#and also ghosting someones text vs ghosting them in person are two different things

[ihazyourkitty]

Why John Hargrove is full of it p.1

Multiple people have expressed interest in the detailed Blackfish rebuttal I am working on. The plan is to put it in video essay format on Youtube. This not only has the potential to reach a larger audience, but it also gives me more creative/expressive flexibility that would otherwise be difficult to get across in just written text.

This project will not be completed for quite some time, as there are a lot of things to cover. However, I did want to provide a short glimpse into some things I've uncovered thus far.

You see, I plan on not only refuting the movie itself, but also covering the consequences of Blackfish, and major figures like Naomi Rose, Ingrid Visser, etc. So as part of this project, I am listening to the eBook version of John Hargrove's Beneath the Surface for the second time. It's..... so.... much..... fun.....

*sigh* Warning, there's a long rant ahead. TL;DR John Hargrove comes off as very full of himself in this book, and it's annoying.

______

Now, on a purely emotional, literary level I guess, the book is certainly very gripping. It's difficult to put down, even when you know that much of what is alleged therein is utter bullcrap. However, I don't think this is just because the whole "little-guy turns against evil corporation" trope makes for good storytelling across the board. I think it's also because, unlike Mark Simmons' Killing Keiko, or Hazel McBride's I Still Believe, John Hargrove's Beneath the Surface has the luxury of both professional editing, and a co-author (Howard Chia-Eoan).

To be clear, I'm not saying this as dig against Hazel McBride or Mark Simmons. I bring this up merely to illustrate the stark contrast here. As far as I know, their works were self published, or at least lacking the same polish and publicity from big name publishers, or sensationalist documentaries.

However, this contrast wouldn't be so noteworthy to me were it not for these two things I'm increasingly noticing in this reread of Beneath the Surface:

It is never clearly stated which parts were written by Hargrove, and which were ghost written by Chia-Eoan... but the amount of contradictions and shoehorned information in here gives me some serious suspicions.

John Hargrove... seems incredibly full of himself!

I don't have the time to elaborate on #1 right now, so we'll just talk about #2 today. John Hargrove is almost never in the wrong. He is always painted as the hero, the true advocate for these animals. You don't hear much about the other trainers he worked with or learned from. Mostly, it's just about him. He bemoans the allegedly poor conditions SeaWorld's animals are kept in, while simultaneously boasting about all his accomplishments with them. He speaks of differing perspectives between him and some of the other trainers, but seldom elaborates on what exactly those differences were. Instead, he usually just frames it in a sanctimonious "me vs. them" way.

The closest he gets to admitting any mistakes he had to learn from is when he recounted an aggressive incident with Freya at Marineland Antibes, and even then.... the whole reason why that incident (allegedly) happened was because Hargrove overestimated his training/waterworks abilities with a whale he didn't have a relationship with. His admission of that mistake is then overshadowed by the rather self-righteous tone he frames the resolution with. All the success was about him. You don't hear anything about how he worked with the other trainers there, what they brought to the table, and certainly not the stronger, lasting relationships they had with Freya. It's not that he had to mention them by name, but he didn't even mention them at all!

To be fair, this interpretation is partly subjective on my part. Still, as someone who is personally working in animal husbandry right now (albeit not with marine mammals), the gaping holes in this narrative raises some red flags.

Here's some free advice to anyone interested in working in the zoo/aquarium industry: I have been told by multiple hiring managers that they don't want someone who "just wants to work with the animals, and not deal with people." That's not how this works. You still have to work with people in some form or another.

It doesn't matter which animals you are working with. When you're on an animal husbandry/training team, you gotta ask for/provide help, seek/give feedback, communicate with other departments, etc. Complaints, conflict and disagreements will inevitably happen, but you gotta be mature about it.

And yes, in that process... you are going to make mistakes, and you're going to have to own up to them! It's part of how you learn. You're also going to inevitably work with people who don't see things the same way.

The people who can't do this tend to not only get stuck in their own way, but are more likely to start resenting coworkers and/or management whenever disagreements happen. They'll constantly complain about how other people do things, but then can't/won't take constructive feedback themselves. It's worse when it's someone with more experience under their belt because of the massive ego. Let me be clear: this kind of mindset does not help your animals! It only creates a toxic work environment that's resistant to change!

DO. NOT. BE. THIS. PERSON!!!!

No, this does not mean you can't vent frustrations. No this does not mean that you can't take pride in your work. It means that you gotta be able to swallow your pride, and not alienate other people.

So, what does all that have to do with the contrast mentioned earlier?

Like Hargrove, McBride details her career journey, but doesn't just paint it all in glamour. She talks about her setbacks, how she grew, things she learned from other people, the internships she did, the grunt work she was willing to do, etc.

Killing Keiko has less to do with the details of Mark Simmons' career path, but he does give credit to other people where it is due, even at times towards those he fundamentally disagreed with. I can remember one part where he explicitly admitted that he made a mistake too, and tellingly, it was in an instance where he played the "I've been doing this for years" card. In the very next sentence he admitted it was the wrong thing to say in that situation, and highlighted the perspective he was missing in that moment.

These things are conspicuously absent in Beneath the Surface. I don't remember anything of the sort that stood out when I first read the book, and thus far it's certainly not there in my second time around. The first third of the book is dedicated to how he dreamed of becoming a trainer as a kid, and the path he took to get there. Most of this path, though, is painted in glamor, when the reality is.... the path to getting into animal husbandry isn't particularly glamorous. Not only do you have go to college, but you also have to settle for various unpaid internships or volunteer gigs, and then apply for multiple jobs only to get several no's before it works out (to say nothing of how underpaid zookeepers/aquarists/trainers are).

Hargrove, on the other hand, kept pestering lead marine mammal trainers at SeaWorld since he was a kid, practiced his swimming/diving abilities, and started his degree in psychology. Then, as luck would have it, an apprentice trainer position opened up at SW San Antonio, and when he got the job, he jubilantly quit college. Not much is said about what kind of volunteer work he did before that. I think he did some stuff with marine mammal rescue in Texas, but I'll have to go back and reread to be sure... in any event, I wish I'd heard more about the experience he got besides swimming and pestering the SW animal training department.

And like.... great, he got the job, but it seemed more by luck than by the sweat of his brow. Then he balked that he was put in the SeaLion Stadium, and/or that he had to spend a lot of time washing dishes and spotting before even being allowed to work directly with a whale, which like..... yeah? I don't know what you were expecting dude.

(Btw, this part isn't just me being nit-picky, Duncan Versteegh from ML Antibes corroborates Hargrove's resistance to doing grunt work like cleaning)

Whenever mentioning people at SW who didn't want to work at Shamu Stadium, Hargrove couldn't understand how anyone wouldn't want that.... because heaven forbid other people have different preferences? To be fair, from what I've heard of SW work culture in general, Shamu Stadium is kind of painted as the glamorous A-team, but DANG does Hargrove really lean into that attitude!

Later on, he detailed some of the conflicts he had with SW's entertainment department. At one point his manager explicitly told him he needed learn to get along better with other departments. And like... yeah... yeah you do!

Look, I'm not interested in doing blanket apologia for SeaWorld. I'm sure Hargrove was in the right more than once when he'd argue with people, but I'm also not convinced that the whole of the entertainment department, management, et al., were just a bunch of unfeeling jerks who didn't care about the animals.

This part actually ground my gears quite a bit. Before I became an aquarist, I was an educator, and sometimes I would overhear certain husbandry staff gossip about us in a really patronizing way whenever there were miscommunications. Not that they never had valid reasons to complain, they did, but to be treated like you're just a dumb educator/guest services person is not pleasant, and certainly not professional. I don't know how common this is at other places, but I bring this up to illustrate the importance of being able to work with other departments, especially in the face of disagreements or miscommunication.

That Beneath the Surface paints Hargrove's inability to do this as a virtue rather than as the character flaw that it is... well.... it's um... it's a choice. And it's telling.

Again, some of this interpretation is subjective on my part. Ultimately, none of us can know for sure what is in someone else's heart. Hargrove does seem to sincerely care about the animals, despite the narcissism. However, the vast majority of people who are going to be reading his book are not people who have spent much if any time working in the zoo industry, and thus may not pick up on some of these things. I'm not the only one to point these things out either.

So even if one is against keeping orcas in captivity, I think being aware of the egos behind figures like Hargrove is important. When you get to the end of his book, you would think that all his former colleagues are, at best, just timid little clogs in a corporate machine, brainwashed to do as SW says. This is just not true. These people are dedicated to their animals, and have worked very hard to get where they are at. Some have gone on to get their masters, or PhD's, provide expertise to other facilities, or take part in rescues, etc., and they did it without chasing clout.

SW Corporate should absolutely treat their employees better, but their treatment of them pales in comparison to how people like Hargrove basically erase their accomplishments altogether. In this way, he tries to have it both ways... his time at SW proves how much of an expert he is, you know, because he was a senior trainer with two decades of experience after all! Oh, but when someone else from the field speaks up to refute what he says, nope.... their accomplishments don't matter, they're just brainwashed. If that doesn't scream "massive ego", then I don't know what does.

I'm only halfway through the book on this second round, so there is a chance I'll come back to correct some things here. I do encourage people to try to read this book themselves and come to their own conclusions. You don't have to buy it either, check your local library (it's how I got a hold of this eBook).

[i-like-gay-books]

ive never ghosted someone before why does it feel like,,, not that bad??

[sparkycinnamon]

Finally making an introduction post!

Thought it was the time to make an intro post, so:

Hi! I'm Pipes, though you can also call me Cheesy, Right, or Spark! I'm a non-binary autistic oriented aroace who likes reading, cartoons, drawing, and writing.

Pronouns (in order of preference):

They/them

She/her (only if we're close)

It/its

Xey/xem

Ae/aer

Fandoms (bold indicates a current hyperfixation/special interest):

SpongeBob

Object shows

Bugsnax

Kirby

Roblox

Minecraft (just the normal game, I'm not interested in any of the SMPs or whatever)

Amphibia

Gravity Falls

DuckTales (2017)

Big City Greens

The Ghost and Molly McGee (as you can tell I really like Disney Channel cartoons)

Cookie Run

My Little Pony (mainly FIM, but also some of the older generations)

Alphabet Lore (and some of the parodies of it)

The Jell-O Wobz

Dead End: Paranormal Park (up to season 1)

The Amazing World of Gumball

KaBlam! (particularly the Henry and June segments)

Hey Arnold!

Animator vs. Animation

The Amazing Digital Circus

Music artists I like:

I DON'T KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME

Lemon Demon

Tally Hall/Miracle Musical

Louie Zong

Glass Animals

Set It Off

Caravan Palace

Diviners

Two Door Cinema Club

Some other things I like (again, bold indicates a current hyperfixation/special interest):

Food (especially candy)

Retro commercials and snacks

Analog horror and ARGs

Bugs (especially ants and dragonflies)

Webcore/“old web” aesthetics

Worldbuilding

Different alphabets/letters/languages

Lost media (especially cartoon/internet-related lost media)

I have far too many AUs, and far too many OCs.

I'll block you if you're a bigot, proshipper, or NSFW blog (I'm a minor). Just be a decent person and we're cool, okay?

Other stuff:

I don't curse very often, but if I do, it's probably because I'm really ticked (expect me to swear a lot in my vent posts too). Either that, or I’m doing it “for the bit”. I do reblog posts with swear words in them a lot, though.

DM me if you want my blacklist so you can tag stuff so I don't see it (I'll only give it to people I trust though)

As I said in the beginning of this introduction post, I am autistic and have trouble understanding text, so please be patient with me and use tone tags as much as possible! /gen

My rambling tag is #right hand rambles, my art tag is #look at my art boy, and my writing tag is #i write sometimes.

Other, less common tags I use are;

#right hand's attempts to be funny (for textless memes)

#right hand spitballs au ideas (for aus that don’t have names yet, aus with names will have a tag with their name instead)

#adventures in objectopia (for object oc stuff)

If you need something tagged or I forget to tag something for you, please tell me.

Also, I'm white and I really don't want to offend anyone, so if I say something bad, reblog from someone bad, or I reblog something bad, please tell me! /gen

Please don't ask me to RP out of nowhere. /nm

This blog is SFW, but I may occasionally reblog posts that could be seen as suggestive. If you don't want to see that, please block the tag "suggestive".

I'm okay with adults interacting with me, but I'd prefer that you don't DM me if you're an adult unless I know you already/we're mutuals/I DM first.

All my posts are okay to tag as kin/id/me!

Other than that, please feel free to interact with me! I don't bite, I promise.

[astersofthesky]

wait can you rec some of those canon compliant fics, I've been lookingg

I'm sorry for this late reply! I'm not sure what kind of canon compliant fics you're looking for because most of the things I read last night are mostly just one-shots related to the latest manga chapters.

If that's your cup of tea then here goes!

Wait for Me by SailorMew4

The moment Bakugou Katsuki found out Deku left U.A. he knew he needed to go after him. The nerd just needed to Wait for Him. Because Bakugou would go to hell and back to save that nerd from anything, including himself.

(Ch. 318 Spoilers, and a sorta prediction to Ch. 319)

message delivered by dekusneakers

Kacchan: i miss you [2:03am]

Kacchan: that was a typo [8:16am]

Kacchan: go fuck yourself [8:17am]

In which Katsuki grieves in the only way he knows how. With rage and double texting.

All We Ever Knew by dynamics

He knows, deeply and intimately, that these hands have innocent blood spilled on them. They've scarred and they've been cruel and they've caused hurt beyond anything deserving of forgiveness.

But these hands, as rough and calloused and war-torn and guilty as they are, can be gentle too.

Katsuki learns the true meaning of kindness and devotion.

Names by Juliame

"It's 'Bakugou', right?"

Katsuki felt himself slightly stiffen at those words.

──────────────

"Izuku..."

"... I'm sorry for everything I've done up until now."

Izuku felt his eyes slightly widen at those words.

It was like the world around them had come to a stop.

Katsukis and Izukus individual perspective on hearing the other say their actual name.

And that's all the latest manga chapters canon-compliant fics I've read. Anyway, since you asked, I would take this opportunity to recommend some of my favorite BkDk/DkBk fanfictions. Reminder though, I suggest you check the tags before reading.

Mirror Image by Eleke

After taking an attack meant for Deku, Bakugou Katsuki finds himself waking up in a world where he was never born with a Quirk, but Deku was. Then the next day, he wakes up in another world. And then the next day he wakes up in another. Each day he finds himself in another world, some only a little different from his own, some very different, but each one has one thing in common:

In every world, Midoriya Izuku is always right there.

(Notes: I still haven't finished reading this one but so far, it's really good! This has slight sexual content but nothing explicit)

Childhood Kisses by Kaligraphy

There are things you do that are cute when you're a kid but kind of weird when you're older.

Kissing your childhood friend's injuries better is one of them.

(Notes: Childhood Bkdk fluff because seriously, we need this kind of fics more)

Rescue me by kae_karo

What if baku and deku were like. actually friends when they were kids tho

(Notes: This is the only fic I found where Katsuki and Izuku stayed friends despite Izuku's quirklessness. I tell you, this is gold. The author wrote Katsuki amazingly and I can't really explain it too well. I highly recommend this one)

Baby Face by VersaceThong

A thick bloody gash runs from Deku’s right brow, across the bridge of his nose, over his cheek, and all the way down to the edge of his jaw. A sickening, jagged line etched diagonally over his face, wide enough to miss one of his eyes by mere milimeters.

He almost crashes into Deku, grabbing his arm in one hand and his face in the other. Katsuki’s index and thumb press into either side of his jaw, squishing Deku’s cheeks together.

With a voice so low he doesn’t recognize it as his own, Katsuki grinds out his words.

“Who did this to you?”

______________________________

Or; a villain leaves a scar on Deku's face and Katsuki absolutely loses it.

(Notes: I really like this one! The author has a way with their words and I also liked how they wrote Katsuki. Heads up, it has explicit sexual content at the end. TBH, I didn't expect this fic to have one so it really caught me by surprise lmao)

Like the Moon by Osakakitty

Katsuki Bakugo is having constant, erotic dreams about Izuku Midoriya. He isn’t sure why, but they won’t go away. In order to make them stop, he needs to figure out what Izuku Midoriya means to him.

Canon-verse story in which Bakugo is confused about his feelings for Midoriya, and doesn’t know what he wants. Besides a good night’s sleep.

(Notes: THIS. ONE. I AM IN LOVE WITH THIS FIC! Yes, it's obviously explicit but this has got to be one of the most emotional Bkdk/Dkbk fanfictions I've read on my stay in the BNHA fandom. It's very telling since this is like my second favorite Bkdk/Dkbk fic)

Kacchan vs. The Universe by LNoGame44

There were certain..tell-tale signs of a soul mate. There wasn't so much a definite factor, rather there were multiple giveaway signs that discretely pointed out that someone was your soul mate. Like a friendly hint from the soul.

Izuku was not gifted with that discrete notification from whatever higher being issued them. Of course his soul mate hit like a storm.

The thing was..Izuku knew exactly who his soul mate was. The two of them had known since they were kids. The extreme pull they felt for one another, that Izuku embraced and Bakugou..well Bakugou ignored or attempted to completely destroy. Apparently the universe, did not agree with Bakugou's methodologies.

(Notes: This one is so funny lmao. Seeing Katsuki struggle against the universe is very amusing and the second-hand embarrassment can get real.)

The Way You Used To Do by Edema_ruh

"We're really sorry," his father says, in a teary-eyed, wobbly way. "But your friend, Izuku, he's... He's gone, son."

Katsuki can do nothing but blink up at them for moments that feel like an eternity, eyes darting between both his parents in obvious confusion, disbelief, and, more than anything, indignation.

"What the fuck are you two talking about? The damn nerd is standing right beside you!"

