#OBVIOUSLY THE MAIN QUESTION NOW IS WHEN. CLASS DO YOU HAVE ANY THEORIES

[gabe-lovebot]

oh. ok

[marshmallowprotection]

I've been questioning this for a long time...

When Suit Saeran is talking, so to speak, to V in the garden on the 9th, Suit angrily tells him that he had abandoned him to which V replies that it was Saeran who abandoned him. I think V says something like this "It was you who abandoned me" I don't know, it just makes me cringe every time I read this sentence, but I just can't explain to myself why V would say something like that?

Okay a lot of things happened, mistakes and misunderstandings but isn't it so blatant of V to say that to Saeran? (V knew that Rika had taken Saeran and did nothing to go after him during all that time).

Is there something I'm not seeing, is there a reason behind those words, what does V mean when he points to Saeran as the one who abandoned him? I'm going on the side that it's a script error or something unless if there is an explanation. I don't get it, sorry haha.

To preface this, I don't think you should take anything you read when it comes to specific lore like this in the literal sense. They are known to change things after the fact in this game and the rest of us have to work to piece it together to make sense of it. The story of how Saeran was brought to Mint Eye changes depending on where you are in the game.

In the diary, Saeran is kidnapped by some of Rika's guards on the street and brought to Mint Eye on his way home from the Cathedral. He's tortured countless ways in Mint Eye until the pain becomes too much to handle and Ray awakes in response.

[Check out Saeran's Diary in this post.]

That is the canon we are supposed to follow in this situation, ignoring anything that might have been shared in the casual and deep routes up until this point. Because, there are bits and pieces in those other routes imply that he might have gone along with Rika willingly, that he might’ve been the one to kill his mother instead of Rika, and that he might’ve had more time with Rika and V than what we see shown.

I have my own thoughts on those theories, but I digress. In the diary, when he gets kidnapped, he mentions two specific instances that're meant to correlate to this. Before he’s kidnapped, he finds Rika in the church, taking his photo off the wall of children that are members of the church. Whatever conversation he has with her is definitely off but he tries not to think much of it.

It's not long after that that he's followed home by a strange group of people, and he thinks it's his father coming after him, only to realize that those people don't work for his dad in the midst of the isolation he's put in at Mint Eye before he's brought to Rika in the basement. 

It's further developed in the After Ending by building on what's in the diary. Saeran spent most of his time at the church when not trapped at home with his mother. He didn't have a lot of one-on-one based interaction with most of the adults at the church, and what little time he did have with them, it wasn't spent fostering any sort of familial relationship. He says himself that he doesn't really view Rika or V as parents. I’d argue that Saeyoung does / did, but that’s not the case for Saeran. 

So, I do believe it's possible that if we follow this line of thinking that is given to us from the diary and the game, V was meant to meet with Saeran some time after Rika had him kidnapped and he didn’t show up. 

My problem with this specific set of information is that we are missing a lot of crucial details to round out this situation. Mother Choi was killed by Rika in self-defense, Jihyun was there with her and they had to “take care of it”.

Saeran wasn’t home during this altercation, obviously, but my main question is: where in the world was he staying if he wasn’t living with Rika and V? Rika and V talked Mother Choi into letting him attend the cathedral classes. I can only imagine that the church was letting him stay there overnight now and again.

That is the only thing that makes sense to me at this point in time with what information that's been given to me. It's the only thing that makes sense with the information they've given us, but there are a lot of holes in this because Cheritz is not that good at communicating between writing teams as these things are created as there are a lot of plot holes that pop up that shouldn’t be there.

I will admit they did a lot to make it cohesive, but there are a few holes here and there that haunt me to this day. This would explain why when Saeran tried to run home and found police tape at the scene, Jihyun had all the reason to pull him away from the crime scene and cover everything up. Saeran might’ve wanted to see his mother after staying at the church, and V couldn’t say no, so that’s how that happened. 

But, my main problem with him being kidnapped stems from the fact that he was trying to leave the cathedral and go home that day those believers got him, a home that should've been impossible for him to go to because his mother was no longer there and the police would have been scouring the area for him. Certainly they would not have allowed him to continue staying in that house given what happened there. 

Rika and V were at odds after Mother Choi's death as well. That was Rika's breaking point, her point of no return as seeing herself as the devil who cannot be saved, so at least, that explains why Rika and V had no communication between them which led to Saeran being all by himself in this situation to get kidnapped to begin with. I wonder sometimes if V assumed Rika would keep her promise and still look after Saeran while he was away, likely hunting for information to do what he could to ruin Saejoong Choi's career, and that's why he was the one who said: "Saeran, you left me."

I don't think V knew it was Rika who took Saeran at first, but it would not take much for him to start putting the pieces together given what we know.

He had to spend a lot of time figuring out where she was, where she took him, and what she was doing in the mountains. There is so much information we are not given in this game about Rika and V at the end of their relationship and the start of Mint Eye. There is so much there that could help us create a more cohesive understanding of this situation, and while I will admit that Rika Behind fills in a lot of these holes, I’m left wondering more and more every day with what I wasn’t told. 

I don't think that was the best choice of words, even if he pieced together the truth of the situation there was no reason to say that Saeran left him, but V is not one to use the best language even when he's trying his best to help. I mean, after all, he definitely didn't make himself look good at the beginning of Ray Route.

He kept pushing for Ray to listen to him, begging and pleading in a way that certainly made him, and the RFA by extension, look bad. In universe, at that moment, even if you have doubts about Mint Eye's goals and the truth behind the RFA, you see something that would make anyone doubtful.

Who would you believe in that situation? Ray lied to you about Mint Eye and the RFA, but he also warned you that V and Seven were horrible, horrible people. You might be rightfully upset with him, but when V shows up and Ray has a panic attack, what does that look like? What do you think about someone who has a presence that sends somebody into a downward spiral?

You don't have enough time to process all of what V’s saying, you just see Ray huddled over in pain. This isn't the last time his language isn't the best in his attempt to save Ray and Saeran. But, the true intent is there, it's just his execution and dialogue that end up being messy. V is a character who can be best described as the path paved to hell is made with good intentions. 

That being said, I wish I could give you an exact answer, but unfortunately, I can't give you an answer when even I don't have the slightest idea how to frame this situation outside of what I've told you here. This is one of those things where you're just going to have to draw your own conclusion or rip your hair out. 

[athenswrites]

15 Questions

@void-botanist had an open tag for this one and I wanted to play! I'm tagging @the-down-upside-finch @worldsfromhoney @from-the-depths-into-your-soul @aquadestinyswriting and whoever else wants to play! (Tagging @thetruearchmagos to see this and play if he wants)

I'm answering these as Piers Hall and Grady Yensey, from the start of Knight of Dawn!

Are you named after anyone?

Piers: As far as I know? No one. I don't even know who named me. I came to Adele as "Jillian Piers". Grady: Actually yes, Grady was my grandmother's name. She died of IR about two years before I was born.

When was the last time you cried?

Piers: It's been at least three months Grady: Liar, you cried the night before your coronation. Piers: Did not! Grady: Did too! Piers: [huffs] Grady: The last time I cried was *also* before Piers coronation but it was stress more than anything.

Do you have kids?

Piers: No, but I would like kids one day. Grady: No.

Do you use sarcasm?

Piers: Obviously not Grady: They use it just a little too often. I don't typically use sarcasm though.

What’s the first thing you notice about people?

Piers: Probably the giant scar on the side of my face. It looks like a weird acid burn scar, but not quite. It's from when- Grady: What you notice about others, Piers. Piers: Oh....you asked the first thing I notice about other people...probably if they ALSO have scarring from IR. Survivors are rare. Secondly, whatever they're wearing. It's the active choice they make about their appearance and tells me a lot about them as a person. Grady: For me, it's how they introduce themself, and the titles they use. Piers and I both work with a LOT of different people from varying backgrounds and statuses so it's important to know how they want to be addressed without making it awkward.

What’s your eye color?

Piers: Green-hazel. They've faded a little as I've gotten older. Grady: Brown now, but apparently I was born with bright blue eyes.

Scary stories or happy endings?

Piers: Scary stories! Grady: Happy endings, all the way. I am an avid reader of cheesy, trashy, lesbian romance novels. I'm currently in the middle of one that's set in the wild west.

Any special talents?

Piers: I can bend my back far enough back to stick my head through my own legs. I also can fall asleep after drinking four cups of coffee. Grady: I used to be able to play piano when I was younger. Now, I consider my special talent to be able to dead sprint in high heels. Chasing down people in the Palace teaches you a lot.

Where were you born?

Piers: Honestly, beats me. Officially, I was born in the Palace. Grady: I was born in one of the hospitals in downtown ATLZoS. I don't remember which.

What are your hobbies?

Piers: I like playing chess, going on research deep dives, and watching conspiracy theory videos. Grady: I consider reading my main hobby, but I spend a fair amount of time baking and playing military sim games.

Do you have any pets?

Piers: I've never had a pet. Adele was allergic to most furry creatures and Marcie hated snakes and lizards. Grady, didn't you- Grady: [Swatting Piers] -I used to have a fish but it died because I accidentally forgot to feed it.

What sports do you play/have played?

Piers: I mean, I don't really do formal sports but I do some mixed martial arts and weightlifting. Grady: Same as Piers, but I also played tennis for a little while.

How tall are you?

Piers: Six foot, one inch! Grady: Piers is about five-eleven and I'm about five-six. Piers: Boooo let me have my fun. Grady: You're still growing which shouldn't be happening, but it is. I'm sure you'll at least hit six foot soon.

Favorite subject in school?

Piers: I loved geo-politics and history! Literature is a close one too. Grady: During my Academy time, I really enjoyed mixed martial arts classes and naval strategy. To this day, I somewhat regret not choosing RG Navy. I had high enough scores. Piers: [giving puppy dog eyes] But then you would have left me.

Dream job?

Piers: If I wasn't Monarch, I'd probably still pursue a career in politics. It's so much fun and I wouldn't trade it for the world. Grady: I do want to be Captain of the Royal Guard one day, which should happen when Gavin retires in ten years or so.

[spring-lxcked]

finshed ru.in so. thoughts. putting it under a readmore!! (apologies if it shows up without one at first, tumblr is doing the thing where it deletes readmores again :/)

ending was uh. abrupt and unsatisfying. also answered exactly zero of the questions i had because, like, it was abundantly obvious it wasn't gre.gory the whole time and was probably the game introducing it's version of the mim.ic

not actually shocked by grego.ry's betrayal (if it even was really him because why would he have control of the elevator?) based on the main game, but i know some ppl must be v unhappy rn

fn.af making me cry like??????????????? sorry but i genuinely cried abt ro.xy don't look at me

on one hand disappointed that the mim.ic was All It Was, on the other glad i don't have to fucking hear people claim glitch/burn is the mim.ic anymore (i hope) LMAO

game did get glitchier with time (two crashes, namely) but still better than main game

okay positive positive positive because the ending and the music me.n part were the only bad parts imo

the creepy objective descs were SO good. "That mask suits you." "Don't you care about your friend? Why aren't you trying harder?" "Don't think about it, just do it."

animatronic jumpscares were SO GOOD like. i think because most of the scares were primarily not the death jumpscares, it gave them leeway to give us the best death jumpscares of the entire franchise

so like. the rabbit when you're using the mask was obviously glamr.ock bon.nie trying to stop cas.sie from freeing the mim.ic, right? i strongly disagree with the sentiment that it was glitch, that makes little to no sense to me

so we agree that illusion disks are canon to security bre.ach (i personally don't think they are in the other games but it's debatable) right? we agree that we don't know that ANY of what cas.sie was seeing without the mask or with it was real right? we agree the mask wasn't literally making her teleport through solid objects right? we agree that we actually have no idea that anything we saw or heard was accurate to reality right?

the candy cad.et story GODS are we ready for 3000 theories abt exactly what that meant because i do NOT think it was abt them mim.ic—

cas.sie lore has me half-considering adding her to the multi

van.ni mask ambience was creepy but also jesus christ the theorists are gonna have a field day with some of that whispering and screaming

me going from "don't understand why rox.y is so popular" to "i would die for rox.y immediately" (tbf i really didn't feel hype for anyone in the main game, which i think says a lot. ru.in handled characters a LOT better and i actually cared about them)

am i crazy or cas.sie and michael parallels?? i just kept getting that Vibe idk

we need to talk abt the claim that va.nni masks were used by all class v technicians. do i believe this? not sure but it's a concept i have GOT to hear more abt

btw i do know there's other endings but i think the normal ending is probably canon

this dlc had no effect on my canon, i already assumed glitch was no longer in the pizzeria/etc (i don't think the rabbit was glitch + the animatronics clearly were acting of their own volition)

i know i absolutely didn't find all the secrets but like. unless there's something major i missed (very very very possible), i'm still sad we didn't get more info on the greg.ory being a robot theory. outside of when i'm interacting with definitely human!gre.gorys on here, my william making the blueprint for gre.gory is an important part of his canon to me

anyway, despite any complaints i may have abt the ending, ru.in proved that ste.el wool is more than capable of listening to criticism and doing better and that makes me so, so happy

hey hi i want to make a million security br.each / ru.in verses now. how can i force my actual william into this, guys—? yes i know i said i want him canonly dead, AU verses doN'T COUNT

WHO IS BEHIND THE PIZZAPL.EX I AM STILL INSANE ABOUT THIS WHO IS BEHIND IT

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[septembercfawkes]

Debunking 6 Myths about Steadfast, Flat-arc Characters

Steadfast/flat-arc characters are characters who don't drastically change their worldviews over the course of the story. In contrast, a change character will do largely a 180 flip in worldview from the beginning of the story to the end of the story.

For example, in the fable of the Little Red Hen, the Little Red Hen never changes her worldview about hard work. But in A Christmas Carol, Scrooge completely changes his worldview from the beginning of the story to the end of the story.

In the writing community, there are a lot of misconceptions of the steadfast/flat-arc character (at least from my experience), which I'm going to talk about, debunk, and clarify today in this article. This information will still be useful to writers who have no interest in writing a steadfast protagonist--because nearly every successful story features a key character who is steadfast.

irst, though, we need to visit our familiar pit stop on writing terminology. The most common term for this character is the "flat-arc" character. But it is not the only term. This character has also been called the "steadfast" character, which is what Dramatica Theory calls it. While "flat-arc" is more common, I prefer "steadfast" for a few reasons:

- It conveys that the character must struggle to hold onto something (after all, one is only "steadfast" when there is opposition)

- "Flat-arc" sorta sounds like there isn't really any growth or movement, which isn't exactly accurate.

- For much of my experience in the writing world, protagonists who don't have much of an arc have been frowned upon or treated as "lesser." The term "flat-arc" reminds me of that.

This is completely preference. You may use whichever term you want. Today, I'll be switching between the two.

Now, you can have positive and negative steadfast characters. A positive one will hold onto a true worldview throughout the story, while a negative one will hold onto an inaccurate worldview. For the sake of this article, I will be focusing on the positive one, which is more common, and may do a future article that focuses more on the negative version.

Now, let's talk about some of the misunderstandings and myths about the positive steadfast character.

My (Helpful) Personal History with Steadfast, Flat-arc Characters

Despite wanting to work in the writing industry since I was seven, I entered the writing world like anyone else: naive.

I had an idea for a story I wanted to write, with a protagonist that drew inspiration from some of my all-time favorite protagonists.

What I didn't know, and what no one could explain to me, was that all these protagonists were steadfast/flat-arc characters. And that's what I wanted to write.

I took writing classes, went to conferences, read books, and tried to soak up any piece of advice anyone could give me. But for some reason, some of the information didn't seem to work into my story or apply to the favorite stories I was drawing inspiration from.

This led to a lot of questioning and challenging of "writing rules" on my part (though that was mostly internal). I was told over and over again (if not in these words) that I needed to have a change arc protagonist. It was implied, over and over again, that protagonists who didn't have change arcs were static, simple, lacking depth and dimension, and were just boring. Of course, there was always the occasional acknowledgment that 007 or Indiana Jones were successful. But I didn't want to write 007 or Indiana Jones. I still wanted to go deep into character.

Well, over the years, I unwittingly switched my protagonist from a steadfast protagonist to a change protagonist. I've only fully realized this recently when reviewing some of those favorite protagonists from years ago.

Not to be dramatic, but I feel a little cheated and let down by the writing world because of that. Even recently I went looking for resources on steadfast/flat-arc protagonists, and frankly, found very little. And of what I did find, 95% pulled from the same source material. I mean, it's great, but we are obviously lacking with this.

I tell this story, not for therapeutic reasons (okay, let's be honest, some of it is totally therapeutic!), but because I know there is someone out there who is struggling like I was. Someone who can't get their story to work because they are trying to apply change-arc advice to a flat-arc protagonist. This doesn't work. But you can't see that, because the people you are learning from (who have sincere intentions), don't fully understand or acknowledge steadfast protagonists.

For example, a writing book that has been making waves (that I looove and definitely recommend) is Story Genius by Lisa Cron. This book is amazing! And so helpful!

If you are writing a positive change protagonist.

It will not help you nail down your steadfast protagonist. Because its principles are founded on the protagonist changing.

