#but one piece was what i hyperfixated on at the start of the first lockdown

[every-sanji]

Woah this little project has been going on for 3 years now! A little crazy that I've managed to keep this thing running but I am nothing if not committed to the bit. Thank you to everyone who has been here since day one and everyone who has followed along more recently in this journey to post every single Sanji! Here's to three more years 🥂

[deliciouskeys]

Cozy Corner Domaystic prompts #16: Going through immigration and #24: Identity theft.

Guys. Guys, I’ll be honest. I have no idea what possessed me. I think I found these two prompts as some of the most challenging to imagine as a domestic fic, and… my thinking got a little bit too outside the box.

This fic will have an intended audience of about 1 (me). But I want to give major major props to @olliveolly who introduced me to this game and was the one who came up with this That’s Not My Neighbor / Boys crossover AU (with a couple lovely art pieces on the theme). The “lore” of this horror game is very simple. Tell me you don’t see it:

Butchlander. That’s Not My Neighbor crossover/AU. Rated E (why). 3.3k words (why). 2nd person to allegedly reflect the feeling of first-person gameplay (why). Is this domestic fic? Welllllll. It takes place in an apartment complex so it counts, right? Lax interpretation of ‘going through immigration’ but honestly that’s what this game really reminds me of 😂 AO3 link

Another day, another interminable shift working as the concierge in the dreary lobby of this apartment complex. It was exciting at first, sure, what with getting to play the first and last line of defense against the doppelganger monsters that attempt to sneak in every single day. But you’ve just gotten too good at noticing discrepancies. Nothing gets past you anymore. You know every single feature- hell, every single freckle! -of every single resident in the building. By this point you’ve got all their phone numbers memorized, for no better reason than there is simply too much tedium to this job. You find yourself wishing you could actually watch the D.D.D. ‘decontaminate’ the lobby, as they so euphemistically put it, instead of just sitting there twiddling your thumbs behind a pulled down rollup metal shutter after summoning them. You could still make out screams without seeing the brutality, and you knew the D.D.D. employed flame throwers and other serious weapons to deal with these monsters. Sometimes you caught yourself feeling just a little bit of sympathy for the doppelgangers, even though their main goal in life appeared to be to imitate people to blend in and then feed upon human flesh, and your main goal in life was supposed to be to ensure none of them would ever get let in through the locked inner door.

John Gillman comes in through the first door and gives you a tired, nominal wave before fishing around in his pockets for his documents to gain entry. He might be your favorite resident— always polite, always in that clean-cut milkman uniform at least when you happen to see him, because no one really leaves the apartment building outside of work obligations. There’s no nightlife in New York anymore, not with everyone nervous of dark alleys or being alone on the street, especially after dark. When you came over here from London, you certainly didn’t expect to get stuck here during a worldwide apocalyptic event like this that has resulted in curfews and lockdowns. You certainly didn’t expect to get zero action and get a mindnumbing job just to make ends meet. It was probably still more interesting than your gig working as a bouncer back in London, but at least you got fresh air there, and sometimes a date to go home with after closing time. Maybe that’s why you’ve started hyperfixating and daydreaming about one of the residents— the involuntary celibacy is getting to you.

John just always looks uncannily attractive. Maybe it’s that silly uniform that’s easy to fetishize. Maybe it’s because his tired eyes also look like bedroom eyes, or the dark circles function the same way eyeliner would. Why is he always so tired anyway? You know he lives alone up there in F03-02. He never gets any visitors either. How much can a person masturbate, really? There’s a rumor around the building that Becca Saunders’ tyke might be his, but you don’t really see the resemblance, and have your doubts that this didn’t just start as a “sleeping with the milkman” joke that got out of hand. People just like to gossip about single mothers. Things like this shouldn’t be considered scandalous. It’s 1955 for god’s sake!

“Sorry, William,” John says, hurriedly shoving his ID and entry request form underneath the glass so you can take take a look. “Almost thought I left my ID at work.”

“Long day, huh?” you ask without expecting a reply, pretending to scrutinize the documents while making small talk. You know this is John. You’d know him from a mile away. But it doesn’t mean you can’t have a little bit of fun. “Looks okay, and you are on the list of people authorized to come and go today. But can you take off your cap?”

John grabs his milkman cap off his head, exposing a mop of blond hair, looking mussed after being under the hat all day. You really wish you could test him, see how far you’d be able to take things before he refused to cooperate. Take off your shirt, John. Gotta make sure it’s really you. You never know these days. But of course you don’t. All you’ll have is your fantasies about breaching every code of ethics and using your master key to gain entrance into his apartment, seducing him, ravishing him right in the middle of what must be a depressing bachelor pad. Give him much darker undereye circles by keeping him up all night. Give this apartment complex a more interesting rumor to spread about the milkman in their midst.

“You’re good to go,” you say and press the green unlock button to let him in. He gives you a wan smile and walks out of view, and you listen to his footsteps ascending the stairs.

The rest of the afternoon is uneventful, only a few people coming and going, and a couple of doppelgängers with laughably strange appearance or bad credentials being dispatched quickly. Or at least it’s uneventful until John walks in, just a little bit past curfew.

“Hey William,” he says, sounding distracted, rummaging in his pockets for his documents as a cold sweat breaks out on your forehead. This better be a doppelganger, you think to yourself. But he has both his ID and the entry request filled out correctly. He looks identical to the John that passed by here a couple of hours earlier. This can’t be.

You start dialing John’s number, not taking your eyes off the man in front of you.

John’s eyes widen with alarm when he sees that you get an answer from the other end of the line.

“Yes, hello? John here. I’m not expecting any visitors.”

You hang up pretty abruptly, staring at the John in front of you, searching his appearance for any subtle defect or inconsistency but finding none. Your finger is hovering over the alarm button.

“Oh my god. Oh my god, you think I’m someone else? It’s me, William! I swear to god it’s me! I don’t know who you let in earlier, and who’s answering the phone now, but it’s not me up there!”

And shit, you believe him. You must have fucked up. Gotten smug and sloppy. Maybe the doppelganger handed you a fake ID but you didn’t notice because you were too busy daydreaming about fucking him.

“William, please believe me, please!” John is pressing up against the glass at this point, clearly scared that you’re going to quarantine him in the lobby and sic the D.D.D. on him. They don’t tend to ask questions. You’ve never had it happen, but you’ve heard of innocent people getting snuffed out on the mere suspicion of being doppelgangers, the D.D.D. rarely admitting to such mistakes even after the fact.

