#anyway im still at work so ill analyze it a bit more when I come back home :]

[ink--theory]

so...that new trailer huh?

[hopeheartfilia]

Update on what i screenshoted from School Bus Graveyard

Also I found out that the reason it seemed so familiar when i started seeing it around was because my friend literally recommended it to me a few months back..

anyway

Ashlyn and Aiden being adorable hours. there is so much of them being cute, and Im always just. glad they can get what little comfort they may from getting closer because those kids sure need it

Another one, it is jsut. so soft. so important to me. Yes offer each other support and closeness in theese hard times, humans are mode for community

I dont think ive mentioned this but its so important to me how all the kids are caretakers of the group in their own ways, like they all care SO much and they show it in different ways but its undeniable.

Ashlyn cares in the way she tries to keep everyone alive and takes on responsibility and also in the way she is on the lookout for danger and generally tries to make plans and get them out of trouble

Taylor takes care of them in a more emotional core capacity, as in she has communiction skills that a majaority of them are indeed lacking in, she says things that need to be said and she helps keep them all together

Tyler on the other hand tends to care for people more in a way fo things he can Do, like doing laundry and feeding when they lived with their mom, practical things, and in the group its very much taking point, hitting things, going over and scaring of that guy that was bullying logan

Ben takes care of them in a medical way, he ptches them up physically and he worries about them and offers his silent support, and like he is still such a teen about it, they all are, but just. When they met up in the facility and tyler was like how about some words of encouragement? tell me its going to be okay and shit, and Ben just wnet and touched him while doing thumbs up, that was so sweet and so teen behaviour i love them all. And of course he is also protective in the way that he gets angry on logans behalf and would also hit someone physically as well

And the way Aiden cares for their little group might be filled with jokes, and a lot of adrenaline and overall danger seeking behaviour, but he still tries so hard, like yes he bothers people on purpose but he also livens a lot of situations, and when they need him he is there and delivers, he tries to ground ben, and ashlyn as well, he is the sort of prescence that you know will stay by your side

And Logan probably shows the most outwards signs of being scared but he still does so much and he clearly cares about the group back. He protects their back and worries about them and when push comes to shove he is there and pulling more then his weight, he helps so much with figuiring out the way the shadow realm works (thats what im calling it. it seems correct to me) and when he got that card? Like he doesnt seem to be very used to having actual close friends, which is true for most of them, but he does care about people and he does try to help others

Idk i just love all theese kids

also, this one hit different, i was so worried about tyler, im glad he is alright-ish for now

Also i know its easy to see how Ashlyn is a lot like her mom, especially in the beginning chapthers but i think its cool to see how much she is like her dad as well

I know there are a lot of other things to be said, and that i probably need a little more time to properly think about stuff and analyze before i can make any actual analysis but for now Ill probably put it a bit on the backburner

On the topic of theories and stuff thou, the phantoms to me have very much seemed connected to shadows in some way, as the changes in the real world affect their shadows, but people who dont see it dont seem to see the changes aeither, as we sall with ashlyns parents, and the things they said abour rifts - it overall definelty has a different, potentionally mirror dimention feeling. Also, If the phanthoms are caugh people, then the giant sentepede thing is likely a turned animal maybe? It seems likely to me that the forest would have less humanoid beings because it is less populated

Also im really curious about Logans grandparents and hoe they got that sedative. Also i have the bad feeling that their parents will get hit with the comatose version of being taken into the rift.

Also im curious about the power surges our guys cause. They seem to be emotion based, but I dont see why the other victims wouldnt cause them? Maybe they didnt stay together? or maybe they didnt live long enough? likely both but im not sure its tge reason. Also if it IS connnected to their emotional/psychological state then does that have anything to do with why aiden recovered faster? Personally i think it also has to do with the type of injury, but like do you heal faster in the shadow realm if you have depression? Or does it have something to do with your own self perception of youe wounds?

[cathalbravecog]

long ramble, haven't had one of these in a while! if you read this, have fun. it's headcanons/thoughts on some stuff. i don't talk about my thoughts on story stuff publicly much anymore especially because 1) i'm shy 2) trust issues 3) bad rsd 4) i forgot the last point

i was writing for oNCE yesterday (some headcanon stuff, for myself, won't be posting that unless i change the wording of some of it to make more sense because i ramble a lot and it's a mess. like i am doing right now. also that turned into being mostly about hr in the end because i am ill. now hopefully this motivation will get me to write my mary and archie stuff.)

and when i went to bed i was thinking about some stuff in toontown, mostly the cogs - and how things work. these are things i ponder on very often and have talked about with my friends many time, throwing ideas back and forth and my headcanons for how things work.

though, there's one thing i really wonder about, and that's where cogs come from in ttcc exactly. in 'that' way though of course to keep things on the same rating as the game is i won't discuss anything explicit so don't worry. (besides they're robots and also are sexless to me, anything related to gender is purely cosmetic to them. you are usually assigned a certain expression when built though, but can change that later on. that's how i explain trans cogs.)

i think about how there are canonical families and children, and that they have "built" dates and places where they've been built. it's obvious as they're robots, they're not born they're built and made.

it's a bit difficult to explore with the limited info we have, which is kind of both an hassle to work with, but also beautiful because you can let your creativity go and make up your own headcanons, without things being set in too much canon. it's also difficult due to how different the suit culture is to us humans and also what we see from the toons which is by nature more familiar to us.

we also do not know much about suitopia, or other possible places where cogs live.

(i, personally, imagine suitopia as essentially a big country where most if not all cogs live. it has it's own regions, cities... all that. where as c.o.g.s. inc has built itself to be essentially it's own small country/community, if that makes sense. though cogs don't always only mention suitopia, at least once 'the whole world' is used. this is irrelevant tho so i won't discuss that but it's still a 'core' headcanon i have - as other things i may hc rely on this personal interpretation / headcanon.

but be aware i do not know everything is canon and can discuss things outside my realm of HCs and interpretations, but if i go deeper into like, let's say, analyzing a cog and imagining their backstory, instantly assume i'm using all these things. sorry for the side ramble, i want to make things clear for possible future reference.)

i wish it will be expanded upon slightly in the future, even a slightest crumb of what it's like out there and i can have a field day with it. i do enjoy the vagueness tho, again, as i've said we do not need to have all the information out there and it's not necessary to the main stories that are being told but MAN my brain itches for MORE. i demand EXPLANATIONS. and so i make up my own lol and i love that i can do that /gen (there's some stuff i do have an issue with that it was not explained better, but again, fixed that with hcs. talking abt atticus but im not getting into that rn)

there also may be things i am missing - i have known of ttcc's existence since it's early days, but i wasn't there for it and missed being there in person for any lore until i started playing for real in early 2023 and became a part of the community. like, there ARE things i have missed AND small details i am missing. that's one criticism i have about some info being more difficult to access now, but the main stuff is on the wiki an all luckily.

anyways that ramble out of the way... how the heck are cogs made? there's a few ways, that seem contradictory in some ways at first but i just see it as different methods.

we know cogs can change their appearances (their shell) and be "upgraded". we know cogs can even choose to be just their skelecogs (Atticus) and i suppose every other skelecog we see.) we know cogs have families and have their own kids. (cathal and bobby jr come to mind, and also belle's own kids and grandkids. not to mention, we have siblings too - thomas and robert. and their whole family drama DOES involve their unseen parents.) we know many cogs, mostly the managers, come into the company as their are - but also new parts are built, at least for the employee cogs in sellbot hq. (recently re-read the dialogue which confirmed this - literally as you're building your sellbot suit.)

we know cogs are more than just some working machines and do have deeper lives and desires and even relationships, though all instances of a parent/child relationship in ttcc have only one parent. makes sense after all they don't reproduce sexually to put it that way, again they're built and they're robots.)

it's easy to conclude, that, cogs are just built. which is true. but it just makes me wonder. we know they age. we have at least 1 cog who is a literal child, and bobby, in human years at least, looks no older than like, 8 years old. (we also don't know how cogs age. we also know cog's don't die like that, due to the whole deal with atticus. i will talk about this one day i have so many thoughts on it)

we know they grow up and even have schools - they're not programmed with everything. they earn experience as they live life and even have?? education systems? like they're more like people than we thought. (ttcc does make cogs more easily sympathized with and gives us INDIVIDUAL cogs and not just... 'The Cogs'. cogs are the focus of ttcc so of course they're developed more and are more 'human' despite being machines.)

so clearly, there's cogs like bobby. who are built young and eventually grow up. we have not seen a cog growing up yet, at least i don't think. but i wonder how that works. through cartoon logic, do they just grow up? their skelecog and perhaps their shell, too? or do they periodically get upgraded to be larger - wouldn't it make sense to built a cog as, well, an adult already? to program all these things? there may be more limits to this than we think, but also just... cultural things possibly.

the only cog CHILD (not just the child of someone - cathal's an adult. also, redd mention, but redd's adopted so he doesn't count) we ever see is bobby and, he is the child of robert, who is known to be very short. we don't know if bobby's going to grow up, or if this height is what he's just going to be like. we have one image where he's way smaller than robert, and other, more recent ones, where they're a similar heights. is that just art inconsistency due to the nature of all the (amazing) artwork being, well, volounteer work and that not everything is (or has to be) perfect? or did bobby really grow up. i'm talking about the wallet picture and the comics featuring bobby, by the way.

though, as things are, i'm sort of assuming that bobby's going to grow up or be upgraded in some way to "grow up"? i don't think we need an clear explanation for that, and in a universe like this 'cartoon logic' would be enough, but it's still something to think about.

like...how do cogs go about having kids, anyways? all instances we see are visually similar as well. cathal has the same gear for his neck as allan's body does, and they have the same head lightbulbs and wires. bobby jr and robert are both furniture.

i've always assumed that it's like in robots (the movie, that i havent watched in years which would be helpful for all this, probably.) if you decide to have a child just for the experience of raising a child, to have a legacy, or due to a bond with a partner - you literally just build one. perhaps not in the same way as in the movie - in here it definitely requires more paperwork and blueprints. but again, it's interesting to think about! hey company i want a CHILD. i look like this build them like me thanks here's some blueprints. (this also explains the amount of single parents. though belle has to have been married/is married as her honorific is listed as mrs. hey fun fact, non native english speaker here. i didnt know 'mrs' means a lady is married until like this year. i've been on this earth for 19 years.)

like the concept of family is possibly just more social there than anything. duh... can't exactly have the same oil and wires inside of you as Robots .

anyways, so that explains kids... but what about the others? some cogs don't have any families mentioned but it's not hard to assume they come from families with parents and siblings as well. what about the employee cogs? who are quite literally very disposable in a way?

we do have to take into account that after all, employee cogs we see just on and about on the streets are mostly a game mechanic, and there are some individual cogs who ARE cogs who would typically be employees cogs. (jennifer comes to mind first, she's a micromanager but also a secretary and counts as a manager. same goes for judy and so forth.)

and y'know, the game won't have a personality and backstory for each random flunky on the streets you fight. but with often they get destroyed and repaired and that there's just... so many of them! of the same model and appearance... makes you think. is that why they were made? are they truly more robotic than the others, more devoid of 'humanity'? or were they different cogs, perhaps more lower class, who's appearances were changed entirely to fit into more easily fixable and replaceable shell forms? something that's less expensive for the company and for them? i swear i am missing some details on this, but that's for me to re read the wiki and cogs ink for on my own later. (i need to have full info n everything and if i dont bring up that i know one small detail i will explode bc someone will bring it up and make me feel dumb and that's the rsd part and it's often physically painful!)

very hard to tell, i'm sort of content with my thoughts on how cogs have kids, but i hope we ever get a bit more clarity on employee cogs - though it is a bit problematic as these are the guys you beat up on the daily who don't have individual personalities.

like i'm just rambling as i go here man, it was gonna be cohesive but i'm just spitting thoughts here now. like, we have 3 seperate skelecog types - all cogs come with a skelecog like we have a skeleton so that also comes into play. it can be adjusted in ways, most notably the head and also in size. though we do have a 4 arm cog. jason please i love you /p we need more jason content. it's wacky, it's tacky - it's toontown!

fun stuff to think about but i just deep fried my brain. tdlr i guess.

how cogs made. how cogs have kids. how cogs work in general. very swag very cool. guzma cathal spades spamtongender goes on 1568854 different tangents while saying they wont aka your swagesty your adhd symptoms are showing

that's it fellas enjoy 2k words of incomprehensible rambles that i am happy to finally get out! you see the way i explain things is precisely why i almost never do it publicly and i need practice shortening things.

[afuntimepartyy]

★[Introduction post!]★

    Hey, it’s about time I did this huh? anyways, hi!  My name is Mangy/Funtime! I’m a still learning digital artist that’s just trying to get their work out there!  I’m here for a good time, this is NOT a super professional account and currently? that will NEVER be this account’s purpose or intent! 

Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ★

  This is mostly, a “post whatever I want” blog, but I’m working on organizing with tags a bit more to make it easier to sort through my stuff that’s art, rambling, what not!  Im a very reblogs > likes person due to me trying to get my art and ideas out SOMEWHERE in the world, any support is greatly appreciated! 

Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ★

   I DO appreciate tone indicators or tone tags when talking with me occasionally, I can sometimes understand tone just fine through text, but other times I may need a nod in the right direction to what you’re trying to convey.                                     ミ★[Disclaimer before I get into the pronouns! my preferred ones ARE neos, however! if you for some reason have difficulty using them, they/them IS fine- and so is it/its. I will tell you though there IS websites that help you see how neo pronouns would work in a sentence, use those if possible to help you out!] ★彡 ★List of pronouns, listed most preferred to least preferred (but not disliked!)★ Cat/cats/catself, | kit/kits/kitself,| paw/paws/pawself, |They/them/theirs,|  it/its/itself!| cloud/clouds/cloudself | star/stars/starself!

[If you see mutuals rebloging my stuff with the name kat, that’s for them only. Kat is specific to close friends and mutuals! Anyone else I’d prefer for them to use mangy/funtime!!]

★Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ★

  things I tend to enjoy a lot vary in many different shapes and sizes- I LOVE general weird early internet stuff, those in the early 2000′s and so on. Just the general early 2000′s tend to be a favorite discussion of mine, or the general stuff that came out in that era! I adore bright saturated colors, and in art I love fun and cartoony proportions the most! I also love animations, art, and theater! I love examining writing from other things and analyzing it FAR too much! [ meanwhile, my fixations can come in WAVES, and come and go as they please, so I wont bother noting those! ]   ★Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ★  now we’ve gotten all over that, yeah? I feel this introduction post is far too long but I don’t really have any other websites to shorten in! so hopefully this works. ill update it as I go, as well as shorten it if I can! Everything down below is simply to another site i use and post to, farewell for now! hopefully this all said all that needs to be said about me!  ★Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ★

★Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ★ Other socials you can contact/find me on! ★Twitter! [https://twitter.com/AFuntimePartyy] ★Artfight! [https://artfight.net/~AFuntimePartyy] ★Insta! [https://www.instagram.com/AFuntimePartyy/] (insta desperately needs a bit more cleaning up, maybe alongside some others too. The idea of strictly going by mangy/funtime online when not with friends is new, so I need to update others!) ★More may be added in the future! stay tuned :]

[cbunny9]

Wednesday, 12.06.23

(Day 6/Intro)

Okay, so where do I start?

Im a 32 year old lady who is currently one week into a partial hospitalization program to address my eating disorder (not otherwise specified). As someone in the program commented today, they can’t remember a time where they were not obsessed with food and their weight. I also can’t really remember that time in my life. I’ve had emetophobia and an eating disorder for what feels like my entire life.

One of my earliest memories is one where I’m probably 6 or 7 and trying to fall asleep, however any time I closed my eyes I would get a vivid picture in my head of the babysitter on duty coming into my room with a mouth full of vomit wanting to know where the bathroom was. I’m positive I could relay to you each and every time I’ve been physically ill in that way in my life, as well as any time I’ve encountered it outside of myself.

And still I ask: Where do I start? There’s so much. It feels like so much.

I’ve spent most of my life living with an eating disorder for over two decades, and it hasn’t looked the same the entire time. I’ve gone through periods of restricting and over exercising; I’ve gone through periods of eating very well and over exercising; I’ve gone through periods of not caring at all what I was putting in my body as long as I didn’t throw up; I’ve currently got a nasty mix of all of the varying patterns, thoughts, and rules I’ve learned and given to myself over the course of my life, which is why the doctor in treatment has officially diagnosed me with “Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified”, or EDNOS. It just means my disorder doesn’t fall neatly into one box; I’ve sort of got a potluck of symptoms and behaviors.

Let me preface the next bit by telling you that, after going into my interview assessment at the treatment center and expecting them to turn me away, they recommended I spend time in residential treatment. My insurance does not cover residential, and for the first time in the history of ever when I said “Financially I can’t do that”, the person agreed with an “Absolutely, that’s an understandable and valid barrier,” and said that I could do a 10 day trial of partial hospitalization to see if it’s an adequate level of care for me or if I need something else. Today my anxiety has been very high about whether or not I’ll be “allowed” to stay in PHP or if they will ask me to go to residential and I will have to turn it down for financial reasons, then I’m left to my own devices? It’s really freaking me out.

Anyway…..

My first three days last week were a whirlwind of new faces, and lots of names I’m just today starting to remember. I hate meeting new people. I mean, I like meeting new people in general, but it makes me anxious, and in such a vulnerable setting I’ve mostly felt exposed, judged, and analyzed. It hasn’t been pleasant. Not to say the people haven’t been pleasant; everyone has been really warm and welcoming and kind so far. It’s just the nature of the thing I guess that makes me feel like I’m naked all day.

This week has been difficult. Last week I hadn’t quite “landed” in the building yet; it wasn’t really real to me, it hadn’t yet sunk in to my brain. This week has been more “Oh, okay, we’re here and we’re doing this,” with a generous helping of “You all don’t know me, please stop acting like you know and care about me.” These are things I know that I need to work on in myself. Not everyone is a bad guy, and it’s okay to ask for help when you need it. Note to self.

So I don’t know … generally I’ve been feeling entirely like a stranger in a strange land, who is also just becoming acquainted with their body for the first time. And I miss my job and my coworkers and the kids I teach :( But hopefully I can come out on the other side feeling more like myself, and be more present and capable for them.

If anyone sees this and reads it, thank you.

Sending you peace & love.

[probably-haven]

Hello!! After seeing what you wrote about xiaoven fics I went to see what things you usually write and omg, your archon Venti headcanons????? I am absolutely in love. So if it isn't annoying, could you talk about xiaoven or Venti or Xiao or whatever ship or character you like? I don't care what you are going to say, I just want to know more about your thoughts ^^

I- is this... bestie, this is essentially a free ramble pass- kerujsgheskdfug. Trust me when I say that in no way is this, and in no way will it ever be annoying in the slightest- i literally- lets just say rambling off thoughts is kind of my specialty, especially when provided a topic to branch off of because otherwise I'm just- really indecisive about it so- iujskdh yeah- 100% definitely down to talk about Venti, Xiao, and/or Xiaoven XD. Also, yes- it may have been awhile since i last posted one(cuz again, indecisive about which direction to take part 5), but the Archon War Era Venti headcanons are still without a doubt my favorite posts I've made. It's just such an interesting topic with such endless potential that so few people actually think about or consider or even realize is there, so i always just get really psyched whenever i see someone interact with them lol.

.... this ended up being a bit of a mess: warning in advance

Anyway! onto the actual content!

- You see the thing about Xiaoven is that there's a lot of different ways that it could end up working out, and just personally my favorite way of portraying Xiaoven in my mind is as an unlabeled relationship because if anyone in genshin would give off that vibe its these two. And a number of other reasons.

- Firstly, I heavily headcanon Venti as being an aroace polyplatonic or perhaps heavily demiromantic. However, regardless of this I just don't think that Venti is really the kind of person to worry about how he should label his feelings, thinking it's silly to try to put them in one box or the other, especially with feelings and emotions being as fluid as they are in general. Plus it fits his whole God of Freedom vibe. I just- dont think he's the biggest fan of labels or social categorization in general.

- And secondly on the hand of Xiao... his defense mechanisms are very much ingrained in his personality. It's probably hard enough for him to not go into fight or flight(the answer is fight) at the slightest affection at first, at the slightest feeling of vulnerability. Even further down the line, with his fierce dedication to Liyue, I cant help but get the vibe that the moment he recognized that he was falling for Venti he would begin avoiding him, not only to avoid distraction from his duty, but to avoid corrupting him or losing him in general like he has with like basically every other person he gets close with(even believing that the cycle had repeated once more when he first heard of Morax's death)... now imagine Venti tryna slap a label on their relationship and tell me Xiao would have a positive reaction.

