#for real though between life and getting sucked into other fandoms I kinda forgot I have a second blog

[for-the-glory-of-trash]

Hello, sorry for disappearing for several months! When If I do that again, feel free to poke me on my other blog. (@yogurtbear242 )

[pocketramblr]

other main character meta- Ochako, pt 1

<part 2>

“Could you send me there?” you ask, while i blink, confused. “The world where someone else is the main character? not because i have any hypocritical biases against the one i got, just curious how the fandom meta changes.”

“Oh, yeah, sure.” I nod, thinking, before tapping my wand against your forehead. “Let’s start with Ochako.”

"I'm going to warn you now- I will have to slightly adjust the plot like I did with Mirio, just to actually let her be the main character."

"Yeah, that checks out." You nod, thinking about certain arcs where the female fighting teams get no coverage while the dudes get four different backstory reveals and full fight focus.

"Very well."

The show begins with a brief narration by the girl of quirks and super hero fights- all flashy. Then it zooms out to show the destruction, and a small construction team moving in as Ochako explains that just as there are new careers in society for heroes, there's also a bigger market for construction companies, one of which her own family runs.

"I've always wanted to help them with it, and my quirk would be useful"- a tiny, adorable Ochako finally appears, making rocks in a park float- "but to get a work license like that is expensive and selective- you've got to make a lot of court appearances and convince them why is a good idea and won't destroy the economy. It's much easier to get a hero license."

Then she explains: "Of course, once you have a hero license, you can make a lot more money than just by helping the company. Especially if... Your family company isn't doing very well." A series of tired but loving parents are shown working all hours to make ends meet.

"I want to help them- my parents. They've done everything for me, and they deserve a break. So that's why I'm going to be a hero- their hero."

The training montage is quick, using her quirk during school in training, after school in secret, around the house. She saves up money too, and studies, aiming for a scholarship.

She applies and tests for many hero schools, and the exams all vary widely.

The first episode ends with her looking up at UA, her final one, the one she really hopes to get into.

"Oh, that's nice." You nod. "And we even get to know her parents' quirks here."

"Yep." I agree. "In general, there's a lot more of a look at the financial side. It's pretty interesting."

"And the fandom?"

"Well, certain people get praised for the bare minimum, but I'll admit having a female lead is super uncommon for shonen jump." It's an improvement, though it's up in the air how much of one it will be. "There's also, because we saw a lot more hero schools, a ton of "students at different school" fics, either because they were expelled or because of the danger UA gets into."

"I do kinda feel like this universe is lucky for that sort of world building." You nod.

"It's very cool to see the takes on the aus. But, I will say there's a cost for this world building- the AfO stuff reeeeally comes out of nowhere and tends to not be popular with fans."

The next episode starts, and Ochako helps a boy from falling. "Love interest alert!" The fans notice quickly when the cute boy blushes and doesn't manage to say much before she walks away.

"They caught on quick." You note.

"And they aren't wrong." Not that it's any real feat to be right.

The exam starts, and Ochako is off in a flash. You see a few glimpses of future classmates- Iida, Aoyama, Kirishima.

She does well, racking up villain points and rescue points, until she's a little too ambitious and falls into the rubble. Her nausea is well established by now, everyone knows she's at her limit.

She can't get up.

The green haired boy comes back and stops the zero pointer.

And breaks every bone in the process.

Ochako saves him in return, lifting up the rubble and stopping his fall.

And then vomits violently afterwards.

"You know, I think quirks suck, actually." The fandom tends to agree on this after that episode/chapter. "But it is interesting that there's such a price for the powers, balances it really well."

"Ha." You shake your head. "They caught onto that, quicker."

"Yep." I can't even say it's more highlighted here, it's the exact same way it was shown in our universe- down to the sparkling rainbow puke.

"Though..." You can't quite imagine that's the only thing the fandom is saying isn't actually that great.

"Ding ding ding." I nod. "Did our own main character get treated just like a damsel in distress? Sure, she saved him back, but that just meant she could have floated away on her own in that time, even if it made her sick. Better that than dead. Is it the sexism?" I shrug. "Most decide to wait and see a bit, and by the time they work together in the first battle exercise figure it's a pretty even split between them saving each other."

"So no sexism?" You get happy at that thought.

I cough. "Ah, no. Both in the show and the fandom. You wouldn't believe how many grown men complain about the lady mc, even as they keep watching."

"And have her body pillow."

"Please don't make me think about that." I cover my eyes, but don't deny that it's true. "Anyway, yeah. Get ready for a lot of people to point out that even though the main character is a girl, every single other girl is flat as cardboard so far and that she only has developed friends that are guys."

"Hey, they aren't flat-"

"In the first season? Yeah they are. Unless you meant, physically, in which case..."

"I didn't." You protest. "But I guess I can see your point, at the start."

"Right. Let's continue on."

Uraraka goes to Present Mic to offer her points. The man pats her on the head, and skyrockets to the position of fandom dad.

"It's all about Dadmic and then Dadzawa here," I explain. "The fans were very disappointed to learn Mic wasn't her homeroom teacher, but yeah... He got a huge head start before Dadzawa fics got going."

"Nice. And it's all fanon?"

"Yeah, it may be a good thing he's not actually in it much, or they might realize how much they just made up on their own."

Then she gets accepted in, on hero and rescue points- she's third place overall, and she gets the scholarship.

On the first day of school, she actually gets to know her love interest's name- Midoriya!

There's also the quirk assessment, which really leads to the "expelled to another school" au and the "fire Aizawa and replace him with better Mic" aus, the first of which lasts much longer in the fandom use, but the second one was just as passionate for a while.

Iida becomes the second friend, and gives her the "Infinity Girl" nickname- which actually is the fandom assumption of what her hero name will be for quite a while, a la 'ground zero'.

Then it's time for All Might's first appearance on screen, to much applause of the students, and the announcement that they get their costumes.

During the first battle exercise, there's a lot more lingering camera work in the changing rooms. Ochako gets to expand a lot more on how she didn't want her costume to be that tight. It's uncomfortable, especially when she thinks about wearing it in front of everyone.

"Oh, I forgot she didn't like it at first... Does she just, get used to it here?" It sounds horrible for the plot to just say 'get used to it' to the main character being sexualized by costume makers outside of her control, especially as a child.

"Not on my watch." I mumble, waving the wand. "Don't worry, she'll actually get more costume changes each time, like some other characters."

"Oh good."

Mineta, regrettably, still exists. You find the fandom manages to be even more violent in his removal.

The battle does even out the opinions on Midoriya, as well as lead to a boost in Iida's with his charming little attempt at thinking villainously.

And cements Bakugo as rather hated. No one has really liked him, when the first thing he did was blow up at Midoriya, then get revealed to have called him a cruel nickname all this time. And then specifically hunt him down because all he cares about it beating him up.

"Yeah he's not gonna get a lot of fans here huh."

"He sure never gets first place in the popularity poll." I agree. "Most consider him the subversion of the rival trope to show is just stupid and violent and in real life, people like that don't go anywhere."

"Most?"

I look away. "How dumb of a discourse do you think you could see today?"

"Oh please, show me." You lean in. "It's nice to not have to deal with it in my universe, so I don't care."

The discourse is such.

Bakugo is gay-coded for Midoriya, the violence is a result of him being shoved off for a girl's love interest when she should be single and independent, and the homophobic creator is vilifying all gay people by saying they are predatory to poor straight boys with refused.

"They............... What."

"If it makes you feel better, that's a very brief minority of the fandom. My favorite response to it was "he's not gay-coded, he's bully coded you sanctimonious sumph of a shmuck.""

"Oh good," you sigh. "I'm glad we don't have to deal with actual queerphobic tropes like that."

I stare at you.

"What?"

I sigh. "Nothing, put a pin in that until I bring up the predatory bi thing with Toga."

Your eyes widen, and you start to have some regrets.

"Anyway, we can talk shipping later. Time for more."

The 'exit sign Iida' gives him a boost in being shipped with Ochako, (as well as Yaoyorozu) and also the general idea that "Ochako has two hands."

That one hand can have a boyfriend with a lot of cash to spare for her and the other is also played with.

"I missed the main trio, like this." You smile as they walk off into the sunset after school.

"Yeah." I agree. "Anyway, time for some near death experiences."

The USJ marks the start of the gradual, gradual growth of Dadzawa fics. It also focuses far more on Ochako, Mina, Sero, and Iida having to think strategically to get around Kurogiri. It's only after Iida escapes that we cut back to a slightly abridged version of how Midoriya was doing, then the other kids, before help arrives.

He does still through his first non bone breaking punch though, which makes the audience happy.

All Might saves the day. Aizawa is battered afterwards. Many fans start out by saying they were disappointed, since this was supposed to be the first big fight, and the kids didn't do much. Many others say in response that's the point- we're looking at first years, they had to think and help each other, but in the end they had to rely on adults.

And then the sports festival is announced. They want to do well, because this is how they get work-week placements, which could become internship offers.

Ochako thinks about Hado Nejire, the only intern of a top ten hero, and senior at UA, along with a few others who are on the up and up. She's determined.

"Really? You're bringing in the big three early?" You ask, glancing at my wand.

It's not sparkling.

I cross my arms with a huff. "Look. Nejire is at this point the only intern in the top ten, she would have been recognizable to the students for that, even if they didn't recognize the big three (which really means that they aren't actually called the Big Three by everyone, or at least not a wide enough group for it to be as big a deal as it's treated. Anyway.) But she wasn't, even if she should have been the most famous of the bunch, considering the coverage the first years got in just their first night. That's because a certain someone doesn't actually think of his female characters much, but he has to in this universe, so."

"Ok, yeah, that's fair. So does that change the sports festival?"

"Not... Much." I admit.

“What?”

“Well, keep in mind in the first universe, our main character didn’t make it past the second round in the one-on-one’s. So she’s not exactly guaranteed a win here either.”

You have to nod, admitting that is true.

“And the conflict isn’t so much about having to live up to any predecessor or breaking down some people’s walls via breaking bones.” I tap my wand against my chin, thinking. “There really is two- one about Midoriya, and one about Ochako’s parents.”

“Oh?”

“One, there’s been the Uraraka’s not happy about how much danger Ochako’s been in. Its been hinted at in the phone calls, but really shows up when we get to see them at home before the SF for the first time since she moved for school. They aren’t sure if she can stay there herself, or if the right thing to do would be to pull her out and maybe try a smaller school.”

“I suppose that's fair, if they haven't been able to actually see her or her progress.”

“Right. The second one is- well. in this, Izuku’s win of the first round, and then breaking out of brainwashing, is more about really piling on how good his mind is- all that brain power. This adds more pressure when we see Ochako being offered a plan from him to beat Bakugo.”

“Oh that does sound neat.”

“Yep- but of course, she still refuses. It’s held up as a worse thing, strategically, initially- but then she comes up with a plan that Midoriya confirms in the stands is better than his, and proves to her parents that she’s smart and skilled enough to handle continuing at the school.”

You smile. “That is a cool arc to do, i guess, if very not traditional. But what about all the character setup and growth with Shinsou and Todoroki?”

“Oh, Shinsou’s largely gets delegated all the way later for the joint training arc, where Ochako’s team is directly against him. Todoroki...” I begin to giggle.

You wait for me to answer, getting more concerned the longer i laugh.

“Pocket?”

“Sorry, sorry, yeah. He actually tells her himself in this canon, a bit after stain. Oh! right, i forgot- the cheerleader incident.”

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes. of course they need this merch opportunity! But yes, it happens. The... shall we say, non-body-pillow portion of the fandom, generally saw it as the end of any goodwill to Kaminari, who had previously been seen as a tertiary possible love interest, since he’d flirted with her on the first day. Flirt, but harmless, and unlikely to be important. Then there was that breach of trust and international embarrassment, and anyway he’s basically the second least likely in 1a to be shipped with her now.”

“Wow. So none of that changed?”

“Well, the setup wasn’t under narration from Todoroki about how his mother was bought for her body and how much that sucked and impacted her and the family while on screen we see multiple girls tricked into barring their bodies and its treated as a laugh instead?”

You stare at me. “I’m not sure if that’s better or worse.”

“Neither am I.”

“So, the Todoroki reveal?”

“Right. So, first you need to know the Stain thing- the claims he has against ‘false’ heroes focusing on money is better spotlighted. After Stain’s arrest, Ochako hears a couple of sidekicks at Gunhead’s agency-”

“Wait!” you interrupt. “She still interned with Gunhead? Then what was the point of showing Nejire and Ryukyuu earlier?”

I try not to massage my forehead. “To build up to it. She only made it to the first of the final round, she couldn’t get an internship with a top tenner yet. She’s also got to learn how to disarm someone who fights with a knife. These things build up over more time, small steps.”

“Ah.” You’re satisfied, and let me continue.

“Right, so, Overhears a couple of them talking about Stain’s philosophy and ends up just feeling really bad about it for a bit, trying to figure out if she’s actually being selfish or a bad hero for, you know, wanting her family to not be crushed due to capitalism.”

“Poor girl.” You shake your head in sympathy, the freeze. “Oh. did not intend that pun.”

“It’s alright, i know what you mean. And yeah, she bottles it up for a bit, until the second day back at school. Then Iida reminds her that him bottling things up last week got several kids in mortal danger, and she begrudgingly admits that he has a point and tells them about what has been bugging her.”

“And they comfort her?”

“Well, Todoroki also offers to tell off Kaminari because at this point his mention of stain upset both her and iida, but yes, A lot of reassurances.”

You squint. “I feel like shippers.”