During a battle, Midoriya gets hit by a villain whose quirk detaches his soul from his body. Stuck in a ghost-like state, the boy enters a race against time in order to save himself from permanently dying. Much to his luck - or lack of it -, the only person who can see and talk to him in this state is no one other than Kacchan.

Alternatively: Deku and Kacchan are soulbound.

(Notes: Here's my no. 1 favorite. You've probably heard this one because when Bkdk's ask for fic recs, this one always comes at the top. If you like the slowest of burns then I suggest you give this a try!)

[somnianus]

On Eastern dramas vs Western dramas

Part 2: On Theatricality and how it transfers into Chinese/Eastern Dramas and Cinema

Part 1   Part 2

Here, I reference a fantastic article from the Asian Theatre Journal, 2008.

So to recap, the problem I’m exploring is this: Why do some East Asian dramas/movies look so over the top? Overacted? Overemotional? Why is it not more realistic?

My answer is in part 1, on the concept of mo, which is the traditional Chinese thought that emotional revelation is more important than accurate realistic depictions in art. Western audiences are more used to plot-heavy, realistic depictions of dramas, whereas traditional Chinese audiences are used to the opposite. They find the plot not so important, but focus more on the content of the work, the spirit of it, how it makes you feel.

1. How traditional Chinese drama translate into cinema/screens?

Making the jump from Beijing/Peking opera stages, or jingju, to cinema screens caused a lot of trouble.

a. Production-wise, early 1900s

It was difficult to adapt the very open, 3d stage into a “realist flat screen,” which was much more advantageous to Western eyes because the camera lens was invented based on “Renaissance principles of fixed point perspectives and foreshortening.”

b. 1950s-60s

Many still tried to adopt the Beijing opera style into film, but it was still very hard because the two mediums were so contradictory. Beijing opera relied on live, grand aesthetics along with the knowledge that the important aspect of drama was emotion and internal struggle, vs film at the time was very focused on accurate “mimesis,” or imitations of real life. One such example was critics actually laughing about the adaptations because the opera actors mimicked riding a horse in the traditional style - that is, minus the horse. Film would have them ride a prop or real horses.

Eventually, many changes were made to the style to better incorporate it into film, and it still kept a lot of its original roots (i.e. makeup/grandiosity in costume, emotions, etc). Western concepts of a limited stage, and emphasis on plot and tragedy were expounded upon. And eventually you have the modern-day dramas (1970s+).

2. Japanese Noh  能 theater - Kurosawa’s Ran

Noh is a Japanese form of theater that is a dance-based dramatic work. It tells stories of supernatural beings transformed into humans and etc. One of its major notes is its very stylized conventional use of specific gestures to portray emotions. Iconic, specific masks are used to portray the roles of the actors such as the ghosts, women, deities, and demons.

Akira Kurosawa’s Ran is lauded as one of the greatest films ever made. It’s a Japanese-French production heavily inspired by Shakespeare’s King Lear. There are many many detailed videos on YouTube about his precise filming methods and movement aesthetics. The body language can be seen as “over-acted” if you come from a Western background. Why? Because it takes from traditional Noh theatre:

Long periods of static motion and silence, followed by an abrupt, sometimes violent change in stance. Heavy ghost-like Makeup. Highly emotive gestures, sometimes repetitive to emphasize the characteristic of a character. All very unrealistic, but that’s not the point, right? Because this also displays mo, it takes the emotive expression, the revelation of fear/action/hope to the front of the stage.

3. Japanese Kabuki theatre - acting style is also larger than life

Kabuki actors also make great effort to express themselves in highly stylzed gestures (i.e. the men play women’s roles and over-act their femininity). 

One major difference between Kabuki and much of Western theatre is that kabuki actors make less of an attempt to hide the “performance” aspect of the work. They’re fully aware that they’re performing, and the audience isn’t there to get “lost in the moment.” Everything -- actors, costumes, dialogue, is larger than life. Realism is far less emphasized, the form generally favoring what is often referred to as “formalized beauty.”

One example of this is the highlight of an aragato kabuki performance: the famous mie. The mie is a dramatic pose adopted by the main (oftentimes male) character during moments of emotional intensity. (The proper phrase for this action is mie o kiru, or to "cut a mie.") Announced by the beating of wooden clappers, the actor freezes in a statuesque pose and crosses one or both eyes. Often it's preceded by a head roll. The idea is to capture the highest moments of tension into one physical gesture and to more or less hold the actor and the audience in a breathless trance. After a few seconds, the actor relaxes and the play continues. A mie can be cut in various specified positions, depending on the character and the moment. When exiting, an aragoto character may perform a roppo exit, which combines several of these poses in rapid succession, before leaving the stage.

The mie pose

This is not to say that modern Japanese dramas and works directly descend from Kabuki or Noh or other theatrical traditions. But like the Chinese beijing opera, the concept of aesthetic beauty/mo, emotional revelation, these ideas all combined with Western influence and modern Western perceptions of good story-telling/acting to make up the modern Eastern dramas of today.

4. How do all of these things combine into the supposed “cheesy/corny/over-acting” of modern Eastern dramatic works?

All of these cultural roots combined with Western depictions of a modern story (i.e. Shakespearean tragedy in five parts: Exposition, Rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement, ofc there are other ones but this is the one I learned in school), I believe make up what we see today in modern Eastern dramas. 

A. Acting Comedy: My specific examples are first, comedic examples from the famous 1986 Journey to the West

Comedy and the feeling of happiness and joy are also very important aspects of emotional revelation. Journey to the West depicts one of the most beloved comedic characters, Sun Wukong, who goes on a journey with Tan Sanzang, a Buddhist priest, to find the sacred Buddhist texts. His exploits are highly unrealistic and highly comedic. It is one of the epitomes of the “spirit” over the “form,” the internal emotional journey over the actual realism (or unrealism) of the journey. Many of the characters exhibit over-the-top facial expressions, some expressions too subdued, and the plot can be very winding and haphazard, but that’s not the point! If you’ve been reading this far, you’ll know why. It’s about how his adventures make you, the audience, the reader, feel. 

B. Acting Villainy: More modern Chinese dramas i.e. The Untamed & Word of Honor

I cannot attest to the quality of the acting nowadays, but it’s a common idea that the supporting cast of the international hit, The Untamed, was a bit weak in terms of acting. If I were to step into my Western lens, I would agree that yes, many characters over-act (i.e. Xue Yang, below):

And Wen Kexing, Word of Honor:

And Journey to the West, Underworld Lord:

However, now with all that cultural context, I can see this choice of acting in a different light. The over-acting and depiction of villainy is over-the-top because it’s meant to inspire that emotion of (this guy is whack, like really). It’s not supposed to be realistic villainy, like how a real person would look if they were these people in real life. To judge it by a completely Western lens is doing a disservice to them I think. You could say that maybe they just can’t act well, but in a Chinese/Japanese/Eastern cultural theatrical context, their acting is actually par for course. It’s even more subdued than the traditional roots of Eastern theatrical performances actually.

This goes for many other C-dramas / Eastern dramas that have these instances of highly emotive performance. It’s a product of hundreds of years of Eastern cultural theatrical/artistic production combined with Western acting styles and cinematography. 

Is it cheesy? Maybe. Is it over-acting? Could be, but what is “over-acting” vs what is “enough?” Is that not the distinction between mo and Western realistic imitation? For me, as someone who’s very used to this uniquely different style of dramatic production, I’m not too bothered by it. It, after all, makes me feel such an incredible range of emotions that the acting is just a fun, interesting perk. 

Thinking that these dramatic productions were originally seen as extensions of poetry, I can see why the exaggeration is necessary to fulfill what mo means:

If I feel some intent, I must write it - it becomes a poem.

If that’s not enough, I must sing it - it becomes a song.

If even singing isn’t enough, then I sigh, and have to express by dancing - it becomes a performance.

Part 1

[13tinysocks]

HHHH The Hunt Is On original concepts that were scrapped and I feel like rambling. For context THIO is Jane/clockwork/Jack x reader currently on Quotev. At first it was just Jack tho. Anyway *shakes my ass* Mild thio spoilerz 

-As I said, THIO at first was supposed to be only a Jack X reader. I understand it would have been a lot more popular if it was but tbh I don’t really care. We thought to ourselves, “Ight Jack’s epic but what if lesbians?” And slapped them in. 

-Also put them in for a better story. Jane vs Jeff is super popular and we wanted to do our own take on it. Jack vs Jeff is interesting but Jack has no emotional attachment to Jeff in this universe. Wouldn’t have been much drive without Jane and the lesbianism xoxo.

-THIOs name was supposed to be linked to YN searching for Jack. We kept the name bc these bitches lookin’ for Jeff and how to stop him. The name kinda bothers me now but it’s sticks well enough.

-In early concepts YN was the host of a popular cyptid hunting/buzzfeed unsovled style webshow. She was still going to be autistic w/ a special interest in the supernatural. 

-She was going to be more driven though. She would do fucking anything to prove that ghosts and/or monsters are real.

-Prob 21/22

-Jack was going to live in some abandoned mall or hospital. Same goth aesthetic but less neat and quieter. A lil more unhinged but still wicked smart.

-Soulmate AU!!!!!

-The writing on your skin shows up on your soulmate’s! YN would get hastily written science notes until she was 19 then it all stopped. Occasionally a random mark that was accidental. 

-They were too driven to really communicate much. They both figured, “Eh I’ll get to it when I’m 30.”

-YN writes her entire routine for the day on her forearm. It’s a habit that she can’t shake.

-Jack’s blind and can’t see it. But if Rake were to catch it he’d point it out prob. If Jack so desired, he could take a (shitty) pic of the text and have it read out to him

-He figures it out way before YN

-Uses it to avoid her when she comes lookin’. She doesn’t get how he keeps giving her the slip.

-When he reveals it to her she’s like MOTHERFUCKER!!!! ! !! !! !! But also, ayo? Hot gray dude with a god complex? Wanna make out?

-When it was just a Jack/reader the plot was gonna go a lil like this:

-YNs crew were going to be her buds. One of them was going to be killed by Jack for munchies pre-story. Later on, YN would use a spirit box and make contact with him (Noah) More on this in a bit

-Noah was going to be punk, loud, annoying, and a skater.

-The group is still in shock and mourning even thought it’s been two months. A few people from their block have gone missing here and there. Something isn’t right. 

-YN and co. were going to film an episode where Jack and rake live. Seedeater was contemplated on being there too but we didn’t really connect with him.

-They catch something black and blurry on camera but only see it when they’re editing. 

-Go back over and over. Nothing.

-YNs like fuck it! Im going alone bc y’all loud.

-Night vision handheld camera like outlast

-Gets a good pic of Jack. It’s unclear, he has his mask on, he’s on all fours.

-Thing is, he like, is faking being a feral animal bc he wants YN to fuck off. 

-Just imagine being smart but crawling around and growling so this girl will go away.

-Doesn’t attack her bc he’s very aware that if too many folks go missing around the area then more people will look. He doesn’t fell like relocating again.

-YN gets in contact w/ Noah via the spirit box.

-Ghosts r real baby!

-He spills on what happened to him. Tells YN that it’s too dangerous.

-His ghost is super duper fucked since Jack got to him when he was STARVING

-YN sort of heed his warning. She’s like ayo!!! Monsters are real that’s so swag but also I’m gonna expose that thing for what it did to you >:

-Noahs like on god literally dont you will die

-No <3

-There’s a big reveal when Jack finally stands up normally and YN is about to piss herself bc the entire time she thought he was a smart dog xoxo

-YN peaces the fuck out

-Goes back a lil later. Scared but determined. No one believes her abt the spirit box and Noah won’t show himself to anyone else.

-YNs upset about Noah but a curious person. Wants to examine Jack from every angle before she exposes his ass.

-Trail and error. Lots of him chasing her off or almost actually fucking killing her. 

-Eventually, there’s like a weird unorthodox interview.

-YN asks him questions from across a tiny table. He’s so fucking tall, he could reach over and snap your neck in an instant. 

-Learn about one another. 

-Bonding. Some frenemy type of shit.

-Jack is YNs 7ft tall lil secret

-Closer. Forgiveness.

-Someone else is like ayo? There’s body parts at (Jack’s place of residence)

-Ruh-roh law enforcement.

-YN and co. saves Jack 

-Friends feel betrayed but they like ight ig, monster fucker lookin ass

-Gets muddied here bc this is where we did an overhaul to the plot where it was more of a character driven, tragic, depressing, hope punk, sort of thing with lesbians and mullet Liu. 

-Note that I’m not going to write this. I’ve found I only enjoy writing polyamory fics instead of solo stuff x.

-THIO is currently ongoing and it is a lot different and very, very plot heavy. The link for the fic is in the thio/ the hunt is on tag. 

[sinceyouaskedme]

The College Tapes episode 5 thoughts::: 

There’s a 99% chance that Adam isn’t replying to Caleb’s texts because weird time shenanigans have prevented him from receiving the texts in the first place, but Caleb’s a dummy who doesn’t remember that there’s plot happening outside of his relationship drama so he just assumes Adam is maliciously ghosting/ignoring him. This angst is exquisite. 

I get that depression is isolating and lonely and makes it difficult to see past your own internal shit. But. Caleb as a character in TBS was enjoyable precisely because his ability forced him to be extremely involved in other people’s internal shit. Even when he didn’t understand what was going on or why people were feeling the way they were, their emotions still affected everything he did, and his actions in turn were always led by how he felt. So this development where he’s no longer talking about or responding to anyone else’s feelings or even his _own_ feelings, and not telling anyone about how his ability is changing and how it’s fucking up his life? It’s making him very not fun to listen to. 

I can’t even be excited about having correctly predicted that Caleb and Adam broke up because Caleb was freaking out about his new ability influencing Adam, because he sort of blew past confirming that on his way to admitting, I THINK, that he forced a sexual assault survivor to talk about their trauma in public, and just. Holy fucking shit. 

Caleb almost said out loud that the thing fucking him up hardest about his new ability to influence how other people feel is that he’s terrified he’s going to become like Damien. Add to this the fact that Mark is the only person with whom Caleb has previously talked about his new ability. I hope the two of them had a long, messy conversation where Mark’s lines slowly slid from “Damien chose to use his ability in a bad way, but you can make different choices” to “Damien wasn’t even all bad actually, in fact here’s a list of all the things about him that I liked and miss”, and then Caleb had to deal with ??? feeling Mark’s nostalgia/wistful-romance feelings ??? about the guy who fucking tried to kidnap Adam ??????? 

Anyway, I kind of want to throttle Caleb and yell “The reason Adam’s doing so great is because he’s actually fucking seeing a therapist with whom he has a good working relationship vs. your, like, gunning to be pseudo-adopted by the Bright-Bryants!!! Go see a counselor, you dummy!!!” 

Mark set up the Bluetooth in Joan’s car, and made her buy a smartphone, and taught her what memes are, and just generally bodily dragged her into the twenty-first century - and she LET him! I love that, I love siblings who have these big personal incompatibilities that they compromise on because they love each other, and also I hope Joan spent the entire process complaining about it constantly to Sam, who yes totally agrees with her that there’s nothing wrong with being a little old-fashioned. 

I don’t trust Trinnie as far as I can throw her (and not just because she shouldn’t be giving out residents’ addresses to anyone who asks!), but I do appreciate that the writers followed through on the consequences of Caleb doing his Atypical Freak Out Word Vomit thing at Frankie in the middle of stage crew by having someone overhear him

Listening to young characters be idiots is fun when it’s about the silly romance plot, but having to sit through this scene where Ben’s roommate was like “Yeah, Ben was totally kidnapped a week ago and I didn’t tell anyone or do anything about it” was /infuriating/ 

The Latin on the bandana, “Sodalis Eximius”, is also what was on the empty envelope Adam found outside the library, but Google Translate says it means “member of the super”, which honestly makes it sound like Ben was kidnapped by an Atypical secret society, not by an…..anti-Atypical secret society? I do not understand this. 

[hollenius]

Sorry, I just really love interviews where Peter Buck talks about books. And also about crying at a Pepsi commercial.

https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-xpm-2001-10-14-0110140554-story.html

Edit: apparently this is not accessible in all countries, so I am copying and pasting the text under the cut. Contains some discussion of Michael Stipe’s lyric-writing strategies as well as tales R.E.M. reading all of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories while in the van in 1982, whether Faulkner or Hemingway or Fitzgerald liked music, intuition vs. hard work in the act of creation (and how writing a song isn’t like writing a novel), the relative effectiveness of specificity vs. generality in bringing about an emotional response in the audience (and, again, how songs aren’t like novels) etc.

RECONSTRUCTION OF THE FABLES: MARK LINDQUIST and PETER BUCK

THE HARTFORD COURANT     October 14, 2001

Mark Lindquist: The only thing I did to prepare for this was to go through my CD collection, and the three bands that dominate my collection are the Beatles, R.E.M. and the Replacements. I listened to albums by each in progression, and one of the things I noticed -- maybe because I was looking for it -- is that each of these bands became increasingly interested in narrative, in story, as their career progressed. Do you think that happened with R.E.M.

Peter Buck: Absolutely. When we started out, Michael was trying to find a way of communicating that wasn't a literal language. He didn't want to string together sentences that told a story that everyone could agree on. I really respected that, the feeling that the narrative stuff has been done, love songs have been done, and this sort of Rorschach blot of words and emotions are a different way to approach telling a story.It also opens it up a lot, in that people can listen to these songs and, without knowing exactly what they're about, put themselves in the song. Michael told me recently: His theory is, name your 10 favorite rock songs of all time. Write them down. Then write next to them what they're about. Guarantee that you'll only be able to do that for two of them.

ML: Let's try that. Name your five favorite rock songs.

PB: "Like a Rolling Stone," "Fight the Power," "We Can Work It Out," "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times" and "Gloria" by Patti Smith.

ML: OK, "Like a Rolling Stone." What's that about?