- The thing with Xiaoven.... honestly, i feel like theres more ways that it can go wrong than it can go right, but if they do manage to make their relationship work out, it's just simply beautiful in all terms of the word.

- Lets talk about killing. - During the Archon War, both were forced to kill a large number of people and gods alike- Venti out of a need to remain alive to protect Mondstadt, it's freedom, and the nameless bard's legacy by extent- and Xiao out of servitude to the god that was once his master

..... actually- break here- ive talked a lot about Venti on this blog but I havent actually spoken about Xiao all that much- so i should probably do that a bit first... do note though that my characterization of Xiao is pretty flexible actually- this is just- the possible characterization of him that i tend to favor as being the most- uh- "realistically complex"

-

Theres a line I saw this one time in a certain story: "He is a trained weapon. That's what he is, was, and always will be. You cannot change that so stop trying." And i just- think its a really interesting concept- that applies pretty well to Xiao now that i actually think about it. - the concept behind it is this: After spending more than a vast majority of his life killing or otherwise in battle, it's become a part of who he is, a normalcy that after centuries and centuries would be near impossible to get rid of or reverse, and even if it was possible, with his karmic debt constantly eating away at him its unlikely he has enough time left for that to happen. - it sounds like a cruel thing to say about him- but in context it's actually pretty layered and i think about it a lot. It's not as much a "he's a killer lol, that his whole personality" its more of a "The centuries of trauma he experienced have conditioned him into a constantly alert and battle ready mindset while also shaping his dehumanizing inferior-in-worth-but-superior-in-capability view of himself that would have likely been necessary to get through those time, and at this point he's been under that conditioning for long enough that it's essentially ingrained itself in his personality."

- the main idea is- it's a part of who he is, that needs to be accepted as who he is because its not something that he can just up and change. It's not all he is of course but his constant battle mode, as though always waiting to be ambushed or to be granted a new target to eradicate.

a couple character story quotes:

-"His past of service under the evil god had rid Xiao of his innocence and gentleness. All that remained within him was the means to kill and the weight of his sins. The only way he could be of service to mortals was in combat." -"Xiao does not feel any hatred. Having lived for over two thousand years, no single karmic debt constitutes anything more than a fleeting memory. No grudge can last a thousand years; nor is any debt so great that it cannot be paid off in this time. Xiao has spent many long years alone. But his battles have never been in vain." -"where did Xiao have to return to? He was merely leaving the battlefield." -"since Xiao wages a constant war against dark forces powerful enough to devour Liyue in its entirety, any bystanders who witness him in the heat of battle are likely to end up as collateral damage." -"The war he fights can never be won, and will never come to an end." -"Because ultimately, the one with whom Xiao wrestles is himself."

i feel like at some point this very nearly did consume his whole personality, almost turning him into nothing more than a being of slaughter under Morax's control, devoid of any "humanity" at all, consumed and corrupted by his karmic debt like his fellow yakshas before him. - until he experienced a moment of clarity- a song in the wind, the peaceful melody of a dihua flute. - and pulled back from the border of something he wouldnt have been able to return from, there a was a shift in his mind- a concept grown unfamiliar enough with time that it took him a great time to identify what it was; a curiosity. Something that there was no place for on the battlefield, something that by all means should have been completely useless to Xiao, and yet he held onto that curiosity, slowly regaining over time, a sense of who he was and who he could choose to be with each song that the wind chose to carry towards him every once in a blue moon.

and eventually that curiousity turned to longing. Longing "for a day to come when he will wear the mask and dance — not to conquer demons, but to the tune of that flute amid a sea of flowers"

...... uh- heh- if you couldn’t tell already i have a tendency to make my characterizations/analyses of characters more serious that i probably should. 

to summarize: Xiao is constantly toeing the line between his ingrained nature and his humanity- almost as though still trying to decide how much of that humanity he deserves to have, how much he is allowed to have, and how much is safe to have.

^looking back after writing this, i think the best way to explain it is that this is the view that i keep in mind/the lense that i tend to most enjoy looking through and refering back to while examining and/or analyzing his character, actions, story, lines, and overall personality.

idk- i kinda got off track but i just think its a really interesting interpretation to think about because it has some really interesting implications ig- it’s not the full extent of how i view him of course, but i kinda got ahead of myself and its long enough as is so ill just elaborate as i go- Lol i actually have in progress playlists for both him and venti and just- vibes- i could ramble about the playlists alone for hours explaining everything... It’s probably a problem- uh- ill keep going now lol.

anyways! stepping off the angst path for a brief break! Brought to you by their lines in the snow: both waiting for it to get thick enough, Venti for the purpose of a snowball fight and Xiao for the purpose of a tasty and nutritious breakfast.

but its actually something of note that Xiao doesnt actually need to eat so anything he does eat is usually out of obligation or enjoyment- so like.... snow.... like i dont blame him, but of all things- an adeptus who refuses to eat basically anything but almond tofu looks at the freezing-cold-floor-water that yeeted itself from above and decided at some point- damn- that seems more edible than basically ever single actually edible thing ever.... im gonna eat it- like- im glad if eating snow makes him happy but- at the same time...

He probably convinces Venti to eat snow too though and Venti wouldnt even resist I mean he’s wind and has probably consumed worse things in his time so- 2 anemo cryptids with glowing tattoos sitting in Dragonspine monching snow in the dead of night is an amusing thought to me.

- kay, now back to more serious-toned thoughts

One of the things about the ship that i really like is the different contradicting parallels between them:

A lot of how i view Xiao’s character is someone formed largely by the things he cant control and who was forced to accept that accepted that and learned to thrive in it as much as he can.  Venti on the other hand is surrounded by things he cant control and is ever adapting to control as much as he can while embracing whatever he cant as being part of the unpredictability of the world, seeing beauty in it. 

both of them have lost people and do what they do to honor their memory: Xiao continues to do what the Yakshas once did And Venti chooses to do what his friend couldn’t

Xiao’s power coming from himself  and Venti’s from others And both seem to appear to use their power for their own gain while truly helping others behind the scenes

both have killed a lot of people during the archon war Xiao views it as another necessary event out of his control and Venti would likely view it as a tragedy he chose to enact himself

and this is where we meet out balance

Xiao- contrary to how i think a lot of people view him as thinking of himself as a monster- seems canonically to have accepted this as part of his duty, as long as those he killed are not mortals. I dont think he enjoys it no- but someone has to do it and he’s just accepted that its a part of his duty Venti on the other hand-

See the beauty of the ship- as someone with an angst-centric mind- is this- these are two of the most traumatized mfers in the game 

Xiao is by far the one who needs the most help and who can serve to benefit most from the ship- but he is nowhere near self aware enough to recognize that there’s anything wrong or unhealthy about his mindset in the slightest-

whereas you have the contrast with Venti who sorted through most of his trauma with the nameless bard alone during the archon war and while the result appears more healthy- is still really not- but he’s not self aware of that either because i mean- who’s going to tell him? nobody even knows. 

however- venti is aware enough to notice flaws in Xiao’s mindset and “Venti” enough to want to help them through it-

Xiao- while not aware enough to recognize the flaws in Venti’s mindset, can recognize where it contrasts with his own, and is blunt enough to point it out- and then it’s out there to be mulled over- 

they’re so similar and yet so different and a feel just conversing between the two of them, being in each others precense, just being exposed to two mindsets that are so very different could do both of them a whole lot of good.

GEEE THAT BIT OF RAMBLING HAD LITTLE TO NO DIRECTION AT ALL- LET ME-- LET ME MAKE THIS START MAKING SENSE- WITH... DYNAMICS OR SOMETHING

I don’t think Xiao needs to sleep really- and i dont think that sleeping would do anything except make him uneasy at first- he’d probably just get nightmares after all he’s been through- but with Venti he would soon learn that it doesn’t have to be that way, lulled into the first peaceful sleep he’s had in... as long as he can remember.

anywho back to not making sense cuz im fickle and i think most questions about ships are best displayed through character interactions so like- a possible exchange thats cliche but cliches exist for a reason

Xiao: Why do you try so hard to help me, it isn’t easy. I know that much Venti, with the most adoring expression: Because you’re worth it, obviously Xiao: But surely there are others more deserving of- Venti: No Xiao, everyone is just as deserving as the next person, you included Xiao: Then why me above others? Venti: ehe, cuz ur my warrior of course [O//////O oh shit, hes right] Xiao: My contract is with Morax alone [gay panic but in broody yaksha]

it’s kinda difficult cuz neither of them really address their feelings.  I mean Venti does but he does it very indirectly and its rare that he ever does it with like- genuine directness- even spilling his backstory was in the form of a song- and told in the third person- so a lot of their interactions would often have some deeper meaning, especially with Venti being the bard he is. 

I come up with a lot of- errant thoughts about Xiaoven- but this is making me realize that a true analysis of their ship is rather difficult because it just encompasses so many dynamics so its hard to settle on just one and not go rambling about who knows what bouncing from one end of the ship to the other-  Because you truly can and thats the beauty of it

within one moment you can be having a heartfelt conversation about the archon war the impact of lost friends and times past, and the next moment Venti is trying to forcefeed Xiao an apple while Xiao screams about disrespecting the adepti and its just- so lovely

so while they have picnics with nothing but apples, dandelion wine, and almond tofu they can sit down and talk about the dreams Xiao once devoured, and the dandelion wine and apple cider that the first Ragnvindir invented from the plants that never could have grown in Old Mond. The foods that tasted of familiarity, or of the grilled ticker fish Pervases always used to eat, foods that tasted of friends and frankly family that had since passed, glaze lilies and cecilias and qingxin flowers scattered in the surroundings and woven into Xiao’s neat braids and Venti’s now messy ones, rebraided by the steady and inexperienced hands of one unused to gentle action. 

and then of course Venti steals Xiao’s tofu once the mood becomes too grim and replaces it with a bottle of wine that Xiao refers to as “vile poison,” a remark that fatally wounds Venti as he collapses on the floor, proclaiming how he can only be healed by a Yaksha’s kiss. Xiao ignores this of course and simply takes back his tofu with a slight smile on his face, but as Venti persists he soundlessly places a kiss on his own palm before intertwining their fingers and pulling him back up from where he was dramatically sprawled on the floor, grumbling about how such action was “unbecoming of an archon.” A sign of affection only Xiao would ever know about. But Venti is literally wind and I hc his senses work differently anyways so he definitely knows- plus Xiao’s face is red as the blood of his enemies and the way he is pointedly not looking at Venti at all really speaks volumes anyways. 

 -Venti playing epic battle music whenever Xiao goes into fights in what looks like a ridiculously extra performance to anyone else but is actually doing wonders to keep Xiao’s karma at bay

-Venti preaches the practice of “kissing wounds better” and Xiao is unfamiliar with this medical treatment but views it as unnecessary regardless because adepti have accelerated healing, doesn’t mean he’s going to stop him though. 

-Messages whispered on the wind

-Venti’s 1000 year sleep- an accident, not a fun time for the yaksha, and not a fun time for Venti once he woke up. Venti is actually more afraid of restful sleep than Xiao is, hence the sleeping in trees thing, but when Xiao is there, he can sleep restfully with faith that Xiao wont let another millennia slip through his fingertips. 

- Xiao tends to make excuses when doing things that aren’t necessary to his duty, like in his birthday voice line “Have this, it’s a butterfly i made from leaves... Okay. Take it. It’s an adepti amulet -- it staves off evil” because at the current point in his progress it helps him to feel like he’s allowed to do these things. Not wanting to put him off from progress, Venti never comments on his excuse but never fails to whisper a quick reminder of how proud he is of how far Xiao had come.

- Xiao’s karma saddens Venti greatly- not only because of how it effects Xiao but also because its a reminder that as much as Venti tries to honor the memory of those he’s killed, there will always be those who resent him for it, and when he took the option of living away from them, he truly can’t blame them. - And when he gets too wrapped up in thoughts, whether around this topic or similar ones or otherwise, eventually, he’ll hear the sound of a flute on the wind. It’s not divine by any means, but as his own wind connects him to the source, he gets the sentiment all the same. “What impact does one individual’s remaining wrath have on the present. You have done much to help the living in the present” the unspoken idea that Xiao has included himself in that statement, because now, with Venti’s help he’s beginning to learn just how to experience living for himself. 

- Venti’s form and Xiao’s mask are off limit topics though because if either mentions it the other will counter with the opposite and the mood will turn immediately bitter at the idea that both know that what they’re doing is destructive but neither are willing to change

- Venti who has different tells for negative feelings than most people because as much as he likes to pretend it is- this form isnt his, and Xiao who is able to identify those

- many fanfics and headcanons have Venti recognizing when Xiao is uncomfortable and getting him out of those situations. I see that and I love it but i raise you: - Venti taking Xiao to Mondstadt, careful that he doesn’t get to the point that he’s uncomfortable. And nothing goes wrong exactly, but Xiao notices the the way Venti’s cape is blowing in the wind, the way he’s holding his weight, barely on his feet so much as floating on the wind, connected with the ground only for the sake of appearance, all the while he looks just as happy go lucky as ever. And without a word, he grabs his hand and teleports them both out of Mondstadt.  - turns out it was just a slight thing that reminded him of the archon war (cuz i will die on the hill of him having more tragic backstory than just Decarabian), and he of course gives a sincere if not flustered thanks to Xiao, because he’s really not used to people noticing. 

- Venti trying to vent sneakily through fictional stories and Xiao is just like “Didn’t that basically happen to you” and Venti is just like “<_< shit”

- Venti once said affectionally that he wished he had met Xiao sooner and Xiao immediately and seriously shot it down by saying “If you had, I would have been forced to kill you” and both of them now stay up at night wondering who would have won that fight, not sure which result would have hurt more. (because honestly I have no idea who would win in that fight and that terrifies me- I like to think it would have been one of those legends that end with “and the fight persists to this day” or something along those lines)

- “How long have you been together?” “Adepti have no need for-” “1000+ years T^T how dare you deny our love” “O///O our...? ...useless”

- its disney- let me explain- i have this- i have this headcanon inspired by watching too many animatics- - so venti has a human form that isnt his- which he would have had to get used to moving in- and he’s a bard- - uh- anyway- as a third degree black belt in mixed martial arts, i can speak as an authority on this(not really an authority since i havent gone since quarantine but lets pretend). We have a thing referred to as the big three(most things do), and those things are martial arts, gymnastics, and dance. The idea is that they reflect really well off of each other and the best in any one category are good in all three. Timing, balance, form, discipline, technique, hand-eye coordination, grace, ease of motion, they all play a part- anyway-

- Venti taking Xiao’s prowess in martial arts and acrobatics and teaching him how to dance, and as someone who’s extremely skilled in the first two, the third comes easy to him, almost naturally. And it’s delicate and beautiful and lovely and it isn’t hurting anyone. And Venti points all these things out and more and despite how much Xiao insists that he feels ridiculous he truly does enjoy it and it goes a long way towards helping him form more healthy views of himself and his worth.  - Verr Goldett walked in on him once and made a joke about performing at the inn. unfortunately Venti was there and agreed on Xiao’s behalf before he could protest and- and it wasn’t as bad as Xiao thought it would be... he still wouldn’t do it again though without reason, but with good enough reasoning he could probably be convinced. 

- anyways point is he likes dancing to Venti’s songs and i just think that’s really cute - just picture the idea that all the animatics you see actually have the potential to be canon- ugh

- venti tries holding something out of Xiao’s reach since he’s taller and Xiao just fucking teleports 

- both need their space but when they dont, all they have to do is speak the other’s name and they’ll be there.

- and because i just had to.... love languages

- lets start with Xiao- i don’t think he’d view acts of service or quailty time as a love language tbh, and he blunt but really bad with words so affirmation is out, leaving gift giving and physical touch. However, he seems to view most material things as meaningless so- - Xiao who’s love language is in his fleeting touches, something he’s only recently grown comfortable with because of Venti, and now is giving back, which he knows he doesn’t have to do, but that he want’s to, though he’ll still continue to make excuses for each one. “you were shivering” “The inn is high up, you could have fallen..... I said what I said, you’d question an adeptus?”

- and as easy as it is to say words of affirmation for Venti- he does that for everyone- i want to say his is actually acts of service - its the acts of service that let him see just how much Xiao has progressed afterall, from teaching him to dance, to playing another song on the flute, to supplying him with the almond tofu he seems to enjoy so much. Every little thing he does helps Xiao to grow and he couldn’t be happier about that. 

-

- of course most of my headcanons for the ship do take place latter into the relationship because- y’know the less serious unhealthy vibes allow for greater range of thought, but i do still love to think about the serious implications so i kinda hopped back and forth. So sorry about how messy it is btw, i kinda- got carried away- it kinda got some kind of structure near the end tho so- maybe it’s okay. anyway- back to... lol something, we’ll see where thought forests lead. 

[cassyapper]

jotaro kujo song analysis: “eight” by sleeping at last

i could not figure out what the fuck to title this for a long time. please forgive me ik it’s awkward but it’s the best i got

anyway the song “eight” by sleeping at last made me mentally ill so let’s get into why <3

here’s a link to the song: https://youtu.be/obi4KCh6eHQ

here’s a link to the lyrics i referenced: https://genius.com/Sleeping-at-last-eight-lyrics

be warned there are part 3, part 4, part 5, and part 6 spoilers in this

with that let’s begin.

“I remember the minute;/it was like a switch was flipped --/i was just a kid who grew up strong enough/to pick this armor up,/and suddenly it fit” Lengthy first line to start this on i know but cutting it up didn’t make sense so please forgive me… Alright let’s get to the meat of this hm? This line is about when jotaro first manifested star platinum. “I remember the minute, it was like a switch was flipped” fits perfectly with how suddenly and obviously star platinum became known to its user, as jotaro first manifests it when he’s in the middle of a fight, a fight star platinum ends very quickly and brutally. The “i was just a kid who grew up strong enough to pick this armor up” is about jotaro having the willpower to control a stand such as star platinum and not get ill over it. He “grew up strong enough to pick this armor up”, this armor being star platinum (which, yes, star platinum is armor more than a weapon because its strength is used to protect. This is stated explicitly in the jin hashimoto song “star platinum” which was written specifically with jotaro/star platinum in mind, as the title suggests). It also shows how young jotaro was re the “kid” description; he was only 17, the youngest jojo up to that point. the “and suddenly it fit” also mixes with how suddenly star platinum manifested, particularly how jotaro gained passable control over it very quickly

“God, that was so long ago, long ago, long ago…/I was little, I was weak, I was perfectly naive,/and I grew up too quick.” Another long line im sorry it just doesnt make sense to cut it up 😭 Anyway this is part 6 jotaro reflecting on his past self, PARTICULARLY part 3 jotaro, which explains the “god, that was so long ago, long ago, long ago…” segment “I was little, i was weak, i was perfectly naive” is kinda gold coming from part 6 jotaro cause end of part 3 jotaro is canonically when he’s at his strongest but i dont think part 6 jotaro is talking about star platinum in this line. He’s talking about jotaro being tactless and rude and pushing away his loved aways in a disillusioned attempt to keep them safe. By part 6, jotaro has to have known his coping mechanism of self-imposed isolation wasnt fair to his loved ones/himself and it clearly didnt WORK as evidenced by jolyne’s situation, so he’s cursing his younger self for it here. Hence, the calling of part 3 jotaro “little, weak, perfectly naive.” part 3 jotaro starts making the bed that part 6 jotaro ends up having to lay in and he hates him for it. The “and I grew up too quick” part is jotaro acknowledging his trauma. Even before part 3 started jotaro clearly had issues and they just kept building and building and building from part 3 and on. Combined with his self-imposed isolation, jotaro had to grow up quick to survive, and this line is part 6 jotaro reflecting on that

“Now you won’t see all that i have to lose,/all i’ve lost in the fight to protect it.” Remember the self-imposed isolation i mentioned in the last line? This line is about why jotaro does that. He hates being vulnerable. He hates relying on others. We only see him comfortable trusting others to take care of things ONCE the entire series, during the steely dan arc, when he believes in kakyoin’s abilities to keep joseph safe and get the lovers out of him safely. ONCE out of the four parts he’s featured in, out of the three he’s prominent in. jotaro does this, as i previously mentioned, out of a disillusioned attempt to keep those he loves safe, hence the “now you won’t see all that i have to lose” line. This behavior is solidified in jotaro at the end of stardust crusaders, when the two final times he tried to trust that others would handle it resulted in the deaths of over of half those he cared the most about (he may have gotten joseph back, but don’t forget that joseph did actually die). Thus, this decisive night ties into the “all i’ve lost in the fight to protect it” line. He’s lost loved ones but he won’t lose them again, not in the same way at least. Ironically, the self-imposed isolation only puts his loved ones and himself in danger, but i can get into that later.