“Alright, alright, I believe you. I just have to think…” you mumble. “I’ll let you in, but don’t go up to your flat. We have to figure this out.”

John nods frantically and slips into your office after you buzz him in.

“What are you going to do?” he asks, and if you weren’t scared shitless at the moment, you’d probably get a kick out of how vulnerable and scared his expression is compared to his usual tired, impassive one.

“I should call the D.D.D. and get them to go up there,” you think out loud.

“Won’t you get reprimanded?” John asks, and oh how sweet of him to worry about your job when you’ve fucked up so royally and almost gotten him killed with your negligence. Maybe already gotten some of his neighbors killed.

“I just don’t want you losing your job over this— you’re the best concierge we have,” he says and then looks down shyly, as if realizing how strange that concern is.

What is this? Are you dreaming? Maybe you’re just out of your mind with adrenaline, but John sounds like he’s got feelings for you.

“Let’s just go up there and see what’s going on,” he says, and damn he’s persuasive as fuck. You want to go and deal with the mess you made, and protect him.

“I’ll go up there and just check,” you say, hardly believing yourself as you grab the fire extinguisher from the wall as a makeshift weapon. Everyone who was scheduled to return to the building has, so you shouldn’t get any more legitimate people coming through, but you still tape up a note that you’ll be back at your post in a few minutes. “Right then. You just stay down here and wait. I don’t want you putting yourself at risk. If I’m not back in five, call the number on the post-it.”

John shakes his head and follows you up the stairs. “I’m not letting you go up there alone,” he says in that quiet irresistible voice and you start to wonder if there’s something strange going on. Why are you going on this potentially suicidal mission to deal with a doppelganger on your own? So what if you get fired? No job is worth your life, right? But you probably wouldn’t see John ever again if you lost this job and that’s clouding all your judgment right now.

Knocking on John’s apartment door is probably not a good idea, and will just give the monster inside time to prepare or hide. So you take out your master key and turn it in the lock as quietly and quickly as you can. The door swings opens with an ominous creak, revealing a dark living room with no sign of anyone there. Did he hear you coming up the stairs? You try to keep John behind you and shield him in case anything sudden happens from within the apartment, but then you feel a strong push from behind and both you and John are in the flat now.

You’re so stupid, so critically, fatally stupid. The John you let in earlier was the real one. You’ve let a doppelganger convince you that you made a mistake, and now you did let one in. You whirl around, try to hit him upside the head with the fire extinguisher you’re brandishing, but he blocks the move with little effort.

“I thought we agreed,” he says, and you realize he’s speaking not to you but past you to someone else in the room.

“Thursdays are my days,” an identical voice answers from behind you and you step back and try to make sense of what you’re seeing. Two John Gillmans, both in the same uniform, neither one looking the least bit spooked, both looking mildly irritated if anything.

“Since when,” the John who came up behind you asks of the other one. “I get to be here every other day, doesn’t matter what day of the week it is.”

“So now what are we going to do about him?” the John who was in the apartment asks, pointing to you. “Why didn’t you just leave once he called me? Are you stupid?”

Your heart may be racing, but your thinking feels as slow as molasses. They’re …. both doppelgangers?

“What have you done with the real John Gillman?” you whisper hoarsely. The twins turn to look at you and you’re creeped out by the very similar smirk that spreads across both of their faces. They’re really impeccable facsimiles of the real person, but this is an expression you’ve never seen on John.

“You’ve never met the ‘real John Gillman’,” one of them says.

There’s enough cold sweat that’s broken out on your back that it starts to trickle down as drops.

“We like you William. It would be such a shame for our friendship to end.”

You hold up the fire extinguisher in front of yourself defensively, but you’re not sure you can really do anything against two of them. You’ve never noticed before, and maybe the real John’s teeth didn’t look like this, but the two doppelgangers have sharp looking canines when they’re grinning. It’ll serve you right to get devoured in this dark flat for making so many mistakes and bad decisions in a row today.

“So you’re just going to kill me then?” you ask.

“We’d really rather not,” one of the twins says. “A murder would bring a lot of snooping law enforcement if not the D.D.D. Itself.”

“And it’s so hard to find good lodging to spend the night.”

They must be joking. “You really expect me to believe you’re not just here to eat people?”

One of the twins rolls his eyes. “Eat people! Yeah, that’s why we’re here, clearly.”

“Has anyone in this apartment building ever disappeared in all the months you’ve worked here?” the other one asks.

“How should I know?” You’re beginning to feel like this has to be some sick nightmare. You can’t possibly be having a civil conversation with a couple of cannibal monsters. This thought has a strange calming effect on you. “If I didn’t know you lot were masquerading as John Gillman, how am I to know how many other residents are real people?”

The twins turn to each other, still smiling and shrugging.

“We’ve been on a vegetarian diet for a while,” the other says and you can’t help but bark out a laugh.

“Laugh all you want,” the other one says, spreading his hands in concession. “But milk is more than enough to sustain us. We do think people are delicious, but there’s one thing we like much more than eating them.”

“And what’s that?” you ask, emboldened by the possibility that you’re just in a ridiculous, paranoid, bad dream of a worst case scenario at your job.

“We’ve been watching you William. We think you’ve been interested in us.”

“We’ve never fucked anyone from this building, and never fucked together, but there’s a first time for everything, right?”

You just stand there, fire extinguisher still raised up defensively. No question about it, this must be a nightmare that’s slowly but surely twisting itself into a sexual fantasy.

“Come on, William. Let’s make you comfortable.”

You can hardly protest as one gently pulls your makeshift weapon out of your loose grip, and the other one sweeps you off your feet with preternatural superhuman ease and carries you over to the couch in this sparsely furnished apartment.

Gentle but insistent hands undo the buttons on your trousers and then maneuver you so they can pull them off completely and free your legs.

“Humans are such fun creatures,” one of the Johns comments when he sees that despite your fear of the situation unfolding right now, you are sporting a half-hearted hard-on. It somehow only gets harder when you hear them talk about people as another species.

Both Johns are still fully dressed, situating themselves to kneel on the floor on either side of you. It’s wild. You must be dreaming. And as you watch both Johns lean forward, extending their tongues and licking your cock up and down from opposite sides, you realize that if this is a dream, you never want to wake up.

