#and on a more serious note (tw suicide to follow) there are kids who kill themselves and write in their notes how

[the-gayest-tree-you-ever-did-see]

school is getting fucking insane my sister has to make up pe bc she had a dentist appointment and it isnt excused work unless its a school trip. SHES IN MIDDLE SCHOOL AND ITS FUCKING PE

[phis-corner]

How about #34 and #9 on the fluff/angst list?Ship is yours to decide

34- “Please don’t do this.” 9- “You meant too much to me.” | Platonic Timari

Note: reverse robins au, where Tim was the one captured by Joker instead, choosing to take his own life instead of break under torture. Marinette, having given up LB post Hawkmoth’s defeat, chooses to take up her dead brother’s mantle after seeing Bruce spiral. She is also Bruce’s biological child in this au.

I got reaaaally into reverse robins, and this is the result. 

TW: suicide mention

Her father and Alfred are being increasingly shifty about the Red Hood, abruptly stopping conversations when she enters the room and changing the subject when she brings up the mysterious man who’s been picking off the corrupted people in this city.

So she makes a plan to look into it in her own time, carefully watching and observing to find a free time slot, and seizes the opportunity.

Dad is at a WE meeting because Lucius threatened him with no gadgets for a month if he didn’t show again, Alfred is asleep (because he is actually human, despite all evidence pointing to the contrary), and Damian is in Bludhaven with Jon, both working their respective day jobs as an officer in the BPD and a journalist.

Marinette silently logs into the Batcomputer, bypassing the security on Hood’s file with a little help from Oracle (hey, Steph was being kept out of the dark too, and they were both curious.)

She reads the basic information, and scrolls down to the DNA section.

Her blood runs cold when she sees the information listed there, because how can it be a match?

He’s dead.

Dead.

Captured by the Joker, tortured near the breaking point, before taking his own life with a shard of broken glass to preserve their secrets.

She watched them lower his body into the ground. Watched as his friends and family stood there, under the clear blue sky, which seemed too pretty for such a terrible day.

Watched as his teammates broke down around his grave, as Bruce’s face crumpled when everyone else is gone.

Watched Damian, two weeks later, finally show up and leave a single purple hyacinth, kneeling in front of the headstone and tracing the letter with a single finger, head bowed, before leaving. 

She searched up the meaning of the flower. I am sorry, please forgive me.

She mourned him.

Mourned a brother, so kind and intelligent, who never really knew how much he meant to all of them.

She has her own suspicions about how he was captured in the first place, but pointing fingers would do more harm than good.

Her father spiraled again, after he died.

She didn’t want to do it. Didn’t want to introduce a new Robin, and slowly let the world forget about the second. Robin should have died with Tim.

But Batman will not stop, and as long as he keeps fighting, he’ll need a Robin to hold him back.

Marinette dons the costume, two months after they bury him, and tries to forget that this uniform, his spare, still smells like him.

She’s wearing a dead boy’s clothes.

Alfred helps her make a new one after that first night.

Eventually, he does accept her as Robin. He trains her harder than he did both Damian and Tim.

She pushes through.

And now, four years later, there’s evidence proclaiming that he’s alive.

Alive, and on a killing spree, weeding out Gotham’s corrupt at the very center, strategically taking people out to topple the system.

A laugh escapes her, even as her shoulders shake with tears, because the methods are so familiar, so Tim, that she doesn’t know how she didn’t notice earlier.

She asks Jason to cover for her that night. 

He agrees without any questions, seeing the serious look on her face. Marinette has never been more grateful for the boy she and Dad found stealing the tires of the Batmobile.

After Batman leaves (Robin is benched until Red Hood is taken care of, whatever that means), and she pretends to go to bed, she opens her closet and pushes against the hidden panel in the back wall, revealing a spare uniform.

Robin escapes out her window, even though she knows that Alfred will have been alerted by the window opening.

Too bad for them, though, because she removed all the trackers except the emergency beacon, which can only be activated from her side.

The Red Hood is elusive, but she knows his tricks. She keeps up with him as he turns corner after corner, jumps from building to building, until he stops on the roof of Wayne Enterprises.

“Robin.” He says, helmet filtering out any signs that it’s her brother underneath. “But you’re not really Robin, are you? You’re wearing a dead boy’s clothes.”

She can’t help it, she flinches at how casually he speaks of his own death.

“Tim.” She tugs at the uniform, which has never fit right, despite it being tailored to her exact measurements. “What happened to you?”

“What happened? I died, that’s what happened.” The helmet comes off with a click and a hiss of air, and then it’s just her brother, older, eyes violent green, face twisted into a sneer. “I went off to follow the lead on the Joker myself, since Big Bird shut the door in my face and told me it wouldn’t amount to anything, got myself captured, and ended my own life to preserve their secrets. But you should know all of that, Replacement.”

The nickname is like a dagger to the heart. “I never wanted to replace you, the same way you didn’t want to replace Damian.” She says steadily, staring straight into his eyes even as her heart skitters frantically. “I was keeping Robin’s legacy alive.”

“Robin should have died with me.” 

“You know as much as I do that Batman needs a Robin, and Batman would not stop fighting as long as he lives.” She replies. “I never wanted to be Robin, Tim. It’s been four years, and it still feels like it doesn’t fit. But there was nobody else to do it, no one else to bring him out of that spiral.”

Tim is silent for a moment, so she continues.

“Come home, Tim. Please. We’ve all missed you so much. Dad isn’t the same anymore. No one is. We can be a family again.”

“Don’t you see, Marinette? I was never meant to be Robin, either. I was just that one annoying kid who wouldn’t leave Bruce alone, the one who blackmailed him into letting a second Robin out onto the streets. Even after I moved in, I was just that one kid who never really belonged, the outsider trying to insert himself into a family, pretending that Bruce cared for me as much as he did his biological children. Bruce only allowed me to stay in the Manor because I knew his secret. Damian made no effort to hide his disgust around me. You- you were the only one in that house who treated me like an equal.”

He draws a gun and points it at her, and she hears the safety click off. “But you’re Robin. He shouldn’t have made another child Robin. He should have said no, let the legacy die.”

“Tim,” She pleads. “Please don’t do this.”

Something in his eyes waver for a moment, fading to blue, before they harden into acid green again. “You meant too much to me. Let’s see if you mean enough to Batman too, enough for him to arrive on time.”

The gun goes off with a bang, and she feels the bullet enter through a crack in her armor, burying itself in her torso.  The pain is nothing new, but overwhelming all the same as her entire body seems to be on fire.

The last thing she does before everything goes black is calibrate the beacon to send the signal to Nightwing only, before smashing the button with all her remaining strength.

I hope Flamebird gets them here on time.

There are two reasons why she chooses to send it to Nightwing, and Nightwing only. One being because Damian doesn’t know that Tim is alive, and despite everything, he deserves to.

The other?

She doesn’t trust her father to make it.

permanent tags

@wannajointhecrabcult @miraculous-simmer7 @certainmuffinbagelcalzone @fantasyislive @chocolateherringtacofan @junarvion @susiej1118 @aestheticnpoetic @toodaloo-kangaroo @ladybug-182 @itsmeevie01 @g-arya @souleateralicestein @nightstarblue @i-is-mysterious @moonystars14 @vixen-uchiha @the-flapdoodle-noodle @labschaos @nathleigh @jalaluvsu @kaithehero @iamablinkmarvelarmy

unspecified @momothefemur @indecisive-mess-named-me @laurcad123 @ilovefluffbutsmutisalsogreat @sassakitty @fusser90

[enderspawn]

🎼 (I can’t find the correct emoji lol) exile arc tommy?

Oh boy! (opens up breakdown playlist) /hj

Montreal – Penelope Scott

Sleep with a Baseball Bat – Cosmic Johnny

Brother – Gerard Way

breakdown under cut, tw for suicidal ideation on the first song esp

1.       Montreal – heehee hoohoo suicidal/depression thoughts baby!!

I mean in short this is tommy saying he wont Survive exile. The intro of the song lists when the singer would be home from college/school and that “another 90 day summers gonna take [their] fucking life” which is rlly just. Tommy not gonna live THAT long in exile.

“And I would rather die And let me make it clear It's nobody's fault But I think we all know That I won't make it to Montreal”

So the thing here is that its “nobody’s fault” bc on one hand it is that he doesn’t blame tubbo but worse he doesn’t blame DREAM. Its just meant to happen, its not bc of anybody, yknow?

“And I would rather die I'll jump before I'll fall And I'm having lots of fun But I won't make it Montreal”

Mans tried to jump to his death before he “fell” whether bc of dream or an accident, hes makin the active CHOICE to end it rather than just waiting. Even w the fun he’s having w dream, he’s miserable and he knows he wont make it to see lmanberg again

“You like to talk about the future As if it's real And when you tell me that you love me I can almost feel it”

Dream keeps promising him stuff for the future. Maybe he can visit to see the tree, maybe he can get another visit, maybe he wont be alone. But tommy doesn’t care, its all fake to him (which like, it is so good for him but fjkdlsjf)

“It's not that it's a bad plan No, the plan fucking slapped I was so excited you don't know how bad I wanted all of it The coffee shop, the weather, the apartment But I don't want anything anymore I don't know, I guess I just got bored”

Okay so. Tommy kept trying to get shit together to leave, right? He wanted to go back so bad and have this domestic life w his friends but in the end he just got so downtrodden that after his shit got blown up he was so ready to just GIVE UP.

“And I don't wanna die I don't wanna get left behind But it's better half than none I hope to god you have some fun”

He doesn’t want to be in this situation, he still CARES abt the lmanberg crew but in the end hes been told that they’re happy WIHTOUT him. He’s not angry at them, not anymore, he just wants them to be happy bc he isn’t.

2.       Sleep with a Baseball Bat – tommy and dream relationship baby!!

“And every time you wake up Thinking this could be the day Well something, something just”

Every day in exile he had no real plans. He just had to exist out there alone and hope someone else came. This IS the day he can do…. Something. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t have a goal.

“And when your love is an anxiety attack Don’t settle for that, don’t settle for that And when you wake and find the claw marks in your back Sleep with a baseball bat, sleep with a baseball bat”

Hes been manipulated into thinkin dream is his friend, that dream “loves” him but it makes him miserable! Hes paranoid and stressed and falling apart!! Boy!!! Fjdsklfj

“Siena says you’re getting used But something’s broken in your head And you can’t run away when you need to”

The other ppl who visited him, like ranboo, KNEW something was happening and that he was in a bad place but tommy had been manipulated by dream so much that he couldn’t process it. No, dream couldn’t be bad, dream was his friend, right? He couldn’t leave exile, dream would be upset. Its all what DREAM wants, not tommy.

“Hey, space cadet Are you still floating round the rock That you spent so much of your life trying to get away from? And does it at least look different from up there?”

OKAY SO ONE. SPACE CADET? THAT’S CLARA BABY!! TWO: he spent ALL his time on this server fucking fighting dream, trying to “get away from” him. But now hes stuck “floating around” with him as his “friend”. The last line feels sarcastic and bitter but like. FUCK it hits, yknow??

“It might take a couple tries till you believe it But love is real, you’ll figure it out, you’ll live to see it But you still have to take a couple of falls And you can’t make an omelet without breaking your balls So batter up Is your bed made? Is your helmet on?”