“I won’t let you in, i swore never again --/i can’t afford, no, i refuse to be rejected” This line kinda ties back with what i was mentioning in the last line, but it hones it a bit more on jotaro’s complete denial of being vulnerable rather than how he acts to ensure he isnt such. “I wont let you in, i swore never again” is a direct tie-in for how jotaro feels after stardust crusaders; he is never going to get as close to anyone or anything the way he was close to the crusaders ever again. Nothing is ever going to matter to him the same way and he is going to make sure of that, as the “swore never again” implies, because he is certain, at least at first, that this will keep others safe. The “i can’t afford, no, i refuse to be rejected” part goes into how selfish and arrogant jotaro’s mentality is. Don’t get me wrong, jotaro’s self-imposed isolation can be seen as selfless, especially because the main driving force behind it is to keep others safe -- but it’s not the only force driving it. Like i said, jotaro doesn’t want to be vulnerable, and to be sure he doesnt feel that way, he needs to ensure he won’t be hurt. Can’t be sad when people die if you were never close to them, right? So as much as it is to protect others, he also is protecting himself by closing off from others. It’s also arrogant of jotaro to assume he is the deciding factor of who lives and dies, that he gets to choose/manipulate the cycle of life and death by deciding on if he opens up to others. Jotaro had this mentality of being a “deciding factor” shoved into his head during the journey to egypt, and that kinda warps his worldview as a result; everything must be his fault. Things go bad surely because he let them somehow. And it’s not jotaro’s fault he’s ill in the head like this but it is still arrogant, and the “i can’t afford, no, i refuse to be rejected” line attests to this.

“I want to break these bones until theyre better/i want to break them right and feel alive” Oh jotaro you have the shittiest fuckign coping mechanisms Alright. “I want to break these bones until theyre better” ties into jotaro throwing himself into dangerous situations alone. He’s just so so damn convinced he can handle everything himself -- bc again, he is led to believe he is the deciding factor of life and death -- he just has to try. If things go wrong, it’s bc he didn’t try hard enough, hence the “break these bones until theyre better”; jotaro will hurt himself and will be convinced he deserved it until he “learns” how to be perfect like he’s “supposed” to be. But being perfect isnt something you can learn, you mentally ill motherfucker jotaro. anyway “I want to break them right and feel alive” ties into the fact jotaro would rather break his body over and over and over rather than tell his loved ones he cares. The only right way to be hurt to him is taking a hit that was meant for those he loves. Jotaro is very much a man of action rather than a man of word, and this line is about his rather unique way of acting (that is, getting beat the fuck up over and over) Basically jotaro can’t tell the people he loves that he, well, loves them, unless he is literally dying. Examples of what i mean: jotaro preferred going on a perilous, 50-day journey to just telling holly he loved her; jotaro preferred getting beat over the head with a rock in the lovers arc rather than risk hurting joseph; jotaro preferred to literally get blown up by sheer heart attack rather than tell koichi to his face he is a good kid; jotaro stepped knowingly into a trap for jolyne and had to literally believe he was in fact saying his last words before he uttered “i’ve always cherished you.”

“You were wrong, you were wrong, you were wrong --/my healing needed more than time” Oh my GODDDddDDDdcdd im sobbing as i type jotaro your head is so so damn ill Okay so i see him spitting this line towards joseph. Let me explain Joseph would no doubt pick up on jotaro’s ptsd and he’ll do his best to console jotaro over the deaths of their friends. But see joseph is ALSO an ill in the head idiot whose idea of therapy is electroshock and who calls ptsd “shell shock”. So all he can offer to jotaro is “youll feel better in time” because that was kinda true for him; he managed to move on in time. What joseph fails to realize is what made him feel better was not time, but the support of those remaining in his life (lisa lisa, suziq, erina, smokey). But jotaro listens and tries to give it time but the thing with jotaro is he just gets worse and worse as time wears on because he deliberately cut himself off from anyone who could console him (as well as got continually traumatized throughout his life), so time never helped but actually made things worse. Thus jotaro spitting “you were wrong, you were wrong, you were wrong, my healing needed more than time”. In terms of timeline, probably happens right after part 5 jotaro stares longingly at the crusaders picture

“When i see fragile things, helpless things, broken things/i see the familiar” Im sorry every new line i start to analyze i begin crying so im just letting you all know incase the coherency takes a dip (as if this was coherent in the first place lmfao) Anyway so this line in relation to Jotaro is about how he projects HARD on the new generation. We see this w his interactions w josuke and koichi, the “fragile things” (there is no way he didnt see koichi as a filler for kakyoin im sorry. Also he just wants josuke safe with his friends like how he wished he was safe with his own friends as a teenager), how he was wary of giorno, “the helpless things” (jotaro is scared he’ll be similar to his dad, just like jotaro is similar enough to dio to share the same stand power…), and his interactions w jolyne, “the broken things” (angry teen in a prison? Come now). 

“I was little, i was weak, i was perfect too/now i’m a broken mirror” Throwback to the second line. Once again part 6 jotaro is reflecting but the difference here is that part 3 was when jotaro was last unashamedly happy, but more than that, part 3 jotaro was on his way to healing before everything went to shit. like i mentioned earlier, jotaro only relies on someone else completely once, and that happens in part 3. Jotaro is finally able to trust in someone else’s capabilities, which is what he needed to do before he could allow anyone to help him with the weight of the world on his shoulders. Hence, why part 6 jotaro would describe him as “perfect”; because he would’ve been perfect enough if he could just trust in others like that again But as the line suggests, that went wrong. Jotaro is now a “broken mirror,” which alludes to the fact that while he projects onto the kids, the kids (the ones that know him at least) project onto him as well, especially jolyne, because in part 6 she finally figures out her dad’s thought processes, as she is experiencing those patterns of thinking too. Jotaro is a role model for them in the sense of “see him? Do the opposite of what he did” KJ;DNJ;DN;SN

“But i can’t let you see all that i have to lose/all that i’ve lost in the fight to protect it” Same meaning as before mostly but the repetition is important me thinks because it mimics jotaro like frantically trying to remind himself why he must be distant when all he wanted to do was go home to jolyne and be her father

“I can’t let you in --/ i swore never again,/ i can’t afford to let myself be blindsided” This means roughly the same thing as the previous line that’s similar to this, but the “i can’t afford to let myself be blindsided” is less about jotaro’s selfishness/arrogance and more about how he believes enemies will use his loved ones against him and how goddamn, it would work, it would work so well because jotaro loves so, so damn much It’s a shame distancing himself didn’t work the way he wanted it to and ended up making his loved ones even more vulnerable than they would have been otherwise

“I’m standing guard,/i’m falling apart/and all i want to do is to trust you” (Begins screaming and doesn’t stop) okay so this line is about jotaro and jolyne during the beginning of stone ocean “Im standing guard” alludes to the fact that jotaro is still desperately trying to appear distant and uninterested even as he attempts to break his fucking daughter out of prison “I’m falling apart” ties into jotaro failing miserably at remaining cold towards jolyne, how he eventually caves in and tells her he loves her in addition to taking a literal bullet for her, using time stop to ensure he can make it to her to do so. and also this line ties into how he is literally physically shot and how his memories and stand are taken from him “And all i want to do is to trust you” is directed towards jolyne of course. God his whole “i’ve always cherished you” ties in with this line; like i mentioned earlier, jotaro by part 6 knows his self-imposed isolation is useless, but old habits die hard and also he was in very deep by the time he accepted there was no reason to go in the first place at all. So he doesn’t know how to change, he doesn’t know how to trust jolyne, it’d been 20ish years since he last trusted someone completely, but god he wants to. He wants to trust her. It’s all he wants to do hence this line

“Show me how to lay my sword down/for long enough to let you through” So continuing from the last line, jotaro just wants to let jolyne in. he wants to learn how to do that. I think this line is actually directed towards his younger self; 17 year old jotaro managed to let in a person once, after all (more than one person in fact, but all the crusaders). This would also make more sense w my interpretation of how part 6 jotaro calls part 3 jotaro “perfect” in this regard Essentially it’s jotaro thumbing through his memories to figure out how his past self gathered the security to trust in someone else wholeheartedly...which makes the fact that pucci steals his memories particularly fucked up in this context

“Here i am, pry me open/what do you want to know?” Another line directed toward jolyne. “Here i am, pry me open” refers to how after jotaro tells jolyne he cherishes her, all cards are on the table. He’s shown vulnerability, might as well go full throttle. So, he’s willing to talk to jolyne for the first time ever, especially because she’s a stand user now “What do you want to know?” ties into jotaro being willing to open up, but also the fact that jolyne doesnt really know her dad ):

“I’m just a kid who grew up scared enough/to hold the door shut/and bury my innocence” Hhnghg begins wailing this line is again about post-egypt jotaro. A lot of jotaro’s like...emotional maturation (and even some physical) occurred during the trip to egypt and immediately afterward. he’s in pain and desperately trying to rationalize a way he can be in control of never letting something like what happened in egypt happen again, hence the “im just a kid who grew up scared enough” “To hold the door shut” refers to how jotaro cut off other people, even the people who used to know him very well, like joseph and polnareff and holly “And bury my innocence” i mentioned this in another line but this bit also refers to how jotaro had to grow up quickly to survive, considering his self-imposed isolation and his life path of chasing down dio’s remnants

“But here’s a map, here’s a shovel/here’s my Achilles’ heel” This line is SUPPOSED to be directed toward jolyne but inadvertently it is also directed toward pucci. When jotaro says fuck it and gives up on his pretense of disinterest in jolyne, finally letting her know he loves her, he’s finally building the frame of a bridge to jolyne; he’s ready to do what he’s wanted to for so long, no matter how vulnerable it makes him, and that is to be jolyne’s father. However, pucci takes note of this; he knows to aim for jolyne in the final battle because of jotaro’s earlier actions when he tries breaking jolyne out of prison. It really is a shame how the narrative keeps fucking enforcing jotaro’s shitty self-imposed isolation

“I’m all in, palms out, i’m at your mercy now and i’m ready to begin/i am strong, i am strong, i am strong enough to let you in” Hmm i imagine this line being when jotaro meets back up with jolyne after he gets his memory disk back. The first thing he does is hug her and cradle her close to him, showing off to the world, right in front of pucci, how much his daughter means to him. But jotaro, at least for the moment, is not scared to be vulnerable anymore. Ever since he decided to give up his cold facade, he was ready to let jolyne in, and he finally has the chance to do that at least a little right before the final battle, which is what this line is about

“I’ll shake the ground with all my might/i will pull my whole heart up to the surface” Final battle in stone ocean,,, What the “i’ll shake the ground will all my might” line refers to is jotaro’s willingness to use star platinum the world during the battle. He’s ready to go all in to save the world, and most importantly, save jolyne, even if he has to use the source of his greatest trauma to do it. Jotaro’s a key player and he knows it, has known it for a long time, and this time he’s going to use that for his happy ending. And well, as i mentioned in the last line, jotaro’s done with the self-isolation and throws himself into the role of jolyne’s father, at least as much as he has the right to throw himself into. This is mostly what the “i will pull my whole heart up to the surface” line refers to

“For the innocent, for the vulnerable/i’ll show up to the frontlines with a purpose” More stone ocean final battle. The “innocent and vulnerable” jotaro is showing up for are jolyne, namely, but also hermes and emporio, and beyond that, the world. Jotaro understands how serious this is and he’s always been a force meant for protection, so he is here to do just that, which is what the “i’ll show up to the frontlines with a purpose” line refers to. Jotaro doesnt believe he’s a good person -- and he might not be, in the grand scheme of things -- but he does fight for what he believes is right, he always has, he mentions this way back in stardust crusaders during his fight with kakyoin. He’s never going to let injustice stand, especially not when he knows he’s such a key player

“And i’ll give all i have, i’ll give my blood, give my sweat --/an ocean of tears will spill for what is broken” This line actually applies to all the “final battles” jotaro has been involved in; part 3, part 4, and part 6. Jotaro, as i mentioned in the last line, has a strong sense of justice and is a force that first and foremost tries to protect, which the “i’ll give all i have, i’’l give my blood, give my sweat” part of this line refers to. Jotaro gives his all, has given his all, to rid the world of dio’s influence, he ruined his entire fucking life to do so, and this line gives credence to that. “An ocean of tears will spill for what is broken” refers to jotaro mourning all the what-ifs in his life, which are all tied with how the outcomes of these final battles go. If part 3 didnt end the way it did, jotaro would know how to trust still, he wouldve been happy even, maybe he wouldnt have had to sacrifice the rest of his life to dio; if part 4 didn’t end the way it did, maybe jotaro couldve gone home to his daughter, maybe he couldve been a bit of a better dad (this is because kids were involved in part 4 even if they didn’t try to because stand users attract stand users, and jotaro couldnt risk doing that to his daughter, so he ends up never coming home); and now for part 6, jotaro hopes that if it ends just a little better than the previous two, jotaro could at least died a satisfying death of sacrificing himself for jolyne, or maybe even got a chance to try mending his relationship with jolyne if they both survive

“I’m shattered porcelain, glued back together again” So this line speaks to both physical and emotional states Jotaro was physically “shattered porcelain” when he lost his stand and memory and also was shot, and he was “glued back together again” when he got medical attention and jolyne got back his disks Jotaro was emotionally “shattered porcelain” due to the fact he couldnt trust anyone completely since he was 17 goddamn years old but he’s “glued back together again” in the sense he’s ready to finally, finally try and be vulnerable in order to save his relationship with jolyne

“Invincible like i’ve never been” This line hurts so fucking much because i believe jotaro was optimistic, all things considered, at the beginning of the final fight in stone ocean. After all, he knows he’s an important figure in all this, he has his stand disk and memories back, he and jolyne and the others have a plan, and he has a future he wants to fight for in addition to the world’s continued functioning So he feels “invincible” like he’s never felt before because not even during the part 3 final battle with dio did he have the hope for the future he has now. But then. Then pucci brings out the knives. And the man who could control time never had enough in the end. He dies and cant even save jolyne with his death. The world ends. He failed. I think this is perfectly represented with how suddenly the song ends. It just perfectly encapsulates the tragedy that is jotaro kujo and i cant stop fucking thinking about it

thanks for reading all this if you did. jotaro kujo makes me feel mentally ill

[osdd-1bitch]

// partly a vent? but also if you have any type of advice as to what i can do pls say,, gotta be honest im still INSANELY fucked on if im a system or not :( for a while i was dead set on it but i ended up just not saying anything to my therapist and fell back into that "ok no thats not me, im just a really vivid daydreamer" mindset.

then your blog auto-popped up as i was typing and i clicked it and im back to that "maybe" thing. im just so conflicted rn ughhh goddamnit :( ive been having an extremely stressful past few weeks (no specifics but alot of my trauma resurfaced, alot of shit triggered me, similar traumatic situations etc) and i missed both of my therapy sessions the past 2 weeks, so ive kinda reverted back to being dependant on alters who im not even sure are alters or not. and even THEN im not sure how to bring up to my therapist that i think i may have OSDD or DID?? like idk how im gonna come back after 2 weeks and say "hey btw all this traumatic shit came back up and i think i might be a system bc i talk to people in my head who arent me lol but anyways can i use ur fidget cube?" ??? SO much has happened and im really debating on just pushing down that it might be osdd/did and pretending nothing is wrong for the sake of keeping myself mentally stable yk ?? gotta say i just dont know what to do at all. lets also not forget im 13 and shouldnt even have to deal w this much stress EVER but dfghgtf. im just really struggling to tell if this is my maladaptive daydreaming or DID man :(

MaDD and plurality are weird to work w, especially since MaDD can and often is be caused by trauma and there are some expressions of MaDD that one could put on the plural spectrum. Its mucky either way and can suck to deal with

before i continue, id like to say our experience on therapy has...not been great so ill refrain from giving therapy specific advice for fear of our past experiences clouding our judgement, but you can share the trauma bits and get some help without talking about plurality. the rings system did some videos that might help about talking to a therapist,red flags ect, lovely folks, you should give em a watch if you havent. either way id say you prolly shouldnt bring this up yet, but info is also good in general

and also, some personal advice, be very very careful on the internet, especially social medias at your age. we were in your shoes once and it did fck us up quite a bit

either way, i seriously doubt youll be taken seriously, not in a bad way, full grown adults struggle to get help. and stressing about specifics can just lead to, you guessed it! more stress. its totally fine to drop all lables and just exist for a while and try and do whatever, talking w sysmates or daydreaming whatever, you dont have to name these experiences for now, just live them. doubt is weird, and youll almost def be wout dxing for a few years either way.

just live your life, try not to bring up trauma wout professionals, and be very safe on the internet, and preferably get off tumblr and move somewhere safer, its really not a place for people your age. i know you probably wont listen to that bit much, but at least be extra super safe.

self dxing can take years btw. its not really a matter of weeks, lived experience and analyzing yourself and just questioning takes a lot of time. take it slow

and its totally fine if its not did. or madd. or either. dont stress, dont try and conform yourself to dxes and stuff rn, especially since you are both v young and just started questioning. im not saying your age means you shouldnt, if you have did you have it rn, but things can take time to come to light. just b honest w yourself and open to the options, mkay? self dxing is a lot of research on top of the work. if you started questiong round now tbh many systems if they questions at your age would get a dx or self dx at like 15,16,17 ect ect, and thats if they question. do what helps you and talk to your therapist, you dont have to mention did but talk about questioning disorders and junk.

this sorta age is when figuring yourself out rlly starts to happen yknow? that doesnt mean you should be cornered off n stuff, n kept away from dxes, but it also means you should be very careful n research a ton. if you find smth you resonate w it, keeping it in the maybe pile for a year or two can seem like its a long time, but will help a ton in the end, if its true or not. if its stressing you out a ton, its okay to not think about it for a bit, you have time.

and again, please please please try and get off social medias they can mess w your head a lot, and try not to share your age online again. im torn abt publishing this n may delete this ask n repost the response, but im not sure

tldr:

i dont wanna tell you to not question or identify symptoms, but things change a lot n you are just dipping your toes into life. take things slow and sit on them, thats the best advice given to us at your age. you could be absolutely right, you could be confused, you could be dead wrong, and all of these are okay. just keep yourself open, research and rlly think abt it (like months of thinking abt it) before it can age properly in the maybe bin. and also be safe online, dont share your age and stuff n keep off toxic n inapropriate sites like this best you can. options are open and symptoms can change over time. just exist and take note of things. dont stress over lables, n self dx should stay in the possibly-maybe bin for now, itll be worth the wait

[macklives]

session 81 end

wow, okay, first things first

AC!!!!!

shes so fucking cute holy shit i love her so much i dont even know where to begin??

i mean i guess its because im so used to troll snark and the way they just? banter constantly? seeing someone who is a literal ray of sunshine is so refreshing and wholesome and pure. god she’s great. shes a cat, she knows her stuff. she’s strong and theres also this guys???? who shes scared of?? and tells her what to do??? yeah no, idk who it is but let her make her own decisions lol

maybe its just over exaggeration or whatnot, and hes not bad but first impressions do a lot to me and right now the only thing i know about this guy is that AC needs his approval for everything. i guess ill see where that takes us. hopefully nowhere bad. but AC seems like she can take care of herself and knows how to be a good decent troll and i love her for that. wow it literally took me one dialogue to like her. damn, that was fast. jesus.

you know who else is great?

terezi.

yeah i know right. and that whole trial thing, which yeah i guess half the time i was confused by what the fuck is going on since i still cant grasp the idea of how alternia works, but i enjoyed myself with lemonsnout and how terezi roleplays and how much she gets into it. seeing a character that passionate about something is so sweet and nice.

god this was just a nice overall session

which i say, while i completely forgot about the banter TA and karkat got into

right, that happened. oh my god. they both literally stomped all over each other, dissed one another, still made up in the end because apparently thats their friendship and i guess it just works like that. depends on the friends you have, i guess.

its funny though, not gonna lie

and karkat as of now is just being a prick and honestly? 

like more than usual, which i guess is weird to say but i mean from present time to beginning of hivebent karkat. not that its uncommon for him to be a prick, he is, but seeing him go through the non-linear pattern with john is mmmmh interesting to say the least. though we havent seen his first trolling, just him constantly going “oh god what did i say, i was dumb” u know, not in those words but thats basically what he means. 

