#also in case its not clear i meant the your WHAT to be referring to the reader calling him her bf sdfhajfalskf

[lewkwoodnco]

Be More - George x Reader

"Er...I think this dough's ready to be cut into the strips."

"Yes, chef."

He coughed awkwardly, too uncomfortable to come up with any decent sort of response.

a/n: am soooo salty i fell sick in the middle of my 12 days of fics '23 for xmas last year :((( so im giving myself a lil treat by doing a short series of valentine's fics! i SO don't know how souffles work if you can't tell so pls don't come for me, and a special special thanks to lisa @neewtmas for the apron idea heheh. all fluff, which is why I got all my angst fics out of the way beforehand if you'd like a lil palate cleanser :) also totally didn't make this a songfic cuz i was struggling to find a title :} btw I headcannon that george randomly zones in and out in everyday life and this has nothing to do with how much I may or may not do this myself ALSO was strongly influenced to post this earlier by the multiverse of George aka @oblivious-idiot @bella-rose29@bobbys-not-that-small heh

warnings/tropes: lockwood and george bromance supremacy!!! baking, lots and lots of valentine's day fluff, awkward georgeeeee

word count: 2.8k!

TAGLIST | MASTERLIST

Lucy handed George a steaming cup of tea, which he gratefully accepted. The three of them were having breakfast as usual, and with the last strains of winter fading, Portland Row's kitchen was entirely too bright. He closed his eyes, pretending he didn't see the way Lockwood's hand lingered on Lucy's when taking his mug. They were bad enough on any normal day, but even worse nowadays, with Valentine's Day drawing achingly closer. He felt himself begin to nod off again from the gentle and comforting steam.

He felt a mild rap against his cheek, which he turned to see is from a well-aimed sugar cube launched from across the table by Lucy. He looked up to see her staring hard at him and Lockwood poorly concealing a snigger with his cup of tea.

"George. Have you or have you not got any plans for Valentine's?"

He takes his time wiping his glasses on his shirt sleeve before responding. "Nothing much. Though I've promised Y/N I'd spend the day with her."

He watched Lucy's expression carefully, and she seemed to be watching his. Truth was, with Valentine's drawing closer and closer, George was going into a mild panic. He hadn't exactly arranged it intentionally. They had been having a quiet chat on a morning when George had been too tired from the previous night's case to strictly follow, and suddenly she was waving goodbye, promising to see him next on Valentine's Day.

He had no idea what kind of a Valentine's Day he had agreed to, or how much of a filter he had had, and he had been dropping Lucy desperate cries for help, with decreasing subtlety. Was it a date? Was she expecting a date? Sure, they had went to that play together after Lucy fell mysteriously ill, and maybe they met up for lunch once a week. But she never referred to

His eyes slowly drifted close as Lucy and Lockwood's conversation morphed into gentle white noise, enjoying the warmth of the little sun streaming through their kitchen window. It felt nice to have a little break from his intense week of baking -

Baking! George snapped wide awake, clumsily climbing out of his chair and feverishly counting the stacks of meticulously wrapped, frilly pastry goodie bags lining the kitchen counter. It had become an annual Valentine's Day tradition for George to construct these small goodie bags of baked goods for a sizeable chunk of his extended family. He even roped in Lucy and Lockwood, and as Valentine's Day approached they'd all gather around the kitchen table at night, even if it was after a case, packing the delicaices George had spent the day baking, until one of them started dropping off.

It was tedious work, but they enjoyed it and were well invested in it - Lockwood fiercely so. When a cousin had remarked that perhaps the tradition was becoming a little tired at a family gathering last Christmas, Lockwood had accidentally-but-not-really smacked his head. George relaxed as he neared towards the end of the pile - just one more day of baking, and he'd be ready to send them off.

Lucy and Lockwood were mostly finished with breakfast anyway, so he chased them out of the kitchen and got to work. Once George had his first batch of cookies in the oven, he started planning for the supplementary baked goods. For instance, he was going to make a chocolate souffle for the three of them to share over a midnight supper tomorrow.

So when the kitchen door swung open, letting in a blast of cold air, George spun around scathingly, ready to threaten Lockwood with deflated souffles. But the hiss at the tip of his tongue withered when he saw who it was.

"...Y/N?"

"Hello. Baking, are you?"

George suppressed the urge to shield the vast volumes of confectionary goodie bags littering the kitchen's surfaces.

"...yes." With some difficulty, he slowly resumed his movements, explaining how this was something he did every year. In a way, he was grateful to have something to do with his hands, because the last minute or so reminded him that he had no idea what he normally did with his hands while standing.

"Oh. Need any help?"

It took George another half-minute to process her question. "With what?"

"With the baking, obviously."

"Uh...s'alright, I've got it all handled."

"No, please, I'd love to help."

George paused mid-stir, looking comically perplexed with a smidge of flour on his nose. "What for?" He bit his tongue, hastily back-pedalling since his tone sounded aggressively suspicious. "What I mean is, you wouldn't want to spend your day here, sweating like a pig - not that you sweat, and definitely not like a pig, no - I'm the one sweating like a pig..."

What he wanted to say was, their oven was ancient and so made the kitchen stupid hot every time he baked, but failed miserably. He set down his mixing bowl in defeat. Almost instantly, she stifled a giggle, trying to pass it off as clearing her throat, and George followed her gaze to his apron in horror. What the mixing bowl had previously been hiding was the horrendously cheesy 'kiss the cook' graphic on his apron.

It had been a ridiculous gag gift from Lucy, one that he had never intended to use but was forced to after his last apron caught on fire from one of his experiments with the skull. Bursting into flames would have been more useful now, He stood there, eyes watering from the heat, determined in his refusal to acknowledge both the apron and the smile she was doing a poor job of suppressing.

"Fine. You can start with the cookie batter."

About a minute or two later, it occurred to George that perhaps it would have wise to ask how much experience she had with baking. Not a lot, he soon discovered, when her bowl nearly flew off as soon as she switched on the egg beater. He dropped his mixing bowl instantly, waving away her apologies.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't expect it to be so powerful."

He cautiously adjusted her grip on the bowl, gently guiding her fingers to a better hold.

"No, no, it's my fault. Not much of a baker?"

"...no."

"Okay, so what you do is, use one hand to hold the - other hand - hold the bowl, and the other holds the egg beater like - no, not quite."

He took a step closer, placing his hands over hers, trying to ignore the warmth radiating from her body, and the smell of her shampoo.

The last time they had been this close was on their way home from that play. With Lockwood out of town for a client meeting, and Lucy developing a mysterious case of the flu, it was only the two of them crouched under a tiny umbrella as they walked home after the play. George would have been more than happy to walk in the rain, but she was the one holding the umbrella, and was firm in her resolve to not send him back to Lucy with a head cold. With the little space between them, their cheeks brushed against each other occasionally, sending a jolt running through the side of George's face.

"Well...this is me."

George nodded dumbly, staring hard at the chips in her front door's paint, agonisingly aware of her looking at his face. He didn't dare turn to meet her gaze; they were far too close.

"I had fun today, George."

He sighed and briefly zonesout. As short as their chat was, he remembered very little, his focus only returning when she pulled her key out.

"We should do this again sometime," she was saying, as she turned the key in her lock. When he finally looked at her, there were the tinies raindrops on her eyelashes. There was something so pure and unassuming about the sight that it tugged at his heart. It made him want...more. More with her. With a brief smile, she disappeared into her home, leaving him standing alone in the rain. He stood there for a minute, prolonging the moment for some unidentifiable reason. It was a nice door. She had a nice smile.

It was as though she had read his thoughts from his eyes, for a faintly embarrassed air hung in the kitchen after that. For the next better part of an hour, they engaged in this delicate dance as they floated through the kitchen, carefully staying out of each other's way, never in the same area for long. It wasn't until she was sifting the dry ingredients that they next spoke.

"Hang on, that might be too much flou-"

As George touched her elbow, her hand jerked, sending a sizeable chunk of flour into her mixing bowl, along with a cloud of it directly in her face. He was sorry, of course, but as she spluttered and tried to blink through it, he couldn't stop the amused twist to his features. When she caught his eye, she rolled her eyes and sent a fistful of flour into his eyes. Now it was her turn to laugh as George groaned through the smarting.

"You're right, Mr. Cook, it IS hilarious!"

George scoffed, struggling to maintain his sanctimonius, above-petty-acts front as he wiped his glasses clean with as much dignity as he could muster. But on the inside, his defences were crumbling fast.

"You're acting like a child."

She looked mildly apologetic for a moment, and George felt a flash of truimph, before she raised both her flour-coated hands and resolutely streaked them across George's face.

"Egg on your face. Or should I say, flour?"

With that, all pretenses of civility were thrown out the window. The both of them swept up as many ingredients as they could and migrated to opposite ends of the kitchen table, pelting each other with everything that could be pelted. George landed a few well-aimed chocolate chips into her hair. She soaked the front of his apron with half a jug of milk, which was nearly enough to send him into hysterics. So it went on and on and on, until they ran out of supplies in their immediate reach, before resorting to shoving each other's faces into bags and tins of baking soda and powdered sugar. This, it occurred to George as he was rubbing cornstarch into her red, wheezing face, is strangely intimate.

Again, there was this tugging sensation in his chest, the kind that made him want to sit in his armchair for anywhere from half a minute to half an hour. The kind of sensation that could not be held in words. The closest he could get was the wish for a never-ending summer, or perhaps orchards full of cherry trees as sweet as the first pick. But even that fell short.

Just as she raised two fistfuls of sprinkles, the kitchen door swung open. Lockwood wandered in, looking sharp as ever in his too-small suit. The two of them smoothly parted, their faces burning under the flour, and George suddenly became very interested in the pastry dough he was kneading. He felt rather than saw Lockwood looking back and forth between the two of them, wishing that he'd just take whatever he needed from the kitchen and got out. But of course, he knew better than to engage in wishful thinking, especially with Lockwood's mildly gormless smile plain as day. "Hang on. George, you do realise that-"

Whatever it was that Lockwood was wondering if he had realised was cut off by the jam tart George shoved into his mouth, because the answer was probably yes, Lockwood, of course I realised that completely inane observation.

"Out. Out. I won't have you compromising the integrity of my kitchen." With a little difficulty, George wheeled a spluttering Lockwood littering soft pastry flakes all over his clean kitchen floor out into the hallway. He shut the door firmly and turned back apologetically, only just seeing the flour in her hair as she watched on amusedly.

"I sure hope I'm not starting up a ruckus - or was it compromising the integrity? - of your kitchen."

George felt his cheeks warming as he returned to the kitchen table. "No, of course not. You never know where Lockwood's been, is all. You're different."

Had he been standing this close to her the whole day, he wondered, close enough to see the pretty flakes in her eyes, softer than any pastry he could make? How was he supposed to look away? And how did he stand it?

"Er...I think this dough's ready to be cut into the strips."

"Yes, chef."

He coughed awkwardly, too uncomfortable to come up with any decent sort of response, embarrassedly muttering something along the lines of how there was no need for any of that. As she got absorbed into getting the strips of dough just right, George glanced at the kitchen door, to see Lockwood silently making exaggerated kissy faces at him. George picked up his rolling pin and Lockwood fled immediately, without so much as a creak from the floorboards.

Now, they finally returned to their baking with proper focus, now that they were all tired out. She seemed to have picked up some skills pretty quickly, though he still kept an eye out in case she might do something that would, say, set her hand on fire.

An hour or so later, the phone started ringing obnoxiously in the hallway. With some difficulty, George peeled off one of his disposable gloves on his way to it. When he picked up the phone, he almost wished he hadn't, because it was that same cousin from last Christmas' gathering. As his voice wore on and on, George started wishing he had let Lockwood give him another punch or two, just to set him straight.

Suddenly, he picked out a few startling words from his cousin's nasally voice, which made his heart plummet, as the calendar in the hallway came into startling focus. He wandered back to the kitchen door, numbly hearing his cousin's complaints of why no one's goodie bags had reached yet. He blankly stared at her, and she stared back confused, slowing down her cutting of the strips concernedly. After a second or two, he hung up the phone, but was in too much shock to lower it.

"Today's date," he whispered.

"Hm?"

"Today's date. It's not the 13th. I thought it was the 13th. Today is the 14th. Valentine's day was today, not tomorrow."

Even as he was saying those words, the calm look on her face told him exactly what he had feared - that she had known all along.

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"I thought this was what you wanted to do!"

"Unpaid labour."

"What?"

"You spent your Valentine's Day doing exhausting, difficult, unpaid labour." He clumsily placed the phone down on the kitchen counter, struggling to find the right words as he fought against the embarrassment. "I am so sorr- just a minute, I might have some loose change somewhere here-"

"Don't." George was spiraling with shame, kicking himself for his oversight, and she still had the gall to look that pretty and kind. "I didn't mind any of it one bit, I promise."

"I promised you something fun."

"George, this is the most fun I've ever had baking, and I've been making pineapple upside down cakes since before I could - oh."

She broke off when she finally looked up to see the growing shock on George's face. She nibbled at the inside of her cheek nervously, trying to gauge his reaction.

"So you do know how to bake."

"Only a little?"

He took in the sight of her apologetic smile, the careful dusting of flour on her face and her suspiciously clean clothes. "You could have said."

"Oh, but I was having so much fun." George rolled his eyes. "I spent the day learning how to construct the most adorable pastry goodie bags I have ever seen, and I did it all with my boyfriend. Believe me, it doesn't get more fun than this."

Not for the first time that day, George stared at her in wonder, like he couldn't quite figure out how she was real. Even now, when all she was doing was merely existing, words failed him. He had a feeling he'd spend lifetimes chasing shadows, trying to pin what was gone before it bloomed, and he still wouldn't be able to find the right words. There was no other way to put it, or colour it - he wished they were more.

He hesitantly extended his hand, brushing just a speck of the huge handprint of flour on her face with his thumb. He turned, walking out into the hallway, but then just as immediately wheeled back.

"Your WHAT?"

TAGLIST: @dangelnleif @elenianag080 @snoopyluver20 @ell0ra-br3kk3r @avdiobliss @mitskiswift99 @ahead-fullofdreams @neewtmas @mischivana @houseoftwistedspirits

[celaenaeiln]

thinking about some quotes i’ve read and i wanna hear your thoughts on them because i have a lot and i don’t know what to do with them.

“the day Dick Grayson turns evil is the day the universe ends, not because that day will never come but because the boy will make it come”

“Dick Grayson isn’t the universal constant of good. Dick Grayson is the universal constant of competence”

“So, having said all that, it is a few but definitely significant words that fill the contingency plan on Nightwing in case the hero of Bludhaven ever turns to the dark side. Let's hope that never happens.”

YESSSSS

“the day Dick Grayson turns evil is the day the universe ends, not because that day will never come but because the boy will make it come”

This is the truest fact I've ever heard because this is really canon.

Word for word this happened.

In one of the canon timelines Clark laser blasted Bruce under mind control.

And oh how Dick took over. You know what Luthor says?

"After all, as I've heard your father [Dick] so often quoted, 'we make the hardest decisions for those we care about the most.' Well, in his case...that has meant remaking the world."

This man has the power to single-handedly control the fate of the world.

Whatever he wants, he will make it happen.

The entirety of the justice league, all the metas, heroes, and villains too stood no chance against him.

DC vs Vampires

“Dick Grayson isn’t the universal constant of good. Dick Grayson is the universal constant of competence”

I think it's true.

Nightwing is one of the most formidable figures in DC, without fail consistently coming out on top, so if Superman is iterating that Dick's personality and essence of being is the same, then there's really no room for disagreement.

But more truly, I think he is a Nexus.

By Marvel's definition, "Nexus Beings are rare individual entities with the ability to affect probability and thus the future, thereby altering the flow of the Universal Time Stream. These beings, each referred to as a nexus, act as the keystones of the Multiverse and are crucial to its ultimate coherence and stability."

That means that the universe hinges on the actions of Dick Grayson.

Not only does he control the fate of the world but his mere existence determines what will become of it by other people:

I'd like to reiterate that Neux Beings are "the keystones of the Multiverse and are crucial to its ultimate coherence and stability."

You can still be a nexus if you turn dark. For example Lore was a dark version of Wanda Maximoff but she is still considered a nexus. So you're right in saying that Dick Grayson is a multiuniversal constant of competence.

“So, having said all that, it is a few but definitely significant words that fill the contingency plan on Nightwing in case the hero of Bludhaven ever turns to the dark side. Let's hope that never happens.”

In the easiest terms as someone put it, "hope he fucks up" is Bruce's only contingency plan against Nightwing. The man doesn't have a clear plan how to neutralize Nightwing.

His exact words are: "As a result of overanalyzing any situation, this allows Dick Grayson to overconfident and misdirected. This will make himself open to a second attack."

So the plan is basically 'Dick is too smart for his own good so we'll have to go with a lucky surprise attack.' He's literally saying 'yupppp. Let's just hope he messed up because there's nothing we can do on ouR end.' Note that Bruce doesn't even have a back up like 'the second attack didn't work? we're fucked.'

For everyone else he actually has a coherent plan in mind- do this and they will fall. But for Dick? 'I hope he messes up enough for a second attack to actually stick. Otherwise we're shit out of luck. And lives. Fingers crossed he doesn't jump to the bad side.'

