#Which I always found badly executed anyway like I think it was a really bad move to try and draw direct parallels between shilo and scott

[autisticcassandracain]

I really. Should sit down and figure out what to do with Shilo in my Fourth World canon

[moviemunchies]

I’m struggling to come up with a coherent review, but I’m going to do my best!

You guys probably know by now that I’m a big fan of animation that pushes itself out of the usual styles. And while it’s been ages since I read the original comic, I was eager to see it adapted into animated form.

In a science-fantasy kingdom, run by the Institute, Ballister Boldhart, a commoner who would be a knight, is framed for murder and is branded a villain by the media. He only wants to clear his name and get back with the kingdom’s champion, but the young (or is she?!?) shapeshifter Nimona attaches herself to him as his villainous sidekick. Together they uncover the conspiracy to frame him, as well as reveal more of Nimona’s own history and how it ties to the history of the kingdom.

The film has gotten a lot of attention for its queer content. See, it was originally being produced by Blue Sky Studios (and employees of the studio are listed in the credits), which was owned by Fox. Which was then bought by Disney. They shut down the studio, deciding that having ANOTHER animation studio open wouldn’t be worth the effort and money, and eventually shut down production on this movie, despite it being over halfway done. Annapurna Pictures picked it up and finished the movie, keeping a lot of the already-completed work. More than one source from Blue Sky claims that Disney’s executives were very hard on this movie for featuring a same-sex kiss and LGBT themes, so they locked it down.

Welp it released on Netflix anyway!

I’ve seen quite a few sites and articles refer to Nimona as having “queer subtext.” I suppose that’s not wrong, but in this case I’d argue that the subtext is so heavy it might as well just be considered text. I mean yes, there’s the fact that Ballister is in love with a man, and his happy ending is getting together with him, but that’s just kind of the tip of the iceberg. Nimona’s a shapeshifter, who says she doesn’t feel alive if she can’t change her shape, she refuses to answer the question of “What are you?” other than with “I’m Nimona,” and has an entire society label her an unnatural monster. Heck, the villain declares that she is “a threat to our way of life.” 

It doesn’t really get more heavy-handed than that. I want to be clear that “heavy-handed” doesn’t mean “bad”; I wouldn’t say it’s bad here. “Heavy-handed” is only bad when it’s badly done. But any adult watching the film is going to pick up on what the movie’s saying. It’s not subtle. In a world though that seems to have increasing calls for violence by political players towards people they hate, I think the message of “Don’t demonize people and call for their execution for being different,” is an okay thing for a movie to be preaching.

One thing (if I remember correctly) about the comic I found a bit jarring (but not bad) was the tone shift in the story. It’s fairly light, a parody of superhero/villain stories, until we get to the end and Nimona’s backstory, where it feels very, VERY dark. The movie has a similar tone shift, but I think it handles it better overall. This does not mean the movie’s better than the comic, settle down People Angry About the Idea of Adaptation. I just mean that I think this one aspect is handled better.

I do also like the resolution better! But I don’t want to spoil it. So I’ll leave it at that.

The animation here is an absolute delight. It seems like Into the Spider-Verse opened the floodgates for all kinds of different styles to be tried out in movies. It’s colorful, but limited to a certain range. It’s memorable, and sticks out from other animated movies. Characters can look like cartoons but not look like the same cartoons that we see in a bunch of animated films. It’s fantastic. I know I always bang on about how much I love unique animation but I still love seeing it.

The voice cast is outstanding. Riz Ahmed is able to wring a ton of emotion out of the role of Ballister, while also having fun with him playing the straight man (comedy term! I know Ballister’s not straight) against Nimona. Ahmed’s clearly not having anywhere near as much fun as Chloe Grace-Moretz. Yeah, she gives a great, emotional performance at times, but she’s having an absolute blast in the moments when Nimona is causing havoc in the kingdom. 

I will admit that I was a little disappointed that the “I’m a shark!” line didn’t get more mileage in the movie; it was a running joke in the comic, and I would have liked to have seen it used more here.

Nimona is, overall, very good. Part of me is just happy to see that this finally made it to being a movie, after so many setbacks. If you’re interested in animation, you’ll probably love seeing how this one plays out. You’ll also enjoy this if you’re a fan of the comic, though I suppose there might be someone more familiar than me objects to the changes made in adaptation. I don’t think it’ll present too much of a stumbling block, though.

[mechaniz89reviews]

Madame Web Review

Oh boy. Where to start with this? I really wanted to like this film when i first heard it was being made. I had always loved the Madame Web character, especially the 90s animated series version.

But, sadly, it wasn't meant to be.

First of all, this project, at least from my point of view, was kept in the dark. Like, it was hearing it being announced to oh its coming out next week. The fuck?

But anyway, first I'll tell you a spoil free version of what i had an issue with and then give you the points i thought weren't bad or at least, that bad.

Ok, the two things that i felt like sank this film, was

A: The story.

B: The acting.

Story-wise, i felt this story was lazy and predictable. We all saw where everything was going just from the start. As it started, i felt deja-vu because this set up has been done so much. Parent doing something important, then something bad happening which greatly affects the main protagonist later. I felt i was being spoon fed story here.

As for how it ended, I hated the final fight. Some of it was done ok, but it was still predictable and mostly terrible CGI as well as a big WTF moment.

Acting-wise, they were everywhere. At some points, trying way to hard and at others, no where near hard enough. Mostly from the lead actress. Seems like half of the movie, she was barely going through the motions and it shined through. It felt like she found out during filming it wasn't a MARVEL film, but a SONY film. Which shows very VERY well throughout the film.

Now, as for the things I liked.

I enjoyed the Spider-Girls. Yes i know they don't have an official name.

I liked the chemistry the 3 actresses had. Little rough at first but then became pretty fluid and seemed to have fun. Of course, i enjoyed all the sexy spider suits, but this one especially.

Also, she was probably one of my favorite characters.

Safe to assume I'm a Sydney Sweeney fan now and I'd watch any Spider movie with her in it.

Anyways, back to the other stuff i liked.

The other thing i liked was the fact that they used a practical villain... most of the time. Which, even if it's a badly or overused villain type, I'll enjoy a practical villain then a CGI mess.

This is Ezekiel Sims, the big bad of this film. Not the best by any means but I still enjoyed the practical scenes with this actor in the suit. I'm a fan suits and having someone in one on set, interacting with people was awesome. I feel like, this was a preview of what a potential serial killer Spider-Man film could be. just saying.

in short, awesome idea and awesome potential. Meh, execution.

And the final thing that i liked, actually has to do with the trailer. The trailer actually misleads us into thinking one thing about this which turns out to be the other way. Which I love. I hate it when trailers tell you EVERY SINGLE FUCKING THING about the films plot.

This one, at least, misleads us to give us a slight surprise. Which I can appreciate.

Alrighty, think I'll end it here. This film, like sooooo many other Sony films, had so much potential, but it fell short because of the people in charge at Sony...and possibly others but whatever. The hardcore Madame Web or Spider-Man fan may enjoy this film just to see characters on the screen. Otherwise, this film is pretty damn bad. My love for the Madame Web character is the only reason I'm not completely blowing this film to hell.

I give it a 2/10.

2/23/2024

Ya FUCKED it up again Sony.

[robininthelabyrinth]

A-Yuan wasn’t the only child among the Wen Remnants, just the youngest.

Children's Day - ao3

Lan Wangji carefully scooped up the boy out of his hiding place, tucked beneath a pile of stones, sick with fever and fast asleep.

It was a good hiding place. If Lan Wangji hadn’t played Inquiry and demanded to know if there were any living beings around in this cursed place of death, he would never have found the small child.

He remembered him – this was little A-Yuan, who Wei Wuxian had taken down into town to play, the one Lan Wangji had bought all those toys for in his confusion, the one who called him rich-gege. Barely more than two years old, having never known anything but war.

He was all that was left, now. There was nothing else left in the battlefield.

No one else left.

Lan Wangji closed his eyes in pain.

I’ll care for him for you, he promised Wei Wuxian’s ghost, wherever it might be now. Now that you cannot.

I’ll take him back to Gusu to raise as my own – wishing you were by my side.

-

-Earlier-

“Sect Leader!” one of his aides cried out when he staggered back into camp. “What – who’s that?”

Jiang Cheng looked down at the girl in his arms. She was – four, maybe? Five? He had no idea.

She looked a bit like Wen Qing.

“I found her hiding in the corner of the battlefield when she made a noise,” he said hoarsely. “The Wen sect remnants…by the time I got there, they were almost all dead already, all her family. She’s – she’s young. It didn’t seem right.”

Wei Wuxian always liked children, he thought vaguely to himself as he looked down at her. It wasn’t so much of a surprise that he would keep one there…in fact, if he thought back to that horrible meeting they’d had that one time he’d come to the Burial Mounds to try to talk to Wei Wuxian, he thought he remembered there being a small child there. This must be her.

She was bigger than he remembered, but that was what happened with small children, wasn’t it?

“Her surname is Wen?”

“No,” Jiang Cheng snapped automatically, and his aide took a step back from his vehemence. “The Wen sect is dead, you understand? All of them. The cultivation world refused to allow them to live, that much is obvious enough. Her surname…”

He looked down at her.

I failed Wei Wuxian, he thought grimly. I won’t fail his legacy.

“Her surname will be Jiang.”

-

-Earlier-

“We found this child hiding in the Demon Subduing Cave,” one of the guards reported, looking nervous. “Lianfeng-zun – what do we do with them?”

Jin Guangyao frowned down at the child, judging the child’s age to be about five or six – maybe seven, considering the likelihood of malnutrition at the Burial Mounds. If they were any younger, he would’ve said that the child ought to just execute them as useless; any older, and he would’ve had no choice but to declare them an enemy combatant, and thereby order them executed.

At this age, though…they were still young enough to be taught to forget their current surname, and to learn new loyalties, and yet old enough to perhaps remember a little of what they had learned, living as they had for a few years with the inventor of demonic cultivation.

Jin Guangyao glanced at the papers in his hands, full of barely legible scribbles, laying out powerful new spells and interesting ideas. They would help Xue Yang with his work – but not as much as a helper would, and naturally they’d just brutally executed all the other ‘helpers’ that might have been available.

Not exactly Jin Guangyao’s personal preference, but he wasn’t the one leading the Jin sect army.

Still, his father, who had been the one leading, had retired to his tent, and now Jin Guangyao was the one with the power, left to be in charge of mopping up. That, in turn, gave him a little more leeway, which meant he could implement his own thoughts, rather than badly thought out instructions.

“Put the child in my tent,” he said, and smiled. “The poor thing must have gotten lost and entered the battlefield – after we arrived. You understand?”

The guard saluted deeply. “Lianfeng-zun is kind and beneficent,” he said, and his expression was worshipful. “I will tell the others that the child is from some distant Jin branch.”

Jin Guangyao hadn’t intended for him to do that, but – well, he couldn’t exactly refute it now, could he, and anyway there were worse things to happen. Everyone would know that he had kindly taken in some orphaned child of war, which would be good for his reputation.

He smiled and nodded, and thought of the future.

-

-Earlier-

“Well, shit,” Nie Mingjue said, staring at the trio of children: nine or ten years old, he thought, maybe a little older, two girls and a boy. They stared back at him, wide-eyed and terrified – they were very clearly trying to sneak off the Burial Mounds down the back way.

Nie Mingjue rubbed his face, glad that he’d insisted on doing the forward scout work before the attack tomorrow morning himself rather than let it go to someone else. He hadn’t wanted to come to this blasted place in the first place, being that he still wasn’t sure exactly what had gone down with Wei Wuxian, who’d been a good man once. But good Nie cultivators had died at Lanling City at Wen Ning’s hands, the Jin sect claiming that that brutal attack was at Wei Wuxian’s instigation, and at the Nightless City at Wei Wuxian’s hands directly, and he didn’t have any evidence to exculpate the man, either; he had no grounds to look the families of those Nie cultivators in the eye and tell them not to pursue vengeance against the man who had slaughtered their brothers and fathers and sons, sisters and mothers and daughters, like they meant nothing.

They deserved vengeance.

Just as he had, for his father.

But at the same time…

“You’re all surnamed Wen, I take it?” he asked, and they slowly nodded. “Dafan Wen?”

Another nod.

“Wrong answer,” he said, making a snap decision. This wasn’t like his father at all, not really; he had wanted to kill Wen Ruohan, who had done the deed himself, while these children clearly hadn’t done anything. “Swear to me here and now that you won’t seek revenge for your sect or family, and you can be surnamed Nie instead.”

They looked at each other.

“Your family didn’t send you to run away because they wanted you to take revenge,” he said. It was a guess, but he could tell from the way their shoulders sagged that he was right. “They wanted you to live. Well?”

They swore.

He took them home.

-

-Earlier-

She tripped and fell flat on her face.

“Hey, girl!”

She looked up, eyes wide with terror – she hadn’t expected to be caught so soon – but the cultivator in front of her didn’t strike her down. He was a young man, just a few years older than her, and he looked nice, kneeling to help her up.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “Did you get lost?”

Lost? From where would she get lost, exactly?

Despite that, she nodded.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Here isn’t a good place, though – we’re going to have a battle tomorrow…can you tell me where you’re from?” He frowned. “Or – can’t you speak?”

An idea suddenly came to mind, and she shook her head, lifting up her hands to mime signs like the ones she’d seen Lady Wen and her brother use sometimes when they needed to talk without disturbing others.

“Doesn’t talk,” he murmured to himself. “Clothing of white, ripped all to ribbons –”

She’d torn out any trace of the red sun. White was a common color, but she was old enough to know that she couldn’t let anyone know she was surnamed Wen.

“Oh, I’ve read about this before! Are you a bird yao that’s cultivated to humanity?”

What?

She’d been thinking of trying to pass as a traumatized war veteran, but she was only fourteen, after all; it wasn’t very believable. Of course, it was a lot more believable that bird yao – who would leap to that conclusion?

“My surname is Ouyang,” the man said, smiling brightly at her. “You should come back with me – I can teach you to speak, and we can give you a name…how about ‘Luo’ as a surname? That has to do with birds. Or we could surname you Bai, instead, since your clothing is white! Or maybe -”

She smiled helplessly at his nonsense. What a silly, cheerful man! Maybe she’d overestimated his age, he couldn’t be more than two or three years older, at most, and his brain was clearly not in the right place, filled up to the brim with romantic stories and adventure tales instead of facts.

It was a nice change, actually.

She accepted his hand as she stood.

Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.

-

-Earlier-

Lan Wangji had returned home and submitted to a dreadful punishment. The elders he had injured on Wei Wuxian’s behalf were either in treatment or recovering.

As for the rest that had been at the Nightless City…

Many were dead.

Lan Qiren landed in the Burial Mounds, lips pressed tightly together.

He knew he was taking a risk in coming here to Wei Wuxian’s lair – no matter what Lan Wangji thought, whatever good points he’d had in the past, the man was now little better than a mad dog. He’d caused the death of three thousand people just the day before, three thousand innocents that hadn’t had anything to do with anything; why would he hesitate to attack his old teacher?

There was already talk of a siege – Jiang Cheng himself had promised to lead it, to wipe off the stain on the Jiang sect’s record, and the Jin sect had been right behind him. Even Nie Mingjue had been dragged in against his will, suborned by his sect members’ need for vengeance. As for the Lan Sect…Lan Xichen had looked so stricken by the thought that Lan Qiren had volunteered for the grim duty, despite Lan Qiren having never been much of a fighter and even less of a general. He intended to take only the smallest possible contingent, and to limit their work as much as possible to cleansing the dead rather than killing those who remained there – that much, at least, he could do for his nephew.

Either way, though, no matter his powers, Wei Wuxian would not live out the week.

If Lan Qiren desired vengeance, he need only wait.

And yet, here he was.

Alone, practically unarmed – and here nonetheless.

An old woman came out from the cave and squinted at him.

“It’s over,” she said sadly. “Isn’t it?”

Lan Qiren looked at her. One of the Wen remnants that Wei Wuxian had surrounded himself with, he assumed; the ones he’d given up his comfortable life for, claiming he was only acting as a righteous man ought. Perhaps he even had thought he was, back then.

Perhaps he really had been, back then.

“Yes,” Lan Qiren said, and cleared his throat. “After what he did at the Nightless City – the verdict is unquestionably death. But the rest of you…there are armies coming, and armies are not known for their leniency, especially not on passerby with the wrong surname. But they’re not here yet. There’s still time to flee – if you go now, you could take on a new surname and find some quiet place to live on.”

Lan Wangji had said they were civilians. Civilian life was to be prioritized above all else.

Lan Qiren was only doing what he must.

Despite his well-meant warnings, however, the old lady shook her head.

“There’s nowhere to go, and we won’t give up our surname,” she said, polite but stubborn to the last. “But thank you for taking the time to come here to tell us.”

“Wangji said that there were children here,” Lan Qiren insisted, ignoring her refusal. “If you won’t flee with them, at least send those that are old enough out on their own, and hide the younger ones. Tell them to forget their surnames – most people won’t rampantly murder children, so there’s a chance they’ll make it through, and live. Can you deny them that, just for pride?”

That gave the old woman pause.