“You’re learning! Yes, Todoroki is just a bit behind Iida in terms of popularity shipping with her. and she does basically get shipped A Lot with each girl in her class too, like imagine double to triple the amount with each girl now, and for the minor guys- but yeah. There’s a lottttt of ships. This was basically called ‘todoroki’s introduction into ochako’s harem’ in the fandom.”

Shipping. fandom just can’t escape it.

“So, then she learns about Todoroki’s past? oh, and what about Hosu? Does she- and everyone else- actually think Endeavor saved the three??”

I snort. “Oh, no. Todoroki’s flat ‘yeah my father totally helped us, as you read on the official report’ basically tipped the fandom off that something else had. But nothing confirmed either, you know? Filling in the hosu gap is another trope in fics that is pretty common.”

“Neat.”

“Yep. But yeah Todoroki tells her his backstory a bit after his introduction into her ‘harem’ of friends. It’s really played up more to caution Ochako- its alright for her to want to help her family, and to work for money to do that. But Rei accepted the marriage offer for money for her family too, and it ended up breaking her. Ochako has to accept a balance- she can work to help her family, and its good, but there are some things she cannot morally do to help them, and other things that she shouldn’t do because she has to take care of her own health first.”

“Ohhhh.” You hadn’t quite expected that, but you sorta liked it, now that you thought about it.

I smile. “It is pretty neat, yeah.” I glance at my watch. “Look, i hate to cut you off, but this post is gonna end up thrice the length of Mirio’s and i think tumblr might stop me, so we’re gonna have to do a two-parter.”

“That’s fine.” You are gracious for what you’ve gotten so far, and do have questions that you’re excited to see answered for the rest of the series. “It’s been fun.”

“It has been.” I agree. “Lets take a break, but you can ask me any questions too, before I return for part two.”

<part 2>

[camelely]

13rw S4 Fix

 So i did one of these for last season and I think now that I’ve had some time to think about S4 I’ll do the same. While last season I thought the issue was one character being overused. But here it seems like there were multiple smaller things that could have improved the whole season Again I’m keeping the same basic plotline and characters :) 

1) Winston 

Have Winston stay at Hillcrest. Him moving to Liberty did nothing for the main plot and he was basically a red herring through most of it. Let him try are befriend the characters from the outside. He can learn about Jess from Bryce’s trial and the news coverage and then try to befriend her at Monet’s. This is where he meets and later starts to date Alex. Since he doesn’t go to liberty school Alex sees him as a sort of escape and lets him in. Clay and Ani dont tell everyone about him because they dont know he is trying to get close to them. It makes them seem less like assholes and more like people. They don’t mention his connection to Monty because they dont realize how close he is getting to answers. Clay can still suspect he did the graffiti, after all it was a break in and a non student could have done that. Plus Estella is another red herring in the school. She serves that purpose so let Winston be the outsider looking in. His arc would still be about knowing a different Monty and not knowing who is was at Liberty but now he is literally the outsider who didn’t really get Monty, rather than it just being a figurative thing at the prom. You can still have the prom scene it would just be entirely imagined rather than the half imagined thing they went with. I think they overused the people talking to ghosts thing so here it would be a  fantasy of Monty and the relationship they had rather then a representation of what could have been. However I don’t think this would have retracted from the point. Also play him up, he is a sympathetic antagonist and it sucks how much he is sidelined for Diego. I didn’t hate Diego but Winston and him basically went through the same arc. They were pro Monty and ending up dating a member of the group, couldnt believe that member was involved and then learned something about Bryce and Monty agreed to move on and just did. All while saying they will alway care for that member of the group. It was an unnecessary rehash. Having WInston be the outsider looking in and Diego the insider looking out also lets their characters compliment each other. They should still work together, just have Winston contact him looking for Monty’s friends. It’s simple. 

2) Tyler and Tony 

Oh Tyler. The character who seems to be in the middle of everything despite never doing anything himself. I didn’t mind his arc of helping the cops find the guys who sold the illegal guns. But Tony’s suspicions, eventually leading to Clay and Tony finding out the truth and just moving on never really go anywhere. I think  it would be cool if Tyler tells Tony, despite the cops telling him not to tell anyone, because he trusts Tony. But Tony, who has had bad run ins with the cops, thinks it is a bad idea. He doesn’t want Tyler taking the deal. Tyler says its the only way the guns wont be traced back to them but Tony thinks teh cops are planning to double cross them to mind out more about Bryce and Monty. At the same time he starts getting close to that cop that takes him boxing and helps him get into college (i dont remember his name for the life of me lol). Tyler sees this as being hypocritical and pulls away. Tony still suspects Tyler is behind the lock down because he is pulling away and Tony is getting paranoid. The rest of their story can still be the same but this way they can show Tony’s paranoia and his loyalty. 

As for Tyler and Estella, It was fine. The scene of them in the bathroom was really powerful, being in the bathroom with a de la cruz and becoming comfortable because isnt her brother was really nice. This could even be another reason Tony and Tyler fight. Tony can be paranoid that Tyler is trusting her too quickly and think she will turn on him. 

3) Jess

Her arc with the principal, being scared and agreeing with the security measures before she sees them in action was really interesting. Focus more on it and less on her manipulating Diego. I did like parts of that arc for her so I don’t want it completely gone but I do think focusing on her working with the principal would have been cool. I would call more attention to her first meeting and her agreeing with the measures and slowly show her change her mind and start to turn against them. Maybe even have an early scene of her and ANi talking about it and have Jess admit she feels safer. Move the creepy cop trying to pat her down to the second or third day. So she can have a moment where they make her feel safe before the negative experience. I loved the protest and a bit better build up would have made it amazing

Her arc with Ani. They fought over Bryce... It should have been a conversation. Not a moment where Ani judges Diego and then they argue. I still think this arc should have been Chloe and Jess and should have been in last season. But they had the opportunity to include Chloe this season and just didnt. I’ll talk about this a bit more in the Zach section but I think Chloe should have been at Prom and the moment between the Ani Jess and Chloe should have been then. It would be right after Jess and Ani made up and would have been cool. 

I don’t think she should have had scenes where she saw and talked to Bryce. Yes it created some powerful moments but they could be reworked. Have WInston use his wealth to commission a positive thing in the paper about Bryce and Monty and have her talk to his idealized photo of Bryce. I will mention it in the Clay section but her hallucinations detracted from his journey with mental health. 

4) Clay

Okay two thing here the first is his arc with mental health, hallucinations, and blackouts. They used it for drama and I wish they hadnt. It should have been about him healing. I didnt mind the way they handled the realization for clay that it was him doing everything (Did they explain the symbol he kept drawing because I missed it if they did? or i just forgot because it was that forgettable lol) but I think the whole thing could have been handled a lot better and a more educated fan then I can provide a better explanation for what exactly was off about it. I will say the the therapy sessions were repetitive and I know thats realistic but for a tv show its boring. The scene were Clay goes to his home was weird and low key scary. I understand the purpose but  I wish he had called him and asked to meet at his office instead. A more likable and relatable journey for Clay with his mental health would be really good for a show that was accused of glorying suicide (personally i dont think it did. My inbox is open if you wanna talk though :))

The second thing is the phantom phone caller. I hate this trope so it might just be me but this is so stale. There are exactly two ways it could go. The person could know everything and be a real problem or the person could be fishing for information and not be a real problem. The whole thing was predicable since Winston had red herring written all over him, Estella was barely developed, and on this show it is always the football guys. Instead let the pranks be smaller and less crazy. Like these boys had to coordinate a lot to mess with Clay. There should be more than one prank and end with a Monty doll and Clay holding a knife to set up the camp episode. But they should be pranks, not the phantom caller psychological torture bs. The blood shower can also happen just on a different day. Clay can be confused about what is real and what isnt making him even more worried about his blackouts and again assuming the mental health arc is handled well, the pranks can be a real part of it. Dumping him in the pit on the camping trip also seemed kinda attempted murdery so maybe do something like tie him to a tree of the path or in a small dirt ditch not a rocky pit where if he hit his head or fell weird the team would all be murderers. 

5) Alex

His arc with Charlie was one of my favorite stories this season. I was also not bothered by him getting close to and exploring his sexuality with Winston and Zach. I’m in the minority but I’m glad Zalex wasn’t made canon and Zach was used to be an effective (kinda) ally and good friend. Plus this way Zalex can live on in the fandom untouched or ruined by the writers interpretation. 

They should have given us Alex in therapy. He tried to kill himself had a traumatic injury, an arc with steroid abuse, and an arc about killing someone. All of which were forgotten this season. All the other characters seemed to be dealing with Bryce and Monty, why not focus on Alex? Even if it isnt in therapy just let him exist in his feelings.

6) Zach

I have one major issue with Zach’s arc, the lack of Chloe. She was the reason he almost killed a man. Let them date, let him start to spiral while dating her. She doesnt know what he did. Have them grow apart on screen but her still connecting to him and not wanting to give up on him. They should go to prom together. I know the hooker was supposed to represent Zach turning into Bryce with the hookers and the drunken sex/potential rape  and cocaine. But Chloe fills the same comparison. He brings cocaine she is not okay with it, He tries to convince her to have sex in the back she is not having it. Maybe he tries to convince maybe it becomes a bit worse than that but she breaks up with him at prom and leaves early. She sees Bryce in him, she doesnt have to say it but you can see it on her face and she walks away when her mind and heart tells her to this time no making excuses. Boom Chloe actually has an arc. As for Zach this is a big wake up call for him he sees what we had become. I know it is later in the actual show but I think it should be in the prom episode so he can have a better conclusion in the finale, like the other characters. The whole season was a downward spiral and I wish we got to see more of him pulling himself out of it. If the whole finale is him getting better even though he wont be all the way done he will be in a better place up the end.

7) Justin

Okay the hard one. I think the writers really wanted to kill him. I mean a fan favorite, who did bad things, and the death would be in the series finale. this is a tv writer’s drug of choice. So I’m gonna do a fix where I still kill him first then to the ideal version. Ok so first Justin dies. No HIV/AIDS. It was out of nowhere, unneeded, and seemed a bit insensitive. If you want it to be related to his drug use, make it so he got a bad batch when he relapsed. Or maybe organ failure. If it doens’t need to be drug related it can be an accident or someone he knew on the streets getting revenge, like that drug dealer we spent time with last season. Or if Justin helps Tyler put the gun salesmen behind bars then have it be retaliation for that. He can still go to the hospital and have goodbyes but it wont be an aids diagnosis and death in the same episode. I know they had signs in earlier episodes but the timeline is still really fucked up...

An ideal ending would have him live. He can still pass out at Prom. The diagnosis can be a combination of stress and withdrawal symptoms.He can be the red herring for the person in the coffin. If Justin lives he can represent hope. He can show the audience that you can get better and things can work out. Even if you are sick and think you will die you can do better be better and live in a better world. Plus I love him and really wanted him to be happy. The message would be you can get out of a bad situation and wold have ended a sad series on a positive note. Even if you are a bad person. Even if you have bad circumstance. Even if it feels like the world is against you, it can get better if you put in the effort. Which felt like the message the show was going for in eariler seasons by showing the people on the tapes doing better but abandoned this last season.

So who would I put in the coffin. Ani’s mom. Now I know she wasn’t a well liked character and her mom wouldn’t have the same audience or character reaction Justin’s death did. But this version isn’t about making the audience sad. Ani would finally have a plot that was really about her, her mom died, Bryce’s mom basically wants to provide for her. And she isn’t sure what to do. Justins funeral felt like it was overshadowed by graduation anyway. Now Ani’s moms absence and the funeral being overshadowed both make sense. She is going to college and doing what she can to honor her mom. And the death of a parent causes Clay to immediately appreciate his own family more. The theme in the first season with Clay was appreciating and acting on his feelings for Hannah before she was gone. Ani’s mom dying is a reality check for him and he know the most important things are his family and friends. Justin’s arc was about finding a family and he did. The core of the show is about family, friends, and the importance of  a strong support system. And starting it with a mother grieving her daughter and ending it with a daughter grieving her mother would be a cool full circle moment.

This post is really long so if you read all the way down Thank you! :) 

[butmaybeidk]

[i roll up to my own old bedroom, circa summer 2015. the fandom calendar i used last year still hangs on the wall above my desk, unreplaced. the full-desk weekly calendar my mother gave me when i got my first job is still unused, bearing a note about where i am in a failed show rewatch. notes to myself, inside jokes from bands and shows and movies, tiny sticky note sketches of people with hearts around them - all years old, all stuck in a flurry to the shelves above where my former self sits at the desk. he is 21.]

him: woah why are you in here, i-

[he starts to get up from his chair]

me: [voice low and even] shh bro it's good, mom doesn't know i'm here, i'm you by the way.

him: [sits down carefully, excited and also untrusting] how do i know you're not lying?

me: dude look at me. [beat] then look at you.

him: [eyes narrow] the real me would know i have no concept of what i look like. get out.

me: [eyes rolling] the first cigarettes you ever buy will be menthols instead of the good ones your friend shared with you that one night because you forgot the word "turkish" was in there, and the guy who works at the shell station is an asshole, but you'll be too damn desperate to feel something and for the transaction to end that when you see the package is wrong you'll just nod in angry silence.

him: [beat, solid eye contact] i really do hate him, yeah.

me: yeah.

him: wait i start smoking?