Tim also confirmed he would never make a contingency plan for Dick. The only person in the world he wouldn't do one for.

He's just that formidable of a man. Even now he can easily take down the Justice League if he wanted to.

And we know that Dick has one of the strongest wills on the planet.

"I have my enhancements. I have powers. Dick Grayson...what do you have?"

A world where Dick loses his emotions is a world that would not survive.

[topaz-mutiny]

I think the fans are underestimating how differently people can process things.

I am consistently seeing posts say "Ashton/Tal were repeatedly warned the shard was not for them/will 100% kill them", when this was absolutely not the case, and, more importantly, it is very likely for groups of people to completely misinterpret the warnings. Even if they've known each other and loved each other for a decade.

I certainly thought the warnings were not clear or frequent enough so I was shocked like lightning in the latest episode that they were meant to be absolute death flags.

Please note that I'll mostly refer to the fictional characters, I don't want to bring the people behind the characters too much into this.

First, I would like to point out, the show takes place over weeks and months with plenty of breaks and interruptions. That is plenty of time and opportunity for memories to get faded, muddled, crossed-over with other memories, etc.

The "warnings" happened two weeks to a month ago. And even when they were fresh on the cast's mind, here are the warnings verbatim (bold is my emphasis):

But be warned, holding the strength of the two in one vessel might sunder it. You bear the dormant strength of the empress. Find and bestow the might of the emperor.

- Evontra'vir, episode 74, aired October 5th. The conversations move on to unrelated things with no followup.

Ashton: He also said it might be dangerous for these two shards to intermingle. Or he didn't say dangerous, he said that-- it could destroy me. Orym: --A chance the vessel could break. Laudna: --The vessel <air quotes> could break. Fearne: Wasn't there something if you put them together with the right thing that it'll be okay? Ashton: It might come together and be okay, yeah. -- Dancer: Maybe if it were to meet one of its own ilk, it could awaken. Allura: What you said as a point of warning likely is true. To have both within a singular vessel, it's possible one could survive, but it's also highly possible that it would rend you into a thousand pieces. -- Allura: We're in a strange area of experimentation and unknown knowledge. -- (after finding out Ashton has a fascimile of a Luxon beacon in their brain) FCG: So he's got two things in him or them? Allura: It would seem, which is why I'm a bit--Well, you're either the greatest weapon we could hope for in this time, or will be our end. I couldn't tell you. Orym: Boy, maybe we don't add a third thing. Ashton: I was put together by bits and pieces. This was not an intentional thing and it, I honestly shouldn't have survived it. It was, literally, I was put together with junk. Allura: In an odd way, your fragmented nature might be what keeps all of this in check. ... Perhaps we don't put another powerful entity within your form.

- Various, episode 76, aired October 19th.

To me, these warnings were not clear in the slightest.

To me, these warnings were interspersed with so many words like "possible", "might", and "chance" that I completely misinterpreted the situation as "For Ashton it is dangerous but doable" instead of "The Game Master is telling you Ashton's character sheet will be ripped up."

This is the problem with using in-character voices and using descriptors that imply chance or flexibility. They can drastically weaken the meaning of a phrase such that people like me will mistake it for something else.

Because that's how my brain works. "May", "chance", "perhaps" suggest to me a reasonable set of odds for an action and does not come across as the grave warning a game master would want.

And as a reminder, these muddled warnings were weeks apart and weeks away, which can make remembering the meaning even worse if you've already misinterpreted them. That's why I was 100% on board with Ashton taking the shard. It seemed reasonable but dangerous, so when Matt said "I warned you." in that grave tone and with that grave look I was thrown for a loop. I went "oh no! those were serious warnings!?" and the panic started setting in.

Also a contributing factor was the pressure and lack of communication from Bells Hells.

Fearne did not want the shard, and finally stated that thought aloud to Ashton. For Fearne and Ashton, that meant the only choice left was Ashton, because, for one reason or another, the 5 other people in Bells Hells repeatedly assumed and pushed the shard onto Fearne and wrote themselves out of the equasion. FIVE characters absolved themselves of being active participants. Once the idea of Fearne came to mind and this Emperor Fearne/Empress Ashton/Callowmoore shipping dicotomy, Bells Hells just stopped talking about it and never once considered if any of them should take the shard should Fearne refuse.

So... yeah that's how my brain works.

[autisticlilith]

Something that always struck me about this 'fight' is that it felt really one-sided. Not because the Raven Beast is bigger, but because she's also way more aggressive. We see throughout the show that Eda in her Owl Beast form acts mostly on instinct (and her inner beast, once she starts talking to it, seems to just be hungry or cranky most of the time). We don't get much insight into how Lilith copes with the curse (like none at all after this), so this is going to be a lot of inference.

Off the top, I would like to reiterate that Hayley Wong has repeatedly asked that nobody repost or edit her art without permission. I'm going to be referring to stuff from the boards in this post, so here's the link if you want to look for yourself.

So, in this episode, Eda and Lilith are both angry—specifically at Gwendolyn, and with good reason. They both end up turning into beasts due to a combination of that anger, stress, and the fact their mom thought she was "helping" by taking away their medication.

But here is where they differ. Eda was angry about the current situation: her mom refusing to respect her choices, and causing unnecessary harm to her all day. And Luz even joined in. As Eda says, she has a right to be upset, though I don't think she meant to lose control over the beast.

That's just what happens when she reaches her limit. And she knows her limits, she's been dealing with this curse for 30 years!

Meanwhile, Lilith has been dealing with the curse for... a few weeks, at most? Unless you count dealing with the guilt of cursing Eda as part of that. We see that she's quite unaware of the effects of the curse, as she experienced some symptoms for the first time this very day. She essentially gets told to take an elixir if she starts feeling stressed, and then is left in the house to stew in her guilt and insecurity all day.

Gwen's lukewarm greeting, and the realization that she's paid consistent visits to Eda over the years, is enough to send Lilith into a downward spiral. She starts stress-eating ice cream, and makes cruel comments about King's dad abandoning him (a clear case of projection, and I don't think he really internalizes it after this episode, but seriously that's no way to talk to your 8-year-old nephew), and unfortunately the only voice of reason around is Hooty. Well, he tried.

I want to note here that she doesn't cry. She mopes, she complains, she gets rude and cynical; these are all things we've seen her do before. But she doesn't allow herself to honestly express her feelings, her wants and needs. What's she gonna say? "Hey Mom, can you please pay attention to me?" You can't just ask for things like that. And she's a grown adult, she's more mature than this. She was the head of the Emperor's Coven, for Titan's sake. Didn't she get enough attention there to last a lifetime? And didn't she learn how to repress all her useless emotions and craft a perfect persona to hide behind until she could no longer tell the mask from her face?

She realizes she's indulged her worst thoughts a little too hard when the feathers start popping up, and goes to take an elixir and calm down...

And there are no elixirs.

And she panics. She has no coping strategies for this. She doesn't even know what's going to happen to her, only that it's going to be really, really bad.

It has to be terrifying, and painful... and maybe, just a little bit deserved? This is the fate she forced upon Eda, after all.

We don't see any signs that she damaged the house after she turned, unlike the havoc Eda caused back in The Intruder. King runs to get help, because Eda or Luz would know what to do better than he does, and Raven Beast Lilith seems to pursue him, but she's not after him. She goes after Eda directly. There is no distraction (King also notes that light glyphs had no effect on her), there is no behaviour that can be explained as animal instinct. There is a violent, visceral anger, and instead of addressing its source, she flies out there to take it out on Eda.

This is why I don't buy the interpretation that Gwen started favouring Eda only after the curse. By that point, Lilith was an older teenager almost out of the house, and it's completely reasonable for the parents to be focusing more on the younger kid with a new mysterious illness. I think Eda was always the favourite, or at least got more attention in ways that made Lilith feel overlooked. Part of it was that Eda got in trouble more, whereas Lilith was usually quiet and well-behaved, so everyone just decided that Eda needed more help (which she didn't necessarily want) and Lilith needed none. Lilith got very good at needing nothing. So good that instead of talking to her sister about their impending duel, she decided to curse her in the dead of night instead. And then to keep it a secret until she found a way to undo it, because she never wants to upset anyone or cause a scene. And then to give 30 years of her life to an evil man's crooked system for nothing—less than nothing, she's only going to realize later.

Lilith's breakdown isn't about the fact Gwen is paying attention to Eda again. That's just the trigger for a lifetime of repressed emotions bursting to the surface all at once, and it's been coming for a while.

The Owl Beast seems to be mostly defending herself. At a few points she tries to flee, but the Raven Beast catches her. The Raven Beast is malicious, with exaggerated expressions of rage and what can only be described as cruel glee when she inflicts pain. This seems to come out of nowhere... but only if you haven't been paying attention to Lilith.

We know what Lilith is like at her worst. It wasn't even that long ago she threatened Luz's life in order to capture Eda. All while convinced that she was doing the right thing. She doesn't even have that shield now. She doesn't have much of anything, really, except her sister who refused to leave her out in the cold even after everything she's done. And this is how she repays that trust...?

We also know that Lilith wasn't in control of her actions as the Raven Beast. But that doesn't mean the beast was just doing beast things. I believe it was acting directly on Lilith's intrusive thoughts. Hurting Eda was her greatest shame, and the idea that she could do it again is a constant fear that she has. Unlike Eda, who has long been seen by others as a monster and had to fight her internalized shame about it, Lilith considers herself a monster while everyone around her is unaware of her inner turmoil. She's afraid of herself; she thinks her feelings are ugly and violent and unmanageable. And so that's what they became.

There was a sequence in the storyboards that was cut from the episode, presumably for time, where Gwendolyn tries to use a beastkeeping spell in order to communicate with her beast-daughters. It proves completely ineffective, so she goes to plan B, which is just trying to talk to them like a normal person (also in the boards, Gwen summons firebees to lift roof tiles for her to walk on, which I'm glad got changed to the tiles themselves being flying creatures. it's less distracting). There was something really affecting about watching her try to do things her own way one last time before finally admitting that she's failed the both of them. It painted the picture of this whole family who never talk about anything that's difficult or painful.

Then the scene plays out the way it does: Gwen's words get through to Eda, and allow her to finally face the beast and have an important revelation about herself.

And Lilith? Well, for all the violence she just showed, she breaks down in tears the second she is shown loving care.

When they've changed back, her anger is gone. There is no sign of the monster; there is only a sad, lonely woman who hasn't allowed herself to cry in so long that she almost forgot how. But she's safe now, and she's seen, and she's allowed this healthy expression of emotion. She collapses in the arms of her mother and sister.

After this, Lilith and Gwen had an off-screen conversation, where Lilith admitted she was the one to curse Eda, and decided that she was going to move back home. I could write a whole other post on that first point, but we've reached the end of the episode. I think a major reason why Lilith wanted to stay with mom and dad instead of with Eda is because she's afraid of hurting Eda again. Any time the curse acts up, she becomes a danger to the people around her, but especially to Eda, because of how much of her energy and guilt and shame has been focused around Eda over the years. She needs some time away while she figures out how to deal with the curse, to recover and build up her own identity. And of course, to build the relationship with her parents that she needed as a kid. Better late than never.

[weirdmarioenemies]

Name: Honebon Debut: Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins

The year is 1992, and Nintendo is making a hit sequel to the video game Super Mario Land for the Nintendo Game Boy. The previous two games in the Super Mario series, Super Mario Land and Super Mario World were both massive hits, and if you know anything about video games, it's obvious why: both had Skeletal Fish Enemies!

If Super Mario Land 2 was to have a chance of succeeding at all, they'd have to include a Skeletal Fish Enemy. But they couldn't just bring back Honen or Fish Bone, no. It was the '90s! We needed a hip, new skeletal fish for Cool Teens!

And so, Honebon was born! Isn't the miracle of childbirth amazing? Unfortunately, Honebon was born a skeleton, which is always a bad sign, because as it turns out, Honebon was dead on arrival...

Now don't get me wrong, Honebon has a few distinct traits to separate it from its Skeletal Siblings. Its attack pattern is unique, since it moves in a zigzag shape instead of a straight line, and according to Perfect Ban Mario Character Daijiten, while Fish Bone is the type to hold a grudge, Honebon has an amiable disposition! So if you're ever looking to befriend a skeletal fish, let that be your guide!

I also think Honebon's name is really funny. It's a portmanteau of hone, the Japanese word for "bone," and the English word "bone". And despite the fact its name doubles down on this being a skeleton, all the official material seems to describe it as a Cheep Cheep's gh-gh-gh-ghost!

But even with all of that, it's clear that Honebon's story as a Mario enemy ended as soon as it began. Honebon was competing for a niche that had already been filled multiple times over. It's a real Spike Eel situation over here! Clearly, Mario games didn't need any more skeletal fish enemies...

Name: Jean de Fillet Debut: Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island

But just because they didn't need another, that doesn't mean they didn't want another! I mean, come on! None of the previous skeletal fish had names that were dated pop culture references, so clearly there was an untapped market there!

You think there wouldn't be much ground to cover with another skeletal fish enemy... and you would be right! There is not all that much unique about Jean de Fillet. Much like Fish Bone and Honebon, it is described as a skeletal Cheep Cheep, despite none of the three really having Cheep Cheep anatomy at all, and much like Honen, its attack pattern involves jumping up to attack Yoshi. They can swim through lava I guess, but I'm not really convinced the other skeletal fish can't do that.

You see what happened? They ran the well dry, and all the fish that were living in the well for some reason died. Nintendo was just left with a bunch of fish skeletons, and all they could do at that point was put them in Yoshi's Island! Sad! Many such cases.

But due to Yoshi's Island going on to become a whole series of its own, Jean de Fillet would have a little more staying power than Honen or Honebon. Which is to say it appeared in Yoshi's New Island, where it even gets a boss variant named Furious Fred de Fillet!

Now it's kind of debatable whether or not Yoshi's Island is mainline, but if you include it, that's four mainline entries in a row that each introduced a completely new skeletal fish enemy! Super Mario Land and Super Mario World both did it, and so would their sequels.

Did this madness ever end?!

Name: Bonefin Debut: Super Mario Galaxy

Not before they could sneak in just one more skeletal fish enemy! It had been over a decade since Jean de Fillet, and in that time it had become the future! That meant their next skeletal fish had to be made of metal. Everything is chrome in the future! (Reference to "Bob")

And since they had a whole new dimension to play with, we were no longer starved of unique attack patterns! Bonefins lock onto Mario, and charge in that direction until they either hit him or hit a wall and explode. (Reference to "Bob")

Bonefins solely appear in the Bonefin Galaxy. They serve as mooks to Kingfin, a giant Bonefin that appears to be actually made of bone! This boss fight is kinda all that exists in Bonefin Galaxy, but at least they got a whole galaxy to themselves, right?

This would mark the end of an era however, as when Super Mario Galaxy 2 rolled around, there was no new skeletal fish enemy to be seen. In fact, Bonefin would only cameo as a skeleton, which is obviously and very intentionally meant to represent the fact that regular new skeletal fish enemies are a thing of the past, a product of a bygone age...

Since then, the series has standardized Fish Bone as their skeletal fish of choice, as they made their grand return in New Super Mario Bros. Wii and have been a series staple ever since. In the process, however, they gained Bonefin's homing attack, letting them do a little more than be Cheep Cheeps for ghost houses and castles!

Is the lack of new skeletal fish enemies another disappointing example of Mario Homogenization? Or did they make the right call, picking a skeletal fish and sticking to it? I dunno. I am completely neutral towards this development.

[ntaras]

Bi-Han Analysis

Though the primary focus of this analysis is Bi-Han, I also do analyze Kuai Liang a bit. This analysis is also mostly for me to put my general thoughts together, so the formatting is a bit hard to read and messy. 

This analysis is not written with the datamined dlc story in mind, so for the love of god do not bring that up if you want to respond to this post. I also hate the way the brothers and the Sub-Zero vs. Scorpion rivalry was presented, but I’m writing this analysis with an attempt at avoiding placing criticism in the center (because I do have a lot of criticism that does conflict with this analysis.) 

Also, this is not meant to prove Bi-Han as “not evil”, because no, he isn’t, but he’s still an antagonist who’s making very bad choices. Also I talk about my own speculation regarding Bi-Han’s relationship with his father, and I want to make clear that I’m not trying to paint their father in a bad light because he is not canonically presented as abusive or evil. It comes off like that, but that’s not my intention. I’m too lazy to rewrite that portion of the analysis so this is just a heads up. 

Bi-Han is a walking self-sabotaging tragedy, and with Kuai Liang as Scorpion, they were doomed from the start for their relationship to shatter. You have the eldest brother: Sub-Zero, who feels forced into submission and forced to conceal his “true worth”. You have the younger brother: Scorpion, who watches his older brother be consumed by his desperation to be something, and stands unsure of how to help him. 

Bi-Han’s desire for power is the highlight of his character. His and the Lin Kuei’s role as Earthrealm’s defenders isn’t something that satisfies him- it isn’t something that shows his worth. He thinks he’s worth more than simply hiding in the shadows, waiting, and waiting for threats to emerge. Defending Earthrealm brings him no value, but perhaps taking part in ruling it would give him value (Sub-Zero: “You wield the power I aspire to be” Sindel: “Too bad you’re unfit for it, Sub-Zero.”) He wants to bring the Lin Kuei to the light, show that his clan is deserving of power. (From his bio: “Under his leadership, the Lin Kuei will come out of the shadows and fight for its place as one of Earthrealm’s great nations.”) 

