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lorillee · 10 months

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okay okay hear me out maya and diego for the duo bingo

I KNEW I COULD COUNT ON YOU GUYS youre my bestest friends for ever and ever. thank you for indulging me. ok ok ok frankly its literally CRIMINAL that for a relationship that is like literally half the crux of the final case of aa3 there is like. no content . at all. and it breaks my poor heart into PIECES its really truly does. like ok the thing is people only ever seem interested in exploring this relationship via mia but the problem is 1) i dont want it to just be about mia. yes obviously mia is the springboard for this relationship's existence in the first place since she's maya's older sister and diego's girlfriend but like come on guys you are all SO..... sigh. this is such wasted potential. come on 2) THEY NEVER DO ANYTHING INTERESTING WITH ITTTTT

okay because like. personally i think mia & maya's relationship is infinitely more interesting if maya has incredibly complicated feelings that she simply is trying really really hard not to address. like because in aa3 i think if you present mia's profile to maya, maya says that she really misses her and phoenix asks why she doesnt just ask pearl to channel her, and maya gives some complete bs non response of "ohhh i wouldnt want to burden her" or something. which makes no sense. like come on guys. really. anyways maya is the kind of person who really doesnt hold grudges - when people to terrible things her first response is generally more to sympathize with the victim and less getting angry at the perpetrator. even with the mask demasque case where she was a literal victim, she gets mad at phoenix for wanting to defend ron for like a few minutes before letting it blow over and moving on. furthermore, like any ace attorney character, maya also really loves avoiding her problems and trying super hard to Not Think About Them.

with this in mind i think the most interesting way to interpret her relationship with mia is that she does actually feel resentment towards her for frolicking off into the distance to become a lawyer and to some degree kind of abandoning her in the same way that their mom did, but the problem is because its maya her internal thought process goes "i am frustrated at mia for leaving me alone -> but mia loved me -> if mia loved me she wouldnt have wanted to hurt me -> therefore, the problem here is me unjustly feeling hurt as opposed to mia hurting me even if it was unintentional" and she would feel so guilty about having any sort of resentment towards mia (especially now that shes literally Dead) that she loops back around to pretending everything is Normal and Fine and Good so that she doesnt spiral into a guilt feedback loop. NOW. with this in mind.

ive already talked about this a bit between my art post and my mildly extended thoughts which im not going to bother repeating here so go read that if youre interested in the cuter details but objectively i think the best possible ending for diego is after he does his prison time, maya & pearl invite him to come live with them (he doesnt have a job, he presumably has no living relatives, and most importantly he's adjusting to having a significant disability in the world after spending the past like 5 years in prison and therefore absolutely somebody who should not be living alone right now). now ive already talked a bit about the cute stuff because like ok yes . i do enjoy some good domestic shenanigans. however . the fey family period drama is nothing if not full of mental illness and this needs some addressing.

both maya & diego have like . severe issues. with avoiding their personal problems but fortunately for us, . in the words of my good friend. avoiding your problems is really really hard when you invite them to live with you. because like the thing is - and something i think frankly doesnt get addressed enough in anything attempting to explore this relationship in the direction i want - is that ...... maya literally. she couldve died. yes he did put his life on the line to save her and yes that does mean something but also he literally let her walk into that situation in the first place, absurdly bad mental issues or not. and frankly i think maya SHOULD have complicated feelings on it i want that for her. obviously this would follow the same train of thought process as with mia in the sense of "well he saved me and if he wasnt there i Literally Would Have For Real Died and pearl wouldve been forced to live with my blood on her hands (dahlia possession or no) so i cant feel resentful a bit at all or else that makes me a Bad Person". and of course there's the wonderful added complication of the fact that the entire BttT situation is intimately connected to mia with whom she Already has Complicated Feelings That She Is Trying Really Hard To Pretend She Doesn't Have on. there's been a million things said on diegos many many mental issues and i already touched on that very briefly anyways in the earlier linked thought post so im not going to repeat the whole spiel but in short its my opinion that he definitely wanted to have his little redemption by death by the end of BttT but I Won't Let Him. hes not getting off the hook that easy. anyways obviously by the end of this whole thing the Issues come to a head and there is some sort of a serious conversation about the current Situation and obviously not everythings magically fixed, but now that we're not aggressively boxing up our uglier emotions and pretending they dont exist they can actually start getting addressed.

on a lighter note 1) this is very much like an edgeworth & kay situation where its like. diego is too obnoxious to not have a weird little girl following him around and making fun of him all the time to take his ego down a peg or two and 2) also as i said in that other post i wholeheartedly believe maya deserves as many older sibling figures as her heart desires <3 hes like basically her older brother in law anyways . also wait before you go take the gif thats looping in my head like a good 20% of the day

#ITS SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO . sorry ill spare you the whole spiel #but tldr throughout the entire stageplay he spends the entire thing with the usual aloof ''lol igaf abt anything going on here'' persona #and this is one of the very very few moments where that actually cracks a bit . in which he actively goes out of his way #to pull maya away from the guy whos name escapes me at the moment #and plant himself firmly between her & the path of possible danger #its not like hes just like. tugging her out of the way. he doesnt even let go of her arm until shes 1) all the way around #and 2) has steadied herself. im obsessed with this gif its everything to me.#AAAAAAAAAAAAAGUH ok its fine its fine i can be normal. ok anywyas #ask game answers #karmaicperfection #graymer #diego armando #maya fey #mia fey #the fey family period drama #<- you know what. im putting these in the sorting tags i feel like i said enough that it warrants it #anyways. THANK YOU FOR INDULGING MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE i love them <3

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sizhui · 9 months

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hello clari i hope you’re doing well! how do you feel about rei’s ending in slow damage? i know a lot of people don’t like that he drops his femininity but i feel like his happy end is accepting the masculinity he spent so long denying and i was wondering what you think! ^-^

Hello, hellooooo! Ok (cracks my knuckles) ive been silent on slowdam for a while with some thoughts cooking in my head and i feel like its time to let a few of them out - to talk about how i feel about rei's route, i must first explain my understanding of slow damage in its entirety... i talked about it here and there to emery and dove but here comes a synthesis!

I warn you: this is only my unconventional analysis, and I think that many will find it unsatisfying and disagree. If anyone wants to discuss or criticize any of my points, i am open to having my mind changed.

Huge thanks to Renne who introduced me to Surodame and set me on the path of studying it!

Under the cut TW: rape, csa

Slow Damage is a story about the consequences and the cyclic nature of abuse. Abuse sticks its claws into you and rakes down, leaving behind four ditches - orderly in some cases, and more chaotic in others. Either way, even as the skin and flesh heal, there is now a generous amount of empty space in you, and Slow Damage poses a question - what will you fill it up with, hmm?

I went into this VN knowing only that Towa enjoys rather extreme forms of self harm, and I have to admit that this was precisely what captivated my attention at first - the promise of a severely damaged protagonist, and the hope that he is more than a run-of-the-mill masochist. I was not disappointed.

The extent to which towa relates injury to sex and pain to pleasure immediately made me suspect the sort of trauma he must have endured in childhood. For a moment, I thought: Isn't the solution to this mystery a little too obvious? Looking back at the lack of subtlety, though, I don't think that Towa being a CSA victim was supposed to be some kind of a grand reveal. The point wasn't in cracking the mystery, in understanding motivations and getting concrete answers - the point was observing onr case of the consequences of abuse that will tell us - no, ASK us - something about all of them. HOW does the thing that happened to Towa keep happening over and over, and in silence too? What mechanisms allow it to happen, and to stay hidden? What all sorts of people, some of them generally good and kind, participate in these mechanisms?

Let us retrace our steps.

Maya forced her own son into violent prostitution from a very young age, all the while teaching him how to use charms to his advantage, how to manipulate people and fulfill their desires in order to gain control over them. The WAY she taught those things methodically seems to insinuate that this was something she herself had been taught at a young age and passed on; the art of assuming the exact persona you need to prod into people's insides. This isn't to say that her actions classify as excusable - in fact, isn't the fact that she's putting her child through the horrors she experienced herself even more disgusting? I wonder if her lessons in human psychology were all for the self-obsessed purpose of turning her son into a copy of herself... or was she, in a twisted way, thinking it would hell him endure and rise the way that she did? I am going to let that question hang in the air - after all, the point of Surodame isn't to review individual motivations, but to ask questions about the grander scheme of things. That is precisely why I cried together with Towa upon reading the strangely frail account of Maya's diary: I just can't make this work... realizing that the slow-growing disease had spread beyond that mother-son duo, beyond the walls of Euphoria, beyond Shinkoumi... in every corner of the world, there are hundreds of Mayas and Towas, and millions upon millions of Silent Takus wondering what they could have done differently.

For starters I want to focus on Towa himself. When I think about him, the first phrase that comes to mind is 'a void filled with the dregs of abuse'. Though he himself doesn't remember his abuse throughout the first three routes, his every move is a reflection of it: every sexual encounter both a self-inflicted wound and an attempt to affirm: IT'S ME WHO CHOSE TO DO THIS TO MYSELF, which is why Towa's breakdown upon realizing that not even his scars are his own is especially painful. I like the choice of stating that Maya did not like nor understand art. She COULDN'T understand it. Though the penchant for uncovering people's dark desires and the ability to read them were all influenced by Maya, the instinct to paint those is Towa's. The art that almost died together with him was the one thing that belonged to him alone - and yet, there is comfort in the fact that the true route ends with him saying that he doesn't know whether he'll paint anymore or not. What matters is that he quit performing euphoric episodes, closed the cycle of abuse and perpetuating Maya's ideals, and began walking towards a peaceful life. The sight of the atelier in the main menu all clean and bright upon Towa's vision returning to normal made me strangely emotional; the reveal that the painting was never dark and muddy, that the atelier was never that dark and scary... the final tour around Shinkoumi with everyone telling Towa that he looks like something good had happened to him... at the end of a very painful road, Towa still found some comfort in existing.

But what of Fujieda? Of Madarame, of Rei, Taku? For a BLVN, isn't it strange to go 6 paragraphs deep without mentioning any of the love interests?

I will preface this by saying that, to me, the very point of Surodame lies in the fact that none of them are ultimately good boyfriends to Towa. I really wanted to interpret the actions of the three sans Madarame more charitably than I do now, but in reasoning with myself, I failed at every single attempt. They are, to varying degrees and each in their own way, a deadend.

Let's go route by route.

Murase Takuma is a kind man in a way Towa is not - this is driven into our heads from the start, he is a doctor. He cares for children, workers and the elderly. He even lends an ear to them outside of his responsibilities as their physician, overworking himself to the brink of death. His role as a caretaker of a hopeless, bleak person like Towa, an addict who is destructive towards both himself and others, can certainly be percieved as saintly. Even his actions of keeping Towa's past from him, burning letters and throwing away packages, were all for the sake of preserving Towa's sanity! However, though Taku's intentions are pure, I can't read them as benign. Well - he is probably the most benign of the four men Towa involves himself with, being the only one who never physically lashed out on him. Neither abuser nor victim, Taku is a third thing entirely - an observer. A hider, a savior, a carer... and at its core, though not intentionally, an enabler. I do agree that there was nothing Taku could have done to save Towa as a child. There just wasn't a way to take Towa away from Euphoria while Maya lived. I do believe that he did the best he could, patching Towa up time after time... staying throughout the years, changing the bedding, throwing out the liquor bottles. Eat something, Towa. Smoke less, Towa. Once Towa got a lot older, Taku grew to love him romantically. Though I find it unsavory, Towa is over twenty-five at this point so it's not really some big deal. The much more dreadful power imbalance than that in age is the fact that Taku is holding the entirety of Towa's past, his abuse, and his identity over his head. Once again, I'm not calling Taku out as a gaslighter here - not in this route, at least, since Towa had no interest in his true identity at this point anyway. But you can't deny that their happy ending - embracing under the cherry blossoms with a calmer, more mature looking Towa, his hair a clean black, an orderly cardigan billowing behind him - is a sort of a quiet misery. Taku loves the man he saved (raised?), the man who presumably quit painful sex for his sake, and Towa doesn't even know what it is that he's being saved from. Towa is a hole. I really might not have interpreted this ending so negatively if it wasn't for the scene of Taku showing Towa a photograph of him as a little child in a restaurant with his mother. This smiling child prostitute in an orderly little boys' getup, dining with his pimp mother and his future lover. It felt to me like a means of truly driving into our brains the extent of Taku's helplessness, delusion, failure, and LIES. The photograph is a fabricated reality, a fabricated happy past that he feeds to Towa. In this route, this is what Towa filled the ditch with - a daydream, and sweet vanilla sex that doesn't scratch his itch. I can't give them more than five years before Towa falls back into his old habits. The end.