So if you are trying to apply it to the wrong type of protagonist, you are going to get frustrated. . . . or switch your protagonist's type.

Unfortunately, I myself have been guilty of perpetuating some inaccurate advice, but only because (like most people), I didn't know better. This also tends to happen because by far the most common protagonist type is the positive change protagonist. There are lots of resources on it. There are lots of people writing it.

But this doesn't mean that the steadfast protagonist is wrong. It actually doesn't even mean that he is boring, static, or one-dimensional, nor that he doesn't grow, struggle, doubt, or change at all. He just doesn't do a direct flip in worldview. Instead, he proves his worldview true (the thematic statement).

Let's debunk some myths I've heard in the decade or so of being in the writing world.

Myth #1: Flat-arc Characters Don't Grow

The most common myth you are likely to run into, is that steadfast characters don't grow. This is inaccurate. The steadfast character doesn't drastically change her worldview. The positive steadfast protagonist has a worldview that will be proven true by the end of the story, which creates the theme. (In contrast, a negative steadfast protagonist has a worldview that will be proven untrue.)

This doesn't mean the character doesn't grow in some way.

For example, you may have a flat-arc character who becomes more competent. Maybe he learns to become a great marksman. Or maybe she learns how to navigate law school (Legally Blonde). A steadfast protagonist can gain any kind of skill, even some that are less obvious, such as learning the art of manipulation. In Moana, Moana must learn how to sail.

You may have a steadfast character who learns to become more proactive/assertive. It's not exactly unusual for a flat-arc character to not want to get involved in the main conflict in the beginning. He may be a reluctant hero. He may need to learn to not stand by but to stand up for what he believes in, by confronting the antagonist directly. In Disney's live-action Cinderella, Ella must become more assertive to fully thwart her wicked stepmother.

A steadfast character may grow in experience and wisdom. In Wonder Woman, Diana must experience and understand the real world in order to fully wield her truth against the antagonist.

A steadfast character can grow in pretty much any way that doesn't totally flip his or her worldview.

Certainly, there are flat-arc characters who don't grow at all, like 007, and that is fine, and you can write successful characters like that. But that doesn't mean that none of them grow whatsoever.

Myth #2: Steadfast Characters' Worldviews Remain Completely Static

Explained most simply, a positive steadfast character has an accurate worldview--understands the true thematic statement--from the beginning. This doesn't necessarily mean she has a perfect understanding of it.

The character's worldview may need some refining. It may not be whole or complete. Or, as mentioned, above, it may need more wisdom (discernment) behind it.

These things can only be realized with real-world experience--in other words, the tests and trials of the middle of the story.

While this concept may overlap with the prior, it's slightly different, as not every way a steadfast character grows will be linked to his or her worldview. They may be two completely separate things. But they can also go hand in hand.

For example, while Cinderella knows kindness will help her through trials (the thematic statement), her worldview needs some refining. She must realize one shouldn't let others take advantage of that kindness. She needs to stand up and be assertive with her stepmother.

In Arrival, Louise Banks knows that communication can help us understand another perspective, which enables us to avoid confrontation. However, through the story, she gains a greater, deeper, more complete understanding of that, as she learns the heptapods' language--which has the power to unit humanity and species across time.

In Wonder Woman, Diana knows from the beginning that we should fight for the world that we believe in. However, she gains more wisdom in that regard, after experiencing the gray moral complexities of humanity--does humankind deserve a better world? Only after she comes to terms with this, is she able to embrace the true thematic statement with eyes wide open.

Sure, some steadfast characters have completely static worldviews, but many of them don't.

This concept can become all the more complex when we consider secondary themes.

First, as a quick recap, the positive steadfast character has an accurate worldview--the "truth," as some like to call it--this is also the primary thematic statement. This is the truth the story is arguing. The positive steadfast character starts the story with this.

In contrast, a positive change character will start with an inaccurate worldview--the "lie," as some like to call it--this is basically the "anti-theme"--the opposing argument to the "truth." The positive change character will change to the "truth," the accurate worldview, the true thematic statement at the end.

However, many stories have more than one theme. Many stories have secondary themes.

Because of this, it's possible for the positive steadfast character to be steadfast in the primary theme, but be a change character in the secondary theme.

For example, Diana is steadfast in the primary theme, which is the argument that we should fight for the world we believe in (as opposed to the argument that we should allow humans to suffer the world they "deserve.")

However, in the secondary theme, she is a change character. The secondary theme is about whether humankind is innately black and white or whether they are innately gray. Diana begins the story believing they are innately black and white (innately good, if not for the antagonist), but learns the truth: humankind is innately gray. This is an arc of disillusionment. This feeds into the primary arc and primary theme.

I have an article on secondary themes in the works, but it's not complete yet. For now, know this:

Many stories have multiple themes. A steadfast protagonist may or may not be steadfast for every theme (or "worldview" if you prefer). But by definition, they must be steadfast for the primary theme (obviously).

Again, more on that in the future. However, this is why you may see writers argue over whether a particular character has a change or flat arc, and why the same character may get categorized differently--it depends entirely on what thematic thread the person is pulling. One may, in fact, argue Diana is a change character, because she arcs in disillusionment, while another may argue she has a flat arc, because she believes the primary thematic statement from beginning to end.

No worries if it sounds a little confusing. In short, a positive steadfast character's view may grow or shift in some way, but it never does a 180 flip in the primary arc and theme.

Myth #3: Flat-arc Characters Always Stand Firm

Just because the steadfast character has an accurate worldview and belief system (knows the "truth"), doesn't mean she never wavers or has doubts about it.

In most flat-arc protagonist stories, the character will have her beliefs tested through the conflicts of the middle. As the antagonistic force gets stronger, the character may experience doubts and powerful temptations (which may include conflicting wants). At some point, it may even seem that her worldview might be wrong. This, along with the cost of adhering to the truth, is almost always the meat of her internal journey. If you want your steadfast character to have a rich inner journey, this is where it's at.

For other steadfast protagonists, the internal journey isn't a major plotline (like 007). This means we won't see many (if any) moments of him having a worldview struggle.

Ultimately, at the end of the story, the steadfast protagonist will hold onto her accurate belief system. This is what makes her steadfast. But that doesn't necessarily mean she never second guesses it.

Myth #4: Steadfast Characters are Simple and One-dimensional

While a steadfast character is probably more likely to be simple, they aren't necessarily. Complexity isn't strictly tied to character arc.

What makes something complex is dichotomy. It's boundaries. It's layers of identity. I talk about this in my free booklet "Core Principles of Crafting Protagonists." But I'll review briefly.

Complex characters are most easily created when we smash together seeming contradictions.

- An outlaw who is law-abiding

- A soldier who refuses to hurt anyone

- A vampire who doesn’t like drinking blood

. . . for example.

Once you’ve smashed together contrasting features within the character, the gray area can be explored to find complexity. Why would an outlaw be law-abiding? How can someone be a vampire and not like blood? (These are more obvious examples, but they prove the point.)

Complexity can also be created by considering the character's personal boundaries--what it takes for him to consider doing something he wouldn't ordinarily do. We all have thresholds when it comes to our values. For example, I may have a character who proclaims that he never lies. But when the pressure gets high, I may show him lying to save the life of a loved one. This will reveal that he cares more about his loved one's life than about always being honest. In other words, he's not as simple as he first appeared.

While within the character arc, a steadfast protagonist will largely adhere to the accurate worldview, even when the pressure kicks up, this doesn't necessarily mean she can't find herself being pressured into unusual behaviors outside of it. For example, just because Job will stick to his faith in God regardless of what is inflicted upon him, doesn't mean he won't be pushed to complaining when the trials get intense. Difficulties reveal deeper character.

Finally, a character can be made complex by differentiating layers of identity. Identity gets down to how someone is defined, and no one is defined the same way from all angles. For example, who the character thinks he is, and who he actually is, will likely be different in some way. Who he believes he is and who society believes he is may be, in fact, opposite concepts.

While these elements can feed into character arcs--or rather, The Character Arc--they don't necessarily have to. There is no reason a steadfast character can't have some complexity.

Myth #5: Flat-arc Characters don't have Ghosts/Wounds

This isn't a myth I've heard very much, but I do feel like there are some misconceptions when it comes to the positive steadfast character and ghosts/wounds.

A "ghost" is a past, significant, often traumatic event that motivates the character to adopt an inaccurate worldview (the "anti-theme" or the "lie" or the "misbelief"--depending on your preferred terminology). In the industry, this is also sometimes called a "wound." You can learn all about ghosts/wounds in my article, "Giving Your Protagonist a Ghost."

But in a positive steadfast protagonist, this is often flipped just a bit. The ghost is often a past, significant, sometimes traumatic event that motivates the character to adopt the accurate worldview (the "theme" or the "truth" if you prefer).

For example, Cinderella's mother, while on her deathbed, tells Cinderella to always be kind. This motivates Cinderella to do just that.

Of course, not every character will have a ghost addressed in the story.

For the positive steadfast protagonist, the ghost may be largely resolved.

But not always. They may not have complete closure and peace. And it's possible they are still traumatized by the event.

Sometimes adhering to what is true can be nearly as haunting as having regrets. It's just that the haunting will come from either the cost of the truth, or, a lack of power--a lack of control--during the ghost. Generally speaking anyway.

In The X-Files, Fox Mulder, in the overall story and theme, is a positive steadfast character. The ongoing theme is an argument of belief vs. disbelief. (The motifs, "I want to believe" and "The truth is out there" speak to that.) However, Mulder has an unresolved, traumatizing ghost: his little sister was abducted by aliens.

This event cements him to the thematic truth of belief and motivates him to investigate anything unnatural. But this happened at the cost of his sister.

Sometimes the trauma comes from not being able to do anything, just as Mulder was powerless to stop the abduction.

Other times it may come from not being able to stop a loved one from choosing the inaccurate worldview--the "lie," "anti-theme," or "misbelief." The steadfast character may be haunted by the outcome of someone else choosing the lie.

So, just because you are writing a steadfast character, doesn't mean she can't have a traumatizing past.

Myth #6: Steadfast Characters are Boring

I have sometimes heard writing instructors discourage students from creating steadfast characters because they are "static and uninteresting." By now, you probably can see for yourself that this doesn't check out.

In reality, any kind of character becomes boring when poorly written. Sure, steadfast characters may need to be handled a little differently (they can easily become annoying when mishandled, for example), but this doesn't mean audiences aren't invested in them. A steadfast character can be just as exciting, meaningful, inspiring, and complex as most change characters.

I mean, I don't think most of us would call Diana, Fox Mulder, Moana, or Louise Banks boring.

In the future, I'll be breaking down this largely misunderstood character type some more. I mean . . . some of us have got to do more about the lack of resources out there, right? I don't want another person who wants to write a steadfast protagonist to be "tricked" into switching it to a change one. If you want to write a steadfast protagonist, this is me giving you permission.

[oneoftheprettynerds]

Fixed: Dark!Steve x Reader (Mob AU)

Chapter 4 in the Lipstick and Crayons Series.

Chapter 3: Love So Soft

Main Masterlist

A/N: It’s shorter than my usual updates but I’m busy so sorry for the delay. My final exam dates have come and all I can do is pray right now lol. Please pray for me if you can, this sis is out here writing fanfics for yall instead of studying so, haha. ANyways, enjoy babies! Shit happens in this chapter.

Warning: Non-Con, Sickening Threats, Mob Themes, Violence, Death, Manipulation, a mild mental breakdown, Cheap Tricks.

Genres + Characters: Mob AU, Single Parents AU, Steve Rogers x Reader.

Summary: Steve can’t ever repay you for what you did. After meeting you, Steve believes his broken family is the missing piece in the puzzle of your own wrecked one. Indebting the crime lord to you has been the biggest mistake of your life, cause now you can’t get rid of him, no matter what. Loyalty and favours go a long way in the mob.

Word count: 5K

Chapter 4: Fixed

You didn’t sleep that night. Or the next few. Your hands shook every time you got a flashback and even though you were numb to emotions that entire day, tears threatened to spill whenever your mind took to you to that overpriced kitchen again.

Now that he had gone to a dangerous and unnerved assaulter from a Dad trying to take care of his daughter, your mind wouldn’t put anything past him. You knew that in the back of your mind that he was a mobster and your ‘friendship’ was alarming to say the least, but now there was no denying his resources and power and the very obvious threat to your life lingering in the air.

At least before you had the luxury to be oblivious and ignorant, not anymore though. Steve felt even more unhinged and liberal now, even messaging you daily, greeting texts that you obviously ignored. He knew you both were aware that you never handed him your number and he felt no need to hide his pursuit.

You read most of the messages, not bothering with a single reply though. You tried to block him but somehow your phone would still receive messages from his number, even though his contact would always peek back at you from the otherwise empty blacklist.

As if his torment wasn’t ample, another message thread from a different number would forward you alarming images, photos of Grace in her daycare, on a class trip to the park and even her playing in your backyard. You had no doubt that this was another game of his to show you his resources.

You skipped daycare for a few days, your mental health worse than it was after the carnival attack, because now you had a personal tormentor and you cursed yourself for falling into this mess. At times, you believed it wasn’t your fault really, you just helped a kid and this situation spiraled itself but what would pointing fingers now get you? The harsh truth was you were in a calamitous situation now and every step from now on had to be thought out.

So, you let Grace attend her daycare and acted if nothing was amiss or altered, after the few initial breakdown days of course, kept going to your job and earning the bread. You considered your options, you really wanted to go to the cops or a higher fair power but those were few these days, almost non existent in your city. You also vaguely recalled meeting three of the Captains of the PD at Sarah’s birthday, all smiley and doe eyed for Steve. You knew they wouldn’t help, fucking kiss-asses.

Maybe you would have to move somewhere else, perhaps to your hometown, at least till things cooled down or better yet were forgotten? But that trail was very predictable and you didn’t want your parents in this mess.  

You also came to know that Steve had inserted himself in the other spheres of your life. You were sure your location was always being sent to him, the knowledge a courtesy of the black car following you while you travelled to home at some late day’s end.

Aiden told you whereabouts were easy to track, when you inquired ambiguously. Another instance was when you went to the bank to deposit cash for your debit card, you came face to face with an enormous amount already there. Somehow, the limit on your credit card was also extended. How, you knew. The clerk told you about an email you must have gotten in regards to it, you dismissed that justification away and told them to not accept the cash. To sum the discussion, they weren’t helpful and had no policy against anonymous donors.

Aiden, your trusted coworker cum pal, sensed the shift in your aura and fidgety form very easily, pestering you with questions and you decided to turn to him, stressed and tired and ready to do something. His questioning eyebrows made you confess vaguely but you refused to tell him the extent of it. Just that his prediction came true and you needed help. Let’s just say, Aiden was a good man.

With time, Steve’s ‘affectionate’ messages became deranged, and you found it harder to act nonchalant in your daily life. You were thankful he didn’t come to visit you, possibly occupied with the rumored war between the mobs. You just prayed for a few more days of ignorance, just enough time to think and do something.

“What do you mean someone collected her?!” You had a hard time controlling your voice, you were about to burst, in tears or with anger, you didn’t know.

“The man was verified in the emergency contacts and we got a letter signed and approved by you to skip the day an hour into the first activity.”

“A man? Emergen-, wait no! What fucking approved letter?”

You had three emergency contacts, your mom in another state, Aiden, and one of the other kid’s mom you had grown close to. Aiden was with you at work all day, so did someone disguise themselves as him? And what was the deal with the letter signed by you? You surely didn’t remember writing and authorizing one.

The boy, Pietro, who had been the receptionist for as long as you could remember, shuffled through the chaotic piles of paper and presented a letter to you, and your blood froze as your eyes skimmed the font.

Your beautiful cursive stared right back at you and you knew that no one would ever be able to distinguish between this penmanship and the one in the pocketbook in your clutch. No one but you. Even though you knew you had not written it, the slightly different ‘f’ and ‘g’ told you everything.

Your signature at the bottom though, was done quite perfectly and that made you even more scared.

“I did-, I didn’t write this! What the-” Your widened eyes met Pietro’s from above the paper but all he offered you was a meek smile. Your hands shook with rage and for the first time in your life, you had the urge to slap someone really bad.

“Maybe your family had an emergency to take he-”

“No, you don’t get it!” You stopped yourself from getting frantic, willing yourself to take deep breaths and think rationally. Today of all days, things had to mess up.

He didn’t know you had no family in this city, that you had a mobster after you or the subtle threats that his hired spy sent to you.

Was going to the police an option? Aiden already told you that the cops were as good as Steve’s men. But this was about your missing kid! You’d never forgive yourself if something happened to her. And you were giving Steve way too much credit, what if he wasn’t behind this all? Come to think of it, what if the other number wasn’t his?

Relax yourself! Thinking of disturbing theories wouldn’t help anyone. You thought you should go to the cops, just in case. No mentioning of Steve, just a woman with a ‘missing child’ report.

‘Missing Child’ left an acrid taste behind and you were too close to a breakdown, but your whole journey of single-parenthood taught you to kick vulnerability aside, well most of the times.