PB: Obviously it's an aggressive song putting someone down, but I don't know who that person is. Assuming that I know a little about Dylan's life, it could be about the people who followed him around. It seems to be a portrait of someone who thinks they're a winner, who's high in society. Who that is, I don't know. I could be completely wrong. I don't know what Napoleon "who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat" means.

ML: But you remember the line about those Siamese cats.

PB: With Dylan, you always get that. "The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face." That's from "Visions of Johanna," which is one of my favorite songs, but I have no idea what that means.

ML: How about "Fight the Power"?

PB: I would assume, being a white guy from the suburbs, that it's about being black, but I don't know. If the Beastie Boys had written it with the same lyrics, I'd have no idea.

ML: "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times" is from "Pet Sounds," which is chock-full of stories, at least in my mind. I may be imposing a narrative, because I listened to this CD when I left for college, and to me that album was about leaving home, going on a new adventure: "I once had a dream, so I packed up and left for the city." But that may have nothing to do with what Brian Wilson intended. Still, let's talk about R.E.M.'s progression toward stories.

PB: When we first started out, I know that Michael felt everything in rock and roll had been done. We didn't want to write a love song, or anything that could be construed as a love song, for 10 years.

ML: What would you say your first love song was?

PB: Well, it wasn't a love song. "The One I Love" is an anti-love song, but since "the one I love" is in the title ... we used to play it, and I'd look into the audience, and there would be couples kissing. Yet the verse is, "This one goes out to the one I love/A simple prop to occupy my time." That's savagely anti-love. But that's OK. People perceive songs as they are. People told me that was "their song." That was your song? Why not "Paint it Black" or "Stupid Girl" or "Under My Thumb"?

ML: But that's pop music -- Noel Coward's line about the amazing "potency of cheap music."

PB: It doesn't even matter, the value of the music. I've teared up at commercials.

ML: What commercial made you tear up, for God sake?

PB: The Pepsi commercial where the woman is depressed and the monkeys bring her a Pepsi. It was because of my life at the time, and not the commercial, but that's what pop music is, too. It's not necessarily what's written or even implied. It's what you as the listener take out of it. Which is why I tend to think songs that are less specific are more powerful.I've never cried at, say, "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" by Bob Dylan, which is a very specific song. I know that there's a woman named Hattie Carroll, and she was killed. But it was reportage. It never made me tear up, but other songs have. It's all about what you bring in at that moment, so narrative is not necessarily the most important thing.

ML: Do you think that works in literature? One of the things they tell you in Writing 101 is to make things more specific rather than more general. Is literature more powerful if it's less specific?

PB: Absolutely not. I think literature is a chance for someone like me, who's led a more or less middle-class life, to look into someone else's heart and mind and be shown a world that I don't know. When I was a teenager, I read a lot of African American literature -- "Soledad Brother" or "Invisible Man" or Richard Wright, and there were things that completely changed my life. The strength of literature is its specificity.

ML: Why do you think R.E.M.'s music has become more specific, more story-driven?

PB: I think Michael was trying to find a way on the early records to tell a story without telling a story. As he got a little older and became more comfortable doing the singing and being a public figure, the idea was still, "I'm not going to tell a story where someone says this is a song about ... " Now as a writer Michael likes to take a character he imagines and write from that perspective, tell a story in the first person. But it's not necessarily his perspective.

ML: When I saw R.E.M. in Seattle in 1999, I think Stipe introduced "The Apologist" by saying, "This is a story about ... " And "All the Way to Reno" is a pretty classic narrative. It reminds me of "That's Not Me" from "Pet Sounds," not musically or lyrically, but conceptually.

PB: "Reno," I'm sure that is sung from the perspective of a 17-or 18-year old girl. It has to be. I've never asked him.

ML: And "That's Not Me" is sung from the perspective of a like-minded 17- or 18-year-old boy. Bret Easton Ellis has said as you get older, you become more interested in narrative, in stories with a beginning, middle and an end.

PB: Part of it is definitely an age thing. When I was in my 20s, and my band was in its early years, we were capturing an experience, not necessarily thinking about the chain between the past and the future, which is what a novel is. As you get older, your life is less about capturing the moment and more about understanding what you're doing.

ML: Has Michael's progression or change as a lyricist been influenced by literature?

PB: I don't know. The only way I can say our band was directly influenced by literature was when we did our first big American tour in 1982, before our first EP came out. We were in a van, touring to nobody, playing songs no one has ever heard. I managed to find all three of the Flannery O'Connor short-story collections, and every member of the band read every one of the words in those three collections on that tour. We passed them around, pages falling out, putting pages back in, reading them with a light on at 2 a.m., going from San Antonio to L.A. I felt really strongly that it changed the way we thought about writing. I don't know why, because she writes about faith and the problems of faith in a world where there is no faith, and Michael wasn't writing linear dialogues, but when we made our first record, I think we all thought Flannery O'Connor was something we would emulate in some way.

ML: I can be listening to a particular CD or song that evokes a mood or a moment in a way I admire, and I will try to get the same effect into what I'm writing. Has the reverse ever happened to you? You're reading a novel or short story, and it works for you so well, you think you want to get whatever it is that works for you into your music? Do you take what you read the night before into what you write?

PB: All I can say is I certainly hope so, which is why I try to read good stuff.

ML: OK, other books that have affected you as a songwriter?

PB: Denis Johnson.

ML: Why?

PB: I don't know why. "Already Dead" changed me when I read it. I can't say why or how, but I felt like a different person at the end, in the same way that when I was a teenager, Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" completely moved me.

ML: One of the things music can do for writers is that we can take a song, an idea in a song, or even a character in a song, and expand it into a story, or a screenplay, or a novel. Another thing music can do for writers is set a tone for whatever we're working on that day. Most writers I know listen to rock, but Kerouac talked about how he would do that with jazz.

PB: What do you think Faulkner did?

ML: I think he just drank.

PB: But do you think he put the 78s on? He probably wasn't a Glenn Miller guy. Was he a Duke Ellington guy? I bet Faulkner played records at his house. I'd be really shocked if he didn't play gospel stuff from the '30s and '40s, if he didn't listen to blues music.

ML: What about Hemingway?

PB: My feeling is he didn't get much pleasure in life. Having read his books, I doubt very much that he had an ear for music. I bet he loved music in the hills of Spain, dancing to it, no matter how good or bad it was. But did he go home and put on records? I doubt that very much. Now Fitzgerald, he found joy in life.

ML: And in drinking. It kept him from writing.

PB: He's another of those people who never really found what he needed to do in his life. I re-read "The Crackup" about a year ago, and there's a great quote, and I paraphrase, about how when I was young I wanted to be Byron, Don Juan, J.P. Morgan. All that is burned away. I'm a writer now, nothing else. Literature is something written out of deep understanding. Music is written more out of the intuitive. When I read great books, I refuse to think they just made it up as they went along. That's what happens in rock and roll.

ML: There are passages that come to you as a writer that feel like they wrote themselves. However, you unfortunately have to write the other 500 pages or so yourself.

PB: The good stuff occurs because you work really, really hard, spend your entire life immersed in one thing, and if you're able to let yourself go completely for that time it takes to do anything great. My superstition, though, is songs that are there that aren't written. I think every songwriter feels, "I'm really good at my craft," but the good songs pop up, and you always like to feel they come from somewhere other than inside of you.The night I wrote "Losing My Religion," I was drinking wine and watching the Nature Channel with the sound off and learning how to play the mandolin. I had only had it for a couple nights. I had a tape player going, and the tape has me playing some really bad scales, then a little riff, then the riff again, and you can hear my voice say "Stop." Then I played "Losing My Religion" all the way through, and then played really bad stuff for a while. I woke up in the morning not knowing what I'd written. I had to relearn it by playing the tape. That's where songs come from for me, someplace where you're not really thinking about it.That's what's different from literature. You can't sit down and let "The Great Gatsby" happen. The songs I write are four minutes long. You can disconnect from wherever you are for four minutes and find it. I really doubt you can do that for months with a novel.

ML: There's something that's always struck me as a little off about Peter Buck and Michael Stipe. Traditionally, the songwriter is thought of as the more intuitive, and the lyricist as the more lettered. The reality is you're the more lettered, and Stipe is the more intuitive.

PB: Michael has this amazing ability to absorb things. He doesn't sit around and read tons of books, but he does read. He probably reads more political literature than I ever have.

ML: It's funny, I know lots of novelists who wish they were rock stars, but I don't know any musicians who wish they were novelists.

PB: Hey, I'm raising my hand right here!

The poster has moved with me now for 15 years. It's part of a series for America's public libraries, featuring a very young-looking R.E.M., with Peter Buck, Mike Mills, Michael Stipe and Bill Berry each holding their favorite books. I'd love to know what Stipe is holding, but, like his early lyrics, the title is obscured. Peter Buck holds an Oscar Wilde collection, and that, along with a mention of Wilde in a Smiths song from the same era, "Cemetry Gates," conspired to send me to the library. Peter Buck's a tremendous reader. His Seattle home is filled with almost as many books as records. So we asked Buck to dine last week with his friend Mark Lindquist, whose music-infused novel "Never Mind Nirvana" gets like few others the profound way music can be not only a soundtrack to life but also a road map. We asked them to talk about how artists and musicians are influenced by each other. -- David Daley, Books Editor

[kiaronna]

I would just like to say that School’s Out For the Summer gives me life and that all the Lonelyeyes moments are absolute perfection

Thank youuuuu!! SCOFS was super fun to write and helped me deal with the horrors these characters were going thru in canon lolol. COPING. I COPE

To be honest, a real challenge in this fic was making Elias n Peter non-threatening and fluffy but still in character?? Making them lil just. Really helped. They are mean bc school is hard and their circumstances suck. Elias just wants to go on one (1) date w/ his crush. Most LonelyEyes HCs I had for that fic did not fit into the flow, and JonMartin needed focus & grounding after their get together. Anyway what I'm trying to say is, here are some LonelyEyes HCs from teacherverse. they are long and if you didn’t read SCOFS they make no sense so I’ve placed em under the cut

-Remember their date plan? Peter legit has a chauffeur but Martin drives him bc Martin is Unofficial Dad. Jon was gonna drive Elias but. Jon accidentally muses about hanging out (COUGH going on a date) with Martin while they wait to drive them back and the idea of their respective dads hanging around while they’re on a date drives Elias into Embarrassed Teen Rage. So Elias takes the bus. Martin also muses about a waiting date w/ Jon but does it 100% on purpose on the drive over while Peter Suffers

-They do get fish & chips and people watch at a cute market. Elias likes this for obvious reasons and Peter likes it bc it fulfills his i-am-here-and-you-all-are-over-there needs.I very specifically picked this date plan even tho it sounds stupid bc it’s perfect for their personalities and it is the type of first date plan people their age would manage to execute. in my day dating at that age was like. going to the mall w/ ur parents in the background

-In the fic Martin says Elias dropped by the Lukas estate “a few” times over the summer. Martin was busy writing poetry in his room and had no idea that Elias hung out once a week

-Elias has had a crush on Peter since 0.001 seconds after he transferred. He spends entire classes staring at him and has turned in HW w/ Peter doodles on it. All his teachers gossip w/ Jon about it at district meetings. 

-Peter hated Elias initially bc he doesn't like attention and also bc Elias is loud and prickly. Then some prep school brat bullies another one of the scholarship students and Elias (partially out of pragmatism, he would've been next) like... destroys him. So Peter starts paying attention. Tbh he only develops a proper crush once Martin is tutoring him and asking him about school and what he enjoys and Peter realizes Elias comes to mind. It is a long summer. Peter spends a lot of it awkwardly wondering how to be a person while they skip rocks on the lake and explode stuff out in the deep woods. yes u read that right. they get a lot of fireworks and they Do Not tell Martin

-when they start dating they spend a surprising amount of time navigating how to handle Peter's introversion vs Elias' desire to glue their frickin hands together bc he continues to find his bf fascinating. the first time Peter erupts and goes into a vent session about school where he rants for 20 minutes, Elias holds his hand very tight and has to remind himself that Peter is pissed and it is not time to smile bc he likes to listen to his bf talk. they text a lot. Peter hates phone calls

-these last points have made the crushing sound one-sided, but trust me when I say Peter likes Elias. Peter does what Peter wants, and if he wanted Elias gone, he'd make it so. sometimes when he needs to be alone he does make it so. Elias spends a lot of time pretending to be someone he's not to be accepted, so he values that kind of honesty. The concept of someone enjoying Peter’s personality actually makes him v uncomfortable and kinda confuses him (Martin skates by under the guise of ‘he is just my tutor who I pay and not the only adult I respect & trust’). after their 6-month anniversary he sort of flips out and ghosts Elias for a week bc he did not expect this to work & he’s scared. Jon and Martin get involved when Elias spends that week mercilessly torturing Jon, showing up unannounced. when they reunite they somehow like each other more. but Elias pettily spends a week w/ extra staring which Peter grudgingly allows

-Peter's family thinks their new maid has a son who now basically lives at their house. Spoiler: Elias just visits a lot and Peter tells them zero personal info

-The difference in social class & money is awkward for Elias, who is hyperaware and insecure and won’t let Peter come over to his house until they’ve been dating for like two years. At that point Jurgen has saved up a lifetime’s worth of embarrassing things to reveal to his grandson’s bf. there is definitely some pining where Elias is convinced Peter’s going to dump him to get with some other hot rich kid at their school. Peter? Oblivious to this fear entirely. Peter had the luxury of growing up filthy rich, and is also the type of person who doesn’t care at all if your clothes are from Goodwill or your dates can’t cost more than a few bucks. This actually leads into the next point

-Peter is super outdoorsy and once his foot heals Elias takes him hiking /canoeing/camping every other weekend when it’s warm. Elias gets into landscape drawings. Peter hates TV but will eat popcorn & snuggle Elias on the couch while he watches his favorite shows on the Lukas’ expensive flatscreen. Elias continues to sketch Peter a lot and Peter does not find out about this for like a year. they continue to explode fireworks and homemade stuff in the woods bc they are teenage boys.

-they’re both Lil Bastards and like to annoy each other but if you ever mess with one the other pops up out of nowhere to threaten you in a cheerful, low drawl (Peter) or descend upon u vengefully w/ embarrassing secrets being yelled out in public (Elias). They hold hands the whole time. it is terrifying. neither of them have ever been the popular kid but nobody will so much as look at them funny

-they make bets about literally everything. My fave is the bet about who's going to be taller, which drags on for yeeeeears and no one will ever concede defeat. “you’re not taller, I could still grow” (Elias) “we are adults and puberty is over” (Peter) meanwhile they are both taller than Jon, who still tries to like. pat Elias atop the head. 

-When Jon and Martin get married u know who walks each of them down the aisle to give them away!! THE BOYS. they both hate the formalwear and look ready to shank someone the entire time

[courage-a-word-of-justice]

Deca-Dence 5 - 6 | Moriarty 3 - 4 | Yashahime 4 - 5 | Maou-jou 4 | I7 s2 5 (22) | Akudama 4 - 5 | HypMic 5 - 6 | Taiso Samurai 4 | HPGC 4

Deca-Dence 5

“…cannon won’t ignite in time!” The subbers spell cannon as “canon” later as well.

Off to the cliffside, where Kaburagi goes to die…

Deca-Dence 6

“Maybe someone intervened.” – I think Minato did, somehow.

This Death Dive reminds me of Wipeout.

Moriarty 3

I once made up a quote that goes, “When life detests you, fight back.” I think it’s also roughly along the lines of advice Albert needs.

I remembered an odd line from Macbeth: “Brother, he has killed me!” Seriously, Moriarty is scarier than some actual horror anime, I swear…Update: It’s actually “he has killed me, Mother!”, but same impact.

I had my hands over my mouth from the moment the fire began. That’s how intense this is.

This ED…doesn’t sound like an ED. It sounds like the OP for a different anime, like Joker Game or something. Also, having Saito Soma as Gentaro and Moriarty…is a bit unsettling because they have a lot of overlap but one’s basically the evil twin of the other.

Yashahime 4

“…was raised here…”

“…we can…”

I felt a heart twinge when I saw Towa tear up…man, it’s been years since I last dealt with Inuyasha properly.

“…nights where I can’t fall asleep.” – So…you’ll play it a lot then, Setsuna.

Oh, so Kirara is a nekomata? I never knew until now.

Kikyo!

According to the mythology, the kirin rules over the middle…so why is Kirinmaru the monster in the east?

Is “s***” unwarranted here? I didn’t have the volume on, so I don’t know…Going back, I think Moroha said “kuso”, but it’s still kinda weird to have a swear word in a mostly family-friendly series in a slot near Detective Conan. (Then again, Detective Conan is where I learnt “kuso” from…so my standards are probably not as up-to-scratch as they should be.)

Rin! People keep saying Rin is the mother of the girls and it’s basically the only conclusion that could be done, considering the relationship the two had…but it’s still kind of squick…(Says a person who has no problem with SGRS s2’s ending.)

Update: Someone on ANN said the teacher’s name (Osamu Kirin) being similar to Kirinmaru is sketchy and I agree.

Maou-jou 4

There’s no pun for Rocket Turtle…that’s kinda startling, actually.

I’m not going to translate the eyecatches anymore. Seems they were actually translated in the manga and someone just copies them over or something.

I’ve seen some characters use wa when they really aren’t that feminine. However, the voice Suwabe uses for the Sorceror leads me to believe this guy really is trying to be feminine, even if in just a vocal capacity.

…aw, no puns here too.

Oh no, the seal…!

…hmm? The Scissors Sorceror’s info is…we’re not allowed to look at it. That’s what the red text says.

…my brain exploded for a second when I suddenly heard jazz music. It’s a Detective Conan parody! *screams*

Iina! doesn’t really mean “Lucky!” It means more like “cool!” or “It’s good, isn’t it?”