They know what they’re doing. They bring you right up to the edge of orgasm and then pull away, leaving you feeling desperate and even annoyed. You’re not annoyed for long though as they both strip down, and you see that their human-mimicking powers are perfect, down to the most minute details that would never be seen under clothes. Granted, you don’t know what John Gillman looked like naked, so maybe they’ve taken artistic license and embellished. Whatever it is, they’ve compared notes, because they still look indistinguishable to you.

“Like what you see?” one of them asks and you realize you I’ve been staring, maybe even with your mouth hanging open. You never imagined you’d hook up with a doppelganger, let alone two of them at once. But you have imagined foisting yourself on John in this very flat, and you’re about to live that daydream.

You end up doing things with the two of them beyond what you’ve ever dreamed of. You fuck one of them, and at the same time get fucked by the other one from behind, the cheap bed’s metal joints creaking and moaning from the motion of three bodies rocking against each other. You let them suck your cock and rim you to get you back in the mood for another round, trying not to think about how unsettlingly hungry they both look, and who they really are underneath the human-looking exterior. The exterior slips periodically when they’re in the throes of pleasure. You wince when they betray just how strong they really are, whenever they flip you over or change positions, as if you weigh nothing. You try not to pay attention when their eyes start glowing red when they’re particularly turned on, but it’s impossible to ignore in the darkness of the bedroom.

“William, you are fucking delicious,” one of them declares, licking his lips obscenely after swallowing down your cum, and all you can do is emit a short nervous chuckle, and think that even if they do decide to eat you at the end of all of this— either to cover their tracks, or just because they might start feeling peckish after all this is over— it will still have been worth it.

You don’t get eaten. In fact, you’ve had the time of your life, and as you get up from the bed and mumble that you have to get back to your post before your shift is over, the two Johns lie languid, naked on the bed watching you, each enjoying a post coital glass of milk (that’s all they have in the fridge— you saw when they opened it), like perfect mirror images.

“You won’t be making any unnecessary phone calls, right William?”

“We can count on you to be discreet and keep a secret, right?”

Through the combined haze of being scared for your life and then having the time of your life, there’s still one thing that bothers you, and you ask about it, against all your best self-preservation instincts.

“So what have you done with the real John Gillman?”

They turn to look at each other, not exactly conspiratorial but it still makes you uneasy.

“Oh, John Gillman never existed. We’ve been around a lot longer than you humans think. Many of us never tried to replicate and replace real humans.”

“Yeah, and a lot of good that did when some of us started! The ones who are doing it are the reason we’re being hunted now. Unoriginal hacks. And so bad at mimicking too.”

“So many embarrassing ones out there.” They both nod at each other.

You’d like to believe them. You really would. “So why choose this persona?”

“The milkman gets free milk and gets around in your society! And humans seem to like this look,” one of them says, grinning and gesturing with his hand over their naked bodies.

“But we only ever get to enjoy bored housewives.”

“And why are there two of you?” you ask hesitantly, glancing at the clock on the wall to verify that you’re not late yet.