HAPPY ENDING POG!! HE STARTS HEALING!!!! HE STARTS REALIZING DREAM WASN’T HIS FRIEND!!! He still “falls” and relapses into wanting dream w him but hes so much better!!! Also,,,,, “is your helmet on” w the turtle shell helmet (eyes emoji)

3.       Brother – IF TECHNO AND TOMMY NOT BROTHERS WHY THIS SON—(gunshot rings out)

Okay so on a serious note this song is abt addiction and while I don’t want to take away from that Serious Topic, it Does relate but w tommy dealing w his ptsd of dream

“And brother, if you have the chance to pick me up And can I sleep on your couch To the pound of the ache and pain? Oh, in my head 'Cause I'm awake all night long To the drums of the city rain”

Hhrhnrng staying at technos place to hide from dream and get better a lil JFKDLSJK. Also “the drums of the city rain” is referenced a LOT in this song but like. It keeps him up so,,,,,, dream JFKDLSJF. Mans barely ever slept in exile so it WORKS okay jfkdlsjf

“The lights we chase The nights we steal The things that we take to make us feel this (To the drums of the city rain)”

This is him and techno livin together!! Like in the first chorus you could see lights we chase being tommy finding techno’s place, then later it’s the lights of lmanberg as they sneak in. the nights they steal is both just time spent together and also straight up the times they stole shit JFKDSLJ. “the things that we take to make us feel” is the gapples tommy always eats so that he can feel safe (also, bc in the og song this is PROBABLY abt drugs and potions are drugs in universe so. Arguably getting a potion effect from the apple means it is Also Drugs? Fjdkslfj)

“I can't go back I don't think I will I won't sleep tonight as long as I still Hear the drums of the city rain”

Go back to logstedshire or lmanberg you ask?? The answer is yes. Both. He feels like he doesn’t belong in lmanberg and logstedshire is too traumatizing for him to return at this point. As long as he “hears the drums of the city rain”, or is thinking of dream, he Cant Sleep:tm:

“Does anyone have the guts to shut me up? 'Cause I believe that every night There's a chance we can walk away So hold on tight Because I won't wait too long In the drums of the beating rain”

Okay so hear me out but. This is just tommy and dream. “I believe that every night theres a chance we can walk away” is tommy hoping desperately for dream to let him go home, to walk away from logstedshire. He never will be permitted, not really, but theres a chance that tommy clings to. He wont “wait too long” while out in exile and stuck w dream bc hes desperate and miserable (also fun fact these analysis is basically me just pmv’ing shit in my head and rambling vaguely abt it but like. Listen,,,, flashback verse jfkdsljf) ALSO. The line “does anyone have the guts to shut me up” in relation to exile!tommy is just VERY important to me. Mans was so quiet and afraid to speak up when in exile.

“'Cause the nights don't last And we leave alone Will you drive me back? Can you take me home? (To the drums of the city rain)”

Following up that last paragraph, this is still in flashback. The days end and dream leaves again, making tommy alone. He asks if he can go back, if he can see home and lmanberg and everyone. But echoing the “to the drums of the city rain” after home CAN imply that “home” has become logstedshire WITH DREAM even tho it keeps him up and aaAAAAAHHHH

I swear this ends up okay and techno + tommy focused fjkdsljf

“Faces I don't know I am tired in the glow”

He feels isolated from everyone during his exile and lashes out at those who visit, to the point he feels like they’re all more or less strangers and “faces he doesn’t know”. Being tired in the glow is, imo, him over the lava.

“Of the freezing club Keep me breathing Don't make the lights come back Can you take me home? We all need this When we leave alone”

Hhhngg okay so tommy breakdown time! Hes in techno’s house (the freezing club) and is just pleading for techno to help. Don’t let “the lights come back” (lava again maybe? He doesn’t want to be Like This?) and just wants to feel like hes at home because hes just left exile and hes Messed Up Over It

“Remember when you and I would make things up? So many nights, just take me down To the place we can hear them play I miss that sound 'Cause now we don't sing so loud To the drums of the city rain”

OKAY SO THEY MAY NOT BE CANON FAMILY BUT WILBUR REMEMBERS SPARRING W TECHNO AS A KID AND PHIL IS HIS CLOSE FRIEND SO THEY STILL KNEW EACH OTHER AS KIDS SO SHUSH FJSDKL. Tommy just wants things to go back to how they were, before everything. When things were easy and they were kids just having fun. He misses it. Before exile, before lmanberg, before dream. But it doesn’t matter, because they’re stuck in this now. With his brother dead and his closest friend being the man who killed his best friend and helped blow up his country. Again, the drums of the city rain is dream. Because of his influence, its all different.

Hhhngngngn this is too long so I wont go into the last outro bc you can interpret it a LOT of ways, esp depending on how you want to Pace this song w the exile arc. But like. The analysis is THERE if you really wanna push it/animatic it babeyyy

[christalpepsi]

a bit for storage

I’m going to post a buncha my grey’s fic! Not everything is connected yet, I just write in bits and pieces. Alex Karev x OC (for now), loosely follows canon, just not izzie. Anyways this is what I got so far: 

TW: depression, suicide, death

Selected bits from S1E1

Finally. Her first day. She was indescribably excited, but anxious thoughts kept invading her mind. She’d worked her ass off for this, and seeing it’s fruition as a residency at Seattle Grace was so rewarding. Well, until Dr. Webber killed the mood. 

“Say hello to your competition. Eight of you will switch to an easier specialty. Five of you will crack under the pressure. Two of you will be asked to leave. This is your starting line. This is your arena. How well you play...That's up to you.”

What was this, a gladiator fight? Her brows furrowed, but as she glanced around, everyone was completely serious. Well, fight she would. 

She zoned out, hoping she’d get placed with people she met at the mixer, as Webber started listing the interns and their assigned residents, until her name caught her attention. 

“...Dr. Heather Palmer, Bailey. Dr. Isobel Stevens, Bailey…”

Someone nudged her from behind. 

“Palmer, you got the nazi.” Great.

She didn’t wanna push the envelope on the first day, so she had brushed her curls out and slicked them back into the tightest ballet bun she could without giving herself a headache. 

“You’re gonna be a suck up aren’t you? I can tell. Regular Mrs. Grundy.” Alex, another intern, snorted as she bobby pinned her bangs back. She glared at him, but he missed her stare as his eyes roamed over to Dr. Stevens. 

The other interns muttered amongst themselves as Heather finished tying her shoes, trying to imagine what the “nazi” looked like. A short black woman walked in, and no one paid her much attention until she raised her voice. 

“I have five rules. Memorize them. Rule number one, don't bother sucking up, I already hate you, that's not gonna change. Trauma protocol, phone lists, pagers. Nurses will page you, you answer every page at a run. A run, that's rule number two. Your first shift starts now and lasts forty-eight hours. You're interns, grunts, nobodies, bottom of the surgical food chain, you run labs, write orders, work every second night till you drop and don't complain!”

She rushed out of the locker room at a quick walk, and everyone scrambled to follow her. Slamming open a nearby door, she said flatly, “On call rooms. Attendings hog them, sleep when you can, where you can, which brings me to rule number three, if I'm sleeping, don't wake me, unless your patient is actually dying. Rule number four, the dying patient better not be dead when I get there, not only would you have killed someone, you would have also woke me for no good reason, we clear?”

Silence fell, and Heather and the blonde girl, Izzie, vigorously nodded their heads.

“Um, Dr. Bailey?” Heather said softly.

“Yes,” Bailey said, staring daggers.

“You said there were five rules? That was only four.” Dr. Bailey stared a hole through Heather, chilling her to the bone. Thankfully, Bailey’s pager started beeping. 

“Rule number five. When I move, you move.”

“Nurses are the ones implementing most of our work, dickhead.”

“Whatever. Maybe you should’ve been a nurse then.” Alex grabbed his chart, and sauntered away. 

“Palmer, what is it?”

“Pain, paresthesia, pallor, pulselessness, paralysis. Compartment syndrome.”

“So? Book an OR!” Bailey yelled.

“Oh! Right, booking a plastics OR for a fasciotomy.”

Selected bits from S1E3

Alex stormed into the locker room as Heather and Izzie were changing. “Morning, Dr. Model.”

“Dr. Evil Spawn.” Stevens deadpanned.

“Ooh, nice tat. They airbrush that out for the catalogs?”

“I don't know. What do they do for the 666 on your skull?” Heather snickered, earning a glare from Karev, but effectively shutting him up. As they finished clipping their badges on, Palmer turned to Izzie, lowering her voice a tad.

“Iz, I don’t blame you! If I was hot I would’ve done the same thing.”

“Oh, shut up, you’re so hot.” Izzie retorted.

“I’m not skinny blonde hot.” Heather crossed her arms.

“Whatever, sexy brunette goddess.”

She let out a giggle, pleased to have the complement returned.

“Are you guys gonna make out now, or what?” Alex interrupted. Heather scoffed, leaving the room with Dr. Stevens in tow.

Dr. Palmer’s patient was scheduled for a lap cholecystectomy at 3 that afternoon with gensurg, so she had time to kill. Heading for the locker room to grab her wallet, she overheard a raised voice. Walking in, she saw a crowd had gathered, and Izzie stood in her bra and underwear. 

“Let's study them, shall we? Gather around and check out the booty that put Izzie Stevens through med school. Have you had enough or should I continue? Because I have a few more very interesting tattoos. You want to call me Dr. Model? That's fine. Just remember that while you're sitting on 200 grand of student loans, I'm out of debt.” Izzie yanked her clothes back on and stormed out of the room, nearly knocking Heather over. 

Everyone awkwardly filed out, leaving Alex and Heather staring at each other from across the room. 

“Where do you get off?” She sighed, leaving her wallet still in her locker, and left for the break room empty handed.

Additional Bits That I’m Working In

Sure, he was a whore, but...seeing him with the kids stirred something in her. It freaked her out. He was Alex Karev, Dr. Evil Spawn, cheater, syphilis giver, aloof, uncommitted, but stubborn, calm, steady, yet exhilarating, adroit, wry, and so clever. And so kind. So kind. He held the premie in his arms, a crooked smile on his face, and feeling her gaze, glanced up to meet Heather’s eyes. She lit on fire under that gaze.

“Palmer.” Addison’s voice brought her out of her thoughts, and she turned away, towards the direction of Addison’s call. Alex’s eyes followed her out of the room. 

“So who’s going with Dr. Montgomery-Shepard?”

“I will!”

“Palmer, you’re in Peds or OB everyday. I’m putting you in cardio.”

“Damn it.” she muttered. Cristina’s mouth dropped open in offense.

“What? She’s crazy and ungrateful and-turning down cardio?”

“Yang, take her place in OB today.”

“For God’s sake…” Cristina huffed and went to find Addison, leaving Heather with Burke. 

“Hey, Joe! How’s your day been?” Heather hopped up on one of the barstools, trying not to slouch due to lack of back support. 

“Eh, so-so. Whatcha drinking?”

“Hm. I’m not sure,” she turned to her right. “Alex, what am I drinking?”

“We’re off tomorrow. Have some damn tequila, Palmer.” he said with a smirk.

“Don’t mind if I do. Could I get a flight, Joe?”

“Alright! Make sure you don’t die of alcohol poisoning, Dr. Grundy.” Alex jabbed her in the side, making her flinch. She whacked him on the back of the head teasingly. 

“Here ya are, Dr. Palmer.”

“Joe, please, it’s Heather.”

He chuckled, heading down the row as she took her first shot. 

“No chaser? You psycho. That’s pretty hot.”

“Yeah, I know.”

And him. Just standing there, arms crossed, chewing his Extra peppermint gum, not a care in the world. He was leaning against the nurses’ station, and she noted with envy the eyes that weren’t hers staring at him. 