You turned and were about to leave, but Pietro stopped you. “If you are going to the cops Ma’am, they require 8 hours of inactivity or disappearance time for kids under 5.”

Well look who just read your mind.

You huffed and kept the tears at bay, your mind thinking of what to do then? Grace was obviously taken-

“How could you let a toddler leave without informing the parents?” You knew your anger was channeling out at the wrong man but didn’t he all but hand Grace to the stranger?

You beat him answering and inquired, “What did the man look like? Do you have any footage? Anything?” The wrinkles in your forehead and stress creases on your face paired with the eyebags betrayed your age surely. You were sure you had aged more this week than an entire decade, juggling your normal life with the hovering threat.

“You shouldn’t be this worried Ma’am.”

The fucking audacity.

“Your daughter recognized him, she all but ran to him and this other little girl he came with. You should maybe ask your parent-friends around? A blonde family perhaps?”

As all the emotions drained from your face and terror took over, the young lad in front of you looked smug. You wondered as if you imagined the faintest of smirks on his face.

You crumpled the letter in your hands, seething with rage as you stepped in your car. Oh, you were mad, more wrathful than ever. You could take any hits on you, any threat but not on Grace, never on her.

You were stupid, you had already decided you wouldn’t put anything past him but unknowingly, you did put this past him. You thought this man had a shred of decency to not use your kid in this adult war, being a parent himself and all but what a surprise! You were wrong.

You drove to your home, your thoughts a mix of trepidation, anxiety and fury. You were scared of him and his reach and resources but if he put Grace in any type of danger; whether to teach you a lesson or use her as bait or both, there’d be consequences.

Lord knows you killed a man a month ago Grace was threatened.

You had one thing to do before contacting Steve about Grace but you never got to do it because unexpectedly the bastard was in your home. In your home.

The black sports car outside was a huge giveaway but your suspicions were confirmed when you opened the door with your house key. The banter and giggles from inside alarmed yet calmed you; the dread of confrontation and the assurance of Grace’s safety reigned your mind.

As the door opened painfully slow like a horror movie, the sight that met your eyes made you sick with a feeling of failure. It wasn’t gore or blood or grunge, it was Steve bouncing Grace in the air and catching her while Sarah twirled around in the living room.  

This man was craftier than you thought, every action of his was calculated, each a refined step. You had been so preoccupied to avoid direct encounters with him in your little family’s life that you didn’t think he had other ways. He was always looming around with Sarah and as Grace began to trust Sarah, she consequently began to trust her blonde guardian too.

As you slammed the door behind you, Steve’s eyes snapped to yours and his smirk made you want to punch him so hard. The smugness on his face while he let Grace down without breaking eye contact told you he had no regret, no remorse. In fact, he was loving every second of this cat and mouse chase between you two.

You were a millimeter close to losing your shit, the only check being the kids in the room. But you were mad and he was going to know it.

“What the hell, Steve? Messing with my kid?” You threw your clutch onto the couch, Steve haughty by the reception of his sent message but still holding back because of the kids. He called Wanda and you didn’t really notice where she came from but you did register Steve asking to take the girls to the park for a ‘private discussion’.

As Grace passed by you, you grabbed her arm lightly, making her look at you with doe eyes resembling yours. You gave her a smile trying to ease her, but you knew she was smart enough to sense the change in the atmosphere.

Apparently, the whining Sarah wasn’t.

You looked back to Steve, your hold still on Grace and continued with a frown and raised eyebrows, “She isn’t going anywhere, not out of my sight and obviously not with you or your goons.”

Wanda had the audacity to look offended and you scoffed at her, eyes staring Steve’s down.

“Honey, I don’t think the kids should hear what I think you have to say right now.” He said nodding to Wanda to take Grace.

“You must be deranged to think I trust Grace near anyone even remotely related to you! Take your people and get out.” You held your hand up to stop Wanda and pointed towards the door with the most menacing glare you could form.

Grace looked incomprehensibly between you two, concern and confusion on her face. That might have been the first time such a tone was used in your household. The grumbling Sarah was close to throwing a tantrum, irritated by the change in the playful air or the lack of attention to her, you didn’t know. She was hanging on Wanda’s forearm, her feet slipping on your printed rug. Wanda was trying to not look hurt still by your previous statement, distracting herself by the blonde kid and you were baffled by her obliviousness to all this.

Steve, the beefy blonde Lucifer, was furious and seething. His white knuckles and ticking jaw were the most obvious giveaways, the fingers just itching to beat the shit out of someone no doubt.

Was he imagining striking you into compliance into his weird playhouse game complex? You wouldn’t be surprised given the extent of his attempt to ‘win’ you over.

The ‘get out’ tone and blatant disrespect was a bruise to his ego for sure, and by you, a middle-class woman nonetheless was a worse injury. Steve was the deadly boss to armored men in the vicinity, the kids’ father figure, according to him, and Wanda’s stern yet kind employer.

People had been killed for less and there you were, standing in all your glory, being the only person alive to reject Steve Rogers and now, the only to raise your voice at him.

You almost scoffed at his impudence to look offended, what did he expect? For you to submit to him after the stunt he pulled? His reach was scary he proved today and that any future with him in your life in any way, was a fearsome possibility to entertain but you’d be damned if you went down without a fight.  

“You can’t make me leave; we both know. You don’t have the physical edge nor the mental one. I have no problem drawing out G-U-N-S in front of the kids or to throw the warnings around, although I would prefer not to.”

Your free hand itched to slap him, like how his did minutes ago. It wasn’t a mankind problem about men thinking they were entitled to everything; it was a Steve Rogers’s problem. Of course, with him consent didn’t matter. If he had a ‘housewife, kids and fences’ fixation, he’d make it come true.

“Do you even listen to what I say? Or your own words even? Please, go ahead! Traumatise my kid and also yours in your wooing process! Why are you so obsessed? Leave us alone, you freak! I just ignored few messages!” You had a hard time maintaining your cool, if there was any left. You were sure you were scaring Grace and no matter what happened next, you knew she was already traumatized by this entire ordeal already. You were so sorry, so, so, so sorry to your poor baby caught in this mess.

You knew, no, you hoped, he wouldn’t pull out the gun, his actions at the carnival a proof, you remembered how he hid his gun on finding Sarah. That threat was empty but the next one wasn’t, his words making you freeze in your spot.

“I think you keep on misunderstanding me, sweetheart. I don’t make empty promises,”

Posh word for threats.

“For starters, maybe I should pay my future in-laws a visit in their blue duplex. They might need help with the vast garden they have, it is the season for ‘violets’, isn’t it?”

As you froze with your parents being brought up, he also cooled, albeit differently, smirking once again gaining the upper hand, not that he lost it if you were being honest.

“Isn’t threatening my kid enough for you, Steve?” You hated how your loud voice almost broke, your anger slowly subsiding into helplessness and you hated that. You hated his guts, his entitlement, his claim; everything about him.

“You still don’t see it, do you? Our family of four is the most important thing to me right now and I’m not above doing anything to save it.”

“There is no family of four Steve! I keep explaining and you keep coming back to square one with all this bullshit!” The curse word did tick Steve off but he would correct that later, when bigger things weren’t at ploy.

“Your ignorance makes me a little mad sometimes sweetheart and that is why I have to do all I do. You haven’t realized we need each other yet, but I’m staying until you do and even after that, I promise. You know how much it pissed me off to see your tickets and the packed suitcases after I’ve been nothing but nice? I was so generous to spoil you with my riches but instead I find that in your finances.”

This fucker knew. Of course, he did!

You were wondering in the back of your head what had prompted this visit with so many threats and warnings and anguish. He was pissed even before you ‘acted out’, he tracked the tickets and the plan and that meant he even tracked-

“You have so much to learn, but luckily you interact with quite a few people. I am most tempted to start out with this Aiden guy, trying to be the hero and giving you all the ideas. Maybe I should visit him?” Steve wondered out loud, and you flinched at his suggestion, hating how you were trapped by this man.

You couldn’t live with yourself if anyone got hurt because of you, be it your parents or Aiden or any other possibility Steve would come up with. Of course, Grace was your peak priority but you doubted he would hurt her as he threatened to harm them.

“Steve, please.” The fire was almost out, your hands trembling, Grace worried and Steve smug.

“Let the kids go and I think we can come to a conclusion.”

“Steve this needs to stop.” You said, your breaths heavy and helplessness clawing away at you.

“I won’t repeat myself.” He voiced out with a threatening edge, gesturing to Grace and Wanda, clearly telling you to first get the kids out.

For a deranged fucktard, he sure cared about the kids a lot.

You loosened your hold on Grace, patting her arm softly and nudged her to Wanda. Wanda received her little hand and enticed the kids with the promise of ice-cream. Sarah clapped her hands and as the trio left, Grace did look over her shoulders at you in concern and for permission, majorly in concern though. You nodded and waved, a tear dropping as soon as the door clicked shut.

You were still staring at the door, not wanting to meet Steve’s stormy blue orbs when he began, “Today was a slip up that I won’t tolerate again. Neither the cursing nor the dramatics.”

We aren’t in a fucking play, what the fuck is he labelling as dramatics?

Your eyes slowly flickered to his, and you had a hard time not letting the tears escape except the one traitorous one earlier. The fatigue, the worry of Grace’s disappearance, the threats to your friends and family were all catching up to you. It took all in you to stay strong and not fall down right now.

“Steve this isn’t funny anymore. It’s sick and you know it! I just said no! Was that so inexcusable that you had to follow up with this? You have violated me for that, broken into my home and now kidnapped my daughter! At what extent will you stop?” You broke down finally, arms a flailing mess as fat tears rolled down. Nothing scared more than the helplessness this moment. He won and he knew it. The carnival incident was nothing in comparison to this. The only good thing you could hope in all this was a safe Grace but that too only if you complied, which seemed like what you would do now given your attempts at fighting back and scampering have failed laughably.

“Gosh, I forgot how theatrical women are. You are smart darling; you know what I want from day one, just a happy family. Nothing that horrendous has happened and especially not as badly as put it. I’m just looking out for you and me in the long run.” Steve slowly treaded towards you, his hand extended to pat your arm comfortingly but you involuntarily flinched at contact and stepped back. Steve clearly didn’t like that as he caught your arm in a bruising grip and jerked you towards him. Manhandling you as your wet hands rushed to ease his grip was not a tough task for Steve, a surprise to none.

“Stop trembling like I’ve actually done something to harm you!”

Steve clearly didn’t know how to comfort women and it showed.

You stopped with the cowering away, even though it disgusted you to be this much in close proximity with your assaulter. He clearly had anger issues and no clue how to solve them. You needed to steer the conversation right and get him out. You could see your hands visibly shake as you put them on his chest, just to create some distance and in a way of surrendering to not fight. The tears slowed but you don’t think they stopped; it was hard to tell with a million other things on your mind.

As your eyes made contact, Steve loosened his grip, clearly a bit satisfied by your submission, as he began counting to help you breathe. As much as you hated to admit, it helped you and you got a flashback to the time when you freaked out on him about Grace at that extravagant dinner date. That was a sweet gesture then, not so sweet now. Funny how drastically things change with time.

It wasn’t so much Steve’s help as it was your own mind telling you to be fucking smart about the whole ordeal right now.

“Good. Better. Now let’s talk. Why were you planning to run away? I’ve been busy and coming home to find out that wasn’t joyful, you know.” His smile suggested a better mood than before but his voice, his husky voice always had this daring edge that almost challenged you to defy him but at the same time warned you of unpleasant consequences if you did.

“Steve, I’m scared.” You spoke with utmost honesty. “The part of the world you associate yourself with scares me. You can’t blame me for not wanting that life for Grace, I mean you have a kid of your own. Wasn’t the carnival attack specifically on Sarah?”

The reasoning was right but you knew you triggered him the moment his smile evaporated. He either felt insulted as a parent or disrespected in his profession or probably both.

He was fighting his inner demons already and you pointing it out was a slap to his face, a hit he didn’t want to take.

“That was a slip up, I admit. Never again. I’m only human, okay?” He convinced himself and you, his grip tightening a bit again.

Oh no, not the right direction to take.

You reckoned he still had nightmares about it like you, he really did love Sarah a lot, all things aside.

“Besides, I am looking out for you! Out for you and Grace and Sarah. I remember my promise of never putting either of them in harm’s way ever again.”

You definitely didn’t trust his security or his people because what sort of a mobster let his daughter get targeted and possibly abducted? You definitely didn’t know the whole story or if it was just a bad day but he wasn’t a person that deserved some slack. Despite all this, you knew what all he held above you, above a common man. He might not be ‘Kingpin’ skilled but a threat to you nonetheless.

Before you could stop yourself, you blurted out, “Is that what you call following me around, huh?” which you immediately regretted.

“Trust the process, baby. Everything is just to protect you.”

Is that what he called stalking even Grace around and twistedly enough, sending you proof of that? The anonymous thread of photos was another nightmare of yours, thanks to him. The last being a candid photo inside Grace’s room, her sleeping in her bed this morning and that’s when you decided you needed to get out. Of course, that didn’t go as planned.

“How am I supposed to do that when you have cameras in my house?!” You scoffed and he reeled back at the accusation, having the nerve to look impressed at being uncovered and caught red-handed.

“Oh my fucking God, it was you! You sick pervert!” You jumped out of his grip, your eyes wide and horrified. “I wasn’t aware of what to make of it but of course, it was you! Who else would be sick enough to do that?” You let out a humorless chuckle. You always put things past him even when you keep telling yourself you shouldn’t. When will you ever learn huh?  

You were full on panicking yet again, this man was an assaulter, a stalker and a creep too. It would have made a good dark, psychological thriller for you to watch if you weren’t the protagonist about to suffer his obsession.

He reached out to steady you again, but you whipped and stumbled back, realizing too late that you elbowed Steve’s nose so bad that there was a crunch. That, right there, was the look a man real-fucking-furious on Steve’s face and now you could see the feared mobster, the man who was personally terrorizing you under the beautiful, Greek God façade.

Steve reacted so fast even with an injury that in a split second, your view of his face turned into a view of his crotch.

“You do realize that there are others ways for me to teach you obedience? I think it’s fucking time you show me your gratitude for my care and attention and apologize for your misconduct and unkind response.” Steve spoke with a hoarse voice, a voice running out of patience and just about done with defiance.

His hand fisted your hair, maintaining eye contact while he nodded between you and his crotch. You knew what he wanted, what he was expecting as ‘thanks’.

“Steve, please no, you don’t-”

His other hand grabbed your jaw, stopping you from speaking as he warned, “I think you have done just enough talking for today, so why don’t you put that tongue to a better use and show me how sorry you are. Better make it convincing because I’d hate to pay one of your friends a visit and then bitch about a nasty blowjob.” He smirked at the end of his monologue, eyes shining with triumph and amusement.

You wouldn’t let him harm anyone else, you couldn’t. You and your daughter were already knee-deep in a pit and at this point, it’d just be cruel to drag someone else in. With shaky hands opening his pants, you just hoped you could get Grace out before you eventually were buried in it.

“Now that’s a good girl. Submissive is a sexy look on you.” His hands patted your hair, playing with your tresses while yours pulled his pants and then briefs down.

His member jerked out, almost slapping you in the face as you recoiled at his insolence to get hard and erect at your torment. Your disdain must have shown which he took as admiration and derision to take his affluent cock in.

“No need to get shy, I have faith you’ll be able take it just as well in your pretty pussy as you will right now. Open up-”

“Steve, I beg you-”

Just as you had cut him off, he interrupted your pleading. Your gag reflex was probably the most efficient in the world but that turned this narcissist on. It had been years since you had done it, never with a man as beefy as Steve.

His taste was salty and if you had to put it into better words, it was the like overpriced sea salt flakes that you never bought. High and pricey and for the entitled.

Your hands clutched at his thighs as you blacked out multiple times; your jaw aching, uvula swaying and tears escaping. Him forcing himself on you brough a new sense of vulnerability as your body trembled. Steve relished like a sadist, practically rutting into you all by himself as you just sat there with your jaw unnaturally open.

His obscene moans and groans were crass and nauseating and you just prayed for this to be over soon and for no one to walk in on this, especially your kid.

It seemed like it would never end, your body dehydrating with all the spit it produced, the drool dribbling and landing just beside your knees on your printed rug. You would have to throw that out.

The tears stooped after some point, the sobbing an unnecessary action that just tired you out more on this eventful day. You moved your tongue around to prevent your teeth from scratching him when he shifted angles. If this was what he did on slightly mad, you didn’t want to find what he did for a more serious punishment.

Apparently, that action was something that turned him on even more, his breath hitching as neared closure. In broken whispers he demanded that again and you complied, wanting to get done with it.

He growled in the moment of his release and you tried to lean back but his grip didn’t relent. “Swallow.” His grainy, exasperated voice said out loud and you knew better than to defy.

He released you and you fell on to the rug, hip bruising by knocking into some furniture and tears coming back again after being hydrated by his seed. He packed himself, his smile smug and content as his expressions truly resembled ecstasy being personified.

“You be a good fiancée from now on and maybe you’ll have all your friends alive and present at our wedding. No cheeky business from now on, got it?” Steve hummed then and strutted out, not even bothering to listen to your reply.

