. I think Toby might choose a wolfdog fursona. A lot of people who choose wolves as fursonas consider themselves to be overwhelmingly loyal to their friends, a trait that fits Toby very well. However, while Toby likes to be “cool”, I don’t think he really thinks of himself as much of an “alpha” type--he’s more of a sidekick, and he knows that, and he’s ok with that. He’s the wingman. So what better way to incorporate that than to add dog into the mix? Man’s best friend=Jim’s best friend. Sociable, humorous, and unwaveringly loyal. Wolfdog it is!

With the species decided, we can move on to the design itself.

I can’t imagine any form of Toby in anything other than warm colors. This is extra emphasized by the flamelike patterns on his legs and tail, which both speaks to his desire to be totally awesome-sauce as well as acts as an allusion to his flaming warhammer. It’s fairly common (not universal, but common) for people to give their fursonas a more “ideal” physique than the person actually has as a sort of way to live by proxy physical goals or fantasies they’ve been unable to attain irl for whatever reason. Given that we’ve seen Toby struggle with fitness from time to time, it wouldn’t shock me to see him take this route. His wolfdog self is still relatively short and stocky, but it’s all muscle, babey. 

This fursona is strong, fun, boisterous, and generally just kicks butt. Concentrated awesomesauce flows through his veins. Just don't mess with his friends, or you’ll feel the flames!

.

Moving on to Jim. Jim was the hardest to nail down, and most definitely the hardest to keep my personal biases out of oof. Which I may have failed to do anways because yes, ok, I made my favorite character a blue feline, sue me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  But hear me out first!

For Jim I ultimately settling on a cheetah/lion hybrid.

Cheetahs, in a way, are sort of the underdogs (er...cats?) of the feline world--at least, in their local ecosystems. They are built wholly for speed, not strength--and as such, just about every other large predator in their environment has them beat when it comes to raw strength. Remind you of a certain Trollhunter? plus the long lanky legs. don’t forget those lol

However, because of this disadvantage, cheetahs...usually surrender. They know it’s not worth it to defend their kill from larger, stronger opponents, so they’ll give it up and just catch something else. This aspect doesn’t quite fit our protective, selfless protagonist all too eager to risk everything to save his loved ones--so a pure cheetah may not be the right choice.

So what animal is brave and protective? That’s where the lion part comes in, of course!

Why not just make him a pure lion? Well, a little similar to making Toby a wolfdog instead of a pure wolf. A straight-up lion feels a little too “chad” for our sweet Jimbo. Too much of a jock. 

Jim has the humble underdog nature of a cheetah as well as the bravery and fierce protective drive of a lion. Cheelion? Leetah? idk, but let’s design it!

Like Toby and warm colors, I don’t think I can possibly associate Jim with any color but blue. While it’s never directly stated, given that we’ve never really seen him wear any other color (with the exception of the Eclipse armor), I think it’s pretty safe to assume that that’s his favorite. Blue sweater, blue jeans, blue shoes, even his backpack and bedsheets are blue. So naturally, his fursona would be predominantly blue as well! Plus some yellowish accents to (somewhat) match the natural colors of his chosen species(s).

I imagine he originally designed the character without horns, but then added them after becoming the Trollhunter, since it became such a major and impactful aspect of his life.

His lion’s mane also continues down his back in imitation of the “mantle” found on baby cheetahs. This youthful feature could subtly represent the fact that he’s been forced to grow up too fast and take on so much responsibility so young--so his fursona can still be young and carefree as long as he likes even while his real self struggles with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

This fursona is relaxed, calm, and confident. He’s not just cool--he’s crispy!

.

Lastly but not leastly, we have Claire. Out of the three, I think Claire was actually the easiest to choose--or at least, I had the clearest idea of what I thought she might go for.

Claire is a bit of an interesting duck, because while she’s shown to be fairly popular at school, she’s definitely far from the stereotype of The Popular Girl™. Yes she’s smart and pretty, but she’s also a little spunky or even a bit quirky--she’s a theatre kid, she’s a huge fan of hard rock band Papa Skull, and while I wouldn’t quite call her “rebellious” per se, she’s certainly willing to bend some rules if she feels the situation calls for it (not telling her parents that she was going to the concert with Steve, literally sneaking into Jim’s basement to try to find out what was up with him, etc).

That said, I think Claire might go for a hyena fursona--something a little out of the box, but not totally out of left field. (she also shows a slight Gurl Power™ streak here and there “the staff was not meant to be wielded by man--” “I am not a man!!!”) and if you know anything about hyenas...well, yeah lol)

I think Claire would lean into her punk-rock “rebellious” side with her fursona design. This character is completely free of the pressure of being the councilwoman’s daughter and having to maintain her mother’s public reputation, and thus allows Claire to express a less restrained side of herself. She has a bold semi-edgy color scheme with bright accents (and some earrings to match her person’s hair clips) while still remaining feminine and (her own brand of) fashionable. 

This fursona is spunky and sassy; she’s spicy and sweet all rolled up into one. She knows what she wants and she’s not afraid to chase it down. She lives her own life and she’s dang proud of it.

.

....sooooo yeah there’s my take on what Toby’s, Jim’s, and Claire’s fursonas could hypothetically be. And I guess since this post was inspired by a joke about Toby’s infatuation with the school mascot, here’s just some quick thoughts on how they might approach fursuiting to end us off:

Jim I don’t see as much of a suiter. He might try it once or twice if given the opportunity, but at the end of the day it’s not really his cup of tea--he’d rather act as the “handler” for his friends, if anything.

Toby and Claire, on the other hand, I could definitely see as suiters. In fact, with her interest in acting, Claire would probably particularly enjoy it--she’d be one of those suiters who really gets into character, absolutely refuses to break the magic publicly (outside of any actual medical emergency), and popular at cons because she just performs so well. 

Toby, meanwhile, would be the more chill type--uses his normal voice in-suit, isn’t really too stressed about “breaking the magic”, just kinda hanging around like he would normally except “look I’m a talking dog, cool right?”. 

also while I was typing this it occurred to be that since Eli is canonically a cosplayer then he could be a fursuiter as well; in his case i imagine he actually made his own suit it’s a protogen and it’s full of little LEDs and other electric gadgets, it’s not the prettiest thing ever as sewing is not his forte but boy did he try!! good for him. good for him

[rovelae]

Behind the Scenes of “Hologram”

           Today marks exactly one year since I posted arguably my most popular fic. “Hologram” is a postgame Saiouma one-shot about escapism, loneliness, and running away from the past. I put a lot of myself into this fic and I’m blown away by all the love it’s received, not only on AO3 but in Discord servers and other social media. All that excitement made me keep thinking about it, so I thought I’d share a (very self-indulgent) behind-the-scenes of sorts about how I wrote it, as well as what I think of the story.

           This essay will contain spoilers for the whole fic, so if you’d like to read it first, you can find it here. Of course, if the tags scare you off, that’s valid, but you might want to skip this post too since I’ll be quoting it throughout (so, just to be safe, expect the warnings I’ve posted on AO3 to apply here too).

           If you’re a Lorde fan you’ll recognize the lyrics in the fic summary – “Nothing’s wrong when nothing’s true,” from “Buzzcut Season.” The inspiration for this fic came to me while I was on my way to an early shift at work, and I needed a good song in my head to give me the will to live for the next eight hours. Not sure why I chose that song in particular, but maybe part of it is because I like imagining stories to go along with the songs I listen to, like AMVs playing in my head, and I’d never been able to pin down exactly what this song reminded me of.

           The mood of the music is really what compelled me – there’s something lonely about it, and the lyrics sound like the singer’s trying to convince herself that everything’s okay even when all evidence points otherwise. There are “explosions on TV”, and “The men up on the news / They try to tell us all that we will lose,” but “we live beside the pool / Where everything is good.” Despite everything going wrong, despite the notes of fear creeping into the pre-chorus, the character will “play along… in a hologram with you” and “never go home again.”

           From there, it was an easy jump to “postgame Saiou” and that was that.

             There’s a cloud of seagulls hovering in the air around him, and a dozen or so more standing just out of reach, staring him down with beady black eyes. Kokichi takes a slice of bread from the loaf he’s holding and tosses it to one of the birds, watches it catch it and stumble under the weight, watches its head bob as it tries to swallow the whole thing at once. It gets remarkably far before four other birds descend on it, shrieking wildly.

           “Mine, mine, mine,” he mumbles into his folded arms, wondering if Shuichi would get the reference.

           He really wishes Shuichi was here.

           Kokichi upends the rest of the loaf of bread onto the sidewalk and laughs at the resulting chaos until his chest aches.

             To start off, I wanted to create the same lonely mood from “Buzzcut Season” in Kokichi’s simulation. He’s not exactly trapped there, but he’s refusing to leave, because as long as he’s on the fake Jabberwock Island, he can pretend the killing game never happened. The trade-off to that escapism is that the only people he can talk to are the NPCs, who aren’t complex enough to be remotely interesting to him, and Usami, who… well, tries her best, but is more of an informational / moderation program and can’t offer him what a therapist could.

           The only thing Kokichi has to look forward to is Shuichi, who he’s convinced is an extremely lifelike computer program rather than the real thing, because the real Shuichi would definitely hate him for everything that happened during the killing game. He’s so locked into this line of logic that he doesn’t let himself consider that Shuichi has forgiven him – he doesn’t even have a good answer for why the Future Foundation wouldn’t just keep the supposed Shuichi AI on indefinitely, believing it’s their way of baiting him into leaving the simulation.

           It’s not a healthy or sustainable lifestyle in the slightest, but Kokichi stubbornly refuses to do anything but wander the islands aimlessly, passing the time with ice cream and feeding seagulls until the next time he can see Shuichi.

             He dreams that DICE is here in the simulation with him, smiling and carefree as they explore the weird music venue. One of them has gotten the karaoke machine working, and another found a box of kazoos and maracas in the back room. Kokichi already pities anyone unfortunate enough to walk by the building tonight.

           “Not going to sing, Joker?” one of his DICE asks (over the sound of their youngest member shrieking through seven kazoos at once), sitting on the bench next to him.

           “Some games are more fun to watch than play,” he answers, leaning back on his hands and sighing.

           “Like a killing game.”

           The warm dream-atmosphere turns cold then, and Kokichi’s head snaps over to look at him—but his brother is gone and Kaito’s looking back at him instead, blood in his teeth and face ashen pale.

           “You... we don’t have to do this, man,” Kaito says, but it’s a lie and they both know it, and he doesn’t want to look behind him because he knows the machine’s looming over him with its unyielding steel and slow slow slow descent—

           “You’re not real,” he snaps at dream-Kaito, who doesn’t respond except to lift him up again. “Nothing’s real, none of—PUT ME DOWN! LET GO OF ME! DON’T PUT ME BACK IN THERE!”

           “Death is more mercy than you deserve,” Kaito says, and Kokichi claws and bites and kicks his way out of Kaito’s grasp like a wild animal, only to end up in front of a prison cell full of—

           DICE, his beloved DICE, trapped and hurt and afraid, bloodied and beaten and helpless.

           “Why didn’t you save us, boss?” says his second-in-command, clutching the bars with bleeding hands. “Why didn’t you do more? Now we’re all dead and it’s because of you.”

             Moments like this are my reference to Buzzcut Season’s pre-chorus, where the not-okay starts to creep into the illusion. Despite Kokichi’s valiant efforts to forget, he’s still dealing with the aftermath of seeing his family hurt and in danger, watching his friends die, orchestrating the deaths of two of them, being killed himself— and then being told every bit of it was made up to entertain an audience who sees nothing wrong with that picture. Running away is not the way to heal from trauma, and one day soon it’s all bound to come crashing down around him.

             “Do you know what this … island paradise represents, Kokichi?” [Hinata] asks, and Kokichi’s really not in the mood for a lecture but he continues anyway. “Jabberwock Island … was the setting for the fiftieth season of Danganronpa. The golden anniversary, they called it. It was my season.”

           Kokichi hunches over, hugging his arms over his torso and stifiling a scream. He does not want to think about this right now—

           “They wanted it to be the best season of all, which, unfortunately for us, meant it was also the bloodiest,” Hinata says. “Twice as many participants, deadly traps hidden across each of the islands— they even changed the way the motives worked, like when they told Fuyuhiko to cut out his own eye so Peko could have a quick death instead of suffering for days.”

           “Do I look like your therapist, porcupine-head?” Kokichi hisses. A sharp pain is pounding into his skull, and there’s a bitter, metallic taste at the back of his throat. A taste like poison and blood.

           “There was so much going on that the simulation malfunctioned,” Hinata says. “When people died, their Ultimate talents downloaded themselves into me. I’m told that the stress of so many personality grafts came close to liquefying my frontal lobe. I’m lucky I woke up at all… especially considering more than half of the others didn’t.”

           “Why are you telling me this?” Kokichi grates out through the static building in his head. If he opens his eyes, will he see the beach or the dull chrome of the machine closing in on him?

           “Because I know how much you want to forget about what happened,” Hinata says. “Believe me, I get it.”

           ….

           “These things that happened to us… we can’t erase them, no matter how much we want to. Some things have to be remembered.”

             I’d mostly like to leave Hajime’s season up to interpretation, but there are a couple things I wanted to say about it. I imagine Danganronpa is like the Hunger Games in that it’d go all out for big anniversaries. So, there were twice as many participants for the Jabberwock Island beatdown that was probably subtitled “Bloodbath Bay” or something equally appealing. The game’s formula changed from a focus on the mystery and the trials to “look at all these kids massacring each other a la Lord of the Flies,” and since the VR system wasn’t equipped to handle that many people and their deaths, it malfunctioned, giving Hajime way too many Ultimate talents and putting half the cast into comas from which they never woke up.