Just laying there, hearing Mere’s bedsprings, Izzie’s rustling, George’s soft snores...she was so alone. She had no reason to be. Full house, friends that cared for her...or did they? It’s not like they went out of their way to make plans outside of work, other than Joe’s, which wasn’t exactly the healthiest of bonding activities. But no one fought for her. She didn’t even fight for herself, and she could feel it again, the sinking. The numbness was settling in again. She stared at the ceiling fan, spinning, spinning, spinning. 

“It’s depression! Just...it hurts all the fucking time, Alex! And I just, file it away, keep myself busy with work, with Joe’s, with you-”

“Oh, so I’m just here to keep you busy, is that it?”

“Isn’t that what you wanted? Just sex?”

“Shut up!” He took a ragged breath. “Please, just leave me alone, Heather.”

She pursed her lips. “If you wanted-I mean I-”

“I asked you to leave.”

Defeated, she met his eyes and turned back down the garden path to her car, careful not to trip in the dark. She wouldn’t be sleeping here tonight. 

Izzie hadn’t moved from the bathroom floor in about 18 hours. Heather was inclined to go lay down with her, but it wasn’t her rotation yet. George was in there keeping her company for now. 

“Who’s next?”

“Meredith. When I tried to kill myself, it was because I saw no way out.” She fiddled with the sheets of Meredith’s bed to be rid of some of the fidgety anxiety. “Just having to be mediocre, feeling I wasn’t important to anybody…” she trailed off, looking in Meredith’s direction. “Mere, you have so much. You have such a gift and I know you don’t want to hear this, but you can’t be so careless. There are people who care about you, people who love-”

“Okay, Palmer, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, I really do, sharing your trauma and all that, but I’m fine. Really. I didn’t try to kill myself, thanks.”

Heather sat there until Meredith raised her eyebrows, a clear order to get out. Turning the corner she ran smack into Karev, whose eyes were haunted. 

“You tried to kill youself?”

“Ha. Yeah, big whoop.” She looked at him witheringly. Her facade fell when they locked eyes and she shrugged. “G’night, Alex.” She sidestepped him, heading to the elevator.

“Okay, but you can see us being endgame right?” Meredith asked again desperately. 

“Mere, I’ve already told you, you and Derek, if you want to make it work, you have to put in the effort! It depends on you two, not some magical twist of fate.”

“God, if he so much as looks at me funny, I’m reporting for sexual harassment.”

“That’s what everyone says before they sleep with him.” Callie said wryly. 

No. Because he had this thing with Rebecca. And she was supposed to be with Ben. But, God was it hard to give him space. 

“Please…” tears shined on his face, and his nose had started to run, “Please, please, please…”

He grabbed her by the back of her neck, forehead to forehead, pleading. “Alex-”

“Please...” She wiped his tears away, but new ones replaced them just as quickly.

“Callie, oh my God! Congratulations!”

“Thank you, Heather! George and I just-did it!’

“Lexie! Wanna work with me today?”

“Oh my gosh, yes!”

Heather pulled her to the side. “Thank God, you’re my favorite. Don’t tell the others.”

He pulled her closer to him, as if that would save her from the water that poured into the elevator, soaking their scrubs through. Their shoes were squelching as they ran to dry land. Except, of course, there wasn’t any. The whole floor was flooded. 

“Oh, God, it’s seeping through my socks.” Heather groaned. 

“I can handle the mess.” Alex said softly. “You know that.”

“But- I’m so much. Alex, Mere thinks she’s all dark and twisty or whatever, but that’s nothing, not to invalidate her but, it’s nothing compared-”

He took her by the sides of the face, eyes open, honest.

“I said, I can handle it. Do you want this?” 

Heather nodded, as a loss for words.

“Then bring it on.”

“Get a crash cart, dammit!” Heather yelled, voice cracking as tears spilled over. She met Alex’s eyes, just as glassy as hers, and he took over compressions.

Her knees buckled. She fell to the floor as if in slow motion. Izzie, first, now George. Not Georgie. Her 007, her Bambi. O’Malley. The pain was constant, unceasing. Because he really was gone. She imagined him, like he should’ve been the next day, new Army uniform, neat buzzcut...her head was too full; it was too much. Her body wouldn’t move, her mind was debilitated-then strong arms grasping her, meeting her here, on the floor.

“He was. George was hit by a fucking bus!” They burst out in laughter, trying to stifle any echos so passersby wouldn’t freak out.

The addition of Mercy West was hell on earth. Even just the loss of Izzie made the workload shoot through the roof.

[sparklyjojos]

KOMATSUKI MAKIKO summary

[Note: this short story centers Jirou from Smoke, Soil and Sacrifices, which I recapped here.]

[tw: gore, sexual content, mental health issues (mostly DID as understood by Maijo), mentioned child abuse, suicide?]

--

The narrator--Komatsuki Makiko--briefly remembers the time when Natsukawa Jirou was called a “man like the eternal return itself” by Salman Rushdie when the two had a chance conversation in a New York cafe in 1998.

Jirou once told Makiko in a quite philosophical conversation that God doesn’t think. Or rather, God “thinks” (ie. has thoughts, brain processes necessary to perceive things and work towards creating the world), but doesn’t really “ponder” (thinks about stuff, philosophizes etc.)--only humans do.

Makiko thinks that by saying this, Jirou is drawing a line between himself and humanity. Jirou certainly seems to just know the answer to anything without pondering it first.

Makiko notices that Jirou’s atmosphere of ‘just knowing’ was deftly put into the main character of Natsukawa Saburou’s book Tsukumojuku (!!!) -- as Jirou’s brother, Saburou would of course know Jirou as well as to capture the vibes he gave off. Although Saburou made Tsukumojuku “ponder” different things from around halfway through that novel, maybe Jirou would be okay with just “thinking”. To force him to “consider” would feel like trying to force God himself to do that.

As he is, Jirou is a genius. He can perfectly remember any image he saw even once and everything he read, and he gets through books so fast it looks like he’s just idly flicking through the pages. He can even memorize a hard scientific text verbatim and only analyze it later in his mind.

Jirou keeps his vast knowledge inside a memory palace--“Natsukawa Dormitory”--not unlike the one that the book character Hannibal Lecter has. But while Hannibal was the only keeper of his palace, Jirou has several.

Jirou claims -- and Makiko isn’t sure whether to believe him or not -- that he experimentally caused his own personality to split and create four additional parts. When Makiko first met Jirou in 1995, those four were as follows: Shi Un, a quiet and wise 14-year-old boy; Daniel, a 36-year-old part-time painter; Sugisaki Yuri, a 17-year-old ghost [who is also described as 性転換した, as in “sexually transitioned”; I think Maijo means just that Yuri’s female?], and Aka Tsuki (or just Akatsuki?), a 21-year-old elderly dog that speaks in a rough tone.

Jirou “raised” those four and eventually “overcame” them, after which he changed their names. Shi Un became “Ichirou”, Daniel - “Jirou” (not the surface Jirou we know), Sugisaki Yuri - “Saburou”, and Aka Tsuki - “Shirou”. Considering that these were also the names of Jirou and his brothers, you’d think that it was a bad idea, but Jirou seemed to be okay with it.

--

But anyway, Makiko first met Jirou in a cafe in Brussels, where she and her friend Toda Erika planned to take some photos (Makiko is a photographer). The instant Jirou saw Makiko, he called her by name and congratulated her on “fulfilling her wishes”. He explained that he once saw a middle school graduation book from Makiko’s school, in which she wrote down her wish of becoming a  photographer.

Ever since that first meeting everything’s been going well, Makiko says. It’s like Jirou is one of the Seven Gods of Fortune, Vaisravana. As if he’s the God who fulfills all her wishes and hears even the unspoken ones --  surely nobody except a god would have that power.

If we stretch the concept a bit, the other Natsukawa brothers would seem fit as the other Four Heavenly Kings: Ichirou the politician as Dhrtarastra who upholds the realm, Saburou the writer as Virupaksa who sees everything, and Shirou the successful surgeon as Virudhaka who brings growth.

--

Jirou likes to look through school graduation books, photos and anthologies of kids’ work, and gather them all in Natsukawa Dormitory. From what he says, back when he was 19-20 he used to sneak into schools in Japan just to page through these anthologies. When the two were in Jirou’s house once (which had only a few beds and piles upon piles upon piles of books as internal decor), Makiko asked him why he enjoys these child pictures so much. Instead of giving a straight answer, Jirou drew a picture...

...which Makiko recognized as the work of Ikihara Akira, her classmate from primary school. Jirou explained that after drawing this picture Akira was murdered and eaten by his mother. Apparently the police and everyone else thought the motive could be the mother doing it “out of love”, so that the boy would become her flesh and blood, but Jirou personally thought it was just something she did for her own enjoyment.

Jirou then talked about Hannibal Lecter playing a monster for amusement, and noticed that acting is a basis of human play. Even when people grow up, their tendency to act is still there, just moves from childish play to performing the role of “themselves”.

Akira’s parents lived in separation, but in the picture, he drew himself holding hands with them in harmony and wrote down yokatta (“I’m glad”, “everything went well” etc.). Even if nothing actually went well, Jirou still likes that yokatta, a simple wish of a child. Seeing as time doesn’t flow in this picture, nothing ever changes within it, maybe in a way Akira’s wish really did come true.

Makiko is wondering if you could really say that considering how Akira ended up. Jirou answers to this by flipping the page and drawing another picture that Makiko quickly realizes is how the original one really looked like.

The first thing Jirou showed was fake. Akira’s actual drawing looked like this:

Makiko really had thought the first one was the original until she saw this one. She wonders just how many memories of hers are actually faithful to life, and how many were altered with time. Maybe it’s that frail memory that makes her love capturing time in photos. Maybe Jirou, whose memory was perfect, preferred those emotionally charged pictures made by children.

Jirou said he’d be fine with whatever end awaited him.

But things don’t come to an end, Makiko thought. This is the eternal return. Things start and end and then happen again. If Jirou really was “like an eternal return itself”, then he would never end either… so maybe would never “be fine”.

--

Jirou sometimes killed that other “Jirou” in Natsukawa Dormitory, only to have him be reborn later. Maybe this repeated killing was Jirou’s attempt to reach some sort of an end--to finally “be fine”. A chase in the middle of eternal return.

Makiko wondered if the two ever changed places. Was the original Jirou still succesfully staying on the surface, or had he been pulled inside and exchanged for “Jirou” a long time ago? Was the Jirou she loved even a single person? Certainly she also had a fair share of experiences with those others.

After they returned to Japan and started living in Makiko’s family house in Chofu, she was once woken up by Jirou touching her body (and, er, himself). To her questions he answered awkwardly that “Jirou is asleep”, introduced himself as Shi Un, said he’s sorry, that Makiko and the family are really kind to him, and that he doesn’t really know stuff yet.

(And then Makiko instantly jumped to the occasion to have sex with him right then and there, because Maijo Otaro.)

When Jirou later renamed and “contain” the other four in Natsukawa Dormitory, Makiko commented that he seemed jealous of Shi Un, but Jirou just answered that this accusation didn’t even make sense--they were the same person, after all.

Makiko still isn’t sure whether the existence of the other personalities is real and not just Jirou putting on an elaborate play. Makiko herself remembers acting a lot in previous relationships. It’s different with Jirou, feels more real - instead of overthinking, her head just goes blank whenever she’s with him… though maybe her head going blank is also a sort of a performance, more to convince herself than him that their relationship is true? Then again, maybe every internal emotion is in a way “performed” when shown on the outside. Even assuming her emotions were “fake”, surely they wouldn’t fall that far off from the true ones.