[he shifts a foot, in turn nudging an empty wine bottle collection under the desk.]

me: yeah, i mean. it's like before christmas this year, actually? you go to a house party and sleep over cause you're drunk and mom freaks out, goes to inpatient, that really sucked-

him: [hissing, eyes cutting to the door through which come sounds of the living room, including our parents' voices] mom goes to inpatient!?

me: woah partner, slow your roll a little there, yes. it will suck, you'll have regrets, yadda yadda, try not to beat yourself up or whatever-

him: i-

me: i'm kinda here on a mission or whatever though, so i'd like to like [beat, pops gum] get to that.

him: oh uh... yeah. sure?

[i walk further into the room, only two steps because it's a tiny room for an adult to live in and it's cluttered from the bipolar energy it's contained for almost our whole life.]

me: this may be a hard pill to swallow, dude.

him: [deadpan] i take three to keep me running already. hit me.

me: wow kid, 2018 is gonna hit you like a fucking freight train.

[he frowns, a mere pressing of the lips he learned from our dad]

[beat]

[i sigh]

me: i'm sorry, it's just clear you need to face the facts, and that's mainly just that glorification of your position of illness doesn't let you zoom the fuck out and realize there are things worth fighting for that aren't built upon other people's presences in your life.

him: if this is about-

me: yeah, bro, it's about our first real girlfriend, but she's just the tipping point for a long damn road of making breakthrough after breakthrough that all lead the same damn direction.

[beat. he looks murderous. i look like i remember the fire i felt in my chest back then, like i still feel it in my day.]

me: look at me. listen to me. i promise we stopped making promises we won't keep anymore, and-

[he fidgets with an empty cup that doubtless held an iced coffee days ago and is now dry and dirty.]

him: please. get to it. work in the morning.

me: [nods] gotcha. 2 jobs. split week between days and graveyard. 50 hours a week. almost as much as dad, 2 hours less. it's killing you.

him: [deadpan] wish it would.

me: hey. i'm not here for an it gets better speech, i know you hate that shit. it doesn't get better, you just learn how to fucking enjoy things.

him: [slowly] i enjoy things.

me: you're currently eating yourself alive, and have been for years, about not enjoying things anymore though and i gotta be real with you the parasocial aspect of all this is driving me insane-

him: woah wait-

me: i don't even remember if we knew what that meant at this point though, so you can imagine-

him: i know what that means.

me: i- okay. okay. so anyway i only came here because i recently realized that it applies to other people online as well.

[beat.]

him: [head shaking] wait, i-

me: [rushing on] which is valid, but we get upset when we lose interest in things because people we admire are an inextricable part of that thing for us. we love people, a lot. and while it's okay to miss them because we enjoyed that thing and their part of our experience with it, it's like. not great to let ourself feel like we've betrayed someone we had nearly no connection with because we're leaving the thing we like behind for- get this- something else that gives us a fresh or even just different spike of dopamine. like please dude, please remember that content creators and big name fans in your spaces are not people you know, necessarily, even if you've read all their shit or commented on their content. even if you've been alongside them, you don't know them for shit or owe them fucking shit.

[i gasp for breath.]

him: okay, so-

me: [desperate] it's not fucking fair to hold yourself to a standard of being missed when there are other people in the world- i promise you, we've finally proven to ourself there are other people in the world-

him: hey, i-

me: you wouldn't get it yet, you kinda have to suffer a lot for that one, we don't have the time-

him: [blinking, eyebrows rising] other... people...

me: POINT IS. there are so many people in this world. most of them won't actually notice if you don't stick around for the rest of eternity, much less the rest of the day when you realize you're bored, or that something else just gives you more. yeah, it's a hard world out there, but if they don't know you personally, they can't miss you personally.

him: this is fascinating, uh, and it makes sense, but won't you fuck up our life from what you have now by saying this? like this is a heavy issue, weirdly, for us.

me: [snorts] you think we have that power?

him: [appalled] yeah, i actually did! you've been here! and it's- it's now!

me: [laughing] oh. oh my sweet sum-

him: don't. i'm a witch. it makes sense.

me: i guess. but be realistic with magic. i just astral projected into your dream. y'ain't even gonna remember. i just hope, y'know. osmosis or whatever.

him: that- [beat] explains the giant eyes out in the backyard.

me: [turns to look out the window] oh, red this time.

[thewrongexecution]

thinkin’ ‘bout final fantasy

I go by Not The Author for exactly the reason that I ain’t no expert on any given work of fiction, but I do like to make connections what make me seem smart: an illusion, haphazardly crafted by incident accident and supplemented by precocious pretentiousness. All the same, here are some fun thoughts I had that you might also enjoy!

I do have a point, that I do get to. I feel like I should say that ahead of time, all things considered. Like, I can appreciate if you can’t appreciate a shaggy dog story? But there is a point to all this.

...Eventually.

Spoiler Warning:

Final Fantasies 1, 6, 7, 7R, 13 and 15

Content Warning:

Discussion of death

Cussin’

Length warning:

5621 words

13 sections

16 digressions

Let’s dig in.

- - - - -

Final Fantasy 1 was not my first Final Fantasy experience, but I think it was the first I ever played by myself? The remaster for the GBA, came bundled with FF2 on the same cart, which I played briefly but did not complete and do not remember, except that it had Cid.

FF1 doesn’t have a Cid, but I really loved the narrative anyway, straightforward as it was, because it was very specifically about spitting in the face of an uncaring god who would doom the world for a laugh. Take these chains that bind us to darkness and, though we be forgot to history, strangle with them that selfsame darkness to bring an end to its tyranny.

((it is a terrible curse, to love time travel. so many grand expectations, so few ever met. play ghost trick, chrono trigger, radiant historia, majora’s mask, outer wilds. have you any recs yourself, lemme know! I digress.

((I digress a lot, as I may have mentioned. they’ll be noted in parenthetical, like this.))

This is the foundation upon which Final Fantasy is built, and while any student of architecture could tell you of many and varied perfectly valid construction techniques, it resonates. Grappling with an immutable past to course-correct an uncaring future is, too, an apt description of personal growth; a theme as universal as being alive. And I, as an impressionable youth, ate that shit up.

((I assume I was young, at any rate. my love for time travel, be it era-spanning or moment-stretching, is, I suspect, not entirely coincidental to my terrible temporal memory.))

And that was the tale of the studio, too. Final Fantasy was so titled because, the story goes, the developers knew they would shutter if it didn’t make bank. Staring your imminent demise in the face, knowing your fate is doom, and giving it your all, all the same.

And then they made another twelve, plus two-and-a-half MMOs, and god knows how many mobile games and spin-offs, and now the Fantasy is that there could ever be a Final one. so say I: life parodies art.

((the half-an-MMO is FF14 1.0, which no longer exists and is a fascinating tale, a rally against bleak futures all its own. I’ll [link] Noclip’s three-part documentary covering the developer’s side of things, because that’s the one I’ve seen. there’s plenty other material to hunt down, though, if you wanna.))

- - - - -

Final Fantasy VII is a game about fate, too. Particularly Death, that most ultimate of fates. Tragic, to be sure; preventable, or at least delayable, in many cases; necessary, at times, for the growth of something new.

Unrelenting. Unstoppable. Inescapable.

Death, and the fights against it, take many forms. There are the fascist death squads that hunt down your ragtag band and any dissent against their cruel masters, but these will only truly stop by cutting off the hydra’s head and building an entirely new society; eight dudes and their dog, faced with a corporate private military, can survive but never win. There are such disasters as do slay that hydra, be they natural or man-made. There’s the space alien and the apocalypse it ushers. There’s literal illness and injury, physical or otherwise. There are the deaths of loved ones, friends and family, that lead to some subtler deaths within those that survive them. The deaths of relationships, by neglect or abandonment. The ideological deaths we inflict on ourselves, accepting ever-growing lesser evils in the name of some impossible ideal.

Every day, the person we were becomes the person we are, and soon, the person we are will give way to someone new, and this, too, is a sort of death. In this sense, we tally Cloud’s deaths at least five: failure to become a Soldier and rebirth in shame, the massacre of Nibelheim and rebirth in grief, arrival at Midgar and rebirth in delusion, his cratering at the Crater and rebirth in nihilism, and his death and rebirth in the Lifestream of Mideel.

((you could prolly hunt down another two if you wanna be cheeky, but I lack the knowledge, motive and patience. frankly, this whole thing is to create a leading line of logic and probably isn’t, uh. academically ethical? or whatever the term is. I’m not necessarily wrong, but I’m definitely scuttling nuance. oh well!))

Now, I say “rebirth,” because that’s how deaths of identity more-or-less work. There’s usually some new identity waiting in the wings to take over. And rebirth is itself a notable theme, inasmuch as it is one outcome of death. But death is oft more final than that, and what people do in its imminence and wake is key here, too. Wutai’s collapse into an insular tourist trap. Avalanche’s vengeful fervor, in general and post-plate drop. Bugenhagen trying to pass his knowledge on to Red. The whole party’s ongoing post-traumatic depressive episodes.

Ultimately, death is the inescapable fate of all things. It’s what we do, in light of that, that makes us who we are.

- - - - -

Final Fantasies 13 and 15 are the only modern Final Fantasies I’ve beaten, and I bring them up because both deal very prominently with fate and death, and as Square’s most recent mainline FF titles, Remake can’t exist without comparison to them. Here’s what I remember:

Final Fantasy 13 was a game I enjoyed. The stagger system mixed up my casual FF tradition of Get The Big Numbers by putting a prominent UI element onscreen that says You Can’t Get The Big Numbers Unless The Bar Is Full. Suddenly there’s a natural-but-enforced ebb and flow to combat built in, where you gotta juggle chip damage, survival, and crowd control while keeping resources enough to burst down a staggered foe, but maintain situational awareness to swap back into survival mode if you’re not gonna down your enemy, all in something close to real-time. Very obviously a direct precursor to the combat of Remake. I didn’t realize the depth of it, but it was still super fun.

People at the time didn’t like the linearity of the game and, I can see that in retrospect? I think it’s closer to, there weren’t breakpoints, there wasn’t variety. It was cutscenes, combat, and the stretches of land between them; the only real thing for the brain to get a workout on was the combat, and eating only one kinda food is gonna make that food taste bland.

((I didn’t mind, but I like idle games, and, also probably had depression around then. Take that how you will.))

The story, though, I loved. You got your uncaring gods forcing mortals to do their increasingly-impossible bidding, cursing them to agonized unlife if they take too long, and with blissful, beautiful death if they succeed. It sucks! And here you have a ragtag band of incidental idiots trying to rebel against a system that, actually, wants them to? Like that’s the plan? Have mortals kill god and summon the devil to destroy all life, because god, doesn’t.... like life anymore?

((The lore gets more than a little impenetrable, and I remember bouncing off it a couple times. The throughline of God Sucks And Makes Zombies was good though.))

The biblical parallels are obvious, and if they weren’t, the final boss’ design will clue you in, god that’s a good design. hang on I can add pictures and already tossed a spoiler warning, here, look at this:

(per the Final Fantasy Fandom Wiki [X])

That’s literally The Holy Trinity But A Sword The Size Of A Building. It’s perfect.

Anyway, I love this game, because the heroes win, which is what God wants, so in winning, they lose, as was fated to be, right? Fuck All That, say the lesbians from space australia, as they turn into satan and, as satan, stop God’s shitty metal moon from crashing into space australia and destroying all life.

((this awakened something in me, though, as is becoming a theme, I wasn’t aware of it at the time. actually hold up I’m gonna rewatch that sequence.

((yeah okay wow on review that was aggressively cheesy and had a whole bunch of weird emotional whiplash that just leaves a super-bad aftertaste. I don’t really like it as an experience, but big bazonga lesbian satan with arms for hair is still a look-and-a-half.))

The whole thing is not entirely unlike if meteor was also Midgar, and there’s more than a few points where I went, hang on, are they trying to evoke 7 here? “Lightning” is ex-military and bad at emotions, Sazh is a black dad w/ guns and emotional trauma and I love him, quirky pink healer girl who might be an alien is here, the game starts on a train and leads into a robot bug fight; obviously it’s not one-to-one but the connections are there for a brain like mine to make, and only more prominent for the fact that FF7 was the more satisfying game.

((I cannot speak to 13-2 or -3; 13-2 was fun up until the enemies were abruptly 30 levels higher than me, more or less a mandate by the game for me to do all the side content, which I was not on-board with. I skipped 13-3 entirely, especially when I learned the whole game is on a timer. did not and do not need that stress in my life.))

- - - - -

But okay, FF13 was “too linear” and wasn’t doing super great. Enter Final Fantasy Versus 13, by which I mean enter Final Fantasy 15 actually, we don’t need any more of this 13 crap. And once again, I enjoyed it! ...Right up until it was bad.

Final Fantasy 15 was not a finished game, and we know this for certain now, because all its DLC was to make it a finished game. At the time, though, there was uncomfortable and inconsistent story pacing, only one playable character, relatively sparse combat mechanics... but it was open-world, and hey, that’s what you wanted, right? open, non-linear environments? I picked it up because, Teleporting Swordsman With a Motorcycle Sword. I am of simple pleasures, and those are they.

Of the little I remember, one point that’s stuck with me is the sequence following the Leviathan fight. See, we’ve been talking about fate and destiny and how Final Fantasy likes to spite them. Here in 15, our main man Noctis doesn’t want the destiny he’s been burdened with, to Become The King and Save The World from the Coming Darkness, or whatever. He’d really rather be doing, anything else? like hanging out with his buddies or actually getting married or, I dunno, grieving the death of his father. Nope! You don’t get to do that. Go find the ghost armaments of your dead ancestors so you can ~saaave the wooorld!~ I would have been in college around then, so, eminently relatable.