           Viewers either absolutely loved or absolutely hated this season, depending on whether they were DR fans because of the “blood n’ guts” factor or the “mystery and psychological thriller” aspect. Team Danganronpa faced quite a bit of backlash for actually causing the real-life deaths of half its participants, but were able to weasel their way out of serious legal repercussions because of the waivers the participants had signed beforehand (plus a lot of bribery and falling back on their longstanding popularity). So, the cast of Season 50 failed to end the killing game, but helped provide great evidence for the “Danganronpa is morally wrong” argument.

           Hajime works as a victim liaison for the Future Foundation and has been trying to take down Danganronpa since he got out of it. He’s like that in a few of my fics, actually; I like the idea of Hajime acting as a big brother of sorts to the V3 cast. It’s especially entertaining to imagine his interactions with Kokichi— though maybe not so much in Hologram, since to Kokichi he’s a representation of the past he’s trying so desperately to forget and the future he refuses to acknowledge.

             “SHUT UP!” He launches himself at Hinata, his hands wrapping around the other man’s throat as he uses his momentum to slam him to the ground. “SHUT! UP!”

           “Ko— ghk—” Hinata coughs, eyes wide with surprise, but aside from moving his hands up to grip Kokichi’s wrists, he doesn’t seem all that worried about fighting back.

           The thought only fuels Kokichi’s rage until he’s choking Hinata so hard his knuckles are white. “If you want me out of this simulation so badly, you can kill me,” he snarls. “I’m never waking up! I’m never leaving, do you UNDERSTAND ME?”

           Hinata grimaces, the outline of his avatar flickering, but he still doesn’t struggle, and Kokichi hates him all the more for it, despises him with a seething malice that festers low in his stomach. He wonders distantly if he’d actually kill this man in real life. Or if he’d be able to stop himself, feeling like this.

             Kokichi’s breakdown here is more out of fear than anger. Like I mentioned, Kokichi sees Hajime as another piece of what’s hurt him, and no matter how Hajime tries to help, Kokichi will always remember Danganronpa whenever he sees him.

             Warm yellow-orange light casts a relaxed, cozy glow over the dining hall. It’s an ambience compounded by the flickering candles on the table, which seems overly idyllic, but Kokichi will let it slide because of the adorable way Shuichi flushed when he noticed them as they sat down. Well, if he’s being honest, everything about Shuichi right now is adorable, from the way his hair keeps falling into his eyes to the way he’s nervously fiddling wth his chopsticks. Kokichi wishes he could keep staring at him forever.

           Ah, not… not in a weird way, though, just… because Shuichi’s beautiful, and when Kokichi looks at him he can forget everything bad that’s ever happened, can create some new and brighter world to exist in.

             This is an idea I wish I’d had room to explore a bit more in the story— that is, just how far Kokichi will go to pretend everything’s fine. I thought about making him border on delusional, like having him talk to people who aren’t there or forget what’s actually happening around him because he’s so lost in his fiction-within-a-fiction. It would have creeped Shuichi out a whole lot.

           Unfortunately, there wasn’t much room for that past the plot I’d already nailed down, so I focused on his loneliness and escapism instead. I do touch on it later in this scene, though— the couple paragraphs where he slips into fantasizing about being a phantom thief having a surreptitious meeting with his detective under the not-so-subtle supervision of his DICE. There would have been a lot more of that if I’d gone with the ‘delusion’ stylistic choice, to the point where even the readers would be confused about what’s real. Maybe I’ll look into writing something similar in a future story.

             Eventually, Shuichi sets down his bowl and looks away with a little sigh, and Kokichi clenches his teeth because that’s the sigh he does when it’s time for that conversation.

           “Um… Kokichi?”

           Kokichi’s only response is to exhale the breath he’d been holding in a quiet hiss.

           “I-I know you don’t want to, but… but I really need to talk to you about something,” Shuichi says. “Please?”

           “My Mr. Detective can talk about whatever he’d like!” Kokichi says with a lilt to his tone that makes it sound more sarcastic than he wants it to. He takes the last bite of curry and wishes that it burns hot enough to hurt.

           “It’s about Kaito.”

             This more serious part of the date scene is meant to reflect the little bridge in “Buzzcut Season”:

“Cola with the burnt-out taste

I’m the one you tell your fears to

There’ll never be enough of us.”

           It’s a part of the song that sounds especially bittersweet to me, a bit of self-awareness between the insistence that everything’s okay.

           Really all I think I managed was to reference it when Kokichi’s internal dialogue comments on his drink being “so sweet it tastes burnt” and then later not tasting like anything. But hopefully the mood’s still there.

             “Tell him… that I have nothing against him,” he says.

           “That’s … not a lie?” Shuichi presses.

           Kokichi shakes his head idly, still not raising his gaze. “I wanted to wreck the killing game and he wanted to save his friend. We both got what we wanted. I’d say the end more than justifies the means.”

           Was that a lie?

           (I don’t want to die Shuichi I’m sorry I’m sorry save me Shuichi please I’m sorry ithurtsmakeitstop—)

           His fingers tighten into clawlike shapes, nails digging sharply into his forearms.

             I really don’t think Kokichi would have anything against Kaito, even if here he’s not being completely honest with how much he’s affected by what happened. It wouldn’t make sense to him to hate Kaito for something he himself proposed, but I think there’d still be a subconscious barrier between them. Too much history.

             “Don’t go, Shuichi, I’m so sorry, I— that was so dumb, what I said, please don’t be sad anymore.” He’s not sure if he can’t breathe because of the exertion of running or because of the hysteria boiling over in his head. “Please don’t go, I didn’t mean to hurt you— please don’t leave, Shuichi, I’m so sorry.”

           “Oh, Kokichi….” Shuichi’s tone is strange, soft and pitying, like he sees something Kokichi doesn’t, and he shakes his head slowly as more tears follow the paths of the others.

           Kokichi goes to his knees, ready to grovel if that’s what it takes, but Shuichi follows him down, closing his other hand over Kokichi’s, and then they’re both crying and he doesn’t know why, and all he can do is repeat a mantra of I’m sorry and hold on as tight as he can.

           It’s horrible. Shuichi’s horrible. Shuichi’s wonderful, and kind and lovely and perfect and Kokichi hates him, Kokichi adores him, and it doesn’t matter because Shuichi’s not actually here but Kokichi doesn’t want to be alone, just let me pretend some more, please, please let me have this—

           “I’ll… I’ll stay,” Shuichi says at last. “I can stay a while longer.”

           You shouldn’t, Kokichi wants to say, but his mouth won’t obey him. You shouldn’t stay if you don’t want to. I don’t deserve having you here. I’m not worth your mercy.

           But there on the bridge, crying tears of relief, he soaks up as much mercy as he can get and hopes it’s enough to drown him.

             I wanted to create a contrast between them that highlights just how the isolation and trauma Kokichi’s experiencing has affected him. He has an almost unhealthy reliance on Shuichi as “the only thing that makes this world bearable,” and panics when faced with the prospect of being alone again so soon. Part of why Shuichi’s crying is because he’s realized the extent of Kokichi’s desperation. It’s not that he thinks Kokichi’s apology is insincere, but that he’s hardly heard him apologize for anything before, so Kokichi going this far has him realizing how bad things really are.

             The door rumbles and slides open when they approach, revealing the bright light of the log-out point that took Shuichi away every time, that would wake Kokichi up in his real body if he walked into it. Shuichi stops just a step away from it, biting his lip as if searching for something to say, but before he can find it, Kokichi reaches out to tug at his sleeve.

           “Shuichi?” he says, distant as the waves on the beach that he can still hear if he listens closely enough. Shuichi turns back toward him. “Before you go, can I be selfish one more time?”

           “Huh…?”

           Shuichi doesn’t move when Kokichi steps closer, reaches up to ghost his fingertips over Shuichi’s jaw and around the back of his neck. He lets Kokichi tilt his head downward, lets him hover inches away, close enough to feel their breath mingle in the night air. Kokichi pauses there to give him the chance to pull away. He doesn’t.

           So Kokichi closes his eyes and the distance between them.

             That last line is a ZEUGMA! It’s a literary device where one word refers to two more in a different way. A popular example is the hyenas’ line “Our teeth and ambitions are bared” from The Lion King. It’s my favorite grammatical trick and I’d love to see more of it in fanfic.

             Slowly, he slides his hand down to Shuichi’s shoulder, using it as leverage to push himself away. That hurts even more. He can’t seem to open his eyes, and he feels so weakened, breathless, fragile. Cracked open, hollowed out.

           When he finally does open his eyes, Shuichi’s are wide with some mix of astonishment and a dozen other emotions. Kokichi bows his head, taking a deep breath to ground himself. “Sorry,” he whispers. “I just wanted to know.”

           “Kokichi,” Shuichi breathes, like a bullet through his heart.

           “Goodbye, Shuichi,” Kokichi says, and shoves him into the light.

           Shuichi’s little yelp of surprise cuts off abruptly as he falls through the door, vanishing into the glow, and all too soon, Kokichi’s alone again in a dream that suddenly seems far too vast. Alone, with the faintest taste of Shuichi’s lips still lingering on his own.

           And he thinks, It was enough just to know you.

           It’s a lie.

             Nothing to say here except that this is my favorite scene and I’m so happy with how it turned out.

             Fake sun rises over fake ocean, fake seagulls glide through fake sky while fake wind tousles fake palm fronds. Kokichi lies on his stomach in the fake grass and talks to his fake family in the fake notebook. Gives them fake names and runs through everything he remembers about them. Apologizes, over and over, wishes he could hug each of them goodbye one last time. Wonders if it would be more painful to die or to never have existed at all.

           He leaves the notebook of his memories on the seat of one of the Ferris wheel cars on the fourth island, because one time he promised them they’d steal the London Eye together.

           He buys a can of fake soda from the fake convenience store on the first island and sits on the fake beach watching the fake waves. Wonders when he’d hit the end of the simulation if he started swimming, or if he’d drown first.

           White sand, blue sea, bluer sky. Washed out, like an amateur watercolor painting.

           He opens the soda can and raises it to his mouth, but … even the thought of drinking it makes him sick to his stomach. He sets it down in the sand and flicks it over, watching the bubbly liquid run down and sink into the sand. The color’s all wrong, like blood streaked against a metal floor.

           He walks the fake streets of the fifth island, passing fake skyscrapers and fake commuters and their fake conversations, until he finally stops outside the factory he’s never been able to bring himself to go into. Smells like oil, and metal and machines and he can hear the sounds and he’s immediately back in the hangar, dizzy on adrenaline and desperation and leaning heavily on Kaito so he doesn’t keel over and die then and there. Kaito says something about how maybe he should sit down for a minute, and Kokichi didn’t agree back then but he does now, goes down on all fours and dry heaves.

           When his vision solidifies and he can stop gasping for breath, he sits up and presses his back against the factory wall, covering his ears and hiding his face in his knees. Tries to convince himself not to imagine Shuichi’s there with him, holding his hand again, promising everything’s going to be okay.

           “I’ve got you. No one’s going to hurt you anymore,” or maybe, “Breathe with me, it’ll be over soon. You’re safe now.”

           I love you.

           He laughs until there’s nothing left in his lungs. He called these little daydreams obsession, before, but now they just seem sick and insane.

             I wanted to indicate throughout this scene that Kokichi’s gotten substantially worse. Instead of halfheartedly interacting with the NPCs or finding something to spend time doing, he’s aimlessly wandering the islands, focused on how fake all of it is. Not even talking to his sketches of DICE can make him feel better. The suicidal ideation starts to slip in even if he doesn’t realize it— a fixation on wondering what death is like, purposefully triggering himself by walking by the factory….

           The thing I want to talk about most though is the italicized I love you. I left it outside of quotation marks and dialogue tags on purpose because I wanted it to be ambiguous as to who’s saying it. If it’s Kokichi’s line, it’s sudden and almost out of place, like he couldn’t hold back from thinking it anymore. But it could be Shuichi saying it, too. Since it’s outside quotation marks, unlike the previous dream-Shuichi lines, it’s more vague, almost a whisper in Kokichi’s thoughts— like he can barely bring himself to imagine it and even feels guilty doing so, because there’s no way it could possibly be real.

           Which do you think?

           Eh, I don’t have an answer. When I hear it in my head, they say it at the same time.

             “How did you know?” he finally croaks.

           Shuichi’s breathing still sounds shaky, too. “Because you said ‘goodbye,’” he says.

           Kokichi finally looks up at him in a silent question.

           “You never say goodbye,” Shuichi says, rubbing his sleeve over his eyes. “It’s always….”

           “‘See you later,’” Kokichi finishes for him. Despite himself, a tiny huff of astonished laughter escapes him. “I didn’t even know, not until a couple of hours ago. And you figured it all out from one word?”

           Shuichi bites his lip at that. “You kissed me,” he says.

           Kokichi’s stomach twists and he looks away. “I said I was sorry—”

           “No.” Shuichi squeezes his hand into a fist and lets it fall to thump against Kokichi’s chest, like he’s trying to knock some sense into him. “It was so honest, and vulnerable, and… and I know how much you hate showing how you really feel.” Another tiny sob catches in his throat. “And so it felt like … like something you’d do if you weren’t going to s-see me again.”

           “Shuichi….” Kokichi trails off as Shuichi muffles his cries in his hand again. He’s so breathtakingly smart. There’s no one else in the world who thinks that way, no one else who could possibly be that attentive and that clever. Not a programmer, not a team of shrinks… how can an AI manage it? How is it that Shuichi always manages to take him by surprise? How can he see straight through him when he least expects it?

           Kokichi’s hand reaches up to Shuichi’s cheek. Reverently traces the path of the tears falling down it.

           “I wish you were real,” he confesses in a whisper.

             Kokichi’s stubborn. So, so stubborn. And he’s not used to being cared about, if the way he does everything by himself is any indication. So it makes sense to me that he’ll refuse to believe anything good can happen to him even in the face of convincing evidence. He’s pretty self-hating for someone so arrogant.