When she was with Jirou, she felt like he’d know the answer to anything, and felt like it was just fine to stop thinking… or at least stop “considering”. There likely wasn’t a point to asking all those “ifs” like whether or not Jirou was actually Jirou.

When she once asked him why he repeatedly kills “Jirou”, he answered: “because I only kill myself.” Did it mean that the one he wanted to kill more than anyone else was himself? Or that if he had to kill, he wouldn’t do that to others, but to himself?

--

Just before they left Belgium, Makiko drove them to Bastogne while unusually serious Jirou recited Miura Tetsuo’s short stories from memory on her request. She wondered how he imagined things from the stories to look like and how close they were to her own imagination. Could imagined, fictional things also remain as memories?

They stopped by a residence that, according to Jirou, belonged to one of the world’s richest men, who out of paranoia hid himself inside a house filled with security. They said nobody was even allowed to see him without stripping completely naked and undergoing a body search.

Jirou left the car and went to the house with the security guards. He returned pretty soon, safe and in higher spirits. Makiko started driving to a restaurant, but Jirou asked her to park on the side of the road for a second. As she watched, he suddenly took off the entirety of his hair - apparently it was a wig hiding bare skin underneath - and then just as casually took off a part of his skull and retrieved from his own head a small knife, still red with the rich man’s blood. He asked Makiko to bring him the surgical tool set from the trunk and proceeded to carefully put his head back together.

When he was done, they went to the restaurant and ordered a meal. Jirou explained that he hadn’t killed the rich man, just roughed him up a little with the knife he’d hidden in his own head. It was the same knife used by the man back when he was a child… well, not the same one, but looking similar enough that the man would imagine it was the original thing.

Even if Jirou did horrible, horrible things to people, he never killed them. He only killed himself.

--

Three days after Jirou “conquered” Daniel and renamed him to “Jirou”, he killed him. About two months later “Jirou” showed up again, this time not as a 36-year-old artist, but as a shy six-year-old.

Jirou would have that child “Jirou” bullied, hit, kicked, and having unspeakable acts done to him. Throughout all that abuse, and being made fun of by “Ichirou”, “Saburou” and “Shirou”, “Jirou” would after some time grow up and become the strongest out of them. At that point Jirou would beat him to death. Later he’d raise him from a weak child to a powerful man again, and kill him again.

Makiko often cried when she thought about it, not sure if she emphatized more with the pain of the killed “Jirou” or the Jirou who killed. If time can flow differently inside one’s mind, then “Jirou” (or maybe even the surface Jirou, if they ever switched) could have endured horrible abuse for hundreds of years. Neverending death and rebirth. Like the eternal return itself.

Jirou didn’t kill others, but maybe the things he did to them were close enough to killing that you couldn’t really make a distinction. So maybe killing “Jirou” was also coming just close enough to death that it really felt like dying while still maintaining life.

Maybe that child that Makiko sometimes spotted in his expression was actually just the same child all this time, and Jirou just acted like he was killing him, an elaborate act of play-pretend for the world, or maybe just for himself.

--

Since ancient times - Jirou said - humanity had a concept of monsters. At first these were god-like beings removed far from humans, but then they started progressively approaching our kind. First as animal shapeshifters, then beings like vampires and Frankenstein’s monster that skirted the line between life and death, and finally as zombies, dead humans who ate others. Then there was Hannibal Lecter, not any undying being of any sort, but just a human gone mad.

Although, as Jirou points out, there was a hypothesis that Lecter wasn’t actually insane. At one point in Red Dragon Lecter says to Will Graham that “we’re just alike”. One could interpret this as Lecter assessing that Graham may end up becoming a criminal too, but in Jirou’s interpretation, Lecter meant that they both simply enjoy acting the role of a serial killer. In Graham’s case, that’d refer to his method of putting himself in the mindset of a criminal to investigate. In Lecter’s case, it’d refer to him being a genius who became so bored with humanity that he murdered and ate people just for the joy of play-pretend.

Makiko can’t help but wonder what exactly is the difference between Hannibal Lecter -- who in Hannibal would mix into society and have a certain woman be with him -- and Jirou.

If Jirou was a monster, then maybe the monster of our times was found inside humans. A monster creeping closer to us than ever before. Hiding inside our friends and families. Inside the people you love.

And--judging from what she could piece together using the few fragments of Jirou’s past he told her about--inside the Natsukawa family.

Every person has their own story inside them. In the stories of the Natsukawas, the rich man from Belgium, and all the people Jirou ever hurt, Jirou was no doubt the monster.

But he wasn’t one in Makiko’s story.

--

Makiko remembers the time Jirou was called “a man like the eternal return itself” by Salman Rushdie, even though the writer couldn’t possibly know about his internal death and rebirth. Rushdie also said that he had a strange feeling like he’s met Jirou somewhere before and had an important conversation with him, but couldn’t place it. Jirou just looked familiar to him. Makiko agreed worldlessly; she had the same feeling whenever she looked at Jirou.

When they were alone later, Jirou expressed the opinion that Rushdie had been sarcastic or speaking nonsense. Eternal return sounds like quite a pessimistic worldview that’d just make people feel that life is pointless, which is maybe why philosophers invented the whole nirvana thing that allows for escape from the cycle of rebirth.

Whether or not Rushdie’s words had a point, maybe Jirou would feel fulfilled in eternal return, Makiko thinks. Maybe the goal, the thing to strive for inside eternal return was keeping one’s will to live.

If eternal return really is a thing, then Makiko is fine with it. After all, she’ll get to meet Jirou again and again and love him again.

No matter who that Jirou actually is.

END

[elizas-writing]

When Wish Fulfillment Fantasies Meet Reality: A Re-Examination of Twilight

 **CW/TW: The following piece discusses dating violence with brief mentions to sexual assault and self-harm.**

This year, the last Fifty Shades movie finally came and went, and as its popularity slowly morphs into a bad memory for pop culture, I’m thinking again about the fiction’s effect on reality, particularly wish fulfillment fantasies, self-insert stories, etc etc.

This train of thought began with the Twilight series after watching Lindsay Ellis’s video essay, “Dear Stephenie Meyer,” where she revisits the hatred surrounding said franchise. While it’s definitely not without serious flaws, Twilight was not really as bad as people made it out to be. And most of the criticism was solely about millions of young girls and their moms liking a thing because, what a shock, our society tends to hate anything feminine. I was definitely one of those teenage girls who wanted nothing to do with Twilight, surprising no one probably. Even though I had enough plot summary from friends to pick up the actual problems of the story, I just had fun hating it for the sake of hating it and disassociating with anything feminine because I was neck-deep in my weeaboo phase.

Cut to about seven years later, I took a Vampires in Pop Culture class and Twilight (the first of the series) was on the reading list. With a more mature mind, I sat down, read it, and yeah, it really was not as bad as I thought. Yes, Bella’s too one-dimensional, Edward’s still pretty creepy, and the dialogue and prose is at best, ridiculous and at worst, stale. It knows its target audience is tweens and reads as such, which unfortunately doesn’t grip me as an adult. I gave up at the baseball scene cause I was ready to gouge my eyes out if I read one more description of the weather. And give credit where it’s due, the side characters have way more fascinating stories than Bella or Edward, and it’s a shame Meyer didn’t take a chance to further expand them instead. I couldn’t find much to be angry about with the first book, and I was honestly more bored than anything. But I also cannot deny the wish fulfillment fantasy driving the narrative which drew in a large audience all those years ago.

And wish fulfillment is fine. Self-insert is fine. Teenage girls are just figuring out what confidence is, and there is some reassurance in a fantasy where the totally out-of-league man of your dreams still finds you the most fascinating human being in the world and wants to give you all his undivided attention. Not every female lead needs to be a strong independent woman who don’t need no man. I still see people write self-insert fanfictions from time to time, and they’re very sweet and tender to imagine being loved by a favorite character. We actually consume these stories more than we like to admit.

Hell, one of my favorite guilty pleasure films is The Princess Diaries. In many ways, it hits the same notes as Twilight. It’s a pure wish fulfillment fantasy where the main girl is smart, but clumsy and awkward and just wants to be invisible. Yet she finds herself on a whirlwind journey of self-discovery where others find value in her, and she even falls in love with a boy who adores her regardless of how she perceives herself. Yet The Princess Diaries is such a popular chick flick among people my age. So why is something like The Princess Diaries fondly remembered as an integral part of a millenial/Gen Z childhood while Twilight is met with disdain and disgust?

The major differences boil down to the main female protagonists: Mia and Bella. While not an overly complex character, Mia has, well, a personality. Her journey is more personal of overcoming her social anxiety and realizing how much she can contribute to the world as a public figure if she just takes the leap of faith. Getting a romance in the end is just icing on the cake when she remembers who was there for her even when she was the awkward nerd and will love her regardless of appearance or social status. It’s cheesy and hokey as chick flicks do, but it’s a satisfying wish fulfillment fantasy where the protagonist is better off than where she started and what she was looking for was right there all along.

With Bella, I barely know who she is outside of her romantic interests. Sure, the books go into more detail of her intelligence and social anxiety, but it’s never seen in film. Her life completely revolves around her relationships to the point of obsession, but we never almost see what she’s like when not caught up in the supernatural love triangle. And unfortunately, it’s a problem which worsens with each sequel. The Twilight franchise frames romance as something Bella can’t live without to the point of shutting herself in for months when the Cullens leave in New Moon, refusing to talk to her friends and family, and getting night terrors. It’s intended to make you feel sorry for Bella, but her backwards priorities make her completely pathetic on how much of her life she misses because of some boy who didn’t hesitate to cut her from his life, and she was totally fine with him leaving if he didn’t turn her into a vampire.

Prioritizing unrequited love over your own well being is such an unhealthy idea to romanticize because there is far more to life than some dumb boy who won’t return your feelings. I saw my fair share of unsatisfying romances in young adulthood hanging on by a thread for some idealized love that’s never going to happen. Even though a break up is the simplest and most effective solution for both people to take care of themselves, they continue wasting their time being unhappy with each other and latching on to the rose-tinted view of how they first fell in love. I know some people don’t like the idea that you have to love yourself before someone else, but there’s still truth to the saying where you have to understand that being in a romantic relationship will not automatically fix all your problems and guarantee a happily ever after.

Aside from getting married and having a baby which almost kills her during pregnancy, Bella doesn’t grow as a character or develop any personality, and she just gets her happy ending anyway. The Volturi hint that Bella is special because she’s unaffected by vampire powers, but that detail is shuffled to the sidelines to get more of Jacob and Edward butting heads on who she’ll choose. Most of the story’s events are outside her control and she doesn’t explore further into what they mean about her being special, and even her turning into a vampire-- not even of her own volition, but as a last ditch attempt to save her while dying in childbirth-- doesn’t change that much about her except now she’s immortal and she can bang Edward without getting knocked unconscious again.

I know Twilight is commercial romantic fiction meant to go in one ear and out the other, but it’s still such a damn waste of great lore and  build up with no pay off. And Bella is such a bore of a protagonist to follow the entire time even for a blank slate who is meant to be easily identifiable for teenage readers. Again, not every female character needs to wield a sword or be flawless at everything they do, but having an engaging arc is the simplest bare minimum when writing your story’s protagonist. But that got lost in drawn out weather descriptions and, of course, the unhealthiest romances in fiction.

In a 2013 interview with TIME about her book, The Host, Meyer says she never thinks much about if her protagonists are good role models because “it’s fiction... I don’t think you should be using fictional characters as role models.” To that, I strongly disagree and am rather surprised to hear from Meyer given the great battles of Team Edward vs Team Jacob as each of the films released in theaters. Granted, this is an old interview, and I don’t know how much her opinion changed, but it still irks me.