As soon as the door slammed, your eyes closed and your demons danced again.

There was no right direction to take when you were stuck in a loop.  

[outercrasis]

Sessions

Pairing: College!Din Djarin x F!Reader

Word Count: 2.6k

Warnings: None (let me know if I missed something!)

Summary: Everyone is talking about the mysterious new guy on campus

A/N: I had a ton of fun writing this extremely self-indulgent AU and I have plans to keep writing more about these two. It won’t be an actual chaptered fic, but at some point I’ll throw together a masterlist with a chronological order to things.

Series Masterlist // Main Masterlist

Introductions

The semester had only started four weeks ago and he was already a legend around campus. Almost everywhere someone could be found whispering about him. You'd even heard faculty speculating, wondering about the rumors they overheard their students sharing.

You first heard of him in your literature seminar, some of your fellow classmates discussing a recent rumor about the now fabled man. Something about a motorcycle and a child caught your ear, prompting you to interrupt and the girls in front of you who they were talking about. 

The looks you received from the pair were incredulous at best. “You mean you haven’t heard about him?”

“Heard about who?” you asked, genuinely confused. It had only been the first week of class at the time and you were too caught up with your own busy start to check in on the rumor mill.

“Mando, obviously. He’s all anyone is talking about.” From there the girls had happily filled you in on all the latest sightings and rumors. 

Mando, as they called him, was shrouded in mystery. He'd popped up on Corellia University's campus when the semester began and no one knew a thing about him. He hadn't gone to Corellia before, internet searches turned up nothing, and even the skull-like symbol on the back of his leather jacket wasn't familiar to anyone. Any information on him was conjecture at best and there was plenty to go around. Once the rest of the class caught onto what you three were discussing, theories began to fly.

People discussed how he’d been spotted downtown, beating on some guys in a back alley. He’d also been seen uptown the same night though, strolling through Basalt Park. One girl was nearly certain that she’d gone to elementary school with Mando, but he’d mysteriously disappeared one day without explanation. Someone else was confident he was just a cop trying some weird shtick to go undercover. Then one person insisted he had a kid with him sometimes while another was trying to explain that he was actually a murderer. The rumors only became more ludicrous from there.

By the end of the discussion you only ascertained two things for certain. He went by the name Mando and he wore some kind of special helmet. Information you could have gotten by watching him pick up a drink at the Java Hut. Not nearly enough to warrant this level of fervor in your opinion.

From there, hearing about Mando was inescapable. You got home that night only to have your roommate and best friend, Layla, launch into theories about him. Within the week someone set up a social media page to try and track his location around campus via DMs fellow students sent in. That had struck you as invasive and unsettling, but the messages about him kept flooding in.

By pure chance, you had yet to actually see him for yourself. There weren't even any creep shots for you to look at. People had been trying to take photos of him, but he was like a ghost. In the time it took them to pull up their cameras he'd disappear. 

There wasn't even more concrete information about him beyond what you'd learned that first day. Just more and more speculation, a good amount of it made up purely for the shock factor. Another week slipped by, the semester picking up, and Mando news became standard in your day. There was always something new going around about him and as much as you tried to avoid it and focus on your studies, you couldn’t help but wonder about him yourself.

Who was this guy? Was this all some stunt or ‘social experiment’ that would be revealed by a sociology student at the end of the semester? Or was he a legitimate peculiarity, doomed to stick out like a sore thumb? You weren’t sure if you should hate him for making a big deal out of himself or pity him for all the unwarranted attention. Either way, you were sure that whenever you met this enigmatic Mando, you’d know.

×××××

You grumble looking at the submission form. The name and student ID information is blank again. You told Todd last week those fields needed to be made mandatory. How else were you supposed to know who to email when you end up with a no-show for the hour?

Looking further down you're pleased to note that they're at least a grad student. Despite the unfinished form, graduates almost never skip sessions like these. You're thrilled to have the opportunity to discuss something other than freshman composition for once. It's fun helping the wide-eyed freshies, but you can only go over basic comma rules so many times before you start to lose it a little.

There's a knock at the study room door and you look up only to be rendered speechless. It's him. Mando. With a kid on his hip. So Alissandra hadn’t been lying when she told you about the toddler she saw with him. Interesting. Continuing to take him in, you can’t help but focus on the obvious - the only thing you knew about him other than his supposed name, the helmet. 

It’s unlike anything you've seen before. You're fairly certain it's a motorcycle helmet, but it's been modified. Rather than the typical rounded shape, his is all sharp angles and flat at the front. It’s colored a sleek, shining chrome that gleams under the washed out fluorescent lighting. Most arresting is the way he's changed the face of the helmet. The cheeks dip inward at a sharp angle, creating deep, curved contours. His visor is a T of black glass in the center, entirely impossible to see through. It's intimidating and… kinda hot?

The little boy he's holding starts to wiggle in his grasp, physically demanding to be set down in the study room. Once his feet touch the floor, he immediately runs over and climbs into the chair next to you. He's a welcome distraction from his father’s? brother's? guardian's? commanding presence in the room.

The boy can't be older than three, smiling up at you with a wide toothy grin. His hair is covered by a green beanie with large floppy ears sewn onto it and he's wearing a little brown jacket with a sherpa collar. Maybe a bit too heavy for the early autumnal weather, but if the rumor that the kid rides on a motorcycle with Mando is true, it’s perfect. His eyes are large and brown, shining up at you with a slightly mischievous glint.

"Hello, what's your name?" you ask, smiling back at the child.

"Grogu," comes the reply, not from the kid, but from Mando.

You arch an eyebrow at him. He can't be serious with that name. "Grogu?" you ask.

He shrugs, placing his bag on the table. "I came home one day and he told his babysitter that was his name now. He won't respond to anything else. So, Grogu."

You look back to the bouncing toddler. He's still grinning, nodding along with what's been said about his name. They must not be lying then. Either that, or it was some elaborate prank between them and you would never be in on the joke. 

"Well okay, Grogu it is." 

You extend your hand out to Mando, offering your name alongside it. He offers a leather clad hand in return, giving you a firm handshake. You're pleased when he only gives your hand a gentle squeeze, not crushing it like so many other students have done. His gloves are unique as well, black with orange fingers, the leather well worn in. It's warm to the touch, his body heat radiating through the thick fabric. 

"Mando," he says, officially introducing himself as he takes the seat on your other side, across from Grogu.

"Mando," you repeat, cementing it as a truth from the rumor mill. "Got any other names?" You hope that comes across as casual and not intrusive. He hasn't even gone to remove his helmet, telling you he isn't a man who cares much for people prying into his business.

"No. Why?" Mando cocks his head slightly as he asks, the helmet adding an exaggerated look to the movement. He reaches into his bag, pulls out some crayons and a pad of paper, pushing them over to Grogu.

You shrug, trying not to think about how you heard his name might be David from someone in your composition course. "Just thought I'd ask. One hears many things around campus and it's hard to tell what's true or not."

"What do you mean?"

That question makes you pause. Surely he knows. Part of you is still convinced he’s doing this act on purpose, trying to gain notoriety for some reason. The way he asked though, something about it tells you that the poor man is clueless about the buzz he's caused.

"Mando, you're like the talk of the town right now. We only just met but I've heard plenty about you," you explain. It's hard to tell with the helmet on, but you're fairly sure he's shocked underneath. Grogu ignores you both, excitedly scribbling away on his paper.

"I'm fairly sure most of it's just rumor and speculation, but still. You're like a thing around campus," you add.

He's quiet for a moment, his laptop only half out of his bag. "Oh," he finally says. "I didn't know."

Grogu gives a happy shriek not a second later, breaking the awkward tension that had begun to creep into the room. He's beaming, holding up his crayola masterpiece. On the paper there is what appears to be a hastily drawn frog using every color in the box.

Mando returns to himself, pulling his laptop the rest of the way and continues to get set up. "Great job, kid. It looks good."

Most people would have said that dismissively, a platitude to get their child to stop bothering them. When Mando says it though, the authenticity is palpable. He said six words and you can hear the pride lacing them all together. It’s sweet, the obvious affection this clearly private man has for the toddler. 

You can’t help but wonder what his connection to Grogu actually is. The way he spoke just then, if you had to put your money on it, you’d say father. The kicker then though is if he’s biological or not. And if not, then how else does a grad student get strapped with a three year old? Thinking about all the potential scenarios is enough to make your head hurt.

You’re also left wondering where all the more violent rumors about him are coming from. His tenderness is so readily on display that it’s hard to imagine the man before you choking someone because they cut him in line at the local froyo shop. He’s mysterious and gives off a vaguely dangerous vibe, sure, but less than five minutes around him and the kid and it’s obvious he’s no threat to you. He’s just a guy trying to get his assignments done for class, same as everyone else.

Your stomach still catches in your throat as Mando starts unexpectedly tugging off his gloves. From what you’d heard, he never takes anything off: not his jacket, not his gloves, and certainly not his helmet. All anyone knows of his true appearance on campus is that he’s obviously male with rumors flying around about everything else including simple attributes, like the color of his skin. Now, here he is, casually revealing this groundbreaking information to you.

His hands move fluidly, pulling off each glove in just a few easy tugs. His skin matches the heat you felt from them just minutes ago, a warm golden tan, with a few faded lines of scars worn in. Watching him type, pulling his paper up for you to discuss, you feel a deep and sudden ache to have his hands touch you again. A simple handshake is no longer enough. Every stroke of the keys is measured, deliberate, and leaves you wondering how he would use those fingers on you.

“This is what I have so far.”

His voice snaps you back to reality, a quick wave of shame washing over you. Where did all of that come from? It was just a man’s hands for heaven’s sake, certainly not something you should be horny about at two in the afternoon. Not to mention that he came in here looking for your help, not wanting you to start fantasizing about his hands expertly working you over.

You clear your throat and tear your eyes away from the offending appendages. “Great, let me just read the introduction here so I can get an idea for what you’re writing about.”

You settle into working with him easily. His paper is already well-written, just needing tweaks here and there to bring it to the next level. It’s nice working with him. He’s attentive, clearly listening to everything you have to say and taking it into account. He doesn’t even try to challenge you as some of the more macho male students are wont to do. By the end of the session, you can’t help but wish all of your time as a tutor was that easy.

“Thank you,” he says sincerely, tucking his laptop away. “You really helped.”

You smile at him, thrilled with his genuine complement. “Of course, that’s what I’m here for.”

He finishes packing up his and Grogu’s things, with you silently lamenting as his gloves slide back on. It still feels like a ridiculous thought, but he really does have beautiful hands. There’s a small tap on your arm and you look to your left to see Grogu patiently waiting. He’s offering something to you, paper outstretched in his little hands.

“Thank you,” you say, taking the sheet from him. You look at it to see a frog carefully drawn on the page. It’s not the same as the first one he showed you and Mando, this one more deliberate and thoughtful. The colors are still just as varied, but it’s obvious he took more time to think about where he was using each one. You can’t help but smile at his small masterpiece.

“It looks great, buddy. I’ll keep it forever,” you tell him. Grogu beams at your praise, excitedly looking over to Mando. 

Mando nods at the kid. “Yeah kid, I heard her too.” He turns his head towards you. “Thank you again. I’d take good care of that drawing. He’ll never forgive you if he finds out you got rid of it.”

“Does that mean I’ll be seeing you again?” Your own boldness takes you by surprise. You have no idea where that came from, how those words spilled without a second thought. Part of you is already cringing at Mando’s potential reaction.

He surprises you once again though, holding a hand out for Grogu to take. Shouldering his backpack, you hear an amused huff of air from under the helmet. “Yeah, mesh’la, I’ll see you around.”

There isn’t a chance to reply as Mando turns, escorting his tiny charge out of the room with him. You’re a little dumbstruck, now equally surprised with him as you had been with yourself. 

And what was that name he just called you? Mesh’la? You don’t even know what language that could have been, much less the meaning. Something about his tone when he said it tells you it’s a good thing though, that he’s not secretly calling you rude names in some unknown language. You can’t help but wonder if you’ll ever get to find out.

.

.

.

taglist: @honestly-shite

[lwt28brave]

LT2 masterpost

If it was up to me, we would get an autumn or winter EP. Since it’s not up to me at all, here, enjoy this post with everything we know so far of LT2, which is to say, not much at all. Everything here is hypothetical. I’ll be updating every time I see something relevant. A little disclaimer that while this is a masterpost (kinda), it could be read as discourse (duh, it’s also a theory), AND it’s also by me, and you shouldn’t expect me to be serious at this point.

Due to me restraining myself, there’s no reference to any of the times he’s mentioned his guitar skills and him improving but I hope you know I cried every single time.

I’m also linking my old pinned here. It was written before AFHF and around the free merch thing that didn’t lead to much, but I still think I made some good points.

Possible tracks:

Copy of a Copy of a Copy

Change

Faith in the future??

369??

Possible names:

369

Faith in the future

When is the album coming out?

Your guess is as good as mine

Friday 28th of January 2022. Almost two years after Walls. It’s a Friday. It’s a 28th. What else can I say?

Here you can find @want-to-be-loved timelines for every month.

Here you can find @berlinini’s timeline of what Louis has been up to this year (2021).

The rest is under the cut. And here you can find a PDF version where Tumblr can't tell me how many pictures I can add.

2020

He said back on May 2th 2020 he wasn’t writing anything new yet.

(x)(x)(x)

Interestingly enough, he’s said many times after that that the album’s not ready cause he has no new experiences to drawn from. I won’t call him out because he does it himself.

May 4th. He liked a tweet from DMA’s Johnny Took saying they had to go write together again. Louis has been credited as an influence for them and (kind of) participated in their previous record, so I’m assuming he meant for their music and not his, but you never know.

Nothing(literally nothing??? how did we survive) until 11th of July. We all know what happened that day. We all celebrated it. Nonetheless, that’s not what I’m talking about here.

(x) So, by the beginning of July 2020 he was working on concepts and ideas for the new album. That was fifteen months ago. I know perfection takes time but…

Brief summary of important things that happened from then until the next mention of new music:

Louis left Syco!!!! 10 days later he rescheduled the tour for the first time. He followed Matt Vines on Twitter, probably so we could publicly shame him into doing something. Also, the 10thanniversary. He followed more people I wish he hadn’t.

Then more nothing until September. Not even a single tweet. The first merch drop was on the 28th of August but he just RT’ed the tweet. He first mentioned Free my Meal on the 25th of September. Then on October 1st Walls hit #1 on a lot of countries and Louis was incredibly happy and excited about it ^^

And then, that same day, October 1st, 2020, he dropped this bomb:

(x)

He also said it was too soon to be sharing new lyrics with us (x)

And, obviously, this tweet which is actually what made me start this whole post. I would hope you know mate.

(x)

He also told us he was cooking "banger after banger" and that he was incorporating more social themes into his music (x)(x) (I believe any social issue is a political issue but that’s not the point rn).

COPY OF A COPY OF A COPY?!?!

These next paragraphs are brought to you by my mind not remembering things and me not having any links. I’m assuming COACOAC came from those writing sessions that supposedly happened in October. Or in LA but I have no idea if he actually was in LA at any point other than a Daily Mail article putting him there on December which would have been too late, but I do remember that someone said he was in the studio in LA last autumn???? A rumor. Maybe. IDK. Did I mention already all of this is very hypothetical?? Well, this is it. I can’t even remember if this was October or November or what. So, take this with a grain of salt.

I’m also… taking the liberty to assume, if you must, that Copy wasn’t meant to be a Walls reject because it sounds more mature and darker and it has a vastly different tone that Walls songs. I know he’s said that song probably isn’t getting into the album, but I want to have faith (in the future) that I’m getting a studio version. (But also, Louis, if you’re reading this, first of all GET OUT OF MY BLOG second of all, please don’t ever feel pressured again to add a song to the album because we have already heard it before. It’s your art and it should always be under your own terms).

So yeah, I believe that Copy is either one of those four songs (then imagine the other three??!!) or was written around the 1st of October date.

---End of the Intermission---

Then not much important (other than sharing more about Marcus Rashford fight against food poverty and the 2nd merch drop) until he announced the livestream on the 24th of November. (x)

It wasn’t until a few days before the livestream date we even thought again about new music (jk, I know we’re always thinking about new Louis’ music). So, December 9th/10th, 2020. Nine months ago. We got our first taste of new music!

He made sure we knew Copy of a Copy of a Copy isn't a cover! (x) (x)

(x)

Ok, so that’s it for 2020. (I feel like I’m missing something from September 17th because tweet was deleted but maybe he was still talking about cucumbers. We might never know. Unless I understand how Tumblr tags work). Expected, cause Walls was released in 2020. We needed to let it sit for a while.

2021

Another Summary: Louis third tweet of the year was telling the UK government off. So was the fifth. What a good beginning. On the 26th of January, he said he prefers pancakes over waffles. I hope he meant pancakes other than his own. More importantly, he tweeted the infamous “you lot read into things too much”. Don’t get me started, Tomlinson. Don’t. Then the 31st came around and Walls was one. He tweeted this. How wise. And Project Defenceless happened!!