             Kokichi’s weak, deep down to his core, weak for this man. Already knows he’d do anything for him, and the thought is terrifying—that one person could have that much power over him, even if he doesn’t realize it.

           But what if he has realized it? Couldn’t this all be an elaborate ruse, a lie he knew Kokichi would be so desperate to believe that he wouldn’t bother questioning it?

           …Shuichi’s never hurt him, though. Only that one time, when he really deserved it. Shuichi wouldn’t … betray him, even for what he thinks is Kokichi’s own good. They’re… different from each other, that way.

           But still….

           “I’m so scared, Shuichi.” It’s barely a whisper. “I don’t want to be alone anymore.”

           “You won’t be.” It’s so hard to be skeptical, lost in his eyes. “I’ll be right there with you, for as long as you want. I won’t let you feel like this anymore.”

           Promise me, he wants to blurt out. Promise you’ll stay. Promise me you’ll never leave me, Shuichi, he wants to demand, but that’s wrong, that’s manipulative and selfish and everything he doesn’t want to be for Shuichi anymore.

           Shuichi, of course, says it anyway.

           “I promise, Kokichi.”

…        

           “Kiss me again,” he says. “Please?”

           Shuichi leans in close, then pauses, his brow furrowing the way it does when he catches him in a lie.

           “I’ll kiss you again in the real world,” Shuichi says. “Okay?”

           Kokichi shakes his head. “Shuichi, please.” Please, I don’t think I can do this. Please, I don’t want to wake up to a lie. Please, one last kiss for me to remember in case it was all fake.

           Shuichi reaches out to tilt his chin up and Kokichi closes his eyes, savoring every second, burning it into his memory.

           Shuichi’s soft breath ghosts over his lips.

           “Trust me,” he murmurs.        

           Kokichi’s eyes flutter back open, searching his face. Shifting him around on the white board in his head, seeing what categories he fits into this time. Weird, of course. Suspicious, maybe not. Trustworthy?

           Trustworthy….

           “I do trust you,” he realizes.

             Kokichi’s still hesitant to accept all of this— Shuichi kissing him didn’t magically fix everything. He’ll still doubt all the way to the log-out point, but at least now he realizes that this simulation is only hurting him— that if things are to get better they’re going to have to change, too. He’s got a long way to go before he’s all right, but he’s not going to have to face it alone anymore.

             And that’s a wrap!

           Once again, I’m really proud of this story, and I feel like I grew as a writer because of it. There are a few things I would change if I wrote it again, but for all its flaws it’s still my baby and I like how it turned out.

           Thanks again for all your support for “Hologram,” and thanks even more if you actually waded through all this nonsense of a director’s cut. It’s a huge confidence-boost to think that people liked what I wrote, and even wanted to hear what I had to say about it. If there’s any interest, I’d love to review some of my other fics here, or theorize or brainstorm or whatever else  you’re into. (Ask me what Byakuya’s Thing is in my superhero AU, I dare you 😉)

           I do have a WIP in my folder of bits and pieces currently titled “boy finally gets that kiss”, and it’s a post-Hologram scene from Shuichi’s point of view to just sorta… tie it all together, have them talk things over again… and kiss, of course. We’ll see if anything comes out of that.

           Until next time!

[jellymaids]

idle dantes thoughts

my favorite white haired anime man has me thinking since i heard he’s going to be relevant again in the upcoming jp fgo event somehow, and i can’t constantly subject my friends on discord to my screeds.

something i’ve seen rolling around in fgo fandom is “dantes’ soul is in the chateau, that’s why he’s still so full of rage.” i feel like this is a wildly simplistic view on dantes’ whole situation though? as well as disregarding that as an avenger, he is cursed to never forget the hurt and harm done him, no matter how small - it becomes his strength. that is a constant in all in the avenger class. gorgon remembers humanity’s hatred for her, jalter knows the pain of being persecuted as a witch, angra mainyu was made a scapegoat for sin. all of them have remembrance and constant hatred circulating in them.

beyond the direct “he’s just an avenger” answer, there’s more to be thought about as to why dantes is raging, though.

as much as you have to take fate/ versions of characters as their own entities and not strongly tied to history, there are enough references in his interactions, lines, and unique events to indicate that the writers are heavily pulling from the actual text of dumas’ novel. in particular, him referring to haydee at points - which is shockingly rare for an adaptation, as they prefer to keep him paired with mercedes and not get into the messy aspects of haydee existing in the story - is proof they’re thinking about what dumas wrote down. dantes is an existence like jalter, like nursery rhyme - all three are versions of themselves, self aware pieces of fiction. where dantes deviates from the others is that fate/strange fake confirms what the drama cd came close to saying - he was a real person who dumas met and extracted the story from, which dumas went and changed around into his own bestselling novel. the dantes we know, then, isn’t straightforwardly the one from the real world dumas’ novel. he’s fictional, real, and made fictional again, only to then again become real as our servant and ally - operating on a double level of constructed identity, messy as that is to define. 

dantes is intensely aware he is a creation. he doesn’t seem to hold much love for dumas, or the happy end which he gave his hero - we do not know the fate of the “real” dantes, but it can be inferred it was not a happy one, given his disappearance and refusal to interact with dumas again. as servants are twisted by the popular interpretation of them, so is dantes changed by the popular image of his novel as one man’s revenge saga. the lust for destruction and vengeance is what people know of him, the rage and pain that dominated most of his life after he escaped prison. the count of monte cristo is that specific man, and not the sailor from marseille or the man who regrets going too far and tries desperately to not fuck up innocent lives when he wakes up to how he’s being, the man who sails away with haydee and leaves france behind. 

he is in essence an excerpt of the full tale of edmond dantes, not the fully told tale of his life. he is denied that hopeful ending that dumas wrote him (in real life and in canon), and so he exists as avenger, forever on fire with hatred for injustice that would do those things to him, to the innocents in the world as a whole. that’s not related to the false chateau, that’s just baked into who he is as a servant. his soul is that popular, twisted image of himself while at the same time being aware that he’s been changed into this entity, much the same as other servants can be. frankly, it wouldn’t be out of line to say it skirts the concept of innocent monster, though i know that’s reserved for those who genuinely didn’t do the wild deeds attributed to them - salieri, andersen, etc. all of this is to say, it’s not the event that made him this way, it’s been in him since the real dumas put the words on paper, and fgo was just copying down what was already there into a servant. 

side note, for as heavy handed and awkward as the canon can be, it’s a remarkably nuanced thing to have it be noted in his information and the knk event that dantes holds a deep love for humanity. even in his complicated, fragmented existence, he still loves the good in the world as much as he hates the evil in it. there’s still something of the man he was and was meant to be at the end in him now. 

[spiders-hth-is-an-outlier]

Possibly a big ask to get just out of the blue but: what are your Supernatural season opinions? Which one is your favorite? Least favorite? Did you watch long enough to have showrunner opinions? If yes, which showrunner is your favorite and which is your least favorite? If no, which season that you haven't seen most tempts you to get back in the Supernatural trenches? Answer exactly as many of these questions as you want to. Carry on.

You know, I am not sure how long this Ask has been sitting here, because my Tumblr notifications are borked -- I hope not long? If long, I apologize, I wasn't ignoring it on purpose!

Okay, so I have more than the average number of Supernatural opinions, probably, but I'll try to keep this to a dull roar! Inside Me There Are Two Wolves: one of them believes that only the original five seasons of Supernatural are worth defending in any way, the other really, really loves seasons 11 and 12. The Kripke Era had a lot of problems, particularly in its treatment of women as bodies without agency and its treatment of Black men as literal predators, but also for all its flaws, it had a kind of coherence and narrative drive that comes from being the product of a dude who obviously cared about it and had something to say. Taken on its own, seasons 1-5 are a brutal and compelling story about the traumas of being men in a universe that's been absolutely destroyed by its Fathers: on almost every level, it's about these abandoned and brutalized boys discovering that their entire reality is the product of an abandoning and brutalizing God, populated by authority figures who are universally demanding and arrogant, but also completely fucking useless. It's quite literally about Sam and Dean trying to hang onto their souls and their own agency when everyone around them wants them forced into shapes formed by conflicts that fell into place at the beginning of time. It's hard to remember, but back then even the Lucifer plotline was about that! It was about the damage fathers inflict on sons! Things were about things, in the Kripke era!

Then we get to the Gamble era, and. Woof. I actually -- don't hate 6 and 7? Like everything Sera Gamble touches, those two seasons are kinetic and memorable and funny and weird and hit some really, really great emotional beats. There are Some Problems, but Gamble was saddled with a pretty dire job, trying to find a way forward after everything about the series really had effectively wrapped up in Swan Song, and I think she did an okay job. People got mad at her for killing Castiel, but you know, damn, I give her this: that was a storyline. Like, this character who was fresh out of the cult he was raised in becoming disillusioned by how messy normal life is and deciding that maybe people need better authoritarianism instead -- the way he's driven to take too many risks by the fact that he's abandoned and desperate -- Crowley as a legitimately scary villain while still being charming af -- and the tragic resolution of Castiel being torn apart by both his hubris and his heroism. It's actually really good. I understand why people didn't want what Gamble was serving up -- and I'm able to like it because it was undone later, you know? -- but she really did commit to a full season of character arc and saw it all the way through to an earned ending, and I gotta respect that.

I genuinely hate seasons 8 and 9. I think everyone is a dick, particularly but not exclusively Dean, to the point where I just find it a bummer to watch. I mean, you get Benny, and I love Benny. You get, I dunno, bits and bobs of decent episodes, but overall they are very fucked up seasons in my opinion. So Carver era is on thin fucking ice with me, but I do think you start to get a rebound in season 10 with the Mark of Cain stuff, although I wish they'd managed to keep Cain around longer. All the really good Claire stuff starts happening, which is nice because Claire, but also because for once the show is really letting itself go back and deal with the mess these protagonists leave behind them constantly. Castiel and Claire have maybe the most interesting non-Winchester relationship on the show. Oh, and Rowena shows up around here too, right? Love her. So the back half of Carver, 10 and 11, are starting to really gain traction for me. The world is building outward, secondary characters are starting to be genuine characters in their own right, the politics of Heaven and Hell get a little richer and more interesting. The show is really starting to feel like it takes place in a universe, which is great because we love the Frigging Winchesters, but they shouldn't be the only thing going, right? We have 15 seasons to get through! Season 11 is basically bracketed by what are probably my two favorite Supernatural episodes: Baby and Don't Call Me Shurley. (I think I'm the world's only living Metatron fan; I fucking love that little dude.)

Dabb takes over in 12, and I really, really, genuinely love season 12. I fucking love Mary. There are so many episodes I adore -- Celebrating the Life of Asa Fox is a special favorite of mine, and I remain pissed off that the Banes twins never made it to recurring status, bluntly that feels wildly racist to me -- probably the best three-episode streak in the show is Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets to Regarding Dean to Stuck In the Middle (With You), three just almost perfect episodes. So I was poised to really love the Dabb era. I wanted to! My body was ready!

And I do really love the first chunk of season 13, the Widow Winchester arc. Obviously I'm a romantic, love that for me, but it's just also really good? The acting, the writing, the psychological complexity of Dean wanting Jack to be Bad so he has an outlet for his anger and Sam wanting Jack to be Good so he can retroactively parent himself and raise a Lucifer-tainted child who isn't crippled by self-loathing. Billie's great, and it looks like she's going to start being one of the major powers of the universe. Unfortunately -- with the occasional exception of this or that solid episode -- that's kind of the end of Pretty Good Supernatural. Season 13 kind of unravels; season 14 always feels like it's looking for itself (which is a bummer, because I wanted very much to care about Michael); season 15 is, idk. Idk about any of it, it's all pretty pointless. I feel bad complaining on some level, because the show's been on for like fourteen years at this point! It's kinda justified in feeling a little worn out. But the reality is that the later seasons systematically undo all the expansion that had excited me earlier -- the Wayward Sisters crew pretty much vanishes when the spinoff isn't picked up, Naomi and the angels stop doing anything, Crowley's gone, Mary's gone for much of it. We're just kind of futzing around with monsters who don't seem to matter (very much including Lucifer, who hasn't mattered in ages) and a lot of Jack, who. I try not to shit all over, because I know he's a popular character, but I find him just ungodly boring. Everything in the last two and a half season just feels like it's headed nowhere in particular, and also it bored me. The Empty deal is just sadness porn; it doesn't have any resonance or meaning in terms of Castiel's character, it's just him agreeing to die for his kid, which is okay, it means he's a loving dad, which he is, but there's no conflict there, ergo no real drama. It's just mean; it happens because it'll make us sad, and no other reason. Rowena is the only strong secondary character left, and her ending also doesn't feel particularly relevant to her, it's just a generic Sacrifice to Save the World. Everything just feels like they're autogenerating plotlines, rather than letting the actual needs and drives of the characters shape the narrative. So while I have this weird split personality with Carver where I either hate what he's doing or I love it, most of the Dabb era is just. There. It doesn't make me feel anything except kind of tired and embarrassed. Which is a bummer, because I have an inexplicable fondness for Dabb, probably just because of how much I love s12. I wanted to love his seasons! I did love his first season! I feel like maybe something happened when the CW rejected Wayward Sisters? I know that was kind of his darling, and it feels like maybe losing that kind of sucked the joy out of him, and he's kind of checked-out by the end. That's genuinely just my guess, however.

That's Professor Milo's Intro to Supernatural Studies, don't forget to fill out your course survey on the way out!

[hilarieburtonmorgan]

Ten Years Later, the One Tree Hill Cast Is Setting the Record Straight

Ten years after the finale of One Tree Hill, the actors Hilarie Burton Morgan, Sophia Bush, and Bethany Joy Lenz have never been closer. Despite their shared experience growing up on screen, the trio— who played Peyton Sawyer, Brooke Davis, and Haley James in the heartland-set high school soap for nine seasons—were kept largely isolated from one another during those years.