“We’ll do what we can,” she said, and then eyed him. “How good are you at medicine?”

Lan Qiren frowned. “I can’t provide care –”

“She’s already dead. Come help anyway.”

The woman in question was not already dead, but dying – she was in her late teens, seventeen or eighteen at most, and she was in labor. From the glassiness of her eyes, the redness of her cheeks, and the threadiness of her pulse, it was clear that infection had long ago set in. It was not an exaggeration to say she was dead, little better than a corpse.

She was little more than a child.

“I don’t want her to die alone,” the old woman said. “But if you stay with her, I can use the time to try to take care of the rest. You’re not wrong, I suppose – the children, at least, deserve a chance to live on, even if it means leaving our surname behind.”

Lan Qiren looked down at the woman, unconscious already and unlikely to ever wake, and yet still whimpering. “And her child?”

The old woman looked surprised. “Can a child born like this still live?”

Lan Qiren had almost no medical training beyond the most superficial basics that were the necessity for any battlefield or night-hunt, with one sole exception: he had supervised the births of both his nephews by himself with little aid – his brother’s wife hadn’t wanted anyone else to be present, possibly in an attempt to prematurely enter her grave, possibly just out of spite. He had studied very hard in the days leading up to those births, and knew far more on the subject than most men did.

“It’s possible,” he said. “Unlikely, but – possible.”

He hesitated for a long moment.

“I can take the baby,” he finally said. “Pass him off as some war-orphan child of distant Lan cousins, sent to me on account of their deaths. I could raise him, or else give him to my cousin to raise; he’s got a large enough family that no one would question it.”

“Why would you do that?”

Lan Qiren looked at the woman who was dying, little more than a child herself. “Because of the children I can’t help.”

The old woman was quiet for a little while.

“Very well,” she said, and leaned forward to whisper the name the young woman had thought about for her child into his ear. “That works with Lan as a surname, wouldn’t it? That’s not bad.”

“Not bad at all,” Lan Qiren agreed, and rolled up his sleeves, settling down beside the girl. “Not bad at all.”

[makeste]

some follow-up thoughts on BnHA 306

mostly Deku angst, but also a little Baku angst (and some TodoBaku angst) mixed in for good measure. because there’s plenty of angst to go around.

1. “if I’d only been stronger...”

I’ll talk more about Deku later in this post as well, because there’s definitely plenty to talk about; this is the most character development he’s gotten in almost 200 chapters. but for starters, I want to discuss the possible parallels between Deku’s current character arc, and what is arguably the most iconic moment of angst/character development in the series.

remember how this kid, who up until this point had rarely seemed to give two fucks about the world around him, suddenly revealed that he blamed himself for being the downfall of All Might? remember how it came almost out of nowhere? how he’d been hiding it, and trying to suppress it? “but even if I try to forget... sometimes it all just comes rushing back.”

yeah. so anyway, I got to thinking -- if being the cause of one hero’s downfall could affect someone this badly, what about being responsible for the downfall of all heroes?

what if a boy who wanted nothing more than to keep people safe suddenly found himself at the epicenter of a disaster that killed hundreds, possibly even thousands of people?

now obviously, this is not the sole thing that’s troubling Deku right now; this kid has a whole array of traumas as of the War arc. like, you know it’s bad when Society As We Know It Coming To An End Partially Because Of You is the least of your problems. but still, I think this is worth bringing up, because the hero kids blaming themselves for things that aren’t their fault is hardly anything new. and yet, what with everything else that’s been going on -- all of the Todoroki drama, and Vestige revelations, and hospital antics, and political strife -- I feel like it’s easy to forget or overlook this little detail.

the fact is that AFO put this entire plan into motion solely in the hopes of finally obtaining OFA. every single thing that happened at Jakku -- Tomura powering up; Machia waking up and going on his rampage (after being ordered to do so by Tomura); and even Dabi/Touya choosing this moment to finally strike (because he knew this was when the reveal would do the maximum damage -- when people’s faith in heroes was already wavering) -- every last bit of it can ultimately be traced back to AFO’s desire to steal OFA. which, obviously, makes it AFO’s fault, not Deku’s. but then, Kamino wasn’t actually Katsuki’s fault either. it wasn’t his fault the villains went after him (but he blamed himself anyway), and it wasn’t his fault that people got hurt in the ensuing battle to save him (but he blamed himself anyway).

just. I think we’re underestimating just how strong of an impact all of this likely had on Deku. we haven’t really had the chance to see him process it yet. he’s been too busy, and there have been too many other things going on. but I’m telling you guys, that empty look in his eyes in the final page of the chapter? I can all but guarantee you that at least some of that emotional weight is coming from this.

sure would be nice if he had a friend who knew exactly what that was like, and could help him process the guilt and all of the other associated emotions, just like Deku once helped him. unfortunately I’m not so sure things will be that easy this time around. anyways though let’s move on to a couple of other thoughts and speculations.

2. “...and I bullied him.”

one of my least-favorite BnHA fanfic tropes is the one where the rest of class 1-A somehow finds out about Katsuki and Deku’s history -- i.e. that Katsuki bullied Deku throughout most of their childhood. mind you, it’s not the concept itself that I dislike; it’s mostly how it’s used. a lot of times it’s just an excuse to have all of the other kids turn on Katsuki and ostracize him; either because the author thinks that’s what he deserves, or else so that Deku can eventually come to his rescue and defend him and shame the rest of the class for not seeing how much he’s changed. either way, it’s usually pretty awkward to read, and more often than not the characters are pretty OOC (especially Ochako and Todoroki).

however! there’s a big difference between fanfic and canon, and just because I’m not a fan of this trope in the former doesn’t mean it couldn’t be executed well in the latter. and lately I’ve been thinking about this a lot. mainly for three reasons:

the recent (can we still call it recent?? well whatever) scene where Katsuki confessed to All Might that he used to bully Deku is now one of my favorite scenes in the entire series, and proof that this can be executed well.

both Todoroki and Deku have finally had their respective big secrets revealed to the rest of the class. so like, idk. feels like it just might be secret-revealing season now, you know?

and lastly, as a result of Deku’s secret about OFA finally being revealed, the rest of 1-A now either knows, or can extrapolate, that he used to be quirkless.

and from there, I feel like it’s not all that hard to put two and two together with how terrible Kacchan and Deku’s relationship was when they first started at UA. that’s not a terribly difficult puzzle to solve. so I feel like it might come out anyway, and if so, I’d prefer Bakugou telling them himself, and taking responsibility as part of his atonement process. because we know that he regrets it. we know their relationship has changed. we know that he has changed. and so I think I might like to see this.

alternately, if confessing to the entire class is too much, at the very least I could see him confessing to Shouto, because I’ve always felt like this was one of the big things that made Katsuki so resistant to letting Todoroki call him a friend. because I feel like there’s a part of Katsuki that saw the parallels between Endeavor’s abuse of Shouto and his own bullying of Deku, and thought, he wouldn’t be so quick to call me his friend if he actually knew the truth. and so there’s actually been this roadblock wedged between them this whole time that Shouto doesn’t even know about. because Shouto hates Endeavor. and so it’s not such a leap to assume he’d hate Katsuki too if he knew just how terrible he’d been to Deku when they were younger.

not that I think he actually would! actually I don’t think either of those things is actually true (because Shouto clearly doesn’t hate his father either, in spite of everything that’s happened). but the point isn’t what I think -- the point is what Katsuki thinks. and I really do think there’s a good chance he’s worried about Shouto hating him, and it’s one of the things that’s made him so reluctant to accept his friendship. anyway, so I’m really just rambling now, but you get my point. I don’t know if this is actually going to happen, but it’s a scene I would like to see if Horikoshi decides to indulge me.

3. “...so when you wake up, please give him my best.”

and now, as promised, back to Deku.

ngl guys, when I first saw this image, my immediate thought was that Gran must have died. because I mean, hello, leaving U.A.?? donning himself in his teacher’s old cape?? empty, exhausted look in his eyes?? what else were we supposed to think lol.

but maybe that was an overreaction. because when I think about it more, Gran’s death isn’t strictly necessary in order to push Deku over the edge. first of all, there’s already the whole “hero society is in ruins now because of you” thing I mentioned earlier. but also, there are just so many other things. like, let’s just list them here because omg. what a rough couple of days this kid had.

he was forced to battle TomurAFO and was terribly injured in the process (most of which was his own fault, but he wouldn’t have gone that far with OFA unless he felt like he had no choice)

and it wasn’t just him that was injured, either. in fact, even though he tried to act as bait to keep everyone else safe, he wasn’t able to stop three of the people closest to him from nearly being killed right before his eyes

and of course that last one was especially traumatic, because it was Kacchan, and because he had to watch Kacchan nearly die just to protect him. out of all the things that Deku witnessed in this arc, this might be the one that had the biggest impact on him

he was also basically helpless to do anything to protect Shouto and Endeavor when Dabi showed up. so again, we have this running theme of people he cares about being hurt and him not being able to save them

and he also got sucked into the OFA Interstellar Dream Vortex for a brief spell during the battle, during which he learned that AFO had possessed Tomura. more importantly, he learned that Tomura was Nana’s grandson, a fact which was only briefly touched on during that scene, but which I think wound up being the trigger to the whole avalanche that ended with Deku leaving UA. but more on that in a moment

anyway so just to wrap this all up, the battle eventually ended, Tomura got away despite all of their efforts, and then Deku wound up comatose in the hospital for two days. which brings us to the most recent chapters, during which

Deku learns that he will be the last wielder of OFA, whether he likes or not

Deku learns the identity of the last two mystery OFA users

and then at some point, he wakes up and presumably talks to Gran, and winds up with his cape

something happened during these last two scenes which helped to push Deku over the edge. I won’t delve into the matter of the Second or Third users for now, although most of you already know my suspicions regarding that, and I do think that would fit into the general pattern here (that is, the pattern of Deku feeling more and more strongly that he is putting the people around him in danger, and his fear of losing them becoming so overwhelming that it eventually pushes him to leave).

but that’s not what I want to talk about for now. what I want to talk about is Gran. specifically, what it is that Deku discussed with Gran. and this is where we come back to that reveal I mentioned earlier -- that Tomura is Nana’s grandchild.

basically, what I think happened is that Deku mentioned seeing Nana in the OFA Zany Psychedelic Spirit Void, which led to the topic of Tomura, and the fun fact Deku recently learned about him being related to Nana. this, in turn leads to Gran divulging his various regrets about everything that happened with him and Nana and Kotarou. his intent is to apologize to Deku for placing the burden of their failures on him. unfortunately, the part that Deku actually gets fixated on instead is this:

All for One hunted down and killed Nana’s son (and probably her husband as well), and stole her grandchild and psychologically tortured him into becoming a mass murderer, for no other reason than that Nana had once held OFA

in other words, AFO can and will hurt and kill anyone Deku is close to, anyone who has any kind of connection to him at all, without mercy, and regardless of whether it actually gives him any kind of tactical advantage or not. he’ll do it simply to hurt him. no other reason necessary.

I don’t know about you, but for me that would be a terrifying realization. and for Deku, I think it just might have been the tipping point.

so, let’s recap.

Deku learns that AFO is after him

AFO/Tomura very nearly kills several of Deku’s most important people, including Kacchan

and then he learns that this is just the tip of the iceberg, and realizes that all of their lives are still in danger and will continue to be as long as Deku is AFO’s target

and then add to all of this the misplaced guilt about society already being shambles, and the heroes already having more than enough to worry about. they’re barely holding things together as it is. and we already know how Deku feels about being a burden to them:

and so instead, he leaves. of course he does. in hindsight, I think this was inevitable.

the question is, did anyone else also put the pieces together in time to realize what Deku was planning before he actually left? specifically, did Katsuki, who understands Deku’s self-sacrificial nature better than anyone else, see the signs and put two and two together? like he did back at Jakku?

and if he did, would Deku have been willing to accept his help again?

somehow, I can’t help but think it might not be that easy this time.

anyway, so that was a lot of rambling, lol. sorry about that. I JUST HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS about all of this angsty shit. tired nomad Deku needs hugs and comfort and someone to reassure him that he doesn’t have to face this alone, and that everything is going to be all right. HE IS JUST A LITTLE BOY. this is too much, and I cannot handle any of these feels, and oh my god, somebody please help him.

[shihalyfie]

@sage-striaton replied to your post:

Idk how people can say Frontier has characters that lack depth. Imo it’s a very psychological season. The whole adventure thing is aimed to making them grown in their behaviours and feelings, it’s a big metaphor of their development

I’m sorry for hijacking your response to my post to segue this into another rant of mine, but I want to emphasize that one of my goals with this blog (if I can be said to have any) is that I really, really, really want people to re-examine whether they actually believe in the rhetoric that’s been dominating this fanbase for two decades, or whether there’s more to it. This is especially in regards to the fact that we’re talking a series deliberately written in such a way that it’ll change meaning and nuance as you get older, so it can “grow up” with you in a sense, and yet it seems like -- especially in regards to Adventure through Frontier, due to their position as the oldest series that the majority of the fanbase was elementary or preteen age during -- people are still regurgitating the same rehashed twenty-year-old ideas like they’re undeniable law. It’s one thing if they’re saying it because the series didn’t sit well with them the first time and they don’t want to watch it again, but we’re reaching a recurring problem where it’s sort of “brainwashing” even people who don’t actually believe it but feel compelled to go along with it, or wouldn’t feel that way if it weren’t for peer pressure. Obviously, there are dissenting opinions, and ones that are even very loud about that, but that pressure remains.

The mainstream opinion in the fanbase is that Adventure is untouchable and impervious to any criticism, 02 is its inferior sequel with half-baked characters, Tamers is an auteur work that’s the “deepest” of the original tetralogy due to being dark, and Frontier is devoid of much substance at all. Even those who don’t really believe in this will still be pressured to go alongside it, those who like 02 or Frontier will be pressured to consider it a “guilty pleasure”, and it’s only very recently when certain events revealed that the idea of 02 actually having quite its own fervent and passionate fanbase that likes it on its own merits became properly recognized. (I have actually noticed a huge uptick in 02 fans, especially casual ones, being more shameless in talking about liking it in the last two years; you’re still going to get the obnoxious person “reminding” you how bad it apparently is if you bring it up, but it’s not nearly as prevalent as it used to be.) I’m not talking about whether something is a “good” or “bad” series -- that concept doesn’t really exist to me as much as whether it’s “to one’s tastes” or not, and I think one of the joys of this franchise is that it has things that cater to people with vastly different preferences -- as much as a lot of potential for analysis and intimate thought about these very fascinating series. Even if 02 and Frontier were as shallow or half-baked as they were accused of, I wouldn’t think it’d be shameful to like them for one’s own reasons anyway, but what frustrates me is that I just don’t think that’s true in the first place!!

Not helping is that there’s still a refusal among the fanbase to admit that there were substantial differences in American English dubbing (especially in regards to Adventure and 02), which I don’t mean as a bad thing in the sense that some people prefer to stick only with that dub and consider that version what they want to work with, but in the sense that the treatment of them as “the same thing” has been horribly detrimental when two people, one coming from that dub and one coming from the Japanese version (or a dub more closely based on it), will end up often having an argument doomed to go nowhere because they were never talking about the same thing to begin with. Recently, a friend admitted to me that although they’d switched to the Japanese version a long time ago, they still couldn’t get the image of Daisuke and Takeru having an inherently hostile relationship (they don’t) out of their head due to the influence of that dub, and although they consciously knew better -- at least enough to admit this to me -- it wasn’t helped by the fact that the fanbase itself continues to reinforce this image because of how normalized it is to treat the dub version and the Japanese version as “virtually the same” and for Western fanbase discourse to assume you should be projecting those takes into the Japanese version. If you’re hanging out in English-speaking circles but are working from the Japanese version or a dub directly based off of it, you do actually have to filter out a lot of takes you’re hearing because they won’t actually apply to the version you’re watching, but not a lot of people realize this.

All four of Adventure through Frontier share tons of key staff, especially Seki, known for her focus on wanting the kids in the audience to be able to empathize with and relate to the characters on screen. All four share some of the best character work I’ve seen not only in this franchise, but also in kids’ media in general, and I also stress that a lot of this has a ton of nuance that isn’t always apparent unless you read between the lines. I do understand that a lot of this probably went over our heads as kids, and I won’t say that the choice to execute it this way should be impervious to criticism, but nevertheless, I think it’s important to call attention to the fact it is there, and much of it becomes recognizable once you see it that way; for instance, so much of "it's contradictory character writing!" comes from the fact that the series tries to represent humans in their inconsistent, messy ways, and while it'll feel "messy" from a writing trope perspective, when you think about it as "since this person has this mentality, does it make sense to approach this with this mindset?", suddenly it becomes very consistent. The supposedly “shallow” 02 and Frontier characters will act in ways that match existing psychological profiles meant for actual humans to terrifying degrees, in ways that you might actually recognize even better once you’ve hit adulthood and start intimately understanding things like depression or anxiety in ways you might not have before. Shockingly, “having heart, important themes, and kindness towards the human condition” are completely valid reasons to uplift a creative work in ways distinct from technical writing or cerebrality or how many tropes they subvert or whatever.