Now, on this journey, you meet a guy called Ardyn. He’s the sort of character that was built as an attack on me personally: sleazy, charming, possessing airs of casual familiarity with people he’s never met, kinda helps you out in tight spots, and also, by the way, vizier to the empire that killed your dad and wants you and your friends dead too. But not in the “secret good guy” way, he just likes fucking with you! he’s perfect.

Right up until the Leviathan fight.

See, Lunafreya, your betrothed--

((I’m so mad about this stupid, stupid garbage. I love Lunafreya on principle, but the game doesn’t bother to give her screentime. you only ever hear about her incidentally, which can be cool if you then meet the character and get to compare/contrast what you’ve heard, but the initial release only has her show up for this one chapter, and your party doesn’t really get to interact with her that much.))

Your betrothed is here and she’s some symbol of the peoples’ hope, right? she’s got light magic or something, and can actually commune with the gods. the gods are on your side, but you can’t actually understand a word they say, but she can, and that’s sick as hell. anyway.

You lose the fight against Leviathan, because you’re a shitty emo teen who doesn’t know how to use your ghost swords, and she got beat up earlier when Levi got all pissy at being summoned. And then Ardyn shows up in his magitek dropship.

Now earlier, Ardyn had Luna as his captive, completely at his mercy, and right now, he who would be king of kings, destined to save the world from darkness, is clutching at rock in a hurricane, beaten, wounded and dying.

Of the two, which do you think he stabs to death?

if you thought, “the protagonist, which will allow him to win, and subvert Final Fantasy’s themes of defying fate by having the villain be the one to do it, forcing everyone else to scramble for some alternate solution and deal with the fallout,” congratulations! You win disappointment, because that idea’s cool as hell and they didn’t. fucking. Do it.

((Ardyn, before this, had given me major Kefka vibes, and thinking on it now, the world descending into darkness in the 15 we never had could have played with even deeper parallels to FF6... but I never played 6, and that FF15 doesn’t exist, so... I’ll leave that analysis to better scholars.))

now, with the benefit of hindsight, that was never going to happen. too long in development hell, game had to ship, had no time or budget for mid-game upheaval. but at the time? made me lose any interest I had in Ardyn, made me mad at the developers for passing up on fulfilling the themes their series had explored in past, made me almost stop playing the game. I’m still mad about it for crying out loud!

((thinking about it gets me tensed up, coiled, with that sort of full-body thrum that’s best conveyed with letters that jitter around. best I can do here is bold italics, but it doesn’t have the right energy. it’s a fleeting feeling, but when it’s here? god. given the men that wrote this scene I would fight all of them and win.

((inhale...

((exhale...

((and move on.))

We, the player, never really meet Luna, so there’s no real... impact, no substance to it. It’s sad, but impersonal. villain kills damsel to inflict manpain on hero. that’s it. we’ve seen this song and dance before.

But kill Noctis? The character the player’s been controlling all this time, who they know intimately? Now it’s personal. Now your party members’ grief is a mirror to your own. And now you get to play as Luna, maybe? give the game time to flesh her out, have her bond with your old companions over their shared grief, and maybe use her connections and public speaking skills to rally the people of the world, in a perhaps-vain attempt to resist the oncoming darkness, while simultaneously using that public-facingness to drive her to hide her own fear and hopelessness...? That’s a complex character ripe for drama and tragedy right there! And then her, at the head of a story about people coming together to solve a global calamity themselves, rather than await their appointed savior?

Even then, but especially now... You can see the appeal, right?

- - - - -

Lemme step back and zoom out for a moment, because there’s one more kind of Fate to discuss before I finalize my thesis. Yes, I promise, there is a point besides being mad at FF15, this is still ultimately about Remake. Bear with me a little longer.

See, Remake’s premise is that it’s not quite FF7, but that itself is predicated on Remake being essentially FF7. Certain things must be in the Remake series, or it will cease to be the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series. The developers have gone on record saying as much, that they’ll still cover the thrust of the original, and that makes a lot of sense from a development standpoint. Building on an existing framework saves loads of time, and lets them focus on details as they have in Remake.

((I think they've already set up an in-universe justification for this, too. The party may have defeated the Whispers at Midgar, but the Whispers are the will of the planet. The only way to truly defeat them would be to defeat the planet itself, which: kind of the goal of the villains!

((a bit ironic, because the villains are the Whispers’ means to keep manipulating events. Remake backends a very large portion of the plot, and I don’t think Rufus seeing the Whispers is a throwaway detail. The party chases Sephiroth by chasing Shinra in the original, so even if the party has shaken free of the direct influence of the Whispers, manipulating Shinra should in turn manipulate the party.

((on top of which, Rufus prizes power, and the power to change or control fate-- something both the party and Sephiroth have seized-- would be as enticing as anything.))

But this begs the question: How much of Final Fantasy 7 is necessary before it stops being Final Fantasy 7? Do you need all nine characters? The Weapons? Rideable chocobo? Breedable chocobo? What about locations? Can you drop the Gold Saucer? or Mount Condor? or Mideel? How many minigames am I holding up? These are necessary questions, but so is this:

“Would a one-to-one recreation of the original game have the same emotional impact as when it released, twenty-three years ago?”

- - - - -

Now, the phrase “emotional impact” is necessarily kind of nebulous and subjective, so lemme dig into that a little bit.

The first significant chunk of the original FF7 takes place entirely in Midgar, which is one huge city. Every screen is densely packed; movement is typically constrained to narrow corridors and industrial crawlspaces. The whole world is deeply claustrophobic and visually hostile, by design.

This is FF7 for the first few hours, before a motorcycle chase deposits you outside city limits, and then... you hit the world map, and everything changes. The world is rendered in three whole dimensions, now! (Then, a technological marvel in its own right.) There’s a sky! There’s a horizon! Grass, mountains, the ocean!

Boundless, terrifying freedom.

From a mechanical standpoint, there’s only one real destination, an A-to-B with random encounters before a small enclosure with an inn and shops, no real change from what you’ve already been doing. But the mood? Everything’s fresh and new, now. Everything’s an unknown.

So, how do we do that again, two-and-a-half decades on?

Let’s say, something like this: Remake 2 starts with Cloud and Sephiroth en route to Nibelheim. For new players, this provides immediate intrigue: why are these mortal enemies hanging out in a truck? how did they get here, where are they going? For veterans, it’s familiar: oh, we’re in the flashback sequence.

For both, it provides mechanical familiarity. We just finished last game hanging out in Midgar, a bunch of town squares with shops and cutscenes connected to hazardous corridors. Well, Nibelheim’s a town with shops and cutscenes, connected to a monster-filled anthill and capped with a reactor. We know this. We’ve done this. We can do this again.

And when the flashback ends, we’re in Kalm. Another town, maybe with sidequests this time; Midgar looming in the distant skybox as a reminder of how far we’ve come.

And then you leave Kalm, and the camera zooms out, and out, and out...

Remake is essentially 7, and you can’t have the impact of 7′s world map reveal if Remake isn’t functionally open-world too. Square has plenty of experience with open environments, however successful their more recent attempts have been; I’m confident that the have the ability, at least, to craft an expansive world that feels appropriate to FF7.

((I’d like to take a moment here to talk about FF14, which mixes both compact twisty dungeons and wide-open overworld zones, and is necessarily wildly successful to still be operating as an MMO... but though I have played it briefly, I don’t claim knowledge sufficient to go in-depth. The point is, Square not only can make a game like that, they have, and are, and apparently possess non-zero competency. I have worries, but I’m not worried, if that makes sense.))

So, can you recreate a given kind of emotional impact? Yeah!

Can scenes from the original Final Fantasy 7 be rendered into a new context, more-or-less as they were? Absolutely!

Would a one-to-one recreation of the original game have the same emotional impact as when it released, twenty-three years ago?

- - - - -

Aerith dies.

If you opened this post and didn’t know that, well. There were spoiler warnings up at the top, the game’s more than two decades old, and the spoiler itself is basically a piece of pop-culture, up there with space dad and wizard killer. There’re probably plenty of people who know next-to-nothing about Final Fantasy 7 except that Aerith dies.

Everyone knows because, at the time, it was so big a thing. This was a title that Square hyped to heaven and back to push JRPGs into mainstream western markets, and it worked. And this was before major death was so common and arbitrary as it is today; even now, Game of Thrones and its ilk are a relative rarity. The death of a protagonist or love interest wasn’t a new thing for games, or any media really, but usually you knew it was coming, or it served some purpose. Aerith’s death was sudden, arbitrary, you’re almost immediately thrown into a boss fight so you don’t even have time to process it right away, and it’s the first stone in an avalanche of other pointless arbitrary tragedy. It’s an obvious narrative setup for the endgame confrontation with Sephiroth; instead, Cloud has a breakdown, Meteor happens, and now there’s an entire Disk 2.

Fandom has always been fandom, even before the continuous immediacy of the modern internet, but... people wrote letters to Square, and got sad on message boards. There’s an entire subset of forum signatures, back when those were a thing, that you could sort as “people fucked up over Aerith dying.” And again, this was the world. Not just Japan, or Asia, but everyone.

((Or, everyone with the finances to have a PS2 and/or an internet connection. Gaming as a pastime remains way expensive, whether played or watched. But you know how it is.))

And that’s the problem with answering that question.

See, FF7 is a lot of things, but for better or worse, it is defined by Aerith’s death. It’s one of many factors, but you can’t... leave it out, right? or it wouldn’t be FF7 anymore.

Aerith dies in FF7, and everyone knows it.

- - - - -

But Remake has promised, repeatedly, that things will be different this time. Everyone is coming together to defy fate, and Cloud in particular is here to keep Aerith from dying. Bodyguard jokes aside, Cloud repeatedly has flashbacks (flashforwards?) to Aerith’s death and the events leading to it. When he meets her in the church, when they cross into Sector 6, twice in the final battle. Hell, the very first time they meet, Sephiroth taunts him about not being able to save her. Even from a metatextual standpoint, since everyone knows Aerith dies, that’s like, The Most Obvious Fate To Change.

If, after all that, Aerith still dies? It’s not just tragedy, at that point. That’s the developers, actively lying to the player about their intent in making this game series. That’s frustrating, and immersion-breaking, and when said death is likely to still have one or more entire sequels to come after? maybe not great for sales! I know I didn’t bother buying the complete edition of FF15; I couldn’t bring myself to care enough about a game that set up this cool possibility, and then just, failed to deliver on every count.

And, Remake is being made for two audiences. I’ve said “everybody knows Aerith dies,” but that’s not really true, is it? It’s been 23 years, after all. Remake could well be someone’s very first Final Fantasy experience. That’s why they’ve been telegraphing Aerith’s death so hard. Not everyone knows, but at least everyone can guess. Is it fair, then, to this new audience, with potentially no knowledge or understanding of the legacy of this flashy new action game, to foreshadow tragedy in the future, have everyone come together to say, We’re Going To Stop This, and then... not? Is that good writing? Is that satisfying? When this is a multi-game and potentially multi-console investment of time and money, is this, as a newcomer, a story you’d want to keep playing?

And then on top of that, it’s 2020.

I don’t mean that in the current-year-fallacy, “we’re better than this now” kind of way. Rather, the way I felt about Final Fantasy 15 is even more relevant now. People, in real life, are realizing that the powers-that-be are failing them, have failed them, have been failing them for far longer than twenty-three years. The people that already knew that are actually showing up for each other, to spite what felt and feels like inescapable fate and finding that, together, they might just be able to ruin God’s day.

Game development is, of course, its own whole beast, and projects in motion tend to stay in motion; deviating from a plan takes time and money that Square may be unwilling to spend. But, under current world circumstances: is making a game where the hero sets out to save one specific person from their fated death, and following that with a game where that one specific person dies anyway, aside from everything else, a good business decision?

- - - - -

So... Aerith, shouldn’t die, right...? But, FF7 requires Meteor, and so requires the Temple of the Ancients and the Black Materia. And, Meteor can only be stopped by Holy, so FF7 requires the Forgotten City.

FF7 is a tragedy. FF7 demands blood.

...Hey, actually, hold that thought. How come Cloud can remember Aerith dying in the first place? He’s not from the future, right? He’s got a connection to Sephiroth, who is from the future... and Sephiroth can manipulate his memories...? but, why would Sephiroth let him, or make him, remember that?

Hey, how come Zack is alive, but like, in the “narrative scope” sense? Wouldn’t his presence circumvent Cloud’s delusions about the Nibelheim incident?

Hey, how come Cloud had multiple big climactic Sephiroth confrontations at what’s essentially the end of the prologue, including one that mirrors the very end of the original FF7? Shouldn’t that still come at, like, you know. the end?

Hey, how come--

- - - - -

Remake has these... Callbacks? Refrains? Like my favorite, when Sephiroth throws a train-- you know, The Fate Metaphor-- at Cloud, who absolutely shreds the thing. Or, for a more direct example:

And it frequently uses these to show that people are changing, that things can change. You know, the whole Running Theme the game has going on.

Sephiroth gets a refrain, too.

At the start of the game (give or take a reactor), in his first real appearance, Sephiroth philosophizes at Cloud, makes sure Cloud hates him, and tells Cloud what he wants.

At the end of the game, in his last appearance, Sephiroth philosophizes at Cloud, tells Cloud what he wants, and makes sure Cloud hates him.

Structurally, these encounters more-or-less bookend the game; thematically, it doesn’t exactly indicate change. Barret may or may not have come around on Cloud, and his admission that Cloud is important to him after all is, itself, important. Cloud, on the other hand, was always going to defy Sephiroth. He stands resolute, now, ready to fight rather than flee, but apathy was never on the table.