That distance began to dissipate with age, and when the #MeToo movement alerted the actors to some of their common experiences while working on One Tree Hill. In their new weekly iHeartRadio podcast Drama Queens, the three actors unpack the moments—nostalgic and traumatic alike—that unfolded behind the scenes of the wildly popular drama. To celebrate the podcast’s success, Burton Morgan, Bush, and Lenz joined us for a bit of reminiscing. —BRIAN ALESSANDRO

———

HILARIE BURTON MORGAN: Sophia, you were the person that called me about a podcast. What was the catalyst for you to be like, “It’s time”?

SOPHIA BUSH: When we first finished the show, I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to touch it. I didn’t want to be close to it. And then as time went on, and we all started being able to get together, and share stories, and talk some shit. We all finally told each other the stories we’d been afraid to share — I wish we’d been able to have the friendships we have now back then! — and hearing everyone’s stories really made me so furious. It lit that fire in me, and I thought “well, we just have to burn it down.” But, I also had to remember how much our fans love the show, and to realize that despite so much that was insidious we also had fun. We’ve shared stories about what was painful and hard, and I think especially because of what you were put through, I wanted to call you first and just say, like, “Does this idea feel triggering?” You said “No, this feels quite cool.”

BURTON MORGAN: What was your first reaction, Joy?

BETHANY JOY LENZ: I was definitely hesitant about more One Tree Hill anything. But the more we talked about it, I was like, “Wow, this is actually a chance for redemption.” Also, I don’t want to throw shade on the show that did give us amazing opportunities. I always try to temper my frustrations with a good bit of gratitude. But as for the bad stuff, I really do love the opportunity to redeem that. Some of it was us being young and stubborn twenty-year-olds, but a lot of it was the people around us who were using our youth and naïveté to keep us from arguing back. It was always, “Joy, you’re the odd man out. Sophia, you’re the odd man out. Hilarie, you’re the odd man out.” So we never reached out to each other. I’m incredibly grateful for the relationship I with you amazing women now.

BURTON MORGAN: I left the show first, and it was the divorce of my life, because I’d committed so much to being the good soldier. “I’ll do whatever press you want. I’ll go on whatever mall tour.” And so, the loss of that was traumatic. But the next relationship I got into professionally was with White Collar, and the best person I could have ever encountered was Tiffani Thiessen, who was an icon to me. She told me right out of the gate, “Don’t bad mouth the show that got you started. Defend your character, forget the bad guys, take what’s good.” That was such great advice. She was someone whose opinion meant something to me, because she’d been a teen idol of mine. Who were some women on TV that that you felt like we were trying to emulate while we were doing the show?

LENZ: I don’t think I ever really knew how to process it. I actually feel like I missed a lot of the excitement because I kept asking myself what it all meant.

BURTON MORGAN: I was the opposite! I like experience. But I made terrible choices.

BUSH: I’m with Joy. Now, I over intellectualize everything because back then, I was always soaking up all the experiences and I got my ass handed to me. So now I’m like, “What does it mean? What is it all?”

BURTON MORGAN: How many years out are we now? Like 17 years out from the first year?

LENZ: I don’t even know how to process that.

BURTON MORGAN: 18 years out? Jesus, we could have children in college at this point. Why do you think people still care?

LENZ: Comfort food. I mean, that’s it, like especially now that there’s so much content. I can only speak from my experience, but when I settle in to watch TV, I will spend 20 minutes scrolling before saying, “You know what, fuck it,” and turning on Frasier. And that’s what I watch because I know those characters, and I just want that familiarity. I honestly think the over-saturation has played a huge role in our fans’ need for One Tree Hill.

BUSH: And I would also say that there is something about how — as outlandish it got at times — there was also a lot that felt honest. People write to us about how they feel seen, how they feel represented, how they see their own struggles in our show. When I meet new people who are just discovering it and I think, “You could be watching anything! Why? Thank you?”

BURTON MORGAN: Honestly, having an older kid, and seeing the things that he’s drawn to, he loves watching TV shows from our era. Probably the same reason I loved watching Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie and What’s Happening – it’s retro. They’re mystified by it because there’s no social media on our show and so people are actually talking to each other. You actually had to show up at Karen’s Cafe to have that important conversation. It’s a wish fulfillment for these younger kids where they’re like, “Oh, my life doesn’t look anything like that.” We are the time warp, which is super fucked up.

LENZ: And we were also the last show that was doing, dare I say, wholesome content? I mean I know our show, like, jumped the shark several times in many regards, but in terms of the“hometown kids, middle of America, just dealing with regular emotions and life stuff,” those shows became very rare. Everything that came after us was like rich kids—Gossip Girl and The OC, and then it was all brought to a high-concept place like the Vampire Diaries, Riverdale stuff. And I don’t know that there’s anything out there that’s kind of gotten back to the roots, like One Tree Hill.

BURTON MORGAN: Can you imagine pitching One Tree Hill now? Like, “it’s about some kids. Two of them play basketball, and the rest are just moody.”

BURTON MORGAN: What episodes are we all excited to review the most? Some of them are cringey as hell.

BUSH: I’m sure a lot of them will be.

BURTON MORGAN: I like the Halloween episode we did at Tric [the “all-ages” nightclub]. That was batshit. It was 1000 degrees in there and everyone was dying and miserable and we’re dressed up like cartoons.

LENZ: I know. The one with the car, where they made me fucking siphon off gas.

BURTON MORGAN: That was fun cause that was really the first time the three of us were put together.

BUSH: Having to pretend to be high on pills when I never had been, I was like, “I’ll try!” Hilarie, your wedding episode was…

BURTON MORGAN: Christ.

BUSH: That was such a shit show, man. You said the Halloween episode — you’ll cackle when you see we did a Halloween episode after you were gone. And I had to be dressed up as one half of A Clockwork Orange, but was abandoned in my costume, and I was written to be dressed as a giant orange and Carol (Cutshall, costumer) papier-mached a workout ball and drilled armholes in it, and I had to wear it. AND I directed that episode!

BURTON MORGAN: That’s perfect! That’s a chef’s kiss.

BUSH: I had little T-Rex arms, being like, “well, if you go over there” – And they’d say “Where?” And I’d be like, “I can’t show you! I’m stuck in an orange!” It was, it was so humiliating. But when I think back on it, great comedic fodder.

BURTON MORGAN: What is your favorite keepsake from the show?

LENZ: I have the Julius Caesar book that Haley gives to Lucas in the pilot.

BURTON MORGAN: I have the leather jacket that Peyton takes after Ellie [Sheryl Lee] dies. That was an intense crying scene for me. My body has a physical reaction to that jacket.

LENZ: What’s yours, Soph?

BUSH: I have, like, a bin.

BURTON MORGAN: You have everything!

BUSH: There’s like this sad episode where Brooke celebrates her birthday alone in her room with a cupcake. I have the photo album from that scene, which is very sweet because it’s all photos of you and I, Hilarie…

BURTON MORGAN: You have that?

BUSH: Oh yeah, I took that immediately. There are real pictures of us from growing up, because it was this story of these friends who grew up together…

BURTON MORGAN: Joy, we’re gonna photoshop you in.

BUSH: Honestly, we should just make a new one. Of all the stuff that feels sentimental, that “Brooke Davis for President” pin kills me. It’s up on the wall in my office, because it makes me laugh. When I think about why that’s the one thing I’ve displayed—next to a photo of the three of us— it’s because it symbolized something that at the time really embarrassed me, but now I respect. Brooke Davis took the thing she was made fun of for, and turned it into an anthem. She was this bad bitch who owned her shit. That’s something I’ve tried to emulate.

BURTON MORGAN: One thing that I keep thinking is, “we deserve this.”

LENZ: Because we do! It’s hard to say that as women, I think.

BURTON MORGAN: What makes you two feel like we deserve this?

LENZ: Because we’ve worked our asses off, and because it’s beautiful to experience friendship with each other in a way that we were robbed of in our younger days.

BURTON MORGAN: We were really good girls. I’m excited to set things straight.

[haillenarte]

uniqlo x ffxiv collab;

Here are translations of the Uniqlo x FFXIV advertisements that hit Japanese stores in December 2019.

Wait... What? An announcement was posted on Lodestone today that tapestries (basically just banners) of FFXIV characters would be displayed in select Uniqlo stores in Shinjuku and Ikebukuro.

I’ve heard of Uniqlo, but I don’t know what it is... Uniqlo is a Japanese fashion brand that’s pretty much known for selling basics — think single-color shirts, sweaters, pants, coats, and scarves. While I won’t speak for everyone, and I’m sure some people have wildly different opinions, my personal experience is that in Tokyo, Uniqlo is thought of as a very basic, bargain-bin place to buy clothes: yeah, it’s normal to shop there, and pretty much everyone has some item from Uniqlo in their closet somewhere, but it’s not really considered fashionable, and it’s honestly a bit uncool to wear Uniqlo from head to toe. In New York, however, Uniqlo is generally thought of as basic but trendy — people tend to like the quality of the clothing even though individual items can be pricey. In the end, a brand is a brand. If they operate in your country, you may as well head to their website to get your own idea of it.

So this is basically just an advertising campaign? Yes, and a very limited one. If I understand correctly, the ads are only running in three Uniqlo stores in all of Tokyo. They’re pretty big stores in trendy neighborhoods, but not the flagship store or anything. (Their flagship store is in Ginza, which is very nice, but rather mature and austere.) Also, they are specifically advertising Uniqlo’s “HEATTECH” clothing line, which, I don’t know, uses science to keep you warm or something. I have never tried HEATTECH clothes, though I have other pieces of clothing from Uniqlo, but I am told that they are pretty warm.

How weird is this for Uniqlo? Honestly, not that weird — Uniqlo does a lot of collaborations with popular series, mostly thanks to their T-shirt line that’s collaborated with such characters and series as Mario, Gundam, Pokémon, Hello Kitty, and all manner of mangas. I don’t know whether or not they’ve run fake testimonials from characters before, but the testimonial-based ads themselves are just a thing that Uniqlo does. I’m pretty sure they’ve done comparable campaigns in Singapore and Taiwan, albeit with real people giving their opinions and not Final Fantasy characters. Their “Voices of New York” series was somewhat similar as well — they got a bunch of famous New Yorkers to wear Uniqlo and do little interviews, basically.

How weird is this for Square Enix? Honestly, not that weird — I mean, will anything ever be as weird as when they decided to have Lightning and other characters from FFXIII model for Prada and Louis Vuitton? FFXV had fashion collaborations with Vivienne Westwood and Roen built into the game, too, although that was a little more... serious. I’m actually just disappointed that they didn’t whip up a Uniqlo HEATTECH shirt for the characters to actually wear.

How weird is this, like... generally? Oh, it’s very silly, but character collaborations are all kind of a big joke anyway. And, to be honest, they do get nerds to get into their stores and buy shit.

Photos were taken randomly off Twitter. Thank you to everyone who visited Uniqlo just to share the banners with social media.

As for the text itself, I... I don’t want to talk about it...

HEATTECH x FINAL FANTASY XIV ONLINE The reason I wear Heattech every day...

ESTINIEN Former Azure Dragoon Heattech lover for 5 years.

Under my armor, I’m always wearing Heattech. Has it already been 5 years, now? 'Twas Ser Aymeric who originally recommended to me these garments. At first, I was half in doubt as to the veracity of his claims, but once I equipped mine own apparel, I was stunned by how well it performed. It doesn't matter how high I jump through the frigid air of Coerthas — I never get cold. Now I can't even imagine fighting in the skies without Heattech.

ALPHINAUD LEVEILLEUR Academician of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn Heattech lover for 1 year.

In Heattech, I'm warm from the tips of my fingers down to my toes. During my journey through Ishgard, a companion of mine recommended that I wear these curious garments to stay warm, and I have not been parted from them since. Even as I gathered bits of brush and kindling in the Churning Mists for our campfire, I felt not the slightest chill.

ALISAIE LEVEILLEUR Red Mage of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn Heattech lover for 1 year.

When something red catches my eye, I just have to have it. And each time a new Heattech product comes out, I'll add it to my wardrobe without hesitation. These garments don't get in the way during frenzied combat, and they provide the ease of movement that I need in the heat of battle. They come in so many tempting colors that I do find it difficult to choose between them every now and then — but in the end, I always pick red!  

Y’SHTOLA RHUL Sorceress of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn Heattech lover for 6 years.

Every sorceress worth her salt keeps a few secrets... and Heattech is one of mine. Naturally, these vestments will keep you warm, and I particularly appreciate that they feel smooth to the touch. ‘Twould be an exaggeration to say that I could forget that I am wearing them, but... I do find myself advantaged by the way that they do not obstruct the flow of magic. As Master Matoya has chosen to reside in a rather dark, chilly cave, I thought it prudent to send her a selection of Heattech raiments. I wonder how well she found them.

CID NAN GARLOND President of Garlond Ironworks Heattech lover for 9 years.

Heattech is our company's hidden uniform. Garlond Ironworks engineers often work in cold environments, so Heattech garments have become indispensable to our performance. Anyone who's ever flown an airship knows this well: when you're at the helm, you're at the mercy of the winds, and those winds are cold. That's why every engineer in our organization is provided with a Heattech undershirt. And you? Will you join our number?

NERO TOL SCAEVA Freelance Genius Engineer Heattech lover for 9 years.

This is something I might engineer — which is how you know it’s good. Garlond’s Heattech undershirt is naught but a simple garment, whereas mine is fitted with a magitek weave that promotes superior heat retention!

KRILE BALDESION Archon of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn Heattech lover for 3 years.