I7 s2 5

I missed these boys!

I like the Kinako transition. It’s cute.

I don’t really like it when Tenn looks at the screen…it gives me 1st person cam vibes.

Why is Tsunashi being called “this”, anyway?

Oh yeah…mensore = youkoso = welcome.

Uh oh…is Yuki actually evil???

Riku (earth) vs. Tenn (heaven). Hmm.

I still can’t believe they don’t believe Gaku is the soba guy. It’s so obvious!

Chikuzen-ni.

Someone on staff ships Gaku and Tsumugi together…hmm…

Oh! So this is DESTINY, huh? I’ve probably heard it on Spotify before, but I don’t recognise it by sheer sound like I do HypMic. (Then again, the half-year off the airwaves probably really hurt I7, man…)

Akudama 4

Say what you will about how bad Funi translations can get…they’re definitely entertaining!

Geesh, Doctor gets all the sexy shots, but Brawler gets all the ab shots. Can I get a sexy Courier shot…?

“…she’s right.” – There’s a lot of dialogue here, so…uh, who’s “she” in this case?

What’s a “bro fro”?

Wow, Brawler, talk about being punched into next Tuesday…(partially joking)

Swindler’s face, LOL. (I know she’s an ordinary gal, but calling her “Swindler” is shorter to type.)

I remember reading around and people agree Swindler works at the Seal Centre.

The shark and bunny’s shirts say things like “Kanto/Kansai”, “earth, air/water” and “pollution/clean” during their montage.

“feminist” – Uh, ex-squeeze me?! Feminism does not equal “ladies first” or “going easy on ladies”. Update: I went and listenend to it and although one of my ears is mysteriously almost constantly plugged these days, I’m fairly sure Doctor did not say “feminist” (in katakana). Update 2: Then I listened to it again and…I’m not sure anymore.

LOL, Hoodlum hit the in-series camera. With his face.

Oh, vault = garage or storage. Right, how did I not know that?

Cat, nooooooooooooooooo! Don’t die!

HypMic 5

After the two “darker” divisions, it seems almost strange to not have a “dark” introduction about the seedy underbelly of alt. future Japan…

Oh, my gosh. That’s Ichijiku on the phone.

The studio has the word “drops” on it.

Lemme guess: Neither hand!...Yup.

The only spoiler I know for this ep. is it’s a Halloween episode, and “Ramuda ruins Halloween”. That quote is way too subjective to mean anything, though…

…hmm, Gentaro doesn’t say “shousei” in that sentence involving “this humble bard” (not that I heard, but one of my ears is mysteriously plugged after I stayed up late browsing Twitter on my phone – don’t tell anyone that, though! They’re not meant to know!). Gentaro is not a humble bard (although that would translate “shousei” quite correctly in the Shakespearean), he’s an author.

LOL, that “ding!”

Gentaro actually says “ghostbusters” in katakana, LOL.

I almost thought this Shinjuku man was Doppo…but no, this Aoyama Cemetery exists. It has nice cherry blossoms.

The “dun dun dun” soundtrack is great. It really sets the atmosphere.

Gentaro really is an idiots’ minder, just as I used to characterise him. (Then the FP and M manga and developments regarding Ramuda being evil changed my mind.)

I-Is this just gonna be an episode of FP being scared and Ramuda yelling? It’s fun for a bit, but when you’re stopping to analyse every few seconds, Ramuda’s voice is gonna get annoying eventually…

Kurosu seems to be a cross between Jyushi and Doppo.

This ep…makes FP look money-crazy. Dice is only money-crazy when he’s broke…because of course you would be…but the others aren’t.

That rock track that plays when FP hand out flyers is cool!

Are they…eating squid?...Welp, squid jerky. I’d say I’m correct.

Oh, so they’re all street photographers? Not just Tom?

I was wondering…how would the “tie to a different division” occur in episode 5, considering episode 6 is where the plot really kicks in? Turns out…they tie back to BB, which is not a thing I was expecting at all.

BB have a BB tablet…makes sense, because I think Hypster have iPhone cases for each division.

Oh, they’re planting the seeds of Ramuda’s ability here, so to speak. By knowing what Hypnosis Mics are capable of doing, you can see the building blocks of Rap Abilities as well.

Okonbanwa! The extra O is meant to make things formal, but only in front of nouns (sometimes it’s “go”, e.g. goshujin), so it’s Ramuda being overly formal to be cutesy and unconventional.

*lightbulb goes off in head* It makes sense that the group affiliated with illusions and randomness does the Halloween episode, actually.

…Yargh! Of course all these onee-sans are FP stans!...*lightly touches temple, as if to get rid of a headache* I should’ve known.

The new song is “Shibuya Ghost Night” by Tokyo Health Club, Yuki “T-Groove” Takahashi and Yuma Hara.

*stops video before the darn airhorn sounds* Thank goodness…hey, isn’t this quote from Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka…?

This episode is very seasonal, but doesn’t really make sense outside of airing on Halloween. C’mon, couldn’t you have given us a Sasara appearance instead of having Ramuda yell down the house…? I knew the FP episode was going to be either lighthearted with a dark undercurrent, like the BB ep (considering we haven’t gotten to Ramuda dying yet), or full-on lighthearted, but…I somehow wonder if the staff had an empty spot labelled “Fling Posse episode” due to COVID and went, “Okay, it airs on Halloween this year, let’s make it Halloween-inspired”…or something. Also, I feel Gentaro got the short end of the stick here.

Update: As for yakuwarigo, Ramuda trends towards the feminine side, which is not something I noticed until my groupwork partner pointed it out to me. The message in this episode has a “yone”, which proves that point even further. “Dayo~n” is a variant of the gender-neutral “yo” ending. Meanwhile, I have game samples that prove Dice uses “ze” like BB/MTC, while Gentaro uses “yo” and desu/masu like Jakurai, so it was really Ramuda anyone wanted to pay attention to since his speech patterns are the most feminine-leaning, possibly due to his extensive hanging out with ladies. (I once read a Tofugu post on how non-binary people deal with language that said if you hang out with ladies a lot, you take on feminine yakuwarigo and if you hang out with guys a lot, you do the same in that direction, but I clearly remember Ramuda using “sa”, which is a slightly male-leaning ending.)

Taiso Samurai 4

There’s something in the background which stops me from listening to it and one of my ears is blocked, but I gotta find out what Tackey was saying about the NHK Cup (the joke, I mean). Update: So I think it’s ninja/nukihara/kekkou, but I may have heard that wrong due to my blocked ear…I should get someone to clean it out properly.

Here’s the YoI monologue about competitions again. <- (neutral on it) Also, NHK is in English letters/romaji in the term “NHK Cup”, but the “Cup” isn’t (it’s in kanji).

Sekigahara had a huge historical battle.

Huh? This episode’s called “Samurai Musume (daughter)”, so…where did “Battling Samurai” come from? That’s one of the previous episodes, right?

Selfies, before they were cool.

I was wondering if Leo actually calls Rei “Rachel” like he calls Jotaro “Joe”…and he does. I just haven’t paid much attention to the audio, that’s all.

The Battle of Chibi? Never heard of it until now, but the Battle of Red Cliffs is the same thing.

Leo Naruto runs…LOL.

If Rei was in 4th grade in 2002…are we going to see the characters in the present in the end? She would be 28 in 2020.

I guess I should’ve guessed from “hat trick”, but a Bergkamp trap is related to soccer.

There’s a random Japanese-sounding track in the background…didn’t expect that.

A cemetery…on the day after Halloween.

“Grandma’s place” = the bar…Ohhhhhhhhhh. I was wondering, didn’t the grandma and Rei live together? Then it all came together.

Jim Beeam (sic), LOL.

I wonder, are Tackey and Ayu dating like he asks?

Gotta love a man in a suit! *chef’s kiss*

Yashahime 5

Who’s this Tokotsu guy again…? Also, the “ja” in Jakotsumaru means “young”.

Oh, Myoga. It’s been a while.

Can there be 4 Perils when there’s only 3 of them…?

Well, it makes sense that a dog demon would have demon fleas…in a sense.

Why is “trying to swallow up this world and turn it into a degenerate age” (or whatever Kirinmaru’s aim is) so vague? You could say the present is already an age of mass degeneracy…

Maybe the Dream Butterfly took Moroha’s memories…?

Wait, why is Myoga only allowed to drink Moroha’s blood when she puts on the rouge?

So this is an arhat. Also, aren’t morals an Anglophone ideal imported into Japan and the rest of Asia? That’s what separates Towa from Setsuna.

Akudama 5

This drone definitely won’t come in handy at all…(sarcastic)

There’s an Evangelion feel to these “masks”…

That box is like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs! It’s great!

I like how the kids jump to the potential fact (?) this is a Swindler trick.

You can see Courier’s bike in the background when the bunny says “…and I mean everything.”

*Knights of Sidonia music starts playing* Search! And! Destroy! *record scratch as music stops*

I think this little discussion between Courier and Swindler will go down in Akudama Drive history as one of my favourite moments because it’s the little conversations that count. Also…does Courier have a mechanical hand, or is that just me thinking weird things…? Is that a glove?

Ooh, scars. Sexy. (On the Executioner Master, at least.)…Now I get why the guy wears that mouth covering.

HypMic 6

Halfway through the season already…? Yikes, how time flies. By the way, my assignment’s come and gone so I don’t need to focus on it anymore.

Hmm? Why did the subbers put “Prime Minister” when Ichijiku merely says “yes”…?

Wait, 1st question: how does one sign up for a rap battle? I don’t think that’s ever been answered. 2nd question (well, not a question): Dice is paying attention to Otome now…

I’m fairly sure that red brick warehouse was just that…as in the Red Brick Warehouse in Yokohama, which was also featured in Bungou Stray Dogs. Update: Oh, it’s (partially) a shopping mall…? I didn’t know that until now.

See, I told you they’re (Tom, Iris and Rex) probably foreigners…

That one shot of Jakurai? *chef’s kiss* Beautiful. Give me a million of ‘em. (Okay, I’m kidding to some degree, but I can’t help staring at it. Jakurai’s just too pretty…)

“Tweet-like lyrics”? Eh? When was Twitter a collective pessimist?

Oh, that’s basically the scene from the drama track. Where the heck is Jakurai fishing though…? I always imagined it to be at a river or a pier, not some concrete complex. Update: According to a user on Twitter, the fishing place is called “Ichigaya Fishing Centre”. It is, as you would expect, found in Shinjuku. Apparently, even Osomatsu-san featured the place...which would explain why it looks vaguely familiar to me.

Wow, I can’t believe how upfront they’re being about Ramuda breaking up TDD.

Ramuda thought in his deep voice…I almost didn’t recognise it for a second. It doesn’t even sound like Shirai. It sounds more like…Hayami, in fact.

“F*** yeah!” - …and they’re still going with the F bomb. Keep being you, subbers, keep being you.

That shot of Saburo in a dimly-lit room almost looks like the SR card in ARB, except in that one he has his headphones on (and might be outside, to my memory).

Oh, so the round thing really is Ichiro’s ring. It’s got an “I” on it too, i.e. the Roman numeral for one.

*Ichiro explains what happened to TDD from his and Samatoki’s side* - I don’t think we’ve ever seen the story from Ichiro’s or Samatoki’s perspective enough to know either thought this (or this way).

“Jiro! Saburo! Let’s go!” - …and Tom’s just taking photos as they leave, LOL.

I didn’t expect the TsudaKen guy to be back again, really.

Well, if this Google route is to be believed, “Sadamezuka’s soul” only lasts about 30 minutes by car crossing from one point to the other, hence Jiro’s remark.

Googling “Toyotama” and “Toyotama Line” gets you…Ghost of Tsushima links…?

…hmm. I’m not listening to it on a hugely loud volume, so I can’t quite tell what the pun is, but I think the word for “monk” in this case is “bouzu”. Then what’s the word for “electric dynamo”…? Update: The pun, according to Takahisa Maeyama, is Erekiteruteru Bouzu.

That ticking thing was really effective in terms of the song…but sasuga HypMic. Things went ka-blammo again.

So we’re probably going to see BB’s first DRB round next ep…or Matenrou doing another takedown similar to ep. 3. Or both. Both is good. (Or it could be the FP/M side of things, much like we got the BB/MTC side of things here.)

...Uh, shouldn’t that be “dawn”? The anime’s generally been very good about this (aside from the obvious typo in the BB logo), but…welp, they’ve done it now.

Update: The LOVE you see Hifumi and Doppo near is this one.

Update 2: As for the yakuwarigo, it…turns out, to no one’s surprise, it stays oddly consistent across all media, although individual treatment of the characters can differ depending on the author.

HGPC 4

Ooh, is this Element of Light?

Fate/Stay PreCure! Here we come!

Moriarty 4

Why is the “to” capitalised? (Is that even capitalised?)

Quinine.

I kind of knew the grapefruit and the heart condition and/or quinine would be relevant somehow…and boy howdy, was I right! I just didn’t really know what it was going to do, that’s all.

I thought the ED didn’t match very well, but looking at the translated lyrics…now it kind of makes sense.

[capn-charlie]

random writings: “Just a Taste of Being Human" (pt. 2) ➜ Supercorp

Scenario: After-effects of the Lena vs. Kara confrontation; primarily set as part two to my initial one-shot, though also valid on its own. 

For what feels like the umpteenth time in twenty minutes, her gaze flickers over to where her phone rests on the coffee table. Lying there, unused, and full of wait for Lena’s daily text.

As of late, her delay has kept Kara on her toes. Something that both bothers and reminds the blonde of mistakes she wishes she could erase. She can’t, though. That part’s obvious. Instead, she’s kept her complaints and grievances to herself, away from Lena. Instead, she’s used every ounce of strength to bite her tongue and keep her thumbs at bay while simultaneously wishing to ask her best friend if she’s alright.

Of course she isn’t, Kara has mentally scolded herself repeatedly. Coming with an eye-roll ━ for each of the five, almost radio-silent days since their exchange in Lena’s office ━ she’s dismissed the option in texting the other woman first. Space, she wants space.

Except, for the five occasions ━ one per day ━ that she’s actually heard from Lena, Kara has nearly second-guessed the idea to give her friend that space. Because, each time, the shortened texts of “Have a nice night” or the single “Hope you’re well” have sounded as though they hold an underlying plea. A plea that asks Kara to extend the conversation a little longer, or ask how she’s faring, how she’s holding up, how she’s breaking down, etc. Sometimes, she even strives to give into those theories of Lena wanting a tad more conversation ━ just enough to know they’re both still living, or their friendship is. But she doesn’t. She can’t. Not when she knows how much she’s stained both of them, not when she knows the answers to all aforementioned questions:

Lena isn’t faring in any sense, Lena isn’t holding up at all, Lena is more than likely breaking down.

And Kara assures herself of the latter because she’s actually witnessed it.

So, maybe she hasn’t been giving her best friend the amount of space she’s tried to, or she’s told herself to. Maybe she’s played into her own indulgences a bit more than she wanted to admit. Okay, yes, she has.

Yesterday was the kicker in terms of keeping herself away from the woman she’d broken in half. The woman she’d held the biggest secret of all from in hopes of staying selfish and keeping Lena’s mind free of Supergirl’s real identity.

In true fashion to her own endeavors, Kara sought out Lena’s location in the city. For once, she hadn’t been stuck in her office while doing paperwork. This time, she was walking across the city in her normal, high-heels, though she wasn’t treading the streets as if she owned them like only Lena Luthor could pull off. Unlike her normal charisma, Kara watched as her friend very seldom glanced upwards at who she was bumping into ━ before mumbling a spur-the-moment “Sorry” ━ and she hardly paid attention to where she was going. She looked in a rush, first thing in the morning, with her hair down yet slightly tousled. It was a look of wearing thin against her own grain, and something else that Kara blamed herself for.

She knew it wasn’t Lena’s day-in and day-out personality. It was barely a fraction of it, after days of sparse conversations and likely no sleep. Judging by her friend’s complexion ━ without make-up, being a rarity, and the bags beneath her ghosted eyes ━ the blonde rightfully guessed that she was exhausted.

Again: Kara’s fault.

The worst part is that she can’t do anything about it, either. She can say she’s sorry until she’s blue in the face, she can curse at herself for going about it all wrong, she can spit on Lex’s grave and blame him all she wants, but nothing will undo the hurt she’s caused her best friend. In all sincerity, she’s not even sure that Lena wants her to. At least, optimistically speaking, despite the pain that courses through the raven-haired woman’s veins, now she knows the truth. Now, everything’s in the open, and she can cast judgement on Kara for whatever she deems worthy.

It’s all about patience on Kara’s side of things, whether she likes it or not.

A sigh exits her nostrils. A last-ditch attempt at focusing on the TV that rolls through something she’s paid little to no attention to. After eating dinner, there’s been a sliver of normal conversation with her friends. Even Alex is off doing whatever, leaving Kara to sulk alone and with her fuzziest, white blanket. She snuggles into it further, hoping to achieve at least a minute sense of comfort.

Then, there’s a knock at her door. One that warrants a puzzled frown, but her glasses sinking down the bridge of her nose so she can see who’s outside without moving. Currently, she can’t be bothered unless it’s uber important.

It is.

With fastened motions, she all but whips the blanket from her body and slides herself across the apartment to the point of nearly face-planting into the door. Courtesy of her socks growing too much traction against the floor straight away. She steadies herself on the doorknob, clearing her throat and putting on a brave face before it’s opened.

“Lena,” sheer surprise colors her demeanor, lips staying parted. “Uh━come in, come in,” she moves a bit too quickly from the doorway, waving her hand toward the innards of her apartment.