I’m really emphasizing the word “shadow”. It’s an obvious reference to Noob Saibot, and it seems like the story is going for the route that Bi-Han is already someone in the dark, yet he doesn’t view himself to be in the dark. (Scorpion: “A shadow’s fallen on your soul.” Sub-Zero: “No, brother. I’ve seen the light.”) As the darkness envelops Bi-Han, he can only see that darkness as the light. 

Bi-Han refuses to see himself in the wrong, and even says his ambition is confused for evil. (Ashrah: “There are many in the Netherrealm just like you.” Sub-Zero: “You conflate ambition with evil, Ashrah.”) That dialogue also implies that Bi-Han does not believe he will end up in the Netherrealm for his actions, because he doesn’t view himself or his actions as “evil”. Everything he’s done has been for the better- has been for the good of the Lin Kuei. 

I wondered why Bi-Han was so loyal to the Lin Kuei in this timeline, as in previous timelines Bi-Han’s loyalty to his clan was because he was kidnapped by that clan, and conditioned to be their warrior (but still agreed to help Raiden and save Earthrealm.) So why is Bi-Han so loyal to the Lin Kuei in this timeline? 

This is more speculation than an analysis I can support with hard evidence, but if you’re asking what I personally think, I’d like the case to be that there was something deeper going on. That somehow, his father put so much pressure on Bi-Han (not intentional pressure) as the future Grandmaster and a protector of Earthrealm, Bi-Han ending up warping that role as “protector of Earthrealm” into his own desire for the Lin Kuei to show all their true ability is to not defend Earthrealm- but govern Earthrealm. Why must their efforts go unrecognized if their role is so important? Also this plays into his role as the first born son, the eldest child who ends up being the one responsible for their younger siblings. As the eldest, he knows what is best for his siblings. As Grandmaster, he knows what is best for the Lin Kuei. 

All the dialogue regarding their father paints him in a good light- even dialogue from Bi-Han. Bi-Han never once accuses his father as being abusive in some manner, but only as weak and lacking vision. So, there is no denying that he was a good man, but he’s still a man of mistakes, such as being the man indirectly responsible for the murder of Tomas’s family. The fact that that murder happened in the first place does raise a lot of questions about the inner workings of the Lin Kuei and how their father led the Lin Kuei.  

It does feel like their father’s death is still not fully revealed. His death is only referred to as an “accident” and not delved into further besides Bi-Han allowing him to die. (Scorpion: “I want to see the moment my father died.” Geras: “You are not ready to receive that knowledge.”) That could mean that there is more to his death, Kuai Liang isn’t ready to see that moment because he’d get all raged up, or it could mean nothing because that’s how a lot of dialogue is. 

The way their father led the Lin Kuei- and how the Lin Kuei has always been in this new era, was by teaching them to be submissive (to follow rather than lead.) And in Bi-Han’s eyes: weak. 

The fact that Bi-Han didn’t kill his father, but instead let him die, is fascinating. We can also compare that act, to how Bi-Han is submissive to Liu Kang until he’s away from Liu Kang and listens to Shang Tsung. ALSO, it’s interesting how Bi-Han doesn’t listen to Shang Tsung’s offer until he is in chains. Even if he let his father die, Bi-Han still was loyal to Liu Kang nor did he change the Lin Kuei in any way (we also do not know how recently their father died, so he may have not even had the time yet to drastically change the Lin Kuei on his own, but I think that’s besides the point). He aches for the right moment to “step up”- to separate himself from what he believes binds him. 

We see Liu Kang keep Bi-Han from being “too antagonistic”. After Liu Kang calls Bi-Han and Kuai Liang over in chapter 1, we see Bi-Han get hostile towards Kung Lao and try to advance towards him, but is stopped by Liu Kang. He glances at Liu Kang, wanting to bark back, but keeps quiet. In chapter 2, Liu Kang looks at Bi-Han when he yells “enough!” and Bi-Han quickly bows in apology. 

He keeps that loyalty to Liu Kang, until he is physically in chains, until he is physically shackled. He does not want to be prisoner to that loyalty of submission anymore. 

His submission to his father’s ruling of the Lin Kuei and Liu Kang’s Godhood is something he doesn’t want, because he feels like he is worth more than submission. He doesn’t want to be treated “so lowly".” He wants recognition for his skills- he’s eager to show himself off and prove that yes, he is a warrior.

If Liu Kang had chosen Bi-Han to be champion, then mayhaps this desire for power and self-sabotage Bi-Han participates in would have been avoided. However, it’s understandable why Liu Kang didn’t choose Bi-Han to be champion despite clearly having the talent to be one: Bi-Han always dies at a tournament. He didn’t want to risk Bi-Han’s death, and then the resurrection of Noob Saibot (or a falling out between Kuai Liang- Scorpion- and Bi-Han that resulted in Kuai Liang killing Bi-Han). But, it seems Bi-Han set himself down that dark path anyways. 

Now, onto Kuai Liang and a brief look into the relationship between the three brothers. 

The story fails at showing us that the three brothers do care about each other, but it’s just barely there. 

In Kuai Liang’s bio, it states two things: “...though he took pride in knowing that his brother, Sub-Zero, would succeed their father as the Lin Kuei's Grandmaster.” and “...he fears that may one day have to battle his brother for control of the Lin Kuei’s legacy.” He views Bi-Han as Grandmaster with pride, and is scared of having to fight him- scared of choosing duty over his brother. 

Kuai Liang verbally tells Bi-Han multiple times to “watch himself”- reminding Bi-Han of his duty (honoring their father) and questioning Bi-Han’s roughness with Johnny Cage. You do see Kuai Liang keeping an eye out on Bi-Han (as he states later in the game, he was aware of Bi-Han’s frustrations). Kuai Liang doesn’t even mind Bi-Han’s ambitions, as evident in the scene where they enter the treasure chamber. “There will be spoils in this war,” says Bi-Han as Kuai Liang does not chastise him for wanting those “spoils”, but responds with “let us win it first, brother.” 

If I’m being honest, I don’t even think Bi-Han was referring to the actual treasure as “spoils”, but rather the glory that treasure holds. Bi-Han doesn’t really have a desire for treasure, especially a bunch of coins, so I couldn’t really view him as having an actual desire for some coins and gems. And I think Kuai Liang’s response was him answering Bi-Han’s hidden desires- that Bi-Han can achieve his desire to “shine” after they finish their job. For Bi-Han to achieve his ambitions, he must earn it first. 

Up until the reveal of Bi-Han letting their father die, Kuai Liang is incredibly patient with Bi-Han. 

Regarding Tomas and Bi-Han’s relationship: Bi-Han doesn’t hate Tomas! Their relationship is complex with Tomas being the youngest brother and being adopted into the family, but it’s not wrong to say Bi-Han does care about him (as clearly evident by the “You are both unharmed?” comment).

I really do think Bi-Han being the eldest sibling is important to his character. It’s a role that brings him frustration as he cannot get his younger siblings to listen to him (them “abandoning” him and the LIn Kuei), and loses control over them. His anger is harsh towards Tomas, as is “what he gets” for being the younger brother, yet Tomas still cares for Bi-Han despite Bi-Han stating Tomas is not Lin Kuei. 

Bi-Han, in all his cruelness and frustration, cares about his brothers. And they care about Bi-Han. It’s evident in the fact that the brothers are so adamant on being the ones to kill/capture the other, not allowing anyone else “the privilege”. They are deeply hurt by the others' betrayal, and any hatred that comes from them is out of a broken heart. 

Kuai Liang did try to kill Bi-Han. After Bi-Han reveals that he allowed their father to die, Kuai Liang loses it, and knocks Bi-Han down, and you see him raise his chains ready to kill Bi-Han. Kuai Liang would have regretted it. He was in a moment of seering, blind rage, allowing his emotions to fully take over him. You know he would have regretted it, because in their confrontation outside the temple, Kuai Liang doesn’t kill Bi-Han. And if I’m being honest, I don’t even think that Kuai Liang knew he almost killed Bi-Han. 

“You are my Grandmaster no longer.” Not, “you are my brother no longer.” Kuai Liang disowns Bi-Han as his leader, but not as his brother. Even if Bi-Han shed his own brother’s blood, Kuai Liang cannot truly renounce his own blood. It’s their bond and their curse as brothers- as Sub-Zero and Scorpion: they are forever connected by rivalry and siblinghood. 

Their love is deep, but their hatred is even deeper. But is it not the same when it comes to siblings? Is that cruelty not the same as a loving embrace?

[howtofightwrite]

Greek fire was an extraordinary specific weapon found in a particular time and region, naval combat was primarily an afar of rams (in the medaterriaan with its oar powered vessels) and armed roaring ie: getting as close as possible and just swarming onto your opponents boat to fight in melee, with some archery and whatnot. One of the sucesses of the eventual roman navy was perfecting a sort of boarding ramp to quickly put their troops on an enemy ship

Furthermore, in later periods, there are accounts of skirmishes in the atlantic between rival fleets. In which case the fore and aftcastles on the cogs are used as platforms to post archers and men throwing rocks and iron bars down on opponents ships while others boarded (hence why their called castles and elevated). Theres at least one account (I forgot of which battle) in which an English king boarded an enemy ship then abandoned his own as it sunk.

So, free advice, if you want to remain anonymous, you probably should make sure that both asks go through as anon. Though, I'm pretty sure Tumblr's extended ask length would have let you drop both paragraphs into it. Worst case (and I do realize I'm a poster child for looking like I ignore this advice), but when you run into a word (or character) limit, it's usually a good idea to start editing and trimming down the length until the system accepts it in a single pass. Splitting an ask into multiple parts is an excellent way to lose part of a question, or just make sure it never gets answered in the first place. Cut everything you don't absolutely need.

Either way, I'll err on the side of caution and answer the anon response to preserve your privacy.

I thought I made it clear that Greek fire was a much later invention. It's actually a little frustrating, because you'll see poorly researched history articles which will straight up make it sound like Greek fire was used during the Peloponnesian War. Which, yeah, no. A lot of the major Hellenic wars we think of today were around the 5th century BCE, while the invention of Greek Fire was over a thousand years later.

While you were talking about Greek fire in particular, what you said applies to a lotof weapons throughout history. When we're talking about something like the rapier or the claymore, those are weapons from very specific points in time. It's something to think about when you're mixing and matching technologies to create a fantasy world. No weapon exists in a vacuum, and they all develop as responses to the state of warfare around them. This doesn't mean you can't mix and match pieces you like, but it is something to be conscious of.

While it is outside the scope of the original question (because it's a firearm), one of the more amusing weapons from the age of sail were actual gun blades. These would be musket (usually a pistol), with a cutlass blade mounted under the barrel. (There were also examples that mounted an axe head under the barrel.) The intention was to be able to use the firearm during boarding actions and then switch over to using it as a melee weapon rather than reloading. The design was fundamentally flawed, the weight distribution was poor for a blade, and the (relative) mechanical complexity of the early firearms meant those components were too fragile for serious use. But for a couple decades in the 17th century these things saw limited use.

Now, I do need to give serious credit to A Number of Hobbies, who came back with a trio of fantastic reference articles. Naval Combat Strategies from Shadyislepirates.com, Choosing Naval Tactics for Your Pre-Gunpowder World from Mythcreants.com, and The First Punic War: Audacity and Hubris from the U.S. Naval Institute. So, if you're still wanting more information, those are all excellent resources to check.

-Starke

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[vanofasgard]

i have to rant about this or i might cease to exist. 

lokius...

for one, i love queer ships (canon or not) but i also like to stay true to the show i’m watching, and i personally don’t have a big problem with sylki (just a little underwhelmed with it if i’m being honest). but the more i look at loki and mobius’ relationship, the clues and that damn song, the more it feels actually plausible that this could turn into something real.

i’m going to somewhat rank these from 1 downward, 1 being its probably coincidental, down to this is too spot on to be nothing. all while i sip leisurely at my tea.

1. “i’ve studied almost every moment of your life..”

it kind of speaks for itself. its a pretty simple bit of dialogue, and most likely doesn’t mean all that much, but what is mobius’ fascination with loki variants? this is higher on the list mainly because mobius has been assigned this case, he's a detective and its his job to dig deep, he's consumed by his work, therefore it isn't strange for him to know so much about loki's life on the sacred timeline.

2. the tie adjustment scene

trust me, i'd love to put this lower on the list, but theres one thing that makes me believe this is-- albeit disappointingly-- a coincidence. it was improv. maybe that, for some people, is more of an indicator of canon lokius, that tom hiddleston felt that that scene was being led in such a flirtatious direction, however, this scene was more his following along owen's playful presence on set, which just makes it kind of sweet. but this is one of my favourites scenes, regardless of the intention behind it. loki will always be a flirt, after all.

3. loki's bisexuality

as much as i would have loved to see more on loki's sexuality-- perhaps slightly more explicitly given his status as the god of mischief-- i'm not going to hate on sylvie and loki, because that would simply erase the existence of bisexuality, hetero-presenting relationships exist and to deny so would again, erase the meaning of bisexuality. however, the ending of season 1 does raise some questions. loki and sylvie's separation sets up the future of marvel, it needed to happen, so this might not mean much at all and we now know that season 2 will focus on loki searching for sylvie through timelines. but how purely queer would it be for loki to realise some stronger feelings toward one agent mobius, and perhaps loki and sylvie's relationship was something that was meant to stay platonic, who knows? this is considerably more fanon than my other theories, but i had to include it, given that to me, its a reasonable arguement. lgbtq+ characters need to be introduced and this was kate herron's goal from the beginning. she also said that she hoped marvel went further with this new information and explored more thoroughly. forgive me for this more outlandish inclusion, but it has been on mind for awhile now.

4. the presence of the dagger / "love is a dagger..."

we all know this one, we've all screamed over it and we all hope it means something more than just a coincidence. with marvel's history of in-depth attention to detail (comic references, foreshadowing years prior to a movie's release), it feels a little too purposeful, doesn't it? again, i'm trying to keep rank these into something somewhat believable with viable evidence, so something i will mention is that loki has lacked any close friendships his whole life. gaining a relationship like this would hold deep value to him, and parting ways would likely pull forth some deep bittersweet emotions. platonic love is arguably more important than romantic, the need to be understood without judgement and that is what both mobius and loki have given each other. the tears in loki's eyes during this scene is a clear indicator of their care for each other, but whether that goes deeper is unclear.

my thoughts fluctuate on this one. for one, its simply so beautiful and meaningful to loki's development (and mobius') that whether its meant platonic or with an underlying romance, feels like it hardly matters, because it holds as much meaning either way. "love is a dagger", it appears in so many forms throughout the series: mobius giving loki his daggers, only for them to be taken away by B-15 a second later, this hug scene and loki and sylvie's fight in the citadel. its so prominent in this scene, its hard to dismiss, yet marvel fluctuates so much with their details that its hard to tell if this was intended the way i'm seeing. regardless, its beautiful and definitely a worthy inclusion.

5. the lokius song / mobius' apparent jealousy

lets get one thing straight, natalie holt is an amazing composer and i will back that to no end with my spotify wrapped this year, trust me on this. so when i first started listening through the second album, like a true neurodivergent kid, i was memorising every song name and i have to say, i lost it a little when i saw the name of this song. natalie confirmed that sif and loki had a 'thing' during the point that the time loop scene was set, so one cannot dismiss the possibility that she could know a little more about the prior scenes than we realise. i was skeptical when i first saw people's impressions of these scenes, after all, they had all reunited after loki technically betrayed mobius, so it was understandable that mobius wouldn't exactly be pleased with the circumstances that they're meeting again. but something about the way he looks at loki and sylvie when he's leading them down the hall, he just looks kind of heartbroken and disappointed. again, this could have been the result of loki's betrayal, if the way he calls him a bad friend is anything to go by, but the substance of this scene holds so much in it. and his little rant about loki and sylvie's "twisted romantic relationship" breaking his reality, hits a little hard. maybe this wouldn't have meant much if it hadn't been with that bloody song, because tell how just an angry, hurt mobius = lokius? it can be jealousy regardless of romantic feelings, friendships feel it too, but this feel a little more substantial.

worthy inclusions:

sylvie's "he cares about you" comment in the void, and loki's near dismissal of it.

loki falling asleep in the archives, he trusts mobius.

am i the only one that finds it cute how loki hangs out at mobius' desk while mobius is off doing other work?

conclusion:

look, i'm going to be honest here, i grow sceptical of my own arguments at times. these are very minor things, and i didn't even realise they were pushing loki and sylvie in the direction they were until they kiss (in other words, i'm a little oblivious), so i want you all to take this with a grain of salt. i like to stay true to the actual characters and their makers, i don't have unrealistic expectations and i am no director, actor or screenwriter. i am not saying how i think the next season should go, i just wish it could go to in this direction to some degree. i have my doubts, but my hopes too. regardless, i'm just happy to see these characters at all!

this is what so many seem to forget. there may be restrictions (cough cough disney), but everyone working on these shows and movies have put their hearts into it and i want to appreciate that for what it is! this doesn't mean you aren't entitled to your own opinion, of course you are! but just remember the show/characters you've fallen in love with and if you didn't have them at all. i'm overjoyed to see loki with a close friendship after so many years of watching him being proverbially kicked while he was down. ultimately, loki and mobius' friendship (and possible romance) is what technically saved loki and that's something beautiful in and of itself.