“Oh there’s more than two of us,” one of them says and they laugh in unison in a way that sends a chill down your spine.

~~~

You think you’ve got it all worked out. You’re letting the John Gillmans stay in the apartment undisturbed, and you let them through even when it’s obvious that there’s more than one of them coming and going. You figure it’s a win-win. They promise to protect the building from any rogue doppelgangers who infiltrate and intend to harm the residents, and in return get a place to stay the night peacefully. You get to visit apartment F03-02 after your shift ends and have mind-blowing sex. They seem to enjoy the orgies as well. They know your shift hours and try to only come and go during those times. There doesn’t seem to be a problem with this arrangement.

Or at least not a problem that you’re going to make into your problem. When one of the Johns walks in, visibly smeared in blood, you do give him a hard time.

“Come on, John. Just because I’ll let you in, doesn’t mean you can just stop trying to look decent. God forbid I call in sick and someone else is here.”

John shrugs and goes through the formality of pushing his ID and entry request under the glass window.

“And get a new ID…” you tell him when you see bloody fingerprints all over the worn paper.

John shrugs, doing his usual tired act, despite how ridiculous it looks to be so bored and nonchalant when he’s smeared in blood.

“Whose blood is that, anyway?” you ask, wondering why you’re not more disturbed.

“Someone who was of no consequence and who won’t be missed,” John replies, terse and cool as a cucumber.

“I thought you said you were vegetarian?”

“I’ll take a cheat day if I run into a wifebeater,” John says, shrugging.

You buzz him in, telling him to get washed up before someone sees him, wondering if you’re being colossally naive to believe his story, and wondering if you’ve got a death wish because you’re still looking forward to going up there once your shift ends in a few hours.

(What in the world. 💀)

ETA: now with another art piece by @olliveolly

[singingninja4]

very long and kind of emotional word vomit post under the cut

tl;dr - I love BCS and this fandom community and I'm really not ready to say goodbye to the story and the characters

I shared a post earlier saying that a piece of media has never affected me as much as better call saul. last night I wept. I felt sick to my stomach, and my heart ached so much I couldn’t sleep. I’ve been hyperfixated on shows and movies before, but I’ve never had such a strong visceral reaction. in some of my other fandoms, I’ve cried—uncontrollably sobbed even—when a favorite character died or something else tragic occurred. like when tony stark died in endgame I ugly cried during the last 30 mins of the movie. I spent 10 years loving that character but then when I left the theater, I was able to go about my day. I was a little down for a few hours, and I certainly continued to grieve the character, but I was functional.

I’ve been contemplating all day why this show, better call saul, has ingrained itself into my being more so than any other show. one reason may be the amount of time I’ve spent with this universe and these characters. I didn’t watch brba from the very beginning—I started while season 3 was airing—but I’ve been with this universe for 12 years!! but I’ve been with other fandoms for just as long if not longer. another reason is definitely the quality of the show. across the board, with acting, writing, directing, music, cinematography, sound, costumes, literally every department is at the top of their game producing some of the best quality television to ever exist. no one is doing it like gilligould and co. NO ONE. but that’s not the only reason. I’ve watched other shows and movies that are of similar quality. Avatar the Last Airbender is and probably will forever be one of the greatest animated shows to ever air imo and for a lot of the same reasons. and yeah, atla holds a special place in my heart and I cry every time I watch certain scenes, but I don’t feel debilitating physical pain from it.

but after reflecting on it all day, what sets BCS apart from all of my other hyperfixations is the timing of it all. as I said, I’ve been a devout fan of the brba universe since around 2010, but my hyperfixation hit a whole new level in march 2020 when the pandemic hit and the first lockdown occurred. this was a very dark time in my life, as I know it was for many others. suddenly being totally isolated, scared about our health and our future, and for those of us in the usa, the fear and anger about our political landscape was traumatizing. I turned to tv and other media to fill some of the voids in my life, bcs and brba being the main shows I turned to for comfort. tbh I think that bcs being there for me during such a traumatizing and lonely time just stitched the characters even deeper into my heart.

another thing that sets it apart, is that this is the first time I have ever made friends through fandom/online spaces. I’ve been on tumblr for about 11-12 years, but until spring of 2020, I never really interacted with other people in fandom spaces. I was always a little detached, simply reblogging things I liked. as I’m sure we all were during the beginning of the pandemic, I was in desperate need of social interaction, and so I started to branch out a little bit in online fandom spaces like tumblr and ao3. then in november 2020 my family and I came down with severe covid. like my mom had to be hospitalized (she’s fine now) and I should have been but wasn’t because of my age and the number of beds in the hospital. during this time a lot of my irl “friends” showed their true colors. even though they knew we were sick hardly any of my friends checked in on me and my family. fortunately, we had other people besides my shitty “friends” to rely on to take care of us. anyway, I lost a lot of friends during that time, and so I dove even deeper into cultivating my friendships online as well as the few irl friends who stuck by my side.

I’ve made some fantastic friends over the last 2 years in the bcs fandom. some of y’all know me better in some ways than several of my irl friends.  the bonding that I have shared with y’all as we waited for season 6—the watch parties on tutturu (aka hyperbeam), the unhinged blogging, discord server inside jokes, fic writing and reading, song covers, voice chats, memeing and so many more interactions both about BCS and outside of it—all of these experiences continued to weave the bcs universe, its characters, and this fandom community into my soul.

last night’s episode was the end of an era, the beginning of the end. and the break-up between kim and jimmy, though inevitable, was devastating. I am utterly heart broken and am having trouble rising up out of how depressed I am about it. I never anticipated that I would be so emotionally invested in these wonderful characters that I would feel physically ill at the thought of their separation. I love this show so so much and it has gotten me through some very dark times, and I feel absolutely sick thinking about it ending. but I’ve realized it’s because I associate these characters and story that I love so much with all the wonderful people I’ve met here. y'all truly helped me through those dark times as well.

I am really not ready to say goodbye to this story and these characters. and I know it’s a silly thought, but I also think that the episode subconsciously triggered a fear that when the show ends, so will the lovely community I’ve made over the last 2 years (I’ve got some abandonment issues, but I won’t go into that here). I really hope that is not the case, and I’m going to try my damnedest to keep in touch with y’all even if the fandom dies down because this community truly means so much to me. 

anyway, I don’t really know where I was going with this…I don't think I articulated anything very well and I’m just kind of rambling at this point 😅 but I really just needed to write down my thoughts to process all these feelings I’ve been having all day. and also just wanted to tell y’all how much this fandom means to me 💖

edit:

thought I should clarify that even though I'm devastated by their break up, I'm anxious and excited for journey these characters are going to take us on in the final few episodes...even if I'm not ready for it to end yet 💖

[fierycavalier]

My 2020 Korean Drama Watchlist