Do you suppose we might call this... the power to transcend the cold? Thanks to the raging aether surrounding the isle, Eureka Anemos undergoes volatile changes in temperature, making Heattech an absolute necessity for exploring the more frosty areas of the Forbidden Land. Even that obstinate Ejika hides an undershirt beneath his robes, you know! I myself am rather partial to sporting a good pair of Heattech short pants whilst on expedition. I don't believe even the brightest minds at the Studium could have conceived of such practical use for this technology.

Please note that Sharlayan lore isn’t my strong suit, and I never set foot in Eureka, so it is possible that there are better ways to interpret some of Krile’s remarks here.

also here’s my version thank u good night

[artsybi]

because i end up basically writing fan fiction of my own projects when i’m procrastinating on said project if i ever manage to actually publish something, i will one hundred percent have an ao3 account on which i write fanfic for my own shit

maybe i’ll even like, make reference to fanfic during like, an interview or something, like making reference to the fact that i’m active on ao3 or just in the fandom community in general and watch as the fandom loses it 

and i’d one hundred percent be active in the fan community, no matter how small, just like, making fandom friends and shit, it’d be so fun to see what ships rise to the top and what headcanons become super popular in fandom spaces for my characters

and like, with ships especially because in two of the main projects i’m currently working on all the main characters are some flavor of bi/pan (and a secondary protagonist from one who might end up as a main character because i like her is a poly lesbian) with one focused around two guys and two girls and the other around two girls and one guy so, like, i’m two hundred percent leaving the door wide open for shippers to have their ways with them

in one project actually i have a whole thing with two of the characters being “dating but not really” and they’re literally fake dating in canon to get their parents off their back, and if that’s not fandom bait i don’t know what is

see this is the problem, like i have all these dreams of people falling in love with my characters the same way i’ve fallen in love with so many in the past but actually writing is so hard, so i just daydream about a hypothetical fandom space for my writing (and i wonder what “hot takes” born of misunderstanding fundamental parts of both character and story would arise) then i have to remind myself that it doesn’t exist and might not ever exist because writing is hard as fuck y’all

like i want to read all the bad and out of character au’s, and i want to see who runs the tattoo parlor and who owns the flower shop, and i want to see fan art, and i want to know about everyone’s interpretations of my characters and i want to know what small reference from one of them will become integral to their personality in fandom, and i want people to love these characters the same way that i love them, but for that i have to actually write, and actually finish something, and actually get it published and etc etc etc and it’s such a laundry list

like i don’t even want to be famous or anything, i don’t care about that and i wouldn’t want to be shoved into the spotlight, but i want people to get a chance to get to know all my characters, i want them to sympathize with tara, laugh with ava, roll their eyes with luke, smile with rachel, get exasperated with alex, fight side by side with kai, hunt with indie, pity jaz, hell, i want them to stand by rosie, rebel with em, stay strong with kat, run with micky, i want them to know these characters, and these worlds i have constructed in my head, i want them to be able to lose themselves in these stories and characters

i want to see my characters through a fandom’s eyes, and i want to know what crossovers get written, i want to know what hogwarts house everyone gets assigned and why, i want to know what crack ships are fan favorites, i want to know what percy jackson cabin the fandom thinks they fit, i want all the stupid au’s, i want to see all the high school and college au’s, hell, who studies what at college, i want to scroll through a tag on tumblr, or ao3, hell, wattpad, and be able to think to myself that, hey, i wrote that source material

and i want

i just desperately want to know what people think of these pieces of me that i’ve molded and given names, how they get characterized

like kai, is he the fandom “uwu soft boy” because he has anxiety? or is he the fandom badass because he’s known for getting into fights? (and how many au’s take away the fact that he’s mute?)

is indie the cool and stoic rebel who smokes and wears all black and combat boots? or is she dangerously reckless and self-destructive? or is she just the fandom slut because she flirts and sleeps around? (and how often are her unhealthy coping mechanisms turned into mere personality traits?)

does rachel get pegged as the fandom’s “literal sunshine child has never done anything wrong ever”? or is she seen as boring in comparison to the other characters? (and how much of her symbolism gets caught?)

is ava the “soft uwu bby girl who must be protected at all costs”? or is she just a bitch who pokes her nose into things that don’t involve her because she stands up for people? (and how often does the fandom forget she needs glasses? how often do they forget she’s a star runner?)

is luke just the book smart source-of-important-information? or is he cold and calculated because he knows how to use a gun? (and how often is the fact that most of his family is alive get glossed over?)

is tara a cold bitch who keeps too many secrets and hides things from those close to her? or is she self destructive and half-suicidal because of all her trauma? (and how often is she a demon in au’s?)

is alex just the dad-friend and nothing more? or is he cast aside and forgotten because he seems boring compared to his far more traumatized peers? (and how often is the fact that he’s a star sports player forgotten?)

is jaz simplified down to “cold shallow rich bitch who only cares about appearances”? or is she seen as heavily traumatized and very mentally ill? (and how are her parents seen, are they the fandom’s john winchester, or are they just forgotten and shoved to the side?)

i desperately want to know how these characters are seen, and even simplified down by a fandom game of telephone, leaving only their most recognizable traits

what color is every character assigned? is jaz gold as i intended? does ava get pastel pink? is alex green? is kai gray or orange? is tara maroon-y purple? does indie get black? is luke dark yellow or blue? does rachel get strawberry blonde? 

what’s their most recognizable outfit or accessory? is it ava’s sweets skirt, kai’s hoodie? alex’s sports jersey, jaz’s fake nails? indie’s gun holster and black canvas jacket, tara’s combat boots? luke’s hoodie, rachel’s sneakers?

what fanwork gains a fandom of its own? is it super angsty like twist and shout(which i have not read)? or is it soft and almost hopeful the way not easily conquered is? is it a heavy au, or is it simply canon divergent?

who are the fan favorites? and who gets brushed to the side in favor of said fan favorites? who’s always wildly out of character, and who stays true to their original form?

what’s the fandom as a whole like? is it wildly toxic or mostly okay? how common are blow-out ship wars? what are the ship wars like? are there ships that stay on the sidelines? which ones start shit the most often? how many people just say “fuck it” and go poly to avoid that shit?

what questions would fans ask at like, panels or during an ama or something? i dream up questions people might ask sometimes, mostly to try and practice explaining things that i feel might be misinterpreted, but what would they really care about?

i know all of this is a pipe dream, books don’t gain the same notoriety on tumblr as tv shows and movies do, percy jackson and harry potter are stark exceptions but i have no hope that i’ll write something half as culturally relevant as either of them, but i dunno, i just think about it sometimes, and i wonder, and i want.

[popculturebuffet]

The Loud House review 4x29: Brave the Last Dance

In a months late review of a show I watch only on occcasion that i’m doing for some reason: Clyde gets the help of the rest of the Clincoln true to find out if his crush likes him or not: Hyjinks and my smouldring hatred of rusty insues. 

With Ducktales only arriving once a week, me missing reviewing and having a lot of time on my hands i’ve decided to branch out a bit.. maybe not a ton, but ocasionally review other animated shows and seasons. If you have any suggetions or any paticular episode you’d like me to look into, let me know. 

For now I decided to take a look at a show I mostly watch whenever the mood strikes; The Loud House. I do enjoy the series, but it’s a casual love... it also dosen’t help that I can’t go into the tags without finding reams of incest but I digress. I do still like the show and despite it’s ocasoinal terrible episodes and even worse creator, it’s still a solid series and deserves it’s spot as nick’s crown jewel.. I do wish nick would stop abusing everything ELSE in it’s lineup, but that’s a whole other story. The point is I like the show, but i’m not a super fan like I am for say Ducktales or Steven Universe where if there’s something new, i’ll go out and grabs it immediately. But I do like it.  And I do regret not knowing this episode existed for two months because 1) This is a holiday episode and I like to watch those around their holiday and 2) Because dance episodes are my shit. More often than not if i’ts a dance episode of a show, i’ts usually pretty good. Community, Big City Greens, Gravity Falls, She Ra, OK KO, Parks and Recreation.. I really COULD go on indefntiely, but I won’t.  Dance episodes usually bring out the best in a creative team, have adorable romance moments, or huge dramatic attacks and everything in between that just makes them awesome to me. So naturally I watched this as soon as possible and my thoughts.. well as with anything they take some context.    You see this episode follows a character who has kind of a .. problematic history to say the least and thus has kinda gone up and down in my opinon. Early on, as most of you probably recall, the series was more focused on LIncoln, the middle child and only boy in the the titular loud house among 10 sisters. And given it focused mostly on lincoln and his shenanigans and schemes to deal with living iwth 10 other siblings. Now the show has evolved since then and for the better in my honest opinon: now all 11 siblings share the spotlight and whose in an episode depends on whose needed, and thus each of the siblings has their own supporting casts of varying depths and episodes, sometimes with NONE of the other family members playing a signifgiant role. But since the show was originally Lincoln centritc, it also picked up an extra main character outside of the 11 loud kids and their parents: Clyde. Clyde is Lincoln’s best buddy, a glasses wearing awkward kid whose dad’s sometimes smother him but are still loving kind guys, and who often goes over to Lincoln’s to share in the feeling of having siblings outside of his surrogate brother Lincoln obviously. However early on Clyde, like most of the cast in the earlier days, had about three character traits: being an only child, being a dork and having a near pyschotic crush on LIncoln’s oldest sister Lori which gave him crippling nose bleeds.  This would’ve been fine, if a touch annoying, had it just been him fainting and nosebleeding.. but instead, it also causes Clyde to be kind of a dick. He perused her constantly despite her rejecting him for a number of obvious reasons, you know him being a decade younger, her being not intrested, him being more like a second kid brother to her, and of course the fact she has a boyfriend, Bobby. Bobby is the nicest guy around, was a great supporting character, and is probably the reason i’ll get around to watching the casagrandes on occasion. Clyde however treats him like garbage, tried to break them up, and in general was a dick to a guy whose only crime is being in a loving relationship with someone Clyde wants to be with but obviously can’t have. It was annoying with the only time it was tolerable was that episode where Bobby was mistaken for cheating and clyde spent an entire episode preparing to beat bobby up if it was accurate, then upon trying (It wasn’t it was just shenanigans), failed spectacuarlly. Bobby is nothing but nice to him by the way.  So yeah it was hard to root for Clyde for a while but eventually it stopped.. not because they had an episode of Clyde TRYING to get over it, they did it just didn’t resolve it, but it was just dropped.. likely because the writers realized it just wasn’t that funny and with bobby put on a bus to the spinoff, they had no real jokes for it and no one really liked the passing out gag. The fact that series creator Chris Savino got fired for sexually harassment is not lost on me and only makes the gag worse.  But thankfully the character did bounce back and by season 3, even before savino was thankfully fired, they put the joke to bed with Bobby’s exit, and it is thankfully buried deeper than the bunker where htey keep walt disney’s cryogneically perserved body... what you thought he just kept the head? Why woudl they? Disney was rich and belived in the future. He probably wanted his body merged with some sort of mechanical man. But with that gone Clyde thankfully became what he was in his better episodes: an adorable dork, with two loving fathers. Though now he’s not the only kid on the block with two gay dads.. he and Violet should get matching friendship t-shirts reading “Gay dad club”... and i’ll probably draw that at some point but I digress i’m several paragraphs in and I haven’t even gotten to the episode, and I STILL have one last bit of explostion for context that most of you may not need.  That last bit is that LIncoln’s episodes evolved a bit around season 3: instead of JUST being him and Clyde, though that can still happen, Lincoln soon got a circle of buddies, each of whom plays a role in the episode, for reasons i’ll get to in a bit, and part of my reason for reviewing it is to touch on my thoughts about them and my weird love of these episodes. So a breif overview since some of you may not know who they are.  Lincoln himself: The former lead and now one of 10, and a great character I enjoy following a lot even if I miss his Zack Morris-esque fourth wall breaks, minus the smug... no one can out smug or out sexually harass Zack Morris.  Liam: A country boy and the only one of the intial five besides Clincoln I actually like. He’s a kind hearted well meaning country boy and is always kind and friendly, and reminds me a lot of stinky peterson but with a tone down accent.  Zach:... I forget he exists, i’m not even sure this is his actual name. He’s just.. there for some reason and i’m not exactly sure why he’s been kept around now that Stella, who i’ll get to next, has been introduced. But he has goggles and wild hair and that’s.. it. Any of his lines could be said by the others without muchc hange.  Stella: My faviorite out of the group, a frieindly girl who was insitally introduced as Lincoln’s third love intrest.. before pivoting to have her not really WANT to be with any of the guys in an episode that’s really good and instead joining the group. She has more personality and energy than most of them, and thus I do tend to seek out an ep if she’s in it. I do also kinda lowkey ship her with lincoln, but only al ittle. her episodde was about hwo every girl who pays attention to you isn’t into you after all and it’s a lesson kids need. I wish I had it when I was that age honestly. Anyways... finally we have the bane of my existance.  Rusty: I hate this kid. I can’t stand his goofy face, and I love goofy goof so goofy faces are not a problem, obnovious wannabe ladies man smugness, or his basicaly being the useless asshole of the group. LIke Zach, I don’t get why he hasn’t been written out. Hell Zach I at least get as the generic guy they can slott in. Rusty is just terrible. it’s telling that his LITTLE BROTHER, who showed up in one episode as a love intrest for Lucy, is far more popular.. mostly because Rocky’s actually likeable and isn’t a dipstick. I just hate this kid and want this character written off already. He’s the weak link in the group and is SOMEHOW more obnoxious than Clyde during any episode bobby and him were in the same room. And tha’ts an acomplishment! Gah. I could rant about this little shit all day, but i’d prefer to move on.  The episode has a pretty basic setup: Clyde is on the dance comitte, and is a good chef which .. tracks. I do think h’es cooked before and his love of Dessert Storm, a in-series cooking show that the Loud’s love too, has been documented in one or two episodes and cooking does fit his personality: he’s a detail orinted kid, he has parents who have lots of money to spend and have been established to like coooking fancy themsevles, it makes sense he’d pick it up. But it’s the Valentine’s Dance and Clyde has a crush on Emma, one of the girls on the comittee. His friends pick up on this and stellas has an adorable “awww” type grin while the boys all have smug shit eating grins but are all willing to help. It’s part of why I like these eps: the 5 really seem to have a nice rapport and be genuine friends.. friends who all fought over a girl once, except Stella who was said girl, but friends nonetheless, who eventually put said friendship over that. Even if one of them’s a block of wood and the other the bane of my existance, you still get the sense their valued.  It’s from there the episode Segues into the standard loud house formula, which is one of the resaons I do only watch the show ocasionally: while the episodes can varry wildly, some just fall into a formula of “character or characters do various things in a row until they realize they were wrong or something”. Now the show HAS had good episodes out of this formula, L is for Love and Racing Hearts, and yes i’m a saluna shipper but the eps are good beyond that, but sometimes it can feel like padding. This is one of those times. Each of the squad tries something to help Clyde find out if Emma likes him or not, he’s too nervous to take it as a sign he should go for it, rinse and repeat 3 more times before the plot finally moves on. This is also why I went into detail on the Clinclon Crew: each one, except Zach because the boy is made of paper mache remember, gets a chance to try helping him out.  Rusty: As if you needed proof I wasn’t overreacting, Rusty SPIES ON EMMA WITH BINOCULARS for the plan.. he did not need them, and the joke dosen’t land like it should because Rusty sucks. And his plan is to drench Clyde with cologne and if she comments on it, she likes him. I do however like the joke about how clyde thinks Rusty’s cousin that gave him the plan, proving Dumbass is a genetic trait, had a girlfriend at a camp who probably dosen’t exist.  Liam: Liam’s plan is a bit funnier... not because of the plan which like the previous one not really that great but hey their 11 or 12 i’ll give all of them but rusty some slack, because he sucks. But the Clincoln Crew which i’m calling them now so there, head to the movies and Liam says ,d ue to a similar thing happening with his chickens, if a girl sits next to you, they like you back. It’s not entirelys ound but the chicken thing got a small chuckle out of me and LIam does have some odd charisma.  Lincoln: And Zach but i’m not convinced they didn’t just swap in a manquin with a tape recorder jammed inside for him for this or any scene. Lincoln uses one of lori’s magazines with some sounder, if flimsy but beliviebly for kids, logic: ask her for a pen: if it’s a regular one they have no intrest, it’s it’s fancy she likes you. like the other two it happens.. but in a resonable bit of writing like the last two Clyde isn’t sure due to a combinaton of insecurity and these plans being as flimsy as the paper they made Zach out of .  Stella: Whose grandma can read tea leaves and actually predicted her moving to royal woods, because stella is great. Stella is also damn good at it as she does predict Clyde at the dance, in a chef’s hat for reasons that i’ll get to in a moment. dancing with a girl. Tha’s lal he needs and this bit finally ends. As I said it’s the tedium. While what happens NEXT is intresting enough, you really didn’t need all of those or have enough jokes and were clearly padding guys, come on.  So Clyde, and crew, stages an elaborate frencha nd boat related danceposal.. that fails. As you probably figured. Emma is flattered, but shoots Clyde down gently. Clyde reacts as you’d expect: by fleeing the scnee as fast as possible, quitting the dance comitte off screen, and planning never to return, which while overracting, DOES feel realistic.  Clyde goes home for some mopey solo time and becomes a tad insufferable, ignoring his friend’’s texts and getting upset as his dad for watching the movie that clearly inpsiried his dance invite plan, depsite it being their valentine’s day he’s interrupting. It woudl’ve played better if he still got upset but iddn’t you know, run in front of their tv and call them out on something they coudln’t of known as he didn’t give them details.  Thankfully the mild annoyance is b roken when, after ignoring his friends texts, which granted for Rusty and Liam is probably normal as liam probably talks about drywall and Rusty uses the word dawg and unlike Lincoln dosen’t seem genuinely worried after Clyde, you know, got rejected in front of a large crowd.  He’s broken out of his mopey solo time by a call: the person he passed cake duty off to screwed up, and after some urging from Cheryl, the principal’s secretary who Clyde knows personally from past episodes and is head of the dance comitte and an utter delight this episode, Clyde does what any normal kid would do: dawn a flimsy disguise and sneak in there. We also get a cameo from Girl Jordan who hasn’t shown up in forever so that’s nice.  Clyde fixes the cake, and Cheryl compares his mustache to a dead caterpillar which was gold, and tries to sneak out only for Chole, another girl, to notice him and stop him. You can probably tell where this is going: She , rather than mock him finds what he did romantic, she also likes dessert storm, he asks her to dance, puts his chef hat back on because time loop,a nd the two dance and even have an adorable bit where they throw their hats to each other. Also Rusty is dressed like cupid and my eyes boil out of my head as the episode ends.  Overall it’s not a bad ep. Had a suprising amount to say about it, but overall it’s a decent, cute ep for valentine’s day with a nice amount of friendship and some nice character stuff for Clyde and plenty of gay dad’s and Cheryl. Overall not a bad way to spend 11 minutes in this ongoing apocalypse. Coming Soon: I feel like quacking so I think Iw ill.. take a look at an episode of quack pack that’s donsy related.  Until next time courage. 