ooh im gonna analyze, i feel like analyzing right now my fingers have already typed so much as it is MIGHT AS WELL

and our candidate will be *drum rollll* karkat wow predictable (its below the cut because this is literally irrelevant now to the session)

okay, lets lay out the shit we have already. as i said before, the way he talks presently to john (meaning in the future) is so different than how he speaks to everyone now. of course the “i hate the world” personality is still there, and hes still just regular karkat, but karkat talking with john is patient to some extent and tells him what he needs to know for the game, lowkey kinda chills out once they started talking about movies or growing up as huh, didnt he say larvae or smth?

okay that whole grub thing makes sense now as i just wrote that but i am still confused as to what the FUCK that is implying because i dont think it crossed my mind this much, im repressing it for now until it comes up later. 

anyways, back to what i was saying. he was so DIFFERENT than the way he’s acting now which is bitch and moan and like? stfu karkat lmfao. i mean, its not THAT big of a difference in character, because i know he’s still his grumpy old self, and theres a lot of potential.. for growth? not sure if we’ll get it but i like to assume we will get character growth from these characters with fucking 8000 pages talking about them. but a story needs that growth and with karkat being just a straight up angry dude, in MY EYES, he should.. have growth, no? idk HOW he will grow, but im basically just taking what i have right now which isnt much but i analyze things for fun sometimes so let me be.

that being said, because its so early on, im not sure where homestuck is gonna go and i dont have much to go on but being in the psychology course shit happens when you have limited information and you gotta pin point what makes a person a person and how do they cope with things to grow further into life. many of my assignments involve limited info so honestly, not that hard.

but it is something that ive noticed, the way karkat is different as he grows which possibly means the whole veil thing happens later later on in his life and we havent yet seen that small growth become patience and not whining every time he doesnt get what he wants. but growth is common and it mostly likely happens to everyone, so its not like wow this is a surprise and a plot twist, more of something that i just wanna write for the sake of writing it. i hope that makes sense? i dont exactly know where im going with this. i just mean that im basically going to analyse karkat a tiny bit so idk how to otherwise explain it but you’ll get where im going with this as i type more lmao. 

anyways, so karkat literally said “pretend i dont think highly of my friend’s talents” as if he’s visibly trying to force himself from all emotions and bash on those who do (reference: “stop being sensitive, its repugnant” or whatever tf he said while TA replied with “hypocrite”) i take that as a key word. so honestly, while that was the smallest thing ive gotten from this session, its the thing im most curious about actually and i actually havent mentioned lol. because what ive learned in psych, which this is just common knowledge but i did an assignment on it so like?? could be useful?? is that people who hold off their emotions tend to hold off others as well, so there is no chance of mirroring each other. in other words, if someone is happy and starts to laugh and goof around with another, the emotions will mirror that other person subconsciously. like an addictive laugh. theres also another way to show mirroring, which is to mimic another person's actions, allowing another to establish a sense of empathy and thus begin to understand another person's emotions. in this case, im using TA and karkat as example. people who suppress emotions tend to see emotions as a bad sign and if somebody else portrayed any sign of it as well, they’ll basically say “gross what are you doing” because theyre so used to concealing it away, that they dont want others to think theyre into the whole mushy shit. so they pretend to hate it, pretend to not even be slightly affected by general sensitivity..

which basically means karkat is a softie, and even if he’s a prick right now, meeee thinks john, from earlier convos, is growing on him because john himself knows how emotions work and while i dont think troll culture does know much about it, considering the BLOOD AND CARNAGE thing, he is in fact growing and even if thats obvious, and you all know it, i am new to homestuck and am trying to see that for myself. its noticeable to some degree. he may always still be a jerk, but i am waiting to see how he slowly starts to accept things around him and to finally show what hes hiding inside. even if its just going up by a few percentages, i see its there and im hoping VERY HOPING he has the biggest character growth!

in other words, why else do i think this?? well nobody who watches romcoms can be that fucking aggressive. you need some sap in you to like it.

on that note, ill probably analyze alternia’s system and rules in another post later throughout these next few sessions because i feel it needs to be talked about and the way everything just.. is so different and doesnt seem right, you know?

thats it for now goodnight

[thethirdwheel404]

Med Rewatch Series (#1)

Right, monkey brain said no sleep no rest, only suffering at the hands of med.

I am going to start with the first episode of S2: Soul Care. Reasoning? I need to check if Latham references Ava in his first interaction with Connor.

If my memory serves me right, when Connor is passed over to Latham for his fellowship, Latham says that he was not his first choice. In fact, his first choice was a brilliant surgeon from South Africa. In the first episode of S2, a season where Ava Bekker is only introduced with one line at the end of the last episode.

If I remember correctly and Latham does actually say that in the first ep of s2, it will be huge for the continuity (and my theory that I came up with today, if you’re interested in following this you should really read that really long post that came a little before this where the basis of the theory is laid out). 

Also in rewatching this I see more of Sarah which, again, I have not seen in two years, and she was the reason I became invested in the show, and the reason I stopped watching after she left.

And all of this even before I start the episode.

There are so many emotions and thoughts running through my brain it literally hurts. I think i’m getting a headache. I’m already really regretting this, this cannot be healthy for me.

(btw, this will basically be a train of thought type thing, I’ll do my best to keep it coherent)

- omg its starting

- i completely forgot how s1 ended but its not importnat in anyway

- just, why are they in a helicopter

- how fast does the episode move ive forgotten and i need to know

-JESUS CHRIST SO DRAMATIC

- THE BEGINNING WITH WILL WHY

- it is at this point where I apologize to all those who made it this far bc we’re literally not even 30 seconds in yet

- i just have a lot of med thoughts

- oh god save me

- i am laughing hysterically

- JESUS CHRIST THE APRIL TB STORYLINE AND TATE WTF

- god that feels like a lifetime ago it was relevant holyshit

-remember when she was pregnant?

- literally what have I missed

- side note, i really like the cup april drinks out of.

-THERE SHE IS

-SARAH

-SHE’S HERE

-and she’s a barista

-literally wtf is this show

-and the dramatic music is still going literally chill man god

-THE WAY SARAH SMILES HOLY SHITTTT come on man there was literally no way i’d survive this but fuck not even a minute in...

- okay but i never understood charles’ family scenario but this is already too fucking long for a minute in so i hope we can just skip past that

-hahahah sharon’s fucking divorce? holy shit, this is too dramatic for the first ep literally save me (at least she acts well)

-yeah the one thing I will say about med (thats a lie ive already said a hundred but yk) is that for the crap storylines and all, the actors take what they’re given and give it their all and i appreciate it so much

-the helicopter’s number is N365UCC and just... succ

-ethans bird (!)

-also the fact that’s so big for ethan to be chief resident is so weird to me. like the last medical drama I watched was greys and they are all like grizzled veterans and have been doing that stuff for actual decades and i tend to put med and greys on like the same level bc they are the only medical dramas ive watched but.. holy crap the people on med are so young?? half their main cast is med students and residents. when nearly every main character on greys is a department head. its wild.

-proud of ethan. proud of my boy (did you know that adam jacobs who played aladdin on broadway was in a s3 episode? fun facts) (fun fact: did you know that ava is the only main character on the show who’s status is now deceased? I’ll shut up now.)

-oh my god i say roland buck III’s name and GOD noah jesus

- i find noah incredibly annoying, especially bc he tries to overshadow reese (my fav) but also just bc hes spoiled [that thing that said that one of the biggest mistakes med made was not having sarah get the emergency med residency at the end of s1 comes to mine, and the fact that noah got his residency easy peasy] - but, i will say that the moment at the end of this season where noah and reese dance together at the party is very adorable. (pre reesker brain showing lmao I really did love sarah with my whole heart) (moreover my snapchat memories were filled with just recordings of reese scenes lmaooooo)

-okay at this point I need to stop once i get to the potential ava thing bc what is happening we’re not even two minutes in why is this so long. (so many thoughts)

- i find will annoying but,,, he is kind of nice to look at. and what i mean is like facial acting (i am a lesbian). like. just. don’t speak. and when he’s being a good character he’s fine. it’s very few and very far between ig

-natalie annoys me so much and shes only had one line, and it wasn’t even a character line, it was mainly exposition.

-EW

-FUCKING EW

-ITS CONNOR HE’S HERE. god i forgot what he looked like in red scrubs and his poofy hair. child compared to s3 and s4. hopefully we see latham soon so we all don’t have to suffer through this. and he looks so angsty. he definetly glowed up in the later seasons.

- i have no clue how to spell definetly. I am guessing literally everytime.

-latham please come and end this all.

-oh haha there’s downey hes dead.

-okay so i actually watched s1 after i watched s2 which is so weird to think about. like that means that i liked s2 so much that i BOUGHT THE DVD FOR S1. yeah. I liked it that much (it really only means I was that much of a simp for sarah). but it also means that technically i watched s1 after i met ava?? like i honestly had NO CLUE what was in my future. did young me ever think she was going to stay up late at night, avoiding history hw while analyzing a defunct character from this show on a whim? a character i was super annoyed with at the beginning? who has no become a huge part of my personality? honestly? no. no she did not.

-and the story with downey was so jarring. and the story with zanetti. like i think i first started watching with the first ep of s2 (the one im talking about rn) and i was a bit lost. so going back and watch s1 to like connect the dots. but i never expected the dots to look like that. its like each season of this show is a completely different show from all the other seasons. like i’ve said before, this show is a headache. but literally latham please come and end this for now.

-GOD CONNOR LOOKS SO YOUNG WHAT THE HELL thats so weird lmaooooo

- like i had absolutely no clue who downey was going into this. and they they started talking like ‘oh yeah he killed his attending’ and i was just like ‘damn bro ill cheers to that’

- that’s literally ava’s first line actually. “i heard your girlfriend went insane and you murdered your attending.” - which was why she was hated at first. that was literally her first line to connor which is like, so hilariously rude that it was instantly iconic.

-also HAHAHAHAH CUE FUCKING ANGST ABOUT CONNOR HURTING EVERYONE AROUND HIM WTF BRO THE EFFECT YOU HAVE ON PEOPLE

- but i’m also sad now. --- “I heard your girlfriend went insane.” Oh. Oh, sweetie. Ava... No. --- but why does s2 ava (all two lines) foreshadow s4 ava in so many ways. like literally what were the writers on.

-baghdad.

-ah yes. the return of baghdad. been a long time since i heard that one, but it is easily one of my favorite running things about med. its just a little detail but the nick name is like perfect. (when i read fanfic where the chars are actually doing doctor stuff in the hospital it makes me light up) the WORLD BUILDINGGGGG. but whatever

-this is the girl who has the fake baby right? that was a really good ep (bc sarah content. can you see my favorites? for the same reason the one where the girl has split personalities easily ranks high with me.) oh wait this is the one where the dad like dies but then comes back for a split second to see his grand child. there’s not really a lot I can say about that, but the fact that i remember it vividly is... weird.

-okay but I actually love the ED in this show. I love how the show is centered around the ED and not the OR like greys. its fast paced, you see a lot about the characters really quickly (one of the reason’s connor’s intro to the hospital in the pilot is certified iconic in my mind [his interactions with will are gold]). the team works well together (usually, when things are good. - which is another reason I hated the show more as time went on. The personal lives interfered more and more and more with their work as time went on. it got so annoying). but like right here will just calls maggies name and maggie is just On It. I love it. I love the fast pace. it’s why this show got me to come back. so many things happen, it overloads my brain, like the way a video game works y occupying all of your attention.

-when is the dad gonna pass out i’m just waiting

-AHAHAHAHAHA JEFF NOOOOO. what even was the deal with jeff that storyline annoyed me so much I never got it. he was friends with nat’s husband (who died) and they were both named Jeff? and she actually ended up getting with Jeff a few times?

- the more you watch med and see how the characters get with each other, the more jaded you become

-omg they’re transferring the girl to the bed i love it when they count

-maggie was great but from what i heard/read they ruined her character too??? just not the same

-lmao only real g’s remember the chicago fire backdoor med pilot (if you want an explanation ask me lmao it was a ride)

- i was a real med simp bc I bought that episode on apple video.

-ahahaha this is so stupid. Jeff tries to do things and Will (being a fucking asshole and jealous, doesnt’ let him). he’s a med student let him fucking learn. also i remember why i hated will

-okay but if you look at greys vs. med, greys literally gives their med students no rights. scratch that. they give they’re interns little to no rights. (i only watched the last three seasons bc lesbian, but in those seasons they introduce the bottom of the totem pole, the sub I’s, who are a step ahead of med students, yet they are jokes on the show.) its just a weird juxtaposition is all.

-”lungs are wet.” dramatic music intensifies.

-OKAY BUT I LITERALLY FORGOT NATALIE SPECIALIZED IN PEDS. LIKE I COMPLETELY 100% FORGOT. HOLY SHIT THATS SO FUNNY i can’t believe in my mass hyperfixation i forgot, just more proof that she doesn’t deserve anything.

-why did will make nat do that call? also idk why but is it weird to anyone else when the characters call each other but just.. their names.

-ahahahah i laugh literally everytime i remember that will is supposed to be in charge like he is threatened by anything that MOVES. (also more juxtapositon to greys bc here the attendings are treated as a joke!)

- hly shit i just remember monday mourning and god damn the angst literally never takes a day off but whatever.

- i dont usually get like this but the dad’s acting here is actually making me sad lol. Usually i get annoyed when family members get emotional (im weird uhhhh)

-why did we have to watch the tube being put in for so long - med is so dramatic this fucking show whyyyy

- i bet u the dad is gonna pass out

-oh ig not oops

-OKAY FUCK ME THAT LITERALLY ONLY TOOK US TO THE TITLES HOW DO I HAVE THESE MANY FUCKING THOUGHTS.

-wait latham introduction we may just be able to call it here.

-haha i fucking hate him (connor). he just... comes off so fake-charming its annoying. i cant get over it lmao

-okay but literally every gives connor shit and I am here for it. Latham: “did you kill him?”

- it is literally so funny but annoy how connor throws hands with literally everyone in his path (like dude just chill come onnn)

-okay. okay. okay. finally the part i was waiting for.

- Latham: I preferred a young woman from Groote Schuur, but I was outvoted.

That’s an actual quote, from Latham. For those who are wondering, Groote Schuur is a famous hospital in, you guessed it, South Africa. This is where I’m calling the episode. This is all I needed.

I just want to restate. This is the first episode of season 2. Ava Bekker is introduced to the show in the last episode of season 2. What does this mean, my friends? It means everything.

For those of you who stuck through to the end, I am very thankful. Here we have probably the first piece of evidence to my theory, at least chronologically.

I, personally, think it’s absurd I remembered this point, but I did. That point, that line, presently, watching this episode with no idea of what the future holds, is only there to tell us that Latham and Connor are not going to agree. But this is the single greatest piece of foreshadowing med has ever done.

Med has never planned anything. I feel confident when I say that. Look at their storylines. They are literally on fire, and every decision the characters make reads like the writers going ‘we have no idea how we made it this far, we thought we would get stopped like ten steps ago.’

When has med ever planned things more than a few episodes in advanced, honestly? Almost never, and going a full season sitting on a plot point, that’s major. This was the first time med has ever planned something miles in advance.

In all honestly, yes I am probably giving the med writers a lot more credit than they deserve. It’s quite possible that as the season progressed they just decided connor needed a new love interest or at least a new dynamic, so they could have just easily looked back and thought ‘oh, hey, here’s a fun little thing we said earlier in the season, wouldn’t it be fun if it paid off?’ That could be true.

Here’s why it probably isn’t. The med writers have no respect for their own continuity. you really think that, in order to come up with a whole new character, they went back to the first episode of the season and paid off a line that is said in less than 2 seconds? no way. Bull. Shit.

honestly, it is probably equally unlikely that either of these things happened. The med writers don’t look back at their story. It’s true, but they also don’t plan things in advance either.

here’s the thing, the more i write, the more absurd it starts to sound. Yeah. Sure. the med writers sat on a character for an entire season, that’s totally a thing that happened and not sarcasm. When pigs fly. everyone knows med is impulsive and messy. But what I am saying is that they planned one thing. One thing.

Ava has an accent. That was a commitment. A pretty uncommon one too. South Africa is such an out of the box choice that god its barely on the map. It asks a lot of someone to act hard while also doing an uncommon accent. If the med writers just decided they needed to give connor a new dynamic, they could have made it a n y o n e. Yeah, sure it would have been nice to have the latham dynamic with the new character, but it would have been so much easier to just create a new character that doesn’t have such a commitment. We all know people who play opposite of Connor Rhodes do not stay around that long.

There is absolutely no reason Connor’s s3 love interest had to be the girl from South Africa. It could have literally been anyone. They could have kept Robin on. They could have made the new character not have so many specific requirements.

At this point, I’m pushing this really hard. Yeah, obviously Ava was planned from the beginning of s2. She had to be. It’s way too specific to be anything else.

What I’m pointing out here is med has never done that before. (at least to my knowledge, if i’m wrong please tell me i don’t want to be a fool) They have never had such a concrete plan for a character, so much as to tease them a full season before they were introduced.

I’m saying, that Ava was special. She was the only character who was teased ahead of her arrival. The one who they knew they wanted, other than the originals, and honestly saying the ‘knew what they wanted to do with the originals’ is being generous. But Ava was different. They had big plans for Ava.

It’s undeniable. Ava was the only character who was planned and teased ahead of her arrival. Ava has such a different style and character than anyone else on the show. She was always planned to be, even when she was just being teased, a rival to connor, meaning she could stand her own against him (or without him).

Now of course, the med writers forgot this when writing s4 and s5. But for the purposes of the important things, all that really matters are the two mentions in s2, and what happens in s3. (for the theory at least).

In conclusion: think about how odd it is that Ava was the only character that was planned over the course of the show. Like sure the characters are planned, but never this far in advance. Med writers don’t really plan anything. I would be shocked if they did anything but through a dart at a spinning wheel. But they had plans for Ava, and they had plans for s3, when she was good.

Think about how odd it is that the med writers had a character planned from the start of s2, that they sat on for a whole season. They never, ever did something so slow and deliberate. Never. It goes against their formula. Like a fucking shark, they have to be moving or they die, at least in their heads. But Ava was always a change to the formula. They had a plan for s3.

that’s it for now. we will see what happens when i watch the last episode of s2.

read the next parts:

Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8 / Part 9 / Part 10 / Part 11 / Part 12 / Extra

[dvp95]

can’t breathe when you touch my sleeve - chapter 10

pairing: dan howell/phil lester

rating: e

warnings: none

tags: alternate universe, slow burn, fluff & humour, tiny bit of inner turmoil wrt sexuality but trust me it’s not that deep, deeper than anticipated but still not that deep y'all this is primarily silly, eventual smut, idiots in love

word count: 4,286 for this chapter (45,795 total)

summary: Dan keeps making a fool of himself in interviews, to the point where it’s basically a meme. Now he’s got to sit down for the better part of an hour and sell his show to the YouTuber he’d had a massive crush on when he was a teenager.

read from the beginning on ao3 or on tumblr!

read this chapter on ao3 or here!

"Daniel?"

Dan blinks. He blinks again, zoning back into the conversation he's supposed to be a part of.

"Er," he says, sheepish. "What was the question?"

"Are you sure you're feeling okay, Daniel?" the woman asks - the interviewer asks, fuck, this is like the sixth time he's asked her to repeat herself. "I heard you were ill yesterday, weren't you?"

He wasn't. But that is what Jaime and Patrick had sworn up and down to anyone who asked, because they're good partners in crime like that. They look like they regret it now.

"Yeah, Daniel," Jaime says, stressing his name in a way that makes Dan think she's one more fuckup from smacking him in the back of the head. He'd probably deserve it, at this point. He can't remember being this scatterbrained in his whole life, and that's saying something. "You sure you're okay being out of bed?"

The word 'bed' gets stressed too, just a bit, and Dan feels a flush creeping up his neck.

It's honestly unreasonable how he can't seem to focus on the task at hand, which is answering softball questions about the show he's worked on for three years, because his mind keeps drifting back to Phil.

Phil, who he'd left in bed with Thor, all sleepy noises and grumpiness at Dan needing to leave. Phil, who has the day off and might still be mostly naked and lazy while he waits for Dan to come back. Phil, who he only has three days left with.

Three more days in London. Two sleeps. And Dan has shit to do every single goddamn day of it.