This was the year I discovered k-dramas. My first one was Crash Landing On You, and during April lockdown I hyperfixated on it, watching it maybe 8 times through (after the first 4 times I jumped around a lot). This list totals the 71 dramas I at least started in 2020.

Please let me know what I’m missing and if you have a good argument for any of the ones I haven’t finished yet! My brain is weird and sometimes needs a little convincing.

Currently Watching (and loving!):

Mr. Queen

Run On

True Beauty

These Dramas Make Me Go !!!!!!!! I’ve rewatched them multiple times

Eighteen Again

Crash Landing On You

Descendants of the Sun

Guardian: The Lonely and Great God

I Am Not A Robot

It's Okay to Not Be Okay

Romance is a Bonus Book

Start-Up

Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo

I loved these but I can’t rewatch them (maybe someday)

More Than Friends

I’ll Find You On a Beautiful Day

Solid Dramas I’d Watch Again

Bring it On, Ghost!

Chicago Typewriter

Fight for My Way

Healer

Into the Ring

Itaewon Class

Mystic Pop-up Bar

Strongest Deliveryman

Timing (series of shorts)

While You Were Sleeping

I’d Recommend These Depending on Your Taste

1% of Something

Arthdal Chronicles

Do You Like Brahms?

Doctor Stranger

Dramaworld

Graceful Family

Her Private Life

My Holo Love

Strong Woman Bong Soon

The King, Eternal Monarch

The Legend of the Blue Sea

The Hymn of Death

I’d Recommend this with Fast-forwarding

What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim

W: Two Worlds

Search: WWW

Started Out Weird, Ended Well

Because This Is My First Life

She Was Pretty

Started Out Well, Ended Weird

Do Do Sol Sol La La Sol

He Is Psychometric

Memories of the Alhambra

I Can’t Believe I Finished This

Meow the Secret Boy

My Love From The Star

The Bride of Habaek

Might Still Finish, Wasn’t in the Mood

Abyss

A Piece of Your Mind

Angel's Last Mission: Love

Familiar Wife

Hospital Playlist

Hotel Del Luna

Signal

Tale of the Nine-Tailed

Train

The Uncanny Counter

The Spies Who Loved Me

Dropped, But Could Be Convinced to Finish

Chocolate

Live Up To Your Name

Record of Youth (only 3 episodes to watch but I just can’t be bothered)

The School Nurse Files

Private Lives

Lonely Enough to Love

Dropped, Totally Uninterested

Cinderella and the Four Knights

Fix You

Love Alarm

Something In The Rain

Sweet Munchies

The Light in Your Eyes

Tomorrow, With You

[thoughtsonhurtandcomfort]

I've been wanting to get a tattoo for quite some time. I plan to find a place that accepts cash because I kinda have to hide it from someone. Also, I have deep hyperfixations, so I'm terrified as soon as I get it I'll instantly regret it. How did you sit with yours/decide it was time to commit? Appreciate it.

For starters I didn't rush into it...i've casually wanted tattoos for years but it wasn't a priority or i didn't feel ready...then one day my friend asked me to go to a nerdy flash sale an artist was holding, just as support while she got her first tattoo. I literally decided in the car on the way there that fuck it, I was gonna get one too. It's one of the most spontaneous things I've ever done which felt like a big step on a personal level, LOL.

I can also hyperfixate and get anxious about things, I definitely considered that I might regret it, but I didn't. Maybe I was just finally ready, maybe it was because it was a scary transitional point in my life at the time and getting Mjolnir on my thigh permanently felt like the LEAST scary thing going on. At least that was one thing I could control. For me it felt right, maybe a time will come for you when it feels right. Or when you just say "fuck it".

And, well. It helps that I'm a little bit of a "comforting nihilism" type. People go on about how tattoos are permanent but actually NOTHING is permanent! Life is short and weird and scary and I've decided that I want pretty pictures on my skin to be part of it. It helped when I let go of the notion of everything having to Mean Something, too. It's ok to just...get something because it looks neat.

I do have one that I ""regret"" but not really. I got this little flowery design on the side of my stomach like, two or three days before everything started shutting down last March. The guy that did them does beautiful black&white work but isn't so great at color, and there were some missed spots and places where the color kinda blurs with the outline. It's messy and imperfect and because of lockdown I never got a chance to go back and have it touched up. Maybe someday I will, or maybe I'll have things added to it to fancy it up. Or maybe I'll just keep it as is to remind me of a year that was messy and imperfect.

Once I got the first one I was hooked and it felt like, well, why not get more, I love this. If I had the money I'd have three times as many. Other people I know got one and were done. The biggest 'commitment' so far was the flowers on my shoulder blade i mentioned in a previous post. That was my first scheduled appointment for a custom piece that was a few hundred dollars, not just a walk-in pick an image off a sheet. That one took extra research, a lot of thought, saving, and working up the nerve to call. The very opposite of spontaneous. So worth it though. :)

Some things that you can do to just get comfortable with the idea before you jump:

-follow tattoo artists on instagram! it can give you a sense of what you like and honestly it's just fun to see what other people get.

-watch youtube videos. i watched some where artists talked about the industry & their styles and stuff

-go with a friend who is getting a tattoo done so you can get a feel for the environment, equipment, etc.

-research is your best friend, whether it's learning about the process itself or reading reviews to find out who in your area is reputable.

Sorry this got so rambly. :') I'm far from an expert, all I can give you is my point of view from my limited experience. But I hope it helps!! Don't push yourself or rush. I think if it's something you want to do, you'll know. Being nervous is normal but if you're stressing a ton over it it's okay to wait. My aunt got her first tattoo at 60!

Whatever you choose I hope it brings you joy!

[randomestfandoms-ocs]

tell us about the newly named oc!

My new baby!! Well, okay she’s like really not new but she’s also new because I never really developed her before — so she’s an Amazing Spider-Man OC but very heavily influenced by Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark because idc that everyone hated it that musical fucking slapped (except for the flashing lights can lighting designers please stop using flashing lights they are literally never necessary fight me)

So her name is Constance Osborn, and she’s Harry’s half sister, a bit less than a year younger than him!  Like, she’s younger enough that Harry always teases her for being the baby, but old enough that they’re in the same grade!  I think around nine-ten months, but idk for sure lmao!  Also just a fun fact but her name is a reference to st. conrad of constance bc of the spider story but like i know very very little about the spider story lmao 

anyways so okay she was raised by her mom when she was very young, but her mom died when she was 5, at which point she moved in with Norman (and Harry), and she barely remembers her mom.  But I can tell you that her mom was a geneticist who Norman met at a conference and had an affair with, and who was close friends with Richard & Mary Parker

which constance doesn’t know lmao but like, i know it and norman knows it so it’s being said — also bc @perfectlystiles implied doubt in my ability to reach maximum angst potential with a dead mom, y’all should know that Constance thinks that her mom killed herself, and that it was because of her, and has always blamed herself for it

anyawys okay fast forward many years, Harry and Constance and Peter were thick as thieves as kids but then Harry and Constance get sent off to Europe for boarding school and they lose contact and the osborns miss peter and he misses them rip

but anyways moving into the actual plot; constance ends up visiting new york during some of the events of TASM, spoilers happen and she gets powers, she accidentally kills someone with her powers, and swears to herself that she’ll never use her powers again, she goes back to europe and never tells anyone what happened