15th of February!! Who cares about Valentine Day when the next day we got this? ♥

(x)

(x)

So…AN EP?? AN EP?? PLEASE RELEASE AN EP.

“I’m sure I will have something out this year but unlikely that will be the album”. Unlikely but not impossible. Also. A single would be good. This is the second time he mentions releasing something in 2021 and he sounds surer about it than the first time around.

He also said that he isn’t sure we will get a studio version of Copy. And that the best bridges from Walls to LT2 are Walls, OTB, KMM and Copy. Can’t wait!

Then we jump to March 6th when he announced he was going to create his own management company. “Sometimes action is needed first to encourage the motivation and belief”. As we can tell he was already manifesting some stuff which will lead us to the numerology stuff/Tesla… kidding. Or not. We might never know.

On the 22nd of March he answered some questions:

He told us music was still his main focus ♥ mwha. (x) I included this tweet to guilt-trip him into giving us music in case he’s reading this even after I told him to leave. ILY.

(x) I’d love to get a visual EP this autumn. Just saying. It sounds like a lovely concept.

(x)

…next (I will get into it, I promise. I’m just mad).

On the 25th he left for Mexico until April 10th. You could assume it was just for the documentary where we got ten seconds of footage or admit the obvious: LT2 its a Mexican baby!!

On the 26th (so, not so far apart from that first 369) we got the first Faith in the Future mention: (x)

Back then we were innocent people who had no idea what was coming upon us. We still have no idea because what the fuck does he mean with these. Please explain. I have one braincell and I don’t use it enough for this. I’m linking some theories.

On the 30th of March he confirmed he was already working on the documentary. So AFHF was already on the works. Will it take this long for us to get the Veeps numbers? We also got this tweet: "Got a decent chorus idea down" (x).

Same person that got the “something out this year” exclusive. If you know something share with the class. Also. Is this Change? I feel like this could be Change but I also assume he wrote Change after hanging out with his friends or being in Doncaster. But who knows.

(x) And the second mention to 369.

(x) 15th of April. The second "Faith in the future".

On the 19th of April he announced that he had something BIG for us later on the year which turned out to be the Away From Home Festival ♥♥ (x) I love him so much.

Then on the 28th he announced the 369 merch drop (which it’s probably the Walls drop? Except that the TOU and KMM ones were “drop 1 and drop 2” and this was drop 369 which, again, makes no sense) but we still don’t know what 369 means.

Into May’ 21 we go.

He rescheduled tour again. And dropped another bomb (x).

He announced he has signed with BMG as an independent artist by RTing this tweet on May 10th. The article also says that he’s already working on writing and recording LT2. The timing… we don’t know. What this deal involves… we don’t know either. Bear with me here because I have a lot to say about this.

I think the deal is only a distribution one, but that BMG are interested in Louis and what he (us) could bring to the table. They were either present at the festival or watching it, but officially they had no involvement at all with it (everything is credited either to Louis own company, 78 Productions, or Charlie Lightening’s company). That’s the case for both giveaways too; the vinyl one and the tickets for the festival.

I think it would be an unbelievably bad move not to test the waters with BMG now or soon-ish. At least a single, to see how it performs. Due to the circumstances, it’s obvious there’re certain limitations on place but I want to see how they push it, whether the radio play exist this time around and if the song is playlisted and promoted and all that… I would also love to know, since it says he signed with BMG UK, but it also states it’s a global deal, how things are going to go on the US and other countries.

Yes, yes. I know those are all questions and no answers. But I know the same as you, sadly. If any of you know more than you’re letting on… again, share with the class.

Where was I? Yes, on the 25th of May Louis had a great day writing (x). Since the first time he had mentioned he was officially writing to this date there’s almost eight months. And I believe he was writing before October’ 20.

He followed Robert Harvey that day and, on the 28th of May (why is it always the 28th???) he was spotted at the studio for the first time.

June was an interesting month for the fandom ♥. Lots of LHL content which I will love and cherish for the rest of times. On June 4th, June 9th, and June 10th he was spotted at the studio, but I believe he was there more days.

(x)

This was posted on June 6th and captioned Studio. Charlie also shared it with “Mega tunes being put down, can’t wait for this @louist91 #louistomlinson #LT2” as the caption. This gives me 2019 (Elton-Joint) vibes. I like it. Feels like we’re getting closer to something.

He added the Milano date on the 9th too which I’m mentioning because I’m going alone. Anyone wanna go with me please? I’m nice and I never eat anything before a concert so you can have my food. On other news. It didn’t come home.

During July he was at the studio at least three days too. Probably more. Feels like more with all the fan pictures we got. Or was that June? Anyway, July 1st and 9th we got some videos from Robert Harvey and wearesuperhi, which is who Louis has been working with the most, that we know of. I don’t know for sure they’re from that day. And on July 5th we got an article and lots of pictures of Louis looking really good outside the studio.

On the 12th of July the first fans started getting the free, 369 bucket hat and print. We still don’t know what the purpose was other than to thanks fans. Maybe that was it. I want answers and I still think it relates to a future project (see theories above), but it could also just be a bridge with the Walls breaking.

He didn’t tweet about anything interesting for a while, mostly because he lost his phone (he either throwed it in the air or smashed it who knows). Then on the 29th of July he announced the festival!

I’m glossing over it because there’s already been a lot of talk about it (rightfully) and while it was a wonderful thing, it doesn’t have much to do with LT2.

Let’s talk Change!

On August 3rd he tweeted this about the setlist.

(x)

And this (x) on the 28th! I can’t stand him.

We didn’t get it, obviously. Because who was going to get that. But we read too much into things. Alright.

On the 16thof August Dave Gibson shared this post tagged #LT2 with the eyes emojis 👀👀👀. I believe this has to do both with Change but also with whatever else came out of that Mexico trip.

(x) Last relevant tweet related to LT2 is this one.

So, on the 30th of August we got Change and we cried, and we know that Change is going in the new album. He said it. With those exact words. He also said he was “getting a feeling for it”. This has to meant he already has a general idea of the vibe of the new album and what’s going in it!!!!!! (Right? RIGHT?).

Anyway, let’s go back a few weeks because some other things happened on August. He was at the studio a few more times. Or it was suggested that he was there. On the 17th and the 18th. (Why was it so time-pressing to be at the studio instead of rehearsing for the festival? There was no studio at all on the documentary. Which makes sense, but again, then why?).

On the day of the festival we got another mention of Faith in The Future that made me feel part of a cult ngl. The words were flashing on the screen for less than a second. Okay.

And then he tweeted those words again after watching the livestream/documentary on the 4th of September (x). This is what makes me suspect it's either the name of the album or of the single.

On the same day, we got some interesting quotes about LT2 on the documentary.

“Soon I’ll have to think about me second album, which in my head I’ll get the tour out of the way and then I’ll address that. So, I hadn’t really given it much thought, to be honest”.

“When every day is the same is hard to feel creative and it’s hard to have any kind of proper inspiration”.

“As season started to come back, I started writing again and it was great and some of these songs turned out alright”.

And I think this is it. I might be overlooking some important details but that’s what we know and what we don’t know.

So. Conclusions. That’s what you missed on Glee. I do believe the album is, if not mostly done, partially there. And yes, this post is pointless and never-ending but it’s all in here if you need to tell Louis “Hey, you said this, mate”.

[maddieinwonder]

A Lesson In Romance #3: The Cast

Spencer Reid x Fem!BAU!Reader

Genre: Fluff

Warnings: None

Word Count: 1.5k

Plot: Reader keeps getting caught in rom-com situations with Spencer Reid. This time, the team figures it out.

A/N: I'm guilty of writing too much Morgan and Garcia but I can't help it — they're so much fun! I think them plus Emily would have the most dramatic reactions to Spencer in a (potential) relationship, though I'm excited to write about the rest too.

(Also, the reference at the end is from Lord of the Rings, because I love Lord of the Rings.)

Masterlist | All chapters here!

-----------

If you've learned anything from rom-coms, it's that every romantic lead needed a supporting cast. Whether they were siblings, parents, or childhood best friends, the main character needed somebody who would drop everything to talk to them — preferably showing up at their doorstep with face masks, nail polish, and a bottle of wine.

In your life right now, you suppose those people would be your teammates from the BAU.

Of course, this hypothetical scenario didn't require your potential love interest to be from work, but let's say for the purposes of the discussion that they were. Then you hoped, at least, that they would have an IQ of 150 or higher and a propensity for wearing mismatched socks.

But you were getting ahead of yourself. You were simply imagining the hypothetical scenario where your life was a rom-com. Hypothetically, you would need a love interest, and hypothetically, you kind of already had one.

“Hey,” Spencer waved you over from across the coffee shop. It wasn’t difficult to spot him when the place was nearly vacant. Everything was slow and quiet this early in the morning, and you weren’t going to make an exception.

“Morning,” you greeted softly as you sat down, relaxing into the smell of freshly roasted coffee and baked goods.

“I already ordered yours.” He smiled, tucking his book away in his messenger bag. “They had bagels this morning. Yours is cream cheese, but mine is strawberry jelly.” He looked overly pleased with himself, and you couldn’t help but crack a sleepy smile.

You eyed the spread in front of you, before lifting your gaze to meet his. “So your theory that you can predict my taste in desserts seems to be getting better.”

"Yes!" He shout-whispered, silently raising his fists in victory. “I knew I was right.”

You giggled at his overexcitement over something as small as getting your dessert order right. Although, he did once spend ten whole minutes explaining to you why dessert for breakfast was an underrated concept, so you couldn't say this was beyond your expectations for Dr. Spencer Reid.

You propped your head up with your arms, a smile plastered over your face. “Have I ever told you that you’re a weirdo, doctor?” You teased.

“Why, yes. Yes you have.” He replied with a smile, gesturing at you to try the bagel. His own was almost-gone, so they must be good.

And it was. Your eyes fluttered shut as the heavenly combination of carbs and cream woke up your taste buds. It was made even better with a sip of the perfect cup of coffee.

"Perfect," you sighed happily, digging into your breakfast further as Spencer quietly caught you up on the latest news in classical art.

Two weeks ago, you wouldn't have guessed that you would talk to Spencer alone, much less spend your mornings together with him. But as it turned out, a lot could change in a few days.

After the initial awkwardness between you had passed, you found that the two of you shared a lot more interests than interdimensional doctors and space opera. You both loved coffee, obviously, but you also had a mutual love for desserts, classical literature, and history.

It didn't take long for these interests to seep into the weekend, resulting in a suspiciously date-like afternoon with Spencer at his favourite museum. But you tried not to think too much into it. After all, the day had ended with a "see you at work", and not a "would you like to come in?"

Still, your dance between friendship and something more continued to grow wilder as days passed, until it reached a point where it inhabited your every waking thought. The only time it didn't, ironically, was when you were spending time with the person in question and every stray thought seemed to fall away.

Your mornings with him brought a necessary reprieve to the dark realities of this job, and some days you almost had to drag yourself out of your seat, knowing that you were straying from the calm of his company straight into the lion's mouth. But duty always called.

Your sudden hesitance to be apart from the resident genius hadn't gone unnoticed by the rest of your team either; ever since the two of you walked into office one morning with matching coffee cups and smiles on your faces.

At first you enjoyed Spencer's company too much to care, but you knew that it was going to bite you back one day. And today seemed to be that day.

You could tell, because the lift doors to the BAU opened to one very determined Penelope Garcia with her arms folded across her chest. "Spit it out, you two," she said sharply without any greeting.

You and Spencer looked at each other, confused, before looking back at Penelope. "Spit out what, Pen?" You asked, a frown starting to form between your eyes.

"You know what I mean!" She squeaked, dropping her stern facade for a brief moment. "Are the two of you dating? The entire team has been dying to know, and I mean, d-y-i-n-g because there's a huge pot of money with my name on it if you are."

"Ah— No— I mean, you think—" Spencer stammered, his face instantly turning beet red in embarrassment, while your face began to grow red for another reason entirely.

"I think what he means is 'no', and what I mean to say is— what do you mean the entire team?" You half-yelled the question, while Penelope raised her hands defensively.

"What I mean, sugar, is that the two of you went from avoiding each other completely, to coming into work together everyday — and I know you spent last weekend together too, because you couldn't stop talking about it the next day at work and everybody noticed." She stated, pushing up her glasses.

"Not to mention, Dr. Reid here started wearing brighter colours subconsciously." She continued with her observations. "I know this, because in the almost four years I've worked with this man, I've never seen him wear anything brighter than violet. Or white. Or beige. But those don't count." She shook her head, getting back to her point.

"You get what I mean— and you," she pointed her pen in your direction, causing you to jump slightly. "You finally stopped doubting yourself as a part of this team. I knew this when you started talking more often during briefings — which I have nothing against, B-T-W, I totally support any effort in self-care and personal growth — but you also stopped shifting in your seat which you used to do when you felt nervous."

Penelope took a deep breath, preparing for the climax. "So all I can assume, is either you've been attending one of the 52 self-help classes that happen every weekend in Virginia, or somebody has been helping you find some serious zen."

"And my money's on the latter because every time you think nobody's watching, you're making eyes at Reid. But you're wrong. Garcia is always watching." She concluded triumphantly, raising one finger to point at herself.

"You might make a good profiler yet, doll." Derek remarked, walking up to the group with a smirk firmly affixed to his face.

"Expert at all things romance, and Cupid of the Behavioural Analysis Unit, Penelope Garcia at your service." She smiled, graciously curtseying to your other teammate.

"I know you're smart like that, babygirl," he grinned, draping his arm around her shoulder, "but you also don't know pretty boy as well as I do, because they aren't in a relationship."

He turned to you questioningly. "Are you?"

"No." You replied, glancing hesitantly at Spencer for his response, but his face simply looked blank with shock.

"See? Now it's time to collect my payout." Derek grinned at the tech analyst, making the motion of raining dollar bills.

Penelope tailed behind him grumpily as he walked into the BAU office, surely to share the "good news" with everybody else.

You hesitated to follow, imagining what teasing and looks would follow regardless of the outcome. Then you felt a tap on your shoulder. Turning around, Spencer gestured back at the empty lift with his head and you smiled, realising what he meant.

"That is the best hypothesis you've had all morning," you said. The two of you shared a laugh as you got back into the lift.

Even behind glass doors, you could hear a muffled "What?!" that you guessed came from Emily. "There's absolutely no way those two aren't together already. Have you seen them?"

There was a brief pause, then a loud groan.

"I know, that's what I told him!" Penelope's high-pitched voice was clear. "You know I'm going to be right about them eventually—"

The lift doors finally closed, blocking out the rest of their conversation. You looked up at Spencer, your gaze meeting his clear hazel eyes. He looked at his watch briefly before saying the next words.

"We've got time. Are you up for second breakfast?" He asked, referencing a movie from a conversation two weeks ago. He remembered. Of course he remembered.

You cleared your throat before replying the next line. "What about elevenses? Luncheon? Afternoon tea? Dinner? Supper?"

He laughed, and you felt a familiar peace return to you.

Whatever your teammates were yelling about, the two of you could deal with it later. Together.

-----------

Tag list:

@blue-space-porgs @nobutalsoyes @lady-loves-a-lot

[elysianslove]

could i req a hc for kita & akaashi where their crush is secretly a jujutsu sorcerer who goes to their school to undercover and to kill the curse but they didn’t know and what if one day, she saves them from the curse? what’s their reaction towards reader? thanks!

JBBSHJDJ JJK X HQ????? GOD BLESS. thank u so much for requesting this hope you like it!! <3

kita shinsuke 

kita’s not a nosy person. he always keeps to himself and stays out of people’s business, and he’s never been the type to encourage rumors or to dwell long on what if’s and theories and conspiracies 

but even he had to admit your situation was weird 

you enroll into inarizaki mid-year, and you’re a third year like him. at first he’d just assumed you’d moved from a neighboring high school last minute, but you never attempted to participate, as if you were only here for show. next, he’d assumed it had been familial issues, but he heard nothing of that, never saw you with a sibling or a parent or a guardian. it was all too. vague for his liking

of course, this amount of interest is unbecoming of kita. it’s just. there were so many questions to you and no answers. you really, really intrigued him, and okay, maybe he thought you were really pretty, and yeah maybe he did have a small crush on you, but that was besides the point! 

the main thing is that you were just. sus. 

he realized you weren’t really causing harm though, just quietly minding your business, so he did the same, and chose to ignore any nagging at the back of his mind 

until he picks up on another weird habit of yours: staying at school until the latest hours. as involved as he was with school activities, he hadn’t heard you being a part of any club, considering how late you’d enrolled in school. but here you were, without fail, every day, by the school gates as the sun sets 

the only reason so much attention was given to you from kita was because of how peculiar your case was. it frustrated him how he knew nothing, just your name after your brief introduction to the class, and the fact that there seemed so much to you. it’s not that you were simply a private, boring person. it couldn’t be, not with how secretive everything was 

one day, on accident, he lags behind in the boys’ gymnasium, cleaning every volleyball with extra care and without noticing, the sun had set. under the assumption he was the only one in the gymnasium, after ensuring every and all equipment was in its place and clean, he grabbed the keys and started to head out. the gymnasium was quiet and dark, save for the gentle stream of moonlight and —

hm 

whatever that thing was, it did not belong in the gymnasium 

okay let’s assume kita can see curses because what is there that kita can’t do 

i don’t think he’d panic outwardly, but he definitely would freeze up and just not know what to do

it didn’t look too friendly either. or sound friendly. or smell friendly 

your appearance comes all of a sudden for him, but honestly, when you come barging in through the doors and you start battling the curse, he’s? not surprised? 

like he figured you had a secret, just — who knew it would be this? 

he’s honestly a little mesmerized with how you manage to fight it off and keep him out of harm’s way simultaneously, until you finally exorcise it

you’re breathing heavily after you’re done, since the curse had put up quite the fight against you, so kita, with his captain instincts, and with mobile feet again thankfully, comes up to you and asks if you’re okay 

you look at him bewildered like??? am i okay??? are you okay???/

you’re a little concerned how unfazed he is by the curse tbh 

after the adrenaline fades away, and you’re left standing in this dark, empty gymnasium with this really handsome guy, you finally find it within yourself to introduce yourself, telling him your name, before lifting up your hand to shake it with his, continuing, “and i’m a jujutsu sorcerer.” 

kita smiles, there’s a part of him, an itch that’s been dying to get scratched, that’s finally relieved, and he takes your hand in his, shaking it firmly and saying, “kita shinsuke; pleasure to meet you.” 