This is a work trip, technically. They've got a handful of interviews the next two days that couldn't be scheduled for their first London stretch, and then they're going to France. That's exciting, it is, a mark of success that Dan never expected for himself, but right now he's frustrated by anything that cuts into the time he could be using to kiss Phil.

Dan is so busy remembering how Phil's mouth had felt against his that he forgets to answer the question. He can practically feel his eyes glaze over.

"Daniel," Patrick says, audibly exasperated.

It takes a lot to get Patrick to that point, so Dan ducks his head and mumbles another apology.

"He's fine," Jaime tells the very nice and concerned interviewer whose name Dan has long forgotten. "He's just got a lot on his mind right now and he's really shit at multitasking."

"Hey," says Dan. It's a weak protest.

The interviewer is a tall woman with kind eyes that crinkle into laughter lines when she smiles at him. She's dressed casually, has a denim jacket with patches and pins all over it, and Dan feels his eyes linger at the rainbow on her pocket.

What is that like? To be so certain and so confident that you can wear it on your sleeve even in a professional environment? Dan doesn't know that he'll be able to get there.

He wants to compliment her on it. It's the same urge he had in the restaurant with Phil's family, vocalizing that he wishes he could wear more nail polish. The same swirling anxiety of being judged for it follows quickly, but this time it's amplified by the recording device in the interviewer's hand, the knowledge that anything he says right now will be analyzed to death later.

Dan wants to live authentically, and he wants to get to a place where he doesn't need to hide, but he's frustrated by the reality of how much progress that's going to take. It's not going to be easy, it already hasn't been, and it's never going to stop.

Even with making a name for himself and having an audience, Dan knows that coming out publicly still won't stop strangers from making assumptions about him or demanding an explanation for the women he's been seen with. He'll have to come out over and over and - it's scary. It's really scary.

The compliment catches in his throat. He can't say it to someone recording him, no matter how kind her eyes are. He hasn't even told his grandma yet.

"I like your jacket," he says instead. He feels like a coward for it.

"Thanks," the woman says brightly, looking down at herself and tapping one of her bigger patches. "Customized it myself, obviously. It's a wee bit more colourful than you like to be seen in, right?"

The casual chirping helps Dan relax, reminds him that this is a laid-back interview with easy questions. Nobody is shining a heat lamp on him and asking for an expose on how he spent part of last night inside of another man.

He grins and shrugs. "Yeah, alright, I wear a lot of black. Sue me. I can still think colours look nice on some people."

Great. Now he's thinking about Phil again.

"Like Jaime," Patrick offers, tugging at one of Jaime's bubblegum braids. Dan still can't tell if it's a wig or not, but she smacks Patrick's hand away like it's her own hair.

"That's true," says Dan. "Jaime wears as much black as I do, though, I dunno that she's the best example."

Patrick nods, solemn. "At least her hair is interesting."

"Oi, fuck you. Sorry," Dan adds sheepishly. Even though this is an online print interview, he still feels a little bit of shame whenever he slips up and curses during an interview.

The woman - Cara? Catherine? Camilla? Ca-something? - just laughs and waves his apology off.

With an ease that Dan can't help but notice isn't quite as practised as Phil's, the interviewer moves on to questions about their other cast members. While they don't have any trouble making fun of each other, it's even more fun to exaggerate stories of people who aren't here to defend themselves.

Dan tries so hard to participate. He does. He laughs in all the right places and gives Jaime grief for not remembering something right, because he's given this poor interviewer nothing of substance. The thing is that Jaime is better at telling stories and Patrick is so dry and stoic with interrupting jokes that Dan knows he isn't needed for this. He lets them bicker over a story detail that he's long forgotten and feels himself start to zone back out.

He listens to Patrick's slow timbre, Jaime's trill of a laugh, and lets his mind drift back to where it wants to be.

--

Even though it's tempting, Dan isn't stupid enough to text Phil in the middle of doing his fucking job. He has to resort to checking his phone between interviews and pictures, getting more and more pouty about the lack of response to the things he's sending throughout the morning. Phil must be having a lie-in, because it takes him a couple of hours to even see Dan's texts.

ugh i should have just stayed in bed

pls send thor pics

and you pics but like give me a heads up if your dick is out im at work

i dropped my coffee on jaimes lap fml shes gonna kill me

im just so distracted lmaooo

canft believe youre just asleep thats so rude

Oh nooooooo. I always cry over spilt coffee :( you want me to bring you one? I can come hang out for lunch!

The sweet text is accompanied by a photo of Thor asleep on the sofa, his little head pillowed on Phil's knee. Phil is wearing Dan's pyjama pants and - it's hard to tell for sure, with the way the photo is angled, but Dan thinks he's got the Friends shirt on. Frankly, that should be gross. Dan wore that shirt for way too long for it not to smell like, well, his sweat, and that is objectively not sexy.

Dan feels gooey warmth spread from his stomach outwards, anyway. Maybe it is gross, but it makes him happy to think about Phil's shirt smelling like him the way that his own Yeezy shirt still faintly smells like Phil. He covers his mouth with a hand so nobody milling around will see him grinning like an idiot.

thats ok, Dan texts back one-handed. yall look comfy you should stay. i'll b back for dinner and snuggles ok?

Ok! ^_^

God, but Dan wants to be there now. He wants to be the one cuddled up with his head in Phil's lap. He recognises that it's very stupid to be jealous of a dog, but he isn't going to let that stop him.

"Hey, Howell." Patrick's voice interrupts the daydream of slender fingers carding through Dan's hair.

Dan blinks. He blinks again, looks up.

"I didn't even see you sit down," Dan tells him, bemused. They're sharing a bench in the building's lobby, not wanting to go too far in case they need to go back upstairs for more photos during the short break in their day.

"Yeah, you're on another planet," says Patrick. Dan wishes he could argue that fact. "Things went well with your whole Love Actually emergency, then?"

The reference pulls Dan up short. He feels his brow furrow as he walks through the entire film in his head. "What are you talking about? None of this happened in Love Actually."

"It's British, isn't it," Patrick says nonsensically.

"I don't," Dan starts, but then he gives up. He and Patrick are close as coworkers - friends, even - but Dan never quite understands the links that Patrick's brain makes. "It went well. It went really well. I don't know if Jaime told you everything I texted her, but I like... fully ended up meeting the family."

Patrick's eyebrows raise slightly. That's quite a reaction, from him. "You met the parents? Bro. You just started dating."

They're not in an overly crowded area, but people keep waking by them on their way in or out of the building, so Dan is pleasantly surprised to discover that Patrick can play the pronoun game, too.

"Yeah," says Dan. He doesn't want to get into the mix-up right now. He's sure that Patrick will have another incomprehensible reference when he hears about it. "But it just feels... I dunno. Right? In a way other people haven't? Maybe that's obvious."

"It's not obvious," says Patrick. He's snapping a hair elastic around his wrist idly, the gesture something Dan had thought was an expression of annoyance or frustration when they first met. Dan knows now that it means Patrick is tired, that he wants to shove his hair off his shoulders and stop it from tickling his neck. They're only halfway through their day, though, still a couple of photoshoots to get through, so he can't put his hair up just yet.

Dan knows so much about these people. He's learned it all from such close proximity for the past three years, but he also genuinely likes spending time with them. He feels, suddenly, very guilty for wishing cancellation on this thing they've all worked so hard for.

"Sorry," Dan says.

"For what?"

He doesn't really know how to voice it. He shrugs. "For being a shit coworker right now."

Patrick gives him an indecipherable look and shakes his head. "Daniel," he says, "you're not being a shit coworker."

"I kind of am, though," says Dan. "Like I can't focus at all, I'm missing interviews, and I... I don't know how much I want to go back to Atlanta. Is that bad?"

"Why would that be bad?" Patrick hums. "This is your home."

Home isn't an easy concept for Dan to wrap his head around. He hadn't had a happy one for most of his life, hadn't been able to find somewhere that felt quite right ever since he escaped that. So it's a little disconcerting when Patrick's words settle into his chest and feel like indisputable truth.

"London is home," Dan echoes, wondering it it feels just as right coming out of his own mouth. It does. His head is spinning, a bit.

"Yeah," Patrick says, like it's that easy.

Dan gives himself a little shake back into the present. He smiles, wry. "Still, I probably shouldn't be crossing my fingers under tables for the producers to shut us down."

For a moment, Patrick looks confused. Dan is all ready to apologise again, shove those feelings down, but Patrick just says, "So negotiate your contract. You know that you aren't required by law to see the show through to the end, right? You can just not come back for season four, or only come back for a couple episodes instead of a full season."

They're sat in a fairly public area, with other people walking about, but Dan could hear a pin drop in the shattering silence that rings in his ears at Patrick's use of logic.

"I," says Dan, "did not think of that."

Patrick nods. "You kind of tunnel-vision sometimes, has anyone ever told you that?"

--

By the time Dan returns to Phil's building, he's talked himself into and back out of quitting his job a dozen times. It's a dumb decision, but not much dumber than simply waiting for someone else to make the decision for him.

He decides to call Amy when he's in France and talk the options through with her. She's already looking for potential gigs in the UK for him, so hopefully the conversation isn't going to come as much of a surprise to her. The last thing he needs is for his agent to get upset with him over making changes in his life.

Dan's head is buzzing with it, loud enough to give him a headache. He texts Phil that he's outside and waits to be let in. He gets an intrusive domestic fantasy of letting himself in with his own key, and reminds himself to rein in this U-Haul bullshit.

"Hey!" Phil beams as he opens the door and steps back for Dan to come in. Other people live on the other floors, but Phil still leans in for a long kiss the moment the door closes behind Dan.

It sends sparks up Dan's spine and quiets some of the unending noise in his head. He sighs, leans into the kiss, wraps his arms around Phil's waist to pull him even closer.

He's cognizant of where they are, though, so he pulls back to rest their foreheads together after a moment. "Hey yourself."

"Did you have a good day?" Phil asks, his tri-coloured eyes bright and unguarded.

"Yeah, but it's better now," says Dan. He's parroting what Phil said to him yesterday, and he can tell that Phil recognises it from the little smile on his face. "You look nice. You showered just for me?"

Phil laughs and tugs at Dan's wrist, pulling him down the stairs. They've got four left feet between them, honestly, so it's a miracle nobody takes a nosedive.

"Yeah," he says as they narrowly avoid any number of broken bones. He presses Dan against the wall next to his front door and grins at him. "But it was also for the judgey moms at the dog park. You look nicer, you didn't take the makeup off?"

To be honest, Dan had forgotten it was even on his face. He settles his hands on Phil's hips and smiles. "They made me look like the best version of me, why would I erase all their hard work?"

"Mm, you do look pretty," Phil says, and Dan is lucky to have his back against a wall. His knees might have actually buckled at the praise if he was unsupported.

"Pretty, huh?" Dan asks. He tries to keep his tone dry, like it's a big joke, but Phil's big eyes just see too much.

"Very pretty," says Phil. Dan doesn't know how to handle being complimented by Phil's deep, sincere voice, but he isn't given much of a chance to react before Phil is speaking again. "But I don't know that I'd call this the best version of you. You looked really nice when you came, y'know."

"Fuck, Phil," Dan laughs, a little breathless. "I was literally gone for ten hours."

"Ten hours too many," Phil grumbles.

Dan laughs again, but he has to admit that Phil has a point. The day had absolutely dragged on with the knowledge that his probably-boyfriend was waiting for him.

"You wanna go inside, then?" Dan suggests, running his thumbs just under the hem of Phil's clean shirt. "I'll do a lot of things, but this floor is cement, mate. I'm not blowing you out here."

The giggle that's surprised out of Phil makes Dan smile so wide it hurts his cheeks. He smacks the center of Dan's chest lightly and steps back to let them both into his flat. "I was thinking we could, like, order dinner first or whatever, but I'm not going to complain if you want to switch up the itinerary."

"The itinerary," Dan mocks, looking around for a ball of fluff running directly at them as he struggles with his shoes. "Uh, where's Thor?"

"Uh," says Phil. There's colour high in his cheeks that he tries to hide by flopping onto the sofa. The sweats he stole off of Dan don't really leave much to the imagination at all, not when he's sitting like that, and Dan almost loses his balance when he stands up straight. The pink doesn't leave Phil's face, but a knowing smirk joins it. "He's in the bathroom."

Dan's heart skips like an old CD player and he laughs to mask just how fond he is. "Uh huh, and here you are acting like you were really ordering food first."

"Well," Phil says, his smirk growing, "we could still order first, it'd be at least twenty."

"Sounds like a challenge," Dan hums, coming around the sofa to sit on the other end and lean forward, kissing the sliver of skin where Phil's shirt is riding up. "Why don't you do that, and I'll go get a bloody condom."

Phil blushes, proper blushes, and pulls a packet out of his pocket. "Ta-da," he jokes, weakly. "For my next trick -"

"If you say you're going to make your penis disappear," Dan says, flat, "then I'm walking out."

They just look at each other for a long moment, like a staring contest neither of them initiated, and then Phil snorts. That sets them both off and soon enough they're laughing, Dan's nose tucked against Phil's hipbone and Phil's hand over his mouth.

"I wasn't going to say that," Phil insists, still giggling. "I wasn't."

"Sure you weren't." Dan grins up at him and slides up his body, a little less graceful than he'd imagined it in his head. He presses their smiles together and licks into Phil's mouth. A little noise passes between them when Phil's hands find their way into Dan's hair, but Dan isn't sure which of them it comes from.

The giddy feeling of laughter doesn't leave Dan's chest. He lets it make a home there as he trails kisses all over Phil's long, pale neck. He doesn't need to guess when Phil likes something - he squirms and makes these little huffs of noises, grip on Dan's curls tightening just a bit before it loosens again. It feels impossibly powerful to learn how to take Phil apart like this, like they're teenagers snogging on the sofa in their first relationship.

It's strange that this does feel like a first relationship for Dan, in a lot of ways. He loved his first girlfriend and cared about other women he's dated, but it's not the same at all.

Finally, Dan is allowed to feel all the things he's supposed to have felt when he was younger. He's allowed to let budding affection and lust and friendship all wrap up in one person.

"So, the piercings," Dan murmurs, letting his hand slide up Phil's shirt to toy with one of them.

"What about them?" Phil asks. He already sounds impatient and needy, like he had last night, and the sound of it goes straight to Dan's dick.

Dan laughs and sits up, helping Phil get his shirt off over his head. "I mean, do they do things for you? Do they feel good when I touch them? How do you want me to touch them to make them feel good?"

"Do you always ask this many questions during sex?" Phil asks, dry.

There's no point in lying. "Yeah, I tend to babble." Dan gives him a winning smile and taps at Phil's hips, a silent request for him to lift up. Phil does happily, arching up for Dan and letting his stolen sweats get tugged off. "Guess you'll have to shut me up somehow."

Phil laughs, muffling the sound of it with his palm, and shakes his head. He looks so fucking gorgeous like this, giggly and naked and starting to get hard against his thigh. Dan has no idea how he got this lucky.

"That's such a terrible line," Phil informs him, grinning wide. He doesn't seem bothered by Dan being dressed when he isn't. He just settles back against the cushions and wiggles a bit, either trying to get comfortable or just teasing Dan. Either is possible at this point.

"It's not a line," Dan protests, shrugging his jacket off and settling back between Phil's legs. He presses his mouth to Phil's soft tummy and, unable to help himself, blows a raspberry.

Phil kicks out at him, instinctive, and his tongue is trapped between his teeth as he tries to hold back giggles.

"My nipples aren't sensitive," Phil tells him, voice wavering with some combination of amusement and arousal. He drops a hand to wrap around his own cock, thumbing at the metal on the tip of it. "This is. It, like, tugs. It's nice."

Biting back a groan at the sight, Dan digs around for the condom. He impatiently knocks Phil's hand out of the way to get him hard enough that he can roll it on. The piercing just above his balls settles nicely at the bottom of the latex, almost like it's holding it in place. Dan rolls it between his fingers, watches Phil's eyes flutter closed. "And this one?"

"Not as much. Still good, though." Phil's tongue darts out to lick his lips, and Dan grins at the unconscious reminder of what he's meant to be doing.

It's not the most comfortable for them to be laid out on the sofa like this, lanky as they are, but Dan isn't nineteen anymore. His knees do not hold up the way they used to. He wraps his hand around the base of Phil's cock and lets the tips of his fingers idly play with the metal bar as he finally gets his mouth on Phil.

Dan isn't used to the taste of latex accompanying a blowjob, but it isn't unpleasant. He gives Phil a couple of long licks and then sucks lightly at the head, not sure how much pressure Phil likes yet.

That's something he thinks he'd love to learn. He wants to know everything about Phil's body, wants to make him tremble with it.

Dan is extremely offended when he glances up and sees that Phil is tapping something on his phone, but the offense settles when Phil huffs a laugh and says, "Put in for takeaway. All yours, now."

The phone gets put down and Dan tongues at the bump of Phil's Prince Albert ring through the condom. That makes Phil's breath hitch, his hips jerk just a bit.

It's been years since Dan has had a cock in his mouth, but he likes to think it's like riding a bike. He takes Phil deep, hollows out his cheeks, repeats any motion that makes Phil let out soft groans. He forgot how much he likes this, fuck.

Much like everything else, it's somehow impossibly better with Phil.

Phil keeps a hand in Dan's hair and braces the other on the back of the sofa, breathing hard, and Dan doesn't want to close his eyes and miss a fucking moment of this.

"Fuck," Phil breathes, and Dan responds with an answering moan around his dick. "Yeah, alright, that's - fuck, Dan, you feel so good, look so pretty like that."

The praise still makes Dan shudder. He sucks Phil harder, feeling the weight of Phil's cock on his tongue as he speeds up his movements.

Dan remembers blowjobs to be pretty fast. He also never gave one to a man older than twenty, though, and his jaw starts to ache once he realises that Phil isn't going to be pushed over the edge as quickly as he's used to.

He pulls off to give his jaw a break, stroking Phil and pressing his open mouth along the side of him.

"You think I feel nice?" Dan laughs, pleased by the way the gust of air makes Phil's cock twitch. "Fucking, forgot how good this feels."

"Yeah?" Phil prompts, his voice deep and breathy and so, so nice to listen to. No wonder he's so successful on the radio. "You like sucking cock?"

Dan shivers. "Yeah," he says. He's unashamed, because he feels safe here with Phil. He can admit to liking a cock in his mouth, a hand in his hair, being called pretty. "Yours specifically, though."

Phil laughs. "That's good. I like specifically your cock, too." He looks over at his kitchen for a moment and raises his eyebrows. "I'll get dressed and answer the door when the pizza gets here if you can make me come in the next five minutes."

Well. Never let it be said that Dan Howell backs down from a challenge.

[warmau]

{Regular Inspired AU x NCT 127} Mark Lee

tw: weapons mention, violence mention, be warned. everything written here is a work of FICTION, and does not in anyway reflect reality  an: please read the introduction to this au first so you understand :-) 

“i said i was going to keep you safe. i couldnt even do that.”

“i choose mark.” 

you pick confidently, assured that out of this whole bunch there’s only one other person who seems to be sane just like you

and if anything, you don’t assume mark is part of any of the super dangerous super illegal stuff

he’s practically a young kid like you, the only thing is that he seems like he’s got way more money than you

damn that big watch should have been a red flag

mark steps up, happy with your decision as he helps you off the table

“since we’re both interns, we can just help around the marketing department together.”

doyoung and jungwoo step closer and out of nowhere you feel doyoung lift a strand of your hair up for a moment

mark puts a hand out to push doyoung’s palm away, asking “doyoung, what are you doing?”

but doyoung just stares down at it and answers blankly

“are you jealous if i do this, mark?”