I don't think its impossible! but i keep an open mind for both directions their stories could take.

[neonacity]

BLOOD RED | CH.3 | HAECHAN X READER

Summary: You’re a forensic psychiatrist assigned to one of the country’s high-profile criminals. You want to unravel him, but he’s set on catching you in his web instead.

Characters: Haechan, Reader, Jungwoo, Johnny

Warnings: crimes, blood, weapons, toxic dynamics, psychological themes, personality disorder, mental health disorder, dissociative identity disorder, smut (fingering, F receiving). Please, please, please, do not interact if you are a minor.

This work is not meant to romanticize any personality disorders or toxic dynamics. Also, I am not a trained psychologist or medical professional so there might be inconsistencies on some of the scientific things here. Most medical references mentioned, however, are based on the book “The Minds of Billy Milligan” which is based on a true story. This is a work of fiction and I am not implying any likeness between the characterization here of the boys to their real life counterparts. I also reserve the rights to all my work—I do not post anywhere else other than tumblr.

CHAPTER 1 | CHAPTER 2

The bitterness of the last few drops of coffee spread on your tongue like poison. You looked at the flimsy paper cup with a frown—as if it was its fault you'd downed the rest of its contents—before crumpling and throwing it to the bin beside you. Your eyes were heavy and yet your mind was in overdrive—as if you weren't running on two hours of sleep today, just like how you were yesterday and many nights before that.

You can remember the first time the nightmares started coming.

The feeling was similar to being slowly being undone, as if your seams are on the verge of falling apart any moment. You couldn't understand the cause of it...

It was two weeks ago when things slowly started turning for the worse. You couldn't remember the last time you've had such vivid dreams before, but you knew—the moment you woke up with pure fear sitting at the back of your throat that night—that what you had was out of the norm. Frustratingly, you couldn't remember much of your nightmare the moment you opened your eyes, but you could tell from the way your heart thundered in your chest and the cold sweat that soaked you that some switch has been flipped inside of you. You remember voices, but not their words, and a part of your fear-fogged brain could still draw up silhouettes that were too hazy for you to make out. For the next few days the nightmares would come and go, leaving you shaking in fear from something you don't even know every single time.

Or maybe you do. You're just too afraid to admit what it is.

The sudden sharp knock from your door made you almost jump from your seat. Your surprise must have been so obvious, because the moment you turned around, you caught the look of obvious worry on Jungwoo's face. Clearing your throat, you decided to quickly gloss over your reaction before he could even have the chance to point it out.

"Hey. What are you still doing here?"

Your friend strolled inside and gave you a look that made you shift your eyes away from him. He stopped just beside your table while you tried to busy yourself in fixing the messy folders cluttering your desk.

"I could ask you the same thing. You've been pulling so many long hours lately."

"I'm just taking care of a couple of things."

"Is the 'couple of things' the Lee kid's case?"

You hate the way your hand froze in the middle of picking up something. It was a quick slip, but it was enough to catchJungwoo's sharp, observant gaze. Pointedly, you pushed through the roughness in your throat and tried to divert the conversation to safer grounds.

"I'm fine. This is the first time I've ever handled a case like this so I'm just a little bit more fixated than usual. You have to understand, I don't even know if I'll ever come across someone like him again."

Jungwoo gave you a look that told you he wasn't buying any of what you were saying.

"That's bullshit and you know it. Have you taken a look at yourself lately?" He paused, his jaw ticking as if he was stopping himself from saying something he shouldn't. You couldn't bear to look at him, knowing exactly where the conversation was going.

"This case is consuming you. He is consuming you. I'm worried that this is becoming an obsession."

You tried to push back the bitter taste at the back of your mouth. Your stomach had turned into knots and for a second, you actually thought you were slipping from reality. Jungwoo put into words what you couldn't—and what you refused to acknowledge—but hearing it straight from him felt like an actual punch in the gut. You barely realized you have been shaking in your seat until you felt the warmth of his hands covering yours.

"You need to stop…"

"I can't."

"Why?" He frowned, concern evident in his voice. His hold on you tightened when he felt your hands tremble more in his grip.

"I don't know," your voice finally caught as you looked at him helplessly. "Jungwoo, I've tried. I tried stopping, believe me, but I can't. He is everywhere, even in my sleep. I don't know what's happening to me and I'm terrified. I can't get rid of him. It's like… he's inside me."

The punctuated silence that followed after your confession was almost physically painful. Jungwoo took a while before he spoke again, his steady on you as if he's trying to dig through whatever it is that was festering inside your head. The dead air in the room became unbearable, and it's only until you've started feeling the dull pain of your blunt nails digging against your palms that he decided to reply again.

"We're taking you off the case. I'm calling the headquarters right now."

Your head shot up so fast as he started pulling away from you. Quickly, you scrambled for his hands again as if they were your lifeline.

"What—W-Wait, Jungwoo, please. You can't do that."

"I can and I will. I can't just stand around watching you like this. I don't know what the hell that boy is doing to you, but I'm not letting him lay another finger on you."

"Okay. I understand. Y-You can call them. But can you do it tomorrow? It's late. I can—I can give my own supporting testimonial if they want to. But—let's just do it tomorrow, okay? Please?"

The fear and desperation in your chest was almost making you gag. The still rational part of your mind was trying to connect the dots to understand why you are acting this way, but the choking feeling consuming you was overriding any sort of logic left in you. You knew Jungwoo was right. You probably look like an addict being threatened off his source of heroin right now, but you didn't care. All you know is that cutting lines from that boy would make you drown more in whatever murky mess you're swimming in at the moment.

What the hell are you doing?

The voice in your head reflected the same look of confusion that Jungwoo gave you. You honestly have no idea why you blurted that or what you were even trying to do, but you've gotten to a point where you've let your impulses finally take over. Despite yourself, you were able to gather the little control you have and gave the man a convincing look. You squeezed his hand, your eyes determined but pleading.

"Please, Jungwoo?"

A shadow of something passed his gaze. You couldn't exactly point out what it was, but you were relieved that you sound like your old self again. He also probably noticed, because he gave you a small nod after a few more beats of silence.

"First thing tomorrow… okay?"

"Yes… I promise."

"Good. You should go home and take a re—"

"Wait," you tugged at his hand to gently cut him off. His brows slightly shot up at the action, surprised by it.

"Can I sleep in your house tonight?"

His lips parted in confusion.

"What?"

"I've been jittery because I've been losing sleep. I've tried everything. I think having someone with me will help me relax better. Calm down my anxiety…"

"Don't you have… someone who can help you out? That man you went out with?"

"He's nice, but he's a stranger. I would feel more comfortable with my best friend," you said, almost way too smoothly. "Please, Woo? Just like the old times…?"

You saw the way his jaw tightened again as you trailed off. The strange shadow in his eyes flickered once more, except this time, you have half an idea of what could be behind them. After a long pause, he finally sighed and looked away as he ran his hands through his hair.

"Fine. That will be easier for us to call the headquarters tomorrow. Come on. I think you still have a few things in my apartment.”

Your smile didn't betray the erratic beating of your heart. You squeezed his hand before finally letting it go.

"Thank you. I owe you one."

*******

You have no idea what time it is when you finally decided to crack your eyes open. The room was pitch black, so it took your vision a couple of seconds to make out the glow-in-the-dark hands of the clock nailed to the wall. 2:55 AM. If luck's on your side, you can pull off this stupid plan of yours without setting off something.

Carefully, you moved your head to the side without rustling the covers around you too much. You couldn't really see Jungwoo's face, but you made sure to closely listen to the sounds of his breathing to check if he is already deep in sleep. For a good ten seconds you just watched him, making sure that he really is out, before you slowly started peeling the duvet off of you so you could get up from the bed. You winced in discomfort the moment your bare feet touched the cool marble floor of the room, but you decided to push on and forego slippers to mask your steps. Your heartbeat was drumming so hard against your ribcage that you almost feared Jungwoo could hear it, but that didn't stop you from feeling your way out of the room in the dark. You had to thank your muscle memory, because you were able to navigate to the door without hitting anything or tripping over yourself.

The stiffness that has climbed up to your neck has lifted a little when you finally managed to step into the hallway. Allowing yourself a soft sigh of relief, you didn't waste any time after to go to the small study that Jungwoo uses as his home office. If there's one thing about your friend that you are a hundred percent sure of, it's that he is a big sucker for organizing things. So if you're going to be snooping around his files, you're sure you will all find them in one place and one place only.

You weren't disappointed when you finally managed to crack open the door at the end of the hallway. Not wanting to risk it by opening a light, you moved quickly towards the table where a laptop is and quickly tried to revive its screen. It was passport protected as you expected, but the light from it now bathed the pile of folders filed neatly beside it. You quickly grabbed for them with shaking hands and opened them one by one to check their contents.

You were on the verge of giving up when your hands finally froze and hovered over the last file. Slowly, you read the words typed on the first page under the blue light of the screen.

If you're going to be honest, you don't exactly know what you are trying to look for. Your gut feel tells you that there is something and that you are close, but your disappointment grew by the second as you realized that all the folders you went through are the same ones that have already been given to you. Could it really be possible that you're simply paranoid? Was Jungwoo correct after all about this case affecting you so much that you are slowly losing grip in reality?

Case 04532

Status: Unclosed

Year: 2018.  

File Record: Alias, The Apothecarist

You frowned at the lines of text in confusion. Your first thought was that Jungwoo might just have misplaced the folder and placed it in the pile of Haechan’s records, but you knew for a fact that he is not assigned to any other case at the moment. Slowly, you turned to the other pages, hoping that something there might give you a clue about what exactly you’re looking at.

A minute of fast skimming gave you a quick review of the case. From the year 2015 to 2018, a serial offender given the alias of The Apothecarist supposedly committed no less than 50 crimes across the city and its closest neighboring areas. The person’s signature offense was through poisoning, supposedly using a combination of lead, arsenic, and still unknown herbal blends to kill their targets. However, other unverified crimes were also connected to the suspect, with the police believing that the person’s mastery in mixing chemicals also extended their talents to creating bombs and other explosives. In 2018, after a particularly large fire that injured dozens and killed many, all the crimes came to a sudden halt. To this day, no leads about the serial offender have ever been found.

Your mind slowly processed the information as your eyes continued to skim over the pages. Nothing still makes sense to you, not until your gaze landed on the list of dates the crimes were supposedly done. You paused. 2018… Four years ago. Slowly, things started moving in your head as a cold feeling made its way up your spine.

Four years ago, Haechan was eighteen years old… The same age Donghyuck supposedly started with his crimes.

It felt like time started moving slowly for you afterwards. Your frozen fingers went back a couple of pages so you could read again the list of crimes that happened during the three year period. Large scale poisoning… Arson. Bombing to the point of total incineration. All victims died without blood mainly because nothing much was left of them in the first place. Even the poisoning cases could have been easily disguised as a random heart attack.

"Do you like blood?"

"I'm not particularly against it."

"Is that why you committed three arson cases, four bombings, and ten mass cyanide crimes across the city?"

"Princess, none of those drew any blood, but if you're asking that question to confirm my love for violence, then yes, I did them all."

Your head was reeling. A dull ringing has already started at the back of your head when you pulled Haechan's file and went straight to the page that lists his own crimes. When you focused on the dates, it felt like you finally closed your fingers on the missing piece that you've been desperately trying to fumble for in the dark.

The years are different, but each and every recorded attack that Donghyuck confessed to happened on the same date that The Apothecarist did theirs. Even the nature of the crime was almost similar—like a well-made replica of another maestro's work. When your gaze landed on the date of the first crime ever recorded under Donghyuck's name, you swore you stopped breathing.

It was exactly a month after The Apothecarist's last and biggest crime… also done on the same day and almost in the same manner. The pattern says it all. It was a continuation of an unfinished work, a struggling effort to keep an obra maestra from entirely dying. 

Donghyuck is not the master of Haechan.

Because he's been under the influence of someone else all along.

*******

You tried your best to keep your gait steady as you passed through the heavy metal gates of the prison. You have no idea whether Jungwoo called the headquarters already to officially take you off the case, but the guards barely even looked your way when you told them that you're here for another interview. In fact, the pair currently flanking the main entrance didn't even miss a beat in getting back to their card game when you told them you wanted the session to be entirely private. Their lack of blatant care told you that it might be Haechan that they escorted today. Or at least… who they thought was Haechan.

He was already waiting by the table when you finally walked in. Turning to look at you, the boy gave you his usual wide smile, before it froze on his face when he saw your expression. For a while, you only stood in silence by the door, watching him quietly. When you finally started slowly walking towards him, he followed you with his gaze, like a predator tracking his prey.

"You did a great job fooling the guards today, Donghyuck."

The slow smirk that replaced his once innocent smile sent pins of cold straight to your bones.

"You're getting better at this too, Princess."

"I've figured you out," your voice came as an almost shaky whisper as you stopped at a distance from where he was still calmly sitting. Something changed in the light of his eyes as you said it, and in that moment, you were sure he knew exactly what you were talking about.

"You did," he said, his tone not giving away whether he is stating a fact or asking a question.

"Everything you've done… You did it for your teacher, didn't you? You weren't just acting out. You were following a legacy. Does Haechan even know about this?"

He didn't answer. He only stared at you, his face devoid of any emotions you could pick apart.

“Were you under his orders? Does he know the police caught you?”

More silence. 

"Are you his successor? Of the Apothecarist?"

His blank facade finally cracked as he curled his lips before giving an empty laugh.

"Am I their successor? Darling, I think we got a little lost in translation there,” he said, his eyes dancing with a light that almost made you physically shiver. “I would give anything for that person to give me as much as a glance. Why do you think I have done all these things?"

You froze. Trying to scramble your brains, your train of thought was easily lost on you as you watched him slowly rise from his seat. He started moving closer with measured steps towards you, his gaze pinning you on the spot. Before you could even stop yourself, your gut instinct took the best of you and made you take a step back to keep him from closing the distance.

"I have done everything to find that person again. You see, people like me and Haechan, we're wrong in the head. We're outcasts. That person was the only one who could have understood us, but they made the stupid decision to stop. I didn't like that. So I took up their activities, because I thought, maybe if they see me doing it, they'll have no other choice but to crawl out of their hellhole and find me. But no. Even that didn't work no matter how many places and people I ripped apart. It was very, very frustrating."

Your breath caught in your throat when you felt your back hit the cold wall behind you. He was towering over you now, eyes dark and hooded as he slowly and pointedly rested both arms beside your head to cage you in place. Goosebumps rose on the skin of your arms when he spoke softly again, his face close enough that his breath was fanning your skin.

"You said you figured me out. The question now is… What are you going to do about it?"

You didn't know how you managed to answer, not when he slowly lowered his head to run his nose gently over the curve of your cheek. His lips ghosted over the shell of your ear after, causing your eyes to flutter shut. Your knees have gone weak, but you couldn't really find it in you to push him away.

"Y-You need… to leave," you croaked. He laughed softly as he pressed his lips to the sensitive spot of your neck, a move that finally made your legs give way under your weight. Before you collapsed though, one of his hands caught you by the hip and pressed you against the wall harshly to keep you steady.

"You'll make me leave? How are you even going to do that, hm?"

You were fighting for air. You pressed your hands against his chest now, though that didn't stop him from trailing his hand on your hip to the hem of your skirt. You gasped as his knuckles grazed against the skin of your thigh.

"What are you—"

"Answer. Or I'll turn you around right now and fuck you against the wall."

Your voice died in your throat. You knew he wasn't kidding, not when he slipped his fingers under your clothes and started slowly rubbing circles inside your thigh. Every now and then, he would stop the gentle movements to bury his blunt nails against the soft skin there to leave half crescent marks on your skin. You were absolutely wrecked, breathing heavily as you became painfully aware of the wetness and heat that has now gathered in the apex of your thighs.

"Answer… Now."

"M-Merge. You need to merge. With H-Haechan."

Your reply made him momentarily pause. It was quick though, his movements soon enough resuming to leave burning tracks on your skin.

"Merging… That's very... novel. I've read studies of it. Multiple personalities are merged and fused together with the core personality to make a single entity," he said casually in an almost thoughtful voice that was a complete contrast to the way his hand started inching closer and closer to your core. Both your hands dropped to his wrist, trying to stop him.

"So you're thinking you can merge me with Haechan… Make us into one person so that I can be held back, is that it?" His voice was brimming with amusement now as he smiled down on you. You gave a dry sob, absolutely hating the way your body was screaming for him to touch you where you needed him. You didn't even bother to answer as you painfully became aware of how his fingers suddenly stopped moving a pitying few inches from your dripping core. For a moment, none of you talked and moved. The only sounds in the room were that of your heavy breathing and the ticking hands of the clock on the wall. When he spoke again, his soft words were like the crack of a whip that shattered the tension that shrouded you both. 

"Do you cum from thoughts of me, noona?"

Your head shot up at him, stunned by the question.