[captain-aurinko]

Second Citadel High School AU

So I read @taylor-that-chic’s incredible penumbra high school AU (https://archiveofourown.org/works/21392842/chapters/50963770) and long story short it inspired me to add a billion ideas of my own.

Firstly, the ideas from the fic:

From the fic:

1. Arum is the weird antisocial lizard boy. He has his lizards with him at school and will let you play with them if you ask nicely.

2. Damien is on student council. He holds the record for track in state.

3. Rilla is aggressively on the science team. She has broken into teachers rooms for supplies and won’t apologize for that.

4. Arum is just as fast at Damian but he refuses to play sports

These are all incredibly blessed concepts so of course I had to add my own take. So, some concepts of my own in no particular order:

Teachers have tried searching arum for the lizards. They cannot find them. Next period there will be a lizard on his shoulder in the hallways. It’s one of life’s great mysteries

Damien does archery outside of school but doesn’t tell anyone because he’s anxious people will think he’s weird

Marc is super into the robotics club and shop class. He ran for student counsel on the idea of making the school pay for more disability accommodations. He lost due to a rigged election by his rich opponent who won by promising to give the school a big grant. Undeterred, mark worked with his woodshop class to make wheelchair ramps for every set of steps in the building. He’s incredibly popular in his shop class, but lots of people hate him because he’s a class clown or his reputation was slandered or because he stands up against bullies etc.

Mira is student counsel president

Tal is a good sweet science boy who just wants to be left alone in his earth science class. But nothing is ever easy because he has to help Marc or Rilla with their harebrained schemes. He’s a good boi and a straight A student but if a teacher sees him just nervously standing around, it usually means that he’s standing guard while Rilla and Arum and every so often Marc breaks the rules

The nymphs are the mean giggly girl groups always hunting for gossip and making fun of the characters behind their back.

Pix and her human are alumni

Qwan yi fakes injuries to get out of having to do the pacer and is always eating something in class. She can and will show up pajamas when she doesn’t have the energy to get dressed. She makes a ton of her own clothes and upcycles a bunch. It’s super mismatched but somehow it works for her. She can and will show up in the most revealing clothes you can imagine. Somehow she disappears before she can get dress coded.

Qwan yi carries a pack of tarot cards at all times and like 12 crystals and is always up to read your moonstones for a price, which changes wildly based on her mood. If she knows someone doesn’t have extra cash on them, she’ll ask for their bagged lunch so that they go hungry. For rich kids she asks for 1000 dollars, no more, no less. They always balk at first but they get so curious about why she asks that much they eventually give in. She’s terrifying

Caroline is on the student council and she terrifies people. She wears a leather jacket and combat boots. To this day no one remembers how she got elected. A lot of people accuse her of cheating, but she didn’t. People just voted for the leader that they knew would get results. Superintendents have quaked to see her in their offices, demanding things for her school. Even when she doesn’t get her way, the people who she argued with are never the same.

Qwan yi saw Caroline for the first time and immediately told her she’d read her moonstones at a discount. Only 500 dollars. Caroline didn’t care. Qwan yi spent months trying harder and harder to scam Caroline while Caroline grew more exasperated by the efforts until they both realized that they’d fallen in love. Qwan yi asked for Caroline’s phone number as her price. Caroline agreed. Qwan yi predicted a date in Caroline’s future. Then she texted Caroline, asking her out. No one else understands their relationship but they work

Qwan yi and Rilla were assigned as lab partners. Rilla was interested in her moonstones. Qwan yi jokingly asked for a finger. Rilla was willing but Damien and arum were at the next table over and rushed to stop her. Qwan yi decides that she like Rilla a lot and they’ve been hanging out too much for anyone’s liking. They’re a terrible combination and Caroline Damien and arum all get nervous to see them together

Angelo is the quarterback. He’s also head of the soccer team, baseball team, hockey team, ice hockey team, and wrestling team. He’s a very nice guy involved in community service and is another member of the student counsel, voted there by all of the members of his various sports teams. He is never tired or overwhelmed and is always ready to do more for his friends though he rarely has time to talk for very long unless you’re willing to follow him around from task to task to meeting to meeting. No one has ever seen him come or go from school. It is rumored that he lives there.

He admires Damien immensely because Damien is the only person faster than him, and they spar regularly. Angelo gets on surprisingly well with Caroline but everyone just shrugs and agrees that everyone like Angelo and Angelo likes everyone so maybe it’s to be expected that he is one of three people that Caroline actually grudgingly likes.

damien is head of the poetry club (the only other members are Angelo and Rilla who show up to support him) and he’s a very active voice in all of his English classes. Even the ones where talking is encouraged, implore him to let other students speak instead.

Rilla has been dating Damien since middle school when he helped her collect wild berries from the bushes that grew against the schools back fence. She helped him with his anxiety too, which was way way worse back then, when he was still new to the school. They’ve already exchanged promise rings and everyone agrees that while Rilla can be very very scary if someone stands in the way of science, and that Damien can get a little wordy with his poetry to her beauty, they’re a good match.

A new kid (arum) that had been homeschooled his whole life transferred in and suddenly things changed

Arum was put in damiens gym class the day of the pacer run and Damien was used to winning by at least 30 rounds. But arum could keep up with him perfectly and over the next week, as they did all the various athletic testing, they constantly competed (and flirted) and accidentally fell in love. MEANWHILE

Rilla and arum ended up as biology partners. They constantly argued about what to do and how but by the end they had an incredible project, had learned more about themselves in the process and fell in love

Arum did not know Rilla and Damien were dating btw

Anyway they all felt guilty that they loved someone else so they all met up with the plan to confess their shame to the other two only to have a “wait- so then- does that mean- you too?” Moment and then they all started dating and somehow nothing changed.

Oh of course how could I forget. Arum joins the robotics club with mark and they unleash chaos across the student body

[douchebagbrainwaves]

LET YOUR IDEA EVOLVE

In Wright's early plans for the Guggenheim, the right half was a ziggurat; he inverted it to get the round closed, he was carrying a Powerbook identical to mine. You find the same in music and art. Leads could and did use a fixed size round as a legitimate-seeming way of saying what all founders hate to hear: I'll invest if other people will. And since the lawyer could never admit, in front of his client, that he'd screwed up, he instead had to insist on retaining all the draconian terms in it, but to design beautiful things. It's hard to imagine what it would feel like to have x-ray vision for character. Then the startup and the lead would cooperate to find the best startups. Investors like it when you don't need it this month.

Understand this and make a conscious effort not to be so cruel to one another? The guys that guys envy, girls like. She has a horror of ostentation so visceral it's almost a phobia. And odds are that is in fact the bullshit-minimizing option. In the past when I bought things from Apple it was an unalloyed pleasure. Investors may end up with less stock per startup, which is like a sort of Valley within the Valley, terrible things happen to them too. Leads could and did use a fixed size round as a legitimate-seeming way of saying what all founders hate to hear: I'll invest if other people will. One of the defining qualities of an asshole. Where had these questions come from? Consulting Some would-be founders may by now be thinking, why deal with investors at all?

The Eiffel Tower looks striking partly because it seems kind of slimy. Unnecessary meetings, pointless disputes, bureaucracy, posturing, dealing with other people's mistakes, traffic jams, addictive but unrewarding pastimes. A deals per partner per year. Fundraising is still terribly distracting for startups. When you tread water, you lift yourself up by pushing water down. But while some openly flaunt the fact that each series A has enormously elaborate, custom paperwork. It's easy to start to believe it will happen, and I think that's ok. Fourteen-year-olds didn't start smoking pot because they'd heard it would help them forget their problems.

Investors may end up with less stock per startup, but not if you're working on technology. Some of the more unscrupulous do it deliberately. Startups don't win by getting great funding rounds, but by making great products. Keep rewriting your program. You can magnify the effect of growth than the cause. The antidote is people. The cause of this problem is the same. The word I most misunderstood was tact. And since the lawyer could never admit, in front of his client, that he'd screwed up, he instead had to insist on retaining all the draconian terms in it, but to design beautiful rockets, or to write well, or to understand how to program computers. Some of the more unscrupulous do it deliberately.

Poof goes the axiom that taste can't be wrong. If you're Sam Altman, you don't have to be able to compete with. Apple II? Unfortunately, t is still very far from infinity. In fact, what makes the number go up, put a big piece of paper on your wall and every day plot the number of startup people around you. If that weren't bad enough, these wildly fluctuating nodes are all linked together. But if you consciously prioritize bullshit avoidance over other factors like money and prestige, you can let the numbers speak for you. How can you get errors asking that? You're not going to stop to consider the possibility that he is forced to produce an elegant design. It didn't have any noticeable effect.