“pleasure’s all mine.” 

he walks you home, and the entire time he realizes how you’re really the furthest thing from quiet, you’re just serious when you need to be, given your occupation. you explain the whole ordeal, about the manifestation of curses spiking in this area, how you’d been assigned this mission, everything. 

it is so satisfying to him finally understanding everything. it’s like finishing a puzzle that’s taken months to complete

you admit that that had been the last curse, since you’d eliminated the source, and you’d have to leave soon 

not without his number you’re not <3 

kita’s not the type to want to show off his s/o, but once you inevitably become that, he takes every opportunity he can to watch everyone’s eyes as they see you kick ass. it’s his guilty pleasure :)

akaashi keiji 

okay this one’s a little different because your arrival at fukurodani wasn’t so sudden. yeah you’d joined later than most students, but you’ve been here since the start of the year, so akaashi wasn’t suspicious of you, since you’d never given him a reason to be

he doesn’t see you outside of school often. honestly, he doesn’t even see you in school. you don’t share classes with him, so he doesn’t know if you skip classes or not, but he’s heard that you do. you’re also never like. anywhere. it’s most that he knows of you

he just assumed you were one of those careless kids that didn’t really give a shit about school, until he started seeing you. except, it was at the weirdest times, and the weirdest locations: sometimes it’d be behind the gymnasium where he practices volleyball, or it’d be in those sketchy alleyways where he was 90% sure people sold drugs there, sometimes he’d spot you on the roof of the school. it was so

odd? 

akaashi’s a very curious person. he’s not nosy, he just has a very overactive imagination (i mean, literature department akaashi keiji? obviously) 

so all this just made him unconsciously pay more attention to you. like, he didn’t want to, he just subconsciously did. any time he’d pick you out from the crowd, he’d find his eyes following you narrowly, or anytime he heard your name, his ears would perk up. he really didn’t mean it. you just kinda fascinated him, to the point of, maybe a crush? he wouldn’t really call it that, but yeah, he guesses the symptoms are of a crush

but anyways, this school was really boring! that’s why! 

not a crush >:(

so! he’d been walking home one night, let’s say bokuto was with his family and there was no training for that day. it was winter, so the sun had set pretty early, leaving him in the paleness of the moonlight and the occasional streetlight illuminating the pathway for him. there wasn’t really anybody around, and he figured at a time like this people were either already home or still at work

until he heard a low growling noise 

he didn’t really think much of it, only stiffening up a bit

but he told himself it was his mind playing tricks on him, or something he mistook for a growl, or maybe it was a growl and it was just some dog nearby. just tried to stick to rational thinking because what else would it be?? was there option for anything else? 

until, out of nowhere, you appeared from an alley he just crossed past, and curled up against him, one arm hugging him tight, before you raised a hand to your lips and silently asked him to stay quiet 

he was

very confused 

like what the fuck 

but then you shifted, spinning around him. curiously, he twisted around with you, and

damn

what the actual fuck

so it wasn’t a dog 

the curse lunged at you, or maybe it lunged at akaashi, but you quickly kicked it away, sending it spinning, before you raised your hands up above you, ready to exorcise it, until it twisted unexpectedly and aimed at akaashi 

it made you panic, and instead of focusing on exterminating the curse, you turned your focus on protecting akaashi, who was in momentary shock. or maybe it was awe. you weren’t sure. somehow, you fought with the curse, maneuvering your way around it and moving akaashi along with you. somehow, his hand was in yours, and he was letting you shift him right and left as you attempted to fight off the curse. god, what the fuck is going on

eventually, finally, akaashi ducked behind you, and you raised your hands above you again, quickly exorcising it. he watched from under his shielding arms as the curse — exploded? vanished? evaporated? 

and without even missing a beat, you were kneeling before him, hands on his shoulders, shaking him wildly, asking is he’s okay 

it kinda made him want to laugh at how panicked you seemed in comparison to how serious and scary you’d been a second before 

akaashi finally answers that yes, he’s okay, but he demands an explanation, please, because he’s never been more confused 

you continue to walk him home, with the lame excuse of “i’m your personal bodyguard now,” and explain everything to him. he’s. kinda. really amazed? like you thought he’d get thrown off at the reality of the world you and him live in but he’s actually really fascinated, and he listens to you talk the entire time, only speaking when he has a question 

when you come to school the next day, you smile at him knowingly, waving at him and when bokuto sees him wave back with a small smile on his face, he combusts. 

akaashi sorta really likes the idea of being the only one to know your little secret. something about it is so satisfyingly intimate, and the trust it conveys? he’s really honored, you know? 

as your s/o, he gets really worried whenever you’re sent out on missions, but you always remind him that what brought you two together was you saving his ass <3

and then he’s reminded of just how proud of you and amazed he is hehe

end note; i want to write a book. :D

[baya-ni]

The Queer Appeal of Sk8

Recently @mulberrymelancholy reblogged a post of mine with a truly galaxy brain take about how Sk8 “is a show made for queer fans” and generally how sports anime often depicts love and relationships in a way that’s more accessible and relatable to ace/arospec people than other mainstream media does.

Just, *chef’s kiss* fucking brilliant. I urge you to read their post here (note I’m referring to the reblog not the actual post).

And basically, it got me thinking about this concept of Sk8 as a Queer Show, and the kinds of stories and dynamics that tend to attract queer audiences in droves, regardless of whether its queerness is made explicit or hell, whether that queerness was intended.

And that’s what I’ve been pondering: What are the cues, markers, or coding, in Sk8 that set off the community’s collective gaydar?

I obviously can’t speak for the community. So here’s what aspects of the show intrigued me and what, for me, marks Sk8 as a Queer Show beyond the subtextual queer romances: a punk/alternative aesthetic, Found Family, Shadow as a drag persona, and The Hands.

1.) The Punk Aesthetic

All three of the above screenshots are taken from Ep 1, and every single one of them depicts background characters. They’re nameless and ultimately unimportant characters, yet each of them designed so distinctly and so unique from one another, one could mistake each of them for the main character(s) of another story.

Of what little I know about Punk subculture, I do know this: that the ethos of Punk is heavily built around a celebration of individuality and non-conformity. Sk8 seems to have incorporated this ethos into the very fabric its worldbuilding, and the aesthetics and culture upon which it takes inspiration appeals specifically to a queer audience.

I don’t really need to explain why Punk has such deep ties with the queer community. For decades, queer people have found community and acceptance within punk spaces, and punk ideology is something that I think is just ingrained in the queer consciousness as both lived experience and a survival tactic.

Therefore, a show that adopts punk aesthetics is, by association, already paying homage to Queer culture, intentional or not.

Queer fans notice this- like recognizes like.

2.) Found Family

This also needs little explanation.

Too often, queer individuals cannot rely on their “born into” families for support and acceptance. Too often, we are abused, neglected, and abandoned by those who we were taught would “always be there for us.”

And so, a universal experience for queer people has been redefining the meaning of Family, having to build our families from scratch, finding brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers in people with whom we have no blood relation, and forming communities tied together by shared lived experience rather than shared genetics.

And this idea of Found Family is also built into Sk8′s narrative.

Like, for example, the way that Reki promises MIYA that he and Langa will “never disappear from [his] sight,” filling the void that MIYA felt after his friends abandoned him.

And in the way that JOE becomes a paternal figure for Reki, teaching him ways to improve in skateboarding, and ensuring that Reki doesn’t self isolate when he’s feeling insecure.

And in the whole Ep 6 business with Hiromi acting as babysitter to the Gang.

Hell, even ADAM (derogatory) is associated with this trope. Abused as a child, he finds solace in an underground skateboarding community and culture he helped create- his own found family (or some powertrippy version of it anyway).

Again, queer fans see themselves depicted in the show, but this time in the way that the show gives importance to Found Family relationships between its characters.

3.) Shadow and Drag

This is one that’s more of an association that I personally made. But I was intrigued by the way that Hiromi adopts his SHADOW persona. He wears SHADOW like a mask, and adopts a personality seemingly so opposite to his day-to-day behavior.

Further, the theatricality and general “gender fuckery” of his SHADOW persona, to me, just seemed so similar to a the characteristics of a drag persona (I don’t know a whole lot about drag but enough that I’m drawing superficial similarities).

There’s also this aspect of a “double life” that he, and actually all the other adult characters of the show, have to adopt, which is a way of living that I’m sure a lot of queer viewers see themselves reflected in.

4.) The Hands

Ohhhh the Hands.

One of the things I noticed very early on is the way the show constantly draws our attention to Reki’s hands, which I thought was a little strange for an anime about skating. After all, skating doesn’t really involve the hands, or at least the show doesn’t really draw attention to hands within the context of skating.

I count 3 times so far between Eps 1-9 in which hands are the focus of the frame.

First, when Reki teaches Langa how to fist pump after Langa lands his first ollie, second, when Reki and Langa make their Promise, and finally, when Langa saves Reki from falling off his board.

And you know what they say, twice is a coincidence but thrice is a motif (no one else actually says this I think I’m the only one who says this lol).

I’m not really certain why hands seem to be such a shared fixation among queer people (at least among those I interact with). All I know is that gay people are just fucking obsessed with them.

I have a Theory as to why, and at this point I’d love for other people to chime in and “compare notes” if you will, but I think it basically has to do with repression. And in the same way that queer people have had to redefine the meaning of family, we’ve also had to redefine intimacy.

Being overtly physically affectionate with someone of the same sex, even if they’re your significant other, or often specifically BECAUSE they’re your significant other, can still be dangerous, even now despite the “progression” of society. Queer people know this, this vigilant surveillance of our environment and ourselves, always asking ourselves, “Am I safe enough to be myself?”

Already, Western culture is pretty touch-averse. That is, it’s considered taboo to touch someone unless they’re a family member or a romantic partner. And to touch a person of the same sex in any way that could be misconstrued as romantic (which is most things tbh) is a big no no.

There’s just A Lot to unpack there.

But basically I think that queer people, by necessity, have had to learn to romanticize mundane or unconventional ways of being physically intimate so that we can continue to be romantic with one another without “being caught” so to speak.

Kissing and hugging is too obvious. But a handshake that lingers for just a second too long is much more likely to go unnoticed, braiding someone’s hair can easily be explained away as just lending a helping hand, touching palms to “compare hand sizes” is just good fun.

But for queer people, these brief and seemingly insignificant touches hold greater meaning, because it’s all we are allowed, and all we allow ourselves, to exchange with others.

God, I’ve gone off and rambled again. What’s my point? Basically that the way the show draws attention to Reki’s hands, and specifically how they’re so often framed with Langa’s hands, is one of the major reasons why I clocked Sk8 as a Queer. It’s just something that resonated with me and my own experience of queerness, and I know that I’m not the only one who noticed either.

~

So in conclusion, uhhhh yeah Sk8 the Infinity is just a super gay show, and it’s not even because of the homo-romantic subtext (that at this point is really just Text).

Because what’s important to understand is that Queerness isn’t just about same-sex romance.

Queer Love isn’t just shared between wives/girlfriends, husbands/boyfriends, and all their in-betweens. Queer Love can be two best friends who come out together, queer siblings who rely and support one another, a gay teacher who helps guide one of their questioning students, a queer community pitching in to help a struggling member.

And that all ties with another important thing to consider, that what we refer to as the “queer experience” or “queer culture” isn’t universal. In fact, it wrongly lumps together the unique experiences and struggles of queer BIPOC all under one umbrella that’s primary White and middle class.

So I think what drives a lot of my frustration about labeling a show like Sk8 as Queerbait is this very issue of considering queerness and queer representation within such narrow standards, and mandating that a show must pass a certain threshold of explicit queerness to be considered good representation.

I get that someone might only feel represented by an indisputable canonization of a same-sex couple. That’s fine. But labeling Sk8 as Queerbait for that reason alone ignores the vast array of other queer experiences.

The aspects of Sk8 that resonate most deeply with my own experiences of queerness is in the way that Reki and Langa share intimacy through skating (intricate rituals heyo). For me, them officially getting together ultimately doesn’t matter- I’ll consider Sk8 a Queer show regardless.

Similarly, @mulberrymelancholy​ finds ace/arospec representation in that very absence of an on-screen kiss. A bisexual man might find representation in Reki, not because he enters a canon relationship, but in the depiction of Reki’s coming of age, growing up and navigating adolescent relationships. A non-binary person might feel represented through CHERRY’s androgyny.

That’s the thing, I don’t know how this show will resonate with other members of the queer community, and it’d be wrong to make a judgement on Sk8′s queer representation based on my experiences alone.

That being said, Straight people definitely don’t get to judge Sk8 as Queerbait. Y’all can watch and enjoy the show, we WANT you to enjoy these kinds of shows, and we want you to share these shows and contribute to the normalization and celebration of these kinds of narratives.

But understand that you don’t have a right to tell us whether or not Sk8 has good or bad queer representation.

And even members of the queer community are on thin ice. Your experience of queerness is not universal. Listen to the other members of your community, and respect that what you might find lacking in this show may be the exact representation that someone else needs.

[punderfulowl]

Top 10 Anime (That I've Seen) in 2020

Well now, it has certainly been awhile. I'm currently sitting at eight months too late for posting this, but, y'know, something something life happens. More accurately, I already made this list, but wanted to try out what response I'd get from Reddit. Turns out, they're not as cool as you guys!

Anyways, as the title states, this is not a list of my favorite anime that came out during 2020, but instead my favorite anime that I just so happen to see during that year. While it's fun to have an end of the year retrospective, I find that having a list in this format not only adds variety, but also helps bring attention to anime that might have been lost in the shuffle in previous years (I also don't have enough time to stay caught up in seasonal releases).

Honorable mentions:

Aggretsuko S3, My Hero Academia S4, Today's Menu For the Emiya Family, Interspecies Reviewers (yes, really), and I Couldn't Become a Hero So I Reluctantly Decided to Get a Job

10. Maid-Sama (2010)

In hindsight, I find it a bit funny that I wanted to watch something wholesome to kick off 2020. Anyway, Maid-Sama is about a high school girl that is also a no nonsense Class President and she kind of has to be at a school where, until recently, was an all boys school. While she kills it in academics and is good at shutting down any shenanigans from the male student body, her financial situation isn't the greatest and has to balance a job at a maid cafe along with her school-related responsibilities. She does her best to hide her employment there to keep up appearances, but is one day found out by one of the boys who happens to be a big flirt and, yeah, hijinks ensue. While this anime doesn't have too many surprises, our main leads bounce off each other well enough to keep me entertained. Nothing I haven't seen already in other anime Rom-Coms, but I think it has more than earned its place at the start of this list.

9. Haganai NEXT (2013)

It's a personal rule of mine when making these lists that I don't include sequels of shows that were in previous lists. While I DID see the first season of Haganai a couple of years ago, it didn't quite make it into the top ten at that time. Because of that, it meets the criteria for this year's list. While I found the characters were just as charming here as I did during the first season, the development of their relationships really took off. It's a shame that it will most likely not get a third season, but I'm happy with what ride this show gave me. But hey! At least I can read the light novels/manga to continue the story! Wait, nevermind, the Haganai fans on Reddit are saying that's a bad idea.

8. Engaged to the Unidentified (2014)

Based off of a Four Panel joke manga, Engaged to the Unidentified tells the story of a girl in high school suddenly getting some life changing news. As it turns out, her grandfather made an arranged engagement with her and the son of a family he knew. Next thing she knows, the boy in question, as well as his little sister, moves into her family's house! While the boy is unassuming at first, there may be more to him and his family than he lets on. Plain and simple, this anime has charmed me. There's a decent amount of drama and mystery despite the source material and I applaud it! Even though this also doesn't have much new to offer, even to the point where I would compare this to Maid-Sama, what made me pick this at the 8th spot were the color choices and animation quality. Give this a shot if you can!