Now, Sephiroth’s whole Thing is psychologically manipulating Cloud to get what he wants, and as part of that, what Sephiroth wants is usually not what he says he wants.

All throughout the original FF7, Sephiroth riled up Cloud so that Cloud would pursue and defy him, culminating first in the Black Materia incident, and then again in the Forgotten City. None of the Sephiroth clones could survive the trip through the Northern Crater, so Sephiroth had to lure Cloud, with the Black Materia, to him, and then also convince Cloud to give up the Black Materia of his own accord. Mind control, memory manipulation and illusions were involved, but if Sephiroth could maintain those indefinitely, he probably just. Would have done that instead. Way easier,

The point is, in Remake, in addition to all the intermittent retraumitization sprinkled throughout the game, Sephiroth goes out of his way twice to directly ask Cloud, “hey, you hate me, right?” And, as part of that question, he tells Cloud, “this is what I want.” And Cloud? He hates Sephiroth, and will do his damnedest to keep Sephiroth from getting what he wants.

So. What does Sephiroth... say he wants?

- - - - -

One last aside before we cap off: This post would not exist without the valiant efforts of one Maximilian_dood. His devotion to the series kept myself and many others engaged and excited and, frankly, hopeful, in the leadup to the release of Remake, and his correlations between the rest of the FF7 series and Remake were enlightening and entertaining.

and had he not the gall to identify defying fate as a device to make aerith’s death more tragic, I would never have been angry enough to write this.

((I know, I know. Gaming and streaming and lit analysis are all hard individually, and I don’t begrudge losing one for the other two. And it was a first playthrough! I might have seen these lines sooner than some, but collating all this info was certainly not instantaneous. And Square can be hack writers at times-- see again my rant on FF15-- so even then, I can’t discount the possibility.

((but, still.

((Really?))

So, while I would like to believe that I have, by now, made my thesis on Remake’s narrative direction abundantly clear, here it is spelled out anyway:

- - - - -

At the bottom of the Forgotten City, at the shrine on the pillar in the lake, Cloud will find Aerith, who believes her fate immutable.

Sephiroth will descend, and Cloud will sacrifice himself, that Aerith should live.

This is Sephiroth’s plan.

- - - - -

Hey, thanks for reading this far! With my conversational tone and rambling tendencies, I’d have preferred to make this an audio post or, god forbid, a video essay, but I got a keyboard, and that’ll have to do. Diction is important to me, as the capitalization, italics and use of punctuation may have clued you in on, so... maybe you’ll get a dramatic reading sometime in the future? but, don’t bet on it.

Feel free to riddle me with questions, or point out inconsistencies with this big ol’ thing! I’m not exactly an expert, and I’m sure I glossed over, heavily paraphrased, completely forgot, intentionally ignored and/or aggressively misrepresented some stuff, but I love learning and teaching esoteric bullshit about The Vijigams. On that note, anything that sounds like it should be sourced is sourced from “I heard about it on social media or in a stream or youtube video one time, but if I actually had to hunt it down this whole thing would never see the light of day, and it has already been like three months,” which isn’t to excuse my lack of due diligence, but I do, lack diligence, so, tough.

Oh! but the Remake screens all come from [here]. Don’t care much for that splash screen, but, I Get It, so, whatever.

There were some other things I wanted to touch on but couldn’t really find a spot for. FF7 Remake as a metaphor for its own development, for example. Or, some of The Possibilities, like how Cloud’s death could very literally haunt Aerith, or how Remake sets up a more fleshed-out Midgar revisit that Cloud’s death specifically would make infinitely sadder.

On that note, if it was not yet obvious, I love speculation, and if they do go this direction, it’ll probably be their justification to go completely... off the rails? Remake only has to be FF7 until it doesn’t, after all. If there’s some wilder implications youall see for like... I dunno, a Jenova more fully-regenerated from also having Cloud’s cells back, getting into proper Kaiju-on-Kaiju battles with the Weapons, or anything like that? Feed me your brain juice, etc.

And, once more, for the road: this is interpretation; subjective, opinionated, and very much in denial of any kind of author-ity. Nor is this a claim on how things should be, or an assertion that this would be good or bad. Everything ultimately rests on Square's narrative design team and, we’ve touched on them already.

((but, for your consideration: I’m smart, and right))

Here’s hoping, whatever happens, we get the game we deserve.

thanks for coming to my ted talk, have a great day

[margoshansons]

The Killing Kind (5/?)

Part Five: 01. 02. 03. 04. 

Summary: Hydro-Man and Mysterio hijack the school’s Venetian vacation.

Warning: action sequences

Notes: I’m so pleased with this chapter! Also, if it hasn’t been obvious already, this is a SLOW BURN (actually it’s more of a medium burn).

All (Y/N) could see was blue. If Mars was the Red Planet and Ireland was the Emerald Isle, then she supposed Venice was the Sapphire City. All she could do was stand in awe at the colorful skyline while the water taxi gave them the scenic tour of the canal.

“Ahhhh” MJ sniffed the air, dropping in line with (Y/N), “The murder capital of Italy, I’ve come home.”

Y/N let out an involuntary laugh, “Of course, I forgot you’re part of the Italian Mob, only enrolling in Midtown to track down the elusive man who owes you thousands of dollars.”

“Wrong,” MJ intervened, a suppressed smile on her face, “I’d have a way cooler origin story than that.”

The two girls shared a laugh, (Y/N)’s eyes finding themselves locked onto Peter’s. He was staring at the two of them, it was only when MJ turned her head back to see what (Y/N) was staring at, that Peter turned away from the pair of friends.

“Hey, um, is everything okay with Peter?” MJ asked, something other than concern lacing her voice.

She shrugged, “Yeah, I mean I don’t really know him that well.”

“You sat next to him on the plane for eight hours” MJ brought up, eyes shifting between the two of them.

(Y/N) sighed, ignoring the knot spinning itself in her stomach, “I was forced to, remember?” MJ nodded, a slight smile upon the recall of events. “Besides, I think he’s just awkward around girls” She continued, the knot growing bigger.

“Not around you, he’s not” MJ brought up, letting the statement hang in the air until they docked at their hotel. If you could actually call it that.

It was the definition of a sinking ship, a fact Flash Thompson was more than eager to point out.

(Y/N) barely heard the other chaperone discussing the Da Vinci museum tour, (wasn’t the big museum in Milan anyway?) cause her thoughts were disturbed by the same subject of her and MJ’s gossip earlier.

“Hey” Peter swallowed, gripping the strap of his backpack. “I wanted to say thanks for the plane ride, I had a lot of fun.”

(Y/N) chuckled at the innocent compliment, grateful that Italy seemed to have taken away his nervous stuttering whenever she was in the room. “No problem, It sucks not to sit next to the person you want to.”

“Oh no, I--”

“Peter” (Y/N) interjected, a smile on her face, “It’s okay, I know you like MJ. It’s pretty obvious actually.”

Peter seemed to relax at the comment, though his eyes were still wide. “It is?”

(Y/N) nodded, chuckling as she pushed a wavy piece of hair behind her ear. “I’m cool with it” Her stomach growled at that, knotting itself up again, “In fact, I tried to switch seats with you on the plane before everything kinda went south”

Peter’s face became red recalling the events of the plane ride. She couldn’t help but giggle at his embarrassment, catching her off guard. Since when did she giggle?

“You--You did?” Peter asked, gripping his bag tighter.

(Y/N) nodded, “yeah, I actually think it’s cute, your whole ‘plan’” Something inside her chest twisted at the words.

“I don't--I don’t have a plan to woo MJ” Peter defended, his expressive face telling otherwise.

(Y/N) chuckled, “You’re many things Peter, but a good liar is not one of them.”

She would know.

After dropping her stuff off in her and MJ’s shared room, (Y/N) didn’t see Peter for the rest of the day. She caught him staring at her and MJ every now and then, but he never approached, just stood at the side.

It wasn’t until she got sidetracked by the watches in a jewelry shop that she saw him again.

“Hey MJ, come take a look, maybe we can get--” (Y/N) stood up, no signs of her friend anywhere. In fact, she hadn't seen her since the cappuccino they had shared a few moments ago. She wandered down the maze of streets that made up Venice, catching herself on the edge of a dead end, almost plunging face first into the freezing canal.

She let out a withheld sigh, relaxing at the close call. It wasn't until she looked once again at the water, she saw something unusual.

The water was moving...against the current?

(Y/N) sped down the streets, winding up and down the alleys and bridges, following the unusual streams to the Grand Canal, where they began to gather.

Her jaw fell open at the figure forming in front of her, eyes widening as she caught a glimpse of the face in the water.

It was bigger than the entire city. And it was a threat.

Her mind immediately went to MJ and she bolted, pushing her way through the screaming citizens searching for her curly-haired friend. Instead, she saw a figure in blue leap over poles and onto the bridge crossing the Canal. She recognized the back of his head.

How did she know the back of this figure’s head?

Her hands became alight with energy, sending it in waves at the threat before her. They weren’t doing anything. In fact, they seemed to phase right through the creature. It wasn’t until she heard the boom overhead she put all the pieces together.

Green pierced the clear sky, and (Y/N) caught the hint of gold that reflected from his chest plate.

She rolled her eyes at the spectacle, the people finally excited to see a superhero enter the fray to save them from the monster in front of them.

Unaware it wasn’t real. Unaware that they were only watching drones project what they wanted to see.

This was why her Dad didn’t want her to go on the trip.

No loose ends for him to tie up.

She grits her teeth at the thought, gathering energy in her palms once more.

He’s going to regret that.

She used the energy to propel herself upward, flying toward the roof covering the bridge, cerulean tendrils flying from her fingers, latching onto one of her father’s precious drones, crumpling it before tossing it out of sync. The hologram flickered, and (Y/N) was ready to move onto the next one in the equation until the Hydro-Man turned its sights on her.

The wave crashed down on the poor girl, but she refused to yield to someone who taught her everything she knows.

She let out another burst of energy, catching another drone, ready to crumple it, until another wave came down, ruining her concentration. She was getting ready for a third launch when something sticky grasped her hand. Her eyes darted to her right, widening at the sight of the synthetic webbing.

“Grab on!” a vaguely familiar voice called, and she followed the order, jumping off the roof, trusting that the string of web wouldn’t snap. She swung to safety, the figure from earlier grasping her shoulders in urgency.

“Are you okay?!” The voice asked, hidden behind a Venetian jester’s mask. His hand brushed her sopping hair out of her eyes, (Y/N) still struggling to catch her breath.

The clocks began to turn in her head and her jaw almost dropped at the revelation. That voice, it was the same one that had told her not to worry, the same one that stuttered whenever she and MJ were in the room, the same voice that was filled with perpetual worry surrounding his own life.

“Peter?” She breathed.

Thank you so much for the feedback! 

MASTERLIST. PLAYLIST.

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[jasonsthunderthighs]

Everyday life (Kara x Reader (???))

Summary: Everyday life with your personal Android, Kara, to take care of you in your everyday life. (I suppose. This is just a vent story.)

A/N: This is kind of a vent story from my personal life into a little story of what would happen if I personally had an Android from the game Detroit: Become Human. I didn’t know which Android to pick out of the ones we know or the main three, so I asked my friend, and they said Kara. So she’ll be the Android that I’ll write about. So I guess this’ll be under the category of “Kara x Reader”? *Shrugs* I might have this in two or three parts. Depends on how many of you show interest in it. I apologise in advance for this not being DC related. I kinda got burnt out on DC and went back into the D:BH fandom. (Though, the game kinda mentally fucked me up for weird reasons. I also completed it in a day (allnighter cause I have no life) and only played it once, in fear that I’d get depressed after playing the game the second time. But my favourites are Markus and Luther so far. I also somehow got Conner killed at least five times and Hank to hate me with a dying passion, so I never understood the Conner x Hank (Conhank? Hankcon? Cohan?) ship, when I never saw that dynamic between the two characters, which sucked ass, honestly.) But, I honestly hope you guys like this. I also don’t regret making this with angst, by the way. I am not good with fluff, so you’ll get angst.

TW: Suicide mention, suicidal thoughts, pills, whatever bad thing anybody can think of at the time I’m writing this at 2 in the morning with the lack of sleep.

Word count: 2,256 (I am so not sorry for how long this is. I kinda got carried away.)

“(Y/N)... (Y/N)... It’s time to wake up...” You feel a soft nudge on your shoulder, earning a soft, tired groan, as you move the covers over your head.

“Five more minutes...” You muttered, wanting to go back into your deep sleep and away from the reality of the world that awaits you.

“It’s 9:45 a.m., (Y/N). You need to wake up and be productive in your day.” The blanket was gently pulled off of you, the chilled air hitting your bare skin. You grumbled, rubbing the sleep out of your eyes and saw your personal Android that your grandparents gave you a few years before they passed, Kara, looking at you with a gentle smile on her face. “Good morning, (Y/N).”

“Morning, Kara...” You mumbled, not wanting to get up to do anything in particular today. It’ll just be the same thing; eat breakfast (if you decide to eat that morning that is), exercise a little bit, possibly take a shower, write one a little bit for your books in your sequel, eat lunch (also if you decide to eat at that point in the day), therapy for that day out of the month, do other miscellaneous things until dinner, relax a bit or write some more and go to bed. The same thing over and over.