Sunken-in, green eyes merely stare into the space. They look at its contents. The soft couch with a white blanket pushed messily into a corner, the rumbling TV with a colorful show already playing on its screen. The countertops, the unique fridge, nighttime darkness seeping through the large windows. She notes how foreign all facets seem nowadays. How different, how… new. Not in a welcoming way, either, but as if she was a child stepping into a fresh classroom after changing schools. It comes with an unfamiliar scent, as well. Kara’s scent, yes, but it’s not the same. Frankly, it’s only a reminder of the deception that’s clouded them since the very beginning. It’s only a reminder that she’s basically meeting Kara’s — Supergirl’s — apartment for the first time.

There’s a ringing in her ears that keeps her mouth agape. There’s a dryness in her eyes that’s caused by not blinking for an extended time. So much so, Kara’s hopeful smile dims with every tick of the clock that passes. With each light that drains from Lena’s eyes ━ not that there was much to begin with.

She suddenly swallows hard at Lena’s reserved attitude. At her clear reflection on the events that have unfolded. And, truly, all she can do is respectfully stand there and hope that her best friend crosses the threshold into her apartment so they can at least spend some time together. Time that they’ve wasted since Lena found out, because Kara sure enough knows that they should be discussing things instead of ignoring the elephant in the room.

Through a relative attempt to break the already forming tension, Kara gingerly clears her throat.

Lena snaps out of it, blinking hard. There, she sees Kara standing with a bashful, apologetic expression on her face. Her glistening eyes, waiting to either be yelled at or lectured. There’s even a crease in her forehead that all but says, “Go ahead, I deserve it.”

And she does. She does deserve it.

At the same time, that’s not why Lena came here. That’s not what took her out of her office, sleepiness and all, across the city so she can nimbly climb the stairs to the other woman’s apartment unannounced. Lecturing Kara isn’t what became her sole inspiration for blinking away the exhaustion, just enough to fold the papers on her desk, throw on an over-sized sweater and comfortable pants, then exit the building she calls her second home.

Her own apartment being her third home.

Kara — in general — being her first. That’s what brought her here, after all.

Finally, with persisting hesitation, Lena nods. Not to Kara, in particular, but at the situation. Like she’s bracing herself for the ensuing interaction with someone who’s done the worst, yet knows she can’t escape it now that she’s taken initiative.

She’s followed into the apartment with a single door keeping her from exiting without a word. It brings nervousness, confusion, and a batch of decisiveness that likewise gave her the extra push to coming here, in the first place. One moment, she was begrudgingly scanning through endless sheets of paper that eventually all blurred together, and the next she was staring at Kara’s door. After she blinked, blue eyes were boring into hers. That’s when her exhaustion formally hit her, if it hadn’t already.

Lena sits on the cushion furthest from where Kara was. Evidence being shown in the shallow bowl upon the couch’s righthand seat, and the blanket shoved into its corner. It takes a while for her to get as comfortable as she can, but, once she does, sleepiness shoots straight through her. When her eyes close, they sting heavily. When she moves her arms, they tingle. Each ailment a result of the collective, seven hours of sleep she’s gotten in five days. It’s been awful, to put it gently.

“I know it’s a silly question, but, um,” Kara doesn’t even look at her once she’s sat down, “how are you holding up?”

“I’m holding up.”

And that’s it.

“Right,” the blonde mouths to herself, scratching the back of her head while settling into the quietude.

Meanwhile, puffy eyes bore into the windows past the TV. Staring into the darkness, then disappearing. She even ignores her own reflection, or the little amount of it which she can see behind the TV’s frame. She ignores Kara’s, as well. Still, she can’t find the strength to blink, or take deep breaths, or focus herself enough to hold a decent conversation with the woman next to her.

Her best friend, who’s been unfortunately on her mind since Lex uttered those ghastly words to her. Since he gave her all the evidence in the world.

She knows she shouldn’t give into the voices in her head that continuously rant about Kara, she knows she should make a solid attempt at healing herself so she won’t go insane, but it’s proving to be more difficult than she expected. Even more difficult considering that, in spite of Kara’s betrayal, she’s still the one person that Lena has wanted to spend time with. She’s still the person that her heart longs for, and that she feels the most comfortable with. She’s still her safety net, her comfort blanket, the one person she’s wanted to lean against and be held by, even if those arms contain Kryptonian blood that she hadn’t known prior. Not with Kara, at least. Because, truth be told, the blonde held a point when saying that, before this, she was simply Kara.

Her Kara.

Now, even with those same feelings of yearning for the woman sitting a cushion away, it’s so much different. It’s altered, and messed up, and fucked, and just… not the same. But while it’s not the same, it’s still the same. That’s what she can’t get over. The anger about things changing, about the deception, about the lying and the secret-hiding… yet all she can do is feel desperation to cling to Kara more than ever before. All she wants to do is shift a foot or so to the left, lay her head on her friend’s shoulder, and whisper, “Can we just rest?”

Sadly, that’s not how the world works. That won’t help a damn thing. Lena can vouch for that, firsthand.

Next to her, Kara grows anxious as she listens past the silence and hears the neighbor’s clock ticking in her ear. Her jaw grinds, her eyes desolate as they stare crossing Lena’s line of sight toward the windows. It shakes her to the core, almost to the point of leaving the apartment, just so she can toss that forsaken clock out the window. Easing the tension of its ticking, however, is the other woman’s heart. The subtle beat of it, lesser than usual yet still there. Thank Rao, it’s still there.

“How pathetic is it that you’re the one I wish to turn away from but the same person I drift to for security?” Lena all but speaks to the windows, voice barren.

A soft, half-smile is given to her, disregarding the dark-haired woman’s sadness about the subject.

“It’s not pathetic,” she disagrees, a bit of desperation in her argument. “You said it yourself: renovating a building doesn’t change its foundation. I’ve made a huge mistake that we’re dealing with now, but that doesn’t change how we were before,” a beat. “Does it?”

Her eyebrows raise.

“I suppose not entirely,” the admission is quiet, Lena now playing with her hands in her lap. “Though it does add a whole dimension that I’ve yet to give the time of day. Now, when I look back, I’ll see three people in our conversations. Either that, or the looming secret set in front of me.”

“Lena…”

“I didn’t come here to discuss it, honestly,” she turns to Kara for the first time, gaze adamant before shifting her jaw and lowering her chin again.

“Why’d you come here, then?” the question is asked without hesitation ━ before the blonde realizes how it could’ve come off. “I━I mean, not that you’re not welcome, whenever. The door’s always open━or you have the key I gave you, right? You can still come and go as you please. You could even stay, if you wanted that.”

The makeshift smile she flashes her friend falters when she realizes that Lena is hardly listening.

“Good to know your nervous babbling wasn’t a farce, as well,” she blinks innocently, then understands that she’s just being spiteful now. “Sorry,” the word is muttered, shaking her head at the ceiling.

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Lena disagrees with a solemn laugh. “No amount of hurt gives me the right to backhand you at every given opportunity. Slipping into that typical, Luthor mindset isn’t on my to-do list.”

“You’re better than that.”

She nods this time, “I know I am.”

No response.

“I can’t tell you━exactly━why I came here. I don’t know where my mind is currently, and I’m not sure where it will be tomorrow. I only know that I’m above ignorance. I meant it when I said I’m trying to understand, even if it’s hard to see past that fresh wound,” it’s whispered, hoarse and frail. “All the lies, the pretending,” her demeanor turns shy, fiddling with her fingers once more. “But, for whatever reason, my heart still says you’re my best friend. After going so long without family, you don’t want to let that kind of thing escape, you know?”

There’s a watery laugh that fills the room. Kara watches Lena’s exterior crumble under the weight of what she’s done. Her lips rub together, not knowing if she should move closer and hold her like she used to, or if she should stay put.

Either way, whatever decision she would’ve made is void when they’re interrupted. From somewhere downtown, a large explosion emanates. So pronounced, it shakes the apartment complex and both women are fully alerted by it, turning in the direction of the source. Kara actually gets up from the couch, running over to the window closest to the door as Lena remains sitting, yet turned. Arm lying across the back of the couch, and watching the blonde stare out the window with both women wearing frowns.

“Can you see anything?”

“No,” Kara’s admission is quiet, mainly spoken to herself.

Slowly, she realizes that it’s best if she takes a look. Unlike in usual instances, it’s not much of an intense, do-or-die moment of comprehension. Instead, her eyes slowly drift over to Lena as she turns to the woman. She’s stared at, like Lena has been waiting for something more, something… different.

Kara knows exactly what it is.

Suddenly, she feels self-conscious about the idea of whipping into her suit. She feels self-conscious about opening her shirt, adorning that infamous symbol before jetting off into the night sky. With Lena right there, her chin lowers as her fingers nimbly pick at the buttons of her old, nighttime flannel without undoing them. They feel heavier than they usually do. They feel more complex, and more intricate. She stares at them as if they were, as well.

“Go ahead, Supergirl,” Lena says it a bit dryly, but also with sincerity. “I’m sure someone needs you,” it’s whispered, icy eyes boring straight into Kara’s temple.

Still, she hesitates for longer before nodding with deliberacy.

With normal motions never before seen by Lena, she whips into uniform in the blink of an eye. Before her friend can formulate a dignified reaction to the motions, Supergirl is stood in front of the window with its panes now open. A subtle breeze flows through the apartment, getting Lena to curl up a little closer into the couch’s back. Simultaneously, she focuses on Kara ━ turned Supergirl ━ in her glory. How the wind causes strands of blonde hair to tickle the frame of her face. How the moon reflects against the contours of her cheek. It all looks so natural, though likewise ethereal. There’s additionally a small flip of her stomach that she can’t ignore. A sense of pride, even if stifled by the pain she’s currently dealing with.

Shyly, Kara looks at her. A sign as if she’s waiting for some sort of approval.

Lena stares more. Unblinking, and unmoving. She doesn’t even smile, not one bit.

At her reluctance to speak, the blonde nods at nothing in particular. She takes two steps forward, muttering a non-direct “This shouldn't take too long” before peeking through the window.

The other woman knows she’s a split second away from kicking off into the air, leaving behind a gust of wind. She’s familiar with the sequence, remembering all the times she’d kept in awe at watching Supergirl exit her balcony. Sometimes, she’d been a little too close to remain casual about it. Since forever, the speed and godlike tendencies have amazed her.

The difference this time is that she knows she’s staring at Kara. Even with Supergirl’s suit fastened against her body, being like a second skin to her best friend, she knows that beneath it is still Kara.

Again: her Kara.

As the woman’s knees bend so she can kick off, Lena can’t help but let an abrupt “Kara” fall from her lips. One that stops her in her tracks, being slightly eager and jumping to get in a final word.

She turns back, lips parted at the soft-spoken name considering Lena’s unwavering irritation. She waits for something more.

“Be careful.”

For the first time in nearly a week, Kara gives her a genuine smile. One that makes Lena’s heart flutter, even if she’s causing the blonde a similar amount of pain that she’s been bestowed with. Although she can’t find the strength to mirror it before Kara successfully disappears into the night, afterwards, the smallest grin curves over her mouth, even if not seen by the naked eye. She knows it’s there, and that’s enough.

With a sigh, the grin fades as soon as it was felt. She leans her chin on her arm, burying her face into the couch’s material.

It’s at least twenty minutes later when Kara returns in a gust of wind. One that even brings a leaf into the apartment, right before she pouts at its entrance and it’s tossed right back through the pane.

“I’m sorry it took me so long,” she speaks with her back turned, closing the windows. “Usually I’m back within five, maybe ten minutes, but for whatever reason, I━”

Spinning around to face the couch, her words trail off until they’re replaced by a tiny chuckle. One that’s given to the sight in front of her, being Lena fast asleep on the couch. Curled into the back of it, and snoozing peacefully against the white blanket now bunched mostly in her lap and clutched in her hands.

There’s a warmth in her chest that spreads to her cheeks upon seeing Lena feel so safe and secure upon her couch and with her blanket. It also comes from knowing that, if Lena wanted to, she could’ve left, gone home, and slept there. After nights of minimal rest, she’s finally sleeping soundly.

Kara doesn’t even want to move her into a better, sleeping position. At this point, she wonders if she should just leave Lena how she is and hope that she doesn’t wake up with a stiff neck. Then again, she’s not sure that would help the woman’s mood improve any more than how it has ━ or hasn’t ━ as she’s gotten zero sleep in the past however-many days. With that in mind, the blonde carefully tip-toes over to Lena and lays her further onto the couch. The blanket is then draped over her body. A variety of pillows and other blankets, set next to her.

For a moment, Kara lingers near the couch and wonders if she should do their normal routine of moving Lena to the bed. It’s something she’s done on multiple occasions when the woman worked herself too hard for hours beforehand, only to fall asleep at the worst of times. In those instances, the blonde would pick her up with ease and transfer her to the bed, just so Lena could get as much sleep as possible. She was always thanked endlessly. Sometimes teased, too.

With everything that’s happened lately, testing newfound boundaries is something that Kara feels she should treat with care. It’s something she should stay away from tonight, moreover, and Lena is clearly still tender from the reveal. Better safe than sorry, that kind of thing.

She takes another glance at Lena, noting how she’s still asleep with her eyebrows knitted together. Contemplative, yet content. Kara smiles at the appearance, eventually nodding to herself.

The apartment lights are shut off, as well as the TV, and she claims tonight as a victory.

[bardofv0id]

Meat vs. Candy: Meat

Here’s the thing.

I’m hearing two main arguments online... a lot of people saying the epilogues are Terrible, for various reasons, and a few people saying they're Good, with a smaller but vocal subset of those people arguing that if you don’t like them then you’re obviously just expecting to be spoon-fed a fluff ending in which the Character You Like gets a wish-fulfillment storybook epilogue.

There are probably some people who are mad about not getting that. However, I think misrepresenting the range of anger various parts of the fandom are experiencing as being purely some kind of childish knee-jerk tantrum at not getting the toy they wanted is disingenuous, at best, and parallels some of the mistakes of the epilogues themselves.  Note that this in no way excuses or justifies people sending the writers or anyone else death-threats or whatever the hell else has been going on.

Honestly... the Meat ending was pretty good writing, in my opinion.  It wasn’t comfortable or happy or flattering in any way to a number of characters who I recognize people care deeply about, but it was nothing really worse than I expected from Earth C, based on the fundamental narrative of Lord English’s giant closed-loop system.  The loop had to close, in order for Homestuck proper to occur at all.  That means that Earth C is where Calliope and Caliborn hatch and grow up, far, far in the future. And that means that universe, like the others, will be destroyed by a SBURB session one day. Sorry, folks.  It was never meant to be a 'happy ending'.

Meat was deeply metatextual. It was gristly and greasy and discomfiting.  It raised questions about what it means to have a narrator, and whose biases are implicitly included--and I think those are very interesting questions to raise, whether or not they are particularly satisfying to someone who is also reading for the characters.

Spoilers beyond the read-more, for obvious reasons.

That said, there were elements that did surprise me.  The removal of the other kids from different points in different doomed timelines, to fight with John against LE, rather than being his teammates from Earth C--but from John’s perspective, it doesn’t seem like there’s much difference.  Either way, they’re not fully ‘real’ to him (and barely feel real to us, as quickly as they appear and then die). He’s from the Game Over timeline, he’s battling depression, and nobody in the retcon timeline is really quite authentic to him, either--just as to many fans, they didn’t feel quite authentic, when the retcon happened and we had to suddenly let go of the characters we'd watched grow and change, replaced by funhouse mirror reflections and could-have-beens.

I’ve also seen some reasonably interesting arguments that a lot of Dirk’s narration, in the Meat route, either sounds eerily like Vriska talking or flips back and forth between Vriska-mode and Dirk-mode, well before alt!Calliope ever gets involved.  I’m prepared to believe some Serket element (whether that is potentially Vriska, or the Aranea who was abruptly displaced from her attempt at wresting control of the narrative by John) was involved there, and Dirk was not acting entirely of his own accord.  I’m also prepared to shrug and say “okay, maybe it was just a narrative parallel--Homestuck does that a lot”.  Some narration, especially when Terezi is involved, doesn't sound at all how I would expect a Serket-influenced narrator to sound with regards to her, in particular.  It doesn’t particularly grind my gears to think some version of Dirk, in the right environment, might make a series of choices that leads him to behaving like this, entirely on his own.  I recognize that it’s upsetting to DirkJake fans in particular to see their favorite pairing written like this, but it doesn’t feel wholly out of character to me for either of them to develop in these directions, given the right (or wrong) pressures and external situations. This Dirk is the culmination of a very wide multiplicity of Dirks, including at least one if not more who ended up directly subsumed in Lord English and/or under his explicit influence.

I’ve heard that some people were attacking the Meat route on the grounds of transphobia, which... I think is a rather weak argument, given that it’s recognized in the text itself, as pronoun changes are handled respectfully by one narrator-character and inconsistently by a second, who is being set up as the villain of the story. That seems like a pretty solid metatextual rejection of the action, no?  Like, if a villain does a bad thing, in a story, while the hero is fighting them, do you argue that the story itself advocates for that thing? There has to be some kind of distinction between ‘character does X’ and ‘author of story advocates X is Morally Correct’, or we would never have any villains at all. Dirk's dismissiveness toward Roxy's agency grows, the further toward 'villain' he slides.

Were there some things I liked, in Meat?  I guess.  From a sociopolitical and cultural standpoint, the shitty repercussions of the way the retcon gang set up a planet, dumped a bunch of chess people and clone grubs, then left them to do all the work of creating its society and waiting for their eventual 'godly' return... were pretty logical. I'm actually happy that it was acknowledged, instead of just brushed off as inconsequential.  It was interesting, too, to see some of the kids playing with notions of gender identity as they grew, and how their companions adjusted. It was telling (in terms of Dirk's character development) how he thought of Roxy and Calliope's gender explorations as something he could choose to 'allow' or not. Also, with how truncated most of the gang's personal development (and plot development) was in Homestuck proper ('thanks', retcon!Vriska), I think it kinda made sense how stunted and incapable of like... dealing with regular life in a functional way a lot of them seemed. Jumping straight to teenage 'godhood' didn't make them experienced or smart. It's sad that all of them just kind of... stagnate there, but Earth C has always felt incredibly stagnant to me.