Whether you like to admit it or not-- especially on the wonderful world of Tumblr.com--, fiction affects our reality. It alters our perception on politics, race, gender, lifestyles, and yes, even romance. Especially as kids and teenagers, we can’t help but find role models to base our ever-changing identities on and look up to so we can be better people for ourselves and society. It’s the reason why so many people define themselves on what Hogwarts house they’re in, why Disney milks Star Wars as long as they can, and why black communities arranged trips for everyone to see Black Panther. And unfortunately, I can’t bring myself to say Twilight is completely harmless in how it portrays the romances.

Just type in any search engine about abusive relationships in Twilight, and you get millions upon millions of analyses on how Edward and Jacob check off as abusers. They’re controlling, aggressive, easy to become jealous, and lacking any notion of personal boundaries. However, one abuser often forgotten in this conversation is Bella, who is such a despicable, emotional manipulator.

Remember how ridiculously depressed she gets in New Moon when Edward leaves? Well, she starts seeing visions of Edward checking in on her whenever she seems to be in danger. And she gets the bright idea to keep purposefully doing so-- including hanging out with shady gang members, crashing a motorcycle and jumping off a cliff-- just to get his attention and hopefully coax him to return to Forks. I’m surprised she didn’t just straight up say “If you leave me, I’ll kill myself” because it’s such textbook gaslighting. And when Edward is led to believe Bella died, then he attempts suicide! And she’s seriously surprised he would given how much needless self-harm she did over the months? What else did you think was going to happen?! I can’t even laugh at some of the badness of New Moon because Bella’s toxic behavior leaves such a sour taste in my mouth. Her severe romantic dependency went from being a damsel-in-distress to an abusive, emotionally manipulative screwball. And that’s just scraping the tip of the iceberg, folks.

Upon actually watching all the films for the first time, Edward’s behavior isn’t nearly as bad as my first perceptions when I was in middle school, but his possessiveness and lack of personal space are still incredibly uncomfortable. I know we all wrote that fanfiction where person A gets saved by person B from attempted gang rape, but Edward is so overbearingly and exhaustively protective, and it just gets worse in the sequels up until Bella’s finally transformed into a vampire. It is to the point where he hardly trusts Bella to do anything by herself knowing how massive of a klutz she is, and will pop into her home without permission, warning or respect of her personal space. As such, she never grows independence, much less learn how to protect herself or be prepared when supernatural forces come for her while the Cullens leave.

Edward may have good intentions to think of Bella’s safety with the context of other vampires mercilessly killing humans in Washington state, but he’s also on a slippery slope of controlling nearly every aspect of her life, especially when she might start feeling romantic for someone else, because guess what dude? You left for over half a year. This continuing behavior throughout the series heavily contributes to Bella’s unhealthy dependency on a romantic partner to the point where she feels like she can’t live without them. Granted, that doesn’t excuse her emotional manipulation, but because she never learns self-defense on the off chance no one else is there to save her, it’s no wonder why she has severe issues with separation and loneliness. Like I said before, you can’t have a healthy romantic relationship if you think it’s going to automatically fix all your problems. Your romantic partner isn’t your therapist or coping mechanism, especially if you can’t handle a simple break up or if said partner wasn’t even that great to begin with.

You’d think Jacob would be off the hook since he at least doesn’t watch Bella while she’s sleeping, but he’s not escaping unscathed. Despite how the series tries to explain what imprinting is, it’s glanced over so quickly on the now creepy relationship between Jacob and Bella’s daughter, even all things considered for a rapidly growing vampire child. He also has a ton of aggressive tendencies as part of the werewolf gene to the point where he will inevitably hurt Bella-- as illustrated with another pack member’s live-in girlfriend who has scars across her face--, and has zero respect for consent as he forcibly kisses her on multiple occasions. Yeah, cause painting your Native American characters-- and only prominent characters of color-- as inevitable, aggressive predators sure is good representation and definitely not some awful racial stereotype. Jacob embodies the most basic descriptors of toxic masculinity between his sense of entitlement that Bella should choose him over Edward and the “boys will be boys” mentality as though Jacob is completely incapable of any self-control, werewolf or not. Given the recent news surrounding Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination and his defenders claiming “what boy hasn’t done this” and that he shouldn’t be punished for his actions as a young man, Jacob’s character is one of the most dangerous aspects of the series to be romanticized as a wish fulfillment fantasy. He’s not only based on gross racial stereotypes, but also on harmful patriarchal ideas of men thinking they’re entitled to women without any consideration to their autonomy. Normalizing this behavior as attractive qualities in a partner allows men to run from their actions without consequence.

And this toxic masculinity only heightened when Fifty Shades of Grey entered the spotlight for pop culture to bash, but had much more legitimate criticisms to garner hatred.

Fifty Shades of Grey changes up the wish fulfillment fantasy where instead of a vampire, the clumsy and awkward female lead, Anastasia Steele, is swept away by billionaire, Christian Grey, who’s happy to spoil her with grand luxuries but has a troubled past which makes it difficult for him to love. Oh, and he’s into BDSM and writes up a questionable contract for Anastasia on all the kinky shit he wants to do. And Anastasia is so sweet and innocent she doesn’t even know what an anal plug is (like, it’s right there in the name, sweetheart. You can’t be this dumb). As you do, things go wrong, they take a break, Christian dumps his tragic anime backstory on Anastasia as a pathetic excuse to apologize, people from his past show up because reasons, and they eventually live happily ever after, married with a baby on the way.

Not only does Christian hit the same abuser red flags as Edward, Jacob and Bella on top of being the worst dom in history, but the series passes off that anyone can be fixed with the power of love. Once again, your romantic partner isn’t your therapist. Trauma may explain his behavior, but that doesn’t excuse what he put Anastasia through, and neither is it suddenly her job to fix him. And abusers like Christian are never reformed so easily with love; more often than not, they use it as leverage to manipulate and keep the relationship going for the sake of control. Sure, it sounds hot to be in a BDSM relationship with a billionaire ready to spoil you, but do the ends really justify the means of that sweet wish fulfillment? Is it really that great of a fantasy to play your partner’s therapist and humor their extreme control and possessiveness to the point where you’re almost not allowed to be an individual?

It’s one thing to have guilty pleasures and wish fulfillment fantasies. But after a while, you wonder what it is about a certain piece of media which makes it a guilty pleasure. It’s one thing if Twilight or Fifty Shades of Grey are guilty pleasures in some of the enjoyably bad writing, unnatural dialogue or squandered potential. But upholding these romances as ideal and disregarding all the blatant warning signs of abusive relationships? That’s where we really need to take a step back and wonder why this is remotely okay to normalize, especially for impressionable teenage girls. Even though I was mostly amused by the films’ bad writing and these poor actors pushing through for their paychecks, there was also a fair amount of content which was too uncomfortable to laugh at-- Bella’s emotional manipulation, the portrayal of werewolves, and the unsubtle anti-abortion message in Breaking Dawn: Part 1 just to name a few. It’s baffling how these properties became cultural phenomenons for their “romances of the century” when most of these character really need couples’ counseling.

Thankfully, these franchises didn’t made too lasting impressions and for the most part are forgotten. Stephenie Meyer quietly retired to continue taking care of her kids, and EL James just kinda disappeared from the media spotlight since the last film released. Maybe Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey aren’t the worst series to happen to mainstream media, but they still heavily reflect a society which to this day hesitates to call dating violence what it is. Where finding love in another takes priority over self-care. Where people still struggle to define abuse because “if that’s abuse, then everyone I know has been abused.” Where despite sexual assault survivors’ testimonies, polygraph tests, supporters, and grueling mental exhaustion to tell their stories, their abusers roam free without consequence and are still allowed power with their nasty holier-than-thou attitudes to silence anyone who dares question their character.

We’re slowly getting better in these kind of fantasies for teens with films like Love, Simon and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before with genuinely health romances where the characters have to confront their flaws and grow. We’re a lot more critical of relationship dynamics in film than we were over a decade ago, especially with #MeToo in the last year. But part of me is still worried if we’ll have another trend like Twilight or Fifty Shades of Grey where it’s blindly defended because it’s fiction and disregard when people romanticize the severely problematic elements which don’t guarantee happily-ever-afters for couples’ in reality. As the possibility of reverting to pre-Roe vs. Wade days becomes more of a likelihood, at what point do we finally acknowledge that a simple fantasy isn’t automatically above criticism?

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[highyenas]

here’s my take on mania

tw: personal experiences with bipolar depression

overall, i like mania. bishops knife trick, wilson, and church are definitely some of my favourite songs they've made to date. tlotro too, the new has worn off of it but it's still a solid track, and i have emotional ties to it because of the interactions i had with not only pete, but patrick as well due to its existence (i've never cried so much in my life). so that's a pretty special track.

though, there are a few things about it that feel off or incomplete. or unnecessary.. ex: the llamas ,, please no more i can't stand them

the things i don't really like include "are you smelling that shit?", and how they chose the word "boost" for heaven's gate of all things - it sounds weird to me but i've gotten used to it, no big deal. i still can't get really into stay frosty, sadly.

some tracks feel incomplete or too repetitive, champion being the biggest contestant here. it's too generic, its meaning is too obvious, unlike most of their songs. i appreciate the idea it's conveying, though. it released at a time i was fighting with my mom and step family really badly so it helped me through that a lot, but it is still very generic and i can't really get past it.

then - young and menace. i just don't like this track. i remember listening to it as soon as it came out in awe but not in a good way. it didn't feel real. is that what i really heard? at the time of course, i grew to like it because i was just happy they were back making music. do i like it now? not really. - but if you look at the song from an artistic standpoint, as a audible presentation for manic depression, it works very well. i can appreciate the song in that light. my grandpa has bipolar disorder and i've been through at least 4 of his manic episodes - at one point he's as sweet as he can be - the next my aunt is fainting because of how terrified she is of him. the contrast between the soft verses vs the chorus (which i feel like could be shorter with more variation with each) represents it well. but do i think it should have been the leading single? of course not. so many people still have a bad taste in their mouth from it and can't look at mania well because of it. first impressions and all. i understand if they were excited (or rushed) to get something out but i feel like if they just waited until they made a song like tlotro, reviews on this album would be much more positive.

now i don't just have negative things to say about the album, but i feel like a good fan should critique what's given to them, not just take it in blindly and never question the methods, or never theorise on what could be done to improve it. but a fan should also appreciate the values it has within it too, "what makes it this album special?" "what makes this part unique?" "don't you just love how (band member) did this?" i'm sure they appreciate the feedback as well. nobody wants an audience of zombies who still say "thanks pete".

(also if you guys could not comment shit like that on sensitive or serious subjects it would be really great - people seriously commented "not bad joe" on joe's post about his mother's passing.)

track by track review  (excluding y&m and champion since i pretty much covered them)

* stay frosty royal milk tea 

this song left a bad taste in my mouth before i even heard it - im easily influenced by how people hype things and how every yeemo trinity kid was freaking out over the title really drove me away. - but the track itself isn't bad. it's very powering and has memorable, strong lyrics like "the only thing that's stopping me is me". the track feels like someone wanting to become great as they can possibly be but they are plagued with obstacles and downfalls - "the alcohol never lies", "some princes don't become kings", but they recover and keep trying. they're resisting failure. (allusion: it really reminds me of ling yao trying to seek immortality for his country in fmab, ahaha. it fits perfectly. "some princes don't become kings.") the track isn't bad at all, just not my cup of tea. i can really appreciate it.