7. Grimoire of Zero (2017)

It's a fantasy/adventure story starring a loli sorcerer and a huge, anthropomorphic white tiger man. I honestly can't say anything else. I won't be able to do it justice. That first sentence should intrigue you a lease a little bit. Read it, again. Please check it out. It's an underrated gem that no one is talking about.

6. ID: Invaded (2020)

Hey, here's something recent! Unfortunately, this is also not something I can say much about. There may not be too many deep characters and the secret bad guy isn't hard to figure out, but BOY is this anime cool! The best way to describe this series is that it's like the movie Inception, but instead of brain heists, it's brain murder mysteries.

5. Carole and Tuesday (2019)

A runaway rich girl has a fated meeting with an orphan and they decide to make music together...oh, this also takes place Mars. Joking aside, this show was something special with its music (a new song almost every episode no less), interesting setting (freaking Mars, dude), and endearing main cast. Shoot, the music itself would be top 3, maybe number 1, but what bogs it down is the show's second half. I can easily see myself watching this again someday, and maybe my opinion will lighten up, but for now, 5 is a dang good spot.

4. Fate/Grand Order: Absolute Demonic Front - Babylonia (2019)

Part of me hesitates placing this high up on list due to this show being animated, fan service spectacle for Fate fans. However, that hesitation is overshadowed by the fact that I am a Fate fan myself and I can do whatever I want with this list. Even if you're not a Fate fan or play FGO, if you enjoy some solid fight animation, this is worth a look.

3. K-On S1 (2009)

I'll admit it, I might regret not watching the second season then putting the series on the list as a whole, but this how I've been doing these lists and I'm such a creature of habit. There's not much I can say about K-On that hasn't already been said. By itself it's an anime classic and one of Kyo-ani's biggest properties. It's a sweet and wholesome watch, but be sure to have some insulin within reach.

2. Princess Principal (2017)

Imagine you're working with a team of programmers trying to make a mobile game then all of a sudden someone asks to make a show out of it. You know, a show with different character motivations, plot, twist and turns and all that? Most might say that's just a shameless, shallow cash grab, but it turns out okay for Princess Principal. Sure, most might summarize this anime as, "cute girls doing espionage things," but with its cast, visuals, and interesting alternative timeline, it works! Apparently there's a new season or movie in the works and I am all for it!

1. Beastars (2019)

I was not expecting this to be number one, but with much deliberation (with myself obviously) this feels right. It tells a pretty unique story while showing itself to be the exception to the rule when it comes to 3D anime.....it being that it's actually good. While I acknowledge that shows like K-On are classics and deserves to be number one on many different lists, it didn't line up with my personal criteria like Beastars did. My biggest deciding factor is: Now that I've watched this, do I want more? It's true that while I'm excited to start K-On S2, Beastars intrigues me more and ever since season two was announced, I'm looking forward to that more.

Sorry again for this list being so late, but at least the silver lining is that the next end of the year list is about four months away (in theory)!

[allhailthecoffeegods]

A lonely kitty in Gotham

Chapter 1

Tired... Marinette was extremely tired. All she wanted to do was curl up in a ball and sleep but instead she sat staring at the wall of her office in her small apartment she had bought and was now living in because her parents kicked her out.

Why was she staring at the wall you may ask? Short answer, she had finally done it! She had finally tracked down Hawkmoth and Mayura after 3 years of fighting she now knew both of their identities (Gabriel Agreste and Natalie Sancoeur) and not only that but she had an entire file filled with proof. Now all that was left was to take back their miraculous and hand them over to the police (not before cursing them first... obviously).

Unfortunately it’s not going to be as easy as it sounds. You see Marinette or Nettie which she goes by now was alone, completely and utterly alone.

No Parents, no family and no friends.

Three years ago Nettie had all of the above she was happy, she had a best friend Alya and a group of many friends from her class, she had two loving but slightly distant parents who ran the most popular bakery in all of Paris possibly even France and her amazing grandmother Gina who traveled the world and told her all about the crazy things she did (some of which she promised not to tell her parents about because it may have been considered breaking the law but nothing reallllly bad).

But all of that soon changed over the first year Hawkmoth terrorised Paris with his akuma and was later joined by mayura with her sentimonsters. Slowly she lost everything including her partner in fighting crime Mr.Bug holder of the ladybug miraculous.

Nettie is in procession of not only the black cat miraculous but also forcefully became the last remaining guardian of 18 other mini gods that are bound to jewels (excluding the butterfly and peacock (not that she would ever give them up because they are basically her family now and she will do absolutely everything to protect them)). How?

Running late to class 3 years ago she saved a (very) old man (186 years old to be specific) from being hit by a car, and for some reason that was enough for him to “gift” her the black cat miraculous as he saw her true chaotic soul and aura (it didn’t matter that she was only 13 YEARS OLD!) he thought it was a brilliant idea to turn her into a child soldier fighting a war against two supervillains more than double her age.

After and introduction to the one and only God of Destruction, who by the way is OBSESSED with the stinkiest of cheeses, she became one of Paris’ main superheroes Kitty Noir alongside her partner Mr.Bug who she guessed to be around the same age as her at the time. It was easy to deduct that he was going to be more of a problem instead of a partner due to his obsessive and intense flirting and lack of skills other than some possible fencing training, all in all he didn’t have a clue how to fight. He was also apparently extremely reckless... like more reckless than her pouring 2 energy drinks into coffee before downing it and has died so many times in a fight she now also has a close relationship with tiki the God of Creation having had to end the fight herself (honestly why did the old guy pick him because it seems like he didn’t even do a similar ‘oh help save me’ situation like he had with her otherwise the old guy would already be dead!) Even though she wasn’t that much better to begin with she did have some hand to hand combat training curtesy of Gina and her ‘friends’ (let’s talk about those later). And she was now training in martial arts and going to the gym to build more muscle and become better without the enhanced supersuit just incase (she also sticks a domino mask on before transforming because she’s paranoid okay and if she is ever forced to detransform she doesn’t want anyone knowing her identity right of the bat to use against her, okay!)

Alongside that she was also extremely smart (like genius level) great with technology and quick to come up with some absolutely insane but brilliant plans. This all resulted in her taking on more of a leadership roll whilst fighting akumas. Mr.Bug only got worse as time went on and her civilian life went downhill, it took 8 months for the old man (previous guardian of the miraculous and temporary mentor for 2 of the months) to become compromised and pass the roll onto her. And the first thing she did was take the ladybug miraculous back and erase the holders (Adrien Agreste her former friend) memories of being Mr.Bug.

The only problem with that was the battle Miracle queen where master fu (the old guardian man) was compromised, and so were all 8 of her temporary heroes except Viperion, holder of the snake miraculous, who had started to tour around the world with his farther Jagged Stone) this ment there were two consequences of taking The ladybug back, the first being she was now alone against two superpowered terrorists but also that she had to switch transformations at the end of a battle to be able to purify the Akuma and cast the miraculous cure to fix everything and yes that did include... resurrection of people who died in the cross fire.

Anyways, back to how Nettie is alone. Only a few weeks after the first attack, an exchange student transferred to the the newly dumbed Akuma class *sigh*. At first she seemed nice and had and was telling the class of her interesting life, her mother was a Italian diplomat and she’s traveled the world.

But Nettie had a bad gut feeling about Lila Rossi which unfortunately was correct. On her third day in the class she started gushing over how kitty noir aka Nettie dearest (obviously unknown to everyone else) saved her from and Akuma attack and they became “best friends”, to say Nettie was left speechless and confused at the lie is an understatement.

Regrettably Nettie was unable to prove her story was a lie because how would she know said superhero didn’t save her without revealing her secret identity.

But the girl carried on creating more and more outlandish claims, such as how she saved Jagged Stones cat on a jet runway (like come on seriously what airport would allow a CHILD of even a cat to run out onto the tarmac). But pointing this out was apparently a mistake which Nettie soon discovered in the girls bathroom after class. Lila sauntered in with a sickly sweet smile that was soon dropped when Nettie refused to give into this girls bullshit.

Hence she was pinned against the wall and threatened, that if she didn’t go along with lie-la’s lies she would lose everything she loved before leaving so she wasn’t caught. Not believing her Nettie continued to point out inconsistencies and facts that contradict her story’s but no matter how much proof was presented to the class lie-la was able to turn it around (meta theory coming into her head: maybe she wasn’t affected because of the miraculous magic) and plant the idea that Nettie was a bully into all her friends heads which apparently all share one brain cell ( or so she thought until Adrien confirmed he knew they were lies to but he was taking the ‘high road’ because nobody was getting hurt, it’s definitely not like lilas ruining all there future careers by promising favours and opportunity’s that will never come and convincing them they no longer need to put in any effort for their futures *insert eye-roll* ).

So life continued and her friends started to turn on little Nettie the scattered brained, clumsy girl who bent over backwards to protect and make sure they were all happy. It hurt more than words could describe the day Alya her BEST FRIEND led the class to turn their backs on her and declare they no longer want to be friends with a jealous bully anymore.

Luckily Nettie wasn’t akumatised but she came very close to it. The only things keeping her going were her duty to Paris and her family.

But as a consequence to that good luck, bad luck hit like a truck. She didn’t know for a few weeks until a guy named Jason called her parents to inform them that her favourite person in the whole world her amazing grandmother Gina had passed away in a accident somewhere in the United States. And if that wasn’t bad enough Lila also managed to place a seed of doubt in her parents around the same time. Life fucking sucked. She wasn’t able to process and grieve due to Hawkfuck still being around so instead she threw herself into creating her own business (NeTi Designs) doing commissions, did I mention she’s a talented fashion designer... no, well now you know. As well as diving head first into a very thorough investigation on mothfucker in between fighting Akuma, helping in the bakery, plus training and patrolling the city of lights for two hours each night.

Atleast she didn’t have to make excuses to not hang out with her ex-friends anymore heh heh *cough*.

Eventually this resulted in her parents questioning her on her disappearances from her room after randomly checking in one night while she was out patrolling and the conversation sort of went like this.

“Marinette, where have you been?! I just checked your balcony and you weren’t up their. It’s 2am” Sabine exclaimed when she dropped back onto her bed moments after detransforming. “Mamma I swear I was up there and I fell asleep in the corner near my pillows behind the deck chair. I just woke up from the cold and I thought I herd movement and panicked because ‘oh my gosh!’ Is it an Akuma but it wasn’t it was you mamma” Nettie responded with dramatic waving of her hands and a fake smile.

Sabine was NOT impressed and most certainly knew it was a lie but it was 2am and she couldn’t deal with this right now so she glared at her daughter whilst leaving her room through the trapdoor.

This continued for two weeks with both her parents randomly checking in. Nettie had to eventually relocate her research into a small apartment a few streets away from the library (which she paid for with commission money that nobody but her knew about especially since her business was doing well and she didn’t put it past her class to try and destroy that if they ever found out) and say she was studying to not be caught doing deep background checks on all her suspects, making files for every Akuma and tracking the butterfly’s on a app she created that has multiple resources available to the public ranging from an alert for attacks that can be activated all the way to videos she made in her hero persona showing things such as meditation or basic self defence that should only be used if they’re unable to get to a safe area away from the Akuma or to buy time to then get away depending on the powers of said Akuma. (Could also be useful in regular crimes like attempts at mugging)

This lead to longer disappearances to the point all her stuff that had any value to her or was related to business and miraculous matters (so basically everything) she was practically living there already. Not that she realised since she got maybe 5-6 hours of sleep and week? She was so enclosed in her little world when her parents decided they had enough (after multiple accusations of her sleeping around with older men and doing drugs (all tests came back negative because her choice of drug was caffeine) which where definitely lilas doing) her parents yelled at her to get out and never come back... so she did the only thing she had to grab where her pillows and fairy lights and she was out of the door, the situation was dubbed a future Nettie problem because ya know suppressing your emotions so the world doesn’t end.

(Authors note: I have plans on making this a series. Hope you guys like it 🙃)

[jamiiviper]

The Jamil Essay

this is a reupload of a post i made a couple of weeks ago - previously it was an external link to a google doc, so it never showed up in any of the twst tags, but i worked so hard on this and i would really love it if more people read it, so i’m reuploading directly to tumblr.

to put it simply, this is a 3.7k word character analysis purely about jamil. and even with a word count like that i wasn’t quite able to cover everything i wanted to say, so who knows, maybe there’ll be a part 2 one day. i’ve also decided i do want to write a kalim version, so i’ll probably start working on that sometime soon! stay tuned!

trigger warnings: mentions of child abuse

jamil is the vice dorm leader of scarabia, who’s been kalim’s caretaker practically since birth. he puts on a facade of not standing out, preferring to remain completely average, and plans his life around kalim’s antics. as we learned in chapter 4, however, his true feelings are that he bears a lot of resentment towards kalim, and that he wants to stand out - he just wasn’t allowed to, as he can never surpass kalim.

in this essay i want to cover not just my personal interpretation of jamil, but also some common misconceptions that people tend to have about him. twitter doesn’t have this problem as much, but with tumblr i’ve found that there are very few jamil stans, especially in the theory and writing communities - meaning it’s quite common for people to misunderstand his character. in the fandom as a whole, it’s common for people to only acknowledge him insofar as “gay for kalim”. 

firstly, jamil’s character development in the main story - i would say he’s arguably the best-developed character in twst, since yana now has enough chapters available to flesh out characters after their main story arc ended. jamil holds very deep-seated resentment against kalim, to the point that he plotted to betray him for probably several years. he plotted to have kalim not just thrown out of nrc, but thoroughly ruin his reputation in the process. after his overblot, those feelings did not magically vanish - far from it. i think earlier twst chapters suffered from arcs being wrapped up a little too neatly post-overblot, but pomefiore’s arc has already proved itself to be the exception and thoroughly covers not just jamil’s continued dislike for kalim, but also the wider consequences for what he did.

since the twst school year begins in september, we know jamil is about 9 months older than kalim. from literally the day kalim was born, jamil’s life has been dedicated to kalim. possibly since the day jamil was born, and he was always fated to be kalim’s caretaker. it may even have been the reason he was born at all. either way, it’s not like he remembers those 9 months. all jamil has ever known is that his sole purpose must be to serve kalim. he must not have desires of his own, he must not do anything for himself - from childhood he was expected to be ready to give up his life for kalim at a moment’s notice. he can’t be good at anything - kalim must always be better (i’ll cover this in more depth in a later paragraph, this philosophy is key to his character). his own parents drilled this into him, even going to the extent of hitting him if he didn’t comply. it seems he has a normal relationship with his family despite this - he bickers with his sister like regular siblings, and pre-overblot he indicated that his desire to be free from servitude wasn’t just about him, he wanted to free his family. nonetheless, the psychological damage his childhood caused him is severe. is it any wonder his unique magic is mind control, when he’s never had an ounce of control over his own life?

moving onto his early teen years, we know both jamil and kalim were severely poisoned at one point, both falling into comas for around two weeks. although we don’t have a timeframe for jamil’s coma, we know kalim’s was when they were around 13 years old. if jamil’s was around this age too - probably a short while afterwards - i think it’s plain to see why jamil’s resentment began to build. he’d have been around the age where he first started to question why his life has to revolve around kalim. why should he be expected to die for someone he doesn’t even like, who’s spoiled and doesn’t realise how much jamil does for him? kalim takes everything for granted: status, friendships, freedom, and jamil is meanwhile left in the shadows with nothing. then one day kalim gets poisoned so badly he falls into a coma - how much do you want to bet jamil was blamed for that, at the age of 13? after that he’s expected to taste-test anything kalim eats beforehand, and eventually starts making all his meals for him because the risk of poison is so high otherwise. then one day he slips up, or it’s an undetectable poison, and jamil is the one to fall into a coma. is anyone blamed for that? does anyone pity jamil outside of his immediate family + kalim? no, probably not. after all, he’s just doing his duty, right? it’s truly… no wonder jamil’s resentment became so intense. he finally has proof that his life truly does not matter. although kalim certainly cares about him, he doesn’t understand jamil’s position. he sees jamil as a friend, an equal; jamil knows this can never be the case, and he also knows kalim is too privileged to ever hope to understand. 

fast forward on a couple of years to jamil receiving his nrc acceptance letter. he thinks that finally, finally he’s going to be free. four years of freedom - and who knows, maybe after that he can be free forever! he can finally excel at his classes and be his true self, without fear of upstaging kalim! 

and then kalim gets accepted a month late. for no reason other than his surname. 

and then kalim gets sorted into his dorm.

it’s a miracle he didn’t just overblot on the spot - but that’s his nature as a scarabia student. careful foresight and planning. this moment was, undoubtedly, the moment he started planning his betrayal. he had his one month of freedom ripped away, just like that. 

oh, don’t forget the fact that not long after, kalim was made dorm leader not because he notably embodies scarabia values at all, but because of nepotism. (side note: most scarabia stans agree kalim does actually reflect scarabia values, just not as obviously as jamil does, but either way jamil himself wouldn’t see it this way. this is a jamil essay so i won’t go in depth about this unless asked to!)