"Wha—"

You broke off into a scream before you even managed to push the word out as he suddenly moved his hand and plunged two fingers inside of you. He moved so fast in pushing your soaked underwear to the side and burying himself to the hilt that the only thing you managed to do was to grip at his shoulders as a mixture of stretch and slight pain overcame your body in waves. He was quick enough to cover your lips with his other free hand, the action softening your voice into muffled groans against his palm.

"Shhh… Keep quiet now. You wouldn't want the guards to come running here and see me knuckle-deep in you, right? Or maybe that's your thing?" He laughed softly, his voice sweet and gentle. It was an ironic contradiction to the way he pumped his fingers deep inside of you, fast, deep, and unforgiving. He didn’t even let you adjust, instead starting a pace that made you shake against him. Unable to answer, you shook your head vehemently as tears started pricking your eyes.

"Fuck, you're such a dirty slut. Can you hear yourself? You're soaking wet. You're even spreading your legs for me."

"I know you dream of me. Don't even try to deny it," he whispered against your temple as you struggled to keep yourself up. Without warning, he pushed another finger inside of you, so deep this time that it hit that spot that always made your vision turn white. The sensation made you actually scream again behind his hand, a reaction he ultimately caught as he smirked at you.

The realization hit you like a truck when he said those words. Looking down in panic, you caught yourself trying to spread yourself wider for him as your thighs continued to tremble. You watched as his fingers disappeared inside of you again and again, massaging your walls that were desperately trying to suck him in. A broken groan left your throat as you felt yourself tighten against him, desperate for more. When he resumed his pace and went deeper, you clung to him harder, nails digging against the fabric of his shirt.

"Oh… So it's this, huh? Your special spot. Look at you trembling. Are you close? Are you going to cum with just my fingers?"

All sense and reason have left you at this point. Tears have started spilling down your cheeks, but all you could care about was the way he continued to drive himself deeper inside you again and again, right where you need him. Your legs were in pain, and you threw your head back against the wall as the beginnings of the tight knot in the pit of your stomach started to unravel. Donghyuck pressed his lips against the column of your throat and nipped your skin in between murmuring words that your foggy mind could barely understand anymore.

Come on.

Give in.

Beautiful.

Stop fighting me.

"Cum."

Your eyes rolled to the back of your head as he made one last thrust and buried his fingers against the spot inside of you. Vision turning white, the pressure inside you finally broke and sent waves and waves of electric pleasure through your veins. You could hear everything and nothing, your mind temporarily blanking out to block everything but your high. Just as you were at the crest of your orgasm, you heard him whisper words against your cheek as he gently kissed you there.

"Perfect… You're so perfect."

"Too bad you can never be her."

-----

A/N: Well... that was a ride. This is the second to the last chapter. Enjoy! 

Taglist:  @negincho, @jhornytrash, @aaasteroidsky, @huangberryyy, @marijmin, @ashkuuuu , @lostlovesoul11 , @johnniverse , @traint0tokyo , @lilyinthewinter , @byunniebaekhyunnie ​, @ellatizw ​, @bettyschwallocksyee , @stopeatread , @glitching-wren,  @tyongf-sunflower99, @chelzinha26, @vaerinri​, @minshookie29, @grandmasterslickfox, @coconuttiez8d​, @haechanalpha​,  @markleemelonn​, 

Untaggable for some reason 😔 @hyukiebb, @kpopstanforlifeuwu

If I missed anyone, please let me know!

[kanmom51]

The is a difference between lying and not saying the whole truth or keeping some things to yourself.

Truth told by V and JK in ITS: We're not as close right now as we were years ago. People change and it's okay.

Omitted info: Why?

It's personal and none of our business. Luckily it looks like that talk was good for them and they started getting closer again.

Truth told by JK: ARMY is for Army and the crown and J is for JK.

The ARMY one is pretty obvious. And J being for JK is new, but that does not mean it's not the truth. He said so himself.

Omitted info: Why it's placed over the M, when it's connected to the crown? Especially considering him sometimes referring to Jimin as JM (including in the new live and RUN).

Again this might be personal and poeple are allowed not to say everything. Especially if the whole truth could hurt them.

They say the truth and keep info to themselves in EVERY interview. Everyone does that on a daily basis, without being a superstar with a big chunk of their country's BNP on your backs. That does not mean, that what they are NOT saying is not also the truth. It just means we don't know all of it and that's how the world is.

I will never call any of the members liers. I just accept that everyone keeps personal stories and info to themselves and doesn't have to share everything. I don't do that myself, so why expect it from them?

Have a lovely day 💜😘

PS. Just my personal opinion of cause.

Your personal opinion very well put.

An opinion I tend to agree with, as I have stated in my posts following the first round of lives we had from JK.

As you said, we all omit stuff, it's personal, it's ours not to share with others if we don't feel comfortable enough to do so.

But in their case, these two young men, whom we love and believe are in a closeted long term loving queer relationship, two young men that are at the top of the world fame-wise, they have everything to lose if they are outed.

With their level of worldwide fame there are those that forget at times where they actually come from, the societal pressures they are under. SK isn't an LGBTQ+ friendly country (not that in friendly ones it would be that much easier). Korean society is very conservative, and if we thought things were going somewhere prior to 2022, well the 2022 elections kind of sealed the deal on that one (without going into the politics). They are also just about to be enlisting to MS, where queer relations are not only unwarranted they are illegal, a law that is being challenged but yet to be cancelled.

And as you know, the bigger you are, the greater the fall. I would love to live in La La land and believe that them coming out would be accepted and celebrated. That the fandom would be happy for them, for being themselves, for finding love. That the society they live in would celebrate their bravery and that they would champion the LGBTQ+ cause in SK.

But those are all dreams.

Unrealistic dreams.

Because the fandom, they won't accept it. Look at how they behave now when JK shows even a smidge of queerness. Our latest little example the reactions to him singing Unholy. And SK society, well look at Holland. Yes, if they ever decide to come out it will have, I feel, an immense effect on the LGBTQ+ cause, if only by giving it the back wind and exposure it might lack at the moment. A celebrity at their level, someone that is loved and adored so much, admitting to being queer, it will definitley have an effect. But the price to pay for them will be a great one. It's up to them, together, to make that decision if and definitely when. And the when is also definitely not now.

God, I have a point here, I promise I do, even though this feels like me just going on and on and on with stuff already said in the past.

My point is, as I've made clear in several posts now, that JK in his live could NEVER admit that the J and M together are meant to be JM.

Not out loud.

Not for everyone to hear.

That would be literally outing himself, and most likely JM as a consequence as well.

Because seriously, EVERYONE knows what that would mean.

JM tattooed on to his ring finger. For eternity.

Why do you think army came up with the convoluted theory about Army plus J being for all the members? Because everyone knew exactly what that JM meant.

So, admitting to it was not an option.

And yet, he wanted to explain his tattoos. He wanted to tell us what Army stood for, what other tattoos stood for, and he couldn't just ignore the J. So he gave us an answer. But like I've said, and like you have too, he didn't give us a full one.

But you know what?

This super intelligent young man who made a conscious decision to add the J tattoo on his ring finger, placing it right over the already existing M, while he knows that many of us aren't stupid either, is aware of the fact that if he gives us a plausible explanation most of the fandom will latch on to that, because they would prefer to believe anything at all rather than even toy with the thought that perhaps he is queer (re: the army is the members idiotic theory).

[stylecouncil]

the people need your verdict: were hemingway and fitzgerald lovers?

do I think they were ever physically lovers? I really have no idea/its improbable that it went on too long if it went on at all and what the extent of it would have been, esp considering how weird fitzgerald was about sex to begin with (read sheilah grahams memoir. which I really do think stems from some sort of abuse, esp when you consider certain pretty telling statements about catholicism/the one intense relationship we know he had with a priest as a young man). both were also so publicly defensive about homosexuality (esp fitzgerald, probably out of necessity of being so outwardly feminine, although you see a real complex view/fixation on it in his actual writing) that it would be unlikely real evidence of this would survive whether it happened or not. zelda certainly seemed to think they had an inappropriate relationship in her eyes, but it’s hard to quantify exactly what that means esp when you combine it with the deterioration of her mental state.

the two of them immensely disliked each other, of which there could be multiple explanations for and might simply come down to hemingways misogyny and cold hearted clinging away from “feminine” showing of emotion or what he said it was, the belief fitzgerald was wasting his talent by remaining married to her/trying to get her help/remaining in their whirlwind of a relationship, but tended to look like this 👇 and was frequently very nasty

in terms of their emotional relationship I certainly think it was intense and scott seemed to value hemingway far more than he valued him (the constant references to him in something like the crack up, the tales of showing up to his house drunk in the middle of the night, the talking about him incessantly to mutual friends etc) but that being said hemingway also seemed to be fixated on scott in some sort of one-sided battle, like he was constantly trying to prove himself the better/not “like” scott ie not as feminine and, in his eyes, pathetic as scott. it seems like there was obviously something within scott that scared hemingway to death. this fixation even carries over to his writing (see: the snows of kilimanjaro, im which fitzgerald is essentially made the poster child for the weak man, a man who may as well already be dead, letting women rule his life, published shortly after fitzgerald released the crack up essays and the ensuing fall out/one of my favorite letters from fitzgerald to hemingway). the fact that fitzgerald seemed to genuinely admire women seemed to be a real sore spot between the two, especially where it concerned zelda. either way, in between their disagreements and the eventual dissolution of their relationship, there were obvious signs of real closeness in their letters

and there seems to be real deliberation in the way hemingway writes about fitzgerald in a moveable feast. like he wants to cause harm, but then also keeps pulling back, (there are a few great essays I’ve read that go into what hemingway left in vs took out of a movable feast regarding fitzgerald, I have a few posts on here that reference them) also don’t get me started on the weird probably false and just meant to make fitzgerald look bad, but nevertheless strangely homoerotic scene he writes into the book about fitzgerald showing him his dick. (It’s a whole thing, also fits right into the theme of hemingway’s need to reassure his own masculinity by using fitzgerald as a scapegoat for his own insecurities).

long story short, I think the two both had some complicated feelings for eachother, a lot things related to fitzgerald are particularly sad/telling

I would say that fitzgerald was in love with hemingway but I’m not sure he knew exactly how to process those feelings/would even admit that to himself so it’s hard to actually fully say that was the case. how hemingway felt is even harder to pin down because he was even less likely to admit something like this to himself. its clear that he almost viewed fitzgerald as a woman and simultaneously treated him in the same derogatory style he tended to reserve for women, and seemed to be interchangeably disgusted by him and as equally fixated on him and with as much admiration as fitzgerald had for him (see: his description of fitzgerald in a movable feast I think all of this comes across even in that concise paragraph). so um what am I trying to get at here.

yeah kind of.

[shihalyfie]

Digimon Survive’s character cast, their roles in the group, and Adventure parallels

This franchise loves to self-reference, so it’s very easy to say that a lot of things are based on Adventure, but in Survive’s case, it has been abundantly clear (to the point of having been officially stated in many interviews) the narrative and setup itself is meant to be a reimagining of Digimon Adventure, as in the 54-episode series that aired from March 1999-2000. As much as the franchise likes to use Adventure symbolism, or rough glosses of its isekai premise, you might be surprised at how few things actually have bothered to take a look at the entire series and structure to the little things, trying to figure out what made it tick, instead of just pulling its names and faces and terminology and calling it a day. Moreover, one of Survive’s core premises of “a Digimon partner is effectively a part of your own soul” is a premise that originates directly from Adventure; it’s just that this time, it’s much more explicit.

Adventure is famous for being a character narrative, to the point you can put a picture with nothing but the characters and people will consider it representative of the entire series. So if you want to go deeply into Adventure, you have to look at its characters, what their relationships were, and what roles they had. And Survive does, but with its own distinct cast of characters who are very similar in some ways...and very different in others.

As you might expect, this post spoils all four routes, so please be aware of this before reading further. (I also will be spoiling Adventure and 02, in case you haven’t seen those yet. Hey, you never know.)

Because I wasn’t able to go back through all four routes to take screenshots, the screenshots used in this post are from Anthony (Wrathful), Owl-Quest (Harmony), and BattleBunny (Moral and Truthful)’s playthroughs. Please go check them out if you want to see the game yourself!

Something very important before we begin

I think making comparisons and drawing parallels is very useful, but I have a personal policy that comparisons should only be drawn “as much as they are useful” and no more than that. There’s a difference between “thoughtfully inspecting comparisons and contrasts to analyze how things work” versus “forcing parallels so hard that you end up trying to smash a square peg into a round hole, completely losing sight of the reason you’re trying to make those comparisons in the first place”. I know it’s tempting to try and make as many parallels as you can, but there’s a point where trying to force it becomes actively detrimental to your analysis.

It is true that Survive was built from the ground up as a reimagining of Adventure of sorts, and even promoted and officially stated to be such. However, Adventure is Adventure, and Survive is Survive. Survive is a game meant to stand on its own even if you've never touched Digimon Adventure in your life; to act as if the narrative and characters are nothing more than variations on Adventure’s is, in my opinion, disrespecting Survive’s efforts to be its own story in the end. It is a game that pays tribute to and reimagines Adventure's concepts, so it can't (and shouldn’t) be disentangled completely from Adventure if you want to bring the most out of an analysis, but it’s also unfair to treat the game as if it’s just some kind of twisted, barely-modified parody of Adventure, because it’s not. It’s a game that draws heavily from its predecessors in bringing up concepts to think about while also firmly doing what it needs to do in order to be its own story.

Therefore, in making character comparisons and analyzing the characters in relevance to Adventure characters, my priority will be on making connections between “their roles and positions in the group” rather than trying to force comparisons for the sake of forcing them, or trying to claim that this character is just the Survive version of this Adventure character. In fact, in some cases, my goal is to convey that a Survive character may start off in the same rough position as their Adventure counterpart but go in a very different direction.

I also would like to reiterate that I very much disapprove of the idea of using Survive to be condescending about Adventure. Survive’s characters and plot do address territory that Adventure isn’t able to, but framing Survive with reductive things like “Adventure but darker/edgier” or “a deconstruction of Adventure” as if the game only exists to dunk on Adventure’s idealism or treat it like it’s implausible is incredibly disrespectful, not only to Adventure but also to Survive, which in fact very obviously holds its predecessor in high esteem. (I mean, it is very fun to refer to Survive as “Adventure except people die” as a joke, but the game really is more than just that.) I’m going to bring back this very well-worded tweet “a deconstruction is when I like something in a genre I disrespect”; I don’t have any patience for this kind of thing, so don’t bring it in here. I reiterate: the comparisons are going to be drawn for the sake of better analyzing what Survive is pulling from and referencing while also doing its own thing for its own story. No more, no less.

Takuma and Agumon

At this point it’s pretty much common knowledge that anyone with a name that starts with “ta-” and a pair of goggles is going to be taking Taichi’s role as protagonist, and Takuma having an Agumon only drives it in further, but if we’re actually going to talk about Taichi himself, things get a little more complicated because Taichi was actually quite unusual in many ways (I honestly would say that Taichi is a character a lot of people “know” but don’t tend to easily “understand”). But right off the bat, Takuma turns out to have a very different temperament from Taichi’s, being significantly more introspective and less impulsive. In fact, he holds the distinction of being a rare Digimon protagonist who uses the polite first-person pronoun boku (most Digimon protagonists use the more assertive ore), and for frame of reference, the other major players who do this are Takato (Tamers), Haru (Appmon), and Keisuke (Hacker’s Memory), all three of whom are associated with some kind of meta element questioning whether they should be in the protagonist position...

(Personally, between Takato, Haru, and Keisuke, I’d say Takuma is probably closest to Haru in that he’s polite but also very thoughtful and introspective. He does happen to have self-doubts much more quickly than Haru would most of the time, but he’s not prone to Keisuke’s self-esteem issues or Takato’s tendency to shrink easily.)

Some of the nuances of Takuma’s personality and how selfish or selfless he is depend on the player’s choices and what route things are in, but for the most part the general core is consistent across all four routes. Takuma doesn’t start off thinking of himself as the group’s leader, and this part is consistent with Taichi as well; Taichi didn’t have particular awareness of himself as the group’s leader until Jou confronted him with the prospect in Adventure episode 28. However, in contrast to Taichi immediately taking initiative and pulling everyone forward even if he didn’t consciously see himself as the leader, Takuma started off still having strong awareness of seniors like Aoi and Shuuji, and it only slowly becomes apparent that he’s taking charge as more and more characters start pointing it out, culminating in multiple characters pretty much unanimously considering Takuma the group’s leader even before he’s considered it; Part 9 on the Truthful route has Shuuji outright admit to Ryo that he’s using Takuma as his model for how a leader should actually be.