Now we get to Rei, who you originally asked me about. I am sorry I dragged it out to this extent, but I truly can't talk about Rei alone without addressing the grand scheme of things. Rei is also a sort of a carer to Towa, though a more casual one. A friend friend rather than a dad friend, I say this with half a scowl hanging off my face. Let us review Rei's situation with gender - due to his toxic, abusive dad (who was also a child sex trafficker, might I add!) degrading him for his homosexuality and saying it made him less of a man, Rei developed an aversion to masculinity, speaking in onee-kotoba and growing out his hair and such. At some point he attempted to cut off his own penis in Towa's presence, but ended up hesitating and not going through. All in all, he decided to drop all things associated with traditional masculinity other than street fighting, which he uses to vent out his frustration. This is the key word here - FRUSTRATION. Rei's frustration grows to hundred percent when he is forced to enter to-the-death matches. Killing opponent after opponent, Rei grows more frustrated and less and less like his friendly effeminate self. I think the key solution to the question of 'how is the writing of rei's gender handled?' Is the fact that Rei rediscovered his masculinity through violence. And Slow Damage is not a game that... likes violence, encourages it, or overall relates it to anything remotely positive. I don't think that Rei reconnected to his masculinity in a healthy way, and I don't think it's meant to be read as a cool finding himself arc. Most of all, it's not his or Towa's happy ending. Towa... the thing is that Rei only realized a sexual attraction to Towa once the amount of violence in his life amplified to the max. As his level of 'manliness' grew. Their sex scene is very frank about this - after he and Towa beat each other into bloody pulp, he says something along the lines of 'I'm a man and I want to fuck you.' I think it drives the point further that he was the only virginal love interest to that point - when he percieved himself as a woman, he had no violent sexual appetites, or at least didn't see a way towards realizing them. Once he 'reverted' into a man though, he could fuck Towa. He could claim his prize - who has no objections, given that it feeds perfectly into his own penchant that I described at the start. And their ending, showing us a casually manly Rei biking with Towa? We have no proof that he's in any way abusive, nor that they're unhappy, but... this 'new gender' of his, he built it up with bricks made of blood, some of it Towa's. I don't think Rei reached a happy ending. I think Rei is a feminine person, or at the very least a gender nonconforming man who retreated back into the closet within the violent festa that his father brought upon him... many will disagree, but this is how I read it - a manhood built up on violence equals unhapliness for two. I think Towa and Rei might stay together longer than Towa and Taku would, but it won't bring either of them any healing. The end.

Madarame's route is the simplest, since Madarame does not hide himself behind any masks. He is a violent, shameless pedophile rapist who gladly continues paving the road of self-destruction that Maya had left off half-finished. I think that placing this ending behind Taku and Rei's serves as a bit of a wake up call who felt pacified by the former two - um, hey, hello? Did you forget? This is not a 'happy story'. For some three hours you watch Madarame break Towa psychologically, repeatedly rape and torture him - only to release him back to Taku and Rei for Towa to find that he can't truly fit im with them anymore. What purpose does it serve? Well, I think it just shows us that there never was any long-term happiness waiting for Towa with either of those men. I think the purpose of the Madarame route, beyond preparing us for the true route, is to totally nullify the effect of the first two. A 'forget what you thought you knew' type of detail. Broken into obedience, a wild blond Towa kissed Madarame after a boxing match. The end.

Fujieda.

He perplexes me the most, and I'm still not entirely certain in the answer I arrived to. Why would the author who penned this painfully real story about abuse have Towa end up with a man who - midway through the route - raped him? I tried to work wonders to explain this to myself, try to interpret it differently, but the truth is concrete. Fujieda raped Towa in a fit of rage, and then with a sober mind refused to apologise for it. Why would this be in a 'painfully real story about abuse?'

...precisely because it's painfully real. It happened to Towa. It happened to a million others. It might happen to you. When you hit your knee, do your fingers not venture to fondle the bruise, press down for a small reminder of what the pain felt like? The fingers are usually kind, but once in a while, they press down.

And again - Fujieda does not consistently abuse Towa. In fact, he gives him his first taste of truly pleasurable sex in a scene that pushed me to the brink of tears in its sad honesty. When Fujieda has a good day, he gently washes the remnants of assault out of Towa. But when he had an extremely bad way, he was the perpetrator of the assault. I think it's 'painfully real' for Towa to end up with such a man. After coming to terms with his past, this was the best he could do. This was as much as he could save himself. The VN ends on such a note - don't be too happy for him, and don't be too sad. I do believe that Fujieda brought Towa some comfort and clarity, but I can't say that this isn't a deadend, too. Just a more peaceful one in the light. In the ocean.

What's the point then, if Towa ends up stranded no matter what choices you make? Let's return to the beginning, to the ditch abuse made in you. Sometimes you fill it in with fantasies, sometimes with violence, sometimes with the 'next best thing', a 'he's a good man you know, he's only rough when he drinks' typa marriage... no matter what, fact is that all abused kids seek to fill it in with something familiar. Something they know and recognize. It yearns to be filled, it aches for it - whatever you're ready to dish out, just put it in! I think this merry-go-round of victims and perpetrators is what Surodame is tryong to turn our eyes towards, or at least force us to stop averting them. So that you may not scorn the Towa in your life, so that if you are a Towa yourself, you may find comfort in knowing that someone somewhere dreemed you up, empathized with you and lead your hand along the path. Why, then, do we not see our Towa free?

Well, the future is long. He was in an ocean. Maybe he walked out.

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paperconsumption · 1 year

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GRABS YOU. what is the locked tomb (asking if its worth reading and ur opinion cuz ive been seeing it everywhere but unsure of what its even ab)

YAYAYAYAY I LOVE TALKING ABOUT THE LOCKED TOMB!! it’s a sci-fi fantasy about necromancy set 10,000 years in the future, where the heirs of each of the Nine Houses (the planets in our solar system) have to gather at the First House with their cavaliers (bodyguards/knights) and carry out these trials to become Lyctors, immortals that serve the Emperor/God/Necrolord/etc. he has many titles you will not be able to keep them straight at the beginning. same with many of the characters they have several names all of them difficult to remember.

the main characters are from the Ninth House, gideon and harrowhark. they hate each other, but harrowhark needs a cavalier and gideon wants to escape the ninth, so they cut a deal to go and do this and then go their separate ways. except people start getting killed, and they have to deal with this murder mystery in a gothic mansion in space with no outside help while hating each other and distrusting all the other heir/cavalier duos.

that’s just the first book, each one has got its own crazy thing going on and is narrated by a different character each time. they’re super confusing, too, because each narrator is like. specifically designed to have the least clue of what’s going on in any situation. but once things start to make sense you just LOSE YOUR MIND over what’s happening. the characters are super interesting and have many things wrong with them, there r lots of gay women, the necromancy is cool as hell, and if you can deal with the second book contradicting the first one and constantly gaslighting you (and the main character) then i highly recommend!! i like the locked tomb a lot but it’s rlly weird so i can’t recommend it to everyone jdjfjg

#hehehe thank u for asking <333 #it’s super duper worth reading #tho the author deliberately writes so you don’t know what’s going on at all so 😭😭 watch out for that #the locked tomb

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corvicarum · 8 months

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okay so,,, ive been thinking up a whole twst event for wuya tbh

ik we have the fairy gala, but? imagine a trip to the fae realm. dangerous i know, but when have these characters not been put in danger???

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭

wuya ( SSR ) / duo with grim? jade ( SSR ) / duo with floyd? vil ( SSR ) / duo with rook?

rook ( SR ) floyd ( SR ) grim ( SR )

jack ( R ) sebek ( R )

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐄: jade has gone missing on a hike! of course any good camper would give their location to someone close to them. thus floyd seeks wuya would to aid in what he's pretty sure is some fairy nonsense. explaining to him that jade was last seen stepping through a faerie ring. wuya of course is more than happy to help him find his brother- bringing along vil as well. which leads several other students to follow suit out of concern and curiosity.

this event is also intended to be a sort of, lore drop, for wuya. he was raised in the moors after all, and talks about it from time to time. hence floyd seeking wuya out for help with the matter.

silly little event, probably SOME emotional ups and down. kinda plays out similar to the way the halloween event did too. i like that mechanic quite a bit!

#i will EVENTUALLY #doodle some outfits #hhhh #i want grim to have more cards PLEASE #𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓. / wuya

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quinloki · 8 months

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id love to tell you all about my oc, but that would turn into a 3hr long video essay (complicated lore my beloved </3), so how about my entire life story ive planned out with iceburg on water 7. we’ve known each other since the start of tom’s workers - came across a gaggle of oddballs one day at scrapheap island and stuck around. we did NOT get along initially due to our youthful tempers - but overtime got closer as we were like the only people our age we were close to that wasnt franky (ultimate annoying little brother energy).

feelings did eventually form when we were older but things weren’t exactly easy to handle due to the strange circumstances and the building of the puffing tom to save tom’s life. but after tom and franky’s “deaths”, that’s where our bond solidified as the remains of tom’s workers dispersed - we stayed together and were each other’s emotional support throughout the next several years as iceburg eventually became mayor.

nowadays, we’re just a couple growing older together who also happen to co-run an entire ship building company. we’re each other’s balance for fun time and responsibility and best friends. i cant sit still in an office for my life, so i’m usually found running about water 7 - it’s not uncommon for me to be racing down the canals of the city on a yagara bull, causing a bit of fun chaos here and there.

but we’re also a silly little duo and aren’t immune to shenaniganry - iceburg definitely has the habit of just spontaneously canceling a day’s meetings when he doesnt want to do them and we just go out for a casual date - probably to chill in the city away from the office and maybe go to our favorite cafe/bakery. bonuses in the forms of our son tyranosaurus and now unofficial daughter in the form of his new secretary jdjksj

wahh that’s so much - i just love iceburg sm, he’s my ultimate comfort character who i never to get talk about cause he’s such a minor character in the long run asdsmdkslk T^T

T-T Awww, that's so sweet!

I love the amount of details you have going on - and that's not counting the 3-hour video essay xD <3

Iceberg is a sweetheart, and I could see him being a kind of quiet hopeless romantic - exactly the kind of person who would rely on his secretary to clear his schedule for the day so he can go on a nice quiet date. I don't know why but I just have this image of him bringing you a small little bundle of flowers, and like, Tyrannosaurus has a little matching flower that's just a super teeny little bitty version of what's in the bouquet.

He's very happy to have his tiny flower.

\o/ Thank you for sharing! I love it, it's just such a CUTE vibe

Tell me about your self-ships!