fast forward a bit and she’s graduated high school and her dad is dying, and Harry manages to convince her to return to New York with him — they both know that Harry is going to get Oscorp but they’d also always agreed that while Harry would handle the science (Constance is good at science but she’s an artist at heart, she only really started getting super focused on science after getting her powers), she would handle everything involving people

but then there’s an accident in the lab and when Electro appears on the scene, she recognizes him as being another one of Norman's experiments (she doesn't know about the accident yet, she thinks he's like her) and feels obligated to help, which becomes her first real appearance as a superhero

I don’t want to give away too many spoilers but she’s a Peter ship, Gwen doesn’t die, and Norman Osborn is a piece of shit

also her superhero name is Arachne, though her powers are more similar to Carnage (minus the parasite part) than Peter — I’m still working on the science side of her powers but I’ve got most of her main abilities figured out I think

also (i know, i need to stop saying also lmao), just some fun facts!  She’s an artist and very into arts of all sorts, though as a creator she tends to be mostly a visual artist!  She loves fashion, she’s afraid of the dark, she’s even more afraid of needles, she bakes in the middle of the night a lot, Arachne and Spider-Man really don’t trust each other even though Constance and Peter are best friends, and Harry is the only person who can get away with calling her Connie 

this was probably a bit more than you were expecting from “she has no name/title/plot” to “she has a name and maybe a plot” but now she has everything and just needs a summary and I’m so excited about her!!

also, last also I promise, she’s sort of a combination of a “hey it would be cool if” thought that I’d had in 2013 after seeing Turn Off The Dark and a very vague oc concept I’d had after seeing TASM2 in 2014, but in my endless cycle of revisiting old hyperfixations to cope with lockdown I’ve recently turned to Turn Off The Dark so now here we are

[lgbtmanic]

Unus Annus.

wow, I don't even know where to start with this honestly. as I’m writing this right now it’s almost 3am and there’s only a few days left until the clock hits zero, and the channel will be gone forever.

'but I think somehow we accidentally came across the year that we needed. not the year that we wanted, but the year we needed. did you have the year you needed? did you make the most of this year, despite the circumstances? I hope you do.' - mark, “accepting the truth.”

so much has happened for me this past year, I came out as nonbinary and pansexual to my friends and family irl, I fell and broke my left leg and ankle mid January, then in march the pandemic and lockdown struck. I moved in with two of my best friends in June, I’ve also experienced loss. I lost multiple pets this year that I loved more than anything and had grown up with. I’ve had multiple serious physical and mental issues/diagnoses, just overall have not been in a good place mentally. I still struggle with is, but I’m trying my best to make the most of my time left in this world.

the only constant I have had in my life was the Unus Annus channel. I remember back when mark had first uploaded his ‘this will end in one year.” video to his channel, that lead me to the actual channel and i thought “wow! this is such a great idea and I'm so excited to see what comes from this.” because I have been watching mark and ethan both for years now. I never expected to get so attached to this channel, but it became a hyperfixation for me. this past year has been absolutely insane so I’m so beyond thankful for this journey, overall experience, and distraction from hell and reality of what’s been happening in my life.

i will forever treasure these laughs, tears and memories i have made.so thank you so fucking much mark, ethan and amy for these videos. they have helped me so much, and became a coping/comfort place for me. your hard work, time and effort will not go unappreciated for all that you have done for us. 

i am sad, devastated actually to see it go even though this entire time deep down I knew this channel was going to be leaving, i just was in denial and couldn't face it, but as ethan said in the “accepting the truth.” video; 

"thank you for coming on this journey with us, and although we're sad to see it go, that's life. we gotta let it go. and you gotta let it go too."

I will go on from this, I will continue to live, and to learn things but I will never forget it. it truly will be a piece of me forever. 

              memento mori.

the Latin translation of “remember death.”

remember that everything comes to an end.

remember that someday you will die.

make the most of the time you have left, for you will not want to have any regrets when your time comes. accept your fate.

thank you again, and i cannot wait to see what the future brings from both of you after this mark, and ethan. <3

@markiplier @crankgameplays 

[saikagerights]

Update: ”I Know What We’re Going To Do Today!”

Howdy Guys!

I hope you didn’t miss me too much. Yesterday, I was suddenly reminded of all of the work I left unfinished back in August. What I also realized is that I never posted the last thing I wrote before my absence. 

I’ll be frank:

These past few months have been pretty strenuous for multiple reasons, and I haven’t found the proper time nor the inspiration to sit down and write more of the journal. In fact, the last oneshot I wrote was directly inspired by art that took ahold of me right at the beginning of the semester. 

Besides the world constantly being on fire in 2020, the problems with my stomach hit a wall in August. I had multiple different tests done to try and find the problem, but there was no diagnosis in the end. My doctor prescribed that I start taking natural remedies to try and ease my sickness, and so far..... It’s been working! I’ve actually had an improvement in my health since then. I started taking probiotic vitamins in the morning and drinking kombucha, and now my persistent nausea during the day has disappeared. I’m down to taking one nexium before I go to bed, which is great because this medication was initially prescribed for twice a day. 

School, has been interesting so far. It’s my first true semester deep into my music education degree, and I find myself struggling in certain areas due to the pandemic. Some classes are made more difficult to achieve in, while others make it hard to attend consistently. However, I’ve been keeping my head above water relatively well regardless of that. Work......I can’t say that I’m too satisfied with my current employment. If you read my notes on AO3, you knew that the summer was about readjusting to work amid the pandemic, which went over with ups and downs, but more often the latter. I realize now that after 3 years, I am not making enough money to be dealing with the type of work environment I am currently in. Many of the coworkers that I had come to realize as family have left or plan on leaving as well because they feel the same. I gave an ultimatum to my manager that I need to get my much needed promotion and raise or I am walking out before the holiday season, which for a retail store is major crunch time. In this department is where I find the most stress, as it is transitional period. I am in the midst of finding employment elsewhere, which can hopefully give me a much larger paycheck that can help boost my savings and support my college fees. 

Free time is spent prepping. Whether it is singing, or practicing another instrument for my methods courses, or even supplemental music theory, I am in a constant state of prep work. And for watching or reading anything, there’s been a lot of comfort shows and not too much else. I took a tiny break from anime and started watching more western television. One thing that my coworkers have been wanting me to watch for ages has been Stranger Things, which I’ve enjoyed a lot so far. I took a short break from it after the slog fest that was the 2nd season, and am now on Season 3. I got access to Amazon Prime Video, so I finally watched the anime adaptation of Wotakoi, a manga I really love, and recently began watching Blade of the Immortal, which is very bloody and very interesting. But above all else, my general mindset this fall has been around one thing and one thing alone: Phineas & Ferb