So how does Takuma end up becoming unanimously considered the leader in a similar way to Taichi despite having such a different temperament? The characters spell it out in clear words multiple times over the course of the game: he brings the group together by being their emotional center. That part about being their “emotional center” is important because Taichi wasn’t necessarily as good at that part (which incites a lot of conflict between him and the others during the last arc of Adventure), but the reason this is more important for Takuma is that the Survive group is significantly more prone to infighting than the Adventure group was most of the time. When the game’s producer Habu called it the “Lord of the Flies” counterpart to Adventure’s “Two Years’ Vacation”, Adventure’s director Kakudou revealed that Lord of the Flies was an inspiration for the part of the story corresponding to Pinocchimon and Yamato...which resulted in Taichi failing to keep the group together and everyone falling apart. So in other words, Takuma is pulling off the achievement of keeping the group glued together when the equivalent of the Pinocchimon arc is happening all the time. There are no Crests in this narrative, meaning the automatic filtering for “naturally good kids” was absent and the kids were dragged into the Digimon world by sheer virtue of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, leading to a lot more negativity on all fronts and composures lost much more easily -- and thus, Takuma’s ability to keep a cool head and get everyone to calm down becomes his most important asset.

Also of note is Takuma’s own relationship with Agumon. While Agumon in this game is obviously based off Taichi’s Agumon in Adventure, Takuma and Agumon end up having quite a lot of conversations together where Takuma consults with him on how to sort out his emotions and what to do next, far more so than would happen in the original Adventure. Part of this is simply because of the medium shift (being a video game, Survive is able to have much longer conversations that aren’t restricted by timeslot airtime), and it’s also not like Agumon in Adventure wasn’t also emotionally insightful when Taichi needed advice, but Takuma and his Agumon partner end up having several conversations on the vein of Adventure!Agumon’s discussions with BlackWarGreymon in 02 episodes 32 and 46. In the end, the main reason is probably just that Takuma is just that kind of introspective person who actively seeks out Agumon and talks to him honestly, allowing them to get borderline philosophical without any strings attached.

Minoru and Falcomon

The mere suggestion that Minoru is supposed to be Koushirou’s counterpart would probably make someone roll their eyes and go “oh, come on, now you’re really forcing it,” and I wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking so. Temperament-wise, Minoru couldn’t be any more different from Koushirou. Rather than anyone in the Adventure group, he comes off as a kind of mix of Daisuke (in terms of being rough but friendly and having a forward-thinking attitude) and Miyako (in terms of being a “mood maker” who tries to keep everyone’s spirits up but needs to be reined in by a more stoic partner). But trust me, hear me out, I know this sounds weird, but I’ve got more reason for this stance than you might think!

Actually, Koushirou had a pretty complex role in Adventure, to the point he seems to have two counterparts in Survive. The more well-publicized parts of Koushirou’s profile involve his intellectual curiosity (bringing him closest to the secrets behind the Digital World) and his sense of deference and politeness, and those traits correspond more to the Professor (more on that when we get to his section). However, the less well-publicized but no less important part is that Koushirou was, for all intents and purposes, Taichi’s right-hand man, and thus one of the most important figures in helping Taichi pull off what he needed to as leader.

Koushirou was one of the few kids who knew Taichi prior to the events of the series and had already established a certain sense of respect for him (he only went to camp at all because of Taichi). As a result, while Koushirou tended to avoid confrontation with the others in the group, he was open to Taichi in a way he often wasn’t with others, and Taichi likewise was comfortable asking him for assistance (culminating in the famous moment in Adventure episode 28 when Taichi uses his authority as leader to appoint Koushirou as the best person to solve the card puzzle). Later, it’s Koushirou who sticks by Taichi when the group splits up during the Dark Masters arc, Koushirou who witnesses and hears out Taichi during one of his biggest emotional breakdowns in Adventure episode 48, and Koushirou who works directly alongside Taichi in Our War Game! Taichi’s relationships with Yamato or Sora tend to be more well-publicized, so casual fans of Adventure or mainstream media reports tend to completely gloss over this, but it’s conspicuous to anyone who knows Adventure on a particularly deep level. (While this analysis sticks purely to the original Adventure and 02 for the sake of consistent scope, it says something that even stage play writer Tani Kenichi clearly also caught onto this and had the lines "I've watched you at your side all these years! Isn't that right?!" and "But I thought you could at least speak honestly with me!" come out of Koushirou’s mouth.)

So as much as Minoru isn’t really much of a counterpart to Koushirou in terms of personality, he is in terms of Koushirou’s “position in the group”: the leader’s right-hand man who avoids inciting confrontation but is vital in helping keep them together. (In fact, the part about avoiding confrontation is pointed out quite directly in his official profile.) Considering how Takuma pulling off the feat of keeping everyone together required him to have a very different temperament from Taichi, it thus follows that Minoru’s temperament needs to be different from Koushirou’s in order to achieve the same effect with the Survive group. Koushirou’s more polite and level-headed demeanor was important to keeping the rather impulsive Taichi in check, but in this case, Takuma is already plenty level-headed by himself, and Minoru being more actively sociable and trying to keep everyone’s spirits up is a more effective complement. This is helped by the fact that, in the same way Koushirou knew Taichi from the soccer club even prior to Adventure, Minoru happens to have already been Takuma’s friend from school prior to Survive, and thus by the time we get to the final chapters of the game (especially in the Truthful route), it’s made quite clear that Minoru really is Takuma’s right-hand man whom he can rely on for many things. On top of that, Minoru being so agreeable makes him the only character of the group besides Takuma to survive all four routes -- he sticks by Takuma no matter what.

Background-wise, Minoru’s is quite different from Koushirou’s in that he’s mostly used to being rather lonely at home due to a divorced father and a workaholic mother, and he also happens to be a fan of hero manga and tokusatsu to the point a lot of his personal ideal throughout the game is to become a “hero”. (Perhaps fittingly, his temperament is probably the closest to the shounen protagonist archetype among this group.) This puts him in an interesting position in that he’s the most aware of what kind of heroic character would be from a series like Digimon Adventure and personally strives to be one, even though it takes him a while to gather up the courage for it. When you have affinity-affecting choices with him, he tends to prefer the “forward-thinking” kinds of responses that would make Daisuke proud, so he clearly took the kids’ media lessons to heart. In line with that, Minoru is the only character besides Takuma to survive all four routes; while his biggest emotional turmoil happens in all four routes (it takes up the majority of Part 6), he and Falcomon weather through it quite well. But when you think about it, back in the Adventure universe, the kids who admired the Adventure kids most were...well, the 02 kids, so perhaps it’s not actually that surprising Minoru’s temperament is closer to them.

Also, here’s another fun thing to consider: Minoru’s dynamic with Falcomon takes several pages from Miyako and Hawkmon’s book...so, remember who also happened to be Koushirou’s junior who admired him the most?

Aoi and Labramon

If you wrote a rough base outline of Sora and Aoi’s characters, they’d probably be pretty similar or even identical. You’d basically get something like “the Mom Friend who tries to take care of everyone and overwhelms herself in the process, crumbling under the pressure”. But there is one key distinction that makes all the difference: Sora’s desire to help others was something that came naturally to her despite her own lack of self-awareness, whereas Aoi’s woes come from the fact she’s all too aware of the fact everyone is relying on her and bears resentment about it.

One recurring thing with Sora was that her own self-evaluation was often much harsher than she actually deserved. Initially scoffing at the idea of being responsible for someone else (Adventure episode 4), despite being unable to abandon everyone and constantly going out of her way to help everyone behind the scenes (Adventure episodes 22-25), her own self-evaluation was still that she was apparently devoid of love and didn’t care about the others at all (Adventure episode 26). Her constant desire to help everyone was effectively compulsive, and she had poor awareness of whether she was getting in over her head, with others needing to remind her that she shouldn’t see things as an obligation (Adventure episode 51). Sora was barely even aware of how much she was putting out for others because she saw it as an impulsive obligation, and the others were the ones concerned about whether she was taking enough care of herself. Moreover, although Sora bottled up quite a bit of self-imposed pressure, she wasn’t exactly shy about expressing her feelings; it’s just that they often happened to be messy, and she wasn’t sure what to make of them.

(By the way, this is also why I really don’t like the idea that Adventure is somehow more “unrealistic” or even “idealized” than Survive’s just because they’re ostensibly more put-together and selfless people, because Adventure’s characters often toed on the other extreme of being selfless to self-destructive levels; the kids would be prone to severe self-confidence issues or even self-hatred, especially going into 02. While the Survive kids may seem overall self-centered at first and thus be more prone to infighting, any self-worth issues they have or attempts at reckless self-sacrifice don’t tend to be as frequent or extreme as they were with the Adventure and 02 kids.)

In contrast, Aoi is consciously aware of what’s on her plate, what she’s dealing with, and why she’s doing what she does. Sora was the same age as Taichi and Yamato, so she was able to be comfortable in a position as their peer, but Aoi is one year older than Takuma and therefore considered one of the seniors of the group, a fact that’s alluded to multiple times over the course of the game. This means the group ends up treating her with the expectation that she has responsibility for them (especially after Ryo and Shuuji die in the main routes, thus genuinely leaving her as the oldest one there), and on top of her class president duties, she’s surrounded by expectations and responsibilities that are actually imposed on her. On top of that, people actually take advantage of her kindness and exploit her, and she knows this fact very well and hates it. (While it’s possible this might have happened with Sora, it’s unlikely she would have even realized she was being taken advantage of, much less come to resent anyone who did, because the issue was more about her own difficulty with setting boundaries and doing something for herself.)

Aoi does what she does because “she wants to be helpful”, so she suppresses all of her angry feelings and resentment to not burden anyone; for the early parts of the game, Labramon openly voices all of the snark and harsh burns that Aoi clearly wants to say but won’t. This means that meeting Saki inspires a mix of admiration and envy for the fact Saki is able to express her feelings so openly. But in the Wrathful route, when everything goes to hell and Saki (somewhat) sacrifices herself for Aoi, Aoi implodes from the resentment of everyone burdening her with responsibilities, seeing their attempts to give her space as not caring enough about her, and upset that after all of her desire to be “helpful”, everything actually just got worse. The last straw is when Piemon exploits her kindness to attempt to murder her, and the end result is Aoi completely flipping into “the ultimate selfishness” (absorbing Labramon, as in her own ego) to decide that the best solution would be to impose her way -- the way she’d never been getting all of this time -- on others and force them to agree with her.

Thankfully, Aoi fares better in the other routes where she manages to trust and rely on others a little more, and her friends do much more to make sure she knows her efforts are appreciated. Notably, during her affinity choices, Aoi reacts very well to choices that validate her right to have “shallow” interests like cute things (instead of it being considered undignified and immature of her) and choices that have other characters outright call her a Mom Friend. I’m pointing this out because for all Sora is well-known among fans for being a Mom Friend, this wasn’t actually pointed out with this kind of wording in Adventure mainly because Sora wasn’t really seeing herself as one, but here Aoi does prefer to be seen this way, presumably because it affirms the fact her friends appreciate her as a person rather than someone to dump responsibilities on.

As an aside, the Wrathful route involves a subplot about Kaito being one of the first to catch onto what’s going on with Aoi and make the most prominent attempt at reaching out to her, and while I don’t know if this was intentionally meant as a parallel, it does call back to the scene in Adventure episode 26 when Taichi and Yamato are at a loss as to how to help Sora during her emotional meltdown, and Yamato’s response (to let her cry if she needs to) is indicated as the better option until Takeru finally manages to step in with the best response. In Aoi’s case, given that she ends up resenting everyone giving her space (interpreting it as “leaving her alone”), Kaito’s attempt to get through to her by confronting her directly about her feelings was probably the closest to a step in the right direction -- it’s just that unfortunately Kaito doesn’t exactly handle it delicately enough to prevent Aoi from having a complete breakdown.

Fortunately, as if responding directly to this predicament, the Moral route contains a scene of them getting along perfectly well when going out to get food together. This is significant if you played Wrathful and Harmony before then, because both routes had one or the other fall off the deep end; Moral has Shuuji and Ryo’s deaths force them to step up to the plate, but without the exacerbating factors that drove both to to the brink in Wrathful and Harmony, it turns out they’re more than capable of stepping up to the task.

Ryo and Kunemon

While it’s generally easy to figure out at least some obvious parallels for each character in this cast, sometimes even multiple, Ryo is the one character I’ve never seen anyone really be able to get a read on regarding this question. I’ve seen suggestions that it might be Akiyama Ryou (based on the name) or even Ken (based on having a bug-type partner that he initially had a bad relationship with). Personally, my stance is “nobody, and that’s the point” -- because you’ll notice that the one thing all of these theories have in common is that none of them correspond to anyone in the original group from Digimon Adventure.

I’m not sure if this really comes across as well to anyone who hasn’t actually played the game hands-on, but one very striking thing about Ryo over the course of the beginning of Survive is that the game oftentimes feels like it’s tempting you to give up on him. The characters label him as unlikely to be cooperative right off the bat, and while they extend the minimum amount of courtesy to him, it’s also tinted with a sentiment that nobody really expects him to come along because he’s so pessimistic he’ll never cooperate. Getting his affinity level up to a significant amount in the early game actually requires you to go out of your way to seek him out and talk to him at least once (during a period the game interface doesn’t inform you that he’s available to talk like it does the other characters). And Ryo really is an uncooperative stick in the mud who doesn't look like he has any interest in helping himself anyway. They spoiled the fact he was going to be the first death before the game even released!

In other words, Ryo has no clear Adventure counterpart because “he has no place here”. He’s not a character who fits in the framework of Adventure-defined archetypes. He wasn’t made to be on a heroic adventure to begin with, and so he’s the first to be removed from it. And yet, the difference his presence or absence makes results in him being arguably one of the most important characters in this game.

In fact, even in the very, very early stages on the game, there were hints that Ryo’s behavior of being completely uncooperative and pessimistic were largely exacerbated by the stress of being brought to another world with monsters; if you closely watch him at the beginning of the game, he’s the one who enables Miu into taking them to the shrine (which he reminds us about near the end of the Truthful route). His website short story reveals that he’d actively decided to go to the extracurricular camp despite his initial misgivings because he really did want at least a little hope of making friends. But being jaded from isolation does a number on your abrasiveness level (the Frontier kids can testify to that one), and then everything went to hell when all of his stress factors and feelings of isolation were aggravated to their worst.

Depression isn’t an elegant thing, unfortunately, and Ryo’s inner desire to do better being blocked off by his initial difficulty to connect with others is perfectly exemplified by Kunemon trying really hard to take care of Ryo and communicate with others but being held back by his inability to use human language or do much with his limited physique. Note that Ryo’s initial hostile behavior towards Kunemon isn’t necessarily condescension or anything near the level of Shuuji’s initial bad relationship with Lopmon; it’s just that Ryo is afraid of Kunemon and not sure what to make of him, in the same way he’s clearly not sure what to make of himself. (Naturally, the first thing Ryo does when he comes back from the brink is start forming a proper relationship wtih Kunemon, and Ryo himself opening up more in the Truthful route correlates with Kunemon’s higher forms becoming able to speak.)

Ryo’s death in the three main routes is from a mixture of factors that even the cast in-universe isn’t sure what to make of; he doesn’t actively commit suicide per se, but his death wouldn’t have happened if not for his extreme suicidal ideation, and while Takuma regrets not having reached out to him earlier, it’s also not like he can be blamed for not doing enough when it wasn’t for lack of trying (from Takuma’s perspective, it’s not like he had any way of knowing that Ryo would die if he didn’t bond with him intimately in 3 chapters, and Ryo himself wasn’t exactly giving much of an indication that such a feat would actually be possible). Looking at the difference between the routes where he dies and the route where he doesn’t, the difference is that when Ryo dies, his pessimism about anything working out for him and him having a “place” anywhere convinces him he really doesn’t have anything to live for anymore, whereas the route where he lives has Takuma and the others so obviously risking life and limb to drag him back that he’s actually able to see, very clearly, that he did have a “place” and the ability to make friends after all.

(By the way, I should point out that one thing Survive is very good at is that a lot of the “correct” affinity choices are ones where you don’t pry too deeply into their problems and instead respect the other person’s space. In Ryo’s case, getting his affinity up quickly enough to save him requires going out of your way to check on him often, but the actual choices that raise affinity mostly involve validating his feelings and not prodding things too much, basically showing that you care but also respecting that he’ll open up when he’s ready.)

Having realized this, Ryo opens up immediately; again, he was interested in proactively making friends from the get-go, so it’s only natural that as soon as he confirmed that was a possibility for him and his initial shell was broken through, he didn’t hesitate to brighten up and actively engage with the others. Turns out, he's actually one of the most emotionally insighful people in the cast (in no part because, as someone who's seen the bottom, he's well aware of its horrors), but he also has a certain sense of grounded, to-the-point pragmatism while also not being as extremely emotionally charged as Kaito. Completely contrary to the bad first impression he gave everyone (except Saki), it turns out he’s actually a pretty great friend to have. And once Ryo is saved, the route automatically locks onto Truthful, because it creates a chain reaction where he ends up being the best person to save Shuuji, who then paves the way for the truth to be reached and the best possible ending achieved.

Remember how I said that Ryo was the character who had no place in the Adventure framework? If Ryo dies in Part 3, the “best” possible ending you can theoretically get (Moral) is the one that correlates most closely to Digimon Adventure, with the kids being booted out of the Digimon world for the time being and an uncertain future of whether the worlds can truly come together. Reaching an even better one that more closely represents what came after Adventure and allows the story to be passed onto future generations (very unsubtly represented by the Chibimon meeting new kids at the end -- note the significance because none of the 02 quartet’s Digimon are recruitable in the game) requires Ryo, the added factor who helps the story proceed.