On the flip side, people praise Adventure and Tamers for being the naturally “superior” works with better writing, but when it comes to talking about why the writing is supposedly better, a good chunk of the reasons stated don’t actually explain anything substantial, or go back to actually being passive-aggressive dunks on the other series in some form -- it’s because 02 and Frontier’s character writing sucks that badly, or because Adventure had the “best plot” (which may be true if by “best” you mean “easiest to understand”, but that doesn’t mean much to someone who might not be very happy about how its story progression is just a boss rush), or because Tamers is the “deepest” when by “deep” they actually mean “cerebral, dark, and unsubtle about it” without any further meaning (as if Adventure and 02 were idealistic series that never went into anything nuanced and not, say, the fact they went very viciously deep into societal issues between parents and children, psychological horror, and intimate takes on the human condition). I’m personally saying this as someone who does think Adventure and Tamers have a lot to praise in terms of their approaches to realism and the unique aspects each bring to the table, and I feel that people like this are doing them more of a disservice by not bothering to uplift them for any reason that isn’t actually just inherently condescending. I mean, even taking this outside of the original tetralogy for a bit, when I was plugging Appmon earlier, there’s a reason I focused more on its theme and character writing and the use of “dark” writing to convey its sheer range, rather than trying to boil it down to a shallow “it looks cheery but gets really messed up later!”, which is unfortunately an argument I’ve been seeing about it lately.

In the end, when I write my meta, I write it "making a case" for my point of view, and I welcome others to disagree, but if you disagree, I really hope it'll be because you personally disagree, and not because the entire fanbase has been saying otherwise for twenty years and I sound like a radical. I’m not saying that everyone’s consensus takes are completely unfounded, but frankly speaking, this fanbase has some really bad takes, and in the past few years I’ve found it freeing to not only “say what you feel without worrying what others think”, but actually go out of my way to outright try and purge all the preconceived notions and pick only the ones I agree with because I actually agree with them. I encourage you to do it too! And if you do, you might find things about something you like that you didn’t realize before.

[cblgblog]

Sorry I’m advance but one of my other favorite accounts just reblogged a Tony scene and people are talking about Civil War and how it made them Stan Tony, and how when they watch that movie they hate team cap👀 Then someone was all about how he was sleep deprived and how much pressure he was under and couldn’t understand how people didn’t like Tony because. Someone literally said that when someone says they don’t like Tony in Civil War they say “did you watch the same movie as me.” I’m baffled. Oddly enough someone else said, “he just wants to help everyone.” Sorry for the rant but I think people forget about what the accords are and what it would mean for people. Side note, I hope you’re having a great day/night 😀

No sorry needed!

I feel you man, I do. Honestly, I’ve unfollowed people based on similar posts when I was in especially Done moods, so.

Look on the one hand, the movie would’ve been a narrative failure if everyone was in favor of one side or the other, right? The whole point of the damn thing—besides giving the Mouse overlords more money—was to spark discussion, debate. Which, yeah, we’ll call that the tame description for what actually happened. But just, the thing was meant to split the fanbase so in that regard…winning? Thanks, I guess?

Film is also very obviously subjective, different strokes for different folks, so yeah, ten people can watch a movie and none of them are gonna see the exact same film. Let’s try to remember that this is, in theory anyway, a good thing. I just read a professional film review yesterday where I had the same reaction. What film were you watching, dude? Incidentally his reviewing partner said the same thing.

So honestly, no, they weren’t watching the same film as you or I or anyone else, because everyone brings their own biases and experiences and knowledge and interests into a thing, and that’s always going to flavor how it’s viewed. Again, let’s try to remember that this is good. In theory. Heavy on the theory.

That out of the way? Let’s get into Tony specifically so his uber stans can find this and scream at me on anon as though I just shot RDJ with a nuke.

Oh yeah, he was stressed. Oh, he was sleep deprived. Yeah, I’ve heard that. And that it’s Pepper’s fault, if she hadn’t left the poor baby, if she was there to rein him in, he’d be fine dammit, leave the baby alone!

Here’s the thing. You know who gets a pass on their shit behavior when they’re upset or tired? Actual babies. Actual babies and toddlers, and children, up to a point. Because they actually cannot always help themselves. Their bodies and brains are different, they have not learned better.

When you’re a 50-year-old man who’s supposedly the world’s bestest superhero, who wants, wants to be in charge of protecting the whole world? You need a little more self-control than that. The sleep deprived excuse works if you snap at someone before you’ve had your coffee, not for this. Roseanne Barr didn’t get to blame Ambien for her racism, Tony doesn’t get to handwave CW away because oops, I was tired.

Really? You’re a superhero, dude. Most of your teammates are tired too, that’s part of the gig. If you crash and burn this badly without your afternoon nap, fucking hang up the armor and go back to your billionaire playboy lifestyle.

Speaking of that, sure, right. It’s Pepper’s fault because she left him. Put aside the argument on whether that was justified or not (cough, it was and she should’ve stayed away even though they are adorable together). It’s not Pepper’s job to keep Tony sane. It’s not any partner’s job to do that for anyone. If she wants out, she has a right to that, without Tony going off the rails and blaming it on her. Seriously, he says part of the reason he backed the Accords was to “split the difference” with Pepper.

Dude. You were an asshole and you lost your girl. You destroyed all your suits, turned an emotional and mental corner in IM 3…and then relapsed 4 minutes later I guess because Whedon. Either way, Tony admits himself that he does not want to stop. So instead of doing that, or finding another partner who can accept that, you back an unjust international law that pits you against your team, your supposed friends? Go to therapy, have a pint of ice cream, cry into your pillow, send her more of those strawberries you sent her in IM 2 that she’s allergic to. You don’t go trying to change international law in ways that could ultimately affect millions of people because your girl left you.

Honestly—and thank God they didn’t do this but—the only way the Pepper excuse works in excusing his behavior in any way is if she’d died. Or been severely injured like Happy in IM 3. Still wouldn’t be okay, but, like Quill messing up their chance to stop Thanos because Gamora died, it would’ve been more understandable. Understandable, not excusable, and the way the MCU treats their women as manpain fodder, we’re probably legit lucky we didn’t get this.

As for him wanting to help everyone. He does in fact want that, I think. The problem is that his need to feel like he’s doing that is stronger than his rational mind, or his want to actually help in a constructive way.

Tony is too smart. He’s dumb as hell in many instances, mostly involving people and relationships, but he’s also too smart, and he’s been told for too long that he’s smart, and he’s bought into it. Ultron. Suit of armor around the world, protects the world, no more alien threats. It’s a simple concept on paper that fails in execution. So there are people with dangerous powers. Okay, we’ll make a set of laws to keep them from being dangerous, problem solved. But again, it isn’t.

Tony is not used to problems he cannot solve. He’s a genius, right? He can fix anything. He should be able to fix anything. That’s how he feels. But not everything is zeros and ones and circuits, things that can be fixed mechanically like his armors can. The people he wants to protect are not built that way. But he needs to feel like he’s doing something, because he’s terrified of what happens to the world if he doesn’t. So he creates these simple solutions to complex problems. The suit of armor, the Accords. They sound good in theory, but the problems they’re trying to solve are bigger than they are. And Tony, way back in IM 1, he sat back for years, clueless that his weapons were being used for bad things. He says it to Cap in CW. When he found out what his weapons were being used for, he went in and stopped it. Whether or not he should’ve known that already is a separate issue here. The point here is that when he found out, too late or not, he went in and did something about it.

Tony needs to do something about it. Again, go back to Cap in AoU, Tony’s nightmare sequence. Steve asks Tony why he didn’t save them. Tony’s ultimate nightmare is that he sits back and does nothing, and his inaction causes everyone to die. Which is where you get Ultron. Something he came up with because of what he saw in space in Avengers 1, then doubled down on in AoU. It’s where you get the Accords. Oops, he caused someone to die, he killed Charles Spencer. Must do something about that right now so it doesn’t happen again, and he won’t have to feel this guilt. He should be collaborating with others to come up with solutions (no Bruce in AoU doesn’t count because Bruce was dumb there), or at the very least, taking more time to think through the repercussions of the things he puts out there. But he doesn’t, because he’s got his savior complex that tells him that he alone can and must fix this, and because he’s too dumb to realize how not-smart he is in certain areas.

“We need to be put in check. Whatever form that takes, I’m game.”

Isn’t that what he says in CW, or something very close to it? Whatever form that takes. That’s the issue, right there, whatever form that takes. Realistically, yes, there should be laws regarding people with powers, the same way there are special laws pertaining to people who carry guns, or people who are licensed to fly planes. You have a thing/can do a thing that not everyone else does, so there are regulations pertaining to that thing. Laws change with the times, they always have. Some new technology comes up, eventually there will be laws that regulate it. As there should be, honestly. The issue with the Accords, Steve’s issue with the Accords, was not the basic idea. He says as much. He says that it could work, but there would have to be safeguards. Safeguards that are not in the Accords that Tony wants him to sign.

It's not a matter of oh, fuck the law, there should be no law governing these people, they’re above it. The problem is that the law as it’s presented here is unjust. There’s what, a month between Lagos and Ross coming by to tell them about the Accords? A month is not enough time to properly analyze such a big issue, Especially when you’re reacting out of fear, which is what happened with Lagos. People died because of an Enhanced person, an Avenger, in this case. Lawmakers don’t want that to happen again, they especially don’t want the political shit storm that comes with it. Damn, we look like we were asleep at the switch here, not having anything to throw at this problem earlier. Quick, let’s throw together this thing so no one can say we’re not addressing the problem.

Patriot Act of 2001, anyone? 9/11 happened, the public were rightfully terrified, the US said oh man, these are unprecedented circumstances, we’ve never had this before. Don’t worry though, we’re on this, we’re protecting you. The reality being that that bill simply gave the government too much power, most of it being used against people who were not actually threats, and it’s debatable, to say the very least, whether or not that law helped more than it hurt.

No law is perfect. No law ever will be. It’s not possible. We still have to strive for perfection though, have to aim there so that the laws we get are as close to fair as possible. Tony’s a big deal. If not for his “whatever form that takes” attitude, he might’ve been able to use his influence to pressure lawmakers into coming up with a fairer bill. Hey, I’m me, the public loves me, I will endorse this bill publicly and work on getting the rest of the team to sign, but you need to change this and this and this first, or no deal. Instead, he took the easy way out, the quickest, easiest way for him to feel like he’s atoned for his sins without actually doing anything. Whatever form that takes.

Tony’s not wrong because he backs the creation of a law that addresses these things. He’s wrong because he says himself that he does not care what that law does, specifically, so long as it exists. He’s wrong because he violates said law upteen times during the movie, while preaching to team Cap about what assholes they are for not backing it. He’s wrong because he cares more about feeling as though he’s tackled a problem than he does about taking the time to make sure that the thing he’s proposing is actually a good idea. He’s wrong because of what he does with Bucky, though that’s honestly a separate issue, for the purposes of this discussion.

Anyway, that was longer than I ever wanted it to be. Damn. Next time you see a comment about CW being the reason people stan Tony, just remember there are other people out there who stopped stanning Tony because of that movie. Everyone’s entitled to see a piece of media however they see it, and although the Tony stans are often the loudest, there are plenty of like-minded people out there who share your take on events. Block who you need to, unfollow who you need to, blacklist what you need to, and don’t let them get you down.

Hang in there, and have an awesome day :)

[sineala]

A Few Thoughts About Hurt/Comfort

I have been asked this month to make a post about hurt/comfort in Avengers comics. And I love h/c -- I actually have a massive number of WIPs right now that are h/c -- so I am very happy to talk about it! Anyway, this is not really all that planned out and this mostly turned into an excursus on Tony Stark's pain. I'm sure you're all surprised.