* hold me tight or don't

i don't have much to say about this track, im not too big of a fan of latin themed music but it's a nice poppy song with lovesick lyrics that go deeper than usual pop love songs. i've grown to really enjoy it. to me it sounds like someone desperately holding onto a lost relationship and being pretty frustrated with how their significant other treats them, but they're so obsessed they don't want to leave. 

* wilson (expensive mistakes)

when i first heard this song on a live recording i fell absolutely in love, the music sounds nothing like i've ever heard before and it's truly captivating. and when i heard it live myself, oh wow. it was amazing. i've seen someone else say this, can't remember who, but they said they believed it was touching on how irrational people with manic/bipolar depression can be. once again, i have personal experience from my grandfather and i really do believe that's what they're trying to do. "i hate all my friends." this is sort of personal and i don't usually talk about mental illness, but this for me personally reminds me of how my grandpa nearly convinced my dad into touching an electrical unit that would have killed him. but when he's on his medication for his bipolar disorder, he loves my dad. i believe the same concept is used here, the narrator doesn't actually hate his friends, the disorder convinces him he does whenever it kicks in. also the secondary title (expensive mistakes). this could be referencing how people with bipolar disorder have a lot of trouble managing their money and often splurge. my grandpa went ahead and bought 2 grave sites for himself and my grandma during one of his episodes. it's not a nice thing to witness.

* church

this song immediately grabbed my intention as soon as i saw the title. i love the music and choir in this song so much, butch's (their producer) bass line is very nice and i love listening for it. also i adore the "if death is the last appointment then we're all just sitting in the waiting room" part. it's a little repetitive but not in a generic way like champion, it has a lot of other things going along in it. - i'm not religious whatsoever but i love religious imagery - it's so fascinating and it's very easy to manipulate it into something twisted. i feel like church is simply referencing how people do absolutely absurd things for their faith and the narrator is willing to do all of those things for their significant other. they are holy. a deity. - or maybe it's just about sucking dick. 

* heaven's gate

when i saw the title track for this song i was hoping we were gonna get some more cult related lyrics. unfortunately not really, but there is a couple that may be referencing it.  "out of my body, and flying above." the heaven's gate cult believed that the body was merely a vehicle your being, (i don't know if they used the word "soul") would essentially leave and enter the next stage in existence, away from earth, possibly on an aircraft, reunited with god. the other one is "go in the world and start over again and again, as many times as you can" the cult believed that god came as a human on earth to warn those of when the world would be recycled, or, restarted. once as jesus, the second as applewhite. a little farfetched, but it's something to consider. - it could also just mean you keep trying to keep your faith but you just don't make the cut for heaven, hinted at in the following lines after it. overall i really enjoyed this song, "boost", like i said, took a little getting used to but it's alright. i really love the music and the bridge is amazing. it's nice to see them incorporate other genres.

* sunshine riptide

this song immediately became my favourite when i heard the previews  - i absolutely love the reggae and i think burna boy did an excellent job. he really spices up the track. this song sounds really pleasant but it's got some of the deeper lyrics on the album in it, blatantly talking about pills, drinking and smoking. it sounds as if this song is guiding you through a manic episode but using substances to mask it - as many do. it has a heavy narcissistic feel to me, burna boy even calls himself "god" at the first part of his verse. it also touches on relationships again, possibly blaming them for the cause of all of their emotions. "you came in like a wave when i was feeling alright." give this song more credit, it deserves it. it truly is a riptide, it's so aggressive and it has so much stuff going on in it.

* bishops knife trick

here it is, my favourite. this song - i can't even explain how much i love this song. it's like a slow rock ballad with a modern twist, it's so beautiful. the bridge makes me break down into tears almost every time. - sadly i feel like this song may be referencing pete's suicide attempt - "these are the last blues we're ever gonna have" - and you probably all are aware what blues mean. ativan. also "im just a full tank away from freedom" i feel like this could be referencing a full bottle of pills to death, but that may be stretching it. on a lighter note, this is totally chicago is so two years ago part 2, just on a sadder note. it's an amazing closer to the album.

many people say mania is too jumbled and inconsistent - i do believe this was their intention since bipolar disorder is unpredictable. though, it could have a better arrangement to flow smoother, perhaps they could've made the second listing for the listening experience, and the original for the more artistic presentation of the album.

is mania my favourite album? no. is mania a bad album? no. is it their best? no. do i like it? yes.

overall, i feel like this album was a success and im very grateful for their fearless experimentation. this era has been quite an entertaining, pleasant experience so far. i give it a 7.5/10

[briinleyisms]

LMAO HEY MTV IT’S MARCY WELCOME 2 MY CRIB

“LMAO” AKA “ ( x ) ( x ) ( x ) #squadgoals”

ok so lowkey have had this muse for like ten years (ive been rping since i was seven fucking beat me) but every rp i bring her 2??? drops after like??? five days likE LISTEN THAT IS NOT HOW U RUN A RP LISTEN!!! UP!!! PUT UR BACK INTO IT!!!

anyhoW ok unlike ivan since i was still figuring out his bg w rosie when i posted his ‘intro’ i actually got brinley figured out and there’s a long version and a short version. imma put the tl;dr up here ok bc the non-tl;dr is overwhelming. personality is like.... toTALLY POINTLESS WHO CARES ABT PERSONALITY but it’s at the bottom i guess :\

TL;DR:

ok basically she was born into a death cult in aliso viejo, california (tbh i just looked up rural places in ca and chose the most recently established one i could find lmao) called ‘the children of the revelation’ bc im extra. lots of fear-mongering revolving around the idea of The End of Days™. leader was a total prophet and totally abused his prophet power. planned out ritual for end of days was lowkey highkey terrifying (‘let’s go die in the river of miracles’!!!!!! [too extra help me]) and one of the ‘apostles’ was like ‘i quit’ and left iN THE DEAD OF NIGHT!!! and lowkey basically kidnapped a few ppl including BUT NOT LIMITED TO brinley and they wound up in hillsboro and ‘apostle luke’ eventually left and now she’s in the oikos house. fin.

also sik tattooz bro.

ACTUAL VERSION THAT IS LONG(ER):

TW: cult (ofc), death, violence

firST it’s of note that i considered being rly fucking extra by putting quotations around her name bc her birth name is genesis like the book of revelations which brings me 2

my Extra™ title for this cult: “The Children of the Revelation”

so it was like a commune located in some place in CA that’s apparently rural and has only recently been established called ‘aliso viejo’ and lmao watch one of yall live there

but yeAH OK commune not just a church like the church of scientology like full on “u chose this life time 2 prove ur dedication”

alright so just full disclosure that i really really want to get this right and i know no one who has ever been in a cult (let alone a death cult) and i myself have not (as is likely expected) so i have already done research but i plan on doing like 100x more since this is a really serious subject. serious to the point that i’m not even using text slang (although i will when i get on with the intro post i just gotta).

anyhoW w that info out of the way time 2 get 2 the actual like point of the cult

first of all her mom joined the cult before she was born (ofc) and she was the gift!!! between her mom and one of the leader’s ‘apostles’!!!

so!!! 

basically: “lmao ur not leviticus enough 4 us.” (probs their slogan)

ok but obviously that’s scratching the surface like the real fuckery lied w/in two thing:

literal death cult (will get to that)

also doomsday cult

which sometimes go hand-in-hand anyhow

ok so the doomsday thing is what was more prominent in her life since she was 16 when she #escaped and never rly disobeyed (so many things 2 get 2!!!)

the leader’s name was ezekiel (cheever this is actually salem circa 1690) and he perceived himself as a prophet and naturally.... had prophecies. one of the most prominent ones was that the rapture would occur at 11:59PM on December 24th, 2011 (take away four days and add a year and u got the end of the world according 2 misconceptions abt the mayan calendar!)

the idea was that if u obeyed what ezekiel told u 2 do (he believed he was the fourth reincarnation of christ) u would end up going 2 heaven on judgment day but if u disobeyed...... yikes.

it depended on the magnitude of the ‘crime’ but for the most part if u disobeyed more than two times u were killed. u were hung or drowned and u were made an example of.

if u disobeyed less than two times and ur ‘offense’ wasnt worthy of immediate death dw!!! u can scrape by w torture!!! and also be made an example of!!!

so basically u were at ezekiel’s beck and call. every little bit of labor he asked u 2 do was like.......... if u didnt do it yiKES!!! ofc children werent expected 2 perform any laborious tasks rather just 2 listen and take in everything ezekiel and his apostles told them.

his ‘apostles’ who (as u can infer) served as his right-hand men were the fathers 2 all the children who would be born inside the cult. they kept ppl in line. they taught the kids when ezekiel was busy. those sorta things u kno???

ok so imma skip over some of the details that are like.... worse??? like theyre all bad but like these are the things i j feel like shouldnt be brought up in an intro post but theyre in the hella long rough-draft bio here that i went ahead and put up for this purpose rly

SO THAT BEING SAID THIS WAS SORTA A WAY 2 SHOW THE SORTA ENVIRONMENT SHE WAS RAISED IN AND IT SOUNDS FUN AND I WOULD LOVE 2 BE A PART OF IT.

so ok imma try 2 make this next part go quicker

basically the ‘judgment day’ was closing in and ezekiel’s plans were rly like no thank u ( (TW: SUICIDE) ’hey guys! 2 make sure we get into heaven not only do u have 2 follow all of my commands since im jesus’s fourth reincarnation but we all also have 2 walk into a river with rocks in our pockets at the time the world is supposed 2 scorch with hell’s fire!’ (END TW) fun christmas activities for u and ur bae.

as it started closing in it was basically all ezekiel talked abt during his ‘sermons’ like wtf??? what a church service.

‘apostle luke’ (i hate myself) was like “ok..... ok the more u talk abt this the less believable it sounds..... like wtf jesus’s fourth reincarnation??? pics or it didnt happen.” and after some months he wound up concocting this plan 2 #escape bc honestly??? 

so he eventually eSCAPED in the deAD OF NIGHT and basically kidnapped ppl like ok sure luke

one of said ppl was brinley which i kno is unexpected. (honestly i think this is like??? maybe the third time i brought her up in all of these bullets??? honestly @me

“wAS NOT WILLING 2 GO!!! WAS NOT HAPPY 2 GO!!! WAS NOT READY 2 GO!!! NEEDS SOMEONE 2 FOLLOW!!! DOES NOT KNO WHAT 2 DO!!! DOES NOT APPRECIATE THIS!!! IS SHOOK!!!” - everyone luke fucking kidnapped then basically had 2 serve as a stand-in ezekiel for

they ended up in hillsboro after like 84 years and he was like “OK EVERYONE GETS NEW NAMES!!! :D” and tbh he probs just pulled out one of those baby books pointed 2 a random name and bam!!! that was their name

so even tho i’ve been calling her brinley this whole time just 2 make it??? not confusing??? genesis became brinley and she was no longer a book of revelations she is apparently a name that’s most prominent in utah

over time ppl pce’d out (not rly bc they wanted 2 but bc they needed 2 like u get what i mean.)