“jealous - what are you talking about!!?! it’s just making them uncomfortable you really shouldn’t just touch people!!”

johnny swishes his champagne glass as he strolls by and drops close to whisper in your ear

“don’t make our little mark fall in love with you, he’ll absolutely and utterly end up losing his mind!”

mark clenches his fist, chasing after johnny who gets out of the room laughing 

jaehyun shrugs

“stick with mark from now on. and don’t you dare try to tell anyone about what’s going on here.”

taeyong walks by without a word, sicheng gives a little wave, and yuta points between you and mark with a devilish grin

it feels less like you’ve just wandered into an underground hub of crime,,,,and more like your first day in some high school club

when mark returns, he tells you that jaehyun has called a cab to get you home

“so,,,,,,do i just keep showing up to work like nothing is going on?”

mark presses the button for the elevator and gives you a sort of apologetic smile

“basically. hopefully these couple of months won’t be too crazy. the jung family has lots of enemies and people are always looking to start trouble but ill make sure to keep you out of it.”

you’re quiet, getting into the elevator with mark and taking the chance to study his profile

he looks just so,,,,,,,innocent 

so naive, vulnerable, and young

you think that if he were to turn to you and start laughing, telling you this was all one big joke

you might believe him

but your eyes drop down the to expensive watch, to the memory of him and jungwoo talking outside about danger and guns

and it’s all real 

you’re here with mark lee and he,,,,,,,,,,,,,he just might be deadly

mark walks you to the cab, opening the door and acknowledging the driver with a nod

he says he’ll see you in the morning and you agree

the entire drive home you clutch the side of your seat belt and think to yourself about the fact that the driver doesn’t even ask for your address. or your name. or mark’s name. he just pulls up in front of your building and raspily informs you 

he’ll pick you up for work at eight

the next day back at jung enterprises, you’re sweating even more than your first

and not because you want to impress or not trip or hopefully become liked by the staff

it’s because you keep getting glimpses of everyone you met yesterday

they’re all acting normal, like they’re going about their business 

but you know that there’s more

but only you know, the people at the desk a couple of feet don’t

mark seems to sense your nervousness - he keeps trying to kindly distract you with useless work

“can you help me copy these?” “doyoung asked if you could get him some lunch” “let’s re-file this, it’s out of order”

you know that all the tasks you’re being issued don’t actually have to be done

that when mark steps away to go to the bathroom or talk to a co-worker, he’s really making a call about the real “business” or discussing something shady in the corners of the office

but you have to sit there, stamping envelopes or waiting on the printer as if you are just the intern

as if you and mark are just ,,,, interns

about a week in, jungwoo finds you alone by the coffee machine and when you brush fingertips over the sugar

you feel his dark eyes hover on you for a moment too long

before he doesn’t say word and turns to walk away

every moment you feel like you’re being watched, being analyzed 

it’s so much to bare - even though nothing happens

you’re not incapacitated, you’re not involved in any fights, you never even see whatever illegal business is going on

you never even see any money

and mark keeps doing his best to keep it just that way

which you really appreciate but also,,,,,you keep telling yourself to remember that this is kind of his job

his task if you will

and that you should look at his kindness as a part of his responsibility 

and not like he actually cares for you

the thought hurts more than you think it would,,,,it was at first just a brush off like “oh i can be pretend nice too”

but if genuine mark is so giving and sweet

it’d be hard to resist you think

“let me take you to lunch!”

mark offers, almost a month in of your “pretend internship”

you shake your head

“it’s fine, i know babysitting me is already boring en-”

“hey, im not babysitting anyone. you’re keeping up the end of your deal to keep quiet and im just here to make sure you’re safe. plus, i want to take you to lunch because you’re fun to talk to, not because of anything else”

you look up, smiling a little 

“you think im fun to talk to?”

mark scratches the back of his neck shyly but nods

“of course, you’d be surprised but ,,,,, normal conversations with you are a real breath of fresh air.”

you laugh, even though the thought of mark finding your normal conversations as intriguing is a little weird - but finally you agree

and mark takes you to this little restaurant a couple of blocks from the jung building

in which you two just talk,,,,,,about normal things,,,,,,about your ambitious and your future plans

and it feels like,,,you two are just people - like everyone else

and the whole situation you’d found about doesn’t exist

mark is in the middle of asking you about a hobby when someones large hand drops onto his slender shoulder

you look up, startled 

but mark’s expression just goes blank

“why isn’t this our little prince, little prince lee?”

“the boss thought you ran away from seoul for sometime, but turns out you’re just out here having dinner with-”

the second person who doesn’t have their hand on mark gives you a once over

“having dinner with commoners?”

you don’t know if you should be offended or just confused

mark shrugs the hand off his shoulder but doesnt turn to answer the two hefty men

they’re dressed in open satin shirts and dress pants

on both their hands are large, elaborate tiger tattoos and the character for ‘lee’ marked up in red, glaring ink

“did my father send you?”

mark finally asks and you feel the blood in your body go cold

“no, no. you know the boss doesn’t have time to be chasing you around. especially after you sold out to the jungs.”

a disgusted tone accompanies the word ‘jungs’ and then suddenly one of the men is looking your way

“is this person,,,,,,,,,one of those filthy cockroaches who works for that family too?”

mark’s grip on his dinner knife is so hard his knuckles turn white

“don’t address them. tell my father i don’t wish to see him or his goons around anymore.”

“this is a public restaurant, marky. and your father isn’t around to defend you so you better watch your tone.”

the hand clamps back on mark’s shoulder and squeezes it

“but we will tell the boss we saw his son. and that he was with,,,,,”

you shudder when they both glare at you and one of them smiles to reveal a mouth with one gleaming golden tooth

“whats your name little thing?”

“dont answer them.”

mark hisses and the two men laugh as they lean forward

you’re frozen as their large faces get closer and they whisper

“our apologizes for interrupting your date with the son of our boss, but you do understand we just had to say our hellos.”

you don’t say anything. you don’t even move.

not until the two men excuse themselves and mark’s knife and fork clatter loudly onto his plate

“w-who were th-”

you start, but mark stands and grabs your wrist as he tugs you out of the restaurant, throwing a wad of bills at the host as you storm by

you’re disorientated, but you realize that something in mark has changed

when he stops, you two are standing in the middle of the alley between the restaurant and the street

and you are about to ask your question again

when mark slams his hand against the side of the building

the sound is painful, but mark just keeps his fist clenched and he’s holding so hard that the veins on his arm start to become visible

there’s nothing soft and sweet about him like usual

instead he’s just angry - an aura of almost seething rage comes from his back

you stay silent, until he turns around 

“this is going to be a problem now.”

“w-what is?”

mark lets out a breath and instead of answering you he fishes his phone out of his jacket pocket and brings it up to his ear

“jungwoo? yeah, it’s me. listen my family is in town and im going to have to take care of that before it gets out of hand.”

you look both ways around you, the alley is dark and it’s only you and mark but suddenly you get the jittery feeling that you’re being watched

“you know what my father is like, if he finds out that im - no no don’t send yuta or taeyong out. yes i have my gun. that’s not the point, the point is if my father finds out i was with someone, they’re going to be a target and you know the situation already -”

mark looks up and you’re still distracted by your creepy feeling that you don’t notice his eyes on you

his slow scan up and down your figure before he bits back his lip and looks back down

“my father will try to take them. they’ll send someone after them. im going to keep them at my place for now.”

there’s a moment of muttering from mark and when you focus back on him

you see him slip his phone from his ear and reach out

“im going to need you to stay with me from now on.”

“haven’t i already been with you this whole time?”

“no, im going to need you to stay with me twenty four seven now.”

there isn’t much explanation from mark about why you’ve turned from just the intern he had to keep an eye on to his very own house guest

mark just says that your safety is in danger tenfold now

and not because of the jungs, but because of mark’s own family

you don’t get it - you have a million questions

but mark doesn’t really seem to want to let you know anything else

just that you have ten minutes to pack your things, come back down to the cab, and let him whisk you away to where ever it is that he lives

you’re pulling your travel suitcase out of the closet when you suddenly stop and think

is this safe? he says im in danger, but he’s dangerous too,,,,,,,

but it’s mark. a whole month has passed and this is the only time you’ve ever even see him freak out

is his family also involved in something illegal? did mark leave his family to work for jaehyun’s dad,,,,,,

theres a swift clicking sound and you hear the door to your apartment open

mark announces that it’s just him and you walk out to see him touching the plant that’s in your hallway

“the door was locked,,,,”

mark gives you a sad smile

“yeah, i picked it with my credit card. sorry if that’s rude.”

you don’t even have a response, you just go back to your bedroom, toss what you have from your closet into the suit case and lug it out into the hall

mark picks it up easily and you protest, saying it’s heavy

to which mark just smiles at you again 

“you’re already going through a lot, let me help you however i can.”

his eyes have returned to a soft, warm brown - not the narrowed and paranoid blown out darkness that they had been at the restaurant 

you find yourself following him outside, wishing and hoping that he’ll stay like this

kind, sweet, nice mark

but the unnerving feeling in your stomach is that - he won’t

the cab pulls up to a tall, glass building full of luxury condos

mark lives on the top floor and when you walk in the first thing you notice is 

tigers

everywhere

there are statues of tigers made of jade and onyx and even diamond on almost every surface of the house

a portrait of a man who looks like an older version of mark hangs up in the spacious, but minimal living room

and everything else that doesn’t have tigers on it

is a clean, untouched white

it’s as if no one even lives here - that’s how spotless it is 

“you can sleep in my bedroom.”

mark tosses off his jacket and undoes the first two buttons of his shirt

you stand there, sweating in your own office clothes, not sure if you can even move a muscle 

afterall 

you’re in ,,,,, mark’s house,,,,,,,,,, alone,,,,,,,with him 

but mark tells you to make yourself at home and disappears into one of the doors in the hall

you take your shoes off, placing them by the door and walk slowly across the apartment 

the tiger statues watch as you look out of the window, as you pass by the kitchen which looks like its never been used before, and finally when you sit down like a timid lonely child on the sofa in the living room

you faintly hear mark talking from the room he’s in and then,,,,,,,,there’s a knock on the door

before you can thoughtlessly get up to see who it is

mark rushes out of the room, barks for you to get down on the floor and pulls his handgun from his waistband

he points it at the door and you duck, blood frozen in your veins, behind the sofa

there is a second knock a moment later

“mark, open up.”

“who is it?”

“who do you think? jungwoo said you didn’t want me to come, but i came anyway. i brought doyoung too.”

you hear mark move closer and closer to the door

till it clicks open and you hear mark sigh

“why are you two here?”

“you know why, but more importantly where is my favorite cute little intern!”

yuta’s voice fills in the apartment and before you can uncurl yourself from your hiding place

he’s already found you 

“why there you are~ come to me, you must be so tired of being ignored and mistreated by mark~ yuta knows what will cheer you up~”

his long, slender fingers reach out and brush past your hair

he grins, with almost a fox like quality as he helps you up and back onto the couch

he sits too close to comfort and continues to eye you like some kind of overtly delicious dessert 

doyoung walks over past mark and takes a seat opposite you in the lounge chair

his eyes stare blankly at you

“so what happened exactly?”

he asks, but not you - he’s talking to mark

mark joins you on the couch, swatting at yuta’s hand before he answers

“it’s my dad. looks like the lee gang is back in town.”

“tsk,,,those guys are wild, no offense mark”

yuta coyly leans himself against you as he talks and mark grits his teeth

“none taken, you know why i left the family. they have no sense of mercy or boundaries. which is why,,,,,i think they’re going to come after them”

the them of course, is you

doyoung nods and shifts his focus back on you

“one of us should take over then.”

“ill do it!”

yuta volunteers, nearly cuddling into your arm

you feel both embarrassed and a little bit afraid 

but mark shoves him in the shoulder and yuta snips just like a disciplined  cat

“no, i think it’s best if they stay with me. ive been with them for a month. and if my dad sends anyone, ill know how to deal with it the best.”

doyoung brings his hands together on his lap

“well, why don’t we just ask them what they want”

all eyes turn to you and you swallow a lump in your throat

“i,,,,im not sure whats going on.”

“mark here is the son of a rival gangs leader, he’s the prince of the lee’s! destined to take over his fathers underground empire and defeat the jungs!”

yuta sings out, falling back against the couch dramatically

mark rolls his eyes at the gesture

“it’s not like that. i am the son of another famous gang leader, but i abandoned them. they just,,,,,,,,,,don’t have any rules and im not -”

“mark isn’t ruthless. he just likes to make money like the rest of us.”

doyoung finishes and the leans forward

“so here’s the situation, you can stay with him like you have been. or you can choose one of us to take over.”

subconsciously you shift your weight over to mark and it makes him smile under his breath

“id like to stay with,,,,mark. unless-”

mark thinks of putting his hand over yours, he can see you’re slightly shaking

but thinks against it, not with the eyes of yuta and doyoung here

“unless im putting mark in more danger”

yuta’s laugh echoes through the walls and he puts his hand out to ruffle your hair

“you know nothing dear, worrying about the criminal and not yourself!”

“im sorry if this is insensitive to ask, but are you and mark romantically involved? why else would you be so-”

“NO!”

you exclaim and doyoung for the first time shows some sort of expression with a raise of his eyebrows

mark knows he’s going to get red so he just clears his throat and takes over

“listen, it’s not like that. but i think if anyone targets them from my family - ill know how to deal with it. that should be good enough, so just report that to jaehyun.”

yuta clicks his tongue

“oh we will, we’ll also report that you two are obviously head over heels for each other!”

and with that he springs up onto his feet, doyoung following suit

you’re too embarrassed by the sudden sentence to look up but you hear mark denying it and leading the other two men to the door

they say their goodbyes and mark doesn’t return to his spot by you

instead he mumbles that it’s been a long day and you should go get ready for bed

as he rushes by you and back into the room he’d been in before

it’s awkward, showering and getting ready to sleep in the home of someone whose essentially you’re co-worker

your cute co-worker,,,,,,,,your cute co-worker who is also sort of kind of a gang bosses son

plus there’s even a little tiger statue in the bathroom

you turn it away when you step into the shower

that night you lay in mark’s bed, which is too big for one person and the crisp sheets are cold on your skin

everything is scary and turning upside down in your head

but somehow,,,,you manage to fall asleep

for the next two weeks, mark does not leave your side

like ever

he’s more vigilant and protective then he ever was in the starting months

and so is everyone else

you notice you see taeyong hanging around you more often

and jaehyun keeps pulling mark to the side for updates on the lee gang’s movements

you notice switchblade sicheng safely tucks back into his jackets sleeve one day and you remember that you’re still always in danger now

mark tries to keep your mind off it, just like he did in the beginning of all this

he does all the menial intern tasks with you, asks you about the books you’re reading or the music you’re listening to

he entertains you in the way a normal friend would, all the while keeping you from the harsh reality of whats actually going on in this business

you’re thankful,,,,,,but you also feel like a burden

like mark would be way better off just doing what he does best, not guarding you like some loyal dog

you think it’s the guilt you feel that makes you do something stupid

like sneak off to get lunch by yourself one monday afternoon

because mark was talking to jaehyun and it looked super serious and so what if you just went around the block

it’s not like you needed supervision all the time

but the lee gang must have been waiting for you to do that

because as you’re leaving the cafe with your lunch, you’re approached by a tall man

crawling up the side of his neck is a red tattoo of a tiger and just that makes you freeze on the spot

“looks like mark stopped guarding his treasure”

you clench the bag from the cafe in your hand tight and try to play it cool

“i don’t know what you’re talking about sir”

he chortles and shakes his head

“not even going to scream? makes it easier for me.”

and before you know it his iron grip coils around your wrist and none of the busy people on the street seem to notice

you think ok, screaming might be a good idea right now, but it’s too late

because there’s something cold and hard in your side and the man has pulled you close up against him

“im sure mark will miss you, so just be quiet and come with us.”

you think that if there’s anything in the world you want right now it’s to tell your parents you love them and tell mark that you’re sorry you did this

with that you let the stranger lead you to a car waiting around the corner and you watch as the door slides shut and your hands are tied 

the long silhouette of jung enterprises shrinking in the distance as you’re sped down the highway

mark assures jaehyun for what seems like the hundredth time that no - his father isn’t in on the trades deal with china and that isn’t what he’s after anyway

and when he returns, instead of you - there’s haechan sitting on top of his desk

mark asks where you are and haechan shrugs his shoulders, his less than appropriate silken shirt hangs loosely off him as he brings a pen up to his mouth

“did you lose them?”

he jokes and mark scrunches up his nose - a habit he’s had since he was a kid

and even becoming a badass criminal hasn’t shaken it out of him

“what? no. they’re probably in the bathroom.”

haechan replies with a sound that mark ignores and instead he starts to walk across the office

jungwoo catches him pacing around and whispers something about it to doyoung

mark doesn’t like that they’re always breathing down his neck like that, but he brushes it off as he plays like he isn’t looking for you - just looking for somewhere to drop these files off

when he’s sure doyoung and jungwoo have dropped it, mark rounds the corner and realizes that you’re not back at the desk

his phone beeps in his pocket and he takes it out 

just to feel the world stop

as the number splayed across the screen reads ‘father’

and the message is one simple line

‘come back or they die’

you don’t know where you’re taken or who took you there

all you know is that when the blindfold you had on is dropped to the floor, you’re in a spacious room

and there are

tigers

everywhere

in the middle of the room is a desk, where the man whose portrait was up in mark’s home is sitting

he doesn’t look or speak to you 

and when he does finally glance over at you he makes a motion with his hand and you feel something sharp pressed against your neck

“so, i am told you were dining with my son mark a couple of weeks ago.”

you don’t know what to say but the tip of the sharp thing gets tighter on your skin so you think you should at least come up with something

“yes”

“and you also work for the jungs?”

“im an intern”

the man gets up with a loud sound and you notice that he’s wearing a long robe

on the lapels there are stripes like that of a tiger and the character for the ‘lee’ family

“intern? is that some sort of new title for a new comer?”

“no, im just an intern.”

you hear the person holding the sharp object grunt and try to move it closer against the left side of your neck

but the man, who you are going to assume is mark’s father, puts a hand up to stop him

“what do you do for the jungs?”

“office work”

mark’s father tilts his head and then lets out a long, drawn out laugh

“c’mon, don’t make me hurt you. what do you do.”

you don’t know how to lie about this, what’s the right thing to say

“really, i just. i just work in the office.”

“so how do you know mark?”

“he’s in the marketing department with me” 

for a second you think you’re going to get killed because one way or another you don’t think this man is buying your story

but at the same time you have nothing else to say

you never did anything for the jungs but copy files and pretend to be a clueless intern

what were you supposed to do, lie and say you were also part of the jung family? act like you’d ever done anything remotely bad in your life?

but thankfully the sharp object is pulled back from your neck

“take them out of here. mark will come soon.”

you wonder what that means, and it must be obvious because his father just grins as he leans closer to you

“you may think mark is just another nine to five suit, but he’s not. he’s much more than that. he’s a ruthless man. he’ll come to save you, sure but he’s my blood and i know that as a lee - he can’t stand losing.”

ruthless? mark?

“he acts like an angel doesn’t he, sweet and soft. but he’s capable of destruction.”

you’re reminded of those moments in the alley

of mark looking angry, knuckles white and eyes over flooded with emotions

but even that,,,,,,you don’t think that mark could ever,,,,kill someone

you’re lugged away and as you turn your head you see the tiger on the back of the robe stare you down

just like predicted, mark does come 

but he comes alone and lies to jaehyun that he and you have gone off on a work assignment for doyoung

in a matter of hours, jaehyun and everyone else will know that he lied

but mark hopes he can deal with this in enough time

his family isn’t notorious for being patient

when he arrives at his old home, the guards outside only let him in when he’s surrendered his weapon and phone

he walks through the familiar halls until he reaches his father’s office 

all the while scouting it out for any signs of you

“ive hidden them, but you’re still welcome to come in my boy”

his fathers voice booms from the other side

and mark does so 

avoiding the glares of other members of the gang who he knows will never forgive him for working for the jungs

“im here. now let them go.”

“i will i will, but first off let me look at you. you’ve grown.”

before mark can talk back he feels someone tear off the jacket he’s wearing

he turns to swing at the person, but they’re fast and catch his fist

“i need to make sure you really are my son before we can chat”

“what the hell-”

the hand that’s holding his fist tightens and mark suddenly feels the other hand rip at his right sleeve

it easily comes off and exposed on his upper bicep is the same tiger tattoo as the rest of the lee family

his father smiles and the hands let mark go in his tattered clothing

“bring them out”

you’re still tied at the arms, but seeing as though you pose no threat you’re allowed to walk out on your own

when you see mark, you gasp

because his torn clothing and expression make it look like he’s just seen hell

but his father just waves it off and continues talking to mark as if you aren’t even there

“i know you want to come back mark.”

“i am never coming back to this family.”

“now don’t say that, don’t make me hurt your precious little co-worker.”

you see the guards at the door inch closer to you and mark looks you in the eyes

“ill save you. i promise.”

he mouths and his father steps closer

“to save them, you have to come back to me. to the family. you have the tattoo after all. this is where you’re meant to be.”

mark hangs his head low, all of his hair falls to cover his eyes and you think he’s about to lean forward and bow 

but instead he just says

“kill me instead”

your eyes widen and without thinking you yell “NO!”

and marks father snaps his fingers so one of the guards clasps their hand over your mouth

you squirm, shaking your shoulders left and right but it’s useless and mark grits his teeth

“just let them go first and then kill me”

“you’re willing to die for them?”