Like pretty much everyone else, I'm sure, I have found that everything lately has been... pretty tough. And the coping mechanism that really got me through last year and this year was reading and writing a lot of h/c, on the theory that, however lousy a day I'm having, I can absolutely make sure that Tony Stark has a worse one. And then I can make sure he gets hugs. Wish fulfillment? Why, yes. (Once at Hallmark I was trying to find a "get well soon" card, forgot what it was called, and described it to my wife as "a hurt/comfort card.") I think Marvel Comics -- the Avengers side, in particular -- is an interesting canon for h/c for a lot of reasons. Though, honestly, if you asked me to recommend you, a hurt/comfort fan, a new fandom, I would probably just hand you some Starsky & Hutch DVDs. Go watch "The Fix" and get back to me later. If you like that, there's way more where that came from. But there's still lots to love in Marvel! Superhero comics are really a goldmine as far as the hurt side of h/c. Because superheroes, and you probably have noticed this, get hurt a lot. They get hurt repeatedly, in fantastical ways that are probably impossible in real life both physically and emotionally (at least, I don't think anyone's invented mind control yet), and even the heroes without superhuman healing powers tend to get physically hurt a whole lot worse than actual people can take. Currently in Iron Man comics, Tony has a broken back and is dealing with this by locking himself into the armor as a backboard and injecting himself with massive doses of painkillers. He's busy! He's got stuff to do! He doesn't have time to lie around and heal! So, basically, if you name a kind of pain that you would like to see happen to a character, it's probably happened to superheroes. Multiple times. The downside, though, is that comics do not really deliver that well when it comes to the comfort part of h/c. They could. It's not inherent to the medium that they don't. But because of the serial nature of comics and also the fact the primary audience is dudes who want to read about people in spandex punching each other, a lot of the time they don't really feel the need to provide closure and write about people dealing with any of the hurt. (Raise your hand if you're still annoyed with the end of Hickman's Avengers run.) But at the same time, I think that's a quality that makes Avengers ripe for h/c fanfic. Because, generally speaking, fandom likes to provide the things that canon doesn't, and fandom is more than happy to provide the comfort. If you enjoy canonical h/c in comics, I think you really can't go wrong with Iron Man. One of the big innovations of modern Marvel Comics was the concept that heroes would also suffer from relatable human problems, and in practice what this means is that a lot of heroes start with a fully-loaded angst-ridden backstory and origin story, ripe for h/c. So Tony starts out by incurring a heart injury that he fully expects is going to kill him, which he responds to by vowing he won't get close to anyone so they won't be sad when he dies, and throughout the early Silver Age is constantly on the brink of death as his heart nearly gives out on him practically every issue. And then even after his heart gets (mostly) better, there are various plots involving his armor being detrimental to his health and him choosing to fight on anyway. It's hard for me to think of another superhero hitting that particular variety of h/c in exactly the same way. Sure, superheroes risk their lives constantly, because this is how superhero comics work, but Tony is the only one I can think of who is this constantly this badly off, physically. Like, think of all the other heroes who have had a continual solo presence as fan favorites across Marvel history -- Captain America, Thor, Spider-Man, Wolverine, maybe even Deadpool. You know what those guys all have? Healing factors! For the most part, they are not running around continually on the verge of death, and while there are certainly memorable arcs involving several of them being severely injured and/or dead, you really have to work at it. It's not their constant state of affairs, whereas Tony is the kind of superhero who shows up to a fight already bleeding out under his armor. Yeah, I know Extremis gave him a healing factor. But he didn't have it very long, and also he did some extremely dangerous things while he did have it; I'm pretty sure I've never seen Wolverine saying that he'll just solve a problem by cutting off his own foot. So, anyway, yeah, there are a bunch of good arcs involving h/c for Tony. If you're looking for physical injury, he has a whole bunch of heart problems over the years, gets several new hearts, then ruins his brain, et cetera. That level of hurt is basically the background pain of Tony's life; every so often, his heart will get damaged or he'll have to live in the armor or the armor will be killing him, et cetera. If you're looking for more unusual trauma, I am, as always, going to rec Manhunt, a relatively obscure arc in late v3 (IM v3 #65-69) in which Tony has an extremely bad week. His tech is stolen and used to bomb a building. Then he gets shot in the chest. Then while he's at the hospital a nurse tries and fails to poison him, and she then tries to beat him to death. Then he checks himself out of the hospital and a helicopter shoots missiles at him. Then he becomes a fugitive from justice. And then, oh, yeah, he has to fight the Mandarin. It is... a lot. (Volume 3 of Iron Man is pretty good as far as h/c possibilities. You've got a lot of physical pain, Carol's drinking arc, the Sentient Armor, both DreamVision arcs, and Manhunt. Manhunt is finally supposed to be out in trade this month, by the way.) There are of course the drinking arcs, which probably count as their own type of hurt. But if you haven't read the second drinking arc (IM #160-200), please do. Marvel likes to up the stakes on events (Fear Itself, Secret Empire) by making Tony drink, and it does work, I think. I feel like I've spoken at length about Tony's drinking elsewhere so I don't really want to rehash it all here. And then there's the emotional pain. Angst and drama is something that happens to a whole bunch of characters, yes, especially in comics, but somehow Tony seems to end up with possibly more than his fair share of it. Fandom likes to make a lot of Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, so much so that you might think, if you didn't know canon, that this was just fandom running with a throwaway mention of Tony's terrible childhood and making it worse. But, no, canon really does go there with a reasonable amount of frequency. Howard's actual first appearance is in a flashback where he's ordering teenage Tony to break up with his girlfriend because she's the daughter of one of Howard's business rivals. And then we get into the verbal abuse, and the physical abuse, and the time Howard made Tony take his first drink, and the part where Howard was a demon in hell who Tony fought while he insulted him. And more! Currently, in canon, Howard is alive again and is in league with Mephisto for the express purpose of ruining Tony's life. Also when Tony was a baby, Howard tried to trade him to Dracula. I think you can make an argument that fandom is actually showing restraint when compared to canon. Tony also has a whole lot of Terrible Exes whose presence and/or former presence in Tony's life can be used for a lot of hurt. If you've read any amount of fanfic, you probably know that the exes who get the most play in fandom are Sunset Bain and Tiberius Stone -- not that Tony and Ty were ever canonically a couple, of course, but fandom is definitely enamored of this idea. Ty and Sunset both have relatively similar interactions with Tony in canon, in that they are both liars and emotional abusers, heavy on the gaslighting, with the purpose of becoming more successful than Tony. They both also attempt to murder Tony, although this is after he figures out they're evil, at least. (Yes, I know, this is not how either of them usually appear in AUs.) Tony also has a bunch of exes who also have just straight-up tried to murder or otherwise hurt him, sometimes while they are dating, and sometimes before Tony dates them: Whitney Frost, Indries Moomji, Kathy Dare, and Maya Hansen come to mind. There are probably more I'm not thinking of! But, yes, if you want to write about a guy in a series of terrible relationships, please consider Iron Man comics. If mind control is one of your favorite flavors of hurt, Tony's pretty good for that too. We all know about The Crossing. I suppose when I say "mind control" I mostly mean "armor control" because there are an awful lot of plots where someone else makes Tony's armor do whatever they want it to do and Tony is along for the ride -- Demon in a Bottle, Sentient Armor, and Execute Program are the first things that come to mind. There is also a fairly obscure What If that is What If Iron Man Lost The Armor Wars in which Justin Hammer apparently really wants Tony in a mind control collar to take off all his clothes and lounge around in his underwear. No, really. I think a lot of pain for Tony often revolves around his issues with control, generally -- his alcoholism comes into play here again. The entire aftermath of Civil War is also notable for its propensity to hurt Tony over and over and over. Is he stoically soldiering on through his grief after Steve dies? Hell, no! He cries, like, six separate times. He 100% blames himself for Steve's death. It's great. Everybody loves The Confession and the funeral in Fallen Son, but one of my personal favorites is Avengers/Invaders, in which Tony is confronted with a time-traveling Steve from WWII and in order not to screw up the timeline, he can't tell Steve he knows him. He is clearly not coping well. He shuts himself in a room with a giant wall of pictures of Steve! Also there's a part where he has to try to convince Steve he can trust him and he ends up having to tie Steve to a chair to talk to him, and Steve looks at him and asks, "Who did you kill to get where you are?" and I feel like that is probably one of the worst moments in Tony's life. No wonder he gave himself amnesia. So now we might want to ask, okay, but why is hurting Tony in fanfiction so much fun? I mean, I can tell you why I think it's fun. I can't speak for anyone else. One reason is that he is very emotional and very affected by everything he does. Sometimes you will see people complaining that the heroes of m/m fanfic cry too much and this is not realistic. This is not a problem if you're writing Tony! He can cry as much as you want and it's perfectly in character. I don't think it would be as fun to hurt him if he didn't express so much of his pain. But he does. He also feels guilty, and for me that's a very satisfying character element. If he were well-adjusted and didn't blame himself for so many things, it wouldn't be nearly as fun as watching him blame himself for everyone whose death he thinks he is responsible for, whether or not he is. And then he just keeps going, and it's, y'know, nice to watch him be resilient, too. So, I guess, I think hurting him is interesting because it's easy to hurt him, his weak points are pretty obvious, and he reacts a lot. Steve doesn't hurt quite as much as Tony does, in canon. It's certainly possible to hurt him -- I mean, they did actually kill him after Civil War, after all -- but I don't think the canonical patterns of hurting him are as numerous. Obviously deseruming Steve is a fairly popular go-to in terms of physical hurt; he's been deserumed at least three times that I know of. I think's easy to see the appeal there of taking a character who is fairly physically resilient and making him... much less so. Certainly Marvel seems to see the appeal. But other than that I don't think he has any other really common way to get physically injured. Unlike Tony, whose origin story is basically "oh no, I've acquired a disability," Steve's origin story is "I drank a serum that cured all my disabilities." Which, I mean, great wish fulfillment but there's not really as much there to poke at. Pretty much all of Steve's pain is emotional, but, unlike Tony, his pain isn't often specifically in response to someone directly, purposefully hurting him. Hickman's Avengers run is a big exception, yes. His pain seems to come up most often as a kind of situational angst. He feels like a man out of time. He feels out of touch with the modern era, with people his own age. He feels guilt because he feels responsible for Bucky's death. He feels like he can't trust the government and therefore he can't be Captain America. He worries that he doesn't know how to have a normal life. And, yes, these are deep and important worries but it's different than, like, Indries Moomji dumping Tony with the intent to make him sad enough to start drinking. Very few of Steve's villains want to personally ruin Steve's entire life the way Tony's villains do; mostly they just want to do things like bring back the Nazis. In terms of Steve's potential for h/c, I think Steve is harder to hurt than Tony is. Physically, he is definitely harder to hurt. You can deserum him, sure, but unless you want everything you write to be a deseruming fic you're probably not going to want to do that more than a couple of times. And if you want to hurt him physically while he has the serum, you have to hurt him hard. Usually past the point where a regular human would ever survive it. He's also harder to break, emotionally, than Tony is -- which means it's very satisfying when you can get him to break, but this is a guy who's only cried twice (that I remember) in canon. So if you want to get him to cry, you really, really have to wreck him, and he doesn't have as many obvious weak spots. He also doesn't generally sit around blaming himself for things that aren't his fault, and the whole "stewing in guilt" genre of plots for him basically came down to "he was sad that he thought Bucky's death was his fault," and that's really the biggest regret he seems to have, and also Bucky's not dead anymore. The Steve/Tony relationship itself, I would think, is also appealing to h/c fans because canon provides a lot of ways for them to hurt each other. Some people only ship pairings who would never, y'know, take turns beating each other half to death in major event comics. (And for a lot of Marvel Comics history, that was also Steve & Tony, so if you want them to be BFFs who have never fought, you can just set your fic earlier.) They have definitely hurt each other both physically and emotionally, so if you're looking for something easy and satisfying as a h/c fan, you can just read or write something where they... make up. What about Marvel characters other than Steve and Tony? Surely some of them are angsty, yes? Well, yes, but also it depends on the particular flavor of angst that you like. If you like the way Tony hurts, you may very well enjoy Doctor Strange comics, because they have a very similar attitude towards life -- they are both former alcoholics whose origin stories involve physical disabilities, who routinely make tactical decisions that negatively affect their continued existence and/or happiness a whole lot. It's very much an "I must suffer alone in the dark and no one will ever know what I am doing to save the world but it's the right thing to do" sort of vibe. Like, you can read comics where Strange is lying in hell with two broken legs, hallucinating that Clea has finally come to save him. Strange's biggest fear, akin to Tony's control issues, is basically that one day he's going to be an asshole again, so he's out there trying as hard as he can to do good. Also, if you like tentacles, he has all of them. I mean that. Carol also occasionally hits similar angst spots, and her drinking arc is great. A lot of people like Natasha, too; I have read zero Black Widow comics but I get the impression many people enjoy her brand of angst. The mutant metaphor is a little different in terms of overall vibe, but some people really like it as a source of angst -- the whole "protecting a world who hates and fears them" thing. It may not work for you, but if you like your hurt to include things like systemic oppression, go pick up some X-Men comics. Start with something like God Loves Man Kills. I feel like I liked this sort of thing a lot more as a teenager but that I kind of aged out of liking the mutants quite so much. It's also worth mentioning that not everything that hits the spot in one universe will be the same in the others, and I'm mentioning this because I feel like I have to say something about MCU Bucky. MCU fandom seems to get a lot of mileage out of Bucky's guilt about being the Winter Soldier, everything he was forced to do, et cetera. I have definitely read my share of those fics, and FATWS sure went right for that angst too. But as far as I can tell, he doesn't hit the same way at all in 616. And I like him a lot in 616; I'm always pleased when he shows up on a team. (He was so good in Strikeforce. Everyone was so good in Strikeforce.) But the thing is, 616 Bucky is, basically, phenomenally well-adjusted, given everything he's gone through, and I'm including the time he wrestled a bear in a gulag. He gets over having been the Winter Soldier, and now he's just, y'know, a guy with a cool arm who likes to bring guns to every fight to horrify his teammates, and he snarks at Clint. If you're looking for that angst, that is really not him these days. He's all better. So pretty much all that is canon. So what do we do in fandom for h/c? Well, as far as I can tell, a decent amount of it is canon-based or very canon-close -- there are a whole lot of stories exploring the angst of Civil War or Hickman's Avengers run. Tony's drinking comes up a fair amount, and if one of Tony's Evil Exes comes back to haunt him, it's pretty much only Tiberius Stone. I don't think I've read a lot of fic with Steve getting deserumed; it doesn't seem as popular in fandom as in canon. When Steve gets hurt, he tends to just get physically whumped pretty hard, and there's a fair amount of that for Tony too, but of course Steve can take more. There's also a thriving, uh, subgenre of pain involving Hydra Steve doing terrible things to Tony, presumably the terrible things he would have wanted to do to Tony in canon if Tony had had a flesh body. There's the usual kinds of h/c setups that appear in basically every fandom as well -- sickfic, whump, dub-con/non-con. You get the idea. But since fandom in general likes to take specific inspiration from canon, there's a lot of fic where the hurt tends to resemble things that happen more in canon. Like, I feel like comics fic probably has more tentacle fic and more mind control than canons that don't come pre-stocked with those. Probably everybody has a whole lot of "tied up by bad guys," though. And then, of course, fandom brings the comfort that canon does not. This is true in pretty much every fandom -- I mean, you aren't going to find a lot of actual canons where Character A saves Character B from mortal peril and then there's gay sex -- but, like I was saying, comics don't provide a lot of closure before it's onto the next thing. Usually with a different creative team, who has no interest in wrapping up anything from the last team. Steve and Tony talked about the incursions exactly once after Secret Wars and nobody mentioned the part where Steve spent several months trying to hunt Tony down and kill him. Tony is never going to remember the events of Civil War. Hydra Steve died ignominiously in a fire and no one has ever talked about him again. Honestly, if you're looking for a way to get some comfort in your fanfic, picking an event, any event, and just having the characters talk about it will be way more than any of them get in canon. I feel like honestly that can often be a pretty satisfying to read. And even though comics canon physically hurts characters pretty often and pretty badly, they also often skip right past the recovery. Maybe you'll get one page of a character in a hospital bed at the end of the story arc. Maybe you won't. Demon in a Bottle has one splash page of Tony going through alcohol withdrawal and then he's all better. I think Manhunt skips to Tony getting out of the hospital at the end. That's just not a story that they want to tell very often. The second drinking arc is notable in that it devotes almost as many issues to Tony's recovery as it does to getting him to rock-bottom. Similarly, Steve is done with his Nomad angst way way faster than you probably think he is (though The Captain does go in for a fair number of issues). So one of the things we often want to do in fandom is focus on all the bits that canon skips over, both in the "why did no one ever mention this story arc ever again" way and the "wow, so how long are they in the hospital after that" way. That's really all I can think of about h/c! I'm off to write some more of it!

[bullshittierlists]

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR DANGANRONPA V3 (and probably the other games, too, just to be safe)

So, just as a heads up, I made this list a few months ago, I think in the middle of chapter 4. I was going to update it, but I realized that any feelings I had were just made stronger and the list was still relatively accurate. Here are my thoughts:

I see no god up here other than me

Kirumi Tojo - As you may know about me, I can typically tell who my favorite characters are going to be before I indulge myself in a series. This has especially rung true throughout Danganronpa, I was able to correctly guess Taka and Gundham as my respective favorites before actually seeing them in action. Let me tell you that Kirumi surprised me. I originally guessed K1-B0 as my favorite and while he’s still up there, he is nowhere near Kirumi. I realized she was my favorite the moment chapter 2 ended. Not only were her execution and plan wonderful and brilliantly done, her last-ditch plea to convince everyone to let her live sold her for me. Not only did this plea make sense, it almost worked and I kinda wish it would’ve. Her motive was almost completely selfless and she worked damn hard to escape. Her execution was the only time I cried during this game because I wanted so badly for her to escape, but I knew that all of her efforts were futile. I know her biggest criticism is that her plan from hiding Ryoma’s body was completely unnecessary, but I like to believe she was just nervous and overthought the whole thing. I mean, this had to go perfectly in order for her to save her country, of course she’s going to add a few too many steps.

Miu Iruma - Okay, I know this is going to sound fake, but I actually really love the dichotomy of her character. The way that she acts so self-righteous but is actually quite self-conscious really stood out to me. Of course she’s funny and hot, too, but I feel it’s important to really appreciate the way her character was written. It amazes me that she was written to be the least likable character in the entire series and still ended up being one of my favorites.

You’re the best

K1-B0 - Yes, I type out his name every time. As I already mentioned, he was my original guess for favorite character, but it obviously didn’t work out that way. He stayed in his position of first for a while, but I always knew it wasn’t meant to last, I just didn’t know which character would take his place. Even besides my doubts, I still love K1-B0, I just wish more could’ve been done with him in the earlier chapters. There are several opportunities for him to be a really funny character and have good interactions with Kokichi and Miu, but he just comes off as annoying. I feel like he only really started to be utilized after Miu died with Monotaro and I really enjoyed their dynamic, I just wish we could’ve had some of this side of K1-B0 before this point.

Kokichi Oma - This spot probably isn’t as subjective as I’d like it to be. Every time Kokichi was on screen, I would get visibly annoyed, but I knew I was in for a treat figuring out his deeper intents behind what he’s saying. The only reason I really like Kokichi at all is because he’s fun to analyze. It gets boring to analyze Nagito because his motivation is pretty much just a mix of “hope” and “he’s crazy.” Kokichi’s character trait of lying makes it so fun to individually analyze each of his lines to figure out whether he’s telling the truth and why or why not. Other than that, I guess he has some funny dialogue with Miu sometimes.

Gonta Gokuhara - I really don’t know. I know this is way too early to be unsure about characters, but I just know I couldn’t put him any lower, but I also couldn’t put him any higher. He’s just such a sweetheart, but that’s about where the substance ends. I adored every time he was on my screen, but everything that would’ve been fun to analyze about him just leads back to Kokichi. I still really enjoy his presence, though. I’d like a big Gonta hug.

Kaede Akamatsu - I’ll just say it, I think she would’ve made for a better protagonist. I’ll talk about this later, but Shuichi’s character development doesn’t really feel like it goes anywhere and the twist doesn’t feel worth it because of that. I think the twist should still have been incorporated, but with the roles reversed. Either way, we got what we got, and what we got was tears from Clair de Lune. But seriously, she really is a great pianist. I’ve been trying to learn the piece for ages and it’s still too complicated for me. I mean, it’s in 9/8 for God’s sake. Good for her, regardless.

Tenko Chabashira - Tenko’s a weird case. I didn’t actually care for her that much until quite literally a few lines before she died. Fun fact: I spoiled this entire series for myself before I ended up playing it and I’m still mad at myself. This meant that I was just waiting for all of the deaths to happen, especially Tenko’s. I was fully aware that every line could be her last during the seance, but I wasn’t aware that she would pull on my heart strings before she went. When she tells Himiko that she’ll do the seance in her place so she can talk to Angie, I literally almost started crying. Before this, Tenko was just kind of annoying, but not too bad, but this moment really solidified her spot for me. She really just wanted to help Himiko and I wish she had chosen a better target for her affections.

Hey, I think you’re pretty cool, I like you a lot

Shuichi Saihara - Time to elaborate on what I said for Kaede. I actually really enjoyed Shuichi’s character development throughout the first three chapters. Before coming to Hope’s Peak, he was afraid to hurt people with his detective skills. Kaede notices this and helps him through it, passing the reins to Kaito once she passes. Shuichi convicts Kaede and later Kirumi, much to everyone’s detriment, but they’re all okay with it (Nobody was really super sad about Korekiyo to begin with, lol). Then, starting in chapter 4, everyone just kinda flips on him. Shuichi + the rest of the gang - Kokichi all believe that Gonta is innocent and Shuichi tries to prove this. Instead of supporting him, everyone (especially Kaito) tries to... stop him??? from proving it??? They’re all just in agreement that it wasn’t Gonta, but don’t want to proceed with the investigation to figure out who it was instead. It’s really frustrating and made my overall experience much less enjoyable. This is bumped up a few notches in chapter 5 with Maki. I understand that she was part of the whole case, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying that she won’t let me prove Kaito was the victim. It just feels like the character development was all for nothing and every student feels like a human obstacle (except K1-B0, of course). Still relatable and emo, though.

Rantaro Amami - I would make the joke everyone expects, but I’m on my laptop and I don’t know how to get to the emoji keyboard.