Retcon!Vriska getting swallowed by the black hole was at least thematically fitting, though I'm wondering why she is using such Seer-themed language, suddenly. I also like that the wallet is finally back in play. Rose and Dirk's philosophical debate about individuation and free will is delightfully creepy, given the themes of the story. There are moments, within the story, that the turns of phrase and the humor just hit me full in the teeth and remind me this is Homestuck, and I do love those moments.  And of course, my xenobiological worldbuilding interests enjoyed that apparently, earth onions are quite toxic to trolls.

Were there things I didn’t like in Meat?  Yeah, of course. I don't particularly like that John, an Heir of Breath--one who is innately positioned to awaken Breath, freedom and motivation in the people around him--callously shoves an unresisting teenager he's barely met into a refrigerator and just leaves him there, apparently convinced he deserves it.

Did some of the things I disliked relate to the storytelling itself, rather than just how characters were characterized, or what actions they took?  Yeah. Why are we still out here queer-baiting with Dave and Karkat?  Years have passed.  They have spent literal years sitting 1.5 feet apart so it's 'not gay'? I sincerely don't think this pairing is actually healthy or beneficial to either of them, the way it developed in canon, but come on. Then, they still balk and drag their feet unless it's being narratively pushed on them by someone else. It's just painful to watch.

I also take a certain level of personal offense as a Tavros fan when the narrative goes out of its way to repeatedly harp on Tavros being useless and no one giving a shit what he's doing.  Ghost Tavros was awesome, okay, and was personally responsible for gathering the ghost army, so fuck you, Vriska-coded narrator. You have bad judgment. But that is not a crime of writing, if it is an intentionally biased perspective and not just writers taking cheap shots at a character they don't happen to like. I'm just incredibly tired of it being done habitually and collectively, as a fandom, to that character in particular. Furthermore, I'm really discomfited by the way Tavros's development (am I the only one who remembers him dancing and telling Vriska to suck it?) is completely ignored and de-legitimized by having him immediately fawning on her, trailing around after her, hiding against her shoulder, etc.  Tavros was a victim of emotional and physical abuse, at Vriska's hands.  Can we just agree to stop narratively forcing victims back into contact with their abusers, period? It's not a good look.

Moreover, there's the whole misogyny angle.  When does a story about misogynistic characters (and narrators) doing misogynistic things while misogynistic shit narratively happens start being a critique of misogynistic tropes rather than a tired old rehash?  Every step Jane (allegedly a strong, independent woman, though also stepping into her dictatorial role as 'Heiress') takes is either dictated by Dirk, sent into a complete tailspin that upends her confidence by Jake, or verbally decried as factually wrong and/or stupid by Dave and/or Karkat.  Rose and Kanaya both have their agency overwritten and end up separated from each other through the actions of Dirk, and Rose becomes an extension of Dirk, losing her very selfhood.  Jade is treated as an accessory to the DaveKat trainwreck, simultaneously discounted as actually emotionally relevant and blamed for its ludicrous problems.  She, of course, also ends up having her agency overwritten as she's plunged into a coma and possessed, prevented from actually having reactions to the things that are going on, or taking action for herself. Borrowed!Rose and Jade are KO'd almost instantly in the fight against Lord English, and become either literally erased, or dead weight for a male character to drag around until it's no longer convenient. Terezi admits to wasting a huge amount of time trailing around after Vriska--who was an emotionally abusive gaslighter to her, on the retcon!meteor. (And we're back to victims being constantly evaluated according to their proximity to their abusers again.) Then, she's on to redirecting herself into some quest on John's behalf, instead. She's still not living for herself. Finally, you show me an Aradia who would ever, ever be concerned about 'saying more embarrassing stuff' around Dave, or thinking of him as an ‘outrageously cool dude’, and I'll show you a bridge I'd like to sell you.  That ain't any Aradia I've ever seen. So who’s narrating there, Dirk again? A third party?

Other weird things: apparently Jane's kidnapping in the snapchats just... never gets explained or referenced again? I went back to reread those, and they connected to Meat even more than I realized at first.   I guess Jane grew up to be... exactly what she was raised/groomed to be, which is *uncomfortable* but not particularly shocking.  I feel bad for people who were hoping for happier endings for the human kids, but I don't think I ever really expected Homestuck to serve up happy endings.  I don't buy that things in the snapchat were just thrown in at random, though.  Those elements were there for a reason, and arguing that everything in the snapchats were connected to the epilogues EXCEPT that one major extended plotline doesn't make sense.  Especially when it visually and narratively seems to be a direct link to the events of the Meat storyline. 

Also, where the fuck are the sprites?  We never see or hear from Jasprosesprite, Gcatavrosprite, or the Nannasprite(s?) again. I’m not sure anyone cares, but. Uh. Yeah.

I have other thoughts regarding the classpect-coded language that crops up pretty frequently in the epilogues, but I think I will devote a separate post to that, if I get around to it, given that this *is* at heart a classpecting blog.

So anyway, Meat ends, it's depressing and futile and grim, I get it. I don't like every element, but it hangs together as a story with a narrative, overall.

Then we get to Candy.

Hoo boy.

I’ll tackle that one next, but as it was considerably more upsetting for me to read, rereading it for fact-checks and commentary is going to be a lot harder for me.  I’ll get through it here sooner or later, though.

[sol1056]

Your posts on clone Shiro have been really interesting - I hadn't considered why the Black lion would lead Keith to the clone when it knew where the real Shiro was (unless maybe it was thinking that Shiro's spirit needed a new body and hey, that one's close enough!). But also, since Kuron had all of Shiro's memories from the time he first escaped back to Earth thru the end of S2, does that mean Haggar's been spying on them via Shiro's arm from the beginning?

Judging from my inbox and comments on other posts, you’re not the only one asking that question. A few examples:

The saddest thing about Kuron is that he wasn’t even actually bad. ... He is compassionate when there are no witnesses. Haggar yells at him to stop resisting when she possesses him, and his screams of agony make it clear that the process is nonconsensual. 

i can’t see any [clone resolution] scenario being handled well. the worst one would probably be if keith (maybe lance) has to kill him … the only thing that could be even worse is if they have the clone commit unambiguous suicide. they can’t do that any justice.

If Kuron had wanted to kill the paladins from the beginning, all he had to do was NOT intervene when they were being destroyed in S4E1. It seems like he was a good guy who got brainwashed into doing evil against his will, so it wasn’t even his fault.

I was really disturbed with what happened to Shiro and clone. Do you think they’ll even address this in the future?

A clone plotline – like a brainwashing/personality implant plotline – will inevitably raise heavy-duty questions about humanity, individuality, personality, and how great a role memories play in who we are. Going in unprepared will result in a story crumbling under that immense philosophical weight – or alternately, providing so many conflicting messages that the readers react with a variety of concerns like the ones quoted above.  

So, let’s talk science, philosophy, and metaphor.

Behind the cut: cloning vs SF make-believe, the ethics of cloning, the question of souls, fictional metaphors for souls. I’ll do a follow-up that gets into the clues in VLD’s text, how a cleaner metaphor could resolve the clone storyline’s plot holes, and what tweaks could’ve unified the metaphor.

The only way to avoid these reactions is to think through the ramifications, and give the narrative a very clear opinion on the answers. You’ve got to do the worldbuilding and decide whether this story’s world is essentialist or existentialist, and how that will change the consequences. It helps to pick a metaphor, but it must be relatively simple (so you don’t need exposition hell to explain), and it must be consistent. The instant the narrative starts waffling on its opinion of its ‘truth’, audiences will sense this and suddenly all those philosophical questions are going to come down, hard.

real cloning vs SF make-believe

In 1885, Hans Adolf Eduard Driesch produced the first viable clone: a sea urchin. In 1902, Hans Spemann cloned a salamander embryo. It wasn’t until 1996 that anyone managed to clone something other than embrionic cells, when Dolly was closed from adult somatic cells. And now, in 2018, biotech company Stemagen has come up with a process that uses an adult human’s cells to create the embrionic material needed for an actual, human, clone. It’d still need to be implanted in a womb, and from there on follow regular human birth and growth, but yes. It’s a human clone.

A clone is not born full-grown. A clone has no memories of anything that gave it genetic material, any more than you remember a parent’s tenth birthday or first kiss. A clone is no more artificial than a baby created by in vitro fertilization. The only difference between Dolly and other sheep was her method of birth; in all other ways that matter, she was a normal sheep. She grew up, had kids of her own, and died. Once the person (or animal) is born, they are their own person, with their own experiences and memories.

A cloned being does not automatically look like its genetic parent; you can still end up with a crapshoot in terms of appearance. Sometimes genes switch on and off, as a body grows; even identical twins are not truly and perfectly identical. Also, injuries (including scars) do not convey. On a glossy level, what’s stored in the DNA isn’t the injury but the body’s need to create collagen to repair that injury. Think of it like a band-aid: even if the body records the need for that bandaid, the clone’s lack of injuries would prompt the body to dismiss the bandaid. 

ethics of cloning & the question of souls

Once you recognize you’re talking about a living creature, the ethics simplify into being the same as what you’d raise for any other living creature. Banks and banks of post-birth clones, even in stasis, are as much living creatures as any other. Slaughtering them is still murder. Enslaving them is still slavery. Brutalizing them is still abuse. Cool clone, still murder.  

Where things get sticky is when the issue of clones runs up against religiously-based beliefs, most of which lack a solid framework for this modern concept. (Some religions have addressed in vitro and cloning birth technologies, but the specifics aren’t really relevant here.) Since this show is American-made, I’m going to stick to Western concepts, since that’s the most likely influence on the various creators involved in VLD. But to discuss souls, first we have to talk about the two theories on how personhood develops.  

essentialism vs existentialism

In essentialism, essence precedes existence: the person’s essence comes before all other things, even the spark of life itself (or alternately, the essence is the spark that kicks life into being self-aware). Spirit, soul, whatever word you use, it’s some inherent and inviolable thing that forms the basis of the individual’s personhood. It maps roughly to the nature half of the nature-vs-nuture debate – but it’s bigger than that.

Essentialism, at its extremes, is a position of seeing that originating spark/soul as the entirety of a person’s truth. When you reduce someone to their gender, or their race, or some other facet of their birth, that’s essentialism; when you declare that someone born X at birth can never be Y, again, that’s essentialism. When essentialism mingles with religious beliefs, you get a concept of a soul that exists before birth, and continues after: the person’s true essence, for which the body is only a thing to put it in. It’s the ultimate Cartesian separation between the mind-that-is and the body-that-experiences.  

Existentialism is the opposite, and maps more closely to nurture-over-nature. Existence precedes essence: personhood is the culmination of all our experiences, our memories, our interactions, our successes, our failures. Everything you’ve ever done, known, said, thought, or dreamed: these are your interactions with the world, and they are the entirety of what has shaped you into who you are. If there is an essence in play, it is formed out of your existence, rather than informing it. We are each born a tabula rasa, and there is no division between mind as objective observer and body as the vehicle of experience. These things are basically one and the same, in existentialism.

This perspective can also be taken to extremes; at its worst, it’s been turned into a kind of AI-like philosophy, where culture, genetics, family, can be swept aside – along with any future paths. Nothing is true; everything is permitted – a phrase whose roots are deeper than any video game, in a murky muddle between François Rabelais and Hassan-i Sabbah (by way of Vladimir Bartol). If you’re curious, this is the best short explanation I’ve found. 

fictional metaphors for souls

I bring up those competing paradigms because for most religious worldviews, ‘what brings life’ can be hugely important. If the process of birth is defined as a soul exists, the body is created, the soul enters thus making life, does this change if a body is created intentionally? What SFF likes to ask is whether a creature could be only as the shell, lacking that pre-existing substance. (Existentialism bypasses all of this, of course – but that would make for a boring story. It’s just one more individual who is born, lives, and eventually dies.) 

The hitch lies in our real-world metaphors mapping to computers. I’ll walk through a metaphor based on real-world computing rules, and hopefully it’ll become clear how this contradicts with the Western religio-spiritual assumption of a pre-existing, unique, 'soul’.

The mind-body separation exists in the basic metaphor. Hardware is the body, which can run with little oversight; the software (the mind) can usually be updated without disturbing the hardware. Sometimes the hardware ages out and this impacts the software; extend this metaphor and you get the SFF premise of transferring to new hardware so the software (the mind/soul) continues to run. Sometimes the software demands too much and burns out the hardware. 

Overall, the computer-based metaphor plays neatly into the Cartesian system where the two (mind and body) are separate but co-influencing. Note that part about 'transfer to new hardware’ – this is where this metaphor breaks down. 

Remember that Cartesian (yes, 'I think, therefore I am’ guy) posits a separation, and lends itself to an essentialist view where the mind can exist separately and objectively from the body. The same is not true of computers. Ask questions about pre/post life and the computer metaphor swerves into existentialism.

To illustrate: let’s say you have a laptop running a Unix OS, and one day you uninstall Unix and install Windows. It’s now common enough to do fresh installs that the average audience-member will grasp the metaphor: the laptop is now Windows. There is no more Unix. If there is a ghost in the machine, it’s a newborn with factory settings. If you were to reverse your actions and go back to Unix, the original system doesn’t pop up out of nowhere; you now have a newborn system that just happens to be Unix. Unless you took other precautions, the original is gone.  

I mention precautions because there are real-world alternatives in the process, and those impact the metaphor. The first is ghosting to an external drive: that entire Unix setup was copied over to a secondary home, broken away from the hardware. It’s no longer interacting; it’s in stasis. 

Yet, from the perspective of the laptop, it’s now Windows and must start over. The computer has no knowledge of once being Unix. Its self-knowledge begins with its 'birth’ as a Windows machine. If the computer is then wiped and the ghosted Unix is returned to the hardware, the re-installation would have no record of what happened in the meantime, because from the OS’ perspective, there’s no break in its experiential record. It was Unix, it was in stasis, it woke and was still Unix.

The alternative is an OS split into two; memory (the database) and personality (the OS). This paradigm gained strength with the rise of large external drives for long-term storage, while the laptop acts like a terminal, storing little and retrieving as-needed. An uninstall/install will produce artifacts: tiny footprints of a previous OS. (In an archive moved from Mac to Windows, you can see this in the .DS_Store files in every folder.) You could say that the newborn Windows system arrives with clues to its hardware’s previous existence, but in this metaphor, those 'memories’ may make no sense to the current OS. Windows has no idea what to do with a .DS_Store file; it doesn’t need it, and can’t even read it.

the narrative needs to be certain of its opinion

Given those variations in the person-as-computer metaphor, it’s imperative that a story know exactly how its world works. Without that strong and settled opinion, a stray remark within the narrative can mislead readers into thinking they should be following a different version of the metaphor. 

If your story will stand or fall on the concept of a ghost in the machine, you’d better clarify that there’s a backup copy somewhere. If you want the memory without the personality, you’ll need to bring in the concept of external memory paired with a new OS. Otherwise you risk readers kneejerking at the notion that the unprepared, unsaved, and uninstalled Unix OS is just floating out there in the ether, waiting to return. You’ve broken your metaphor.

Next post: the clues in VLD’s text, fixing the clone-created plot holes, and some minor tweaks that would’ve unified the metaphor.

[hypertensiongamedev]

You are a source of inspiration..Any recommendations if someone wanted to make a game of their own? (I.e what programs to use, things to look out for, etc)

I’ll get the expected answers out first. Here’s the programs I use (and the plugins I use for each of those):

Blender, which I use for modeling, rigging, and animating

Rigify plugin for rig creation (this comes bundled with Blender, you just have to enable it)

RetopoFlow for retopologizing high-poly to low-poly (has a free version in Github, the paid version just entitles you to technical support)

Substance Painter for texturing (this sometimes goes on sale on Steam, so watch out for it every time Steam goes on a discount sale)

Photoshop CC for creating GUI art, and image manipulation needs ($10 per month sounds fair for all the things it could do for me)

Unity for the game engine

StrangeIoC, an open-source code framework (I explain what it is exactly here)

TextMesh Pro for the GUI labels (free)

ShaderForge for making my own shaders (used to be paid, but it’s now free)

InControl, for user customization of controls (has an old, free version in github)

Unity’s Post-processing Stack for visual effects (free)

A custom AI plugin that I made, called INTLord

A custom game editing tool I made that I simply call Attack Editor (for now)

Visual Studio Community Edition (the free version) for the IDE

Resharper plugin for VS is immensely helpful for me (this is pretty expensive, but worth it for me as I use C# heavily)

Git for backup and version control

I use Git Extensions as the front-end GUI

Dropbox and Google Drive for backing up other things like raw art assets

Portable Kanban for keeping a todo list (I can recommend HacknPlan for an online alternative)

But I think the number one thing to look out for here is that, while it seems I’m able to do this game with ease, I can assure you that it is not smooth sailing all the time. I’m only sharing the end result of my work each time I post. All the mistakes and errors I encounter, I tend to discard and not share, but only because I think no one cares to really read about them. My point here is that even when I tell you what programs I use, just using those won’t guarantee you success.

If you’re having a hard time making a game, that doesn’t mean you’re not cut out for this, because I have a hard time too. It’s an inescapable part of something as complex as game development. I think what really makes a person not cut out for this, is when they give up easily when encountering difficult problems, like an overwhelmingly confusing bug, or getting a crash and finding out your work got corrupted. The proper response here is to approach problems methodically instead, and take steps so you tend to not encounter those things again in the future.

Don’t expect to get things perfectly the first time, but do take time and effort to improve each time you blunder.

There’s one pattern I see a lot with beginners who never get far: they love to complain. Don’t end up like that. If after all your best effort and research, things still don’t work, then I can finally concede that you have the right to complain.