#quin answers #quin delights #self ships #iceberg one piece

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sunlightsshadow · 1 year

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Heal What Has Been Hurt Liveblog

hello and welcome to the first of 5 initial (but probably not Only) posts recounting my liveblogging of Heal What Has Been Hurt by @sunlitmcgee

ch1: and the universe said "I Love You"

c! tech did one (1) good thing and it was burning the egg

gogy mention/pos

its only ch1 and they've already gone DadMode. hasnt even even , talked to the boy yet/lh

XD :D

ch2:Flower Gleam and Glow

"weirdo mother hen guardian angel nanny thing." hehehe

moths moths moths moths moths

Clara :D

ch3: I've Been Ghosting Your Dreams

i wonder how tommy feels about warm rain

my browser crashed god dad is too powerful/j

ghostbur :DDD

oh i have so many feelings about ghobur

ch4:Come, My Child

not lots of thoughts just enjoying the domesticity of the bois

did enjoy the star freckles tho

ch5:Like A Busy Bee Taking Flight

"large purple man" thanos/neg

compass compass compass compass (im wearing my Your Tommy compass my bf bought me <3)

heheh dad said pogchamp

ch6:Flying Like a Bee, Black and Yellow Energy

hehe derivikat lyrics

xd dad god. why is that form even still in your rotation/lh

ranboo/pos. i love all Ranboos

hehehe time to sin!

c! techno/neg

xd having several children who are gods and can take care of themselves and having to focus your attention on the whole of creation is different than abandoning your litteral tiny children to go adventuring w a gladiator who hears voices

xd you could have shifted forms dont yell at them/lh

ch7:Cold. Why You Gotta Treat Me So Cold?

weird schlatt tubbo/neg nightmare tubbo/neg

GOD I hate exile

I am so emotional over them GODS

I need someone to be proud of me like xd is proud of tommy

I want a god dad. the yearning is strong

ch8: sweet like honey

any time someone writes tommy saying the phrase "ill be good" istg i feel my heart break

back sore, clue #1

micha 🥺

ch9: I Think You're All Insane

_beloved family/pos

PUFFY!!

every time i manage to forget the captain is dreams mom someone reminds me :/(/hj/nm/lh)

no more memory broke :D

am i using that emoji to much? i do not care<3

god enderman lore/pos

ch10: Deep In The Meadow

i also feel Okay. this is a good place to be

there is something so personal about tommy wanting to end the cycle of abuse and worrying he'll end up like the people who hurt him

good people have intrusive thoughts tommy:(

ch11:Here it's Safe, and Here it's Warm

hehehehe Wings also toms XD would never leave you :(

"you'll instinctively know" its not instincts if it hurts Philza

god i fucking love the personification of instincts. so much. its such a cool thing

ch12:Why, Tell Me, Father?

tommy has a perfect comfy bed and doesnt wanna move. mood

tommy is starting to heal and i love that for him/gen

how DID xd figure that out?

ive just decided just now while rereading that xd was too nice to phil

"you're still here" im gonna SOB

heal! emerald duo/neg

I wanna hug tommy :(

ch13:It's a Promise for Life Between Father and Child

what if i just [takes a white out pen to tommys trauma] look now hes just a lil guy! (someone do this to me)

[beats the doomsday bitches over the head with a stick] i will actually never be normal abt c!tommy

mmmm i should play omori

tinyboo. itty bitty

i dont wana read the interaction w technoooo [reads it anyways] its important

Ghobur! he back!

i think more people should let ghostbur get angry

ch14:How Would You Know?

idk how phil cant sense the Pissed Off aura xd must be giving off rn

in which xd is my spirit animal

:D(malicious)-XD

i like his hat :(

somebody please do this w my dad

ch15: Remember to be Patient

i am obsessed w instinct stuff. lil baby birb go peep peep

i was so lost in the euphoria of birb i forgot to have thoughts

ch16:Fold Up Your Wings, Close Your Eyes

WING TIME WING TIME WING TIME

"it's beautiful… except of course for the unholy screams"

xd " claws" and " adorable" are not generally words that go together

he is SAD the baby is SAD :(

what would xd do if tommy turned into an actual baby?

"its me?" AWWWW🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

hes a baby

i will kill any god for him

baby boy

precious

oh boo even *mentions* agere how did I miss that the first time? tommy is simply baby

ch17: See the Sunset

cant see glass<3

i want a cool space blanket (I have a non-binary flag space blanket tho :3)

I also like when things make click clack noises… am i birb?

I love hiiiiimmmmm

ch18:Nothing Could Tear Us Apart

they can both be clingy it's okay

i almost forgot to open my document when I started reading again

[wilbur voice] quackityyyyy

hes not even actually here but I'm lobe himb

hehehe lovey dovey qpps/pos

i adore my qpps and my bf

GOD i am not NORMAL about platonic soulmate clingyduo there is nothing normal abt my mind state towards them!

"You were worth more than L'manburg ever was…" grrrrrr growl hiss its so GOOD

more baby birb🥺

ch19:Come out and Play

is he a demigod now?

bird time again!

i love instinct shit have i mentioned that?/hj

baby baby boy/pos

i was reading this the first time and I was just like. hes so small

i fuckin love my comfort chara using my coping mechanisms

And with that it's back to reading<3

#cass speaks #dsmp #heal what has been hurt #c!benchtrio

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boypussydilf · 2 years

Note

ok ur choice between homumiko or asoryuu (...or both??????) for the bingos GO

ABSOLUTELY BOTH!!!!!! LETS GOOOOOOO asoryuu first

OH RIGHT EVEN WHEN UR NOT MAKING AN IMAGE POST TUMBLR PUTS THE IMAGES, LIKE, NEXT TO EACH OTHER SOMETIMES. thats gonna make this post a LOT more tolerable !!!!

I don’t actuslly think “divorced” describes anything they have going on accurately at ALL, there’s just a lot of asoryuu divorce jokes and i think divorce is funny so I nod along, but they’re not divorced. I never talk about them ever but no one misunderstand: they are fucking everything. They’re incredible. Bromance of all time but without the romance (but with the romance). They cant be divorced bc they weren’t together and like not in a “characters who have never been married but are still somehow divorced” way theyre just more like. They got to the Awkward In Between Spot where neither of u is sure if this is like, romantic or not, or what you’re gonna do about it, or anything, and then they’ve just been stuck there for a year and are going to continue to be stuck there for a long time I feel bad for them. They’re really gay though “I dont trust myself so here take this, the sword that is a metaphor for my soul” Stop being gay in public…

FUCK I MEANT TO CIRCLE GAY AF TO HAVE A SWORN RIVAL !!!!!!!!!!! They’re not Sworn Rivals by any means? They’re not even really Rivals on a temporary basis? But also they kind of are. You get it. Right? You get it. It’s their vibes. Nothing about this is a rivalry, it’s just a defense attorney/prosecutor ship and also they’re two guys who go in really hard on the competition with each other which isn’t really anything special in itself lots of people are competitive for fun w close friends but. Idk. They’re doing something and they’re so funny. Asougi saw ryuu and went “what a LOSER” and then the guy Was Better At Talking Then Him and asougi went “i adore this man. I would give up my lifelong dream for his sake.” Kazuma asougi is like that stereotypical late teens girl whos like i DONT CARE that i just met him a week ago were getting MARRIED . asougi went This guy is not cool at ALL and also ive known him for One Year and also ill do almost anything for him. No talking stage mutual obsession and we see god in each others eyes or nothing.

I like asoryuu they are funny. Asougi may bully ryuu on purpose, but ryuu will always get the upper hand completely unintentionally via something dumb. Ok homo miku time

i debated on the “terrible in every way” thing but they do deserve to be called that what with all the. lying to people. guys do you. know ways to navigate difficult situations that arent just *hides information and then is evasive about it* *lies outright about something very major* Guys…………

homo of miko. Mikotoba tried to fix him Once and then went whatevers wrong with him is way funnier & sherlock actively made him worse. But its ok bc their worst crime is being annoying in public. also several dozen counts of breaking and entering.

related topic obsessed w the fact that , like. the only reasonable conclusion to draw abt The Finding-Jigoku Scene. THE Homumiko Scene. is that this is an accurate representation of What They & Their Investigations Were Like, Like, All The Time. mikotoba pulls the ONLY PULL IN VERY DRASTIC EMERGENCIES OR WE FUCKIGN EXPLODE YOU alarm & sherlockjust picks a lock so they can break in & then they fucking dance and insult each other i guess. Gregsons ghost is there screaming something about “lower me into my coffin so you can let me down one last time”. They are 1. silly 2. absolutely taking this seriously but fundamentally do not act like it 3. Breaking the law. Great Job!!!!!!!! I want to see 50 more hours of this. I want to see other characters’ impressions of Them As A Duo so bad. Like ok. again: mikotoba is so funny when u think abt it . absolute professional. regular seeming guy. even comes across as serious or stoic to some people. And then. *gestures to the above*. I just had the words gap moe pop into my head i am going to fucking throw up. Anyway. I just think it’s funnh to imagine some shit like. dr sithe- Oooh there are too many ways this sentence can end. *grabby hands* capcom give us the courtney sithe lore. Okay okay order of events. sithe is working at the same hospital where mikotoba is working & where sherlock moreso just kind of shows up to dick around with chemistry experiments. she knows mikotoba as a good respectable doctor who takes his work very seriously. she knows sherlock as an insane idiot who keeps burning himself. apparently they are living together. well rents high and mikotoba just moved here & hasnt been exposed to the insane idiot so much thats understandable. She sees them on a case. Mikotoba breaks into someones house through the window. And also they dance. She has to continue working with this man.

I don’t know if the timeline adds up in a way where sithe wouldve even been working @ that hospital when mikotoba First got there but you get the IDEA ANYWAY. on a note thats only related in my brain eberyone should read arthur conan doyles a study in scarlet but just the like, first 2 chapters, just to be amused by sherlock holmes. i got sidetracked there maybe lets go back to talking about homumiko.

Sorry to bring this up for th first time w them when it also very much applies to asoryuu but as we all know dgs2 was so fucked up for ending w “and then everyone is separated <3” Insanity. OKAY. okay. OKAY. OKAY. *once again wheels out the giant conspiracy board in my brain where all the homumiko information is stored* they both. like. mikotoba says he never expected to be able to go to britain again & sherlock is like Wow i never thought id be solving mysteries like this with you again!! Ever!!! In my life!!!! and i wont go on the other connected rant abt shit like mikotoba saying “our home” and themjust picking up like nothing has changed bc i think i already did that and also thats not the point i just . like . WHATS GOING ON WITH THEM !!!!!!!!! “WOW! AFTER 10 YEARS I GOT TO SEE YOU FOR LIKE. A WEEK. OK BYE FOREVER <3” HELLO!!!!!!!!!!!! *SHAKES THEM*ARE YOU OKAY WITH THIS? ARE YOU HAPPY WITH THIS? “MY CLOSEST FRIEND MY PARTNER MY OTHER HALF. I LOVE GETTING A LETTER A MONTH FOREVER” SCREAM !!!!!!!!!!! this is a fucked up decision. I’m normal.