“im willing to die if it means you’ll let them go and i don’t have to come back to this monstrous place”

with an almost exasperated sigh his father turns on his heel

“no, no i won’t do that. if you want to be difficult, then ill just let you have some time to think it over.”

with that, another guard grabs mark and the two of you are hauled off into a windowless room somewhere else in the house

you’re thrown and locked in together and as soon as the door shuts you look at mark

who looks messier than ever before and ask

“why don’t you want to work for your family?”

he looks up, but doesn’t answer, instead he just comes closer to you

and undoes the ties on your hand

there’s nothing in the room you two can escape with and instead of speaking mark just envelopes you in a hug

“you must have been scared, right?”

“mark, what is going on why are you-”

“i said i was going to keep you safe. i couldnt even do that.”

“no, im the one who ran off like an idiot. i thought i was always bothering you and thought-”

marks warm hand comes up against the side of your face

you see the tattoo on his skin and then look up into his eyes

and mark gives that sad smile 

“you weren’t bothering me. having you around all this time has been so nice for me, you don’t even know. i just wished this would have never happened and we could have met under other circumstances”

there’s a silence that follows after he says that, mostly because you don’t know what to do or say

and you’re sure if this was a movie this would be the moment where he confesses he has a plan to get you two out

but he doesn’t

and instead

you kiss him

because you think that’s the only way to express what you feel

and mark kisses back, at first with restraint and then with an almost strong hunger

you pull back to breath and he apologizes softly if he startled you but you tell him that if anything you’re overjoyed that he feels,,,,like you do

“can i ask, because im still not sure, why do you not want to go back to your family?”

he covers the tattoo on his bicep as he answers

“they’re,,,,,,they’re too much. even for me. the jungs are dangerous, sure but they don’t aimlessly hurt others. ever since a kid i was trained to feel nothing for others so it’d be easy to watch someone die or even participate in it,,, but,,,”

mark winces and you feel like this is such a vulnerable memory for him

“but i couldnt. i cried when someone got hurt, i mourned people, and my family doesn’t do that. i just,,,,i guess im not,,,,”

“ruthless?”

you whisper and mark nods

“im not ruthless at all.”

“good, it means you’re human”

you lean in close and kiss him with a light feather touch that mark reacts to instantaneously

until you hear the door click

he recoils and makes sure to block your body with his from the door

“i think my father is back for me”

but when the door swings open, it isn’t his father

or any of the lee’s

it’s a pissed off looking jaehyun with a bloodied baseball bat

“there you two are, get up and let’s get out of here”

“how did you-”

“who cares, run!”

mark doesn’t question it and neither do you

you just let yourself be pulled up and with all your might you follow mark as you two make your escape

mark knows this house and he knows the winding paths that will get you two out

but you can hear jaehyun’s scream from somewhere

and then the sound of gunfire, punches, and more yelling 

“don’t look back!”

mark urges and you shut your eyes instead and just let him lead you until you’re out on the street

jungwoo waves his hand from the window of a large SUV 

mark lets you in first and as you follow the door shuts

“what about jaeh-”

“he can handle himself, the jungs know there’s no limit with the lee’s”

you feel mark tug you into his arms before you can say much more or even think about it

he holds you close up against him and you think this has to be a movie or some kind of dream

jungwoo speeds through seoul’s traffic and only when he comes to a safe stop somewhere you’ve never been before

does he turn to see you secure in marks arms and sigh

“didn’t johnny tell you not to make mark fall in love with you?”

you’re confused and mark tells jungwoo off for joking around in this kind of situation 

but his grip on you never loosens

not when you’re back in the safety of one of the jung’s hideouts

not when yuta comes around to jokingly see if you’re alright

and this time he doesn’t even dare to lay a hand on you when mark is making it so obvious that he better not

not even when jaehyun comes back with just a minor injury across his eye

and not when he falls asleep against your shoulder

still wearing his torn shirt

your finger tracing the outline of the tiger on his skin

jaehyun looks at you two with concern, but then seems to shake it off 

when mark finally does let you go, he tries to say sorry for the wild events that have happened

he talks about taking some money he has saved up and going to america or europe 

somewhere where you two will be far from the jungs or lees or anyone in korea

and you just hold onto his hand and say

“ill go anywhere with you from now on.”

“but i dont want to force you from a normal life, i know it’s too late for one in korea but i can help you start somewhere new and then just disappear like this never happened”

you press your forehead to his and shake your head

“you said i have to stay with you twenty four seven”

mark grins 

“ill change that to stay with me for forever?”

“i like that better” 

[haikyuu-scenarios-drabbles]

anonymous asked:  How would you feel about an Avatar AU? I’d love to see what element, or if a character is a non-bender, you feel would match your favourite characters in HQ!

oh-HO. i am unsure if you know that Avatar is one of my all-time favorite shows so when i saw this ask i was pumped!!! without further ado: i finally had some inspiration. i took this a bit farther than just my fav characters (i did as many as i could think of) and although i say in my rules i don’t do hc’s i felt this ask was best answered in that format so i did my best! i hope you enjoy 😁 im nervous as hell about headcanons 😬 some i have reasons for (serious or funny) and others i just...have a feeling 

special shoutout to my discord fam that i love so dearly and especially to @animelake13 and @justoverseas for helping me out 💕💕

Karasuno:

Daichi:

Alright with those thighs and that dependability?? Earthbender through and through

He is a rock solid, all-around player that holds Karasuno all together

he is their BASE, stable as fuck

he didn’t get those thighs from nothing he got them kicking around some boulders

didnt get those arms from nothing either, punching rocks out of mountainsides

Suga:

Waterbender for sure

Hello? Mr. Refreshing

Very calm and level-headed, but like Katara: DO NOT. FUCK WITH HIM.

He’ll fuck you up

again like Katara, mom friend, supporting the whole team, caring a lot about them and getting ready to fight and ready to jump in and help at a moments notice

Asahi: (Thanks Louie!)

ok so this boy was hard to decide bc, he’s a nervous bean but also the motherfuckin ace so he ain’t playin around

so i decided on earthbender because, he’s a big boi; a powerful and all-around player that has the respect of his teammates

and although he’s nervous, so maybe he doesn’t use earthbending to the extent of other benders but when he needs to, he will

and when he does it has impact and he is a pretty strong earthbender to boot

he can move fucking mountains when he wants to

member of the white lotus bc he only uses his immense power when he absolutely has to

noya: “asahi!! show us your bending”

asahi: “oh im not much of a bender”

MOVES A CONTINENT

Noya:

While my first instinct was firebender

the more i thought about it the more airbender made sense

air is the element of freedom and Noya is the definition of wild and free

not only that but his position too! airbending is almost purely defensive

sounds like our guardian diety to me

also can u imagine

Noya and Hinata racing like maniacs on air scooters

Daichi throwing up barriers all over the place to stop them but they just nyoom around them like obstacles

airbending is all about circles too and roooooolllliiiinnnng (hehe) thunder!!!

Tanaka:

alrighty well here is Karasuno’s firebender

Firebending is known for its intense and aggressive attacking style and literally

Tanaka yells like a maniac anytime he goes in for a spike

and firebenders can be hotheaded (dont have to be, Iroh for example) BUT say anything about Kiyoko, Karasuno or really anything and he’s ready to throw down

it might be all talk but he still gets fucking triggered

he fires up two flames in his palms and makes that face “ehhh what did you say about our lovely Kiyoko-san?!?”

Enno:

airbender

he has such patience and probably mediates or something 

or else he’d go crazy from Tanaka and Noya doing stupid airbender/firebender shit and burning down the entire town 

deals it out when he needs to, sometimes blowing Tanaka and Noya to opposite sides of the room and pinning them there until they calm the fuck down

anytime Tanaka gets too heated, Enno just shows up and blows out his fire 

Hinata:

ok so i kinda spoiled earlier

but airbender

i know airbending is defensive and Hinata sucks at that aspect, but his personality man, airbender all the way

again imagine him and Noya zooming on air scooters around

they would be a MENANCE

but also in the same sense, airbending is all about finding a way around the “normal” way of fighting (they refuse to harm anything is what i mean)

Hinata had to find his own way of fighting in volleyball and yeah…airbender  

possibly bc he’s a bit of an airhead too  

Kageyama:

WATERBENDER BUT WITH BLOODBENDING BACKGROUND

ok hear me out

he used to want to control people and make them do what he wants, otherwise get rid of them bc they’re useless and who needs ‘em

but then he meets this stupid, bounce off the walls, airbender who he doesn’t need to control bc this kid already does what he couldnt find in anyone else

and he slowly learns to stop using bloodbending, sometimes slips and lapses, but for the most part has left that part of him behind

also water is the element of change and Kageyama certainly goes through a major change in character throughout Haikyuu

everytime Hina and him fight, they make a snowstorm that nobody can stop and it pisses Tsukki off bc he can’t do anything about it

Tsukki: (props to Lake for this one)

tsukki why are you an enigma

nonbender and is a sword master 

with his ability to analyze and control, he would heckin destroy 

sword fights are a lot about watching your opponent and being able to make a quick decision to block or counter attack 

he can definitely make decisions at the drop of a hat and his strategies work and work well 

Yamaguchi:

THIS BOY

IS A WATERBENDER BUT SPECIALIZES IN HEALING

when Karasuno needs him most!!! he’s there!! ready to help and get his team back on his feet, in this sense by healing them

and also like Suga, mirroring Katara, don’t fuck with him. especially when it comes to Tsukki

AGAIN like Katara/Suga, mom friend, there to support all the time and bust in and help when needed

More teams under the cut!

Aoba Johsai:

Oikawa:

so there’s a bit of a trend here i see

but Oikawa would also be a waterbender, i guess it’s a setter thing

water is the element of change and Oikawa adjusts his setting style and approach for each of his team members to bring out the best of them

waterbenders let their defense become their offense turning their opponents own forces against them which i think fits Oikawa to a T

can make ice spikes he can throw long distances with scary accurate precision

like, one can just zip past your ear, and you dont see him anywhere where tf is he?!

Iwaizumi: 

i couldn’t decide between firebender and earthbender

so i went with the lovely mix, lavabender 

just like Toph, Iwa shows his affection through some sort of violence, but thats just cause he cares a lot

oikawa has mastered the art of distinguishing flaming hunks of smoldering rock thrown at his face

also stubborn unmoving like a rock

and when he gets heated, he is fired up

and finally, arms. where did he get ‘em? throwing boulders around. 

Shiratorizawa:

Ushijima:

metalbender, bc he’s definitely an earth bender but there’s something special about him

he’s a little dense (ok maybe not a little)

Earthbenders are generally muscular, tough and direct AND HELLO. thats Ushijima in a nutshell 

Tendou:

our guess monster is definitely a non-bender

like ty lee specializes in chi-blocking 

he can disrupt someones chi pretty easily making them completely helpless 

sometimes he does it to be funny 

like make Ushi’s right arm useless for a day 

and Ushi is like “Tendou. I don’t use that arm anyways.” 

“i knoooooooow Wakatoshi thats the point!”

which for some reason Tendou thinks is hilarious cause now he really cant use it 

Semi:

firebender

mainly bc of his hotheaded and competitive behavior 

his desire to show his abilities in his words is “uncontainable” and that kind of made me think of Azula 

wants to show off and be the best 

Shirabu:

so although Shirabu is also extremely hot-headed, he hits me as a waterbender too 

maybe just because every single setter so far has been a waterbender but its just my gut feeling 🤷

Nekoma:

Kuroo:

firebender but can lightning bend

dont ask me why it just seems right

he has the concentration and flow it takes to lightning bend, i mean he has that whole speech he gives to his team before every game 

“We're like the blood in our veins. We must flow without stopping. Keep the oxygen moving and your mind working.” 

and while this may lead to possibly thinking he could be a waterbender, he uses his knack for fluid motion and deceptive strength for a different purpose

not only can he lightning bend, he can redirect lightning which takes an immense amount of skill and is drawn from waterbending techniques

maybe its also the hair cause it looks like he got hit by lightning

Kenma:

ill be honest, i dont think Kenma would be a bender

what he would be ilike is Sokka, super smart, the strategizer, the man with the plan

who people look to for the next step, the brain of the operation

and i dont think he’d necessarily have a speciality besides overwhelming ability to observe and make decisions

so basically…he’d be the same LOL

Yaku:

earthbender

being small (dont kick me Yaku) means nothing (uhh have you seen Toph?)

super dependable and not gunna take anyone’s shit

Yamamoto:

Tanaka’s counterpart

his homeboy

his fellow firebender

both ready to throwdown at a moments notice

Fukurodani: (wow i suck i dont know anyone well enough but these two)

Bokuto:

did someone say airbender??

i just keep imagining he was the one to teach Hinata the air scooter and they fuckin zoom around while Bokuto is hollering at the top of his lungs

his hair already looks winblown, like he just stepped off his glider and doesn’t bother to fix it

also im cackling bc airbenders prefer evasive manuevers and…i keep thinking about that time he ran away from a block and Akaashi called him out for it

Akaashi: (ily Lake for helping)

so apparently setters are waterbenders

bc this boy is definitely one

he has nice fingers (weird i know) but i can see him just making these beautiful hand motions to bend water and hnngg yes

ok but in a more real way, waterbenders have strong fluid motion and understand those around them, they believe in very strong connections between individuals 

so even when Bo is out of the game, Fukurodani doesn’t fall apart because they have strong connections and can survive without him 

[cayennecrush]

Out of curiosity, since you're kinda into Lapis now, is there anyone you'd pair her with? Such as Peridot or Bismuth for example?

u know what im just gonna use this as an opportunity to rip the bandaid off and come out with it lol,, 

ive been thinkin about jaspis lately. shocking, i know. for some insight, heres the tags from a personal post i made: 

#post.txt #what i say: im really picky about the jas//pis i like #what i mean: most of the jas//pis ive seen blatantly frames ja/sper as an aggressor or dominant figure in the relationship #:even though that directly contradicts canon. it also usually has a heavy focus on lap/is’s feelings and pretty much just uses ja/sper as #:a prop in their “relationship”. ive also seen a lot that is uncharacteristically fluffy and happy and portrays ja/sper as someone who #:enjoys being manipulated and controlled by lap/is and has no say in anything herself which is extremely unhealthy #:and is a really toxic relationship dynamic to glorify (which is also how i see most if not all lap//dot being portrayed) #:therefor im beginning to find jas//pis i actually DO enjoy when its framed in a way that makes sense for the characters and has #:a more equal power dynamic between them as well as giving attention and focus to jaspers feelings and seeing her as more than just #:an object or aggressor to place la/pis in a “victim” or “wife” position #so anyway tl;dr its really weird going from being so viscerally uncomfy and upset about a ship to actually enjoying it #when ur around ppl who dont frame it in super shitty ways LOL and like actually care about the character U Care about most #andi know everyones like “draw what u want who cares what anyone else thinks” #but i feel like there would be such a fucking FIT if i drew jas//pis……….. #in a way that makes sense for me and that i enjoy u know? #idk #blehh #its not even like im like “ohhh theyre gonna be romaaanticcc” like fuck no lol but i think they have a rly interesting dynamic to explore #and maybe its something i want to think about #i dunno #lays on the floor #im sick and tired ill deal with these feelings later

basically, the majority of the jaspis ive seen in the past i havent liked, but lately ive been enjoying what i see on twitter and i realized that 100% has to do with the way that its framed and characterized, so i think it might be fun to try exploring again at my own pace (seriously guys, pls dont ask for this or any other lapis ship lol)

all of this is helped immensely by what i said about lapis a bit ago—that i feel after CYM shes much more honest and isnt constantly trying to deceive those around her. my top issues with lapis have always been 1) lack of accountability 2) lack of authenticity 3) lack of loyalty. she ticked off 2 and 3 for me in CYM, so im confident shell take responsibility for her actions in the future. because of THAT, i feel like she can be authentic, loyal, and responsible in her relationships, which i didnt feel she could before. which opens doors to other possibilities within her relationships… 

as for my personal headcanons about lapis, i see her as aromantic, so i wont be shipping her romantically with anyone (same as how i ship garnet with others). shes very independent and i cant really see her seeking out or benefiting from that kind of relationship. but friendships and maybe some benefits? sure why not! 

obviously things are way more complicated with jasper, but thats part of why ive been thinking about it. theres a lot of anger and despair and bitterness between them, but also i see the potential for a biting, sarcastic friendship with an undercurrent of genuine care once theyve had time to work some things out. 

i know some of you might be upset by this, but also remember i am a real person. i have my own thoughts and feelings, and its healthy for people to consider and analyze their feelings and be open to change. it will always be tagged appropriately so it can be blacklisted, and the fact of the matter is youll barely have to worry about it anyway because jaspearl is still my favorite ship lol 

anyway those are my current feelings, i figured its better to just. dump all of it out right now in a post than have to explain in 800 tags when i inevitably post an art of it eventually lol 

[marcilled]

The Xylo ARG: a summary

Have you or someone you follow been getting cryptic asks like the one above? They always just say one of the two following things:

a303d61a3714b71b459a9e65921078 OR a303d61a-371-4b71-b45-9a9e65921078

Well, good work, you’ve managed to stumble into a new tumblr ARG which I’ve taken to calling the “Xylo ARG” or “Shiloh ARG”. I’ve already talked about this on my blog already, but I thought it might be a good idea to have a post summarizing what the hell is up with these asks and what the deal with this ARG is.

The main blog and focus of this ARG is here: @xylophonetic

If you haven’t already read my previous post about this, you should check that out. It includes some speculation and theories that I didn’t include in this post, most notably my theories about this string of characters being a UUID, as well as some observations that this hex number actually corresponds to 5 unique colors encoded in hexadecimal.

Since my previous post, there’s been some developments, but sadly I and the others I’ve been discussing this with over discord haven’t come up with any major leads, or if we have, they haven’t led anywhere yet.

That being said, I thought it might be useful to make a post summarizing some of what we already know about this. I’ve never done an ARG and don’t even really know much about them, but I was one of the people sent one of these asks so in a way I’m a small part of it now. I figured I’d make this post since I think I was the first person to really analyze what was going on here and notice that there’s an actual blog associated with these asks people have been getting. Obvs a lot of these discoveries weren’t made by me tho, I’ve not devoted much time to discovering things, there’s a few others involved in trying to figure this out too. (y’all, feel free to hop in the replies/reblogs if you want people to know you’re helping with this).

Anyways, let’s get onto the actual post. This might get lengthy, so it’ll be below the cut. Heads up- this post contains creepy imagery, depictions which might be described as “body horror”, as well as mentions of parental abuse. All posts referenced should have a link provided unless they were deleted before the creation of this post. Got it? Let’s dive in.

First off, let’s recap on how this all started, and how me and a few others came to realize that this was, indeed, an ARG we’re looking at. (Presumably, anyways- all of the happenings are too strange to just be the work of some crafty aesthetic blogger… probably.)

It all started with a couple of popular tumblr users getting asks like the one linked at the top of the post here. Just this cryptic hexadecimal string, sometimes with hyphens, sometimes without. It’s unclear how many people these anonymous asks were sent to, but if you look up the text you’ll find a couple other popular tumblr users that were sent the ask. It’s always anonymous, and I don’t know of anyone who’s received direct messages from the blog owner(s).

After pondering it a bit, I decided to look up the ask I got on tumblr, and noticed a blog which had this string of characters as its url. And that’s where things started getting interesting.

The blogs

The main blog relating to this ARG appears to be https://xylophonetic.tumblr.com/. Her URL has changed a couple times since we first discovered it, the url was originally a303d61a3714b71b459a9e65921078. From now on I’ll be referring to this blog/blog owner as “Shiloh”, as that is and has been the name stated on the blog. (Also- her pronouns are she/hers as mentioned here.)

There is also another blog relating to this story, which I hadn’t mentioned in the previous post (because at the time we did not know about it / it had not been created yet). This blog originally had the url a303d61a, but has since taken the previous URL that shiloh used: https://a303d61a3714b71b459a9e65921078.tumblr.com/

This new blog was originally titled “Safe?”, and doesn’t appear to have any name associated as far as anyone can tell, so from here on I’ll be referring to them as “safe”. It’s unclear if “safe” is a character that has been mentioned by Shiloh before, but it’s certain that they are associated with the ARG because they swapped urls with shiloh. At time of writing, the “Safe?” blog has had its title changed twice, first to a series of three emojis, then to an eye emoji. We will continue to call them “Safe” until there is a more appropriate name discovered/decided on.