Ryoma Hoshi - I genuinely don’t have anything to say about Ryoma. He’s my halfway point because I don’t have anything particularly for him and I don’t have anything particularly against him, either. Go off, funky little cat man.

Kaito Momota - He got on my nerves in chapter 4, but he was a genuinely sweet character that I really enjoyed talking to. Any time he would talk about the stars, I would swoon because he’s just such a natural romantic. Not really my type, though. Very average.

Monophanie - Legally you can’t ask me why the monokubs are where they are. She’s voiced by Natalie Hoover (Sonia) and I guess that’s my only reasoning.

Monotaro - I really just liked his interactions with K1-B0 in chapter 4. Other than that, I greatly disliked his and Monophanie’s presence in Gonta’s execution. 0/10 worst use for monokubs.

Monodam - A nice, non-distracting addition to Korekiyo’s execution. But he had so much potential and just threw it all away. Apparently I’m a basketball dad from a high school movie now.

I remember you

Angie Yonaga - Many times, I’ve found myself asking who I ship from the series and this love triangle comes to mind. Of Angie, Himiko, and Tenko... I only really like Tenko. I don’t hate Angie’s cult stuff as much as everyone else seems to, but she didn’t have nearly enough of a presence for me to latch onto outside of the cult stuff, which was funny, I will admit.

Maki Harukawa - I was so excited the whole game for her to get cool. I knew she was going to get cool, I just didn’t know when or how. But then, it was chapter 5 already and she hadn’t gotten cool in my eyes yet. I was really meh on her by that chapter anyway, but her being annoying really knocked her down a few pegs. She got a couple extra points for surprising me during the case, but not enough to bump her up any spots.

Himiko Yumeno - I was rooting for her to be crushed under the rock at the end. She was fine before chapter 3, but then they tried to develop her with the Akane treatment and it didn’t work for me at all. She just got on my nerves during the third trial and continued to contribute nothing throughout the rest of the game. During chapter 5 and 6, it’s like the writers just completely forgot that she was there. This would’ve been fine if they weren’t the last couple of chapters and she was one of about 6 people left alive. She had a role to play and didn’t play it in the slightest. The most she was utilized after chapter 3 was as Miu’s replacement post-chapter 5. Someone needed to fill the dirty jokes quota and I guess Himiko was chosen. #GiveTenkoABetterLoveInterest2021

Monosuke - The only thing I remember him doing throughout the entire game was distract me from Kirumi’s exectuion. Not a fan.

You are the worst. Literal scum. Leave this planet and never return

Korekiyo Shinguji - Okay, listen. He’s not that bad. His design is actually one of the best, in my opinion and I love his dedication to his craft. However, he just creeps me out whenever he’s on screen and I’d prefer not to be around him. It’s not even the sister thing, I honestly think that’s funny and a nice change of pace, but his overall demeanor is creepy. Not to mention he’s played by Todd Haberkorn and he’s been in one too many roles recently. Hopefully I’ll get over it, but as for now, that loses him points.

Tsumugi Shirogane - I know, not exactly an unpopular opinion. She’s just annoying and downright pisses me off a lot of the time with her “plain” shtick. I already knew she was going to be the mastermind, so most of the game was just me waiting for her to reveal it. I swear, I almost couldn’t take it every time she said something like, “What if there isn’t a mastermind?” “What?? There’s a mastermind????” Just stfu Tsumugi. You all are lucky I don’t have the energy to talk about 3-6 right now.

Monokid - Hate the tongue sprite, that’s literally the only reason he’s down here. He’s also kind of annoying, but made the best addition to an execution out of all of the monokubs. His death was one of the few things that surprised me in this game and it was a welcome twist. I was sick of him by this point, but was still incredibly shocked when he was pushed into the execution. Then, his severed head rolls out to all of the students looking on in shock at Kaede’s death. Masterful. Still hate the tongue sprite.

There we go. Definitely my least favorite cast out of the whole series, but it’s still fun to love on and hate on a lot of the characters, as per usual. There are just a few too many in the middle tier (metaphorically speaking) that are either uninteresting or just don’t get their time to shine. Maybe they’ll eventually grow on me more, but I doubt it.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

MAKER'S SCHEDULE, 631, BRIEFLY

I'm a writer, and writers always get disproportionate attention. How did they stand it? Their main expenses are setting up the company, which costs a couple thousand Altair owners, but without this software they were programming in machine language. Those ideas are so rare that you can't find some way to reach me, how are you going to create a successful company? For a startup, managing them is one of the first 10 employees you'll have almost as much.1 Families are entitled to their own traditions, and who the competitors are and why this company is going to beat them.2 In the late 90s my professor friends used to complain that they couldn't get grad students, because all the undergrads were going to let hosts rent out space on their floors during conventions. Part of the reason I can't believe it will be more like being able to play the two firms off each other as well as talent, so this answer works out to be important, because a we invest such small amounts, and b we think it's better if startups operate out of their own premises, however crappy, than the offices of their investors.

If you're a freelancer or a small company doesn't ensure freedom.3 What makes a good startup idea, it's sort of like having a guilty conscience about something.4 There's an idea that has turned out to be a startup. For a lot of work.5 Which is exactly how I'd describe the way lions seem in the wild seem about ten times more alive. You probably can't overcome anything so pervasive as the model of work is a job. Don't sit on their boards. What really bothers parents about their teenage kids having sex are complex.6 It's not so much as that they never pander: they never say or do something because that's what the audience wants. So if you're going to optimize a number, the one to choose is your growth rate to compensate. In social settings, I found that I got over 100 other responses listing the surprises they encountered. If you don't understand YC.

At the time any random autobiographical novel by a recent college grad could count on more respectful treatment from the literary establishment. The angel now owns 200/1200 shares, or a job. The kind of question on the application form that asks what you're going to clear these lies out of your head, you're going to clear these lies out of your head, you're going to do, at least, nothing good.7 I often recommend that founders act like consultants—that they wanted to.8 In a startup, you don't even know that.9 If these guys had thought they were starting companies, they might have been.10 Viaweb entirely with angel money; it never occurred to us that investors were too conservative here—that they do what they'd do if they'd been in Nebraska, like Evan Williams was at their age? The saddest windows close when other people die.

And when you propagate that constraint, the result is that each species thrives in groups of a certain group, that seems nearly impossible to shake. Someone who's figured that out will automatically focus more on the idea. The only explanation is: by definition. It's not just a figure of speech to say that the outcome is zero. The artists who benefited most from this were the ones who had preserved a child's confidence, like Klee and Calder. Once you have all the college students, you get rich is that there are many degrees of it. It could be replaced on any of these axes it has already started to be on most. When you're a little kid and you're asked to do something differently.

But not all waste is bad. Later I learned it hadn't been so neat, and the three founders each get 25%. Along with such outright lies, there must have been told a lot of economic history, and I understand the startup world is evolving away from their current model.11 If you seem really good we'll accept you anyway. Even in the rare cases where a clever hack makes your fortune, you probably have an idea.12 At least, that's how we'd describe it in present-day languages, if they'd had them. The way you get taught programming in college would be like teaching writing as grammar, without mentioning that its purpose is to make me feel better. After two years, the un-rapacious that you only extract half as much from users as you could. If you have something that no competitor does and that some subset of users urgently need, you have to seem like you understand technology.13 On that scale, every negotiation is unique.14 I was cynical about VCs, but the way he composed them into molecules was near faultless.15 But unfortunately when you graduate, as long as you want.16

Notes

Thanks to Daniel Sobral for pointing this out. Make it clear when you ad lib you end up reproducing some of the things they've tried on the LL1 mailing list. What you learn in college or what grades you got in them, initially, to sell earlier than you expect. But while this is also a name.

In fact most of them. But try this experiment is that if you conflate them you're aiming at. The worst explosions happen when unpromising-seeming startups do badly.

Y Combinator certainly never asks what classes you took in college. This approach has not worked well, but this would work better, and that modern corporate executives were, we try to accept a particular number.

Aristotle the core: the editor in Lisp, they may try to accept that investors are induced by the surface similarities. Com of their assets; and with that additional constraint, you can't help associating it with such a statement would merely be eccentric.

Most word problems in school math textbooks are bad: Webpig, Webdog, Webfat, Webzit, Webfug. Without the prospect of publication, the assembly line, the closest anyone has come is Secretary of Labor Statistics, about 28%.

I think the usual way to fight. The next time you raise as you can see the apples, they made much of it, and no one who's had the discipline to pull it off. Successful founders are driven by people trying to decide whether to go to college, they would implement it and make a lot of investors caring either.

P nonspam are both genuinely formidable, and the exercise of stock options than any preceding president, he was otherwise unoccupied, to get into the heads of would-be startup founders who had been a good idea to make more money. The best thing for startups is very long: it might take an hour over the Internet, like hedge funds, are available only to buy corporate bonds to market faster; the Reagan administration's comparatively sympathetic attitude toward takeovers; the crowds of shoppers drifting through this huge mall reminded George Romero of zombies. That it might take an hour over the Internet. Yes, I had zero effect on the relative weights?

The VCs recapitalize the company, and yet managed to screw up twice at the data, it's probably good grazing. I should add that we're not. They did turn out to be a win to include things in shows that people start to pull ahead in the field.

Galbraith was clearly puzzled that corporate executives would work so hard to mentally deal with the founders gained from running through their initial attitude. Sparse Binary Polynomial Hash Message Filtering and The Old Way. One thing that drives most people emerge from the moment it's created indeed, from hour to hour that the worm might have done all they could be overcome by changing the shape of the bizarre consequences of this: You may not be far less demand for them.

Indiana University Bloomington 1868-1970.

Trevor Blackwell points out that taking time to come up with an associate cold-emailing a startup could grow big in revenues without including the order of 10,000, because investors already owned more than their competitors, who may have realized this, but simply because he was skeptical about Viaweb too. See Greenspun's Tenth Rule. We just store the data, it's software that doesn't seem to want them; you have significant expenses other than salaries that you decide the price, and for filters it's textual.

P 500 CEOs in the sophomore year. It was only because he had more fun than he'd had in school, and philosophy the imprecise half. The philistines have now missed the video boat entirely.

As we walked out we ran into Yuri Sagalov. Emmett Shear writes: I'd argue the long tail for sports may be common in, you'll have to replace you. It took a painfully long time.

The reason Y Combinator.

This is an instance of a safe will be coordinating efforts among partners. In practice it just feels like a loser they're done, she doesn't like getting attention in the definition of property.

The thing to do sales yourself initially. 5%. At first I didn't care about GPAs.

Thanks to Paul Buchheit, Gary Sabot, Trevor Blackwell, Tiffani Ashley Bell, and Jeff Arnold for sharing their expertise on this topic.

[iaintyourbro]

Imo Tifa is Cloud’s real catalyst. Some people say it’s Aerith... yeah sure... she is in some way, but only on soldier Cloud in OG. Like, in the first place he wanted to be someone strong hence why he became soldier, cuz of Tifa. She saved & brought real Cloud back in the lifestream. She vented and knocked some sense into him to bring him out of his misery. Why does everybody sleeps on Tifa’s efforts like 🤷🏻‍♀️

Hey anon.

I honestly have a very difficult time comprehending it myself. Generally when I play these games the first time, I take them at face value. I think most people do that. From a logical standpoint, the first time a person plays OG, they probably do think that Aerith is meant to be the love interest because she’s pink and cute and a white mage type of character. 

This is the fun thing with stereotypes... Whether or not there’s any romantic interaction between Cloud and Aerith, people automatically assumed the moment he wakes up in that church that she’s the love interest. I think this was also done on purpose to further the whole illusion thing. It used people’s preconceived ideas about romance against them.

In Remake, they make it much more obvious that Cloud has an issue with his memories and personality, and that his subconscious is heavily attached to Tifa. He stares at her constantly.  

Aerith then dies. In real life we do not continue to pursue dead people that we knew for a very short amount of time. That seems... ridiculous. They also don’t really dwell on it in game. After her death, she’s not mentioned again until they’re trying to figure out what to do with meteor. This is well past her death. 

You first go snowboarding and through all of the Icicle Area, then up to the Northern Crater where you’re slammed with the line from Cloud that Tifa’s opinion is the only one that matters to him, then Cloud falls into the Lifestream. Then we get Tifa who is very upset about everything, almost gets executed, has to slap a bitch a few times, gets back on the Highwind, and her number one priority is to save Cloud. You get him back and go on some more Huge Materia missions, can do side quests, and then when you actually start to go down the what to do with Meteor path, is when she’s brought up because of Holy. 

But for the whole Lifestream thing...

Tifa is mostly selfless throughout the game. She puts others before herself constantly. I honestly thought her turning to what she felt and what she wanted was a good character building moment. I think her one desire to find Cloud was the most selfish thing she did during the entire game, and it was about her feelings. And about Cloud. She knew nobody else was going to look for Cloud - she didn’t want him alone. 

When they do find him, she’s done. She’s staying there no matter what. At this point I think she’s already lost everything else, and finding Cloud somewhat alive, the last thing she really has from her past, she’s not letting it go. She sticks by him. She helps him find himself. She continues to stick by him. 

She almost dies sticking by him. She saves him from himself by helping him rebuild who he truly is. All is revealed, it’s obvious he has feelings for her that go way back, and that’s that. At this point, I think most people who played the game with no preconceived ideas realize what’s mostly going on. I do think FFVII requires multiple playthroughs to get everything, but the jist of things is there. 

So most people don’t question this - Cloud loves Tifa, okay - let’s mosey. 

The ending I think is where people start to argue, even though it’s not supposed to be romantic, I don’t think. He says the line “I think I can meet her there” which people take as he’s going to meet Aerith there. Tifa doesn’t react badly to this. This is after the Lifestrem, after the Highwind, and then suddenly he’s just gonna drop her? No. This is about them realizing they’re probably going to die. 

Some people couldn’t accept she died, they can’t accept what happens after that, so they shit on Tifa. They know she’s the catalyst for him, she’s the reason he wanted to join SOLDIER (he tells us this himself), she’s the reason he finally snapped at Sephiroth in Nibelheim (after everything else), she’s the reason he comes out of his first bout of severe mako poisoning, and ultimately she’s the reason he survives the second bout. 

After all the shit that happened, after almost killing their friend twice, ultimately causing Meteor to get summoned, after it all, she still stuck by him.

Then we get AC. Now AC is interesting because people think Cloud acted like he did in AC the entire two years after FFVII ends. He doesn’t. He’s happy - the devs came out and made sure people knew that he was very happy with Tifa and the children. He runs from Tifa for a week or two. People think he took off for months. He runs off due to getting Geostigma, and can’t bear to have Tifa and the children watch him die. He knows what happens to Tifa when people close to her die - she starts doing really stupid, drastic things. So you have Denzel dying already and now Cloud has the same problem. He ran, but it wasn’t to go find Aerith or get away from Tifa because he didn’t love her - he ran because he did love her, and in his mind.. well... he couldn’t deal with the fact that he was going to ultimately hurt her. Badly. 

Cloud realizing Tifa is injured and knocked out in the church shows how much he cares about her. The second Tifa that he yells is fully of emotion. Geostigma also acts up when he has high anxiety or an emotional event. Right after this, he has a major Geostigma episode and passes out. You can’t say he doesn’t care - deeply - about Tifa. He’s scared out of his mind here. He thinks she’s going to die. And he blames himself because she came to the church looking for him.

Cloud sees Tifa is alive in the simulation here.

After he thinks she dies.

A lot of people think that Tifa is attached to Cloud and useless without him, but I think it’s the other way around. Tifa could live a normal life without Cloud. Cloud wouldn’t be able to live a normal life without Tifa with the story of the game. You can’t say what if he didn’t get experimented on, because he does get experimented on, he’s injected with Jenova cells, and has severe mako poisoning. Which she can at least get him out of to function. Tifa was literally created for Cloud so he actually has a shot at life and doesn’t die in the gutter of the Sector 7 train station.

FFVII had a main theme of life and death and learning to live after death.

And that learning to live wasn’t just about Cloud.

It was about Barret who lost his wife, hometown, and ultimately ends up losing his best friend when he thinks he found him. He deals with his loses by channeling his passion for revenge. He vows to care for Dyne’s daughter. He does blame himself partially for the entire thing even happening, since he agreed with Shinra, but ultimately doesn’t let it consume him. He goes back during AC to help rebuilt Corel to make amends.

Tifa also learns to live after heavy loss. Tifa loses her mother as a young child. Her entire hometown is burned down, her father killed, she’s almost killed. In both cases of her parent’s death, she makes very irrational decisions to cope with it. She thinks going up Mt Nibel will allow her to see her mother. She thinks she can take on Sephiroth after he kills her father. She also does this after she thinks Cloud dies. She decides she can go to a brothel and question a crime lord to give her info... Not a good choice. I’m sure at this point, most of the folks reading this have had to deal with somebody they loved dying. The first few days really is bizarre. You’re in a daze. Your decision making skills are shit. You’re tired. Tifa ignores the fact that she’s in a daze and makes decisions anyway to cope with it. But she lives. She rebuilds her life in Midgar, she has a job, has a place to live, and then decides to go the Barret route and get revenge.