But really, the ultimate take-home the game is making here is that you shouldn’t give up on people that easily, because they just might surprise you.

Saki and Floramon

Saki’s creed being to “go with her feelings” makes it immediately obvious off the bat that she’s the Survive counterpart for Mimi, but interestingly, Saki is simultaneously more rude and more kind than Mimi was in Adventure. Mimi had a “princess-like” demeanor based on her somewhat spoiled upbringing, meaning that on one hand she would be quick to complain and gripe about anything that even moderately annoyed her, but she also was constantly deferential and respectful to her elders, had consistent use of honorifics, and was always polite and careful not to step on anyone’s toes as long as she wasn’t emotionally overwhelmed.

On the flip side, Saki handles everyone somewhat bluntly (not even using upward-facing honorifics for most characters despite being one of the youngest in the group) and has less regard for what other people think when she says what she feels -- but she’s quite the opposite of spoiled. In fact, Takuma realizes after a fashion that she comes off as someone who’s been through hardship in the past, and she’s actually one of the most resilient in the cast; eventually, we find out that any “sheltering” she’s been through comes from the fact she wasn’t allowed to do much in light of her illness, and her emphasis on feelings and living to the fullest comes from the fact she’s not sure whether she might die soon. Moreover, the illusory versions of Saki encountered over the course of the game reveal that she’s actually afraid of being hated by others, so there is a certain aspect of her that’s self-conscious about whether she’s going too far.

In the end, Saki respects others’ feelings, but also expects to have her own feelings respected in turn. Throughout her affinity events, Takuma learns that although she initially seems flighty and difficult to predict in terms of how she wants to be treated, she’s a lot more considerate than she seems at first, and at no point does she deny anyone else’s right to feel the way they do as long as they respect her own. In addition, while she doesn’t believe in hiding how she feels, she also does take measures to try not to step on others’ toes (that is to say, she understands that she can’t just selfishly do whatever she wants without regard for others). Out of all of the deaths presented in the three main routes, Saki’s is perhaps the most purely selfless one as she knowingly accepts death in the face of her fear of it, as long as it saves others -- especially since the weight of “failing” her friends hangs so over her head that she loses all sense of self-worth.

The beginning of Part 5 of the Wrathful route reveals that Saki had been delaying a surgery out of fear of its outcome, despite the fact that it would greatly increase her chance of living longer if she takes it. It’s left ambiguous whether she does actually decide to commit to it after the events of the game, but the three endings where she survives (Harmony, Moral, and Truthful) confirm she at least lives for a year after the game’s events. One can only hope that the events of the game and her friends convinced her to have the courage to take it!

Incidentally, Adventure and 02 generally had a pattern that the characters with Digimon partners that were closest to their own personalities were the ones that usually were more straightforward -- so naturally, Saki and Floramon have the closest to identical temperaments from the very beginning.

Shuuji and Lopmon

Considering that Jou tends to be one of the most well-liked Adventure characters by adult fans, depending on how you look at it, it’s either deeply ironic or incredibly fitting (or both) that his Survive counterpart is turning out to probably be the most controversial character in the cast.

In fact, on the surface level, Shuuji’s profile is almost identical to Jou’s from temperament to backstory. He’s the oldest of the group (in this case, the only one in high school) and is therefore considered the “leader” with responsibility for everyone by default, but doesn’t really have the mettle to keep himself together for it at first. His sense of duty has roots in his family life, including a father who has high expectations of him and a shadow of an older brother looming over him. However, one factor makes all the difference here: Shuuji’s doing all of this specifically because he wants to please others and get their approval.

Jou wasn’t really all that worried about what others thought of him (other than the minimum amount of respect necessary to have faith in his ability to keep them together). The concept of “status” didn’t really play any sort of factor, and in fact, he was portrayed as even somewhat dragging his feet when it came to studies or social status. On top of that, poking into a 02 drama CD reveals that Jou’s dad wasn’t actually that controlling, and was perfectly willing to give his blessing to Jou about not becoming a doctor; it’s just that Jou knew that, emotionally speaking, he wouldn’t be very happy about it, so Jou was doing this because he just really cared about his dad’s feelings. Jou only didn't want to "disappoint" others because he happened to have a Good Samaritan nature of wanting to help others, and in fact it almost seemed he thought of himself too little to the point of having a rather recklessly self-sacrificial streak (Adventure episodes 7, 23, 36). When Jou said “because I’m the oldest”, what it meant was “because as the oldest, I take my responsibility to take care of everyone very seriously”.

In contrast, Shuuji’s fixation with being respected as the “leader” is decidedly less altruistic than Jou’s, and in contrast to Jou not really worrying that much about what others think of him, Shuuji believes he’s entitled to everyone’s respect and acts out of fear of abandonment. Of course, the beginning of Part 5 makes it clear why there’s such a huge difference here: instead of a father who was still ultimately supportive despite everything and two older brothers who looked out for him, Shuujii’s father is emotionally abusive, and while his brother doesn’t seem actively condescending per se, he seems to have a sense of resigned apathy and is only driving Shuuji’s inferiority complex in further. (While it wasn’t said in Adventure or 02 that Jou was necessarily concerned about being compared to his older brothers, there was a nuance Jou had a very intimidating “example” set by his university-aged brothers -- but that's also exactly why Shin pulled Jou aside to give him advice in Adventure episode 38.) With the fear of being "abandoned" instilled in him, Shuuji desperately tries to prove to everyone around him that he's capable of being a "leader", but his obsession with trying to force everyone's respect rather than doing anything actually worthy of it only earns him less respect, which he knows...leading to a very bad loop.

Shuuji's behavior of being a well-meaning abuse victim who ends up exhibiting abusive behavior as a maladaptive response to his trauma is unfortunately a very well-known cycle, especially in the way it manifests via his behavior towards Lopmon. In a moment of clarity at the beginning of Part 5, Shuuji does notice that Lopmon's behavior towards him mirrors his own behavior towards his father, but this only results in a slight improvement in their relationship (from “treating him like a disgusting monster” to “overworking him to uncomfortable extents”), with Shuuji treating Lopmon in the exact same way his own father treated him. If you know anything about typical maladaptive trauma behavior, it comes out most prominently when the person in question feels the safest -- when they feel threatened, they shrink under the trauma, and when they feel safe, they try to make use of the control of the situation they’d so desperately been lacking, resulting in them resorting to the only thing they know how to do. So ironically, Shuuji began behaving this way because he actually felt emotionally safer with the kids and with Lopmon than he did at home; in front of his family, he shrank and groveled at his father’s feet, but once he was in a situation he did have an opportunity for respect, he became overly controlling.

In three of the four routes, Shuuji dies a vicious and unfortunate death when his own negativity dark evolves (for lack of a better way to put it) Lopmon and symbolically results in him being destroyed by his own malice, but in the Truthful route, Ryo gives him a good smack in the face to bring him back to his senses. While it's implied that Ryo was in the best position to understand how necessary that was due to having personally experienced trauma himself, at the same time, it's also remarkable just how quickly Shuuji bounces back and completely changes his tune thereafter. In fact, it’s quite unlikely Shuuji himself wanted to be this kind of person, it’s just that this kind of behavior was the only way he knew how to respond. (Note the symbolism of Wendimon himself clearly being in anguish and effectively crying for help even after devouring Shuuji -- he was afraid of his own destructive qualities.) Even if Shuuji wasn’t necessarily dealing with a supernaturally implanted ball of darkness in the back of his neck, it is not entirely off to be making a comparison with Ichijouji Ken.

Shuuji’s role in helping achieve the Truthful outcome happens because he decides to become the Professor’s assistant, meaning that Shuuji is actually incredibly capable and intelligent to the point where his observations help the Professor reach a level of understanding he wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. Shuuji himself says that he decided to start working under the Professor because he wanted an adult’s example to follow, which is important because this is basically Shuuji realizing that the other adults in his life had failed him. For all his father gave him grief for being a bad leader, he wasn’t exactly setting a fantastic example himself about what a good leader should be, and Takuma notes that Shuuji is starting to take on some actual leadership qualities just by being more confident and being more assured of what he wants. Shuuji says that he’ll talk to his father and brother once he gets back, and it’s not entirely clear whether this will go well (personally, I’m willing to put more bets on his brother, whom I imagine is likely to be a victim of their father as much as Shuuji is), but the important part is that this will mean Shuuji asserting himself and what he wants back at his family, pursuing what he wants to do and being a leader figure in his own way, rather than doing things just because his family expects him to.

It took a much longer and much more painful way to get there, but Shuuji was able to come to a forward-thinking conclusion for himself not entirely unlike the one Jou reached at the end of Adventure, which I think is pretty neat.

Kaito and Dracmon, Miu and Syakomon

Kaito and Miu’s character stories are so intertwined that I honestly feel it would be better to combine their sections here (I also know Miu would probably hate this, so I give my deepest apologies to her). Of course, it probably goes without saying that they’re Survive’s parallels to Yamato and Takeru, in the form of an overprotective older brother and a younger sibling who wants to be more independent. However, Yamato and Takeru’s situation was heavily influenced by their family situation, which is very different from Kaito and Miu’s, resulting in some pretty significant differences.

Back in Adventure, Yamato and Takeru’s parents having divorced meant that the brothers only got to see each other once a year (Yamato jokingly compares it to Tanabata in 02 episode 17), and Takeru had gotten his parents to agree to let him join Yamato’s camp despite not even going to his school. Thus, Takeru was openly affectionate with his brother because he was happy to even have the chance to be with him at all, and Yamato was overprotective because he didn’t have very many opportunities to do much for Takeru to begin with. Both of them were still heavily hurt by the divorce and coping with it in ways that were not entirely dissimilar to each other; Yamato started judging his own self-worth by his ability to be independent and via comparisons to other people, and Takeru suppressing everything and pretending he had it together and everything was fine, even when it wasn’t. Yamato derived his self-worth from his overprotectiveness of Takeru because he was afraid of the idea of anyone providing that role better than him (such as Taichi), whereas Takeru’s insistence on independence came from his desire to avoid difficult things and to not hold everyone back.

In Kaito and Miu’s case, the two still live together, but the inciting incident that defined their current relationship was the fallout from Miu being targeted by a stalker and Kaito dealing with him violently, resulting in the family relocating to the countryside and both of them blaming themselves for it; Kaito blames himself for not sufficiently protecting Miu during the incident, whereas Miu blames herself for causing a burden on her family and everyone around her.

While Miu’s desire to be independent and tendency to retreat into escapism reflects Takeru’s, her way of reacting to it is almost the opposite; Takeru responded by trying to present himself as a responsible, mature kid who had everything together, whereas Miu shirks responsibility altogether and sinks herself into occult hobbies and mischief. (It’s for this reason that while Part 4 contains a scenario that greatly calls back to the Princess Mimi subplot from Adventure episode 25, it’s Miu who is the central character instead of Mimi’s actual counterpart Saki, who’s significantly less selfish.) On Kaito’s end, he becomes so obsessed with his role as Miu’s protector that it becomes more about him than it ever becomes about Miu. His description of her as a frail girl at the beginning of the game is horrendously off, and his hot-headedness is to the point where Miu calls him out for defaulting to solving things with violence and using her as a proxy for it. (Yamato did lose his emotional composure enough to start punching Taichi out in Adventure episode 9, but this wasn’t treated as something that would have normally happened if not for the immediate stress of the situation he was in, and his punch on Taichi in 02 episode 10 came from him knowing Taichi would understand what he was intending to do with it, but Kaito going as far as to even slap Miu in Part 9 makes it clear that it’s not really about her as much as it’s Kaito wanting his way in being her “protector”.)

Of course, Kaito’s abrasive nature masks the fact Kaito genuinely does want to be friendly and simply has a hard time expressing it, but when Miu dies in the Harmony route, the despair brings the worst out of him, and his more self-centered stake in the equation ends up taken to its logical conclusion. Having basically centered his entire life around Miu’s existence and his own relation to her, Kaito decides that the entire world can burn for all he cares despite it being very obvious Miu wouldn’t approve of that (and when everyone informs him of this fact, Kaito merely retorts that they don’t have the right to say they know what she would think, as if he would know any better). In the end, Kaito is only barely brought to his senses before being destroyed by what he helped create.

Things end up better for Kaito and Miu on the Moral and Truthful routes, although, interestingly, the problem is not completely solved over the course of the game; Kaito keeps lapsing into overprotective tendencies, but he admits to Takuma that this isn’t good and that he needs to start doing better. Even if Kaito wants to do better, this kind of habit is not going to go away overnight, so it’s important that he keep this in mind going forward, especially since the end of the Moral route has him remind his shadow that he’s not going to be a very good brother to Miu if he ignores the fact she can take care of herself. Miu, on her part, stops shirking responsibility and becomes more aware of her need to not cause more trouble for others; on top of her compassion winning out in Part 4 when she realizes how much her immaturity had been causing others pain, she also starts taking more proactive roles as each route progresses, and the Moral and Truthful routes have her be more willing to admit that she doesn’t want to have a bad relationship with her brother despite everything.

Dracumon has a much more put-together personality than Kaito and is key in getting him to chill and hold back instead of losing his temper, similar to how Kaito is aware that he needs to do better (thus, him completely succumbing to his own despair and selfishness results in him willingly throwing Dracumon out for the sake of more power). Syakomon and Miu are like-minded enough that they have the best relationship among most of the partner pairs in the game, but Syakomon is significantly more down-to-earth and pragmatic, and she serves as a reminder of the responsibility to others Miu knows she’s shirking when she goes off to do things at her own convenience.

Miyuki and Renamon (”Haru”)

Fun fact: Due to Hikari’s natural sensitivity to Digital World-related phenomena and the fact she outright channels “the one who wishes for stability” (novel name: Homeostasis) in Adventure episode 45, quite a few Japanese fans have taken to  calling her a “shrine maiden” (miko), basically comparing her to a Shinto priestess who helps communicate with the gods and convey their will...so, naturally, her Survive counterpart is an actual shrine maiden.

In fact, comparing Hikari and Miyuki is a little difficult, mainly due to the fact their contexts are so different -- the more detailed nuances of Hikari’s characterization didn’t start popping up until 02, and her comparatively short time in Adventure had her with a cold, so she wasn’t exactly in her most optimal condition. Thankfully, if we do retroactively reflect Hikari’s further characterization in 02 back on Adventure (especially since Miyuki seems to be closer to 02!Hikari’s age anyway), Miyuki is actually pretty similar to Hikari’s nature of being bright, assertive, insightful, very put-together, and incredibly selfless. (Also, the scene of her immediately going right to the blackboard and drawing out the relationship between the worlds brings to mind Hikari’s Jogress mockups in 02 episode 28 and her parallel worlds diagram in 02 episode 34.)

As for Miyuki herself, she is at least significantly more willing to be vocal and outspoken about her feelings instead of clamming up to dangerous levels and risking falling into despair about her own welfare like Hikari would (Adventure episode 48, 02 episodes 13 and 31). In addition, the fact she grew up as a “responsible older sister” instead of being in the shadow of an older brother like Taichi means she grew up with the expectation of having responsibility for Akiharu, and her independent streak seems to be in line with that (it’s commented that even despite Akiharu now being much older than her in age, she still seems to have it more together than him). However, being born to the Minase family meant she was trained as a shrine maiden from the very beginning, which ends up causing much more misfortune for her than it does Hikari; Hikari’s sensitivity abilities were more of a “factor” than anything, and her ordeal with Miyako in 02 episode 31 allowed her to assert herself in spite of her special position, but Miyuki understands her role as a shrine maiden to be a duty, which includes considering it her responsibility to sacrifice herself for others and the world if need be. And while Homeostasis ultimately borrowed Hikari’s body after negotiating with her and left after courteously explaining themself, the entity that ends up taking possession of Miyuki for the last few chapters of the game is...decidedly not as benevolent.

Takuma’s initial contact with the “real” Miyuki in Part 8 is very brief (fittingly, it’s during the chapter he has contact with the real world, like with Taichi’s brief visit and meeting with Hikari in Adventure episode 21), but it’s enough to convince him that she should be considered a trusted friend worth saving, which puts him a bit at odds with the others for a short time after his return. Unfortunately, Miyuki remains somewhat of a damsel-in-distress for most of the rest of the game, and in two of the four routes (Wrathful and Harmony) she unceremoniously dies when the route’s main antagonist absorbs her. On the flip side, however, she becomes extremely instrumental in saving everyone in the Moral and Truthful routes, and is also granted a way home and a much happier future with her brother.

Interestingly, the parallel continues with Miyuki’s partner Renamon having a very “complicated” relationship with her partner and with loyalties or morality in a similar way to Hikari’s partner Tailmon-- but in an inverted sense. Other than the obvious partnership reasons, Tailmon’s absolute loyalty to Hikari came from a past lifetime of bitterness gained from blackmail and abuse on Vamdemon’s part, so it’s only natural that she jumped ship at the opportunity and took the chance to be with someone who would treat her with love. (She did initially start off on a bit more of an abrasive note with the other Digimon, most notably setting Gomamon off with her attitude in Adventure episode 45, but she eventually settled in.) Renamon is the opposite; her absolute loyalty to Miyuki and desire to be the one to make her happy (even to the point of taking the form of someone she hates) results in her stooping as low as trickery, betrayal, and submitting herself to an abusive master just for the chance to get Miyuki back (and, more selfishly, to prove that her bond with Miyuki means something, in the sense that she can’t stand the idea of anyone being more important to Miyuki than herself). It's an interesting contrast where, in both cases, the arguably most morally upright person in the group has a partner who ends up most closely associated with questionable morality, but it also goes to show you that even the best of intentions can end up with very bad results when sufficiently pointed in the wrong direction.