*blinks like someone who just got woken up at 7pm* i dont know how fucking lomg ive been. writing this post. It seems to have gotten out of hand. i like homumiko. makes them sillyguys makes them halves of a whole makes them . uhhh. gay. *clinks glass* Heres to them impulse adopting many more children !!!!! HAS YUUJIN MIKOTOBA EVER MET GINA

#gina isnt sherlocks kid #but she IS iris’s sister #so thats. theres a connection #hi for the love of god hello.#basilask #dgs from my brain

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nonamem9 · 1 year

Text

tanay rizal trip thing from 3 weeks ago (rough details sorry) (bad storytelling)

monday and tuesday

resort is called Martessem

went to tanay (duh) on the days where my sister has to go to school since its schools days but she didnt due to no one taking care of her (awesome schedule)

throughout the whole 2 days, me and my cousin played chess on his tablet as we wait for the meals (best idea honestly), he checkmated 3 times, a stalemate, and i only won once on chess960 without knowing, we all individually chose our own dishes, me and my sister chose the meals as a duo

our room is G1, cousins' at G2

on the 1st day we ate the meals on the restaurant in the resort, both dinner and lunch

the time we ate our lunch is at 3PM due to travel time since us at antipolo are gonna ride at the van my tita was at, she's at taguig. i forgot what we ate.

looked at the view and i saw the clearest rainbow ive ever seen, and technically my first rainbow i saw since on other times i wasnt paying attention or see it clearly

this might've the mighest place i've been in since flying an airplay several years ago back when i was a toddler, the clouds are nearer to my reach

i put out the laptop and its overheating as fuck on sleep mode, draining the battery that i charged to max for nothing, had to force turn off since its lagging as fuck.

in the back balcony with myself, my sister, and my male cousin, said cousin is talking about his preference for shitting out water since its more comfortable in great length and detail, we lost our shit laughing at such absurd, disgusting and vile conversation topic. we've struggled to argue against it due to how hard we're laughing, can't barely hold it in. me and my sister jokingly called this the poopshitters podcast.

i tried booting in my laptop and connect to the wifi, you must put in the token password (lasts for 1 day) via the pop out website for this hotspot (if thats the right term), they gave a lot of these password tokens when we first arrive to the room. hopped on discord and told (i think) the spica discord that im here in tanay (doxxed)

laptop is lowbat so i get my charger and try to connect to the wall outlets, the thing is that there is no 3 holed wall outlet, no 3 prongs, we didn't brought an adapter because who the fuck does that while traveling, so i had to accept that i cant use this laptop again throughout the day.

at night my tita's employees/friends came in to my surprise and they bought in cup noodles, ate the mildly spicy one as my sort of mini dinner

i struggled to sleep my ass and move a lot, producing squeaky bed sounds as i roll, to much to the elder's dismay

2nd day we woke up

chess and chess960

ate breakfast at the resort's restaurant, i think i chose bacsilog/baksilog?

i found out that all of this was for my tita's daughter's brithday

resort people did the happy birthday thing, they drizzled chocolate and spell out "happy birthday!" on one of their plates

back to room interacting and such, apparently according to my mother, during night someone knocked on the balcony door and she checked and no one is there.

traveled to a restaurant that has a minigolf thing, a massive swimming pool, two of them this did not became our lunch destination since they said "the kids cant rallt do things here" (??? we never really did anything at the future two restaurants) so we went back to the van and traveled again

i ate shrimp sinigang and garlic rice for lunch in the a new restaurant by the mountainside (the one with a video that i posted)

back to our units at G1 & G2, oh yeah and G3 since the one that arrived at day 1 nighttime, recorded the "M" pool video

back to the van traveling

tempura for dinner, my first time eating it, dipped in sauces and such.

our family got home a day earlier while the rest will continue until wednesday, my sister got sick and nose snotty hence we go home.

while on our way home us and the van driver are mesmerized by the 5 motorcycle and approximately 7 people gang/riders where they guy at the front does the turn signals and the rest of the group who're in a line formation follow. i joked about our van driver being hypnotized by it and forgetting about the part where we go home and instead chasing them. lmao

in the entire 2 days at the traveling by van part, we shuffled seat to seat, from the furhtst of backs, the middle row, and in my case, got the front seat (i called shotgun, dibs on that [what am i even saying??]). saw the beautiful views that didn't bore us, didnt took photos though so there's that.

yeah i think thats all of it about the tanay trip

its 2:27 AM now, january 31 as i finishing writing this feeling thirsty.

#tanay rizal

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isthereintruthnobeauty1968 · 6 months

Text

going to bed with just the finale left in season two and feel like drawing up a rough list of favorite episodes from the first two seasons:

for season one:

both the emissary pilot duo. it's a strong introduction and the deal with the prophets and time/grief is compelling

past prologue. strong follow-up! several layers of intrigue! good kira episode! garak is there!

dax. hesitated on including this one bc the pacing kinda kills it for some stretches but i get excited whenever the stories actually Do anything with jadzia 😑 compelling introduction to her & sisko's relationship

the nagus. really only here for the b plot. i like seeing jake and nog :)

vortex. it's paced well and seeing odo compromise after insisting it's not something he does for half an hour is satisfying lol

dramatis personae. REALLY GOOD ENSEMBLE EPISODE! loooove how the plot device gas plays on existing tensions even though their motives don't suit them. love seeing sisko ignore everything to work on a clock. also kira hot

duet. really strong performances for kira and marritza and it left me thinking about it for a good while

season two:

invasive procedures. again, a yay they're doing something with jadzia! one. has some strong moments for julian and quark and LOTS for sisko too. i liked it when he shot the bastard

cardassians. another one that left me thinking about it for a while. feel horrible for rugal and that diplomacy/preserving a treaty forced him away from a family that loved him. still thinking about miles saying something nasty about rugal WHILE HE WAS IN THE ROOM and keiko calling him out on it like holy shit.

necessary evil. solid crime drama! i enjoyed the elaboration/complication of kira and odo's relationship and am madly curious how they followed up/resolved it. funny how Was odo complicit with the occupation is even brought up as a point of question though like. Yes. his justification of it as being better than an alternative/just regular cardassian force has some logic but there's no denying that he was!

rivals. again only here for the jake & nog b plot! this one was really funny

whispers. solidly written thriller that i think would work even if you don't know the series at all! i did NOT guess the twist

profit and loss. i continue to like the 'cardassian dissidents' ones. the two quark & garak scenes are both REALLY good

the maquis. good sisko episodes even if there are some parts (mostly like. ideological implications/framing of colonization/presentation/lack thereof of real history while presenting a fictional future-history that are aspects of star trek in general and ive talked about on main wrt tos) that i take issue with. liked seeing him play across dukat for so long clearly barely tolerating his presence & blow up at kira after being level with various bureaucrats for hours and she's like :)

the wire. my god! i don't think i have anything to say that hasn't already been said abt this. it's good drama and good tv and REALLY good performance

crossover. curious abt what bajor is like in the MU and v interested in everyone's counterparts

#p #this was way longer than i intended i shouldn't have made comments 😭#ds9

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silly-cheese-rat · 8 months

Note

ykno ive been calling john x steve hatefucking this whole time but aspenshipping is a much better name lol, thank u for ur insight (genuine)

"hatefucking" ?? you need to be put down.

Jokes aside, Aspenshipping is anything but them "hate fucking". Clearly, I need to lecture you. I assume you only know Sculley and Steve's relationship as "John Sculley fired Steve Jobs. Steve never forgave Sculley and they never spoke a word again". So, have fun with this wall of text.

Before Steve Jobs left Apple in Fall 1985 ("Steve Jobs was fired" is an overstatement), he and Sculley actually were very close friends. They got to personally know each other back in Fall 1982, after Sculley declined the offer to join Apple. Sculley and Steve spoke and met a lot, in a casual way, for several months, and a friendship formed quickly. Eventually, Sculley became CEO of Apple in Spring 1983, despite originally declining (Steve's famous "sugar water" quote won him over). The two of them were a great team — they were known as the "dynamic duo". Some Apple Executive said "John adored Steve, they would finish each other's sentences.". There are photos out there of Sculley wrapping his arm around Steve at the beach, or them having a conversation while they're only wearing jogging shorts and nothing else. I've never seen those photos myself (I wish I did), but they were mentioned in a book about Apple's history ("Apple" from Jim Carlton). But the pictures of Sculley and Steve at the beach could be from the same photoshoot I've seen two photos of -- the photos I saw were the two of them having a laugh, standing at the beach as the sun sets.

At Apple (and eventually outside of it) Sculley being highly infatuated with Steve was no secret. The amount of love Sculley felt for Steve was so huge, even magazines covered it back then — for example, FORTUNE called it an "unusual affection". There's also that one quote from Joanna Hoffmann (an original member of the Macintosh team) I always love to bring up; She described Sculley as "a lover so in love with his beloved that he could see none of Steve’s faults". There's much much more out there about how Sculley was head over heels for Steve and how he still very much feels the same after all those years, but I'd sit here for months until I listed everything I know. Just trust me on that one.

I sadly don't know too much about how Steve felt about Sculley before their ways parted. But obviously he liked him. There are a bunch of pictures from a photoshoot where Steve leans in towards Sculley again and again while they're sitting next to each other, although there's plenty of space around them and the photograph's dimensions didn't require him to do it. I like to think it was subconscious on his part simply bc of their strong bond. Anyways, during the power struggle at Apple there was a point where Steve tried to kick Sculley out of Apple. After Sculley found out about the backstabbing, he talked about it with Steve, letting him know he's fully aware of what's happening, and telling him to stop. Back then, Steve told the people at Apple close to him that all this was simply a "lover's quarrel" and that they should forget about it.

TL;DR: "Hate fucking" couldn't be any further from the truth — unless it's past 1985, bc in that case it would be one-sided hate fucking

#phew had to get that out #I don't expect you'll actually read all that #but if you did then you're pretty cool and got some dedication damn #ltl ask

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thelovedream · 11 months

Text

SKIN FAVORITES (MAY - JULY 2023)

So this has definitely been a long time coming, but as promised:

1. SUPPLEMENTS

Firstly, I want to talk about supplements & diet. Healthy skin starts with healthy insides, you literally do glow from within. So this should never be neglected, especially when you have reoccuring skin issues.

For some background on my skin history: I’ve struggled with acne ever since I was a teenager, finally got it under control in my early 20s when I found the right products. Unfortunately, my skin developed a sensitivity to the products I was using. I was forced to stop them, leaving me almost back to square one. After a while, I figured my acne had to be hormonal or the result of some deficiency.

I started taking Vitamin D3 regularly and it helped a lot with the frequency of breakouts and severity of my periods. In February, my hair dresser recommended that I take collagen for my skin and dry scalp. I also decided to take fish oil pills and probiotics. I saw a huge improvement in my skin within a month or so. (Also pretty helpful for hair growth too!)

I’ve since switched out my fish oil pills for cod liver oil pills because they have Vitamin A.

I also have been slowly but surely improving my diet eating more home cooked meals, more fruits, drinking more tea and water on top of becoming more active.

DISCLAIMER: I’m not a doctor, so please do consult your primary care physician before using any supplements. Supplementing the wrong thing can lead to more problems.

2. IDOLE EXFOLIATING SOAP AND TONING CREME

These products were recommended to me by my hairdresser. At first I was a bit skeptical because this brand is known for skin bleaching/lightening (which was not my goal). However, this particular soap and cream really did wonders for my skin by getting rid of dark marks and controlling breakouts. It did not lighten my skin at all.

I used this quite a lot during May to the middle of June. I’ve since stopped using the soap, as I felt it dried out my face a little too much for my liking. I still use the creme nightly.

Use: Every day

3. KIEHL’S ULTRA FACIAL CLEANSER AND MOISTURIZER

I picked up the travel sizes on a whim when I was headed back home from New York in June. I thank God, because it was one of the best skin decisions I’ve ever made.

My skin was a little drier than usual because of the soap and the air in New York being drier than where I live, so I wanted something simple and not too stripping. I also wanted a moisturizer that would be light, but still hydrating.

This was the the perfect pick me up duo to replenish my skin. I also noticed even less breakouts, smaller looking pores and my dark marks fading much faster. This is likely due to the squalene in both the cleanser and the moisturizer.

I’ve purchased the full sized versions of both & plan on sticking with these for the foreseeable future.

Use: Every day

4. THE ORDINARY LACTIC ACID 10% + HYALURONIC ACID 2%

An oldie but goodie. I’ve been using this on and off for about a year, but it’s really become a staple in my routine since late May.

I would like to note that I’ve been using lactic acid (& other strong chemical exfoliants) for years now, so my skin is well able to handle this. If you’re just starting out I would recommend using the 5% version once a week, and building from there.

Use: 3 times a week

5. ST. IVES BLEMISH CONTROL APRICOT SCRUB

Is this a safe space? 🫣

I’ve been using this again at my hairdresser’s recommendation and...it’s actually not terrible?