Vincent is the most similar to Cloud in how he deals with loss and guilt. He sleeps. For 20 years. Vincent goes from Turk Viincent to Eternal Sin Vincent. He blames himself for all that happened to Lucretcia. He’s alone. Sleeping. For 20 years. This probably would be a good example of what would have happened to Cloud if Tifa wasn’t there. He would have spiraled in to guilt and - ultimately - would have died. Vincent couldn’t die, so sleep it was.

As for Tifa and Cloud, specifically. Cloud probably wouldn’t have joined the military if Tifa never fell down Mt. Nibel. He probably would have stayed in Nibelheim (or followed her wherever she went, he did have it pretty bad for her) and then they all would have perished. It’s to be assumed that Sephiroth would have still come to Nibelheim and burned it down. Cloud and Tifa had nothing to do with him doing that. All of the catalysts for that were from before those two were even born, so nothing was going to stop that. 

Without Tifa, Cloud probably would have died at the Sector 7 train station. I think the flashback with Zack in the OG (even though its optional) is to show how bad of shape he was in. The guards say to leave him because he’s pretty much done for. Somehow he does make it to Midgar, but I don’t think he would have lasted much longer. Zack got him 90% of the way back. Tifa did the rest and ultimately brought him back to “human status” even though it wasn’t really him at this point. 

People start to shit on Tifa because she doesn’t come out and tell Cloud right away that somethings wrong with him. She doesn’t correct him about the flashback in Kalm. She keeps it going. The thing is, she admits this was wrong. That it’s a character flaw. Literally right after Cloud falls in to the Lifestream after giving Sephiroth the Black Materia, she tells the story of finding Cloud at the Sector 7 train station, and how she’s always been this way... She’s non-confrontational. She didn’t want to upset him. I think she thought that something bad really would have happened to him. 

And ultimately, she saves him again. 

Nobody else could have helped Cloud rebuild himself. Nobody.

Tifa is the only person in the world at this point that knew Cloud prior to the events of the Nibelheim Incident. She is the only one that could guide him. She’s one of the only survivors from the Nibelheim incident. Nobody else could have done it. Cloud’s subconscious is almost entirely made up of things about Tifa. The Promise, Tifa’s mother’s death and the Mt. Nibel incident, the reactor and how he hid from her because he was ashamed he didn’t make First Class SOLDIER. Every piece of his subconscious has to do with Tifa somehow. 

[simpbur]

hello! i would like ur 40 song wiblur playlist

anon thank you so much for asking <333 while it would’ve been easier to just drop the link i have so many thoughts about everything so i explained why every single song has its spot on this list which was IMMENSELY fun for me

(also: if anyone does want the link i can provide both apple music and spotify but if u would like the apple music link i’d rather it be through dms or an ask off anon that i can make private!)

another also: i bolded all the songs for ease of perusing if you don’t want the director’s commentary and bolded + italicized the ones that i think fit Very Well

another another also: wrote the second bit of this on my laptop and the keyboard is p funky so if there are any typos or things that do not make sense i will try to fix them asap haha

saint bernard by lincoln: this is one of those like. Dream SMP Songs that i added because it fits into so many different relationships and plot lines and arcs but i think there’s some connection to c!wlbur somewhere out there. idk i asked my friend and he said to add it so this one goes out to him

amnesia was her name by lemon demon: ghostbur song ghostbur song! mostly comes from this lovely animatic

o valencia! by the decemberists: okay this is one of those songs that only really has one lyric that fits but is an absolutely banger so it’s here anyway. you’ll also notice a trend of quasi love songs that i relate to c!wilbur’s perception of l’manburg and i think this song shows this in a really cool way, esp with the chorus (‘and i swear to the stars i’ll burn this whole city down’ is The Line)

achilles come down by gang of youths: another one of those Dream SMP Songs. i think this fits better with c!tommy but i like it too much to remove it. this is a somewhat common trend with the earlier songs on this playlist (i’ve been building this thing since january, for reference)

brave as a noun by ajj: another Dream SMP Song. i think certain verses fit better than others when it comes to wilbur’s character but that ones that work really work

harness your hopes by pavement: a song that is one here for vibes alone. i have no idea what these lyrics mean. all i know is that i heard it, thought of c!wilbur, and put it on the playlist. thank you all for being here

evelyn evelyn by evelyn evelyn: sad-ist made this a tommy and tubbo song (as she should) so it’s validity on this playlist is questionable but folks used to compare it to wilbur and tommy’s relationship during the pogtopia arc and i think some points were made there

the execution of all things by rilo kiley: i’m so excited to get here because this was the first song i put on the playlist that i think really works and i thumb nailed an animatic for the last verse and november 16th so! i think it’s a good l’manburg song and the last verse has some good ghostbur lines (‘and lately you’re all alone with nothing left but sleep/but sleep never comes to you, it’s the guilt and forever wakefulness of the weak’)

i’m just your problem from adventure time: this ones a bit tricky since at is my favorite show of all time and i cannot detach this song from its in-show context very well but there is a very cool animatic with this song that landed it a spot on the playlist

man burning by josh ritter: almost became an animatic but the audio i wanted to use (which i recorded at a josh ritter concert and it’s just him and his guitar and there’s echo and it’s very haunting and pretty) has my stepbrother singing in the background and i could not edit it out so. that will probably not happen. but anyways the only hole i would pick in this song is that it’s mostly about self sabotage which isn’t really applicable but i think the imagery is cool

mamma mia by abba: here me out. here me out. this is another song that fits so well and i have spent so many hours thinking about this and somewhere there is a note on my phone explaining how every single line relates to c!wilbur’s entire arc from founding l’manburg to the resurrection (made when we thought gbur was going to get resurrected in january) and just. the metaphorical ‘you’ is l’manburg does this make any sense (another almost animatic except now that wilbur’s actually back it might become an actual animatic)

the other side of paradise by glass animals: no idea why this is here other than being a Dream SMP Song. it’s good tho

infinitesimal by mother mother: they saaaaay it stared with a big bang but they saaaaaaaay it came out of a small thing latelyyyyy i’ve been feeling like a big bang You Know

curses by the crane wives: had a thing drawn out for this song showing the comparisons between c!wilbur and c!niki because of the chorus and i think the last two lyrics of said chorus are the best thing about this one

lonely eyes by the front bottoms: gotta admit that i have no idea how this song got on here but i’ve come to associate it with ghostbur based on vibes alone. it’s a friendly song he’s a friendly ghost it works. the other tfb song coming up fits a bit better methinks

king of new orleans by better than ezra: not to put better than ezra on my c!wilbur playlist but like. something about the whole ‘tasing something up to let it fall’ motif makes me think

get me away from here, i’m dying by belle and sebastian: another almost animatic song (there’s a trend here). not only does the story told in this song work i like the lines ‘play me a song to set me free/nobody writes them like they used to so it may as well be me’ in relation to my l’manburg

montgomery forever by the front bottoms: certain bits and pieces of this song fit so well, specifically the chorus and those bits in the last two choruses Yeah (’montgomery forever and ever and ever and now they’re blowing it up/(x2)/as you started laughing and crying and trying to explain how all you want to do is leave’)

don’t look back in anger by oasis: out of all my almost animatic songs, this one got the furthest. the animatic, which I got pretty far in thumbnailing, was about wilbur and tommy and kind of drawing comparisons between their characters, also about the revolution in general. maybe i’ll finish that animatic one day idk 

snow by ricky montgomery: i wish i had a link for this so bad but!! saw art on twitter!! with the lyric ‘bury me six feet in snow’!! and went ahfsdjfk!!

burning pile by mother mother: a Dream SMP Song. also a jam there’s no real specific connection for this one but i think it could fit in a couple of ways

rounds by the oh hellos: in the same position as snow except it was on tumblr..... @ whoever made this comic i saw these lyrics in your brain is massive and your art is incredible

lovely by mt. eddy: on here for vibes alone. there’s something in the lyrical content too, but my thoughts in that regard are not very fleshed out

adventures in solitude by the new pornographers: ah yes..... the song that prompted this all...... this is a beautiful and incredibly well written song and if you’re going to listen to any song off of this playlist i’d encourage you to listen to this one. it’s place of here is mostly cause of the chorus but the imagery in the verses could all represent a part of c!wilbur and i’d love to explore that more

caught in the middle by paramore: obligatory paramore song. i think it got on here because limbo = ‘middle’ but i’m not quite sure. on the verge of being deleted if i can find a better pmore song

delicate by damien rice: one of the oddest songs on this list and i am well aware that it sticks out like a sore thumb. a song that’s on here pretty much because of one lyric, which is ‘and why’d you sing hallelujah/if it means nothing to you’ which i related to both eret’s betrayal and how my l’manburg is hallelujah yknow

bang! by ajr: almost animatic song. i think we all know what the bang is here

somewhere only we know by lily allen: ik i said don’t look back in anger has the most potential to get made into an animatic but this song might actually take it place. on par with adventures in solitude in terms of how pretty of a song it is, and probably even moreso. it’s kind of turned into a ghostbur song in my head, and makes me cry like an infant child every time i hear it

a pearl by mitski: i cannot defend this song’s place on here past the line ‘it’s just that i fell in love with a war and nobody told me it ended’

eight by sleeping at last: the official c!wilbur song needs a spot on here <3 if i can dig up the clip of cc!wilbur talking about this song in relation to his character i’ll add it but until then yeah <3

always by rilo kiley: no idea why this is on here but it fits well!! could not tell you why!! banger!!

celebration guns by stars: it’s a hauntingly beautiful song about war, and kind of one of those that necessarily isn’t about wilbur but moreso his place in the story? idk how to explain it but yes

passerine by the oh hellos: it’s. it’s from the . the fic. yeah h

oh, you are the roots that sleep beneath my feet and hold the earth in place by bright eyes: added this after the real resurrection and i think it’s because fo the imagery? also the last verse

we are beautiful, we are doomed by los campesinos!: all i have to say is ‘i cannot emphasize enough that my body/is a badly designed, poorly put together vessel/harboring these diminishing, so called vital organs/i hope my heart goes first, i hope my heart goes first!’ has always made me think of pogtopia era wilbur :(

dead weight by jack stauber: no real connection other than eret played this song during a break during the ghostbur’s january ‘resurrection’ and i heard it and went :0

point me at lost lands by tired pony: gives me season on l’manburg vibes..... i love how free and passionate it sounds and that's p much the only reason it’s on this list haha

ghosting by mother mother: added this five seconds ago because i could not BELIEVE it was not on here. ghostbur song. mans sang it on that one stream with the reverb and everything. the lyrics ‘i will be kind and i’ll be sweet/if you stop staring straight through me’ hit particularly hard back when everyone thought that ghostbur was actually wilbur in disguise 

[thecassadilla]

Bloom

Pairing: Kristanna

Word Count: 2,488/AO3

Summary: Though their initial meeting was the result of an unfortunate situation, Anna and Kristoff begin to grow something wonderful, together. 

Author’s Note: Hi everyone! This is my contribution for Kristanna Week Day 1 - Red! I had a billion ideas for this color because of all of the emotion attached to it but I couldn’t execute any of them well enough. As is typical for me, I finished this very last minute (aka at 3am). Also, I know nothing about flowers lol. Enjoy!!!

The first time that they met had been a pure coincidence. Kristoff had picked up a late shift at his parents’ flower shop on Valentine’s Day, when he knew the only customers would be the desperate, last-minute “I need to bring some type of flower home or my significant other will k*ll me” people. He always took the shift as a courtesy to his adoptive parents, so they could enjoy a night off and go to dinner or a movie and celebrate the holiday.

He was neither here nor there about Valentine’s Day. He didn’t think it was a meaningless holiday like many of his single friends did, but he wasn’t necessarily fond of it, either - mainly because of the association to the flower shop and all of the craziness that ensued in the weeks leading up to it. He was expected the night to go exactly as they had in Valentines Day pasts; a few late night stragglers but otherwise quiet.

What was particularly unexpected that night was when the little bell on the door of the shop jingled and a young couple walked in near closing time. 

The man couldn’t even be bothered to pull the phone away from his ear before telling the woman, “Here’s my credit card, pick something fast so we could get the hell out of here.”

He watched in silence as the woman, on the verge of tears, slowly perused the shop while her boyfriend-slash-husband or whoever he was waited by the door and continued his phone conversation. 

“Can I help you?” Kristoff asked when she came close enough to the cash register. She was quite beautiful; bright blue eyes, a dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks, which happened to be rosy from the cold weather, and long, auburn hair that stood out against her plum-colored pea coat and grey knit hat. He also couldn’t help but notice the large, sparkly diamond ring on her left hand. Married.

She shakily sighed, the tears pooling in her eyes threatening to spill over at any second. “I know it’s late, but do you have any roses left?”

He nodded. “We do.”

“Those are traditional for Valentine’s Day, right?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered.

“Can I have a dozen roses, please?”

“Sure. How do you want them?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you want them with babies’ breath? Wrapped in paper or in a vase? Or -”

She shook her head. “You know what...never mind. Thank you for your help.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” she said, her voice cracking. “Valentine’s Day is almost over, anyway.”

He glanced up at the clock on the wall; it was quarter to eleven, which meant that there was just over an hour left of the holiday. His heart was breaking for her. 

“Anna!” her husband sternly called. “Let’s go!”

She turned toward the entrance of the shop. “Thank you again.”

“Wait,” he said, plucking a red rose from the pile behind the register and holding it out to her. “I feel really bad.”

“You shouldn’t be the one to feel bad.”

“Please take it.”

The tiniest inkling of a smile appeared on her quivering lips as she accepted the flower. “Thank you.”

He nodded sympathetically, and watched as she walked back over to her husband.

“Excellent, you didn’t spend much,” the man said smugly, snatching the credit card from her hands. He was still on the phone, which was now sandwiched between his shoulder and his ear. “Are you satisfied enough to go home now?”

She looked back in his direction one last time as her husband grabbed her by the hand and pulled her out of the shop, jostling the bell once again. Kristoff was so enraged that he was practically seeing red; he’d seen plenty people come in over the years and buy flowers last minute, but that had to be the worst instance he’d ever seen. He couldn’t fathom how a grown man could treat his wife so...poorly. If that was what happened in public, he couldn’t imagine what happened in private. With his jaw clenched, he made it through the remainder of his shift, counted the cash register, and booked it out of there as quickly as he could, stewing in his own anger for the rest of the night and much of the following day.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The second time they met was intentional, though not on his behalf; nearly two weeks had passed, and Kristoff had managed to put the entire incident behind him - or so he thought. He’d finished his shift and was packing up to leave on a Saturday afternoon when one of his coworkers came to the break room and grabbed his attention.

“Kristoff, there’s a young woman looking for you.”

He furrowed his eyebrows. “What?”

“A young woman asked if she could speak to the tall, blond guy and you’re the only person that fits that description.”

He sighed, mentally preparing himself to get an earful from a woman whose husband bought flowers for his mistress or something equally as ridiculous. It happened quite frequently and he was always the one to take the heat as opposed to the person who’d actually caused the problem. 

Instead, he was quite shocked when he walked out onto the sales floor and found the woman from Valentine’s Day, in the same plum-colored pea coat and grey hat. Her left hand was gripping onto the strap of her purse by her shoulder, and he couldn’t help but notice that her ring finger was sans ring.

“Hi, can I help you?”

“Hi,” she said in a small voice. “I’m not sure if you remember me, but I came in right before you closed on Valentine’s Day...with my ex-fiancé.”

“I remember,” he confirmed. His initial suspicions had been wrong; the man wasn’t her husband, after all. 

“I just had to come in and thank you again,” she explained. “It was such a kind gesture, and I really needed it that night. You really have no idea how much it meant to me.”

Not wanting to bring up the rottenness of the situation and rub it in like salt in a wound, he simply nodded. “No problem.”

“I can’t even imagine what that must’ve looked like to you...how bad it looked.”

He shrugged. “I’ve seen some crazy stuff.” 

“I can only imagine,” she stated. “If you’re free, I’d really love to buy you a coffee or something from the café next door to say thank you.”

He waved his hands dismissively, slightly flustered at the offer. “You don’t have to do that, it really wasn’t a big deal.”

“It was to me,” she said meekly. “I want to express my gratitude.”

He faltered for a moment; if it would make her feel better, then there was really no harm in agreeing to go along. “Okay.”

The tension in her face melted away. “Great.”

“Let me just grab my jacket.”

He grabbed his belongings, waved goodbye to his coworkers and then met her back on the sales floor. Without another word, they left the shop.

“I don’t believe I caught your name,” she mentioned once they had made it outside.

“Kristoff.”

“I’m Anna,” she said, smiling as he held open the door to the café for her. They managed to snag a table by the window, and once they sat down, she asked, “How do you take your coffee?”

“Black,” he answered. “And the smallest size they have, otherwise I’ll be awake all night.”

“Got it,” she nodded, walking over to the cashier. 

He rested his arms on the table, waiting for her to come back but slightly eager to leave and go about the rest of his day. She returned a few minutes later, setting the two cups on the table and sitting across from him.

“So, you must know quite a bit about flowers being that you work for a florist.”

“I do,” he confirmed. “My folks own the shop. I’m helping them out while I’m working on my degree. I’ll probably still help them out once I graduate, though.”