A cartoon that has been one of my favorites since I was 6 years old has recently resurged in my life and has overtaken my attention once again. What was meant to be my comfort show of the lockdown during the spring has become my comfort show of the fall semester, turning into a massive hyperfixation that has overriden my thought process. Don’t worry, I didn’t go that deep. I just might’ve written 3k words of an analytical piece for the show’s emotional finale, “Act Your Age.” But I stuck true to my morals and didn’t read any fanfiction (this time). This laser focus on the show is actually 5 years late, as I was in the thralls of a fixation when the series ended back in 2015 just as I was discovering Steven Universe, which was the series that won my attention for the next year before I was captured by anime in highschool. But now, I’ve decided to take a break from it until Christmas, as I didn’t watch either of the show’s Christmas specials during my 3 month fling. Everything has connected to this show, and I mean everything, including my own musical development which I really don’t want to go into detail with. 

But today, the dreaded Election day in my country, I’ve finally found the resolve to come back to writing Saiino related things. Last night, I took a step back and began to reread my journal to re-immerse myself within my ideas, which ended up being a fantastic idea because it actually made me realize that I needed to change the perspective of the next entry. Along with that came my idea for the prompts in Yamanaka Week 2021. I actually have decided that my participation will follow it’s own running theme that coincides with my journal while also following some of the prompts. They will all be centered around 1 particular headcanon, so I hope you aren’t too dulled with my idea. It will start with my next oneshot chapter for the Sai Journal. As exciting as it is however, I will not be able to start working on this until I can clearly see the end of this semester. Be on the look out for my oneshot, “Technical Difficulties,” and any more updates about Yamanaka Week, because they are coming. I have to go to a zoom meeting for a class, so I will end it here.

Until Next Time

- Saikage

[eternaleve]

I’ve spent the course of COVID lockdown cycling through hyperfixations while also trying to engage in some much needed therapy (lolsob), and I’ve been essentially encouraging myself to try and do more things I can enjoy without feeling shame. Anyway, that’s a short way of saying I decided to blog about all the music videos of Depeche Mode for reasons of science.

The science is that my basic premise is that most of the videos are pretty bad in ways that I find to be pretty strange. Full disclosure is that I spent my teen years being a huge Cure fan and there’s an overlap there? Of songs with very niche high-concept ideas that don’t necessarily map onto a model of popular music but found mainstream success in the rise of new wave music in the wake of the collapse of first wave punk and amplified by the creation of music videos and music video TV. And I owned all the Cure music videos and played them on my iPod Nano because I was a very strange child. But to get back to my central thesis, many of The Cure’s videos are very stylised and fun and memorable in ways that are good. And yet, despite existing in the same sphere and having an overlap of fans, the music videos for Depeche Mode mostly stay bad until the end of the eighties, a fact I will prove by watching them all.

Can you tell that I am bored because i have lost my job and my mental health is making me fixate on strange shit currently because that is absolutely the case right now

Speak & Spell

Dreaming of Me (Feb 1981)

The single art is really lovely - the red/yellow contrast is very striking against the white, and I really love the design. Hey remember when people used to go out and buy singles and you would appreciate them and the work that went into them? I don’t think I’ve bought a physical single since I was about sixteen. I used to buy them from the Woolworths music department because it was cheap and all my friends worked there, so they had a pretty lenient attitude about what exactly constituted paying for things. Woolworths policy of only hiring teenagers is probably what destroyed their business.

Anyway, Dreaming of Me did not chart super well, getting to number 57 and having no official music video - or actually getting onto the album. It wasn’t included on Speak & Spell in the UK until the 2006 re-release. So, there was no music video for me to look at…

Apart from this video I found from local TV in 1981 to promote the song. It’s a maybe-music video. Because music videos had only been around for about six years and MTV didn’t exist until later in the same year, my guess is that Mute Records were pretty cautious about putting money into a medium that might cost more than they would get in publicity. That’s only a guess. I don’t have a crystal ball for forty years ago. 

Anyway, here are some children recording music.

If i was 19 and someone offered me a recording contract I would have taken it without thinking (like i took on all those student loans without thinking through any consequences wompwomp) but now I am nearly thirty I watch this and think, ‘These children shouldn’t be outside unaccompanied’. The passage of time has made a fool of me.

They go bowling and play Space Invaders which, hey, still sounds like a great night out to me, but I’m guessing that because this is very clearly aimed at teenagers the TV producers didn’t want to encourage teen drinking by showing them performing a gig at a club night.

I call it high fashion. The all-grey really sells it.

This reminds me so much of a advice column in teen magazines - when they’d have problems set out in a little faux-comic strip of still photos? ‘My best friend stole and read my diary’ ‘My crush found out about how I feel and now he’s going out with my best friend’, that sort of thing. That is also a classic carpet pattern. I think my grandma’s living room had that carpet. 

The video is very naive! It’s the sort of thing we would all see now on Youtube from bands just starting out and it is wild to me that this went out on TV. It’s very un-glossy and normal, the stuff that bands put out on YouTube now because of DIYness.

New Life (June 1981)

This is also a really great piece of single art. It’s very bold and striking - it would definitely be the standout record in a sea of other 7’’ released the same week. It also doesn’t particularly match the tone of the single but eh, it looks pretty cool. New Life did much better than Dreaming of Me and got up to number 11 in the UK singles chart. Still no official music video, but the charting meant that the band got onto Top of The Pops! ToTP was cancelled when I was a wee baby teen, because the BBC decided to stop caring about yoof viewership and promoting music was circling the drain everywhere as streaming hit, but it was the place to promote music so was definitely a sign that You Had Made It.

So, last video was silly and made by children, but now they’re wearing see-through mesh shirts, leather trousers, and leather hats with a design that I am a little bit dubious about. I grew up on the oi/punk scene and let me tell you about how many first wave punks wear iconography of bad regimes for faux edginess reasons because I met a LOT of them in my time.

Oh boy do i have thoughts about that hat. It also looks like a Leather Daddy hat which, well, let’s leave that thought to one side. Most ToTP performances were lipsynced. Playing things live would sound weird in the studio, be picked up strangely by the audio equipment and the cameras, so 99% of performances were mimed to the single. Now, some acts would deliberately play up to the pretence and refuse to act like they were doing anything that corresponded to the song - The Jam, The Communards, and The Cure are literally the first examples that come to mind who would just… not do anything close to pretending it was real. 

This is not that. It is very earnest and awkward and serious, which sort of makes it very sweet.

Just Can’t Get Enough (September 1981)

Right, that is shibari, isn’t it? I’m not blind, am I? It’s a very striking image that 99.9% of people would not recognise other than being a striking black and white image. 