These beginners would blame the engine, the programming language, or the art tool if something goes haywire, when, majority of the time, the mistake was their misunderstanding what the tool was for, and a way to solve it was in the user manual. So make sure you’ve done your homework before going on a rant.

Second thing: Practice a lot. They build your skill set. If you have no idea where to start, I suggest just making a simple game like tic-tac-toe in the game engine of your choice. The point here isn’t to build something amazing, it’s to get your feet wet with the tools you’re using. You’ll be doing it more to learn how to get graphics drawn on the screen, how to detect and react to user-input, how to code gameplay logic, etc.

The fact that you’re making a simple tic-tac-toe game helps ease the difficulty curve of trying out a new game engine. Then work out how to put a main menu on it, a highscore that gets saved to a text file, etc.

Then try out making a tetris game, then a side-scrolling platformer, etc. The more familiar you get with your tools, the easier it is to create more and more complex things.

There’s a theory out there that the amount of vocabulary you have with your spoken language influences what you tend to say (or even think!). I think it’s the same with you and your gamedev tools. You might have never gotten around to doing some crazy idea you had, simply because, lacking knowledge in your tools, you didn’t think it was possible.

I do game jam games to try out learning something new.

One thing you need to realize is, if you’re not having fun doing the nitty-gritty details of these steps in game-making, maybe you should reconsider your choice of wanting to make games, because this is how it is all of the time. Or probably at least consider specializing in one aspect instead, and get help with the rest.

The third thing to look out for is having no direction. What really helped me out with making this game is having a clear goal of what I want: a 3d action game about the last days of a terminally-ill henshin hero, taking place in a modern day city.

When you have no clear goal, you have no idea if what you’re currently doing is beneficial or detrimental to your game. You would have no yardstick to measure progress.

It’s fine to experiment without having decided yet what the game will look like, or what genre you’re going for, but I think even among experiments, the good ones are those that have at least some general direction of what they’re trying to test or prove.

This is the earliest photo I could find of my work on the game, dated 2014, Dec. 31. On my pen tablet display there is my early concept for Desparo.

There’s a lot of things to consider when deciding to make a game. I myself was thinking whether I make this game a turn-based, or a real-time action RPG. I was also wondering if I should do it in 2d or 3d, if I go with anime or realistic art style, etc.

I knew I needed to finalize my decisions if I ever hope to progress. I think the proper way to have done it would have been to make a turn-based RPG prototype alongside an action RPG prototype, and then compare the two. But in the end I just went ahead with the real-time action game, simply because I wanted to try out something new.

Sometimes, you start out making a game prototype with just boxes, and deciding it has potential, flesh it out further by attaching a theme/story/premise behind it. I think that’s also a viable approach. It just so happened Ghost Knight Victis started the other way around, with the story first before the gameplay.

And how do you get that spark of an idea of what your game should be? My game’s premise was a culmination of several ideas that have been brewing in my mind for a long time (years). After going through something pretty significant in my life and one lonely December, with two bottles of Tequila and playing through Transistor, all the incongruent ideas started making sense and fit together.

I’m not saying people need to go beat themselves up just to get something “cool”. In fact, if you have a content and happy life, consider yourself lucky if you couldn’t find inspiration to create something really artistic. Because those things tend to come from some deeply-buried, strong feeling, like anger or resentment. Then again, dealing with such thoughts are a normal challenge of growing up, living in a community, or even something as mundane as struggling with where to get a stable income. You just need to change your perspective on where inspiration comes from.

Fourth is to pace yourself properly. Match your expectations with what you can do at the moment. Aim too far out of your comfort zone, and you’ll likely fail, get discouraged, and stop trying. The trick is to aim only a little bit outside your comfort zone. You still compel yourself to improve, but at the same time, it’s a manageable amount of work for you.

Scrum and Kanban are the usual things to learn about here. I personally use Kanban a lot. The idea is simple:

As a task gets further along to completion, the more it moves to the right. But, you have one restriction: only up to 3 tasks at a time can be in the “Doing” column.

This means if you are already devoted to working on 3 tasks in the “Doing” column, and you want to work on something new, you have to finish at least one of those 3 first. This makes you concentrate on getting things done. It stops you from diluting your focus, trying to work on too many things at a time.

You could also decide to move a task from “Doing” back to the “Ready” column. But I normally do it only when either I realize something else is of more importance and I need to stop what I was doing, or perhaps I’m stumped and really can’t progress on that task, in which case I give up and swap it for a different task instead.

Scrum has a lot of techniques, but one thing I take from it is the idea of sprints. You do your work in a per 2-week period, called a sprint. On the start of each sprint, you decide what you will get done, and commit to finishing those tasks within 2 weeks. After those 2 weeks, you again pick which tasks to do for the next 2 weeks, and so on. This is also a method to help you focus on getting things done, because you only concentrate on a few tasks at a time, but it also forces you to take a look at the bigger picture and re-prioritize after every 2 weeks.

In my case, I don’t have 2 weeks. My sprint is only 2 days: every weekend. So I make sure each task I write in a card is achievable within 2 days. If I think a task can’t be finished in 2 days, I divide it into several subtasks.

For example, “obtaining items from chests” might be too complex, so I could divide that to these subtasks:

being able to define chests as a list of the items inside it, and being able to save that data to file

being able to place chests in the map, each chest being: a 3d model of the chest, and the data file saying what items are inside it

create the GUI art for viewing items inside a chest

put the GUI art in-game and adding code to allow it to react to user-input

implement the code for transferring items from a chest to the player’s inventory and vice-versa

Fifth is to concentrate on having a working, playable work-in-progress.

The thing to aim for here is that at the end of each sprint, whatever progress you make should be something that works in-game. It’s fine if you don’t get that all the time, but I think aiming for it helps pull everything towards that direction.

I think this video of Bayonetta’s prototype says a lot:

For reference, here’s how the final product looks like:

You can see from that prototype video that you can already start working on the gameplay even if you don’t have the art finalized yet (because the art can take a long time to get done).

I think that’s the wiser method of doing things, you get a playable work-in-progress without being stalled by the fact that the art is incomplete. It’s even better because it’s easier to adjust animations while they’re still rough: it’s less motions to re-arrange and tweak whenever you need to adjust it.

It’s also not good to base your judgement of how correct an animation is from just looking at it in Blender/Maya/etc. alone, because you aren’t seeing it being used in-game. For all you know, the sword attack you’ve been polishing for so many days doesn’t really work because the arc of the sword swing doesn’t really reach the intended target! Or maybe you didn’t realize that the swing is making the sword pass through the ground mesh unintentionally!

Or maybe there’s certain situations where your animation really just needs to be tweaked (when fighting inside narrow hallways, or when you are standing on a flight of stairs & attacking a target below you, etc.). It’s really better to test it out in-game as soon as you’ve established the key frames of your animation.

Frankly, this is something that I should learn to do myself!

And what about for the story? I think this is a neat trick in designing a prototype for your game’s story:

(the video’s about half an hour long, but it’s worth it)

The basic gist is that you design a “board game” out of your game’s story. And I think that’s the proper way to do things. There’s really more to it than what I just said, so I encourage you all to watch that video.

Sixth is to handle feedback as objectively as you can. As a solo developer, you will tend to see your game as your “baby”, something that in your eyes is a flawless creation.

Maybe you expect players to always do something, but turns out it never crosses their minds at all. That might be a symptom that you need to fix your game’s design.

Be clear with what you are asking feedback for. Just posting screenshots, and a vague “this is my game, suggestions and feedback are welcome!” will not help, because people will tend to give you suggestions that are not in line with the goal you have set in mind for the game, and you end up sounding defensive trying to explain things.

Explain your intent with what you’re specifically showing, and ask for feedback if people think your work achieved that intent or not. But start with a 2 to 3 sentence blurb that describes the premise of your game, to set the tone. Here’s a good tutorial for that.

Take the time to appreciate when people praise you, but don’t let it get to your head.You shouldn’t keep yourself in a circle full of yes-men, you will just not improve there. On the other hand, don’t think that just because you’re being the target of verbal abuse that you are finally getting the so-called brutally honest feedback.

You really have to ignore the emotional parts of what people post, good or bad. Read between the lines of what’s being said, to find the truly useful feedback you want for improvement (if there is even any in their posts).

But don’t just follow every suggestion that comes along your way. Sift through it and think about why someone said what they said.

In my first playable demo, many were complaining that the player should be allowed to move more responsively, to be able to cancel attacks into movement. But that went against my intention of giving it a Dark Souls type of combat (instead of a Dynasty Warriors style of combat).

I realized, people were having that problem because I placed far too many enemies in the level. No one suggested that I lessen the amount of enemies, but that was really my mistake with that one.

So there really was a problem, but their suggestion was not the best way to fix it.

Another example: When Magicka was still being developed, some beta testers complained that friendly fire ruins the experience, and kept suggesting to remove it, or at least have the option to disable it. But the developers doubled down on their decision to have friendly-fire, because friends hitting each other was part of the humor that they wanted to achieve, so they decided to leave it there, and they were right.

I’ll end all of this by saying, this is only my way of doing things. It’s perfectly reasonable if you discover a different way that works for you!

I always keep a bottle of Tequila handy under my desk.

[bolbianddolanhouse]

BNHA self insert AU [Book 3]

New? Read here! Then here!

Chapter 14: I Wanna Be A Cowboy Babey~

After a few weeks of intense training, I do the damn thing at the Sports Festival. But now there’s an added security that all the intel student also attend for any suspicious activity. Wish I could do it since they’ll all be in plain clothes instead of suited up, but no! That just makes my position that much more important because I can see if any of the students are acting suspicious. This is all because of the last villain attack and the info I told my mom. Apparently its a big lead but nobody will tell me anything about it aside from be on high alert for any inter-student or inter-hero conspiracy....whatever that is!

-Day of Sports Festival-

“GOOOOOOOD MORNING EVERYONE! AND WELCOME TO THE OPENING CEREMONY OF THE UA SPORTS FESTIVAL, 3RD YEARS STADIUM! I’M YOUR BELOVED HOST, PRESENT MIC!”

“Jeez you would think that after all this time he’d retire” I commented after the blaring of the opening ceremony siren.

“Aren’t you excited Iida-kun?!” hyped Gon “Its the final sports festival for us! And we’ll see how far everyone’s gone! Well, everyone is finally going to see how awesome you are with your two quirks!”

“Oh please! I barely figured out how to upkeep with the kick of my engines a few weeks ago!” I denied Gon’s hype for me “I’m just me, and all I know is how to kick ass and make a big show out of it.”

I do the things and did fairly well. But the dreaded spars came up and my name was on the scoreboard because my team did well on the steal the headband game...stupid competitive nature of mine! So I fought some dude in the B class and won because the dude tired himself too early in the fight. In the second round I won my fight with a different B class student, I punched them a little too hard that they stepped out of bounds. But finally came lunch time! I rushed to Beizu for hugs.

“How does it feel getting to the 3rd round with minimal damage?” Beizu praised me as we sat in the corridor “Bet your dad and uncle are so proud!”

I rolled my eyes as I swallowed my food “Don’t think I wanna do it or that I’m proud of myself! It’s like amateur hour and I asked to get my ass kicked!”

“Oh so you wanted to lose today son?” responded a familiar voice to the right of us.

“Dad? What are you doing down here?” I asked in confusion “I thought you weren’t supposed to come down here without an escort?”

“Well...I have a reason, your mother wanted me to check on you” Dad was being a little skiddish “I texted her videos of your fight and she asked me to check if you were okay with those fights.”

That was something new “Huh? She could tell?”

“Your mother can tell the slightest of discontent in anyone!” Dad chuckled “But I could tell too in your fights that you were disappointed. You have the same fighting mindset like your mother, fight like you mean it and with fire in your eyes.”

“I guess” I sigh and look down at my to-go plate of musubi and takoyaki “I was expecting something better than this. I don’t get the hype and these fights feel like I’m wasting my time doing the hero part of my dual enrollment. Bet you didn’t feel like this when it was your third year sports festival.”

“Actually, I did” Dad spoke up “But it was for a different reason. I wanted to make it to the top 3 for your mom. I trained hard, planned out what I was going to tell her before my match” Dad turned red “All so I can finally ask your mom to be mine and have her watching me closely. But it all fell apart, right here actually!”

“Oh! Do you remember what day and year?” Beizu piped up and pulled out the device from his pocket “I kinda want to see what happened.”

“Why did you take that with you?” I asked

Beizu shrugged “Thought it would help in case things went down.”

So dad told Beizu the day and year, and the hologram popped up of a young Mr Hitoshi and mom sharing a moment.

“Come on, just a kiss to hold me over until everything ends?”

“Fine, one kiss!”

Mom got on her tippy toes to kiss and it looked kinda cute. But I know things didn’t turn out so cute later.

“Pause it here” asked Dad to Beizu, then walked over to the stairwell “I was right here, watching my love kiss the one person that told I had a crush on her. I felt so defeated, I wasted my time and efforts to get her attention so I could confess. After this incident, I just couldn’t believe that she’d hide her relationship with him from me! Her so called ‘chosen family’ when she didn’t trust me with this.”

I cringed at the sight of young dad on the floor “Geez, and you got her flowers! So what did you do?”

“I just existed and pretended I didn’t know anything until she decided to tell me” Dad fixed his glasses “If I didn’t confront her about it during the dance, she probably would have never told me.”

“That’s a whole 5 months from now!” gasped Beizu “No wonder you were so upset and basically ghosted her after graduation!”

“Did mom ever tell you why?”

“No, but I put all the pieces together when we started dating” Dad smiled “She didn’t want me to know because she loved me more but I was too stubborn to say anything about my feelings toward her. So she was waiting for me to say something and leave Hitoshi the moment that happens.”

“But Mr Hitoshi knew that already huh?” I looked back at the two kissing “He knew this was a complicated love triangle and added some drama to it to make you say something.”

“Yup, he told us that on our wedding” Dad watched the holograms fizzle away “But you already know what happens at the end Iwata, I ended up reuniting with her and never let go after that. All those years without her felt like a waste, so I make every moment matter with her and our family.” He turned toward me “So don’t feel down that things feel like a waste! Make everything count Iwata!”

“So you’re telling me that I should kick my last opponent’s ass so hard they never forget it?” I thought out loud “Because I don’t want my last fight here to feel like a waste, I wanna make it count!”

“I was going say win this one for your mom or Beizu because I didn’t have love motivating me to make it matter. But what you said makes for a better fight” He put his hand on my shoulder “Go kick their butt son! I’m proud of you no matter what.”

“Thanks dad” I smiled but then the siren wailed, marking the end of lunch “Oh jeez, you better get back up there. Pretty sure they’ll do a head count real soon.”

“I’ll escort you back Mr Iida” offered Beizu “I have to go to my post before the start of the third round.”

“See you guys later then!” I got my left over food and turned toward the student wing “I won’t disappoint!”

I got back in time to wind down a bit before my turn. To my horror, it’s with Gon and I felt conflict. He’s my friend, the usual suspect for hero things! We trained together, developed together and so much more. Can I really be satisfied beating him when it’s his dream to win this? A hand on my shoulder jolted me out of my thoughts.

“Hey, I know we didn’t get along all these years” said my classmate “But don’t go easy because Gon-kun is your friend. It’s disrespectful to not give your all to someone that’s giving their everything!”

What kind of bizarro world do I live in!? An enemy giving me advice?! I give them a nod and smile “Thanks, I think I’ll be okay now.”

“Good! Now go kick his butt”

I walk out to the arena to hear the roar of the crowd. How fucked up is that this is just quirk cock-fighting? Like, we’re teenagers! And these are grown ass people that paid to watch us? Plus the broadcasting?! Talk about exploitation! But that’s where my self awareness thoughts end, I was face to face with Gon.

“The final spar of the festival! Ryuusuke Gon vs Iwata El Roca Iida!” blared the host “Two A class students going head to head! This is Iida’s first festival debut, following in the footsteps of his family of the Ingenium name! Will he come on top or settle for second?!”

“I won’t disappoint you Iida-kun” Gon says as he gets in fighting stance “I’ve trained along side you all these years, time to show you what I’m capable of!”

I smile and get in my stance “I won’t hold back either. Please kick my ass Gon-kun!”

The start whistle was blown and we went at it. This fight felt like an actual challenge! But with one leg swing to the upper back, I knocked him out cold. The way his body went limp scared me, I used my telekinesis to catch him before he could hit the ground. He was still breathing and alive, just out for the count. But I didn’t want him to go out like this, so I shook his body out of desperation.

“WAKE UP STUPID!” I slapped him “Come on, quit playin’! Get up!...Please!”

“Looks like Ryuusuke Gon has been defeated, making Iwata El Roca Iida the winner of the UA 3rd year Sports Festival!”

“Wait- what?!” I processed this win and looked up to the spectators, they were out of their seats and roaring their cheers. The camera panned up to my face and I gave my uncomfortable smile. Gon was taken to the nurse quarters as I was instructed to get up on the winners block. While I was satisfied with that fight, I didn’t mean to win like this. Then out came Deku to give us our medals and I got more dissatisfied with this win!

“Congratulations young Iida-kun!” cheerfully spoke Deku as he hovered the first place medal over my head “You made your family name proud!”

I scowled “I don’t want it” I hard-stopped his arms with my telekinesis, before he could place the medal on me “I don’t deserve shit! This wasn’t supposed to happen! I wanted to get my ass whooped, not get 1st place!”

“Well it’s too bad young Iida-kun” Deku flicked his wrists to toss the thing onto me sloppily “You changed the outcome on this fight yourself. Now you have to live in this reality where you are the winner and live with it. Just like your mom all those years ago.”