My controversial opinion is that while chemical exfoliants are great: you do need a little physical exfoliant at least once a week. This does the job just fine for me. I don’t use too much or scrub too hard. To be honest, I see even better results with my skin using this and the lactic acid, versus the lactic acid alone.

Naturally, there are better options than the above for this purpose, but it’s been giving me no problems so I’ll keep using it.

Use: Once a week

6. FRESH SUGAR STRAWBERRY EXFOLIATING FACE WASH

Another recent impulse travel purchase I made while on my way back from London. (As you can tell, I have a lot of self control in duty free stores).

It’s definitely not as harsh as the St. Ives scrub and in fact is very gentle. But besides the sugar crystals, a few more ingredients in this cleanser caught my eye and have been doing my skin good:

• Strawberry extract - improves hydration, elasticity, brightens skin, rich in vitamin C and polyphenols.

• Black currant extract - rich in fatty acids and antioxidants that nourish and repair dry skin and has anti-inflammatory properties.

• Sapindus Mukorossi Peel (Indian Soapberry/ Washout) extract - tones skin, combats symptoms of skin fatigue while softening imperfections and moisturizing the skin.

After I wash my face with the Kiehl’s Ultra Facial Cleanser, I massage this into my face/neck and let it sit for about 15-20 minutes while I shower and then rinse off. I’m not sure if letting this cleanser is doing anything extra, but my skin feels extra supple after and noticeably smoother in the morning.

Use: (Still determining) 2-3x a week, or whenever my skin is a little too dry

Daily Skincare Routine

AM:

[nothing, I only wash my face once a day at night. I’m still on the hunt for a good sunscreen]

PM:

CLEANSE:

1. Cleanse with Kiehl’s Ultra Facial Cleanser.

2. Massage Fresh Sugar Strawberry Exfoliating Face Wash into my skin and let sit for 15-20 minutes then rinse.*

EXFOLIATE:

3a. Exfoliate with St. Ives Fresh Skin Apricot Face Scrub.*

3b. Apply The Ordinary Lactic Acid 10% + Hyaluronic Acid 2% to skin, avoiding eyes and mouth area.*

MOISTURIZE:

4. Apply Kiehl’s Ultra Facial Moisturizer.

5. Apply Idole Creme, avoiding eyes and mouth.

* = not applied daily, see above for use frequency.

3a and 3b are never done on the same day.

7. TOO FACED BORN THIS WAY MULTI-USE SCULPTING AND ETHEREAL LIGHT CONCEALERS

I recently upgraded my foundation and concealers, and I’ve been loving TOO FACED. I’m using their Born This Way Multi-Use Sculpting concealer as my foundation. I find that I prefer the lighter and fuller coverage concealers and foundation sticks offer me over foundation. The color match has also been perfect for me.

Their Ethereal Light concealers layer perfectly with my base and I have absolutely no complaints.

I’ve been using these almost every day for two months and loving it.

-------------

That’s all from me! I hope it was helpful and let me know if you try anything I recommended.

- thelovedream💕

P.S. I rarely do skin favorites because I like to try my products for a few months to be sure they work and that I love them. Then when I’m sure I love them, I don’t switch things up lol.

Useful Links:

Previous skincare favorites

DISCLAIMER: NONE OF THESE IMAGES BELONG TO ME.

#thelovedream #thedreamreviews #May - Jul skin favorites #Kiehls #Idole #collagen #vitamin d3 #TOO FACED #the ordinary #st. ives #fish oil #cod liver oil #probiotics #born this way concealer #vitamins #healthy skin #healthy body

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roniscloud · 3 years

Text

lhs - runnin’

lee heeseung [a. + f. 4700 words] runnin’

to you

you came up on some new

i know i shouldn’t feel blue

‘cause i was runnin’ out of time for you

synopsis: you met heeseung in your freshman year of college and immediately hit it off. you’ve made it to your third year and when everyone including yourselves thought that you were each other’s endgame, the devastation when you two split was immeasurable. you both know there’s still love between you. this break allows you both to realize new things. can you two find your ways back to each other? will this be the final goodbye?

genre + tropes: angst. fluff. comedy. college!au. establishedrelationship!au. exes!au.

warnings: fem reader. swearing. arguing. nosy friends. cold heeseung and cold reader. drifting relationship. interventions. slight suggestive themes but it’s only mentioned like once. they both pine over each other. mentions of alcohol and binge drinking. maybe not a happy ending. if you choose to see it that way. whoops. appearances of the rest of enha plus txt yeonjun and soobin.

i. the break

“so this is how it’s gonna end? i thought we were doing fine.”

heeseung erupts into an even angrier fit, “are you kidding me? we are not fucking fine. in what world is this fine? tell me!”

you scoff from where you stand cross-armed on the other side of the bedroom. “well, can you really blame me? it’s hard to see if there’s something wrong if we never see each other.”

“exactly my point! we don’t see each other.”

the two of you have been at each other’s throats since heeseung showed up at your apartment. you have no idea how long ago that was or when the argument started. all you remember is coming up to him when he arrived, wanting to actually spend some time with him. instead he shrugged you off and ignored you, blaming the fatigue. the rest has been a blur. one of you made an offhand comment and now here you are: frustrated and in another fight.

a quick recap: you two met at a mutual friend’s party. you thought that each other was attractive and he ended up asking you out. from there you kept going out, fell in love, dated, and everyone thought you were perfect together. three years later and it’s getting tiring. life has been draining trying to balance it all.

“and who’s fault is that?”

annoyed, he snaps back, “oh please, you can not put the blame solely on me.”

“bullshit. i sure can when i’m the only one making an effort here. i’ve actually been trying to save us. you, on the other hand…” you pause again, rolling your eyes, “well, we both know just how much you care.”

his jaw drops, defensively he spits back, “are you genuinely implying that i don’t care about you? about us? that’s rich.”

you move to sit on the edge of the bed, staring at a single spot on the floor. you can see the shadow of heeseing pacing back and forth. you sit there, not looking at each other. the only sounds to be heard are his footsteps and the heavy sighs from you. you think back to the last several weeks. you recall each of the times you have been able to see each other. there’s no substance, nothing memorable. the only thing that comes to mind is that you always end up not talking at all or arguing.

just like right now.

“be real, heesung. when was the last time we went on a date? when was the last time you stayed the night without it ending up with you just knocking out? when was the last time we actually sat down and had a conversation? be honest because i will. i can’t remember.”

“and yet you thought we were fine?”

“well it’s better to believe a good lie than face the hurtful truth. i’m trying to save this relationship. i’m trying all the fucking time and you don’t do shit.”

he spits back frustrated, “well maybe that’s because there’s nothing to be saved.”

“are you kidding me right now? am i supposed to be scared? you tell me that there’s nothing to be saved and expect me to just give up?”

“sorry but i’m not running from this anymore.”

“you’re not sorry and we both know it.” you push yourself back up to stand, resting your hands on your hips, “you can’t say you’re sorry and expect me to forgive you. that’s not how this works.”

“this isn’t what i wanted to happen. this isn’t how it was supposed to go.”

“then make it work.”

“i- i can’t,” he holds his hands over his face, running one through his hair, “it’s too much.”

“so what? what do you mean?”

he finally stops. he takes a deep breath and lets it all out, “i just can’t see this working anymore, at least not like this.”

ii. week one

you thought this would be more difficult. that this would be the hardest pill to swallow. the first week apart may actually be the easiest. nothing has really changed. that’s probably because you haven’t told anyone that you two are no longer together. perhaps the time that you didn’t spend with each other before the break up had trained you for this.

life goes on, with or without heeseung. that’s what you keep telling yourself. you choose to get caught up with your life. you have other priorities. it’s not a crime to focus on yourself for the first time in three years.

heeseung feels the same. he doesn’t see any point on dwelling on the breakup. sure, he was the one who made the decision. he’s the one who put it out there. he’s the one who ended it and the one who is taking responsibility.

lucky for both of you, you don’t have any courses together and your schedules don’t really coincide. there’s no chance at any awkward run-ins. there is this weird, tiny feeling though. there’s this small inkling of something missing. you both suppress it. i mean, hell, the breakup just happened.

iii. scheming

meanwhile, your friends have all seemed to notice that the two of you are off. they aren’t sure what it is. they get that you two have had some time apart, but you’re both adults with lives. you have your own classes, jobs, other friends, and such. no one mentions it because they don’t think it’s their business.

but come on… there’s no way they won’t get to the bottom of it. our resident gossips, sunoo and sunghoon, team up and make it their mission to snoop around. of course, they take precautions to not get caught. the scheming duo find out nothing, to no avail.

now the gang of the scheming duo plus jay, jake, and niki have convened in the common room of jungwon’s dorm building. the 02z are all playing billiards in one corner. sunoo battles jungwon in a game of ping pong. the youngest of the group sits by himself on one of the couches, contemplating if he should speak up. they’ve been in a heated discussion as they try to figure out what exactly has been irking them.

riki, against his own conscience, speaks up to the five. he has this gut feeling and innocently wants to voice his opinion. “what if,” the young boy start out while gauging the faces of the others, “now don’t get mad and just hear me out.” he stops again, taking his time to make eye contact with each of the older boys, waiting until they all nod, “what if… they broke up?”

the group of friends all exchange glances with each other before breaking out into laughter. jay composes himself a bit, still chuckling when he says, “seriously? you think they broke up? heeseung and y/n? yeah, no way.”

sunoo leans onto the ping pong table and eggs him on, “they are literally soulmates.”

jungwon sets his racket down and goes to plop himself next to riki on the couch, “there is no way in hell the two of them split.”

iv. breaking news

“yeah, we split.” plain and simple. three words that crushed the poor hearts of jake and jungwon. he broke the news over brunch. he sensed their curiosity when they deliberately never brought you up.

“good joke there, dude. almost had me for a second.” jake says, awkwardly with a forced laugh.

the youngest of the three chiming in and agreeing, “yeah, that’s really funny.” a silence hits the booth. “you are joking… right?”

the oldest then looks back and forth between the two, tilting his head to one side like a confused pup. he doesn’t see why they think he would joke and simply replies, “nope. you guys haven’t asked so i’m guessing you tried to snoop around and pick up on my cues. i’m also guessing sunoo’s behind this whole operation.”

“ok wait,” jake interjects, “what do you mean you broke up? you can’t just break up.”

jungwon agrees, “he’s right. you two are just playing a prank on us.”

“guys, i’m serious. y/n and i are no longer together.” the two just freeze, jaws dropped, eyes wide. “besides, it’s better this way.”

v. bad timing

meanwhile the remaining four members of their friend group have met up in the campus library in an attempted study session. so far, they’ve just gone back to gossiping and slacking off. the boys all find themselves teetering on the verge of sleep. that is until sunghoon catches you walking in. immediately going to softly pat the others back awake, they all look up confused. trying to stay subtle, hoon jerks his head to the side in your direction.

you make your way to one of the shelves, searching high and low for a book you need for your literature class. sneaking up behind you comes choi yeonjun, the library aid and a friend of yours.

“need any help?”

“no thanks, i’m good jun.” you give him a polite smile.

unbeknownst to both of you, the failure of a study group has creeped to a closer table. they knew that you two were friends but they still can’t help but eavesdrop. “will you two please shut up so we can hear them?” the annoyed face evident on sunghoon’s face at the bickering of sunoo and niki. he turns to see jay, snacking and not paying attention. he rolls his eyes at the group, his gaze then catching yeonjun leading you out of the shelves. quickly shushing the three and nodding his head in your direction again, they finally get the hint.

yeonjun steps in front of you, “so you know my friend soobin, right?”

“soobin… as in choi soobin?”

yeonjun flashes his bright smile, “that’s the one.”

“yeah i know him. we had a stats class together a while back. he definitely taught me a few tricks around a calculator.” you laugh with him, “he’s super sweet, and needless to say cute too.”

“well, am i glad to hear that! long story short, he’s kinda been crushing on you lately and wants to know if you’re free. he mentioned your shared class before but he said he never got your number.”