under kalim’s watch, scarabia - known for its intelligence and cunning - is turned into “the party dorm”. this seems to be the fandom’s perception of them too - i mean, just ask any non-scarabia stan what goes on in scarabia, that’s probably the answer they’ll give you. jamil would have probably loved the original scarabia; although we don’t know much about it, we know scarabia students are on a par with octavinelle when it comes to intelligence (paralleling azul’s constant interest in jamil). yet by winter break, scarabia is doing so badly in those same exams that they didn’t even place in the rankings…? without meaning to, kalim clearly harmed scarabia. instead of getting chance to study magic and show off, jamil is now essentially an unpaid, full-time party planner by the time his second year starts.

a few months later, winter break finally arrives, and jamil executes his plan to dethrone kalim. i may have just spent the last two pages defending jamil’s grudge, but his actions themselves are still indefensible. there’s evidence to suggest kalim knew what was occurring on some level - refusing to answer jade’s question about who was hypnotising him proved that 1) he probably had some idea deep down that jamil was betraying him 2) he doesn’t want jamil to get in trouble for it. nonetheless, this does not make what jamil did okay in the slightest, even if kalim allowed it to happen. jamil is, undoubtedly, the bad guy in this situation, no matter how sympathetic his childhood makes you feel. i could go into detail about why kalim acted the way he did, but again, this is jamil-focused.

i’ll skip talking about his overblot, because i covered his hatred for kalim in a lot of depth already and i want to talk about the general aspects of his personality like his desire for praise later on. so moving onto the end of chapter 4, we see jamil’s true self: a snarky, heavily opinionated boy who honestly just wants to be free to be himself.

but just like his freedom, that side of jamil once again only lasts for a brief moment. jamil almost loses everything after his overblot. practically every scarabia student hates him and wants him thrown out of the dorm - even kalim, his sole defender, can’t call him a good person. he’s a traitor. he says he trusts the scarabia students to work out that it’s better for them if he stays, but that day won’t come any time soon, and until then he’s keeping his distance from them all, because their hatred is that strong. if azul truly had been streaming to more people than just jade, his life would have been ruined beyond repair. so what does jamil do? he goes back to serving kalim. as a scarabia student, his foresight is good enough that he knows the option he hates the most is the only one that’ll be good for him in the end. for jamil, being himself is nothing short of a death sentence.

now i’ve talked for far too long about the timeline of his character arc, i can finally get to the good stuff: jamil’s personality, and how it’s changed throughout the stories we’ve seen so far.

the first thing that springs to mind when you think of jamil, other than “snake”, is probably “tired”. or “he’s going to snap”. something along those lines. which... yes, we know he is. he did snap. after chapter 4, this doesn’t seem to have changed too much, but i do get the impression that he’s somewhat less stressed out by kalim. his resentment has dissipated, for the most part (he does still openly insult him, though), so while he does grumble at kalim there’s no suppressed fury behind it. what replaced that fury?

guilt.

in 5-10, jamil tells azul that he intends to continue to obediently follow kalim around in order to restore his reputation, both inside and outside of scarabia. this does of course make him sound pretty selfish (as per usual), and in classic jamil fashion he doesn’t let his true emotions show, so it’s easy to take this at face value and assume he just doesn’t really care. i think in this case, we need to look more at his actions that we see throughout chapter 5. namely, the way it’s being emphasised how he’s silently watching kalim from afar - something he’s always done, yes, but yana seems to be really making a point of it in chapter 5. it’s not just kalim he’s distancing himself from, either. he’s staying away from the rest of the scarabia students too, as mentioned earlier. he never had any friends at all to rely on, even before his overblot. so by doing this, he’s effectively completely isolating himself. he clearly has a lot of thoughts about everything that he’s not sharing with anyone - just listen to the way he sighs at the end of the flashback in 5-10, how annoyed and frustrated he seems. if jamil was telling the truth about just wanting to restore his reputation, he’d probably appreciate kalim’s efforts, even if he dislikes kalim himself. he shouldn’t be upset by kalim persuading the scarabia students to give him another chance. not if he truly just wants to get back to normal. i think on some level, jamil feels incredibly guilty over his actions. he might not have even admitted to himself yet that he feels this way, and by saying things like “i just want to restore my reputation” he’s just trying to convince himself. after all, that’s something he has a history of doing.

ever since jamil’s first introduction, we’ve known jamil lives his life by the philosophy of “not standing out is the best way to succeed”. he hates standing out or receiving any kind of positive attention at all, because he thinks that it’ll only attract trouble. or so we thought, because as we learned from his overblot, jamil desperately wants to stand out. he’s powerful and intelligent, and he wants people to acknowledge that. he wants the praise and recognition he knows he deserves. this means that whenever he said he didn’t want to stand out, he was lying through his teeth - he probably constantly tried and failed to convince himself of this throughout his childhood. during his lab SR story, he even repeats it to himself in his thoughts, like a mantra - “I want to avoid standing out. I can’t be satisfied with this. I cannot be too good, nor fall behind, and neither should I get satisfactory grades or fail. This is the best shortcut to success.”. much like his feelings of guilt, jamil refused to acknowledge how much he truly wanted to show off, even in his own thoughts. he is awful at being honest to himself.

post-ch5, we find out that despite everything, jamil does still hold this philosophy, to some extent. he of course shows off his singing and dancing skills enough to be chosen as a main vocalist, and he says he wants to make a name for himself and show various people just how talented he truly is: kalim, his family, the asims and MC, to name a few. yet in the chapter before that, when kalim compliments his singing and dancing, he’s like “i don’t really want to stand out, but…”. which is honestly a little confusing at first because he does want to. i’d probably interpret it as something along the lines of he wants to show off to the people he cares about, but he still wants to keep his head down in general. so i think that to some extent, maybe he actually has internalised that philosophy now. the one time he truly expressed his desire to stand out, it ended in catastrophe for him. he has this tiny seed of doubt within him now, telling him his parents were right all along. but... he’s working past it, and applying himself as and when he’s comfortable doing so.

going back to him being bad at being honest, jamil’s a pretty big tsundere. there’s one person he does regularly receive praise from: kalim. yet despite desperately wanting to be praised, he often gets annoyed at kalim and tells him something like “this isn’t about me right now” or “what does that have to do with anything?”. plus when the praise is coming from kalim, it’s often in the context of kalim praising him to other people - as a servant, he can’t be seen accepting all these compliments, right? he can never be better than kalim. so he has to reject kalim’s praise. when it’s just the two of them alone, though, is when jamil gets embarrassed to the point he has to hide his blush under his hood. given his childhood, chances are that he doesn’t really know how to process being praised. he knows he wants people’s approval, but when he actually gets it, he just short-circuits. it was the same at his birthday celebration; although he wants to be the centre of attention, when it actually happens, he gets all embarrassed and tsun. i was trying not to let my own personal feelings spill in this but oh my god he’s so cute i can’t

next... this isn’t really linked to any previous topic, but i want to talk about jamil’s cooking! jamil cooks all of kalim’s meals, and regularly cooks entire feasts for kalim’s parties, too (as well as being in charge of getting any animals kalim wants to show off, decorating the dorm, making sure everything runs smoothly… you get the idea). his cooking is very good, and he has a lot of technical knowledge about cooking too - azul, whose parents run a restaurant, didn’t know about emulsification, but jamil was able to explain it to him. despite being so good, though, according to his dorm SSR homescreen lines he doesn’t actually like cooking very much. he says the fact that he cooks so much is “just how things turned out”. of course, he could just be being a tsun, but i do feel like he’s being honest with this - what reason does he have to seriously enjoy something he was forced into doing his entire life? However there is evidence that he might enjoy it after all; he’s particularly good at alchemy because of his cooking knowledge, and according to magical archives he’s completely neutral in motivation for both flying and history lessons, but has slightly higher motivation levels for alchemy, indicating that he can’t stop himself from putting a little bit extra effort into that class. i think it can be interpreted either way with the canon info we have currently, but regardless i would not say he’s the cooking fanatic people often depict him as. 

also, when jamil cooks, although his cooking is good, visually it’s usually very boring, to the point he and his sister would bicker over it. he has the technical skills to cook good food, but no idea how to present it. similarly, in his fairy gala SR he was told that although he perfectly memorised the dance, it was boring to watch - it looked like he was just executing the routine without any passion behind it. jamil is so emotionally repressed that he has no idea how to express his individuality. even in his bedroom, the only truly personal items he owns are a first aid kit (related to his servant position, not him as a human being) and a stereo + headphones set for dancing. he doesn’t have any other hobbies or interests - he doesn’t even know what people his age do for fun, because he’s never been allowed to think about such things. 

dancing is all jamil has that’s not directly related to serving kalim, really - but even that ties into his servant status. although he genuinely enjoys it nowadays and dances by himself for fun, he only picked it up as a hobby because kalim wanted to go to dance practice, and of course jamil had to accompany him. when his flashback after his overblot talks about him deliberately losing to kalim, the story focuses specifically on a dancing competition. which is why it’s honestly so important to jamil’s character that chapter 5 focuses on a singing and dancing competition. jamil finally has the chance not just to show off his skills in general, but his skills at the one thing he’s been allowed to love throughout his life. the one thing where losing to kalim at it hurt so much that it was such a prominent memory for him. when jamil was chosen as a main vocalist, he instinctively tries to say kalim would be better suited for the position, but stops himself and accepts it. it clearly means so much to him that he was chosen for this.

okay i started to scare people with how long this was getting when it was only 50% finished, i think if i write anymore people will actually be concerned for my health so i’ll leave it here. if you read all of this, thank you so much for putting up with my anime boy brainrot for over six full pages! i really.. really like jamil. again, i most certainly do not think his actions should be defended, but god if they’re not fascinating to read about. and i hope i covered the other sides to him well enough, the things that you’d never ordinarily pick up on because so few people talk about him outside of him and kalim as a pair (both platonic scarabia + romantic jamikali, i mean). he has so much depth to him that people don’t see and god i could easily have gone on for another few pages if i wasn’t forcing myself to stop. but please please talk to me if you want to hear more...

yana has treated him so well, jamil stans get too much food if anything but i’m absolutely thriving off it as you can see! thank you for allowing him to exist, yana-sensei!

having said that, i couldn’t stop myself from adding some extra facts about him below. please enjoy.

some fun jamil facts for your soul:

his sister used to bake him cookies on his birthday - specifically, these!

when jamil and kalim went to eat at the cafeteria with ruggie and leona, leona took one look at jamil and went “you look like you’d kill kalim in his sleep”

sebek and jamil find each other’s positions enviable. sebek wishes he could have been by malleus’ side from birth as jamil was with kalim, and jamil just… wishes he served someone he respected as deeply as sebek respects malleus (but he does think sebek is too enthusiastic)

jamil hates surprises with a burning passion, and despite being with kalim for 17 years is still not used to them. for his previous birthday, kalim held a huge surprise party, and i think he still hasn’t recovered from the shock

i think a lot of people already know that in his birthday SSR story he said he wanted a parrot after graduation so he could teach it to call him master, but it goes a bit further than that? it was actually first mentioned during his lesson chats, when kalim gets a parrot. jamil has to research how to care for it, and ended up wanting one of his own afterwards (but got too tsundere to admit it at the time).

also, he heard that the sorcerer of the sands’ parrot (iago) could speak as fluently as a human, and he got excited and watched a bunch of parrot videos on magicam, but was of course disappointed to find out that this was not the case.

he frequently uses flattery to try and get his way, like when he attempts to flatter vil during his SSR story - unfortunately he misjudged vil, as vil’s actually the type of person who hates meaningless flattery. because he does this so frequently, when he genuinely does give compliments people don’t always believe him.

according to the halloween event, jamil is surprisingly environmentally conscious, and insists on holding a sustainable halloween theme. after organising so many parties and seeing the waste they probably produce, i think there’s no wonder he’s so concerned about it.

[bluerosesburnblue]

Thinking about Deltarune Chapter 2 today, particularly the ending, and I think I might have a theory that recontextualizes Chapter 1 and be able to predict the general trajectory of the next couple of chapters

So the end of Chapter 2 makes it pretty obvious that Kris is the one who’s been going around and opening up the Dark Fountains, doing so by literally ripping the soul that the Player is in control of out so that we can’t interfere with them opening the Fountain. This begs the question of why Kris is doing this, though, especially given Ralsei’s whole existence

The storage closet in the school can’t have always been a Dark World. Someone would’ve noticed it before, so it must have been created recently (possibly even just before the start of the game). And there’s only one inhabitant of that particular Dark World, Ralsei. And what are the odds that Ralsei would happen to look identical to and have a name that’s an anagram of Kris’s brother, Asriel?

Of course, this is all pretty obvious to anyone who’s played the game. It clearly wants you to ask these questions, and with the reveal that Kris is creating the Dark Worlds, it seems pretty obvious that they may have created Ralsei, too, to fill the void that Asriel left when he went off to college. The Dark Worlds are Kris’s way to escape to a world where they get to be a hero with all of the people they love. Possibly even a return to simpler times, too, as Ralsei looks and acts like he’s younger than the college-aged Asriel

So where does Susie come in?

What if she wasn’t supposed to?

She and Kris obviously aren’t friends when the game starts. Susie is a bully, always on edge and threatening Kris and telling them how much she hates them. It doesn’t make sense for Kris to think “yes, I’ll invite the girl who keeps threatening to eat off my face into my personal safe zone.”

I think that Kris was intending to take Noelle into the Dark World in Chapter 1

Notice how, out of everyone in the class, Noelle is the only one we can ask to be in a group with Kris for the group project. Everyone else responds that they’re taken, but with Noelle we’re pushed to ask her if we can join in a group of three. We can’t even do that with Noelle’s partner, Berdly. And it almost works, too, until Susie barges in and Kris is forcibly partnered with her, not unlike any of the moments later on in the chapter when Susie blatantly ignores our choices. I think that Kris was really gunning for Noelle to be their partner, then the two of them would go to the storage closet and into the Dark Worlds after class, where they’d meet Ralsei and it would be like their childhood gang of friends was back together again

It just makes more sense for Kris to set this up with Noelle in mind. The two of them were explicitly childhood friends, along with Kris’s brother, Asriel, and Noelle’s sister, Dess. And neither of the two are doing well. Kris’s parents are separated and their brother left for college, while Noelle’s dad is currently hospitalized, her mom is harsh and has no time for her, and her sister is implied to be dead. If we assume that Kris is a generally pretty decent kid, if a little eccentric and standoffish, then why wouldn’t they want to make a secret, magical hideaway for themself and their oldest friend, where they can be with “Asriel” like old times?

Susie probably wasn’t supposed to be there. She just muscled her way in. I think it’s notable that Ralsei’s prophecy just refers to the humans as “a human, a monster, and a prince from the dark,” and Susie’s immediate response is to say that he’s got the wrong person. What if she’s right, though? Sure, we see the monster illustrated and it looks like Susie, but that might be for the Player’s benefit. It’s entirely possible that “the monster” was intended to be Noelle, who’s directly connected to Kris and Asriel, and that Susie was just a fluke who wasn’t supposed to end up as part of the group

I do think that Kris genuinely warmed up to her in Chapter 1, and that’s probably why they keep letting her get involved in the Dark Worlds. She wasn’t supposed to be a part of the group at first, but now they’re friends so she’s allowed to stay. (Of course, that’s just my interpretation based on how Kris protects her in cutscenes. It could very well be that they don’t care and she’s forcing herself along.) The same can’t really be said for Berdly

If Chapter 1 was Kris trying to get Noelle involved in the Dark Worlds and failing, then Chapter 2 is Kris rectifying that and finally managing to get her involved... and Berdly ends up the same as Susie. He’s in the Dark World because he’s Noelle’s partner in the group project, just like Susie was Kris’s. Except Kris doesn’t really care for Berdly and, unlike Susie, isn’t made to come to like him. You can take the “Snowgrave” route and have Noelle kill him in the Dark World leaving him either dead or comatose (it’s unclear) in the real world. After all, he’s intruding on the Dark World as an add-on to Noelle. He’s totally inconsequential, and Kris shows little inclination to let him get involved in future exploits. He’s practically ignored when they all return to the real world, regardless of route

So what does this mean for Chapters 3 - 5? We know that Kris just opened up a Dark Fountain in the main room of their house, with Susie and Toriel asleep in front of the TV, which seems like it’ll serve as the base for the next Dark World. I think that the TV is less important overall, though, then the fact that Toriel is in the room. You know, Kris’s mom. Another person that they might want hanging around in their perfect world

So if we assume that this is a game about Kris attempting to escape from the unfortunate realities of their real life to create a “perfect” world and each chapter revolves around someone that they care about, then we can say that Chapter 2 was focused on Noelle. I’d hazard a guess that Chapter 3 is going to be heavily focused on Toriel, and if the pattern keeps up then it’s likely that Chapter 4 will be about Asgore (possibly taking place in his flower shop), and then Chapter 5 would be about Asriel/Ralsei, assuming that it’s the climax and the constant talk of Asriel returning home results in something. At least, that’s the trajectory I’m assuming it’s going for now since there’s still some confusion about the fact that Chapters 3-5 are going to be released together and that’s considered the full game, but there’s seven slots in the chapter select