“The weather today will be clear skies with a temperature of 18-degree Celsius (64-degree Fahrenheit) and a 20% chance of showers.” She continued on, moving the curtains out of the way to let the sun in the messy room. “Your therapist appointment is today at 3 p.m., and your father left a voicemail for you, wanting to know when you’ll come over to visit.”

You forgot about your dad wanting you to visit. You honestly didn’t want to in fear he’ll mentally abuse you again for the time you’re over there. It makes you shiver from the very thought of it. You don’t even want to listen to the voicemail he left for you. “I don’t want to see him… Can we do something else?”

Kara can see the distress in your face, knowing that you really don’t want to see your father at the moment or anytime soon. She smiles warmly at you, “Of course, (Y/N). What is it you want to do today? After you have your breakfast we can do something today until your therapy appointment at 3.”

“I don’t want to go to therapy.” You mumbled, “They don’t help me at all and say the same thing over and over. Sick of it. Heard the same bullshit for the past (age) years. I don’t need to hear a broken record from a ‘professional’ and waste my money on it.” Looking up to see Kara’s eyes and her warm smile, the poor machine doesn’t understand the basics of human emotions unless she turns deviant. You sometimes wish she can become a deviant, so you can have a friend to turn to and not a motionless machine with human features. It can get frustrating, but sometimes you don’t mind it and grew accustomed to it. 

“Therapists are here to help you, (Y/N). Your grandparents made sure of it to get you to a good therapist to help you with what you need help with.” Her voice was the same; no tone changed or emotion of real concern if only there was a way to change it and to have someone who actually cares instead of saying what she’s programmed to say to you.

“They’re dead now… I don’t need any help. How would you know what I need? You’re just a machine with no human emotions or understanding.” you snapped, not in the mood to handle the emotionless words from the Android.

The words seem to not register for the Android, she just smiled at you, “I’m here to help your everyday need and wants. And you need to see the therapist, upon your grandparents' request before their deaths.”

She was right; your grandparents gave you Kara to help you and not be as depressed as you were before they died.

You paused, looking at her and sighed in defeat, “Fine. I’ll go. But I don’t need the help from her anymore. She’s just not worth my money anymore.” You see her smile in response as you get the same clothes you wore yesterday; black jeans, a shirt with (favourite band) logo, a light weighted jacket with the sleeves rolled up to your elbows and your doc martins, not caring of what you were wearing and not wanting to take a shower that day.

You walk out of your room, heading downstairs to the little office to write a little bit, Kara following closely behind. “What do you want me to make for breakfast, (Y/N)? You need to eat and take your medicine.” 

Ugh. The pills. You never liked them to begin with and hated taking them in the mornings and nights. You try to get out from taking them a few times when you’d get yourself drunk at night, can’t give intoxicated people pills. “I’m not hungry, Kara... And I don’t want those pills. They don’t help me at all. Just like what (dad’s name) said, they’ll never help me and make me lose my creativity..”

“That’s not true, (Y/N). Even (therapist’s name) has told you in past sessions that it’ll take time for the pills to work... Your father is sick as well with his mental illness. He just wants to scare you..”

You scoff, hearing this the millionth time this month of the year, “You’re only saying that cause she told me that... I don’t want the pills and lose my creativity. I already lost my grandparents, I don’t want to lose the very thing that I’m good at and what keeps me alive.”

“You don’t have to eat, but at least take your pills for the morning. You’re supposed to take them with a meal, but you can at least take them with something to drink or crackers, (Y/N).” Kara walks up to you with the pill bottle in her hand.

You’re not going to go anywhere with your protest against the Android, so you nod, wanting to get the whole thing over with. Maybe the pills will help you in the long run with your (mental illness) you’ve been struggling with since you were a teenager. “Fine... I’ll take the pills. I don’t see the point of it all, but only to make you not tell her.” You take the pills and the glass of water from Kara, swallowing the pills with the water and took some of the crackers she placed on your desk. You were hungry, but you never really ate breakfast, afraid to throw it up like you always have in the past. But at least the crackers helped with your stomach a little bit. “Thanks, Kara...”

She smiled warmly, seeing the little process you’re making this morning. It’s not a lot, but at least it’s something. “You’re welcome, (Y/N). Are you going to skip your exercises today? You skipped doing them yesterday. Maybe doing some afterwards will help you with relaxing...”

You shrug, not in the mood to, but you suppose it won’t kill you to do a few exercises today. That’ll be a little accomplishment for the day. “I guess I won’t… I’ll do a few exercises after I’m finished writing a little bit... Why don’t you do a few chores whilst I write a bit?”

Hopefully, she would forget that you were also on suicide watch, after your last attempt to commit suicide after your grandparents died, you landed in the psych ward for the last seven months. It was Hell for you, but you’re glad that you’re finally out and in your own home again. But that never stopped you from still thinking of trying again in the future.

“You’re still on suicide watch, (Y/N)... (Therapist’s name) told me to watch you in the next seven months... I’m sorry, (Y/N)...”

“But there’s a camera in here that was installed by the psych ward to help you watch me in my office... I just want a little alone time, Kara. Surely you understand that..” You looked up at her, really wanting to be alone and not have the Android babysit you. You’re a grown-ass adult, you can do fine alone in your own office for 30 to 45 minutes. 

Kara looks at you, her LED lighting up yellow; processing what could happen if you’re left alone for such a short time. She decided to let it slide for just today and not report it to your therapist this afternoon. “Ok, (Y/N). Only for today for 45 minutes. I’ll be back from doing the chores that are needed to be done for the day. And I won’t tell (therapist’s name).”

Those words were music to your ears, that’s enough time to have alone time for you and your thoughts. You smiled widely at her, “Thank you, Kara.” You couldn’t hold your excitement of actually being allowed alone time for the first time in two months since you left the psych ward.

Something in her made her body flutter from your happiness; the first time she’s seen you happy since your grandparents died. She loves seeing you so happy, your big smile and laughs made her... Actually happy. She feels so warm and content when she sees you happy. It’s a weird feeling, knowing that she’s not supposed to feel this way, so she keeps her thoughts to herself. She knows you want a friend to talk to, and she can talk to you, but she’s not obviously the best type of “friend” for you. 

“You’re welcome, (Y/N). I’ll be back in a bit. Just know I am watching you from the tablet. I don’t want to regret this and sees you get sent back to the hospital.”

You nod, knowing that you wouldn't do it at this time whilst she’s watching you carefully on camera. “I understand. I won’t do anything whilst you’re gone. You have my word.” You raise your hand as if swearing to her on the Bible, smiling at her.

She looks at you with a puzzled look, the last time she “had your word” was the last time she saw you before calling the paramedics and you being shipped off. But, it’ll be easier to watch you since you’re in one room with a camera watching you. “Please don’t hurt yourself, (Y/N). I’ll be back in 45 minutes.”