“since you have mine already, go ahead and give it to him. tell him i’m free whenever he is.”

yeonjun raises his eyebrows at your boldness, “will do. i just wanted to ask you first before i gave it to him because… y’know…”

“no worries, i completely understand.”

he gives a quick goodbye before going back to his desk. storming quickly, four faces appear in front of you, all a combination of confusion, shock, and anger.

sunoo starts, “um… y/n. why are you telling yeonjun to give your number to another guy?”

“yeah, are you cheating on heeseung?” his partner in crime, sunghoon, joins in.

you pause and scan their faces. your face dawns an equally as confused expression. “how can i cheat on someone who isn’t my boyfriend?”

four jaws simultaneously drop. riki’s being the first to close and answer a bit hushed, “i knew it.”

jay turns to him in disbelief, “not the time, niki!”

“did heeseung not tell you guys?” you ask them slowly. “i assumed he would be the one to let you all know.”

“that you two broke up?!” sunoo asks angrily, being shushed by yeonjun from the counter. giving an apologetic smile then tuning back into your conversation, “what do you mean you two broke up?”

“we just… broke up. that’s it. end of story. now if you’ll excuse me, i have to actually study.”

they watch you check out the book you came in for originally and walk out the doors, unsure of what to do next.

vi. the intervention

arranging your monthly movie night was not exactly the easiest task given the tensions surrounding two people in your group. so the only logical solution that they all could think of was to simply not to tell one of you that the other was coming over. a fool-proof plan.

in the dorm of the 02z, you did not expect to see heeseung when you walked in.

he gets up from his spot on the couch, “what the hell is going on here?”

“yeah, an explanation would be nice.” you cross your arms as you glare at the younger boys.

niki, trying to act as mediator gestures for both of you two sit on the loveseat—the same loveseat that was always reserved for the two of you before. “this is an intervention.”

after the confession of their intentions, everyone goes quiet. not a single word is spoken for several minutes, no one knowing how to start. after much internal contemplation, jungwon finally attempts to start. “we brought you two here today because- you know what, i can’t do this.” he stops and cuts himself off, burying his face in his hands.

sunoo sits next to him with his arms crossed. “how dare you two? our parents gets divorced and we don’t even get a notice.” it was common for them to refer to you and heeseung as the parents of the group, being the oldest. although something about sunoo still calling you by that nickname stings, him shaking his head to display his disappointment making you feel guilty.

you see heeseung out of the corner of your eye avoiding looking up to your friends. “look, i don’t see the big deal. we broke up. that happens when relationships don’t work out.”

sunghoon quickly intervenes, “how can you say it isn’t a big deal? you’re letting three years go to waste and that’s all you can say? that’s what happens.” he scoffs at how shameless you come off.

“well, would you rather us stay together even when we were unhappy?” their reactions were a mix of shouts, the words yes, of course not, and duh all blending into each other.

that’s what brought your ex boyfriend out of his daze. “y/n has a point. we broke up and it’s over. we were no longer happy and i don’t see the point in bringing it up again either. it’s in the past. let it go.” he says rather coldly and sternly. him actually saying it and acknowledging it caused that weird feeling to come back. his body language is off, too. your years together has taught you enough about heeseung to know when he’s upset, especially with himself.

jake takes his turn, looking down at his fidgeting hands and muttering sadly, “but you promised each other forever.”

that prompts you and heeseung to glance at each other quickly, making eye contact and it lingering for a couple of seconds. you look away first, not noticing that his stare doesn’t leave you.”some promises just can’t be kept.” your response then making him turn away.

“bullshit.” it’s the first word uttered by jay this entire time. “neither of you are the type to break promises.”

“some things can’t be helped,” heeseung defends.

jay, getting angrier, asks his friend, “did you know that she’s already going on a date? yeah, that guy, soobin. i’m pretty sure you know who he is. your ex,” he makes sure to stress the last word with a certain degree of annoyance, “thinks he’s cute.”

emotionless, heeseung answers back, “good for her, then.”

you were sure that you were over him, that’s why you said yes to the date. but something about him not caring leaves you feeling odd.

jungwon stops your train of thought, “no, you’re supposed to be upset. you’re supposed to get jealous and confess you still want to be with her. you’re supposed to fight for her and be together.”

another quick glance between the two of you, lasting longer than the previous one. no words are said on his end, but you know exactly what he’s trying to say. “he doesn’t have to fight when i’m the one who ended it.” you knew him. you knew he couldn’t admit to the others his decision. after all, he wants to be a good role model even in his darkest times. he couldn’t crush their idea of love and you did what you had to do. you lied for his sake—and maybe even yours.

vii. him

two months have passed since the breakup. there’s tension amongst the friend group, the six not wanting to pick sides between you and heeseung. they’re constantly going back and forth, like they’re walking on eggshells as to not bring up something that only happened with the other.

to get your mind off everything, you’ve found comfort in soobin. well, more accurately you’ve found comfort in between his sheets, or wherever you two decide for it to go down. that’s not to say the dates aren’t great. you’re not official and you both know that. your latest date, however, couldn’t help but feel weird.

the date was going pretty well. don’t get me wrong—soobin is a great guy. he’s sweet, caring, funny, and handsome. you have a lot in common like your taste in drinks and movies. maybe if you had met him first, you would’ve dated him… but you didn’t meet him first. you met heeseung first, and soobin isn’t heeseung.

you found yourself drifting from the conversation now and then, thinking about how heeseung would’ve been at that moment. you think back to his habits, particularly the way he raises his eyebrows whenever he’s excited or talking about something he’s passionate about. you always found it endearing. over the course of dinner, you are able to notice that soobin has some cute habits too, like him covering his face when he gets shy or puffing out his cheeks. but it still isn’t the same.

“you two deserve each other.”

soobin catches your attention again with that comment. “what?”

“you and heeseung. i know that look. don’t try to lie to me.”

“look, heeseung is my past, and i want it to stay that way.”

“do you really want it to stay that way, or are you just afraid of what could happen if you let him back into your present?”

you give him a teasing glare, “don’t get all philosophical with me. i just don’t think he and i can go back to how we were before.”

“what’s so bad about you two changing? obviously if it didn’t work out, you shouldn’t try to be what you were before.”

“can’t i just try with you?”

“as much as i would love for you to give me that chance, i can’t do that to you or to myself. it’s not fair.”

you hesitantly ask him, “but is it worth it?”

“that’s not my decision to make.”

viii. her

now that you’re virtually not in his life, he seems to be looking for you everywhere. actually… rather than going out of his way to look for you, everything just reminds him of you. the jingles of the commercials you always sang along to, your favorite songs on the radio, the reruns of 90’s shows you always binged. hell, even when he was making ramen, he was reminded of how you would make his favorite for him every time he was stressed over an exam. he was sitting in the back of the lecture hall, trying so hard to stay awake for his 3 hour long class with the most boring professor on campus. he fought the urge to text you since it felt like second nature to rely on you to help cheer him up.

there was a particular night when it really hit him. reality smacked him in the face late one evening. heeseung was bored out of his mind, laying alone in bed, aimlessly browsing netflix to find something to watch. he thinks to himself y/n would’ve slammed this laptop closed and talked all night about random and obscure topics. he laughs to himself, reliving the memories. right then, it’s obvious. he misses her.

ix. promises

the rain hitting your bedroom window had no help on your already gloomy mood. what did help was the bottle of soju- well more realistically, four bottles of soju. it was all the liquid courage you needed to call heeseung at three in the morning.

you sat drowsily on the rug of your living room, your phone on speaker and placed in front of you as you stared out the dewy glass. you heard the phone ring seven times, ready to hang up until you heard his groggy voice come out from the other end. “hello? y/n, why are you up?”

you laugh softly and ask him, sounding loopy, “why are you up?”

“because you’re calling me. would you like to give me a reason why, and are you drunk?”

“maybe. anyways, you know… i was thinking. we broke a lot of promises and it hurts. i have to know that we’re not bad people. i have to keep at least one, right?”

heeseung groans but lets you ramble, knowing that you won’t stop until you’ve said it all, “go on…”

“we made a promise that if something was going on, if we were in a dark place, that we would talk to someone. well, if you couldn’t tell by now, i’m not in the best place. the first person i thought to talk to was you.”

“why me?”

“shhh… don’t ask questions. i know you’re tired so just stay on the phone and let me talk. ok?”

he goes quiet for a bit, sighing, “ok.”

“i miss you. i do. i don’t expect you to miss me but i just want to say it,” pausing to hiccup, “soobin helped me realize some things, saying some crap like we deserve each other.” you chuckle as you recall his words, “maybe he said it because bad people deserve bad people. maybe he said it because in our own fucked up lives, we’re the only ones who can understand each other. i did a lot of thinking and i’ve come to the conclusion that we don’t. because if we stay together, we can’t move on. we can’t grow. we can’t become good people, no matter how much we want it. that’s life. sometimes, no matter how much we want something, no matter how much we wish on stars or pray, some things just aren’t meant to be.”

“y/n, get some rest…”

“wait, i’m not done. you already can tell i’ve been drinking and to be honest i have been, for a while. i do it,” starting to choke up and sniffle, “because it helps me forget. even if it’s just for a minute that i can forget what happened, i’ll drink as much as it takes. i’ll grow out of it, eventually. i know i will, but for now… i have to do what i have to do. i’m sure you can relate.” you laugh again, getting more drowsy. you bring your legs up, hugging your knees. faintly, the sounds of heeseung’s snores play from your phone. you smile to yourself, “i wish you were here, singing me a lullaby. i don’t know when you fell asleep but goodnight. take care of yourself.”

cuddled up in his bed, heeseung hears you hang up. he lets you believe he didn’t hear what you said. he knows the reality of it all and the weight that you both are carrying. knowing that you won’t check your phone for the rest of the night, he sends you a quick text: bookstore, saturday, noon. goodnight.

as he turns off his phone to try to fall back asleep, he sees his reflection in the black screen. he sees his puffy, red eyes and his tear-stained cheeks. the end of it all is coming and finally, you two are ready for it.

x. love song

seeing him in person is a good idea. clearing the air, letting it all out, getting closure. all good ideas, you hope. walking into the bookstore was a weird feeling. when you spot him sitting by the window, you quietly make your way over. he looks up at your new presence, his feet shuffling out of nervousness. you notice the glass of pear juice on the small coffee table in front of him, already half empty.

“hi,” he says like a whisper.

“hi,” you awkwardly respond. it’s unlike the two of you to not know how to start a conversation. you make your way onto the cushioned seat, letting yourself get comfortable to help ease the tension. you each avoid the other’s gaze, not knowing how to begin. you sigh and finally ask, “how have you been?”

“busy,” he says as he nods, “finally took up actual music lessons. thought it would be better to have someone who’s played piano and guitar professionally instead of trying to teach myself.”

you softly giggle, “that’s good. you’ve always loved music.”

“yeah… how about you?”

“same, busy. i got the t.a position i applied for like forever ago.”

“congrats! you still looking to become a teacher?”

“well, generally yeah. i was having my doubts before but i just fell back into it. finally being able to be there, present, and guiding others… that’s what i want.” you sit there across from him, watching him and taking it all in. the man in front of you is heeseung, but not the heeseung you knew. no, this is the better version of him. the version of him where he can focus on himself. the version of heeseung that’s glowing and happy and ready to take on the world. “so, look. there’s no easy or delicate way to put it but i think there are things we both need to get off our chests.”

“agreed. since it all happened—the fights, the breakups, the ambush interventions—we haven’t actually talked.”

“those interventions… they were silly but the guys did help me realize some things. we’re growing up. sure, i thought we had this plan of us graduating, getting married, having a family, settling down, growing old. we both wanted that type of life. sadly, it’s not what happened and we have to live with it.”

he lets out a chuckle, “heeseung and y/n: meant for each other and meant to be.”