it ended up j being three ppl in their shitty apt!!! one luke one brinley and one kid who has a name but 1) i havent mentioned it yet and 2) i dont want 2 go look for it in the bio tbh

doomsday came and brinley was shook!!! rly rly shook!!! trying 2 find out what 2 do that would be similar enough 2 what thE CHILDREN of the corn would do!!! and luke was like ( x )

a lot more climatic than im acting like it was but this is so long i dont want 2 spend too much time on anything anymore but ok minor point is homemade inkin’ machine (legit mainly bc ryan ashley -dave navarro voice- [has/had] what it takes... to be ink master. -end voice-)

ok luke left eventually and idk so did the kid idk that’s in there and at first she was like “lmao idk what 2 do ig imma squat [man ivan and brinley #parallels] and keep doin what im doin” and she did and ok

aFTER ALL OF THIS OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST WRITE she wound up w the oikos (bc honestly u can only squat for so long and who the fuck would be like “yes! i would like 2 be inked by a kid on the street who doesnt rly have anywhere 2 put anything! yes!” [i would be like that #exposed]) and is now somewhere where ppl dont think the world will end soon wtf

personality but who cares abt that:

WOW THAT WAS LONG

ok!!! so i never rly had a clear definition of her personality i just like... waited 2 see (BEFORE THE RP CLOSED FUCK THAT) but then i watched a long-ass chipotle commercial (theres this one part where a cow is basically abt 2 be slaughtered and idk it’s so sad it was rly playin up that pathos i wanted 2 cry) and i was suddenly like!!! a lightbulb!!! “aha!!! basically fiona apple’s cover of ‘pure imagination’”

SO 2 GET ON W THAT

it’s been five years since she escaped and started desocializing from that lyf she knew but like............ five years compared 2 sixteen i mean which one’s gonna weigh the other out tbh (i just typed ‘way’ i cannot believe myself pls send me back 2 first grade)

so ok literally LITERALLY it is this song like im tryna think of how 2 explain it???

like the lyrics of it are (u kno willy wonka) v bright (albeit a bit ??? during that spin part) but the bg in fiona apple’s cover is so??? dark??? and honestly fiona apple’s voice just makes everything seem darker (i love fiona apple shes such a queen)

so it’s a v contradicting song

and she has a v contradicting personality

like ok one big thing that fits this contradiction is she feels like she needs someone 2 follow??? since that’s how it’s been almost all of her life??? (come 2 think of it i wouldnt be surprised w my subconscious if that’s the reason she’s still in the oikos house [asides from jobless but]) but at the same time like??? she WANTS 2 be independent??? she WANTS 2 be able 2 build a life for herself and around herself and not someone else but??? it just doesnt work that way???

MORE CONTRADICTION!!! bc of that whole ‘death/doomsday cult’ thing she is a p paranoid person??? but??? at the same time??? c h i l l ??? i mean in any case shes always gonna be lowkey paranoid but she doesnt??? rly act that way most of the time??? this could also be filed under “very curious about the norms of this brand new society but also very wary and prefers 2 Not™”

MORE!!! lmao ok religion idek what 2 do here honestly it’s so fucked. she knoWS IT’S SO FUCKED IT’S SO FUCKKING FUCKED but 16/21 years like??? v hard 2 get over that??? buT IT’S SO FUCKED. like no hate no discriminate (speaking of no discriminate highkey bi i love wlw) but also “everyone is a sinner and so am i we are living in sin we are going 2 burn it is only a matter of time satan where u @???” so like??? scared and wary??? but also??? fucked.

A LOT OF FUCKING FUCKERY. 

A FIONA APPLE SONG.

THANK U AND GOODNIGHT

if u would like 2 plot pls do feel free 2 like this or hmu

and if u actually READ that all then holy shit ur a saint u would make it 2 heaven on rapture day

[sparklyjojos]

I’ve finished reading The World is Made out of Closed Rooms a few weeks ago, but didn’t really feel like talking about it. Which should already tell you that yeah, uh, this wasn’t the best Maijo I’ve read. Sure, there are some interesting meta tidbits here and there that I’ll write more about later, and it has some really good parts (as well as some infuriating ones), but mostly it was... eh. I’ve been told it’s important to know this before reading Disco Detective Wednesday, though. So here’s a summary, just to get this out.

(tw: suicide, sibling death, dysfunctional family, an obnoxious case of Dead Lesbians, mentions of nazi violence and antisemitism)

--

The narrator is Nishimura Yukio, a boy who lives next to the Banba family and is good friends with Banba “Runbaba” Junjirou. They knew each other since they were kids. When Yukio was thirteen and Runbaba twelve, they witnessed Runbaba’s 19-year-old sister Ryouko fall from the family house’s roof onto the concrete below, and the grave injuries caused her death a few days afterwards. The boys had actually been on the very same roof at the time, but couldn’t do anything to stop her. They weren’t even sure whether it was suicide or an accident.

After her death, Runbaba closed himself in his room for a few days, and because of stress developed a nasty psychogenic rash that soon landed him in the hospital. (And it served for a lot of juvenile gross out humor which I really didn’t like.) Only after he was discharged, it really hit him that his sister was dead.

Ryouko had always been smart but withdrawn, and used to run away from home a lot, walking wherever her feet took her, often to distant prefectures. (’Everything’s better than staying home,’ Runbaba said once after he and Yukio met her on her way out of town. The book never really states outright what’s happening in the Banba family, but it’s obvious that something’s off). This caused their father, Banba Kouji, to fit iron bars in her room’s windows, but it still didn’t stop her from getting on the roof that fateful day. As Runbaba and Yukio investigated her room, they found a hidden hole in the wall leading to the adjacent room - the father’s study, from which one could go up on the rooftop. They also found a lifesize doll that Ryouko probably wanted to put in her bed to hide her absence.

Up on the rooftop, Runbaba realized what had killed Ryouko: a power line running close to the roof, which in places lacked protective coating. Back on the ground, they found a discarded fishing rod that belonged to the family’s father, and they remembered that Ryouko had been holding something long when they saw her on the roof. She must have tried to use the rod to swing herself on the power line to escape, but tragically chose the wrong place to do so.

She hadn’t wanted to die; in fact, it was her burning will to live that led her to attempt to escape the locked room her father made, again and again and again.

---

A few years later, when Yukio was 15, the boys went on a school trip to Tokyo. When during free time Yukio was away from the group, he witnessed a fight between a woman and a man which quickly turned physical, and developed into the woman mercilessly beating up the man. Yukio tried to stop the fight, but it only resulted in the woman hitting him on reflex. While Yukio was dazed, the scared woman took him in her car to her house in Urawa, Saitama Prefecture to look after him. Which was a weird way to act, but it seemed the woman was just this kind of a weird person.

Her name was Inoue Tsubaki, and she had a younger sister Enoki. They lived alone ever since their parents died in an accident. The man Tsubaki beat up earlier was her boss Taniguchi Tooru with whom they had a fling behind the back of Taniguchi’s wife Marie. [Lore note: Taniguchi Tooru was the name of one of the Angel Bunnies in Tsukumojuku, namely one of the two “murderers” in the Seventh Story]. Obviously their relationship was pretty much over.

Tsubaki spent some time babbling about all her life problems before Yukio managed to convince her to arrange him a ride back to Tokyo. On the way he met Tsubaki’s younger sister, Enoki, and they mainly talked about how Tsubaki was a weird person. Yukio came back to the hotel in Tokyo that his school group stayed in. As it turned out, Runbaba had been so worried about him that he actually detectived his way after Yukio all the way to the Inoue sisters’ house, and also fell victim to their weird hospitality. He returned to the hotel later, just like Yukio having mixed feelings about the sisters, but in the end they ended up keeping in touch with them.

---

One day Yukio got a call from distressed Enoki, who said she and Tsubaki had to flee their home in fear of Taniguchi Tooru coming after them, and they were headed for Nishi Akatsuki. Yukio immediately brought that news to Runbaba, who suspected a link to a case that happened four days prior. A certain Taniguchi Marie and her young sons Kento and Kanji had been stabbed to death, and their bodies were then dragged all around the house for unkown reasons. Two remaining members of the family went missing: Marie’s husband, Taniguchi Tooru; and Marie’s unborn third child, who had been cut out of her stomach and taken away. That baby’s name was Saburou.

[Lore note: this Saburou’s name kanji are 三朗, slightly different from Natsukawa Saburou’s 三郎. Both are common names for a third son, so this may be just a coincidence... or is it?]

Before Runbaba took a closer look at the Taniguchi case, he took some time to close the previous serial murderer case he’d just solved. Runbaba figured out that in every crime the victims’ bodies were arranged to form a mitate of one of four paintings of Edward Hopper: Cape Cod Morning, Morning in a City, Morning Sun, and Nighthawks. [Runbaba briefly explains what mitate is in a way very similar to Tsukumojuku’s explanations - “you know, like the design of Japanese gardens where a pond represents the sea, and a stone is a mountain?”]. All of the “paintings” could be seen from outside the crime scene through a window, and Runbaba believed the serial killer would live somewhere from where he could safely observe the first scene, likely the next building over. He instructed the police to investigate the man living there, Sugawara Yuu.

Back to the Taniguchi case. Runbaba considered many possibilities as to why the bodies had been moved back and forth through the house - was the culprit scared of what he’d done and tried to help them, or did he want to draw a giant symbol with blood, or did he need the combined weight of the three bodies for something (At one point Runbaba voiced the option that maybe the culprit had wanted to use them instead of a pickle stone, and at this point even Yukio’s like, dude, be serious, and Runbaba’s like But I am serious! Detectives, man).

---

Since they couldn’t solve anything by just sitting around, the boys caught a train to meet the Inoue girls halfway. They successfully found Enoki, who told them that because of a fight with her sister they sat in different compartments, and Tsubaki would probably show up soon. As it turned out, Enoki hadn’t known anything about the Taniguchi murder case; the sister fled home because of Taniguchi Tooru’s stalking, which had been going on for over two weeks.

They noticed Tsubaki in the crowd, but she seemed to avoid them, and it took them a good while of trailing her to find out the reason: Tsubaki had taken a tiny baby with her on the train and kept it a secret even from Enoki. That baby was little Saburou. Tsubaki had been in the Taniguchi house on the day of the murder, and managed to at least save the baby. Runbaba and Tsubaki went to a hospital to check if the baby’s alright (it was perfectly healthy), pass it to the police, then take steps to make sure the sisters’ house is safe. Meanwhile, Yukio and Enoki stayed at a hotel.

Then there’s a weird part in which we learn the content of a video tape, allegedly made by Taniguchi. It’s a short stop-motion movie, but done with the corpses of the Taniguchi family, moving around the house as if they were alive. (It’s described as “Pingu, but with corpses” Thanks for that visual, Maijo.) At one point in the movie Tsubaki appears at the front door, falls down [I guess she was knocked out?] and also gets to “star” in the animation. The plot of it follows Tsubaki coming clear to Marie about her affair with Tooru, and while Marie at first seems to take it in stride, she and the kids end up mercilessly beating Tsubaki, the end. I’m calling this part weird because after reading the entire book I can’t for my life figure out who made it and why and I feel like I’ve missed something.

---

Runbaba called Yukio soon after, informing him that Taniguchi Tooru had been found dead in the girls’ house, and that it seemed to have been either suicide or a locked room murder. Judging by the clues, Taniguchi got stabbed (stabbed himself?) with a knife in the kitchen, then moved to the dining room, and he or someone else moved the furniture and closed the door and windows. Then Taniguchi (or someone else?) removed the knife, cut his own carotid artery and bled to death. Next to the body there was a single symbol written in blood, あ [hiragana for “a”].

Once Yukio and Enoki joined them at the scene, Runbaba explained a few more things he had figured out. First: the investigation found undisputable pieces of evidence that the murderer of Taniguchi Marie, Kento and Kanji was actually Taniguchi Marie herself. Second: that case was probably what you call a “forced double suicide”, as his family’s death maybe pushed Taniguchi Tooru to commit suicide as well. (So there’s no trick to this locked room; it was just suicide.) Although it’s possible that he really got stabbed by someone else who ran away, and only then he went into the dining room, made the locked room, and finished himself off. But who would stab him?