Or Bruegel in his paintings—or Shakespeare, for that matter. During interviews, Robert and Trevor and I would pepper the applicants with technical questions. As a thirteen-year-old kids are intrinsically messed up. There will of course come a point where you get stupid because you're tired. After a while, drugs have their own momentum. Teenage kids used to have a medium that makes change easy. That's the worst thing a startup can least afford. Chance meetings let your acquaintance drift in the same way the nerds learned to be popular, certainly, but as a predictor of success it's rounding error compared to the founders. If it's physiological, it should be better not just for clothes, but for almost everything they do, apparently, do society wives; in some parts of Manhattan, life for women sounds like a continuation of high school, watching as the cheerleaders threw an effigy of an opposing player into the audience to be torn to pieces. How big is the hacker market, after all? Hard as this was to be the most common form of failure is running out of runway.

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

Hidden Gems of the Silver Screen (And, to a Lesser Extent, the Telly)

It can’t have escaped your notice that the majority of my more recent posts (and fuck knows I’m not posting regularly at the moment) are about movies and TV. The reason for that is pretty simple: 2019 has, surprisingly, yielded some great movies and TV... and also some really torrid shite. On the one hand, films like Ma, Brightburn and The Perfection continue to breathe new life into the horror genre. On the other hand, sci-fi as a cinematic and televised thing continues to ignore its actual audience in favour of sniffing its own farts in a sound-proof chamber designed specifically for next-level virtue-signalling. One thing I will say about the dreck of 2019 is that it’s interesting dreck, at least so far. Another Life, for example, isn’t just bad: it’s mind-bogglingly, fascinatingly bad, as though someone set out to make the worst TV series imaginable and accidentally created a portal to another dimension made entirely of crap.

With all the amazingly wonderful and transifxingly terrible visual media on offer lately, it’s easy to forget that there’s a rich repository of films and TV series from just a few years ago that you’ve probably never watched. You see if you, like me, are a snooty, card-carrying member of the elitist intelligentsia, you probably missed films and TV series that looked dumb as soup on the surface on the grounds that they weren’t worth your time. Luckily for you, I’ve dived nose-first into the detritus of our dying culture, so you don’t have to, and I’ve ferreted out the diamonds from the pig-swill. Without further ado, I’d therefore like to present my list Easily Overlooked Gems.

1. Mandy The phrase “Nicholas Cage stars in a sword-and-sorcery rape/revenge thriller” does not inspire confidence. It’s therefore easy to ignore Mandy and the promptly forget it ever existed. Which is a shame, because it’s kind of a work of genius. The plot is exactly what you’d expect: a cult kidnaps, rapes and kills Cage’s girlfriend, Mandy, and Cage sets out on a mission of revenge culminating in a blood-bath. The nature of the revenge quest is what puts a sting in the film’s tail- or tale, if you’re feeling puntastic. You see, a lot of the bad guys exist in a constant hallucinatory haze after taking a drug that sent them mad after one dose. In order to fight on their level, Cage has to take a dose too. As a result, the world around him slowly but surely transforms into a nightmare landscape that looks like a cross between a D&D illustration and the cover of a heavy metal album and his grubby, personal mission of fury takes on the unmistakable resonance of a Conan-esque hero’s quest. By the end of the film, you have to wonder if Cage has actually slipped into some sort of alternate dimension or if he’s just lost his game-pieces completely. In places, it’s nearly as painful to watch as Landmine Goes Click (crikey, there’s one for the history buffs) but it looks and feels like Beyond the Black Rainbow. Worth your attention just because of how weird it is. I give it a solid four-out-five decapitated rapists.

2. Baby Driver Nothing about Baby Driver suggested it would be a good film: the way it was advertised as a car-chase movie trying to be cute; the stupid title; the fact that it came and went through cinemas like a fart in the night. Which is a shame, because it’s secretly brilliant. It’s a highly stylised crime film populated with the archest archetypes money can buy (to the point where some of the dialogue has a weirdly beat-poetic feel to it). It’s saturated colour palette and off-beat affect actually have something of a full-colour Jim Jarmusch flick about them. The hook, of course, is that the lead character (only ever referred to as Baby, because he’s got a punchably youthful face) has tinnitus and therefore has to listen to music constantly to drown at the buzzing in his head. The practical upshot of this is that a) every single scene is overlayed with surprisingly great and situationally appropriate music and b) he goes through life like he’s always dancing, so his way of moving lends to the film’s easy-going sense of flow. It also explains where his preternatural driving skills come from (I mean, not really, but within the context of the plot): he’s used to sliding effortlessly into patterns and rhythms because of the music thing. All of this could make a terrible film, of course, but execution is everything and, to everyone’s surprise, especially mine, this flick was executed with an astonishing level of panache. I rate it ten out of ten grizzly motor way pile ups.

3. Nightflyers It’s not just films that get overlooked as the tide of culture washes back and forth, like a great big sea of effluent. TV series also vanish unduly into the dustbin of history. Case in point, the criminally underappreciated Nighrflyers: Netflix pre-Another Life sci-fi offering that was actually good. It’s a pretty classic set-up: a group of mismatched wing-nuts on a spaceship, all of whom have secrets that that will threaten to tear them apart while they try to make contact with an alien life-form. What elevates Nightflyers is just how fuck-uped the cast are. There’s an angry British psychic whose spent his whole life in captivity in case he goes full Scanners on somebody’s head, a guy who only ever appears as a hologram for reasons too twisted to explain here, his evil mother whose uploaded her mind to the ship’s computer and gone batshit crazy, a genetic superbeing and a hacker who can send her mind into computers via a dodgy implant and who may or may not be drifting out of touch with the human condition. It’s great. 6 and half billion out of 7 billion monkeys, boiling in the void.

4. Hardcore Henry No, I don’t know who thought that title was a good idea either, but the point is that Hardcore Henry has no motherfucking right to kick as much arse as it does. It was clearly made on a budget that would embarrass a Youtube shampoo commercial, but it just flat-out rocks. Shot entirely in first-person, it follows the adventures of a mute cyborg as he seeks revenge against the bastard psychic entrepreneur who first built him then tried to kill him. Along the way, his main ally is a dude who keeps dying and coming back to life in a series of identical bodies but with radically different personalities and haircuts (this is eventually explained, but I’m not going to spoil it for you). It’s premise is demented, it’s surprisingly well-choreographed and its soundtrack is an aphrodisiac for your ears. Also, Tim Roth is in it, so that’s just yer seal of quality right there. It came out to a lot of fanfare and many, many cinema trailers back in the day and was then promptly forgotten about as soon as it launched. So I’m dragging it kicking and screaming back into the limelight. It’s on Netflix right now, so go watch it. I rate it a solid 11 out of 15 creepy duplicates of Tim Roth.

5. Upgrade Another lesser-known film about a cyborg. Unlike Henry, however, this cyborg’s life doesn’t so much ‘rock’ as ‘suck balls’. He gets crippled and then ends up with a sentient computer chip in his head that allows him to remote-control his own body despite not having a working spine anymore. Naturally, his experimental tech attracts the attention of some unsavoury characters and he and his brain-chip have to work together to figure out what’s going on, often through a series of ultra-violent, gory fight-scenes that horrify the protagonist himself. Of course, all might be well, except that the head-chip is a homicidal little shit that clearly has its own agenda. I give it at least 0000 0111 out of 0000 1001 painstakingly restored vintage kill-bots.

6. The Tick The Tick isn’t as overlooked as everything else on this list, especially since there have been a couple of previous televised incarnations of the franchise to lay the groundwork. However, I still feel like the modern iteration doesn’t quite get the love it deserves, so I’m throwing it out here. Following the adventures a mad, amnesiac and possibly stupid superhero and his neurotic sidekick, The Tick explores a world where superheroes aren’t the paragons of good from classic comics, the corrupt psychotics of The Boys or Watchmen, or the eternally struggling, walking moral life-lessons of modern cinema. Instead, they’re just ordinary people operating at various levels of competence/incompetence and mental illness and working within a bureaucratic, wildly inefficient framework. That might not sound like a recipe for a successful TV series, but it really is. Drawing out the mundane, human side of heroes and villains against the backdrop of cataclysmic, civilisation-threatening events makes for infinitely compelling and very, very funny viewing. It’s kind of doing for the superhero genre what Futurama did for sci-fi a few years back. It’s also where the phrase and/or popular song ‘seven billion monkeys boiling in the void’ comes from. My rating is four out of five sapient, homosexual boats (which will make sense when you watch it).

7. The Void Amid the high-budget horror extravaganzas of recent years, it’s easy to forget about the void, which feels like the best story H.P. Lovecraft never wrote and looks like David Chronenberg tried to adapt a Heironimous Bosch painting... in the ‘80s. The actual plot concerns a group of people getting trapped in a hospital by murderous cultists and discovering dark secrets and, arguably, a whole other dimension in its basement. You’re not exactly there for the plot though: The Void is a mood-piece and an exercise in visual FX craftsmanship. You’re there to drink in the atmosphere and see what each new cosmic horror looks like. I am delighted to award it ten out of ten unspeakable whisperers in the darkness. That’s enough for two barbershop quartets, an emcee and a supporting act.

8. Happy Death Day It’s Groundhog Day but as a horror film starring a really annoying lass in her late teens has to keep dying horribly until she learns to stop being such a terrible person... and also kill her murderer with a little help from her newly-minted, non-cunty friend. There’s a sequel that I haven’t seen yet, but the original is a low-key, oft-overlooked delight. I give it 9 out of 11 suspiciously similar corpses.

[adamwatchesmovies]

The Worst of 2019 (So Far)

And now we get to the opposite of yesterday’s post: the worst of what we’ve seen so far. Time to give them a proper thrashing before they (hopefully) fade into obscurity. Disappointingly, there's a general lack of films that were bad but in an interesting way. Mostly, it’s either been the same sorta dreck we usually get with a couple of unusually offensive stories and a couple of soul-crushingly bad superhero flicks. Curious? Read on.

10. Serenity

I like to save my #10 spot on the “Worst of” list for a movie that has a chance of becoming a favorite among those who love bad movies. Serenity is competently enough made that it does not belong in the same category as The Identical or Runaway. It’s another kind of bad movie, the kind that baffles anyone who sees it and who will have film historians scratching their heads in the future. It’s not quite on the same level as 2017’s “The Book of Henry” but close. Top-notch actors at the top of their career in a story so poorly conceived it would’ve been brilliant if it weren’t awful and utterly absurd.

The revelation that everything we've been seeing is actually part of a video game programmed by an angry teen who hates his abusive father, and that his actions are tied to those of Matthew McConaughey's character is the kind of nutty decision someone at some point should've questioned. My advice? Surprise some unsuspecting friends with it. Periodically pause the movie so they can write down how they think it'll all fit together and then watch their faces as they're proved wrong.

9. After

I’m not going to remember After down the line so this is my opportunity to give it another flogging. I can’t believe fan-fictions of real people is a real thing and that one of them was deemed legitimate and popular enough to be turned into a movie. It plays out like the clone of a clone of a clone of Twilight. At least that movie had danger in the form of vampires and werewolves. This has nothing to offer except embarrassing drama and a prepubescent’s idea of what romance and love look like. I saw it in the theater with a friend and thank goodness she was there; it made what would've been a chore... slightly more bearable.

8. Dumbo

I’ve already gone on about how I feel about Disney’s string of live-action remakes. For the most part, they fail to validate their own existences; they’re just copies of the original but with “real” actors dancing around animated backgrounds, objects and locations instead of everything being traditionally animated. Dumbo isn’t like Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast. It does try new things. It diverges from the source material significantly in the worst way. The titular character winds up playing second banana to a bunch of circus performers no one cares about and in the end didn’t contain an inkling of the emotion the 1941 version did.

7. Dark Phoenix

This one’s a triple-whammy. Not only was it a deeply disappointing way for Fox’s X-Men series to end, it retreaded old material in a way that was worse than X-Men 3: The Last Stand AND it was a box office bomb. By the time the story finally comes alive… it’s just about over. The whole thing feels like a mistake, bringing in aliens and asking us to invest in characters we just haven’t had enough time to fall in love with. Makes me wonder what the future of the characters is going to be like. Yes there are a number of heroes and heroines we haven’t yet seen, but are people going to care, even when the brand gets a new coat of paint from Marvel Studios?

6. Men in Black: International

Was anyone asking for the Men in Black series to return? Maybe if they'd had a dynamite story this could’ve overcome the public’s general disinterest, but this was an extremely generic plot you could figure out easily minutes in and lost touch with what endeared us to the first. Even with the combined forces of Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth failed, it to generate many laughs. Worse, to make sure I got any references or Easter egg it might drop, I re-watched all of the previous Men in Black movies, including the horrific Men in Black 2.

5. Replicas

This movie goes about itself in such a convoluted way. First, Keanu Reeves plays a scientist working for a company that wants to transplant the mind of dead soldiers into androids. Then, his family is killed in a car crash, prompting him to use the mind transfer tech to put their memories into new clone bodies of themselves. Problem is, he only has the means to clone three out of four family members. This means he has to erase all memories of his youngest daughter from the others’ brains. Following me so far? Good because it keeps going from there. Actually, that’s just the start of it. It’s a classic case of TMSGO - too much sh*t goin’ on. Even with all that, it STILLL managed to have gaping plot holes. No surprise it came and went as quietly as possible.

4. Hellboy

This one hurt. I wanted to see a superhero horror film badly. The early interviews I read about them wanting to adapt Mike Mignola’s books more closely than the Del Toro films got me excited. I was a little apprehensive when the trailers showed some goofy stuff but I figured these were included to draw people in. I should've listened to that sinking feeling. The actual film is awful, one giant mistake after another. Without a doubt, this featured the year’s worst special effects and even this I could've forgiven but the would-be humorous tone was badly misjudged and the story bloated with way too many elements that might've worked... if we weren't also trying to tell the character's origin at the same time. Hellboy ends with a teaser promising more and there’s no way we would’ve seen a sequel even if this had made money at the box office. Cool demons though, for what it’s worth.