“but not meant to last. what a bittersweet and poetic ending."

“it’s like people always say: right person, wrong time.”

“you know… you used to tell me that our love song was the soundtrack to the best life you could live.” you reach out and take his hand in yours, “i just,” pausing to take a deep breath and compose yourself, “i just want you to know… that if anything happens-”

he cuts you off with a quiet gasp, whispering your name with a shaky voice, “don’t.”

you shake your head and gently squeeze his hand, “if anything happens… if in the end, we don’t find our way back and it isn’t us, don’t think we ended on a bad note.” you drop your head as you chuckle lightly before continuing, “cause you were always on key.” you give him a small grin, trying your hardest to not make things worse by crying. “we were just playing different tunes.”

he pulls you in closer to him, placing his hands softly on your cheeks. “i always hated seeing you cry,” he says as he wipes away the tears on your face, not bothering about his own. he wraps his arms around you, holding you close for the last time.

you stay there in his warmth, hearing him sniffle as he tries to hold back the falling tears. when you pull away, you tell him “i will always love you. maybe not in the way i thought i would but it’s still there.”

“maybe in our next life, it’ll be the right time.” with that, he leaves a kiss on your forehead, leaves the bookstore, and leaves your life. your duet that worked in perfect harmony now playing a beautiful cadence—two wandering artists, free to fill your own wretched worlds with new melodies, the bliss and tranquility of it all. the hope that maybe one day, you’ll be in each other’s lives again is enough.

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nevertheless-moving · 3 years

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Suicidal Misunderstanding AU Part V (SW Time Travel AU #27)

Part I - - - - - Part II - - - - - Part III - - - - - Part IV

After a meandering walk through what felt like every path the hanging gardens and marsh pools had to offer, Obi-Wan stopped to lean against a stone wall.

“Obi-Wan? Are you ready to stop and eat something? As nice as this has been, I’m getting hungry and I’m guessing you are too.”

Anakin was only being a little sarcastic. It had genuinely been nice to peacefully spend the day with Obi-Wan like this- they hadn’t been to the marsh habitats since the war started. He had resigned himself to watching Obi-Wan enthusiastically greet every wandering knight, master, and elder who they passed.

It was actually starting to become impressive- Anakin never realized how many members of the Order his Master was friendly with- no wonder he was given a seat on the high council! But after the last heartfelt clasping of hands with a completely unfamiliar Bothan (thankfully for Anakin’s petty jealousy, Obi-Wan wasn’t hugging everyone), Anakin had asked who the knight was.

Obi Wan frowned. “No idea. But I suppose I must have seen him somewhere.”

Anakin was no longer feeling impressed.

When a group of crechelings wandered by, Obi-Wan appeared briefly overwhelmed with emotion. His shields (apparently even better drunken than sober) didn’t let anything specific slip. But he knew Obi-Wan was feeling something intensely. Bizarrely, instead of saying hello, Obi-Wan hurried out and away with Anakin dragged behind, bringing them back to the stone wall and their skipped breakfast.

“Not yet.” Obi-Wan responded hoarsely. “I want to visit the Room of A Thousand Fountains first, and say a few more goodbyes.”

“Goodbyes?” Anakin asked, a slight chill running down his back. “We’re not shipping back out until the end of the week. Do you always say goodbye to everyone this thoroughly before redeployment?”

“No. Do you think I should have?” Obi-Wan frowned. “I feel like that would have been more upsetting than anything else.”

“Ok then, why are you saying goodbye now? To the whole order?”

Obi-Wan didn’t reply, he just pushed off the wall to continue on his quest to apparently visit every corner of the temple.

“Master, please, you’re worrying me. If you won’t eat, then let me take you to the Healing Halls so they can check you over for drugs. We can visit the fountains after.”

Obi-Wan finally paused, thinking that over. “I would like to see Bant. She should be there, right?”

Bant did end up being there, and was more touched than disturbed by Obi-Wan’s sincere joy to see her. While Obi-Wan wandered the halls greeting injured Knights, she ran several tests.

“As far as I can tell, all you had last night was human-appropriate alcohol. No force-user specific drug interactions, and no traces of Spice. It’s possible there’s something I missed, but your force presence doesn’t feel off balance in the manner I specifically associate with drug-induced altered perception. Your blood sugar is a little low and you’re somewhat dehydrated, especially considering you’re in the temple, not out on a mission.”

“I’ll take care of my physical needs after I visit the Room of a Thousand Fountains. Just because a vision isn’t purely induced by the force doesn’t mean I can’t draw meaning from it. I do appreciate how you always looked out for me though, Bant. I’ve missed your fussing.” Obi-Wan smiled, clasping one of her hands in his.

Bant sighed, “If Master Yoda wasn’t off world I’d urge you to talk to him. I haven’t seen you this shaken by a vision since we were younglings. Even if you do seem to be handling it fairly... calmly.”

Obi-Wan laughed. “I’ll tell him you said that someday. I might be wrong, but I think he’ll be happy to learn about-” Obi-Wan gestured around vaguely, “all this. I’ll talk to him at some point. I’m sure of it.”

She glanced over at Anakin, who had been a quietly looming shadow the whole visit. He seemed both relieved by the diagnosis as well as bewildered. “Can I speak to you privately?”

Obi-Wan nodded and Anakin stalked out of the test room.

She scrutinized him, worry more obvious now, “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you slipping tenses this whole time. You’re still not sure where your vision ends and reality begins, are you? Do you even know when you are?”

Obi-Wan looked down. “I know what’s real and what’s not. I’m just...enjoying not fully living in the moment. I have every intention of waking up.”

“Yeah, that’s a BIG red flag, Obi-Wan. Force.” She tilted her head back and forth, examining him with obvious concern. “I am scheduling an appointment for a soul healer and you are going to go, understand?” She demanded.

Obi-Wan agreed far too easily. She reluctantly let him leave with an earnest promise to eat something real.

Obi-Wan came outside to find Anakin pacing.

“I’m glad you’re still here,” he told his former Padawan, ignoring the ache in his chest.

“Of course Ori’vod,” Anakin said, ducking his head with a shy smile. “What did Bant say?”

“She wants me to eat something real and visit a soul healer.” Obi-Wan sighed. “Well, I can do at least one of those things.”

“A soul healer! She thinks you’re crazy?” Anakin asked offended.

“First of all, you don’t have to be unstable to visit a soul healer. I’ve seen them in the past, when there wasn’t as much wrong with me. I’m sorry if I led you to believe you couldn’t seek out help for your problems.” Obi-Wan said. Another mistake.

“I-I know that. I just thought, you know, Jedi can be judgmental of that sort of thing. A good Jedi is supposed to be able to just, meditate stuff away.” Anakin said bitterly.

Obi-Wan thought furiously. Was this why he had been so blindsided by Anakin’s fall? Had his padawan been so afraid of judgement that he hid all of the warning sides of his struggles with darkness? Maybe he could ask Owen for some sort of petty assistance when he brought over bantha milk next time, to demonstrate to young Luke that it was ok to ask for help. No, he was probably still too young for those sorts of lessons to have much meaning. The insight would require meditation, when he was more sober.

Unsure how ‘Anakin’ would respond, Obi-Wan tentatively said, “You’re right, that some Jedi might judge for seeking such aid. But I think in the last years of the war, that sort of opinion became less and less common. After all, an ideal Jedi shouldn’t be leading an army. I don’t know if anyone can be perfect during war, let alone a peacekeeper.”

When that failed to garner positive or negative reply, Obi-Wan let out a breath. “It hardly matters, since I can’t exactly visit a therapist, let alone a soul healer, given my present living conditions.”

Anakin seemed to process that, giving Obi-Wan a long, searching look. “What’s your next point?”

“Hmm?”

“You said first of all, and I think that was all one thing, so what’s your second point?”

“Not exactly being able to visit a soul healer regularly doesn’t count as a separate retort?”

“I guess? I’m just trying to understand what you’re trying to tell me” A twinge of frustration crept into Anakin’s otherwise level tone.

"I appreciate that, truly, and I regret the number of hurtful miscommunications that sprung up from me failing to do just that. Well, I suppose, by most reasonable standards, I am ‘crazy.’ Getting some help with unraveling my mind would probably be best, if it were an option, but it isn’t so...” Obi-Wan shrugged.

Before any followup questions could be asked, they finally arrived at the main entrance to the Room of a Thousand Fountains. The archway was stunning, water flowing upwards along the stone in intricate, shifting tessellations. When they stepped through, Obi-Wan was delighted to see Mace Windu sitting on a bench by the entrance.

“Mace! I was hoping to see you.”

Mace looked at him. He seemed at first, to be utterly unsurprised by the duo’s arrival. But the longer he stared, the more visible shock overtook his features. “Master Koon recommended I look for you...force what happened.”

Obi-Wan just chuckled. “Oh you know. What didn’t happen.”

“What’s wrong?” Anakin asked urgently. “What do you see, Master Windu?”

Obi-Wan tried to wave them both off, laugh a little more forced. “Please, I came here to relax. I’m sure it would be easier to say what’s not wrong with-”

“Kark it, Obi-Wan this isn’t a joking matter.” Master Windu’s voice was calm, but insistent. He slowly started approaching Obi-Wan as though the fellow council member were a feral loth-cat.

“You look as if...nearly every shatter point around you has broken open. Force, I think you’ve been carrying some of these with you since you were a child. Usually when things that deep break...And some of these- some of these are too big to have just affected you.” Mace hesitantly reached forward, brushing against something invisible.

A chill ran down Anakin’s spine, again. What the kriff did Obi-Wan see in his vision? Last night he mentioned the temple burning, their rooms turned to ash, and Anakin had just...let that go in favor of greedily spending time with this addictively affectionate version of Obi-Wan.

“Mace...” Obi-Wan groaned. “I had been wondering what you might say to me but this is...please, can’t you just give me a hug and let me enjoy the peace for one more hour.”

“Master Kenobi,” Mace said, seeming to revert to an even more serious version of himself. “What I see cracked open around you is bigger than the reemergence of the Sith on Naboo, bigger than the first battle of Genosis. Whatever has happened, you cannot possibly keep it to yourself, practically or morally.”

To the shock of both Windu and Skywalker, Obi-Wan actually rolled his eyes at that. “Mace. You are not telling me anything I do not already know. And I am choosing to spend a little longer enjoying the unique joys of the Temple before dealing with the harshness of reality. Haven’t I earned a small break? I’m not abandoning my duty, but if I don’t take care of myself where I can I’ll go madder than I already have.”

At no point did Obi-Wan’s voice get whiny or upset, he just calmly dropped a series of bombshells like he was repeating an argument.

Mace and Anakin exchanged glances, but if Mace was trying to communicate something, it was utterly lost on Anakin.

“Alright, Master Kenobi. I trust your judgement.”

And, to Anakin’s shock, Mace pulled Obi-Wan for a tight hug. “And I care about you, Obi-Wan.”

For a brief, hysterical moment, Anakin Skywalker wondered if he was about to witness his Master break down crying on the shoulder of Mace Windu the Master of the Jedi Order.

But Obi-Wan just let out a slow breath and returned the embrace before bowing deeply in Respect. Windu returned the bow with a placid expression.

“If you’ll excuse me...I think I’d like to stand by the waterfall alone for a moment.” He paused, turning to address Anakin. “If you’re willing to wait for me, I’ll happily rejoin you by the glowing mushrooms.” Anakin nodded silently and Obi-Wan beamed before leaving the two alone together.

Mace turned to the young knight in a silent demand for answers, and, for once, Anakin was eager to share what he was dealing with. “He came back drunk last night, talking about the temple burning down, and being well-”

“Unusually emotionally expressive?” Mace offered.

Anakin nodded. “Took a blood sample to analyze in the morning. He woke determined to hug every sentient being in the temple. I actually managed to get him to the halls just before we came here; Master Eerin said there was nothing in his system and...I just don’t know. He’s been off today, but not in a bad way, exactly. Could a vision have caused the shattering you saw?