“That’s so nice,” she smiled. “Do you have a favorite flower?”

He shook his head. “I don’t. I associate different flowers with different occasions, so that may be why.”

“My absolute favorites are sunflowers. But I love roses, too. And gardenias, and lilies. I guess I like everything,” she laughed, jovial for a moment before her expression turned somber. “You know, I wouldn’t be sitting here if you hadn’t handed me that rose, so if it’s okay with you, I want to explain what you saw that night and the aftermath.”

“Go for it,” he encouraged. Admittedly, he was quite curious, even though he knew that it wasn’t really his business. 

“Obviously, it was Valentine’s Day. I wasn’t expecting flowers or chocolate or anything really, but my ex and I would always exchange gifts on holidays. We had just got engaged in December and I knew he spent a lot on the ring so I didn’t have any expectations for this year, but I still got him a gift,” she explained. 

He nodded along as she spoke, not wanting to interrupt.

“He got home late and spent the rest of the night on the phone, ignoring me - which isn’t unusual for him, but I was hoping that we’d spend some time together because it was a special day. I asked him if he wanted to go out to dinner, but he’d already eaten with someone...I’m assuming it was another woman. Anyway, he got off the phone long enough to tell me that if I really wanted chocolate, then I could wait until the day after when it would all be marked down, and that we could go to the flower shop near closing because the flowers would probably be really cheap - I don’t think that’s true, though.”

“It isn’t,” he verified. 

“By the time we got to your shop, I was pretty upset because of the way he had been treating me all day, but it only got worse once we were inside. I was barely able to keep it together, and it wasn’t until you - a complete stranger - showed me the tiniest bit of compassion that I realized how bad my situation was and how badly I needed to get out of it.”

She took a deep breath before continuing. “I broke up with him. By the time we got back to the car I was crying, and he got mad that I was disrupting his call and we had a huge fight. It ended with me throwing the ring in his face and moving out.”

He hesitated for a moment, not wanting to say the wrong thing. “I’m glad you were able to get out of that.”

“Me too,” she nodded. “I think I knew it had to end for a long time - even when I said ‘yes’ to getting engaged. But what really solidified it was when you handed me that flower - it reminded me that people who care about others still exist.”

“Anyone who works there would’ve done the same,” he chuckled, trying to divert the credit away from himself. 

“I’ve spoken to a few friends and I recommended your family’s flower shop to them. They should spend their money at a business that actually cares about its customers.”

“Thanks, that means a lot.”

She nodded, a smile gracing her lips. “It’s the least I could do.”

They talked a little while longer before bidding each other goodbye and going their separate ways. In all honesty, Kristoff was happy for her; she’d escaped a bad relationship and she seemed to be in a much better place despite the fact that little time had passed. Even though he imagined he’d never see her again, he could rest easy knowing that she wouldn’t be trapped in a loveless marriage.

It didn’t quite play out the way he imagined, though. Frequently, she’d pop into the shop and distract him, following him around as he added water to the vases or fixed the arrangements, only laying low when another customer would come in. He didn’t mind the distraction at all; it made time go faster and she was fun to talk to. 

It wasn’t until a hot, summer afternoon in June that he decided to do something about their relationship. Anna came into the shop clad in a red sundress, accessorized with a floppy, wide-brim hat and oversized sunglasses right before his shift was due to end. 

“Hi, Kristoff,” she smiled, pulling the sunglasses off of her nose and hooking them onto the front of her dress. “Did you get in any sunflowers yet?”

“We did,” he confirmed. “We got a batch that bloomed early this year.”

She clapped her hands together. “That’s so exciting! May I purchase a bouquet of them?”

“Sure,” he said, walking over to where they were being kept, fully aware that she was following him. While she often came in to visit, she seldom purchased any flowers. She usually just came in to keep him company and relentlessly flirt. “Any special occasion?”

“It’s my birthday,” she answered, a slight blush creeping across her cheeks. 

“Oh!” he exclaimed, slightly embarrassed that he didn’t know - to his recollection, they’d never discussed birthdays. “Happy birthday!”

“Thank you,” she beamed. “I figured I may as well treat myself to my favorite flowers on my birthday, you know?”

“Of course,” he agreed, though in his head he’d already decided that she wasn’t going to pay for the flowers. It was her birthday, after all - they should be gifted to her. “Do you have any special plans?”

“I’m probably going to go out with some friends over the weekend, but not today.”

“I’d love to take you out to dinner,” he said, before quickly adding, “If you’re up for it.”

She nodded, biting down on her lip. “That would be really nice.”

They walked back to the counter, and he arranged the flowers in white and tan tissue paper, securing them with a red bow that matched her dress. 

“How much do I owe you?” she asked, opening her purse and digging for her wallet.

“Don’t be silly. They’re on me.”

“You’re such a sweetheart, you don’t have to do that.”

“It’s your birthday,” he reminded her. “I want you to have them.”

He handed them to her and she cradled them in her arms. “Thank you, Kristoff.”

“I’m going to go clock out and then we can go?”

She nodded excitedly and when he returned, he took her by the arm and led her out of the shop, the bell jingling as the door opened and they stepped out into the sunshine.

What had started as something so rotten had bloomed into something beautiful. And for every occasion from that point forward, there were flowers to match; roses on Valentine’s Day, poinsettias at Christmastime, and of course, sunflowers for Anna’s birthday.

[redxblueihateloveyou]

This is a personal opinion but from where I see it the Given movie and the anime itself definitely was... something that I would question because somethings just.. didn't make sense to me. The development of the Characters were either super fast or super slow and it made the pacing really really weird for me idk. But I do think that a huge reason so many people love the Given movie is because of the fact that when you compare Given to OTHER JP BL animes, there's very very slight improvement in terms of the story itself of Given. Is the story poorly executed? Fucking hell, who the hell is going to say no here. But is it better then some of the JP BLs out there? That's depended on how you view BL to be. For a lot of people things like Super Lovers or Hitorijime My Hero are super unbearable to watch because it's "problematic" (which honestly okay, you do you BB) which then leads them to look for BL animes that DON'T have such "themes." Leading them to actually liking things poorly executed but just "not problematic", Given for example.

Given is “not problematic”? Debatable.

Their first kiss was right after Mafuyu finally had a courage to sing a song about his ex who commited a suicide. ???

Problematic doesn’t only mean stuff like “he’s underage”. What about using someone to get over your grief or getting into a relationship with someone who is still not over his ex death and is vulnerable at the moment? Is this suddenly “not problematic” bc they’re same age and he haven’t pushed him into a wall in throws of passion?

To me it’s not even about the fact if it’s problematic or not (it’s rarely not tho, no matter what ppl think), it’s about whether its believable and feels genuine or not. It depends on many factors: situation, characters past, traumas, etc, etc. It depends on the story and how you write it.

Change some stuff and it’s gonna be a completely different thing. Make it like Uenoyama only hugged Mafuyu after the song, even tho he wanted to kiss him, but knows that it’s not the right moment. Make Mafuyu heal first, make Uenoyama be in his own angst that he loves Mafuyu so much for example, but cares about him recover more, so he doesn’t expect for it to go somewhere, then he tries to date someone and Mafuyu first starts getting out there, when he feels like he can start trying again. Someday he gets sick and Uenoyama cancels his date to take care of him even tho it’s nothing serious and then the realization comes. Make Mafuyu kiss him first and take the first step. This would’ve changed everything so much. He should’ve made the first step when he was ready, this would’ve felt so right. Uenoyama kissing him after that song is just.. it feels, I was like ehhhmmm.. weird?

Seeing someone saying that Given is a masterpiece is hilarious to me. The fact that it includes heavy themes like suicide, doesn’t make it a masterpiece, esp when it’s handled this badly. Once again, if you pick such thing as a base for a love story, do it right then, not in a “bibbidi bobbidi boo” kind of thing. 

BL or not BL, any relationships, it depends on whether you watch it and it feels plausable or not. 

For example, if Yuu says that he can’t live with Mika, my tongue won’t even twist to call it “unhealthy” or be like “dude why”. But if some high schooler in slice of life anime who has a caring family tried to end himself bc his two weeks friend left him, I would’ve yelled “bitch go see a doctor”. 

Depending on the story you can sell some feelings or not.

Nezumi and Shion are also problematic according to ppl’s logic these days. But I 100% believe they’re each other’s true loves. Only 11 episodes and it’s sold.

In Given I didn’t believe it. Bc it’s ridiculous, ok? It wasn’t the right place or time to start this relationship. It is not a new love story, it’s just a sad story. 

Given movie is slightly better compared to other japanese BL? Why would you offend Sekaiichi Hatsukoi, Uragiri wa boku no namae, No.6 and many others?

Also better where? They kept the same old “’stop, i don’t want to’, but he did it anyway” stuff AND on top of that the story sucks.

The way he used him knowing very well that he was unrequitedly in love with him for so long is so disgusting that it leaves a much grosser feeling than many yaois combined. You’re saying “it’s slightly better” bc they’re of age or don’t have an age difference? I don’t get it. It somehow makes everything better?

No, thanks. I’d rather watch Onodera sleep with Takano in high school with them being genuinely into each other and it going great than whatever happened in the Given movie. I don’t care if they’re both 18 there, it made me feel bad.

I didn’t feel bad, when Wei Wuxian thought “why the fuck didn't I have sex with Lan Zhan back when I was 15? I've really pissed away all my days, haven't I?”. I wonder why is that.

Like what you’re saying here is that their opinion on BL is so low that they automatically would give it 10 out of 10 bc it’s slightly better than smth that they find “unbearable” to watch? What kind of evaluation is that exactly? Maybe also let’s compare each anime to “boku no pico”, then everything will look like a masterpiece.

Like excuse me for the fact that when I watch some shonen-ai and yaoi, I judge it the same way I judge any other genre and any other relationships (hetero or gay) in animes. On a scale whether I care or don’t care, whether I believe that they love each other or don’t, whether it’s a good story or not. I don’t get what it means “it’s good for yaoi”. It’s just not good. This movie is trash, I mean, the relationship in it is trash. Who the fuck cares gay or not gay. Trash relationships are trash. Bad story is a bad story. Whether it’s a bad gay story or a bad hetero story, I don’t give a shit.

The reason I’m more into boy on boy ships is because I love the relationships there more than relationships in most heterosexual couples. My fav hetero ships are either “from hate/attraction to love” stories like “gone with the wind”, “anastasia” or “pride and prejudice” or stuff like “equals without pink goo, who only see each other and don’t need no one else and would die for each other, epic soulmates” like Richard and Kahlan. In anime 99% of those fit bromances, not romances. Like I don’t find Midoriya/Uraraka appealing at all for a reason that “she said ‘hi’, he blushed as a tomato, now they’re supposed to be each other’s romantic interests” is not what I find romantic. I find romantic the fact that Todoroki is forever devoted to Midoriya bc he knows he’s amazing and is not afraid to say it; and he’ll always be there for him when he needs him, no matter what it is, him just sitting there crying, some villain trying to kill him or if he’s too late out ther grossery shopping. Uraraka most of the times doesn’t even care where he is.

Most hetero romantic animes, I just find ridiculous, too cheesy and unrealistic and I’m not ready to watch 50 episodes for them to hold hands. I’m not in that age and I also never found things like this romantic before either. Stuff like Kisa/Yukine, when you meet someone, find him attractive, wanna fuck him, then fall in love accidentally.. yeah, that’s understandable to me. Stuff like Takano/Onodera “I was an naive idiot in high school, but now life made me a sassy bitch and I can’t open up to people as easily” also yes, relatable. 

When you’re turning into a tomato bc someone said “penis” and think holding hands will take your virginity or smth, that’s not my thing.

So when I watch BL, I expect more, not less. So if it’s bad, I just say it’s bad, I’m not gonna be like “hmm... unproblematic... then 10/10″ like what? 

1stly, even “little mermaid” and “cinderella” are problematic. 

2ndly everyone is so focused on purity these days, like storyline don’t matter at all. It’s like any great love story is automatically trash if they have age difference. Any trash love story is great, if they don’t?

Let’s then also rate “Dororo” as 1, bc it’s like 24 episodes of them falling for each other while she’s 11 and he’s 16. Wow, such gross relationships they have during the whole story. Doesn’t matter that she grew up at the end of the last episode, the whole anime she’s a child. And let’s rate Noragami 0, bc 2000 years old perverted Yato is into 15 year olds.

No one has to fuck asap (heck even in the same hella problematic “Super Lovers” you talk about, Haru refused to fuck Ren even tho he was 17 in s2 and wanted to fuck another guy) and the rule “you can only fall in love after 18″ doesn’t exist. Also underage is not BL thing, it’s all anime thing. It’s time to shut it already. There are zillions of age gap couples out there who are great. Hyakkimaru waited for Dororo to grow up, it’s fine, seriously, they love each other in the right way, he didn’t want to fuck her when she was 11, okay? They did love each other tho already then. Pls excuse them for that.

3rdly, some relationship that ppl here call unproblematic are 20 times more problematic, than what they call problematic.

4tly, why the heck it’s like couples who have an amazing character and relationship progression, who love each other to death and will do anything for each other, ppl go: “wow, at the very beginning, he grabbed his wrist, he needs to go to jail”. Meanwhile a relationship who has no base, no story, no logical progression, no anything are “yes, best love story in the world”. Yeah... who cares if it feels like it’s all been pulled out of an ass and doesn’t make sense, very healthy tho.

It sounds lately like if most ppl here had two stories in front of them and one would be about two men who just met and the next day one proposed and they lived happily ever after and 2nd would be some complicated incredible story with a natural progression of the relationship, but they yelled at each other once, they’d be like “1st is better”. Well, not to me, no.

[ryugi]

hello friends !! i’m kyla ( she/her ) , it’s nice to meet you all and i hope you are ready to meet this knucklehead girl, gi is a miss or hit and is ready to take a lot of risks around town. . . i’ll put some bullet points about her below if you are interested in plotting with us. i’m really excited to write with everyone asap so please don’t be shy and like this, i will slide into your ims in no time <3 btw for the discord lovers hit me on rhy#0273 .

the basics. // guess the 21 YEAR OLD APRIL baby just arrived to dallyeog! it makes sense, because RYU GI is just as EXASPERATING as the month of APRIL. wait, why do they remind me of KIM YERIM? beyond that, they seemed ADAPTABLE & BRAVE upon first glance. i heard someone say they’re sort of JUDGMENTAL & UNRELIABLE though. i hope they get acquainted here in COMPLEX 2 / APARTMENT 2 / FLOOR 2 ; SHE seems to have a lot going on with HER job as DJ.

background.

ryu gi was born on april 18 in the year of 1999. her mother is a fashion executive, living alone in new york at the time of her birth, they both lived together in a nyc apartment until gi was about three years old.

when she was three her mother decided it she needed to balance more her career in fashion and her mother life, so she went back to live with her parents in seoul. 

while her grandparentes were distant, lacked affection and time they had money and put all their grandaughters wishes in cash.

she was never a bad or an actual rebellious child, but gi slowly became aware that she wasn’t wanted that badly by her blood family and that did made her bitter with time.

after enoumous feuds with her mother, she was sent to a branksome hall asia which is a boarding school in jeju, gi was thirteen at the time.

she didn’t actually hate her time in boarding school, in fact she became much more extrovert after her years away from home. it became a place where she could be more herself, she realized she didn’t exactly needed her family to find love.

when gi was seventeen she graduaded well and went to live with her mom in seoul, but that didn’t work either because her mother was seeing a new guy that was super abusive and weird towards gi. 

so on her eighteen birthday gi ran away from home for the first time, she brought a ticket with her mothers money to viena and spent a week there before her grandfather brought her back.

she ran away by stealing her granparents and mother’s money a few times later, but always went back when the money was short. they all turn a blind eye to her behavior, like the attention she was seeking wasn’t enough.

then eventually gi gave up, when she didn’t get into any college she wanted she decided to work for real. it was hard at the begging because she didn’t knew much, but she found something she liked to do and went head into it.

she says she has experience from being a dj from all the parties she snucked into since she was seventeen and left boarding school, and that’s actually true.

personality.

despite her rich girl stunt gi is a very quick learner, she likes living on the edge, observing others and taking advantage of situations. she doesn’t have a great goal in life yet she is surprisingly ambitious, wants to be powerful and live a lavish life on her own terms. 

a little hypocritic too because in spite of everything she still goes for her grandparents for money when she needs it, with her own ways of manipulation she always gets what she wants.

gi is a funny gemini girl, indecisive, hard to deal with, very judgmental, but still a honest and kindhearted friend. she doesn’t give up easily, loves changes of scenes.

deep down she wants to have a degree in engineering, chemistry or something nerdy like that, but at the same time she doesn’t plan at all in studying to try for college again.

she loves britney spears and paramore, 90′s pop music, has a scrapbook for every movie she watched since she was fourteen, has an interest in photography even though all the pictures she takes turns out blurry, can’t take care of animals but she has a cactus, black coffee kind of girl.