You nod again, watching her leave your office to do some quick chores around the house; which they weren’t bad or hard to do, only to do the laundry, clean the sitting room a little bit of the trash you left from the night before, wash the dishes and make your bed. 

~~~

It only takes a good 37 minutes to do all the chores; especially for the laundry to get washed, dried and folded, since you barely wear different outfits in the week and your washer and drier takes no time. Every now and then she’d check the tablet to see what you’re doing in your office to only see you either talking to yourself or writing in either your notebook or typing on your computer. It gives her peace in her mind to know that you’re still doing ok without her personally watching you and not hurting yourself. She really doesn’t want you sent back to the psych ward again. Your therapist said that you’ll be in there longer if you’re sent back from another suicide attempt.

Kara walks back into your office, looking at the clock on the wall for it to be 11:07 a.m. and seeing you with your head on the desk, probably asleep. She wondered what you could be dreaming about. Hopefully, something pleasant to get away from the reality of the world that you live in.

“Papa...” You mumbled in your sleep, bringing Kara’s attention back to you. Your grandparents. That’s what you’d be dreaming about, it’s so simple yet a touchy subject to talk about at times unless reminding you what they wanted what’s best for you before they died to get you to do the simple things you didn’t want to do. 

Kara nudged you a little to wake you up, “(Y/N)... Wake up... It’s time to do your exercises... C’mon.” She helps you up as you groaned sleepily, following her to the sitting room to get ready to do your daily exercises.

“Ok, ok... I’ll do ‘em... Do you-” You looked up to see your exercising equipment ready for you to use. You just planned to do 20 sit-ups and half an hour on your treadmill. Just as you were getting ready to lie down to do your sit-ups, you hear a knock on the door and your head immediately went to the door. “Kara, do you know who was going to visit me today?”

Her attention went to the door as well, not knowing who it is on the other side of the door, walking closely towards you her voice was hushed as well as yours, “No. Nobody was scheduled to visit until next week from the psych ward and your psychologist for a monthly visit.”

You heard the familiar voice followed by a second knock on the door, “(Y/N). I know you’re in there. Open up.”

“Shit... What’s my dad doing here?”

[youremyonlyhope]

The Last Jedi

Here we go. The most controversial Star Wars movie ever (unless Rise of Skywalker has reviews that are just as mixed. I haven’t read any so I don’t know how it’s been received yet.) I actually really really enjoyed the Last Jedi, but I haven’t rewatched it since I saw it in theaters.

Also, unrelated, but literally just a few hours ago I met Oscar Isaac. I was doing a caroling event where I work, and he came by with his son to watch. During one of our breaks, he asked if his son could try the microphone and he held him up so he could whisper and sing stuff into the mic. It was adorable.

I seemed to be the only person who recognized who he was, though one of my co-workers said he had thought so too but he wasn’t sure until I confirmed it. So I went up to Oscar and said hi, asked if he was Oscar Isaac, shook his hand, and thanked him for coming. He says that it was great and that his son loves to sing.

I always joked that I’d bump into Oscar one day since he lives in Brooklyn, but I didn’t think it’d actually happen. And not while I’m wearing a Star Wars shirt and Star Wars socks (which he obviously couldn’t see since I was bundled up in a coat and a scarf and boots but whatever). And definitely not the day before I’m supposed to see the Rise of Skywalker.

I’m still freaking out oh my god. Ok. Time to rewatch the Last Jedi.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away... This was the first Star Wars movie I’d seen in theaters in like 12 years at this point. Seeing those words on a giant screen again was amazing. “Certain that Jedi Master Luke Skywalker will return and restore a spark of hope to the fight.” I love that line. I love any and all comparisons of Luke to hope. Yes I am biased. But also, restoring the spark is exactly he does in the end so yes, I love it. It’s just now hitting me that we’re picking up exactly where we left off. Having 1 night between the two movies is every different than having 2 years. ...Was that whatsherface from Game of Thrones, Catelyn’s creepy sister? (IMDB says yes) *BB8 beeps* “Happy beats here buddy, come on.” BB8 sort of said the thing! Also, OH MY GOD I JUST MET OSCAR ISAAC AND NOW HERE HE IS ON MY SCREEN WHAT THE HELL. Was today even real? Oh General Hugs. “Skinny guy. Kinda pasty.” Knowing Oscar and Domnhall are friends makes this better. Oh BB8. Very honorable of Billie Lourd’s Lieutenant Connix to make sure she’s in the last ship leaving the base so everyone else leaves before her. I forgot about the chain reaction of bombs destroying their own Resistance ships... You know, Paige dying while dropping the last of the bombs was already emotional. Rewatching it after you know she’s Rose’s sister makes it worse. First Binary Sunset of the movie. General Hugs has a very good upset face that makes me not feel bad for him at all. More like I want to punch him. Snoke can use the Force across the galaxy... forgot about that. I realized I didn’t mention this in the last one, but I remember the crew complaining that when they filmed the end of Force Awakens it was a cloudy day, but then when they went back to the island for TLJ it was super sunny. And now that it’s been pointed out, I noticed it immediately. Luke throwing the lightsaber. I can’t remember if I was spoiled for this but I feel like when I watched it, I wasn’t that thrown off by it. Something else I didn’t mention at the end of Force Awakens is that I LOVE this set. The stone houses are amazing. Oh porgs. Also, that porg looking into the lightsaber always gives me anxiety. The first words we hear Luke say in 40 years are an annoyed “Go away.” which at least is less whiney than the Tosche Station. Oh Chewie’s like “DUDE. WE NEED YOU.” “Wait... where’s Han?” Awww. Throwing in a little Vader’s theme in there. More temper tantrums. People getting mad at Luke calling a lightsaber a laser sword (in a purposefully mocking way) even though George Lucas himself called them that in some interviews. Yes, it’s not a laser sword, but Luke is trying to show how ridiculous he thinks the idea of him taking down everything is by calling a lightsaber that. I remember being like “Luke... no let’s not just milk that thing... oh ew” I do love the shot of Luke using the giant stick to cross to the other cliff and kill the fish. God that’s a steep hill. “No one’s from nowhere.” “Jakku.” “Alright that is pretty much nowhere.” That’s funny. “It’s time for the Jedi to end.” Remember when that line in the trailer made the fandom literally break down? I love knowing that behind the scenes, Carrie had to slap Oscar a billion times. Also, I do not blame Leia at all. So many people were mad about Leia and Holdo demoting Poe, but Poe was too fearless in that moment. Yes, he destroyed the ship and it worked out, but they lost so many people and they already didn’t have many to begin with. It was worth it, but at a very high cost. So I don’t blame her. Heyyyyyy it’s that girl from that Black Mirror episode and what was that other show? Chewing Gum or something? (IMDB says yes it’s Michaela Coel) See and Poe’s already learning a little by asking permission. Of course... later on he doesn’t ask permission... but whatever. Leia’s Theme... causing me pain. Oh, Kylo didn’t kill his mom. We’re supposed to be happy about that? The bar is on the ground. The utter horror I felt the first time the control room was destroyed and Leia was pulled into space. Oh I love the moment when Leia flies in. Because I’d heard that in the books and comics, we get to explore Leia’s Force abilities and stuff but we don’t get it in the movies besides “I feel that Luke’s in trouble.” Which sucks, because she is the “other” if Luke didn’t work out, so she’s just as strong as Luke if she got trained. They should have just trained both kids honestly, why did they pick the boy? Not saying Obi-Wan and Yoda are sexist... but they’re probably sexist. Also, foreshadowing. I actually noticed the hologram of the ship and Leia flying through this time. Oh Chewie. I like the porg that literally has his jaw dropped in horror. Knowing now that the dice were kind of a symbol of Kira (was that Emilia Clarke’s character?) and Han’s relationship makes me not like them as much. Still, cute throwback that they’re still on the Falcon. We can just ignore they weren’t there in Force Awakens (I kept an eye out and didn’t see them) The way Luke laughed when he said “R2!” I just... my heart. “Nothing can make me change my mind” *R2 plays the Leia hologram* I literally just went “AWWWW” out loud because I forgot that that’s why R2 started playing it. Oh my heart. That hurt the first time. Luke standing over Rey, but offering to help her. Parallels. Oh Admiral Ackbar. I love Holdo’s dress. I love the draping. Someone teach me how to make it. “Thank you for making me aware.” Yeah Poe, she already knows. Stop mansplaining. This is literally a case of mansplaining, why would Poe think he’d have to explain to a commander that there’s no fuel? Yeah it’s a little harsh, but is Holdo wrong? All of these fanboys complain about Canto Bight, but forget that it was Poe’s idea. Then they go and say Holdo was too mean should have put Poe in charge. Guys. Poe’s impulsive. We love him, but he’s the ultimate Gryffindor with no fear and will just do anything without considering consequences. I do wish Holdo had been more open like “I have a plan. You don’t need to know all the parts of it. Just let me do what I need to, ok?” instead of “Just follow my orders.” but still. Oh poor Rose. “Doing talking....” Oh she’s so cute. “I’ve had to stun 3 people trying to use this escape pod.” We love a girl who can fight. Yeah. Once again. Not mad at Rose. Finn does have some selfish tendencies, he’s well meaning but ultimately selfish (or at least, only thinking of Rey). So I do not blame Rose for stunning him.

And now I will take a nap since I have to go to a show tonight. And then I will finish the last 3/4-ish of the movie when I get home later.

Annnnd I’m back!

See. Rose has good reason to be mad at deserters. Ok so it wasn’t Poe’s idea to go to the Star Destroyer it was Finn’s. I will give him that. But still Poe went along with it. “That... wasn’t exactly my...” Oh 3PO. I wish Maz had had a bigger scene. More Lupita please. I have one question: from what angle is this hologram filmed? And how does the camera follow her? I guess it’s multiple hologram cameras, but still, it followed her as she rolled and ran around. Also, did Finn call Maz or did Poe call her? Because as far as we know, only Finn knows her. It seemed like they both had the idea to call her, but that Poe had it first. Did Finn tell Poe about Maz? I’m glad they showed Finn handing Poe the binary tracker thing, since for a second I was like “What if Rey had popped up next to Finn on the Star Destroyer?” I’m glad Rey’s first instinct is to shoot Kylo. “Can you see my surroundings?” “You’re gonna pay for what you did.” “I can’t see yours.” Why do I remember that line so vividly? Why does it make me feel so unsettled? Rey, my sweet Rey, I wish you had just told Luke that you saw Kylo. I love Luke’s explanation of the Force. And him messing with Rey was funny. I love when Rey’s reaching out and feeling life, death, peace, violence, etc. And I love Luke saying the Force doesn’t belong to the Jedi, because it doesn’t. The Jedi failed years ago. “You didn’t even try to stop yourself.” Luke’s horrified. But also, Rey’s just like an extreme version of Luke. Yoda knew that Luke’s emotions could make him vulnerable to the dark side, Rey’s already vulnerable. Yeah, I don’t blame Luke for being scared of Rey after he feels like this is Ben all over again. Oh my god. I love the porg that has a metal piece over its head. That actually made me laugh out loud. Poor Chewie.

I just had to refresh tumblr because my draft wasn’t saving. It brought me back to my dashboard. Where there was a spoiler for the new movie and it wasn’t tagged. PLEASE tag your spoilers people.

The water hitting Kylo still confuses me. Say what you will about the Canto Bight plot... the costumes are AMAZING. The costumes literally make the whole side plot worth it to me. Literally I was just in awe by all the costumes during every single scene. And the set! The set’s fantastic too! I literally just paused every single second to take in all of the costumes. Do I care if the Canto Bight trip ended up pointless? Nope! Because it gave me some of Star Wars’ best costumes. Oh... to be an extra in the Canto Bight scene... Just show up... And put on a beautiful outfit... And do nothing else but pretend to drink, talk, and gamble... That’s the dream. Oh hi Mark Hamill! That was cute that they let him voice that little thing. I remember noticing the thing and being like “...is he important?” and nope, it’s just Mark doing an extra voice. Oh I love the Fathiers. Aww and it’s the little Force sensitive boy. I have thoughts about that kid that I can get into later. The way BB8 jingles with the coins. I love it.

Rey: *Does a move with her stick* Rey: *Does the same exact move with the lightsaber* Fanboys: She’s too good too fast! Mary Sue!

As I said throughout all of the Force Awakens, she’s just applying the skills she already had. If anything, a lightsaber’s easier since it’s half the length and she doesn’t have to worry about the back of it hitting her. LOL, remember when we thought this shot was an epic shot of Luke training her? Good times. Oh that poor fish nun. Everything Luke says about the Jedi is true (also did I not say they failed earlier in the post? Luke agrees with me). Rey’s right that a Jedi got Ani to come back from the dark side, but the Jedi’s system enabled him to turn in the first place. Soooooo yeah. Oh Luke. Don’t blame yourself. Kylo was already basically gone. Sure, seeing his uncle standing over him with a lightsaber definitely didn’t help... but it’s not the only thing that made him turn. Who is this captain of the medical ship? He looks familiar. (IMDB says he’s Danny Sapani. I probably recognized him from the Crown) Oh BB8. Finn, did you learn nothing from Rey? Put the cover back on the vent! Awww the Fathiers have such sad eyes... I love the Resistance ring. Can I buy one? Ok. The shot of the bubble egg lady singing felt like it was much longer the first time, but it’s really only a split second. I. LOVE. THE. CANTO. BIGHT. SET. I know it’s a real town in like Italy or somewhere near the Mediterranean. I want to go. I love it. I love that the first thing Luke does when he decides to use the Force again is to seek out Leia. Oh poor Adam became a meme after this. He just has a very wide and bulky body, ok? God Luke looks so scary in Kylo’s flashback. “Let the past die. Kill it if you have to.” That reflection scene is so visually stunning. So in a way, it’s like Luke is failing Rey like he failed Ben. He’s not helping her in the way she needs, so she’s being lured by the dark side instead. I love the walls falling around Luke. “Did you do it? Did you create Kylo Ren?” Rey, he already told you earlier that he believes it’s his fault, so the answer from him is yes. I can’t remember if we hear this story of Luke and Kylo one more time after this or not. “Then he’s our last hope.” Ok ew. No. Kylo is not allowed to be compared to hope. Only Luke, Leia, or Obi-Wan can be. Oh for a second I thought that torch was a lightsaber. YODA!!!!! I think I had been spoiled for Yoda showing up. It was definitely still exciting though. “The sacred Jedi texts!” Oh Luke. Oh memes. Not as whiney as I remembered. “But that library contained nothing that the girl Rey does not already possess.” Because Yoda knows she stole the books. Oh Yoda. I love Yoda. Oh Rose. Ok, so I will give it to Poe that at this moment it doesn’t seem like Holdo has a good plan. Abandoning ship isn’t necessarily cowardly, but on the surface it does seem like it puts them in more danger. Literally earlier today I watched a video about the layout of the Millennium Falcon, and the escape pods were mentioned. And I thought to myself, wow that must be something from the novels since we’ve definitely never seen that in the movies. Welp... I was wrong... Rey’s in one now. I was about to be like “Do they not care that an escape pod just docked?” before I saw Kylo. LOL the iron coming down like a ship. I feel like I remember being completely terrified when Rey stepped in front of Snoke. Oh BB8. Bumping into stuff. I remember being super relieved that DJ (has he told us this is his name yet? I can’t remember) gave back the medallion. Captain Phasma! Hey girl hey! Leia shooting Poe is still funny to me. Also Lieutenant Billie Connix is smart.  I love the scene of Holdo and Leia saying goodbye. Also, Holdo’s purple hair with her bright blue eyes is super striking. Good choice. Snoke puts down the lightsaber. Unknowingly sealing his fate. Literally when Snoke reveals he connected their minds, I was like OF COURSE. Because the whole time I’m like neither of them are strong enough to do this. “She was more interested in protecting the light than she was seeming like a hero.” See. And that’s the flaw in both Poe and Finn. And Rey to an extent. They’re thinking about the big picture, but in context of smaller things like seeming like a hero, saving Rey, saving Kylo, etc. But Holdo’s thinking of only the big picture. I knew DJ betrayed them, I just forgot how badly.

And here’s another annoyance (which I was sorta trying to touch on earlier). Everyone hates the Canto Bight plot, yet they complain about Holdo trying to take charge. If Poe just let Holdo take charge and ignored Finn and Rose’s idea, then her plan would have been a complete success. No Canto Bight, no DJ to betray them, all the transports make it to Crait unnoticed, and the First Order eventually destroys a ship that’s empty except for Holdo. They complain about Holdo, but don’t think about the fact that Holdo could have prevented another plot they hated if the main characters had just listened to her.

And then Snoke hits Rey and literally puts the lightsaber back to where it will kill him. Ok literally I just misread a caption that said “Lord Vader” as “Lord Voldemort” and I was very confused. Taking a second to say that I love this set of Snoke’s throne room. Been thinking it forever, but Kylo picking up the lightsaber off the ground and seeing the reflection in the smooth red floor is amazing. Kylo igniting the lightsaber through Snoke is amazing. Also, I typed “Ben igniting” before literally freezing for a second and being like “...ok that’s a lot to unpack” I guess when he does something good my brain thinks of him as Ben instead of Kylo. ALSO, arm #16 and #17, I love that Snoke’s arms were cut off too in true Star Wars fashion. And I am VERY excited to see this fight scene again. I told myself not to pause at all during the Kylo and Rey team up fight, but I paused literally a second into it because Binary Sunset yes.