There is also, technically, a third blog- this blog uses the URL previously used by Safe, and it appears that this blog may just be for keeping the url hoarded. However, there’s still some interesting things on this blog, and even some possible hints. The blog is https://a303d61a.tumblr.com/ and will go unnamed unless things begin to appear on that blog as well.

Okay, now that we know a bit about how this started, and what blogs to be on the lookout for, what is there to know? Well, if you take a look at Shiloh’s blog, you might not even realize what you’re looking at is a part of an ARG at first. From first glance, it honestly just looks like an average aesthetic blog. She reblogs lots of aesthetic type posts from various bloggers, a lot of which may not mean much in the long run, but some of the posts she reblogs do give a bit of insight on some of the different “characters” in this emerging story. However, she also sometimes posts very cryptic things- many original posts contain very strange and cryptic photos or text that’s been purposefully obfuscated or otherwise altered. The same string of text “a303d61a…” is present throughout the blog’s history. There’s also other posts from Shiloh that imply that she is (or, was) in danger, or that she was sick, that she’s afraid of certain other characters, etc.

So, these “characters”… who are they? There are quite a few distinct “characters” involved in this, some seemingly more relevant than others. I’ll give a brief overview of what we know about all of them, but first, I should say what is known about the central character here: Shiloh.

Shiloh

While we don’t know a lot about Shiloh herself, there are a few things we can say for sure. Shiloh likes to reblog things she likes or thinks are interesting, much like your run of the mill aesthetic blogger. However, she also posts her own strange, cryptic photos sometimes- often times with many filters and photo manipulation used to make them look strange or hard to decipher.

Shiloh seems prone to deleting posts often, for one reason or another- or posting things then rapidly deleting them. This has been noted to happen even late into the night without much rhyme or reason. The “Safe?” blog is sometimes used to archive some of these deleted posts, although not all of the important/noteworthy posts are actually saved in this way. Shiloh has even been shown to go back and frequently edit old posts, sometimes multiple times. Her (and the other blogs’) urls, titles, icons, blog colors and headers have been known to change at random.

She also seems to not have total control over her blog/account- she’s posted before about her url or icon changing out of her control, and seeming confused or upset by it. See here. She’s also posted before about how she’s “regaining control” and such.

As well, it seems that for a time, Shiloh fell ill with some unknown ailment. Or rather, unknown to her- “they won’t tell me”. It’s unknown who “they” is in this context, but Shiloh seemed sad that she could not see Nat any longer- and also that her mother was preventing her from going out due to this illness. Notably, after posting this, she posted “im not a monster im not”. Perhaps people, possibly her mother, were telling her her illness made her monstrous??

Yesterday evening (may 16), she posted that her fever is gone and she is doing better now. Perhaps she has recovered from her illness– although she still seems confused about what is happening.

Aside from those things, she has also posted a photo here, tagged as “#me”:

(original post)

There’s a lot of uncanny images like this on her blog, and I can’t include every one of them- but this is, supposedly, Shiloh. There’s also another post in her “#me” tag, but it is simply a reblog of some art. Not sure if it is important.

Safe?

I’ve covered most of what we currently know about Shiloh herself, but there are many other “characters” at play in this story. Most of these characters we only know about based upon things Shiloh has said about them, or posts she has tagged them in. “Safe?”, on the other hand, we only know about from their blog, and how they interact with Shiloh.

Safe is a bit of a mystery right now. It’s unclear if they(?) are even one of the characters mentioned by Shiloh or not, or if they are an outsider completely. Regardless of who they are, they seem hostile towards Shiloh.

Safe’s blog was not known until two days ago (may 15th) around ~4pm. When we discovered it, our initial thought was that the blog could be unrelated to the ARG itself, and it could potentially just be somebody who was following along and taking time out to archive the posts. Shiloh is known to delete posts sometimes after all, including ones that seem pretty important.

As time would tell though, it became clear that Safe is another actor in this story, although they seem to be even more mysterious than Shiloh.

Safe seems to reblog many of Shiloh’s original posts, sometimes adding tags or even editing the post in certain ways. We have reason to suspect that Safe is a malevolent force, as they have reblogged the photo of Shiloh and tagged the picture “#it”, in spite of her specifically requesting not to be called it. They’ve also reblogged posts from her that say “cold” and tagged it “freeze”, and a post saying “warm” with the tag “burn”, as if wishing harm on Shiloh.

Nonetheless, some of the most compelling clues we’ve gotten yet have come from the Safe blog. Particularly, it was the Safe blog which posted the following:

Sadly, the post was later deleted from both blogs, and there is no web archive of it, or fullsize versions of the right and left pictures. Here’s the fullsize of the center picture, though:

This post originally came from Shiloh’s blog, although I believe the images were not in the original post– Safe seems to have a habit of editing Shiloh’s posts and adding new things.

These pictures are tantalizing because of the caption: “room 371″. If you’ll notice, 371 is a subset of the string of text tying all of this together…

a303d61a-371-4b71-b45-9a9e65921078

The significance of this is currently unknown. However, there was some speculation that Shiloh may have been hospitalized due to her illness- these images do look somewhat like a hospital. However, this conflicts with what Shiloh herself has said- she is at home. So, what is room 371? We just don’t know, at the moment.

Another series of posts from Safe that just happened today only further the mysteries surrounding them. Today, they reblogged the post in which Shiloh said her fever was gone and edited the text to make it say “SHE MADE ME SICK”. It’s unclear who “she” is, in this context- but this seems important.

Also today, safe changed their blog title from “Safe?” to a series of three emojis- a safety pin, an old key, and a dagger. This is significant because of another thing I’ll bring up later. At time of posting, they’ve changed their blog title yet again to be just an eye emoji.

Beyond the posts about room 371, and other mysterious edits and reblogs of Shiloh’s content, not much is known for sure about Safe. There are some theories that Safe is actually Shiloh’s mother, or that they are a reflection of Shiloh’s inner thoughts and feelings about herself, but for the time being these are simply theories with not enough proof to back them up yet.

Other Characters (Nat, Melody, Zach, Brian)

Now, it is time to get into the other named characters in all of this. These other characters we only know about from things that Shiloh has said, or posts that she has reblogged and tagged in their name. For some characters, we only know of them at all due to her tags.

First, let’s start with “Nat”. Nat is one of Shiloh’s best friends, and clearly someone she cares about a lot. Shiloh was very sad when she could no longer see her after falling ill. A scroll through Shiloh’s Nat tag will show a variety of posts, although there seem to be some strong connections to love, tarot, and cats. Also, sometimes, space.

Something interesting to note is that in the tags of this post, Shiloh seemed to imply that Nat also has a blog, but “she changed urls”, and Shiloh doesn’t seem to know what her url is anymore, simply saying “weird”. While this is purely speculation, it’s possible that Nat’s blog could have been tampered with, in the same way that Shiloh’s was previously (possibly by the person who runs the Safe blog?)

After Nat, we have a minor character: Melody. It’s possible they could be more important, but right now, I can’t find any posts where Shiloh directly mentions melody- we only know of melody from various posts tagged with that name. Interestingly, one of the earliest posts on the blog (and an original post, too) depicts a pair of boots and is tagged as “#melody”. There’s a slight pattern of celestial bodies and plants, but nothing too significant to comment on here.

After Melody is another minor character: Zach. Here’s Shiloh’s #zach tag. A common theme here seems to be certain mammals (an opossum and a squirrel) and two pictures of pocket knives. Recently, Shiloh has posted that zach is a friend of hers. Other than that, not much is known of Zach.

That brings us to Brian- another interesting character. Here’s Shiloh’s #brian tag. There’s a few original posts here, with some cartoon characters dancing and hugging. There’s also the same pocket knives that zach was tagged in.

On the surface there might not seem to be a lot here about Brian, but in actuality I have reason to suspect that Brian may be Shiloh’s brother. I believe our first hint at this was this post:

It would make sense that her brother would be there at her home, albeit unexpectedly. Another post that re-affirms this hunch is this now deleted post:

the tag #brother was put alongside #brian here. Also, there is this post which also mentions there being a brother:

There may be other characters, as there are a lot of tags in use on the blog. However, these 4 are the most obvious ones, having names that are… just ordinary people names.

Mother and Father

Beyond the already named characters, there’s two more distinct characters mentioned on Shiloh’s blog- “Mother” as well as “Father”. There are very few posts about Father, but a great deal about Mother. I’ll just preface this right now by saying that Shiloh’s mother seems abusive and openly hostile/aggressive towards Shiloh. As for her father, not much is known of him, but he seems to be absent from Shiloh’s life, likely due to having divorced her mother at some point in the past.

If you take a quick scroll through her #mother tag, you can see that there is a strong association with birds. This seems like a very consistent thing- perhaps Shiloh’s mother is a bird. Or maybe she just connects her with birds for some reason. Either way, if there’s bird imagery, there’s a good chance that it relates to Shiloh’s mother (although there was one bird image tagged as #brian, too).

Some of the earliest posts on the blog make references to mother in this way, too:

Another motif in the photos tagged as #mother are glowing eyes:

As discussed before, Shiloh’s mother seems abusive. Here’s some posts showing Shiloh expressing fear of her mother:

As well as some recent posts from earlier today (may 17) which tell a lot about how Shiloh feels about her mother:

(source for the last one)

It has been stated that Mother doesn’t like any of Shiloh’s friends:

It’s also been shown that Shiloh’s mother tells her she can’t go out and can’t see nat anymore due to her illness. I also speculated earlier that her mother may have been the one to call her a “monster”.

Additionally, this cryptic original post is in the #mother tag:

full tags are #fear, #heart, #love, #mother, #love love.

There’s a lot of hidden text in this image, including the mysterious hex string, as well as phrases and words such as “fear of the heart of love”, “like anything”, etc. It is a bit hard to make out, and difficult to reverse all the filters done to make the text illegible to begin with.

Adding to the series of mysteries surrounding Mother, earlier today Shiloh posted a series of pictures that appear to depict a path to a river. When asked about them, Shiloh stated that “mom doesnt like the river”, and that “she thinks its dirty or something”. Curiously, she says that her mom is scared of fish.

There have also been some theories that Mother is the one running Safe’s blog, antagonizing Shiloh when she gets the chance. There’s credence given to this theory by taking into account this post, where Shiloh talks about having her blog changed without her control over it. In the post, you can see that her icon was changed to this image:

An edited version of the full photo remains on Safe’s blog. This is a photo that was created by a neural network (source), and contains many bird-like features, so we’ve taken to calling this picture “mother bird”. The fact that Shiloh’s icon was changed to this while the blog was not under her control seems to imply that her mother was the one messing with her blog. Considering how much urls swapped between Safe and Shiloh, it seems as though there’s a link between Mother and Safe, although, again, this is speculation.

There is also this post on Safe’s blog, which depicts feathers / knives side by side, along with a caption from Shiloh saying “she’s coming”:

The post is now deleted from Shiloh’s blog. Given the feathers/bird motif here, and referring to a hostile entity as “she”, it’s probably safe to assume that Shiloh was referring to Mother.

At the very least, we can say that both Mother and Safe are openly hostile/antagonistic towards Shiloh, if not the same person.

As for “father”, there’s only a few posts referring to a father, and only recently have there been any original posts. Shiloh seems to associate him with suited businessmen, and there are many posts implying that her parents had a very testy relationship. It seems as though they divorced, and now Shiloh’s father is no longer in her life. Aside from some possible resentment possibly stemming from him not being there any longer, it’s hard to say much about Father, other than that he’s not around any longer.

Other tags

There are many tags in use on Shiloh’s blog, many of them seemingly mundane, something you’d expect from any run of the mill aesthetic blog. Still, there are a few tags which incite some intrigue, or are worth speculating about.

One such tag is #home. Shiloh makes many references to “home”- never “my house” or “where i live” or any other word- only ever referring to it as simply “home”. The images in the tag are often very lush and green depictions of nature- they could just be pictures of landscapes, or sometimes they are pictures of humble cottages in the wilderness. Sometimes they can depict houses that are rotting and decaying. All these pictures seem to signify what “home” is to Shiloh, and I think that “home” is a specific location.

To back up this theory, there’s also the tag #camp. There’s not a lot in this tag, but it seems to evoke this feeling of some summer camp or something that Shiloh went to once perhaps. Maybe “camp” could come up again in later posts? I guess we’ll see.

There’s also the tag #you, which would seem to be the opposite of the #me tag. However, there’s just some songs and other various reblogs in this tag.

Misc. observations / speculation

The new(?) blog at the url https://a303d61a.tumblr.com/ may be otherwise empty, but the blog’s title and description are somewhat curious. As of time of writing, this is the entire contents of their blog:

My device doesn’t have a new enough version of unicode to support displaying some of these emojis, but the emojis in the title are:

safety pin 🧷 old key 🗝 dagger 🗡

The emojis included in the blog’s description are:

rainbow 🌈 tooth 🦷 scissors ✂️ wilted flower 🥀

Also worth noting, is that these three emojis were briefly displayed as the title of Safe’s blog earlier today.

I get the feeling that these emojis may be a pretty significant hint. Something that reinforces this suspicion in me is the fact that Safe made a post tagging Shiloh’s blog, similar to how this new blog made a post tagging Safe. However, the post Safe made includes a safety pin emoji, which is one of the three emojis included in this blog’s title.

This is purely speculation, so feel free not to believe me, or reinterpret it how you wish of course, but: Perhaps Shiloh’s blog is like a safety pin, holding the story as we know it together. But, what we really need to find is the key. The key will lead us further, until we find the dagger.

I also find the emojis used in the description curious, because Shiloh has posted pictures of scissors (actually, lawn clippers?) before. Additionally, Safe has made a post about teeth and eyes hurting before. Interestingly, this post was edited from the original– Shiloh’s post was about her mother seeming angry, but Safe changed it to say “teeth hurt eyes hurt”.

Another potential lead that @ skippsblipps discovered, was a pattern in this old post from Shiloh.

Aside from the obvious secret message mixed in amongst the text, there seems to be a pattern of when the “a303d…” string of text repeats, and when there is something other than the original “a303d…” string. In their words:

“if we count only where the code was exactly the original code, its 6 , 1 , 2 , 1 , 4 , 2 if we count where the code deviates, its 1 , 3 , 3 , 3 , 1″

There’s a chance that this post could be absolutely random nonsense, or that we were only meant to look for the words within the text, but perhaps there’s something more here.

Closing thoughts

I said it at the start, and I’ll say it again: I don’t know a damn thing about ARGs. And, hell, after spending hours compiling stuff for this post, I’m still pretty clueless about where this one might lead. My main hope with this post was to inform anyone who’s curious about this ARG about what we’ve discovered so far, as well as to fill people in who may have missed stuff.

Also, I’d like to apologize if this post jumps topics around a lot, or if it can be a bit hard to follow. Honestly I think that’s just a result of all of the different loose ends in this ARG being hard to follow themselves, although I tried my best. I had to keep updating this post as I typed it, because new posts kept coming in and new discoveries/speculation kept happening. So, sorry for any confusion.

Sadly, many posts on both blogs end up getting deleted, and never archived. That’s why I’ve taken the liberty to archive each and every single post and tag I linked to in this breakdown on the internet archive, which is also why this took hours to make this post because I had to ctrl+c and ctrl+v like a million times. If you notice any of the links I put in this post are broken, just paste the url into the wayback machine and you should at least pull up the archive that I took at the time of typing this post. I couldn’t archive every single thing on all these blogs, just the stuff that I thought was relevant.

If anyone else is inspired to hop in on this ARG because of this post, please feel free to add your thoughts/speculation in the replies, reblogs, whatever. Also please don’t expect me to answer all your asks & speculation, I did this post because it seems like nobody else is paying attention to this and I thought it was cool and deserved some time and attention. I fully expect people smarter than me to outpace me and discover all the secrets and that’s cool with me, I’m just along for the ride. I hope my post helped. Thanks for reading!

EDIT: I’ve made an update to this post here, go read it!

[awholedamnmeal]

thank god for friends who can handle small talks

it was 9pm and the movie finished later than i thought it would. i just got back from bandung to jakarta that day and i had been working for hours (on a sunday!!!) before seeing the movie. so you see, i was tired. then came the online taxi driver taking me home and he had a lot to say.

“do you think this is the right turn? i don’t want to miss the u-turn, i think this is it. oh yeah yeah the u-turn’s right there. i thought we missed it, that’s why i turned left to go back around the building, you know? turns out it’s here. it gets confusing around here with all the construction going on.”

i had lived in jakarta for less than a year, i didn’t know every u-turn so excuse me for being unhelpful.

“oh thank god there’s no traffic jam right now. the traffic’s usually crazy here. it would take an hour just to go a few hundred meters.”

i knew the traffic was usually crazy there. but i didn’t care enough to notice there was less traffic that day. nor to chat about it.

“you know i usually don’t pick up passengers from this mall. because of the traffic. other drivers say the rate is usually higher if you do pick-ups here but i’d rather not. i mean, the difference in rates isn’t even all that much anyway, so i usually just go to other parts of the city with less traffic.”

i was not at all invested in this conversation.

i have a whole thing with small talks. it has always been something i struggle with. every time a stranger or someone i don’t know well strikes up a conversation with me, i freeze and lose my words. i just go through the motions; nodding, saying “ahh” and “ohhh” on cue, and providing short answers to their questions. and then i feel my energy leaving me like purple galaxy crunch slime slipping through my fingers, except it’s not satisfying and you can’t ASMR it.

i’ve been thinking about this a lot. it’s not that i’m shy or quiet. i’m talkative with people i know (i even have a tendency of saying too much and regretting it later but let’s not talk about that). so what, pray tell, is wrong with me??? i want to change. i want to fix this. mind you, it’s not like i enjoy being a conversation assassin. i would like to be able to exchange personal trivia with a stranger and not feel like i have to recharge myself with a 5-hour nap afterwards.

i’ve done a thousand years of soul searching and i’ve over analyzed every awkward small talk encounters i’ve had and i think it comes down to two things:

1. either i genuinely don’t care enough about what the other party is saying

“so where are you from?”

“bandung”

“wow im from bandung too!”

yes, just like a couple million other people..

2. or i think a friend i’m with is more interesting to talk to so i’ll just shut up

this is what happened that day in the taxi. i was with astrid. she handles small talks like a seasoned professional. she responded enthusiastically, and asked questions in return (though i’d assume anyone with normal social DNA would be able to do the same). all the way home, all i had to do was think about what to order in for dinner.

but knowing why i clam up when it comes to small talks is only the first step in my journey to becoming a small talk guru. now i have to actually like making small talks.

i’ve tried self-help books (which i think are the biggest scams on earth but i tried anyway), wikihelp articles, blogs, and youtube videos. but those things and my small-talk-phobic lame ass are like online petitions and world problems: the former does jack shit to solve the latter. so i tried faking it and just copying what my small talk savvy friends do. i feigned interest and asked questions.

“how long have you been a driver for?”

“about 2 years now. i’ve been on and off though”

“i see... uhmm... uhhhhhh...... how has it been like..?”

“oh you know, it has its ups and downs. sometimes i get crazy customers, or have to drive them somewhere super far.”

“oh.. right...... haha.... uhmm...”

a mosquito listening to me in the car kicked the bucket that day. coroner’s report: frustration. RIP.

fear not, i have not given up.

recently, i went to this public speaking workshop at my mom’s request. it didnt just teach me about public speaking, it also taught me how to conduct one-on-one communication. to be frank, it had a lot of pseudoscience bullshit. but surprisingly there were also a few useful tips. like it had a whole exercise routine you can do to help ease communication (more on this workshop in a separate post, hopefully out by 2045), which has opened me up a little bit to small talks. the thought of a taxi driver asking things other than “is this the right way?” or “do you want to get off here?” doesn’t really make me cringe with dread anymore.

but i’ve still got a long way to go.

ultimately i think what’s holding me back is this voice in my head telling me how redundant and somewhat dangerous small talks are. why would a stranger want to know where i’m from anyway? or whether i’m studying or working? or how old i am? what would they do with that information? after all, that public speaking workshop did also talk about communicating with purpose and meaning what you say. if you dont really mean to know where i’m from and you’re just asking for the sake of filling the silence, then why bother? or do you have ill intentions towards me?

i mean, i’m willing to make small talks when necessary but i still believe the world would be a better place if people would just mind their own business...

alas, the world is still full of invasive extroverts.

and until the day i can hold a conversation with that taxi driver like i can with a close friend, i still need all the astrid’s of the world to cover for me.