I don’t think I can overstate how… innocent, in a way, this point of time was? As in the general level of knowledge about non-conventional stuff in the wider public at large. As in my mother, an almost teen at this point, saw George Michael walking with his boyfriend in central London and had no idea he was gay until he came out. It’s actually the widest cultural gulf I can think of between her teen years and my teen years because I was very aware of queer people from a young age.

Anyway, moving on, I feel like it bears repeating that this song fucking slaps. It’s the last single to be written by Vince Clarke and the last single until 2006 to be written by someone other than Martin Gore. This is one of those songs that just works on every level. Can you imagine coming up with this for the first album of your band? That blows my mind. It’s so overpoweringly good that it was probably for the best that it was saved for last - coming out the gate with a guaranteed fucking banger was been the nail in the coffin for a lot of other eighties synth/electronica bands. They scored a huge hit and then nothing after that managed to be as good or meet the hype. Depeche Mode had built up a far bit of radio play and interest before dropping this which turned out to be very good in the long run!

This got to number 8 on the UK charts and the first to get a music video! It is the only one with Vince Clarke. Full disclosure in that I had this song on my iPod through downloading the video to my computer (that’s how we got songs without using stuff that would give us viruses because i got a ton using bearshare for rare cure demos) and I remember watching the video, all of sixteen years old, and thinking, ‘Man, all these people look so grown up, compared to me, I can’t wait to be an adult!’.

Twelve years have changed my view, somewhat.

Look at this little baby man. Were you in one of my A Level classes - as in, ones that I have taught, not ones that I have been in.

Vince Clarke, however, has had a significant glow up in the six months and now looks like he is the bouncer in a leather bar. This is the One Adult in the room.

Ahh, I see it’s Open Mic Night at the local leather bar. You know what I was saying about how teens in the eighties tended to be significantly more naive about what we might call certain signifiers? Because what this outfit says to me, a queer woman in 2020, is susbstanitally different than to my mum and her friends watching this when it first came out. She would read this as ‘This is totally rebellious and cool!’ while I go ‘Someone just joined the university kink club and spent all their bursary’.

I don’t remember the member of Blazin’ Squad that wore a slave harness. (Now, there’s a reference that shows my age. A Blazin’ Squad reference in the year of Our Lord 2020. Hoooo boy.)

I read somewhere (that I can’t find now because, of course I can’t) that these are the band’s girlfriends and I always remembered that because it made me think, lol, same. One of my closest friends is the Head of London, so she’s in every band in London and if she’s not in yours yet give her time, and my partner was in a locally successful metal/hardcore band for about a decade and being connected with any sort of band means you will be helping out hugely behind the scene constantly. I have held lights, moved speakers, picked up instruments, been in music videos, and have bought tearaway trousers and glowsticks for gigs. You get called in to help all the time which is a lot of fun, so that fact always just stuck with me. It also makes sense financially because then you don’t have to hire any professional backing dancers, you can rely on people who will happily do it for free (while looking pretty rad while doing it!).

Anyway, the band look like those generic raiders that you run into when randomly walking across the map in a Fallout game.

I love awkward choreography in music videos. It feeds me.

Filming a night out provides A) Great footage and B) Can be done for limited overheads, leaving more money to be put into promotion. 

I always like seeing this sort of footage in music videos. I tend to see a lot of it, given the DIY punk scene, and it always charms me. I am easy to please. And all those women have the most amazing eye makeup that makes me super jealous because it all looks so good.

That hat is on point. This looks like a still image for some sort of cyberpunk big band style swing revival that, sadly, lives only in my dreams.

It took me so goddamn long to screenshot this shot probably because i was also blasting dream nails whoops

Anyway those are my reactions to Speak & Spell’s one solitary music video with some other things thrown in and this took me way too long. I make myself laugh though, that’s the main thing. I will do A Broken Frame… at some point. I think I have a bunch of vinyl for A Broken Frame? My mum actually bought all the singles for that album and I stole most of her collection years ago. I will have to search and see what I can find.

[bmwiid]

Tea Blog!

Yes, thats right! I haven’t forgotten about tea, I just completely stopped drinking it for no reason at all. Hyperfixations rock.

However, before the lockdown kicked in, I actually bought two new teas that I’ve yet to try - they are about 3 weeks in the bag I bought them in so I thought tonight I would try and have one.

The two I bought were: Apple Crumble and Lemon Meringue. 

I’m gonna try the apple one. 

Now, I’m not going to lie - I got this tea because I loooooove apple crumble. I would say that if given the option of anything other than carrot cake, I’d pick apple crumble. Even over cranachan!

So, this is like my constant fave: Rhubarb and Custard tea, same brand, same price (75p for 20 bags) It has a 5 minute infusion which is over the 3 mins for the R&C but I’ll let that go because it’s not the 15 minutes of the mint Pukka tea. (I’m still not over that)

Ingredients:  Apple Pomace (43%), Apple Pieces (15%), White Hibiscus, Sweet Blackberry Leaves, Flavourings, Roasted Chicory Root, Rosehips and Orange Peel.

I actually looked on the website rather than just off the packet and they have a little blurb about the tea: 

Do You Need A Moment? Well we've loads of indulgent infusions to choose from! Treat yourself to our dessert-inspired teas with warming crumble, fruity sweets and rich chocolate. Whatever you choose, a mug will leave you smiling.

I think this is a nod to the other flavours (lemon meringue and chocolate orange - which I still haven’t seen in the shops yet - and the R&C)

Once again, these cheaper teas aren’t individually wrapped like the pukka / twinings teas, but they are over half the price and so far I’ve never actually noticed any difference in the quali-tea. (hahaha...)

It’s boxed with a foil lining though so it’ll keep as fresh as dry things need to be fresh. 

In the box it’s not an instant hit of apple crumble, nothing like the R&C which is instantly recognizable as what it’s supposed to be. In fact, I’d struggle to place this smell at all other than ‘some kind of fruit tea’ - very generic and nothing coming out. 

because of this I used two bags - I do this with the R&C because I like it to be as strong as possible. I also used sweetener. 

As it steeps, it smells more apple-y, although I don’t seem to pick up any of the ‘crumble’. Not too worried, I’ve so far never met an apple flavoured fruit tea so this will stand out in my collection. 

As I’ve been typing it’s been steeping, so time for the first taste:

Note to self: Less sweetener required. OKAY! This is very much the inside of an apple pie! It almost has that sugar caramel stickiness that I didn’t think it would have going on the ingredients. It’s very sweet (this might be my fault though, going ham on the sweetener) and has a lovely apple sweetness but also a bit of a tang too - like just at the back of the mouth there is a sharpness under the caramel. 

Zero crumble. I’m not sure how they would get that topping in a flavour but honestly, it’s not like it needs anything else. If you like hot apple pie filling, or apple sauce or legit anything hot and apple sweet - you’ll love this tea. I love this tea!

It’s also a bit of a stand out because I’ve never seen a lot of apple teas - in fact, I don’t think I’ve seen a single APPLE tea - it’s always in the ingredients but never the star of the show.

It’s really good. I’m putting it up there with the R&C which - so far - no fruit tea in my collection has been able to top. I’m going to start sorting my teas though - between fruit and rooibos - because the taste is so different. 

If you have a sweet tooth and like apples, this is the tea for you. Apple pie filling tea? Yes please. 

10/10 for fruit tea!