Enoki pointed out that  あ was a symbol Tsubaki had used to secretly mark the dates she was to meet with Taniguchi back when they had been dating. But Tsubaki was with Runbaba at the time of the crime, so she had an alibi. Then Enoki realized that there was another lover Tsubaki had nowadays, Koizumi Mitsuo, who was similar in looks to Tsubaki and used the same perfume, so it’s probable that in the dark of the night Taniguchi mistook Koizumi for Tsubaki, so he felt heart-broken when she stabbed him in protection / anger about him stalking Tsubaki.

She, because yep, Koizumi was Tsubaki’s girlfriend. Tsubaki’s bisexual, which the boys apparently had known about all this time but didn’t share with the reader for some reason. They had a short conversation about this with Enoki. Runbaba at one point said that he didn’t think there were any gay people in Nishi Akatsuki or at least in his school year [Hey, uh, Runbaba? Buddy? Pal? I’m sorry to break it to you, but if you’re seriously this ignorant about society, that just shows you’re not a very good detective]. At least Enoki countered it saying that this sounds very strange, since it’s something that a certain percentage of people are regardless of the situation, you know!

[Even with Runbaba’s comment and Yukio’s overall I’m-a-teenage-boy-as-straight-as-a-board narration, at this point I was pretty happy that we got a confirmed bisexual character and her girlfriend...]

---

[...and then the very next scene had both Koizumi and Tsubaki dying horribly because Koizumi attacked the police car escorting Tsubaki (since she had saved little Saburou the media was bothering her) and set it on fire and both women burned to death.

God, I can’t believe how blatant the Dead Lesbians trope is in this book. It takes place just PAGES after they were confirmed to be wlw, and without any fucking narrative reasoning as for why it even happened. Like, sure, we’re told that the last email from Tsubaki to Koizumi was basically “I just realized what’s precious to me in life and I’m breaking out with you, bye” so I guess this was supposed to be revenge/”if I can’t have you no one will” on Koizumi’s part, but... really, Maijo? Really? You wrote so many fucking pages about Yukio thinking very Straight Teenage Boy thoughts and expected me to relate to them and then you pull THIS shit off?!

So yeah, this is the moment when this book absolutely plummetted for me and never quite recovered.]

---

After Tsubaki’s death [grrr...], Enoki came to Nishi Akatsuki to live with Yukio’s family. When Yukio and Runbaba were high school seniors, they investigated another case. This one involved a set of four weird square buildings in the mountains of Nishi Akatsuki, built next to each other like this (white rectangles are windows, black ones are doors):

Inside each building were a few several weeks old corpses, coming up to a total of 14 between the four locked rooms (very locked, since the boys had come here before the police, so nobody had went inside yet). Some of the bodies were arranged in weird scenes that Runbaba recognized as something like a very morbid 4koma. From bottom right clockwise: there once was a rich guy, there once was a woman, they fell in love, and finally had a violent falling out:

There’s one more corpse lying outside between the buildings, and Runbaba assessed that the man had somehow died of hunger. Runbaba also noticed that the crosses in one of the rooms [upper right in the picture] were taken from what looked like a very old cemetery in the forest. Then he climbed on top of one of the buildings, found the murder weapon - a knife, now stuck in a tree trunk high above the ground - and found a way to open a hole in the roof, which must have been how the murderer got outside after locking the door and window.

Runbaba explained the case to Yukio. The murderer was Sugawara Yuu, the same man who had arranged the Edward Hopper-inspired “paintings”... and the same man who died of hunger between the buildings. Sugawara hadn’t made or owned the buildings, he just found and used them for his fucked up art expression. This time he didn’t base it off of someone else’s paintings, though, but off of his original work. [Runbaba has an interesting opinion that this shift from merely imitating others to expressing oneself may be how people can  “grow up” / achieve “growth”.] One of Sugawara’s paintings (actual paintings, not crime scenes) had a similar layout, but portrayed stages of life. Clockwise from top left: 1) birth/childhood, 2) inevitable conflict with parents when growing up, 3) reconcillation with parents when one’s at the peak of one growth, 4) formation of a new family.

Runbaba then explained that the nearby old cemetary was likely a remainder of the chaos that had swept through Nishi Akatsuki around WWII. Back then, a lot of Jewish people came to the village to live in hiding [as we may remember from Smoke, Soil and Sacrifices which talked about it briefly in context of Hans Natsukawa], but unfortunately they were followed by the Germans, which resulted in a great deal of violence. Runbaba didn’t know which side the graves belonged to, but somebody, likely the caretaker of the mountain, was still leaving flowers on them. [I’d say it’s obvious which side these graves belong to considering the crosses and flowers. Then again, as fucked up as it is, ignorant gentiles sometimes do put crosses on old Jewish graves because they consider a cross to be a general symbol of death (no it isn’t, PLEASE don’t do that), so I guess this isn’t completely out of question if the mountain’s owner’s ignorant enough. ...Or it’s just Runbaba who’s very ignorant about yet another thing. HOW are you even a detective, dude. Just how.]

The four buildings were also connected to that bloody past; they may have been interrogation and torture rooms, or a small prison, or something like that. Runbaba pointed out that each roof had what looked like a giant kanji 王 - lord / king, maybe referring to God? [or if we go for meta interpretation, the first kanji of “Otaro”?...]. You could opening the triangular sections of the roof, as shown here (that stickman in the middle is the murderer’s body):

Then Runbaba demonstrated that pressing a hidden switch on the wall allowed the buildings to be rotated. Rotating the four buildings so their corners touched, and then opening all the roofs parts so the pieces of the 王 kanji touched each other, would put those pieces together in an entirely different symbol - the swastika.

[...yeah. Uh. Alright. I’m uncomfortable. I am VERY uncomfortable. More so because I remember the hidden purpose of the triangle warehouse from Smoke, Soil and Sacrifices, and the fact this new set of buildings is clearly meant to be similar to the warehouse (or even inspired by it, if you consider the meta theory that Closed Rooms may have been written by Natsukawa Saburou) is, uhhhhhhh... I don’t like this one bit. So while I know I should probably post the next picture so people can better visualize how the buildings and the roof tiles move, I’m not putting swastikas my blog, no sir.]

Anyway... this rotation maneuver made the walls of the buildings touch each other so that a fifth locked room was formed inside, and that’s where the criminal, Sugawara, was closed in by someone after the murders. After Sugawara starved to death, that mysterious someone set the rooms back to their original positions as if nothing happened. Who was that person? Maybe the same one who left flowers on the graves. Runbaba decided he’d need to talk with the mountain’s owner - Mr. Natsukawa (!) - to figure out if he didn’t have anything to do with it.

But nothing came out of the investigation, and in the end, while the case was technically solved, Sugawara’s murderer was never found.

---

Eventually, Yukio and Runbaba graduated high school. Runbaba wanted to keep on being a detective and didn’t consider going to college, which his father was upset about. Things escalated and Runbaba’s father just like years before put security bars in his kid’s windows, to make him “focus on learning for the entrance exams”. Runbaba stayed home, and slowly Yukio lost contact with him.

Yukio couldn’t quite understand why someone as smart as the great detective Runbaba 12, who could solve difficult locked rooms cases left and right, would be so helpless against the locked room made by his family.

Eventually, Yukio went to the Banba house, and got into an argument with Runbaba’s parents about how their son wasn’t a child anymore and that he’d have no problems being self-reliant as a detective. When all arguments failed, Yukio yelled that Runbaba’s father would only drive his son to death, just like it had been the case with his daughter Ryouko. The father answered that well, not really, because there’s a difference between Runbaba and Ryouko, and it’s that Runbaba is not an idiot. That line made Yukio snap, punch the dude in the face and yell about how Ryouko was a good kid, that her parents never even tried to help her, and that the only complete idiots here were them, and then he stormed off back to his house leaving the completely shocked couple behind.

Later, Enoki - who apparently had been regularly sneaking up on the roof near Runbaba’s window and talking with him for days now - commended Yukio for his verbal throwdown, and according to her Runbaba was pretty amazed too. (Also, Yukio starts thinking the two are dating because he misinterpreted Enoki giving a cute encouraging forehead kiss to Runbaba for romantic interest or something.)

The iron bars disappeared from the windows after that. Maybe a month later, on the anniversary of Ryouko’s death, Yukio saw Runbaba standing on the roof, in the very same spot Ryouko had been standing that tragic day seven years prior, and burning pieces of paper. Terrified that Runbaba was about to either jump to his death, or set the house on fire, Yukio told Enoki to bring help and then got on the roof himself. He asked what Runbaba was thinking about (”about Ryouko”) and what were the papers he was burning (”Locked rooms. Ideas for them.” He came up with fifteen different ones, apparently.). Yukio said that burning them was a waste of ideas (”Maybe I could write a book using them?” “Hey, don’t steal my ideas! Come up with your own.”). Runbaba finally admitted that they were ideas on how to kill his parents, and Yukio agreed that yeah, maybe it’s better for these to burn.

At this point some people Enoki had alarmed gathered in front of the house - Yukio’s parents, random neighbours, though not Runbaba’s parents, as they had gone to visit Ryouko’s grave - and pleaded with Runbaba to come down, but he didn’t listen.

Finally Runbaba said, “Yukio? Go back alone. I’m going to fly now.”

[Okay, I have to give the novel credit: this entire finale is really great at keeping up a great amount of tension even through their seemingly relaxed conversation. At this point I was legitimately worried.]

Runbaba then opened the secret passage Ryouko had once used, retrieved two items -- the life-sized doll Ryouko had made, and a crowbar -- then suddenly broke into a run and jumped off the roof. The gathered people screamed in terror, but soon realized that what hit the ground was just a doll, and the real Runbaba had hooked the crowbar onto the edge of the roof to keep himself from falling. Apparently Ryouko had had a similar idea seven years prior -- to just pretend like she’s falling to scare her parents, but really just swinging herself on the power line.

Yukio helped Runbaba get back on the roof and was like “so it’s fine, right? you’re coming back down now?”, but Runbaba only got very quiet. So Yukio told him that there was indeed a difference between him and Ryouko - and it was that Runbaba had people who were more than ready to help him. To prove this, he climbed back to the ground and asked everyone to bring their mattresses and pillows. Soon a giant pile had accumulated in front of the Banba house.

“Let’s go!” Yukio yelled. “Fly, Runbaba!”

“Let’s go!” Runbaba yelled back, and unexpectedly continued, “The reason-- the reason why I’m calling myself Runbaba 12-- it’s because Ryouko died when I was twelve, and it’s like a part of me got stuck back then--!”

“Hey, hey, no self-psychoanalysis now, just fly!”

“That’s anticlimactic!” Runbaba argued, but jumped, and landed perfectly safely on the pile of mattresses. He was fine, but cried a lot afterwards, and apologized a lot to Ryouko for not helping her all those years ago. When his parents came back, he also punched his dad, “for Ryou-chan”, and the dad endured it without a word. And everyone lived happily ever after.

--

[To sum up, this book actually had a really tense and heartwarming and sad and even funny at places finale that I liked. If you took just the Banba family conflict plotline and put it together as a short story, I’d probably love it. I’d even tolerate the deluge of immature humor because yeah, I get it, the protagonists are teenage boys, and Yukio is quite self-aware that his main method of trying to defuse tension is to say stupid jokes and hope they stick. But then the middle of the book ranged anywhere from “eh, it’s fine” to “oh fuck OFF Maijo”, and I mostly enjoyed what few meta references were there.]