Mace furrowed his brow. “Not any vision like I’ve ever seen but...these are dark times. And Master Kenobi has had historically bad luck. If some new cataclysm is coming for us- I absolutely believe he’d be the first of us to stumble into it. Something terrible and extraordinary must have happened in the 24 hours since I last saw him in person.”

A beat passed.

“I should go to the mushrooms before I lose track of him,” Anakin said quietly.

Mace nodded. “Skywalker, if you need assistance dragging him back to the healers for whatever reason, comm me, understood?”

“Understood. Master Koon said the same.” the Knight replied, heart pounding.

The Windu clasped him on the shoulder firmly, "I’m going to check in with Master Eerin. It’s possible she has some suspicions that my observations will help her confirm. Until then...”

“I’ll look out for him.” Anakin promised.

Part VI

#star wars #suicidal misunderstanding au #star wars au no 27 #my au #sw #time travel #obi wan kenobi needs a hug #oh boy we are BUILDING towards the #angst #it 1am #lol im supposed to work tomorrow but ive said that before #thank you everyone for being supportive im glad youre all hyperventilating with me over this sad boy

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collisiondiscourse · 3 years

Text

on the wonder duo (part 1)

(BNHA Analysis Post Ahead! This isn’t explicitly romantic, but it is an analysis of the relationship between the two most popular characters in BNHA--Katsuki Bakugou and Izuku Midoriya. Split into two posts because I realized that this was gonna be long as HELL)

yall ever think about the fact that the wonder duo is perfectly set up in so that bakugou and deku together are the better version of all might?

bc like. ive been thinking.

everyone knows the win to save and save to win parallel. How they are supposedly two halves of a whole perfect hero (which, previously, was defined as all might)

but ever since bakugou and deku started working as one—growing together to win AND save and continuously reminding each other that they shouldnt try to do things alone, ive realized that its BECAUSE theres two of them that they surpass all might. its not a case of deku and bakugou both being 50% of an ideal hero, but rather i think that they are 100% of what all might SHOULD HAVE BEEN from the very beginning.

as early as the AM v AFO battle in kamino, we see the effects of all mights flawed existence. the fact that he, the greatest and supposedly infallible symbol of peace, was destroyed—society had begun to collapse. there was suddenly no pillar to hold people together and the impacts were so severe that even in the latest chapters of mha it keeps on getting worse. the truth is, all mights biggest mistake was the burden he placed on his own shoulders

with bakugou and deku... its different.

its different for them because down to their attributions, they seem like two halves of a whole person.

i think that the wonder duo are going to surpass all might because of the fact that they work together.

@bakugoukatsuki-rising @svpercraigus @tybee @isaustraliaathing

(batshit crazy and conspiratorial essay under the cut !)

1. Complementary Colors

I’d like to first preface literally everything I say by the fact that I am not an expert analyzer or literary major in any way. I am literally just some random fan on the internet who has wayyy too much time and looks wayyy too deep into things, but here we go!

A common thing we see when we talk about bakugou and deku is the way they are... sort of an inverse of one another.

Down to the design of their features and the way they move, Deku is the obviously softer of the two. There’s an intentional contrast between the two of them, in the way that Deku’s drawn with round shapes and curvy hair and the way Bakugou is literally all spikes and half-mast eyes and rough muscles. Bakugou’s movements too are languid and showy, with the way he leans when he walks and splays his legs and kicks open doors. Katsuki, in a casual sense, is loud and dramatic.

Deku on the other hand s finicky. He jitters when he walks and he’s often fidgeting and mumbling. Comparatively, the aura he radiates is energetic and frenzied, even self-conscious to a point unlike Bakugou’s calm and confident movements.

the point is, there’s a clear difference in how either of them are designed and what exactly they are supposed to represent. They utterly complement each other down to the way they behave and even their main colors (red-orange and blue-green) being literal complementary colors.

Now, moving to my more ungrounded points, this is quite a bit of a stretch so I’ll try as much as possible to make sense of these with hyperlinked sources because. yeah.

Down to their names, I think Deku and Bakugou both symbolize something deeper. I think that the way Hori expresses characters and what they’re meant to do is something that we have to pay close attention to when we talk about the Wonder Duo’s rise to success.

Izuku Midoriya (緑谷出久), as some of us may know, does have an interesting meaning when broken up. According to a lovely fan translation of his name, ‘Izuku’--while not an actual name used commonly in real life--means to ‘Come out’ or ‘Long time’. ‘Midoriya’ on the other hand means (Midori) ‘Green’ and (ya) ‘valley’. The translator further pointed out that his first name ‘Izuku’ could be a reference to him being the first legendary hero to come out of the long-running All Might Era. (or, if you’ve been reading @/bakugoukatsuki-rising’s posts, the first significant anime protag in a long while to come out as queer, ppfft)

but that isn’t my focus right now.

We know that Hori LOVES telling stories with names, and more often than not in the BNHA universe, names alone tell us a lot of things about the characters. When referring to Izuku’s last name, Midoriya, it’s important I think to step back and realize that hey, maybe there’s something more to Green Valley than just the fact that his motif is all green.

After searching for a lil on the specifics of green valley, I’ve found out that across many cultures, the colour green and valleys in general tend to represent life. From dream analysts, to Christianity, and even old Taoist teachings, valleys are seen as areas of fertility and escape. They are seen as safe havens and often escapes for people to come to after running away from bad circumstances.

(Sound familiar?)

Deku, in essence represents life and peace. He represents being the “salvation” that the world in BNHA needed. To me, it sounds like Horikoshi is trying to say that he is the long-awaited hero in the sense. The one that people can feel will create a society that feels safe for everyone after years of All Might just saving people from themselves as a band-aid solution.

On the other hand, we have Katsuki Bakugou (爆豪勝己), who’s name we commonly know means (Katsuki) Winner and (Bakugou) Explosion Master. He is essentially, the champion. The power. His name means success and power and all the things that make up winning.

When putting them side by side, it then becomes increasingly... interesting to me how their names almost perfectly slot into All Might’s save to win and win to save mantra, and how they are both quintessential parts to what made All Might as a hero.

2. Hero Too!

Now, I’m not even gonna really TOUCH much of what happens in canon. If you want me to do a step by step breakdown of their arcs in regards to the plot of manga and anime, feel free to send me a gratuitous ko-fi tip so I can pay for the headache I get after trying to organize my thoughts into word vomit.

What I WILL talk about on the other hand, is the subtle shift both of them slowly have in regards to how they look. Bakugou and Deku, while growing up, seem to have MANY many parallels--but before I elaborate on all of that, I wanna talk about something else.

Detour: Deku’s Red Shoes

We all know the iconic symbol being Deku’s red shoes. For all his life, save for some outfits like his hero one, we see Deku more often than not wearing his signature red sneakers which have become a running joke in fandom.

But the funny thing is, in Japan, red shoes seem to have an interesting connotation.

In 1922, a popular Japanese nursery rhyme was written, called “Red Shoes”. The interesting part to me about this song was the symbolism that, in my tiny pea-sized brain, I could connect to the story of BNHA.

The story goes that there was a little girl with red shoes named ‘Kimi’. She was from Shizuoka prefecture (which, if you didn’t know, is most likely where Musutafu supposedly is) and was raised by a single mother. When she was young, her mother had to entrust her with a foreigner under the impression that they would give her a better life in America. The stranger is a man named Charles Hewitt (who was described to have blue eyes) and supposedly took her away.

The singer of the song (supposedly the mother, but some argue it was written from the perspective of a childhood friend) believes that Kimi is happy and living a better life away from them, when the reality of the situation was much worse. The young girl with red shoes in actuality had Tuberculosis, and thus the foreigner whom she was entrusted to had left her to fend for herself and eventually left her to go to America while she died alone and orphaned.

“When I see red shoes, I think of her.”

A very interesting story with very interesting implications indeed.

Anyway, moving on to the more... “nuanced” and connected parts of this section, I have every reason to believe that Bakugou and Deku were simply MEANT to be working together down to how they dress. Now, I’d like to discuss their hero costumes.

At the start of their series, using these godawful pics for reference, it’s clear to see that neither of them seem alike in any way--reflecting the dissonance in their relationship at that point in canon.

ough. deku why. (yes we know why its because you love your mom you stupid little bunny <3)

Anyway, we see an immediate gap in how the two of them are. Deku’s first costume is one that reflects how he treated his dream of being a hero. He was still in that childlike idolization phase, the one where his dreams and aspirations were hinged on pure feelings and inspiration from All Might. Katsuki on the other hand was a lot more tactical--professional to an extent. The gap between their respective development with their quirks is something that is clearly felt in every fashion decision they’d made.

(Notice how Deku’s green is a lot brighter and less like the green accents Katsuki has all over his costume.)

As time progressed however... their costumes changed. The colors, the silhouettes, the practical functions, most things.

(Deku’s Gamma Costume and Bakugou’s Winter Costume used respectively)

we begin to notice a few similarities.

As the show goes on and we see more evolutions of their costumes, it almost seems like they begin to look like a matching pair. Deku’s green grows darker and almost teal in nature, while Bakugou’s orange is veering towards red territory. This is important to note because red-orange and blue-green as I said earlier were complementary colors as compared to simply orange and green. The minute shift is something I really wasn’t quite sure was intentional, but something I find interesting to pick up nonetheless as the colors they used to accent their costumes begin to match up.

Secondly, I think and important thing to note is silhouettes. The way that both Bakugou and Deku’s costumes are designed follow a lot of parallels that typically we don’t see with the rest of 1-A. For one, they both have a combination of tight long-sleeved tops with a bulkier set of bottoms. They also share the use of utility belts and metal pieces typically worn around their necks. Deku has his bunny-eared hood that mimics All Might’s hair, while Bakugou has his orange and black explosion ear-pieces that mimic his own quirk.

i don’t think any other people in class 1-A match each other as subtly yet strongly as these two. Uraraka and Deku and Bakugou and Kirishima do come close however.

“But Codi, you fucking knob!” I hear you plea. “This is such a reach and tells us practically NOTHING!” And yes, I’m inclined to agree with you! You’d be sort of right in the idea that this is a reach. Maybe I am looking too much into this, and maybe it really isn’t that deep--but I do think that them subconsciously matching outfits means something quite brilliant.

In the way that their costumes are designed, each aspect of either outfits have a very logical explanation. The changes were strategic and made with their fighting styles vividly in mind, so what that tells me is that BECAUSE these costumes are so complementary or similar in nature (Bakugou’s reinforcing his arms while Deku reinforces his legs), these two are implicitly showing the audience that their combat styles are complementary as well.

The evolution of their design choices and similarities tell us that even unknowingly, their minds line up in strategy on the battlefield--a clear exhibit for why they would be INCREDIBLY POWERFUL as a Hero Duo to begin with.

When I look at their hero costumes side by side, I see a mirror. I see the way that these two are reflections of each other and are strong where the other isn’t. The point I see in BNHA repeatedly is that EVERYONE HAS A WEAKNESS. Nothing is infallible, regardless of how hard you train or how powerful your quirk is. Everyone will always have a weakness, but the significant difference I see when fandom discusses the future of Pro-Hero Society is that the new generation is finally raising itself to be RELIANT on each other.

Observing their fighting styles and the simple use of their quirks, its obvious that they are indeed two parts of a whole hero. Bakugou, who’s quirk emphasized his arms and hands and the power that comes from it, while Deku who’s quirk now emphasizes his legs and lower body and the way he’s always running to save people.

IN CONCLUSION:

As they become heroes, it is easy to assume that if nothing else, Bakugou and Deku will cover each other’s weak spots (especially when you consider the way Deku probably won’t be able to keep using his arms with the way both the anime and manga are going...) (also chapter 285, anyone?)

Part Two: Interactions, OfA

kofi || commission details

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