A LOUD NEIGHBOUR, unfortunally. she blasts music, sings, parties, plays guitar hero, even have loud sex... also her apartment is a mess that she won’t apologize for.

wanted connections.

someone she knows since childhood, it doesn’t matter how they background match or not could be from school or something similar. friends, enemies, lovers, anything! 

someone that was nice enough to let her crash for a few days when she ran away from home in her eighteens, they could be friends or just acquaintacce anyways gi feels like she is in debt with your muse.

someone she is a horrible friend to, they were good once but now they changed and can’t accept each other so they are bitter and mean instead of just ending things.

party friends!! they aren’t necessarily important for each other, but they are there when things are fun and glittery. might even do crazy things together.

feuds with neighbourhoods, calling my april babies! someone that just hates having gi as their neighbour, they get in arguments everytime they see each other. we can develop this in a lot of ways!

fwb!! one, two, three.. i don’t care how many, neither their gender, just want some.

someone gi has feelings for, good ones, like love ones, that she can’t express so she just wonders around this person like a dumb bitch. they probably have no idea!

an ex boyfriend/girlfriend that ended in bad terms, she most definitely wasn’t the best girlfriend while they were daiting and both left with a broken heart.

i will be uptading this once i think of more !! but if you had any other ideas lmk too 

[runenc03]

Til the light goes out (and after) - part 1

Writing date: I started in October ‘20, got scared by the amount of personal issues I put into “the reader” and procrastinated. I eventually finished in January ‘21, lol.

Genre: Angst, I guess? But not too badly, it’s fine.

Warnings: Insecurity (to everyone reading this, you are worthy!!)

Word count: 3.6k words

---------------------------------------------

"I remember when I reached the age of 25 and I had this jarring quarter-life crisis. I felt like I wasn't at all where I wanted to be: I wanted to be deeply in love and almost married to my soulmate. (...) I also wanted to be a publishing author. Yet I was single, and had never put a book together, even after writing hundreds of poems, journal entries, and essays in my life. I felt like I was just wasting my time, and that felt terrifying. That was three years ago. I look back at that time in my early to mid twenties so differently now. I see many beautiful poems written. Deep conversations with cherished friends. Night walks, early morning walks. Dinners with my family and birthdays, going around the table saying what we love about each other. (...) None of it was wasted. It was beautiful, and the life I had lived was so meaningful and precious. I wish I could go back, and tell myself that, so the younger me could appreciate each moment, rather than comparing where she was to where she wanted to be."

~Katherine Cimorelli Straneva

-----------------------------♡--------------------------

"I think Miss Swann over there should have the role."

Your hands stopped their movements to free you from your pirate costume, and you looked up. Your entire group of colleagues was staring at you, expectantly.

You see, you worked at a theme park, and it was just about the most amazing job ever. Every holiday period, it opened its gates, ready to shower people of all ages in everything magical. You were part of the actors crew, which basically meant that you acted out entire stories at fixed intervals and filled the rest of your time with walking around the theme park in costumes, doing small acts on your way. Often you ended up improvising, dancing with your guests, and of course posing for pictures. If you could, you would live in the theme park. Really, there was just something so entrancing about the atmosphere there, the music coming out of the lanterns beside all the roads, the roller coasters, the beautifully decorated buildings. A big part of the magic was because of the work you and your crew put into your characters and its stories though, you shouldn't underestimate that, which was exactly the reason you weren't too keen on taking the lead role in your next story. The pressure to create the biggest part of the magic was something you didn't know you could handle.

"I'm...not too sure about that. Ariel always plays the lead role, why shouldn't she now? I've never even done a lead role."

'Ariel' was one of your colleagues you were probably the closest with. She was funny, kind, and seemingly good at everything she did, acting included. Her real name wasn't Ariel, but you never called each other by your real names. It was like a tradition within your crew to call everyone by the name of the character they were currently playing. Seeing as she had had the lead role in your newest play, a crossover between Pirates of the Caribbean and The Little Mermaid, her name had been Ariel for the past two weeks, and yours had been Elizabeth.

Your friend wriggled herself out of her tail, her eyes still on you. A smirk was playing around her mouth, and your stomach gave a swirl. She had actually meant it when she proposed to give you the lead role.

"Because, dear Elizabeth, you wrote the play, and you did so beautifully! Your talent is ridiculous, and I think the entire thing is going to come across as much more honest if you play the biggest part in your own story. Isn't that logical?"

The other members of your crew nodded in agreement, and while you couldn't help but smile at their faith in you, the nerves in your stomach grew. You started to untie the laces of your pirate boots as you voiced your concerns.

"I'm not too sure about that. It's a love story, remember?"

The grinning on Ariel's face turned into a warm smile, but her eyes showed determination, and at that point you knew that you had lost this particular battle.

"I remember, and I also remember that you're the biggest romantic out of all of us. Come on, we all know you're going to be fantastic."

Another colleague of yours spoke up, telling you that he'd been in awe of the script you'd written, and another joined, claiming she'd even cried a little at the end. Your doubts slowly folded themselves back up again.

"The story belongs in this place, just like the lead role belongs to you, Elizabeth."

The words were spoken by the most timid guy in your crew. He never talked in your plays but provided the music in them, and even though he was terrific at adding that extra touch of magic to your stories, he never contributed to conversations about their content. You thought he just didn't really mind, as long as he could play his music. If he was willing to speak out loud about it, it must mean you really were meant to follow your crew's judgement.

You smiled, a blush blossoming on your cheeks, and you knew your eyes twinkled when you finally gave in.

"I'll do it."

_______________________________________

"Hey!"

You plopped down next to the music guy in your group, feeling extra cheerful today. You would start rehearsing the piece you had written today, and now that you'd been able to get over the initial insecurities you'd had, you felt really excited about this first rehearsal.

"Good morning, Jade."

You grinned at your brand new name, rummaging through your bag. Tossing aside a water bottle and some elastic bands, you found what you were looking for. Your eyes scanned over the words, making sure you had taken the right document out of the stack you had brought with you, before stretching out your arm in the direction of the music guy. He looked in your direction questioningly. Your grin turned into a warm, although somewhat insecure smile.

"If you're okay with it, your name is Sam from now on."

He read your script in silence, a small smile appearing on his face.

"Who says I can even act?"

"Who said I was able to play the lead role of my own story?"

He threw his head back in laughter, and you watched, surprised you were able to get such an exuberant reaction out of him.

Your alarm chose that exact moment to go off, the bright letters "START REHEARSAL" instantly reforming the knot in your stomach. You frowned at yourself. Weren't you over it by now? It was time to start the whole thing and you were still nervous, for God's sake.

"Hey, you'll be fine. Even better, you get to kiss the guy everyone wants to marry. You should relax more, maybe you can enjoy acting again then."

You tore your eyes away from your phone and onto Sam's face. His comment didn't help at all, and your face must have shown it, because his eyes went from warm to panicked, and your guilt punched the knot of nerves in your stomach. What a mess you'd made of all of this, already. You managed to send a tired smile in his direction, trying to salvage as much as you could from whatever it had been that had made him open up to you a bit.

"Thanks for trying to calm me, really it means a lot. I think I'll calm down once this rehearsal is over though. Are you ready? You're in the scene I want to start the rehearsal with."

He nodded again, awkwardly showing you the flute he was holding, and followed you to the middle of the room where you beckoned everyone to come join you so you could start.

Taking one last deep breath, you started.

"Hi everyone! As you know, we're starting our rehearsals for my story today. If everything went well, you've all received the script for the character you're playing. I actually wanted to start with one of the last scenes,..."

Everyone nodded at you encouragingly throughout your little speech, and as you realised that these were all your friends who genuinely cared about you, you felt the knot in your stomach slowly untie itself.

The first scene you rehearsed was actually the ultimate confrontation between the good and the bad in your story. Your friend Ariel, whose name was now Ruby, played the villain in your story, and you played Jade, the lead character. This scene basically consisted of the fight between Ruby and the main character's love interest, Dante. The story situated itself in the medieval times. Dante had come to Ruby's tower to rescue Jade, who he believed was kidnapped by Ruby, but upon arriving, he - and the park's visitors - would discover that Jade wasn't actually kidnapped and Ruby had made it all up. Then, Jade would realise everything just in time to go up to Ruby's tower as well and rescue Dante, instead of the other way around. What could you say? You'd always been a feminist at heart. Dante was played by a great friend of yours, and you'd actually written this piece thinking he could play the male love interest, while Ariel would play the female lead role, but things had, evidently, taken a turn. The two of them had been friends way longer than you'd been friends with any of them, and even though the three of you were really close, you couldn't help but marvel at the chemistry the two of them had, something you and Dante would very much lack, or at least that's what your insecurities made you believe.

However, you didn't want to rewrite the entire thing just so you wouldn't have to play each other's love interest, and you had showed the script, including the initial cast, to everyone anyway, so it wasn't really something you could get out of without a whole lot of awkwardness.

The rehearsal started off well enough. Ruby was, as you'd expected, really, a brilliant villain, and apart from some minor corrections from you, everyone executed the script exactly the way you had in mind. You were starting to believe in this.

That was, until the very end of the play, in which Jade and Dante would get all cute because of the whole we-just-survived-a-villain-attack-and-thought-we'd-lost-each-other situation. You thought you'd mentally prepared yourself, really, you had, but apparently it hadn't been enough. The awkward tension was palpable, your own movements, usually so fluent, were now stiff, your rigid body seemingly forgetting how your limbs worked. No one said anything about it, but you felt it and you know the others did too.

And you tried to pull out of that awkward moment, tried to chase your insecurities away, you really did, but they seemed to cling to you, and the longer it lasted, the worse your mood became. When you almost fell off of the stage because you'd instinctively set a step backwards when Dante had tried to pull you into his arms, you knew you couldn't continue like this.

Hastily, you grabbed your jacket, quickly telling everyone you would have a 15-minute break and that they'd done a good job, before hurriedly walking out of the building, and into the cold.

_______________________________________

The wind quickened your tears, and you angrily wiped them away before they could hit your neck, mad at yourself for allowing them to fall down. You knew you'd had to get back inside your rehearsal room eventually, and while everyone had a good image of what you were doing, you weren't looking forward to letting them see the evidence.

Most of all though, you felt vulnerable. Vulnerable because you had failed, and because everyone had witnessed you doing it. Vulnerable because your biggest insecurities had just come true.

"Hey, what is up with you?"

You looked up, watching as Ruby flopped herself down on the bench you were sitting on, turning herself so she was completely facing you. She wore an expression of confusion, and worry.

You let go of your eye contact, your eyes drilling holes in the soil beneath your feet. You owed her the truth. In fact, you owed your entire crew the truth. Being completely honest with yourself, you knew that was the only way this play would end up being a success. You took a deep breath.

"I'm just....not equipped to play Dante's love interest."

You couldn't look at her, too ashamed, but her voice conveyed honest surprise, which, in turn, made you surprised. Didn't she realise how obvious it all was?

"What are you talking about? You were fine until you had to reunite with Dante, and if you didn't like physical contact or if you were extremely hesitant for anything romantic, I'd agree with you and say you should probably focus on roles you are very good at, but you, you're a hopeless romantic at heart, and you like physical contact. Why is it so difficult then? I'm not making fun of you, I genuinely don't understand."

You scoffed, too caught up in your own head, annoyed at her lack of understanding.

"How can you not? I've never had a boyfriend, and that explains everything. Don't you see? It's not that I don't want to play a character that's in love, and I'm sure that if I managed to calm down I'd even enjoy it, but whenever I come close to Dante I feel like "forever single" is practically inked on my forehead."

You had, by now, managed to look at your friend, your annoyance chasing away a bit of the previous insecurity and shame. Her face morphed into a look of understanding, and you didn't know if that made you feel better of worse.

"I know it's a bit intimidating to play Dante's love interest, and I know that, like, everyone wants to date him, or at least gushes about how good-looking he is, but that doesn't mean that you can't play his love interest. Stop thinking you're too ugly to be around beautiful people."

If you hadn't been feeling so terrible, you might have literally facepalmed. Maybe you should've seen this coming, but Dante being known as the Adonis of your group really was the least of your worries.

"Wait...what? No, this has nothing to do with him being attractive, you know he and I are only friends. In fact, I think you would be great as his girlfriend, I would totally ship that. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that he's just a friend and it's not about playing his love interest, it's about playing someone's love interest in general. I just...what if it looks completely stupid? I know it looked stupid now. I can imagine all these cute things in my head, but then when I have to execute them, the only thing I can think about is that no one wants to do this with me in real life, and that just...I don't know. You all one by one find the love of your lives, or at least good partners you're happy and in love with, and it...it just makes me wonder if I'll ever be good enough to have that myself, as well."

"Oh, honey..."

You felt Ruby's arm wrap around you, her hand stroking your back, and you eyes filled themselves with tears again. She wasn't a physical person and therefore didn't like touching people, but she did now for you because she knew that you were. The tears started falling again.

"I mean, I knew you were ready to have a boyfriend, or like, to commit to someone and be in love with them, but I didn't know you were so insecure about not being in a relationship, and now I wish I'd realised that earlier. But you have to realise that while you're insecure now because you think no one is going to want you, you're going to be insecure about not deserving a boyfriend when you have one. Trust me, the insecurities don't go away, they just change. I guess what I'm trying to say is... don't wait for that moment that you're someone's girlfriend, the insecurities aren't going to magically disappear then. Now's the time to work on them. And, this shouldn't matter, but for the record: I fully believe that you are very worthy of being someone's girlfriend, and when the right person comes along, you'll give your all, because that's who you are, and it'll go a lot better than most of the relationships you wish to have yourself now. For now though, just have fun. You get to kiss Dante and make lots of bratty girls jealous!"

You chuckled at her attempt to cheer you up. You were really grateful for her. The two of you were complete opposites, and her radiance sometimes made you insecure, but right now, with her words, you believed yourself a worthy person again, and that meant more than you could express.

"That's what Sam said, too."

Ruby's eyebrows went up at lightning speed, her eyes wide.

"Wait, he talks? And he told you you'd be a good girlfriend?"

You rolled your eyes, but also noted how you had to fight the blush off of your cheeks.

"No, dummie, he told me I'd be able to kiss the guy - and I quote - everyone wants to marry. I guess he's not wrong, a lot of female visitors do seem to want to faint whenever he includes them in improvs."

Your friend chuckled, and, her laugh being so infectious, you chuckled along with her. Then, when you didn't expect it, she jumped off of the bench, beckoning you to follow her. As she entered the rehearsal room, she yelled that you'd come with her, and as the rest of the group started cheering, you realised that that had been a good choice.

_______________________________________

"Dante, hold on, I'm coming!"

A few of your younger spectators started whispering excitedly as you stepped into view, quickly climbing a long, round staircase to get to platform on which Dante and Ruby were battling. You were busy concentrating on tripping and falling off of the stairs. That had happened once during your rehearsals, and if you hadn't still been in the lower half of the stairs and if Sam hadn't discarded his flute to catch you, you probably wouldn't have been able to play Jade. While that scenario would've actually sounded appealing a few weeks ago, you had to admit now that you loved playing the lead role in this play.

You threw yourself in the battle, pulling just about the bluntest sword out of its holder around your waist, and clashing with Ruby's. Needless to say, Ruby was no match for you and Dante together, and with a dramatic last breath of air - and a smirk only you and Dante could see from so high up - she fell backwards, tumbling down. This part had actually taken quite some organisational talent. Right in front of the platform you were battling on, there was the staircase, while there was some kind of wall behind the platform. Ruby always fell down behind the wall, where multiple thick layers of soft material made her fall softly and unharmed. The visitors, however, only saw her tumbling down the platform, which made for a very dramatic effect. Of course, Ruby, out of all people, loved it the most.

While the enthusiastic applause intensified, you and Dante fell into each other's arms. You separated a bit, and patiently waited as Dante pulled a lock of your hair behind your ear, something that was in the script. Then, he leaned down slightly, pulling you in for a small, but cute kiss. This wasn't your first time enacting the play, and so you'd gotten used to kissing Dante, and even though you both really didn't have romantic feelings for each other and this was only just a play, you found that the enthusiasm during that kiss from both the kids and adults who were watching, had cured a lot of your insecurities over time.

Hand in hand, you walked down the stairs. Beneath you, the crowd started cheering again, and Dante squeezed your hand, smiling at you. You knew he was congratulating you for once again bringing the play to a successful end. Every time the two of you walked down those stairs, he did it, and every time, you were really grateful.

Once down, your entire crew formed a line, taking each others hands to make a collective bow. You were already holding Dante's, and reached with your other hand to Ruby, but to your surprise, Ruby completely dodged it and went to stand next to Dante on his other side. You were about to grin, your hopes at getting them together once more reviving, before Ruby looked at you and sent you a wink. You were puzzled for a second, until you felt your fingers being intertwined with someone else's, a warm, and, let's be honest, a bit of a clammy hand. Normally, your entire crew held hands with closer fingers, kind of a palm-to-palm thing, so this was a surprise. You were quick to turn your head, and looked straight into Sam's warm eyes. He flashed you a shy smile, and congratulated you on your performance. You smiled back, bowing down with the rest of your crew.

When you got home tonight, you wouldn't slip off your smile along with your costume, for you finally understood that you were just as worthy of a fairytale as all the princesses, goddesses and fairies you had played along the way.