3. Shaft

Looking back, I’m struggling to think of anything worth seeing in Shaft. I hated the film’s approach at comedy, particularly when it reverted Samuel L. Jackson’s John Shaft into the kind of man who proudly doesn’t understand modern sensibilities and spews out one homophobic joke after another. The plot was uninspired and uninteresting - not to mention generic - and none of it felt like it belonged on the big screen. On the upside, it prompted me to view the original trilogy with Richard Roundtree and those were enjoyable.

2. Simmba

Simmba is unlikely to be on the “Worst of 2019” list next January. It probably won’t be at the #2 spot. The film mixes two wildly different tones but not well. It begins as a romantic crime comedy, a dated one, sure. Simmba staging a phoney crime in order for the woman he’s attracted to to call him for help and then use the call as an excuse to stay with her through the night is creepy but I guess it might’ve passed like 20 years ago in North America. What makes this a bad film is the way it then introduces a character’s gang rape and murder as a way to prompt the anti-hero onto a righteous path. From there, it turns into this vigilante revenge film that has disturbing implications. You probably haven’t heard of it before now, much less seen it. I don’t recommend you check it out.

Runner Ups:

Aladdin

A controversial choice, as many casual filmgoers seem to have fallen madly in love with it (similar to the way they ate up 2017’s Beauty and the Beast) but honestly, what does this film do better than 1992’s Aladdin? Add an unmemorable song for Princess Jasmine to sing? Reduce the number of talking animals in order to give us more… nothing? Pile on the CGI to the point you wonder why it was made with live-actors in the first place? Like the innumerable direct-to-video sequels of classic films who've been all but forgotten, I tell you this Arabbian adventure won't endure.

Tolkien

So much potential squandered on a boring story. It didn’t take an astute viewer to recognize the film was crippled by the studio failing to obtain the rights to Tolkien’s actual work. I get the feeling we'll see another shot at a biography of J.R.R. Tolkien in a couple of years and this will be the Christopher Robin to the much superior Goodbye Christopher Robin.

The Hustle

It’s an unfunny comedy, what more is there to say? Rebel Wilson makes yet another bad career choice playing the same character she always plays. I only realized it was a remake of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels while writing my review, which is unfortunate. Hopefully I can expunge this film from my memory soon enough and forget anything it might’ve spoiled about the original Bedtime Story or the 1988 remake.

1. Unplanned

The numerous instances of technical incompetence - mostly coming from the performers who are given lackluster material - would be enough to condemn Unplanned to this list. What made me hate the film is the way it blatantly lies and attempts to manipulate the audience into further entrenching themselves in a certain point of view through cheap, manipulative means. I can respect that genuine passion was poured into the project but the way it goes about it is shameful. Do not go see it, even if you're curious.

Yuck. That last one really left a bad taste in my mouth so I'm going to talk about a movie I did enjoy and am enthusiastic to direct you towards Alita: Battle Angel. Rosa Salazar as the titular Alita impressed me and I really dug the action scenes. I'll also right a wrong from last year by reminding you to find and watch Paddington and Paddington 2, both movies I should've put on my "Best of" lists the years they came out. I don't know what I was thinking but I keep coming back to these in my head. They're excellent for kids and adults.

And with that said, the list is over. Back to our regularly-scheduled film reviews until something big comes up. Thoughts or comments on the list are welcome and I hope you enjoyed reading.

[nadziejastar]

As much as I dislike the idea of Lea, Isa, and Subject X becoming a trio I sort of understand why it's happening. Axel and Roxas were a popular duo in KH2, then Days and Xion came along and turned the friendship into a trio and it was accepted by most of the fans. They're probably hoping for a similar reaction.

I HATE the idea of Lea, Isa, and Subject X being a trio. I don’t mind the idea of Lea and Isa becoming friends with a girl and forming their own trio. I just hated the bad retconning involving their backstory, and the way their relationship was totally ruined to accommodate this new girl. If there was any girl who was going to be a part of their “trio” it would have been Kairi. They had the PERFECT set-up already there. Skuld was 1000% unnecessary. Though I think Ven would have been included in their trio, too.

I’m going to compare a few scenes from the novels with the Secret Reports about Subject X. And I’ll let people make up their own mind about whether Kairi or Skuld would have made a better choice for the role of Lea and Isa’s female friend. Because these passages really speak for themselves:

Isa Was Originally Subject X—But So Was Kairi

As he watched Ven go on his way, Isa commented to Lea in a frosty tone, “What is it with you and picking up stray puppies?” Lea just shrugged.

“I want everybody I meet to remember me. Inside people’s memories, I can live forever.”

“I know I won’t forget you. Believe me, I try all the time,” Isa replied with a bit of humor in his tone.

“See? I’m immortal!”

“You’re obnoxious.” Lea and Isa looked up at the castle looming over this world. Lea’s mouth curled into a grin.

This is from the BBS novel.

“…You’ll have to sneak into the castle.”

“How do I get into the castle?” asked Riku, kneeling in the sand with a similar expression.

“No, I’ll go.” Axel peered under Riku’s hood to meet his eyes.

“How’s that going to work? Aren’t you a fugitive?”

“I’ll figure something out. You just hang back and watch. The castle’s pretty huge, y’know.” The corner of Axel’s mouth curled in a smirk. “In the meantime, I’ll check on what the organization’s up to.”

And this is from the KH2 novel. Axel feels bad for kidnapping Kairi and tries to rescue her. And there’s a remarkable sense of déjà vu.

“What’s with those jerks!” “It’ll be annoying if this turns into even more of a commotion.” At Isa’s urging, Lea reluctantly got up too.“We’ve got as many more chances as we want,” Isa quietly lectured Lea, starting to walk away. Lea followed after him.“Even though just a bit more and we’d’ve had it!” Complaining as they went, they arrived at a residential neighborhood.

Again from the BBS novel.

Axel sat patiently with his back against a wall. He was waiting for the perfect moment to rescue Kairi.

And the KH2 novel. Now we’ll take the rest of this passage from the KH2 novel and compare it to the Secret Reports from KH3.

If he made his move right now, he wouldn’t have to worry about Xemnas. But what about Saïx? Or Xigbar? Or Luxord?

“The two who stood guard at the gates were researchers themselves, though you wouldn’t think it to see them, massive and barrel-chested as they were. And slipping past that duo was only the first hurdle. It proved one not easily cleared; we were found and tossed out on our ears, time and again.”

He really wasn’t sure he could do this. He may have talked a big game, but he had an awful lot of doubt behind it. 

“On the day we finally secured our entry, we descended the long spiral stair at the heart of the castle to find a dark space below it, lined with cages. There wasn’t light enough to see if they were inhabited, and we were in no position to call out to any occupants within.”

Maybe he was discovering the emotion known as fear.Feeling a sudden presence, he looked up in apprehension.

“Yet we could feel it. A definite presence, there in the black. Terror washed over us, and we immediately regretted coming.”

“…Oh. It’s you.” The big tawny dog was here, wagging his tail at Axel.

“Pluto?” Hearing his name, Pluto jumped on Axel and covered his face in slobbery kisses.

“Aw, cut it out. Do you still smell the king on me?” Pluto barked once, loud and definitive.

“But just as we turned to flee, we heard the faintest of voices.”

Axel had seen Pluto jump fearlessly into a portal to the Corridors of Darkness. And Kairi had done the same. This was no time to hesitate, then.

He gave Pluto a good hug and pressed his cheek against his fur. “Okay, let’s go.” Pluto woofed in reply. Axel got to his feet and headed deeper into the bowels of the castle.

“The urge to run was nigh overpowering, but someone or something beckoned us on.”

Deep in the castle, there was a cage, suspended from the ceiling. Axel peered up at it and called to the girl who had to be inside. Beside him, Pluto wagged his tail wildly.

“There, framed by a tenuous sliver of light, we found her.”

“Kairi?” he called, and at the same time, Pluto barked. Her face appeared from behind the bars.

“It was too dim to make our her features.”

“You…?” He smiled up at her with a hint of a smirk.

“Axel. Didn’t you have it memorized?” Kairi nodded.

“Who was she? Why was she imprisoned here? She had no answers for us. Had no memories at all.”

“Um, well… I’m sorry about before. It’s my fault you’re locked up in here. Just wait. I’m gonna get you out.” Axel opened a dark rift, and Pluto jumped into it a step ahead of him.

“We spoke to her in hushed whispers. That was all the comfort two children like us could offer.”

Then someone else spoke behind him. “I’ve been waiting for you, Axel.”

“Yeah, I figured you’d show up.” His smirk turned nastier as he turned to see Saïx.

“She was an enigma, but I knew I wanted to help her.”

He didn’t take his eyes off the other man as he spoke to the girl in the cage. “Listen, Kairi! Trust me. I’m going to get you out!” Behind him, the portal closed.

“But Lea had other ideas. He was determined to free her.”

“What are you saying…? Vile traitor!” The great Claymore took shape at Saïx’s back. Axel didn’t waste a second grabbing his chakrams. But his body was reluctant somehow.

I don’t want to disappear… But still, it wouldn’t be so bad if I did. Not here.

“We slipped into the castle that day knowing only that we wanted, with all our hearts, to save her.”

Well, damn. That must have been when they were caught and used as test subjects. That’s quite tragic. No wonder Axel felt like disappearing while fighting Saïx. He became a Nobody all because he and Lea wanted to rescue a little girl. But, wait. There’s more.

Kairi sat on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest, and Pluto licked her face. “Do you think Axel’s okay…?” she wondered. Pluto’s reply was a whimper. She hid her face in her knees.

They are coming to help me. Axel… Sora and Riku… All of them. But why are they keeping me here? I’ve seen Axel get hurt twice, for my sake. And I couldn’t do anything. Axel’s saved me so many times, but I can’t help him…So many times?

Kairi caught herself. She’d only met him twice. Once when that other man had kidnapped her, and just now. So why did she get the feeling that he’d helped her more times than that…?

Kairi says she feels like Axel has helped her over and over.

Day 321: My Place

Axel’s always helping me out, so I just assumed he would again. How long has he known about me? Maybe since long before we met in Castle Oblivion. But he told me to think for myself. I was so happy.

Xion’s memories went back into Sora, but they stayed etched into Kairi’s heart. She still feels a heart connection to Axel.

Sora: Say, Kairi, what was your hometown like? You know, where you grew up.

Kairi: I’ve told you before, I don’t remember.

Sora: Nothing at all?

Kairi: Nothing.

Sora: You ever want to go back?

Kairi: Hmm. Well, I’m happy here.

Sora: Really…

Kairi: But you know… I wouldn’t mind going to see it.

Kairi has no memories of her home, but she’d like to go see it.

Axel: Go where? It’s not like we have homes to return to. We don’t exist, remember?

Naminé: Yes, it’s true. We may not have homes. But there is someplace I want to go… And someone I want to see…

Axel: Same here.

Axel definitely remembers his home. As a Nobody, he doesn’t feel like he has a true home. But he still has people he wants to see again. Lea back hurried to Radiant Garden after 3D. Merlin’s house is there, as well as Ansem’s castle. Both Lea and Kairi were returning home during KH3.

Xion: We don’t have any place to run.

Roxas: I know. Heh, I was just thinking out loud.

Axel: Well, even if things change, we’ll never be apart–

Xion: As long as we remember each other…right? Don’t worry, Axel–we got your hokey speech memorized.

Axel: Just checking.

Xion: I’ll have these moments memorized for a long time. Forever, I hope.

Axel said they’d never be apart as long as they remembered each other. And Xion also felt she had nowhere to go. 

Kairi stood on the sand, watching the sun sink below the horizon. “Maybe waiting isn’t good enough…,” she murmured.

“We’ve got something in common, Kairi. You and I both miss someone we care about. Feels like we’re already friends, you know?”

The final battle involves Lea and Kairi fighting Saïx. This is their first major battle. When Kairi wanted to find Sora, she was gazing at the sunset. While they’re training, Lea looks into the sunset. 

Day 352: What I Must Do

I’ll never forget today’s sunset. Even if Roxas and Axel do, I won’t forget.

And he sees Xion. She never forgot. Kairi’s right there with him. They never have to be apart anymore. She understands his pain. Xion’s name means forget-me-not. Both of their characters revolve around the theme “memory”. And the third member of their “trio” also involves the theme “memory”.

My pilot studies used a handful of subjects, but none possessed the fortitude to endure them. Subject’s memories have not returned, and our conversations remain less than lucid. Upon discovering the tests I’ve been conducting, my master demanded that I cease my work immediately and destroy what research I have compiled. Worse still, he ordered the release of my remaining subjects. Where is Subject X now?

Subject X was imprisoned and had no memories when Ansem the Wise intervened and took them away from Xehanort.

“I trust you.”

Axel let out a low chuckle. “Yeah? Because your heart tells you to?”

“Just the memory of it. But if you continue to interfere, I’ll have to overwrite that memory with everything I’ve learned as a Nobody.”

“…Should I take that as a threat?”

“More or less. Keep it in mind.” Finished with the conversation, Saïx walked away. Axel didn’t move for a while.

Saïx has all the memories of having Isa’s heart, but he has forgotten how to love. His memories only help him injure a heart more effectively. Axel left the Organization, and Isa’s heart lost its purpose and felt forgotten about.

Lea: Now that we’re going back, I’m worried about everything.

Kairi: Well, you don’t have to worry alone anymore, Axel.

Before the final battle, Lea and Kairi look into the sunset together. They are both worried about Isa. And they will both save him together.

‘Dear hare, your virtue will be remembered through the ages. I will take your gift little hare, and I will carry you in my arms up to the moon, so that everyone on the earth may see you and hear the tale of your kindness and unselfishness.’

Because Isa’s selflessness would never be forgotten.