That threw me off, to the point where I wasn’t clocking all the cheers and roars of the crowd were for me. I was thinking about how quickly fate can change because of our impulses and how we have to live with the outcomes for the rest of our lives. We can’t go back to change them, just apologize and try not to mourn your desired reality. I wonder if that’s how mom felt with she came over here, or when things fell apart between her and Mr Hitoshi? In any case, I have to start by apologizing to Gon for stealing his win. I walk into the infirmary after the closing ceremony.

“Hello? May I come in?”

“Hm? Oh! Iwata, yes please come in” said nurse Eri as she finished her notes “congratulations by the way!”

“Thanks, heh” I meekly responded as I shifted my gaze to the occupied bed “Is he- doin alright?”

Eri looked over to where I was looking, then turned to face me “He’s doing just fine. If you’re wondering, he was at his limit when you struck him down. It wasn’t your fault and he’s not seriously injured” she patted my shoulder “You can stay a while with him if you’d like, he woke up a few minutes ago.”

I walk over to pull back the curtain to see a bandaged up Gon on the bed.

“Gon-kun? Listen, I-”

“Iida-kun! You knocked me out cold with your super cool aerial move!” hyped Gon, forgetting his injury “You’re super fast and I thought I could out speed you! But I spent all my energy evading your palm piston pews” he mimicked the move with sound effects “Man, what an awesome fight! You earned that first place!”

“You’re not upset?” I questioned “But you wanted to win this so badly! You wouldn’t shut up on how you wanted Deku to place that first place on your neck and the selfie you wanted to take afterwards” nothing made sense in this logic “How do I deserve this more than you?”

“You do deserve it! You put in so much more effort in your training and studies” Gon listed as he slowly sat up “You’re one of the most genuine people I know! I’d be more upset if I lost to someone that wanted to win for selfish reasons or didn’t train hard because their quirks are ‘good enough’ to beat everyone with. I saw that you wanted a good, honest fight; just like me! You inspired me to train even harder to work on endurance and speed.” He pointed at the ‘1st place’ engraved gold that hung on my neck “So you wear that medal proudly!”

I sighed and chuckled a bit “Okay then, I guess I’ll accept this gold. Thanks Gon-kun, for giving a good and honest fight.”

So it all worked out, I didn’t feel guilty and Gon still got his second place with the Deku selfie. I guess this outcome isn’t so bad! But what else is waiting for me now that I changed the course of things with this win?

-The following Monday, Homeroom-

“...and now for a special announcement!” sensei said as he finished taking roll “As you’re aware of all the specialized agent tests given at the academy level, these past few events has sparked interest in the board on our three-man team to take on the Hero-Take Down practice test coming up AND the Labyrinth practice test!”

“Oh shit I wonder who’s the third person” I whispered to Beizu “For a long ass time the board as had their eye on you and the class rep.”

Beizu sneered at me “Bitch it’s you! Who else could it be?!”

“Naw, thats straight cap” I gave him a face “No way it’s me.”

“Okay then, if it is you” Beizu started “You bottom, if not, then you top.”

“You got yourself deal” I held out my hand to shake on it “I’m so confident that it’s not me, that I’ll even wear lingerie if I’m wrong!”

“No take backies!” he said as he grabbed my hand to shake it eagerly.

“Your three man team is Hatsune Beizu, Gee Celi and Iida Iwata” sensei motions to me “That sports festival win really put you on the scope and now you get to represent us at the practice exams.”

I froze in my seat....oh shit, I must of sounded like an absolute clown making that bet with Beizu. OH SHIT NOW I GOTTA DO MORE TRAINING! So much for coasting by the rest of the school year.

“Congrats babe” teased Beizu “You might be the entire circus, but your my circus~”

I softly slam my head onto my desk. Man, I hate this timeline!

-Fast forward, early May-

I’ve done more training and honing my weaponry skills for this first practice test. While it’s still a few weeks away, I’ve asked my mom, aunty Mimi and uncle Jin for advice. They all strongly advise to train together and build upon our weaknesses to fully cover ourselves. But I can’t believe I’m so close to the end of my time here at UA. I know that things are going to be set for me afterwards, but how did my mom and her friends do it? They built themselves from the ground up and worked hard everyday, even to this day! Makes me feel like I should be doing more but there really isn’t, I’m not destined for greater things, I am just me. And that’s okay too.

“Hey we got the special jumpsuits” Beizu said as I entered the door to our room “Try it on so they can make adjustments in time.”

“When did they come by?!” I asked confused because I was taking a quick shower.

“Dude you were in the shower for like 20 minutes” Beizu clarified as he tossed me my jumpsuit “What were your shower thoughts this time?”

I extended my jumpsuit to check the length of it “Ya know, the usual what ifs” I take note of the material “is this teflon mesh?”

“Yup, I was just as surprised” Beizu started to put on his “Made to withstand heat and blades while being breathable.”

I put mine on and looked in the mirror “Wow, I look like my mom in that practice test video” I reached out to touch the mirror “Bei, do you think teenaged mom would clock me as her son?”

“I think so” Beizu walked into view of the mirror “Pretty sure if you showed up in the past in front of her, she’d get excited about the future. Probably flip when you tell her who your dad is.”

“She’d probably call cap on me” I laughed thinking about it “until I show her these pistons, then she’d faint probably.”

“I can see that happening” Beizu laughed “but it looks like I’m going to need a longer jumpsuit, it’s not fitting at the bottom at all.”

I check my suit fully “Oof same for me, it’s like they didn’t account for all this ass.”

“Double cheeked up on test day, hella ass, the sun is still out!” joked Beizu.

“Proctor, I’m trying to stealth on the enemy” I turn around flex my ass “but I’m dummy thicc and the clap of my cheeks is alerting the heroes.”

That had us howling in laughter on the floor. It’s been a while since I’ve laughed like this with Beizu. Things have gotta so serious since the villain attacks. All the waiting around for the next one is making everyone anxious. But it’s all the little things with Beizu that make things better. We really don’t have the time to celebrate our birthdays this year, as the test lands on my birthday. But that gives me an idea for later...

-Day of test, suiting up-

I zip up my suit and fix the sleeves in the mirror. I know that I’m capable to carry for my team and do anything, but so many people are coming to this practice test. Most of them scouters that heard that I’m Ingenium’s son. At least word that I’m my mom’s son got out, otherwise there would be people spilling out of the place! I look to my left and see Beizu securing his holsters, trying not to get those nervous jitters.

“Hey, it’s okay to be nervous” I put my hand on his shoulder “I want to make a deal with you.”

“Huh? What kind of deal?” Beizu asked curiously, snapping him out of his nerves.

“If we do good on this one, lets go home for the weekend” I suggested “Just to get outta the scene for a bit before the next round of training. I don’t think I wanna stick around for and rush back into training.”

Beizu smiled and sighed “I’d like that actually” he put his arms around my neck “I haven’t spend enough quality time with you. At least, not the type that I want to do.”

I glance at the clock “It seems like we’ll be cut short of this quality time too” I look at his face “Kiss me for good luck?”

“Okay, one kiss” he responded right before connecting the kiss.

I put my arms around his waist and savored this kiss. But of course we got disrupted by our teammate kicking the door down.

“Oh what the- you two are A THING?!” gasped Gee at the sight.

“It’s kinda obvious, no?” I said very casual, arms still around Beizu.

“NO?! You guys got me used to all your weird habits that I didn’t put it all together!” Gee turned around “I’ll just, umm, wait in the wing for you! Sorry again!”

Beizu waited until she was out of sight “Guess we should put on the visor and head out.”

“One more kiss” I pleaded “this time it will be a lucky one.”

When we were ready, we lined up in the waiting wing with Gee-san. What is going await us on the other side? Will I really live up to the hype? The start siren wailed and we ran into action. The beginning swarm was a piece of cake! Everything was okay until after the river zone, that’s where all the strong and quick ones were. I was maybe a little faster and using both of my quirks just to keep them off of Gee-san, as she was the slowest of us. Then came the biggest obstacle, literally. Someone with a rock bending quirk made a rock wall that was too high and smooth to climb effectively.

“Iwa, it’s time to use the slingshot” Beizu cried out.

“But you need my help here” I blast someone with my palm piston “and the slingshot is a one person at a time thing!”

“Don’t you worry about me!” Gee said in the heat of her tussle “We need you to kick some ass behind that wall, I’d get squashed if I go by myself.”

“No arguments!” Beizu gets in position “you know what to do.”

I nod and brace for take off. The feeling of getting thrown into the air is surreal, limbs at the will of the air around you. But I didn’t lose myself in thought, I kicked on my engines to fly onto the other side. Floating down I saw the last two to take down and the finish line. They came at me at the same time, and I held up as much as I could but I was getting tired. I got one person down but the other wasn’t letting up! What to do?! I dropped my one gun back at the river! And I had to conserve my energy in case I had to fly again! Think, THINK! It clicked in my head that maybe I didn’t need to fight, just distract until Beizu or Gee gets over here! They have to cross the finish line too! So I took off my holster belts and posed.

“What’s with the pose?” questioned the other person “there’s no use! You’re out of weapons and getting tired, just forfeit!”

“Naw, mama didn’t raise a quitter” I cracked the two belts like whips on the ground “And she’s latina! Imma show you the meaning of a Mexican Time Out!”

The look on their face when I came at them at top speed was priceless! It was the face of confused fear. And they had every right to be scared, I was whooping their ass like they broke my favorite vase. It’s different when you give a punishment ass whoopin’, it hurts more. I wouldn’t know though, my mom never hit us but told us stories of her childhood and the ass whoopings grandma gave. Didn’t take long for the guy to get in fetal position on the ground as I wailed on them with the belts. Kinda felt bad so I stopped and thought I’d end them differently, but then I heard Gee screaming from above. And there she was, flying in at full speed to perfectly body slam this guy.

“I’m here! Hatsune-kun is on his way for back up!” Gee groaned “Where’s the danger?!”

“Please! I surrender!” cried out the enemy from under Gee “I don’t want to fight anymore, I just want to go home!”

Gee gets off him and stands next to me “Sheesh what did you do to him?”

Before I could answer that, Beizu flies in and lands on top of the enemy.

“Oh god I killed him!” Beizu panicked as he got up “I didn’t mean to land on them! Can we get a medic?!”

“Bei! The finish line!” I grab his hand and Gee-san’s with my other hand “No time to waste!”

We tighten our grip and ran to the finish line without a single hitch. The proctor signaled the end of our exam and we heard the roars of the spectators. Wonder if this is how mom felt when she crossed the finish line hand in hand with her team?

-Meanwhile, with the agent trio-

Jin slumps onto his desk chair “I’m really feeling my age” he stretches his back “wish we had all the pieces to solve this mystery. So we could just pack it up and retire.”

“You know there’s more to that Jin” Ita said looking up from her mess of papers on her desk “we need to find someone to replace CEO position of the company.”

“Don’t forget the pain in the ass that’s getting retirement paperwork” Mimi responded from across the room “Speaking of pain in the ass, it’s Ita’s turn to do the briefing.”

The curly haired agent groan and rested her chin on her hand “Man, how academy causally didn’t mention how lame being in agent work is when you’re past the age of 30!”

“Speak for yourself!” Mimi chuckled “I love teaching! If we retire here and the company, I’m teaching until I can’t hold a gun anymore.”

“Love that for you” Ita responded as she stretched her back out “Oof, who wanna go for a group chiropractor date?”

“Way ahead of you, I scheduled us for our next day off” Jin said doing a few taps on his tablet “We deserve this one, OH who wants to do the healing clay bath combo?”

“Can we get sushi after too?” asked Mimi “I’ve been craving the stuff! Nikita is going through one of her little picky phases and this time it’s raw fish.”

“Oof and you love sushi! I was wondering why you haven’t asked me to get you a cut of otoro from the fish market lately” Ita responded shocked “Thats another thing too! Motherhood... didn’t think I’d get this domestic with y’all.”

“I did, I knew the moment we became friends” Jin added “Mimi becoming a single mom was a surprise though, everything else was expected.”

Ita glanced over to the picture of the three friends in high school on her desk “I wouldn’t have it any other way” she sighed “We came so far together and I’m so happy we kept our promises.”

Mimi stood up “Hey, lets keep working hard together! Don’t get all sappy now” she walked over to Ita and held her “I’m not going anywhere, my home is with you guys.”

Jin follow suit “I’d do anything to preserve this friendship. You guys are all I have, and I’m happy with that.”

The mess of papers on Ita’s desk were written accounts of a recent sighting of Hawks. Making this a big step toward closing the case. What’s going to come next? Is Iwata’s destiny more intertwined in this case than his one encounter? All we can do is sit and wait for the next one~

-Chapter 14, End-

<Previous - Next>

[pocketrandys]

tagged by @burglethyturts!! thank you katherine~!!

Rules: answer these 92 statements and tag 20 people

(a lot of numbers are skipped im sorry fjj;nsnddgaljfsl;a..)

Last:

1. drink: water

2. phone call: my super best friend 

3. text message: also my super best friend

4. song you listened to: Forever Summer Holiday by Kero Kero Bonito (a JAM)

5. Time you cried: um....... like four days ago thinking about kenny mccormick

Have You:

6. dated someone twice: nope

7. kissed someone and regretted it: nope

8. been cheated on: nope

9. lost someone special: not really

10. been depressed: not beyond a normal level

11. gotten drunk and thrown up: nope. fuck im boring

List three favorite colors:

12-14. pale pink, yellow, soft green

In the last year have you:

15 Made new friends: yeah!! 

17. laughed until you cried: sure thing!

18. found out someone was talking about you: not yet.........................

19. met someone who changed you: nnnnnnnah

20. found out who your friends are: YES honey i’ve already unfriended people on facebook

21. kissed someone on your facebook list: nope

General:

22. How many of your facebook friends do you know in real life: all of them; ig and tumblr are for online friends!

23. do you have any pets: two cats!

24. do you want to change your name: nah i like my name

25. what did you do for your last birthday: took my best friends to Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament and then we went back to my house and watched Sharknado

26. what time do you wake up: on a school day, 6. weekend, 10

27. what were you doing at midnight last night: texting @stanfiction about creek

28. name something you can’t wait for: the FUCKING FRACTURED BUT WHOLE I THINK ABOUT IT EVERY DAY AND THE EXCITEMENT HAS STARTED MANIFESTING ITSELF INTO A PHYSICAL ENERGY

29. when was the last time you saw your mom: two hours ago when she went to bed 

30. what is one thing you wish you could change in your life? i wish i lived closer to my Super Best Friend; i love my house and location a whole lot actually but i always miss her and making plans sucks

31. what are you listening to right now: Anxiety Online by Blank Banshee

32. have you ever talked to a person named Tom: yep.

33. something that is getting on your nerves: this hoe at my school

34. most visited site: this one and youtube

Random Info:

35. moles: i have a beauty mark on my chin :>

36. marks: i have big freckles on my shoulder area and legs and a metric fuck ton of mosquito bites at all times

37. childhood dream: i wanted to be a famous singer

38. hair color: light brown but it gets blonde if i’m in the sun a lot and i Do Not like it

39. long or short hair: its slightly past my shoulders and i want it a lot shorter 

40. do you have a crush on someone: isnt that a great question\

41. what do you like about yourself: i like my general outlook on life as i’m fairly positive and enjoy most things in the world, and i’m content with my appearance

42. piercings: just my ears ^^

43. blood type: no idea i think like... A-

44. nickname: I respond to Syd, Sydford, Squid, or Cunt

45. relationship status: singel

46. zodiac: pisces sun, leo moon, gemini rising

47. pronouns: she/her

48. favorite tv show: South Park, Gravity Falls, Bojack Horseman, Rick and Morty

49. tattoos: don’t have any but i’d like a little scribbly flower outline on the front of each thigh

50. right or left handed: Left!

51. surgery: none so far

52. hair dyed a different color: i’ve had the ends dyed pink and turquoise (not at the same time), and i’ve had my bangs silver-blue and dark blue 

53. sport: fuck no lol

54. favorite video game: i ower my entire life to Super Mario Galaxy 

55. vacation: Japan is my only priority right now and eventually i’d like to go to South Korea, Ireland, and Iceland.

56. pair of trainers: i only wear flip flops and large clunky black shoes

More General:

57. eating: nothing rn

58. drinking: ^

59. I’m about to: slepe

61. waiting for: mThe fuckein............f..ractued but whole..

62. want: THEe FUCKIN...............................FRACTURED B

63. get married: at some point i would like to

64. career: i’d prefer to do something with japanese language, maybe work as an interpreter

Which Is Better:

65: hugs or kisses: depends on the person but i love hugs a lot

66: lips or eyes: eyes im always focused on people’s eyes

67. shorter or taller: i like being the shortest one of the group it tends to attract positive attention

68. older or younger: i prefer to be around people the same age as me or a year older

70.  nice arms or nice stomach: nice stomach....gotta b soft

71. sensitive or loud: what

72. hook up or relationship: idk im like 10 years old lol

73. troublemaker or hesitant: hesitant

Have You Ever:

74. kissed a stranger: Nope

75. drank hard liquor: noo

76. lost glasses/contact lense: my eyes are Perfect.

77. turned someone down: yah

78. sex on the first date: i wouldnt no

79. broken someone’s heart: i doubt it i mean i’ve broken up with a guy but we were 14 

80. had your heart broken. nope

81. been arrested: no i’m no heathen

82. cried when someone died: does my cat count

83. fallen for a friend: i’ve been infatuated with nearly all my friends at some point lol all of them are very attractive and funny

Do You Believe In:

84. yourself: Hell yea!

85. miracles: na

86. love at first sight: not really

87. santa claus: no

88. kiss on the first date: ya life is short do it

89. ghosts: not too much but i like to

Other

90. favorite fictional character: Kenny McCormick will literally always be my favorite character from anything ever

91. eye color: blue w a little yellow ring in the middle

92. favorite movie: probably Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

tagging... @fish-the-lamest @lyawesome32 @stanfiction @r3turntheslab @georgeharrison @danidery and whomever else would like to do this