Professor (Akiharu)

Every Digimon series needs a designated infodump character to unpack what’s going on with the worldbuilding and all, and back in Adventure Koushirou was the main bearer of this role -- in fact, he was so important that he ended up constantly showing up in 02 despite not technically being a part of the advertised main cast. At first, it seems as if the Professor really is mostly just this, and it’s initially even questionable how helpful of one he’ll be when it seems like he’s died at the end of Part 3. But not only does the Professor return to provide more info behind what’s going on, he also ends up becoming instrumental to determining the difference between the endings, because whether he’s present or not and how much he’s learned become the biggest influencing factors on the outcome. (The Harmony route involves the gate being opened much less aggressively than in the Wrathful route, but it’s implied things still had a worse outcome than they did in the Truthful route because the Professor wasn’t able to be there anymore to give any guidance, and the Moral route has everyone seal off the gate because him never uncovering the truth behind the Master meant they destroyed it and thus the system that gave the boundary between worlds any stability.)

The Truthful route happens thanks to the chain reaction of Ryo saving Shuuji and Shuuji becoming the Professor’s assistant, allowing him to more effectively dig up the truth regarding the Four Holy Beasts, the Master, and Haruchika -- hence why it’s called the “truthful” route, not simply in terms of being a “true ending”, but also in terms of it being the ending where the truth behind it all was revealed. Through flashbacks and eventually some outright statements, we learn that as even as a kid, Akiharu actually had quite a bit in common with Koushirou, in terms of being timid and deferential yet bursting with intellectual curiosity and a desire to know more. Back in Adventure, Koushirou managed to uncover some very important things about the Digital World thanks to the fact he actively pursued anything he was interested in, and while Akiharu spending his life studying the Kemonogami might initially seem to be his way of coping with the traumatic loss of his sister and memories, he tells Garurumon in the Truthful route that it was simply his encounter with him that inspired him to learn more and teach others.

The ending of the Truthful route draws parallels between the siblings Haruchika and Yukiha with their descendants Haru and Miyuki, but their situations are reversed; Haruchika was the one “abandoned” by his sister, whereas Miyuki was “abandoned” back in the Digital World when she sent her brother back, and thus the Master attempts to claim Miyuki as someone who should sympathize with him only to find that she bears absolutely none of the malice he does. And like Yukiha, Akiharu doesn’t give up on finding his sibling again and eventually manages to do so, despite going through trauma and memory loss (and some scorn from the scientific community) to get there. On the flip side, Garurumon ends up bearing the emotional pain of being left behind, but in the Moral and Truthful routes he can’t bring himself to hold the grudge for too long once it becomes clear Akiharu really didn’t mean for that to happen. In the end, despite all the trouble that happened between Akiharu, Miyuki, Garurumon, and Renamon, none of them were able to hold onto their grudges, and that’s what eventually allows them to save Haruchika from his own.

Haruchika

You might be wondering, wait, what, this guy? Well, you see, in the Truthful route we find out that he was a sacrifice for others to have power, and he decided to take out his feelings of betrayal out on the world and bring it down with him. Now how does that correlate to anything in Adventure --

-- oh, okay.

I’m sure a lot of Adventure fans who finished the Truthful route were probably at least able to figure out the parallel overall, but inspecting it closely reveals there’s even more than you might think -- Haruchika is deliberately drawn as a parallel to Akiharu in a sort of Survive equivalent to a “fallen Chosen Child”, and his laments rather parallel Apocalymon’s “we wanted to live and speak of friendship, justice, and love!” And in the Moral route version of things, the Master forces the kids to go through trials of overcoming their darkest feelings and reaffirming how far they’ve come, quite similar to the reaffirmations in Adventure episode 53.

Fortunately for Haruchika, his much deeper contextual relation to Survive’s story and themes (and therefore sympathetic qualities) allow him to be saved and to pass on properly with Yukiha, which certainly beats going out in a failed suicide bombing. Adventure, as a sort of pioneer for Digimon works thereafter, had Apocalymon serve as the “inhibitor of evolution” compared to Adventure’s “story of evolution”, but Survive, which spends more time examining what a Digimon partner even is in the first place, thus has Haruchika represent more of a challenge to what the Survive kids learn to find and what ultimately saves Haruchika himself in the end: as the theme song says, turning hatred into love. Haruchika himself is said to be the first to have realized that bonds between humans and Digimon made each other stronger -- basically being the inventor of Digimon partnerships in this universe -- only for him to end up succmbing to his own hatred and the malice of the world.

Also, when you really think about it, the Master is the closest thing you can say to entities that “chose” the kids as the Survive equivalent of Chosen Children -- at least, in the sense that their distortions dragged the kids into the Digimon world in order to prey on them. Homeostasis and the Agents were still guilty of dragging Adventure’s Chosen Children into the Digital World and not really giving them good explanations, but Homeostasis rather courteously explains in Adventure episode 45 that they were doing it out of desperation for lack of many other options. However, Homeostasis also made it clear that they didn’t have many abilities on their own besides housekeeping, and that the kids would have to be the one to figure the rest out on their own (the novels clarify that it’s really nothing more than a security system), whereas the Master does pose himself in a deity-like position and even has the entire stability of the Digital World depend on him -- it’s just that they’re also quite the opposite of cooperative. So in both cases, regardless of the initial circumstances, the groups involved had to solve the problem on their own will.

[vitruvianmanbara]

Hi, I saw your tags on that post about queer labels and was wondering if you could expand on what you meant about the limitations of our language of sexuality and the stuff about grounding conversations about this stuff in history and epistemology?

Asking in good faith, I just never thought about it in those terms, so I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.

Sure! Just to be clear, I was kind of going off on a tangent in the tags, all that stuff wasn't entirely relevant to the poll at hand, lol - when I'm introducing myself to others or talking to people casually I don't expect to be having these kind of conversations.

Broadly speaking, when I talk about the limitations of our language of sexuality, what I'm referring to is the way we might find that our lived experiences aren't adequately captured by our historically and culturally-determined vocabularies around sexuality, and sexual identity in particular. When I talk about grounding our conversations about this stuff in history, I'm saying that I think it's more useful to pay attention to the historical and cultural reasons behind why this is the case as opposed to doing things to intellectually and linguistically skirt around the issue.

There's a few reasons why I think this is worth caring about:

It allows us to clearly state that sexual identity as a concept has its origins in medicine and psychiatry, and continue to examine how our modern concepts of terms like "gay" and "lesbian" have been historically (and to an extent, continue to be) mediated by medicine. If we care about liberating ourselves from a medicalized understanding of gender and sexuality, we need to be attentive to the ways in which the pathologization of homosexuality has shaped not just our oppression, but things like our politics and language.

It allows us to be attentive to the ways in which certain sexual identities, e.g. "bisexual", have not followed the same trajectory. It prompts us to ask the following: what are the theoretical reasons behind why this is the case? What does this mean for the history of bisexual identity formation, and the ways we attempt to define & legitimize ourselves today? How does this impact on bisexuality's degree of cultural intelligibility? How does this affect the language and politics of bisexuality?

It clearly positions issues of language and history as relevant to all queer people, regardless of particular orientation. In an ideal world, we're able to talk about the specifics of, and similarities & differences around how this impacts our lived experiences as gay people/lesbians/bisexuals without making the conversation hierarchical, or positioning these problems as issues that only affect a specific group of people.

Of course, this is all assuming that others want to talk about these issues in good faith, lol. I think plenty of people do, but I also think our broader queer politics sometimes causes people to treat these discussions with suspicion (especially on social media).

But for those of us who do want to talk about problems of language, I think that paying attention to the above can go a long way towards helping us avoid being overly individualistic and intellectually dishonest in our analyses and conclusions.

[bimboficationblues]

i haven't read that molly smith book but just from my knowledge of marx your analysis looks wrong to me. i'm aware of two places where marx claims that wage labor is forced labor: the 1844 manuscripts and capital volume 3. i'm going to assume you don't care about the former, so for the latter: "We saw also that capital -- and the capitalist is merely capital personified and functions in the process of production solely as the agent of capital -- in its corresponding social process of production, pumps a definite quantity of surplus-labour out of the direct producers, or labourers; capital obtains this surplus-labour without an equivalent, and in essence it always remains forced labour -- no matter how much it may seem to result from free contractual agreement."

by my count, you are actually succumbing to the appearance that wage labor is the "result of free contractual agreement". marx uses the word "seem" here, and when he does that it tends to mean that it is appearance and not reality. so he's explicitly saying that wage labor is not consensual ("the result of free contractual agreement") but forced labor. as far as i'm aware, we just refer to forced sexual labor as rape. you claimed in your post that this isn't the case so please elaborate

"it’s a framework that can’t distinguish between tricks that were okay or fine to deal with and times where you were physically assaulted or actively manipulated" i don't find this persuasive because, as a student of republican theory, you should know that it's perfectly possible to even have *literal slavery* where the master is benevolent and labor under him is fine compared to labor under a harsher slavemaster. yes, slavery and wage labor are different, but they share the trait of being forced labor, which i think is what matters here. when marx talks about the formal freedom of the wage laborer, that's clearly meant to show that bourgeois notions of freedom (which, it seems to me, is what's being alluded to in the previous quote to distinguish good and bad tricks) are impoverished, the "double freedom" is obviously supposed to be sarcastic/seething and implicitly contrasted to some sort of a real freedom to be realized in communism

obviously, marx didn't want to criminalize sex work, but i'm not seeing how the inference that sex work (or at least FSSW - stuff like pornography is something else i guess, whatever we would want to call forced picture taking/video taping) is rape isn't accurate under his analysis. he and engels regularly disparaginly reffered to prostitution as the "community of women" and they disparagingly compared marriage to it, in both cases making a point about how the normalization of it causes people to have instrumental views of women. marx calls prostitution just one instance of the "general prostitution of the wage laborer", which isn't meant to imply that prostitution is nonproblematic but rather make other wage labor look problematic

I don't really agree with a lot of the assumptions you're bringing to the table here (your interpretation of Marx or that quote, the necessity of being in agreement with Marx or Engels [lol] on all things, the relevance of these points to what I'm talking about, the presumption of my intellectual obligations to anonymous people) and I think maybe reading that Smith & Mac book (or even something more in-depth/less targeted for a popular audience) would be a worthwhile use of time.

again, it's not like it's impossible to use more effective and clear language on this - there's nothing that obligates us to talk in the terms you're defending. is it "violence" for me to have to go to work? did it transform into "sexual violence" when I was doing sex work (or did it lose the sexual because it was virtual, as your parenthetical implies)? maybe! (though probably not, imo.) but I think talking about the weight of money and the market on our reasoning using moral-juridical shorthand has significant costs analytically (clarity, precision), politically (the entire trajectory of this idea as applied in the history of prostitution law), and ethically (in terms of evaluating and taking stock of our actions and harms). in fact the whole reference to pornography sort of troubles this particular narrative (paid sexual labor is rape when it's in-person but not when it's virtual or filmed, despite being produced by the same incentives?), which I think relies on the same idea of sexual labor as unique/mystified compared to other labor that I was criticizing. I'm not pushing a "sex work as empowerment" line here and never have; most other current or former sex workers I know wouldn't. but this is a framework that doesn't clarify, it obscures by reinforcing criminalization and stigmatization, and makes it actively more difficult for sex workers to talk about the range and depth of their experiences in the context of their needs and demands as laborers, both in their own struggle and as part of a larger struggle. it is ethically and politically worthless as a line of thought.

anyway I think this is all quite condescending and in poor taste.

[dipplinduo]

(Me being sad that the thought I’ve been putting into headcanons for dipplinshipping and kieran himself are going down the drain due to the asks not being answered)

Nooooo anon don't be sad!!! It's always my intention to engage and interact with you guys, it's literally my favorite thing about using Tumblr and being involved in the dipplinshipping community. I promise you I am reading everything, and I want to read your thoughts! It just takes me a little time to get to them. <3 And to prove I mean that, here's some straightforward transparency:

I was working on Chapters 7 & 8 of S&S Dipplins over the past few days, and when I'm writing, it is a timeeee suckeerrrrr, so I've had less time for asks.

I've also been relatively active in the discord server (that's centered around discussions & supporting other creatives in general) and on AO3 when people engage with my writing on there.

Sometimes I'm contemplating how I'm going to be responding to asks, and may delay responding so I can give a more thought-out response rather than just posting it without interacting back.

I try to be mindful about the content that I'm posting. I often receive asks that reference other media I'm not familiar with, and I actually have a process where I set aside some time to screen the media myself so I can do my best to make sure nothing inappropriate, harmful, or insensitive is referenced in a way where it could cause discomfort to the community.

On a similar note, there are some cases where asks appear to be too inappropriate for one reason or another (in which case, I do not interact) or border a line where I need some time to reflect on whether or not I feel its appropriate to interact with publicly; I have a pretty big comfort zone myself, but I try to account for others' comfort, too. This blog is almost a month old now, and I'm still trying to figure out the overall tone of it as it experiences growth. Part of that involves figuring out how to be intentional with what content I'm curating, and that takes time.

For the asks that are about/related to my fic writing: sometimes I may choose not to respond due to spoilers (whether it be if someone correctly guessed something or got close enough for some spoilers, or if someone is reacting very immediately to a chapter I might've literally just posted. I tend to delay responding in these instances to wait for others to have time to read updates so they don't encounter unwanted spoilers on Tumblr).

I try to respond to asks in bursts, and often try to group them together when I can (e.g., answering a group of asks that appear to be related in theme). But even then, I can't quite get through them all in one sitting. This is a screenshot of my inbox at the time of writing this:

...and this number may fluctuate at times (e.g., sometimes people may send in more asks when they see I'm actively online and answering asks).

That being said: this response isn't meant to complain or create excuses for ask delays in the slightest - I am very lucky and privileged to experience this level of engagement from you all across platforms, and it's something I really want to handle with care. I know a lot of you have likely followed me because of the way asks function in this blog, and it's quite literally a charm that cannot operate without you guys. I'm just hoping this breakdown can clear some air so you can know that there are a lot of moving pieces, and it is never my intention to exclude anybody when they reach out and interact. You have all been wonderful to me and I intend to treat you with the same respect. <3

I'm answering asks again right now, and will be on the lookout for headcanons & kieran-focused questions!

[mitziholder]

what media would you actually recommend? you seem to have very discerning taste

geeeeee... I don’t know. there are multiple metrics by which a piece of media can have value to me... but maybe not to you.

1) sheer entertainment value (personal, subjective - in my case usually humor-oriented, less focused on action and explosions and violence and gore and hacking and slashing and sex meant to titillate ... but humor is subjective in its own right)

2) rhetorical value (based on the presence and effectiveness of conveying intent - a thesis, a point to make, something new and interesting to say unique to the creator’s perspective. also, prose/dialogue/text that sounds good, hits right, says exactly what it wants to say with brevity and precision)

2a) IMO, “objective” judgments of a piece of media’s quality should rest most strongly on this point. 2b) sometimes the meat of my analysis is based in an interpretation of how a creator failed to say something or what they unintentionally revealed about themselves and their views in the process. and that can be interesting, but it doesn’t necessarily make the work any less shit

3) informational value (for research purposes, which may not be relevant to anyone else. definitely a step down in importance because I can read something and find it informative without enjoying it or thinking it’s “good”)

it’s impossible for everything I consume to meet all of those standards all the time... and I like to have a diverse media diet. I enjoy plenty of things which don’t really affect me or make me think too deeply. but it’s hard to recommend anything because people’s priorities and tastes vary so much.

as far as what I’ve enjoyed and found value in? I’ve already gone over books, so let’s do movies. I love Bob Roberts; had a point to make and made it with aplomb. it was very funny - and useful as a point of reference for my own work(!) Dr. Strangelove was also great. I’m a big fan of satirical dark comedies that leave you with this sense of gruesome hilarity... beyond the funnies, I like things that are sort of distant from their subjects, inhuman and quirky, using them as tools to move us along on a painterly backdrop - A Zed & Two Noughts and other Greenaway fare + and arguably Kubrick as well - but I also enjoy studies that lavish attention on their subjects, like Girl, Interrupted. I still love that one. in spite of it all. and I liked One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s nest despite its treatment of Ratched/the vile protagonist lol. Network was “good” no matter how badly they fumbled Dunaway and how much that fucking pissed me off. oh and anything about Watergate... I love a good documentary

but anyway, I know saying any of this invites speculation about the Problematic or questionable elements present therein. why not more lesbian media? why not more woman directors? how could you enjoy x knowing what y did to z? I don’t know. I respect an auteur, a clear and defined vision. I have had fun with many things that are not that. but at the end of the day, regardless of content, it all serves to entertain me, to shape and inform my artistic endeavors writing about what I want to read and saying what I want to say. so, you know, your mileage may vary. also I like musicals