And my idiot brother and my mom are texting in the family group chat so it’s popping up on my screen throughout this scene. Ugh.

All of these red knight weapons are so cool. And I forgot about the one that gets chopped up... Oh my god one is a sword that transforms into a whip. LOVE. IT. And I love the quick lightsaber ignite through the head. Love it. Woah how is there still 44 minutes? I remember this battle being much closer to the end. I was wondering when the red walls went away, but I rewinded and saw that they had been slowly burning away after Rey made something hit them. Nice touch.

Ugh my brother and mom will not stop texting.

“You have no place in this story.” Wow Kylo, harsh. Oh shoot I forgot about the lightsaber breaking until they started their Force tug of war with it. I’d always wondered what would happen if someone lightsped through something... I want to say that I realized what she was doing before they told us, but now I realize that they basically told us what she would do when the First Order guy said “they’re preparing to hyperspeed.” so I guess I just caught on to the obvious hints.

God that moment still gives me chills. The silence. The way it sort of goes black and white. The multiple angles. So good.

I know for a fact that I spent the rest of the movie from this point on with my hands over my mouth in a constant stake of shock/fear/anxiety. Oh BB8. Some people thought this was ridiculous. But I had just spent the last few months rewatching the prequels before seeing this, and compared to the stuff R2 does, BB8 clumsily controlling a walker is nothing. Oh how I love Gwendoline Christie. I FORGOT THAT WE SAW HER EYE IN THE MASK. I hope Phasma survived. She’s so awesome. Ok my quality is like horrendous right now so I’m gonna refresh. LOL I FORGOT ABOUT GENERAL HUGS NEARLY ATTEMPTING TO KILL KYLO. Oh I forgot how much I love Crait as a set location. OH AND THE ICE DOG THINGS! LOVE THEM! Poe petting BB8 when he comes back kills me. I like those space age two person laptops. “People believe in Leia.” *Binary Sunset plays* My heart. Ok for a second I was like “This first person camera is like a war movie” and then it turns and we see the trench and I’m like “...ok... ok fine but that was very literal.” The red footsteps. Just... guys this set is so AMAZING. Ugh, these red streaks of dust behind them are so amazing. And when Finn passes in front of the camera, it gets covered in the dust and blurs part of the lens. Just like the Rathtar goo in the Force Awakens. I wonder if that’s going to be like... the thing of the sequels. One shot that has the camera lens partially covered by something. Also, I just wasted time trying to figure out if there’s an official name for that or not... oh well. The winding stripes left behind as they weave around... just... amazing. YEAH! GO CHEWIE! GO REY! Oh my god I forgot about the porg roaring. “Oh, they HATE that ship!” I’M DEAD. Look at the salt and how it forms the crystals in the trench. I love it. I FORGOT ABOUT THIS SHOT OF THE CAVE FULL OF THE RED SALT. I LOVE THIS SO MUCH. I remember when the trailer had the first shot of the gorilla walkers, and I didn’t notice at first that there were normal AT-ATs next to them, and then I realized these things were twice as big as AT-ATs and I was horrified. See, and now Poe has learned that you can’t always be a hero and is making a good decision. I forgot about Finn’s speeder literally melting as he gets closer. I don’t understand the people who were mad that Rose stopped Finn. I for one was HORRIFIED at just the thought of Finn dying this way and thankful she stopped him. “That’s how we’re gonna win. Not fighting what we hate, saving what we love.” The kiss is pointless but I love the line and sentiment behind it. Oh god. Ok. Here come the emotions. Binary Sunset is playing. I was a wreck. And a little of Han and Leia’s Love Theme as she sees the dice. I remember actually noticing that in the theaters and half-sobbing. Oh god the forehead kiss. Oh and he winks at 3PO as he walks by. My heart. This is the specific shot of the gorilla walkers and the AT-ATs in a line that freaked me out. That shot of Luke standing up against all the First Order walkers and ships. Amazing. That shoulder brush though. Kylo’s so dumb, he literally just watched that lightsaber get destroyed, he HELPED destroy it. He should have known something was up, it couldn’t have been repaired that quickly. Purposeful shot of Luke’s feet not moving the salt. That Matrix back bend though. “I will have killed the last Jedi.” He said the title. Also, is that the only time it’s said? Because they say it a lot in Force Awakens but I don’t think so yet in this movie.. “And I will not be the last Jedi.” Ok so now it’s said again by Luke. Purposeful shot of Kylo’s shoe leaving a footprint as he runs to Luke. I’m pretty sure I probably shrieked when he tried to slice Luke in half.

I just now remembered that I’d actually kind of wondered if he’d be a Force projection or something when he first showed up. Because I’d just watched Return of the Jedi like a week earlier and saw Obi-Wan do it, so I wondered if Luke was doing it too. Especially when Poe said Luke was distracting the First Order. It passed my mind and was confirmed when Kylo couldn’t hit him. And here’s where I started to feel like my world was crumbling...

Oh god. My eyes are wet. It hurts. But when I watched it the first time, I really felt like my world was absolutely falling a part and ending forever while I watched Luke die. With the stupid binary sunset in front of him just like when he was a teenager and when he was a baby. One of the first things he ever saw was the binary sunset. I was like “This is beautiful, but that doesn’t mean I’m not completely in pain and dying.” That shot from above of Kylo with the stormtroopers, mirroring a shot from the prequels of Ani. Nice. So do they still have that connection even if Snoke’s dead?

HEY! Hey. Those dice were still visible to Kylo even after Luke was dead... was Leia Force projecting them to Kylo? It wouldn’t take as much work as doing it to everyone else at once from lightyears away. One person, your son, would be easier. So maybe... maybe Leia’s the one continuing the projection of the dice. I’m gonna stick with that theory thanks.

Awww BB8 asked Rey about his antenna, just like when they first met. Remember when people were like “Are Poe and Rey gonna be a thing?!?!?” and of course I’d much prefer that over Reylo thanks. The books! Somehow, that obvious shot of the books goes over so many people’s heads. So many complaints about the books getting burned, when they literally show us that Rey saved them. I had never noticed the bunks in the Millennium Falcon either until I saw that video earlier, and I’m glad I got to actually see one in use since Rose is sleeping in one.

Oh GOD the entirety of the Resistance can fit on the Millennium Falcon... that is NOT good.

I LOVE the scene of the kids retelling the story of Luke. I must have already gone in depth about this 2 years ago, but I love it. Luke became a legend in the end. He didn’t necessarily want to be one, but he’s become one. It was exactly what was in the opening scroll, he restored the spark of hope. That subtle use of the Force by that little boy. With Binary Sunset playing. And I love that last shot of him holding the broom up like a lightsaber.

I nearly forgot that they put in “In loving memory of our princess, Carrie Fisher” at the end. That’s what got me to finally cry. 40 straight minutes of covering my mouth in anxiety, then feeling like my world was crashing down around me as Luke died. Having it dedicated to Carrie made me just start sobbing so hard. Watch that happen again tomorrow.

I remember when I left the theater, at first I was like “What if the boys is Rey’s brother?!” but then... I realized that a huge point of the movie went over my head for a second there.

The fandom got so caught up in figuring out who Rey’s parents are, whether it’s Obi-Wan or Luke or Leia or even Palpatine, that they were mad when Kylo said they were no one. But like... guys... not every single Force user is related to the Skywalkers or anyone else we already know. There were hundreds of Jedi in the prequels, because anyone can be Force sensitive. Obi-Wan’s parents were nobody, Qui-Gon’s parents were nobody, Mace’s parents were nobody. They didn’t come from long lines of Force users (at least in movie lore), BECAUSE THE JEDI WEREN’T SUPPOSED TO HAVE KIDS. The Skywalkers aren’t even a long line, it’s just 3 generations at this point. So literally none of the Jedi of the past came from powerful Force users (or at least from ones who got the chance to become Jedi) since that literally goes against the code.

Luke found at least 11 other Force sensitive kids to train alongside Ben, their parents were all definitely nobodies since he’s the last Jedi. Ben is an anomaly, Luke and Leia are anomalies, the Jedi don’t have kids! The fandom got so caught up in figuring out who Rey could be related to, that they forgot that for millennia the individual Jedi were not related to anyone.

Anyone can be Force sensitive. Anyone can be a Jedi. Rey is an example of that. That little boy is an example of that. That’s why I love that the little Force sensitive boy was the final shot of the movie. He was meant to reassure and remind us after the Rey parentage reveal that anyone can end up Force sensitive. They don’t need a famous/powerful parent. They can come from anywhere and be anyone. And I love that that’s the final note of this movie.

Some people were not reassured. Some people couldn’t handle the idea that Rey’s powerful just because she’s Rey, not because she’s someone’s daughter. She HAS to be related to someone to be that powerful, right? But every Jedi before her who was just as powerful wasn’t related to anyone, so why does she have to be?

ANYWAY! I was actually worried over the last 2 years that I’d rewatch The Last Jedi and not like it as much as I did in theaters. I still like it a lot. Even the Canto Bight scenes get redeemed by the costumes and the set being so amazing. But I love the message of don’t be a hero, this is bigger than just you. And I love the message that even if you’re “nobody” from “nowhere” you could still be Force Sensitive and you could still be a Jedi. I love Luke’s send off, I love that he does end up reigniting the spark and being a beam of hope again. I love it.

And I’m excited to see the Rise of Skywalker tomorrow.

[thing-you-do-with-that-thing]

Full Attention

Characters: Reader (Y/N), Kit Harington, Kit’s Family (mentioned briefly)

Pairing: Kit x Reader

Warnings:  Being forgotten on one’s birthday (cause that must suck), implied smut, mention of cheating (not Kit), mention of past bad relationships. It is not as bad as in it sound. It is quite fluffy.    

Wordcount: 2000ish

A/N: This is my very first time to write Kit Harington and I have no idea how I did here. I hope someone out there will like even though I am mostly a SPN blog.

This is my entry for @deals-with-demons’s 200 follower celebration and she wanted me to mark which fandom. I guess it falls under Game of Thrones but it is a rp fic. My prompt was: “Oh you poor, poor baby.”

Thanks to the wicked awesome @blacktithe7 for betaing this for me. I would be lost without her as a friend and editor. Love you Erin.

***My fics are not to be saved nor posted on any other sites without my express written permission.***

You had told Kit you had an audition, and he had believed you because you had never lied to him before. At least not until now. You hated lying to him, even if it was to surprise him. Ever since you had met Kit, he had instantly become your best friend. Someone you could laugh and share your tears with. Someone you knew would always be there for you no matter what. You had know Kit for the past 5 years, but it hadn’t been until last year that he had finally kissed you on  New Years. To be completely honest, you hadn’t realised that you even wanted him to until his lips met yours. You completely froze up when he kissed you. Yes it was midnight, but you had expected a hug from your best friend and not a kiss from your future boyfriend. Right up until that moment you had been as unaware of his feelings for you, as of your own for him. Not until his arms were wrapped around you and you melted into his kiss. You felt as if the world stopped turning, and as if all the fireworks were solely for the two of you.

Since that moment, you had never wanted him to stop kissing you. He was no longer just your best friend. He was your lover and your world.

Trusting him hadn’t been easy in the beginning. You hadn’t had the best taste in men up until that moment, and truthfully, the tears you had shared with him prior to your kiss had been caused by other men. Men that had stood you up. Men that had cheated on you or made you feel as if you weren’t important.

Kit made you feel loved and safe even though you had been reluctant to trust him at first. Not because you hadn’t as his friend, but because your past romantic relation had taught you differently. He had been more patient with you than you had deserved. While you had blamed him for everything under the sun, things you deep down knew he would never do to you. Kit had never raised his voice at you, no matter how unreasonable you had been. He had just waited you out. He had waited for you to realise what you were saying, for you to break down crying in his arms as he whispered soothing words into your ear.

Slowly he had made you stop doubting him and your relationship. He was not any of your exes and it was not fair to keep holding your past against him. Kit had made it more than clear how much he liked having you wake up in his bed. He liked having you stay at his place for days, wearing his shirts and old sweatpants. Watching movies, cooking and laughing together, or crawling through his kitchen window drunk off your ass at 4 am in the morning because your boyfriend had forgotten his key.

He never made you doubt how much he loved having you around or how he wanted you with him all the time. He had just never actually said the words. Still, there was no doubt in your mind this was the right decision. Your surprise for him would be the best gift you knew how to give him.

Kit’s parents house were buzzing with life when you got there, but there was no actual sign of your boyfriend anywhere. You searched the house for a good few minutes, spending some time politely talking to his mom before sneaking upstairs to check his old room. You smiled as you realized your suspicion was right. He tended to retrive into himself when the world got too much. You knew how much he had loved his room as a kid, so this was the first place you had thought to look for him.

Your boyfriend had hid himself from all the commotion, sitting on his childhood bed reading a book, only looking up when he heard the sound of your voice.

“There you are,” you smiled, walking up to the bed and lowering yourself down next to him. Your heart skipped a beat just like it always did when his chocolate brown eyes found yours. No matter the situation, he always looked at you like you were the most important person in the world. He always gave you his undivided attention no matter what he had been doing, and you loved him for it. He always saw you; all of you.

“What are you doing up here? It’s your birthday. You should be with your family,” you gently scolded him, and he sent you an almost shy smile.

“Yeah well, it is also the day after Christmas. My entire family always descends on the house, and I am always kinda forgotten,” Kit mumbled almost sadly, staring down at the mattress between you. He looked like a wet puppy stuck on the outside of a glass door.

You tried to hold back you laughter, but a grin still slide across his face. He didn’t notice your amusement at first and he probably wouldn’t have if you had just been able to refrain from teasing him. You just couldn’t. He was pouting like a small child, and he was still your best friend. You couldn’t help but have a dig at him, even though this was clearly a sore spot for him.

“Oh you poor, poor baby,” you lovingly mocked him, making him look up at you in surprise. “Are you not getting enough attention?”

Kit faked a sulk, but you could clearly see the smile playing in the dark eyes you loved so much. “I never get enough attention,” he pouted, making you laugh and fling yourself into his arms. You wrapped your arms around his neck, knocking him onto his back with you on top of him, taking him completely by surprise. You kissed him deeply and passionately, loving the feel of his arms wrapping around your waist, as he started kissing you back.

You were both panting when you pulled back. Kit looked up at you with a curious glisten in his eye and a smile gracing his gorgeous features.

“You have my attention, Mr. Harington,” you teased in a sultry voice, making Kit laugh before letting his face fall back into his fake pouting look.

“Yeah, well, you left me this morning. So clearly you forgot my birthday baby girl,” Kit fake grumbled, making you roll his eyes at him.

“I didn’t forget you dumbass, and I didn’t have an audition,” you confessed, pushing yourself off the bed, grabbing his hand, pulling your surprised boyfriend after you.

“You didn’t? Then why did you…” The hurt in his voice was slightly more real this time, and it tore at your heart.

“I was getting a surprise ready for you. I’m sorry I lied, but I needed a few hours to…” you began babbling, but were stopped by Kit pulling you into his arms, softly kissing your lips before smiling tenderly at you.

“I trust you,” he whispered, and a big smile spread across your face. You grabbed your now laughing boyfriend’s hand, pulling him through the house and towards your car.

Kit had tried to get where you were going out of you, but you had steadfastly refused to tell him as he begged, sulked, and whined next to you, making you laugh as you manoeuvred through the London traffic.

“My apartment, Y/N/N?” Kit raised an eyebrow at you as you pulled up infront of his building. If he was disappointed, he hid it well. Instead, he smiled, and you knew your excitement must have shown when you nodded before jumping from the car and running around to his side to take his hand, almost dragging him towards the door.

“Alright, alright. I’m coming,” Kit laughed, making you pull a face at him before you stepped aside, letting him unlock the door.

“You could have used your own key you know?” Kit raised an eyebrow at you, but you just shrugged, letting him walk through the door and into his apartment. Only, it didn’t look exactly the way he had left it.

Your pictures were on his walls, and a few of his furnishings were traded with yours. Some of your trinkets were on the surfaces of the living room, and your pillows were spread across his couch.

You smiled as you saw Kit freeze up, taking in the sight, before slowly turning to face you. “What’s this, Y/N?” Kit asked quietly, but with clear hope in his voice, and you beamed at him.

“I know 30 is a big deal. I wasn’t sure what to give you. I wanted it to be something you would remember. So I decided to give you me. If you will have me,” you explained starting to feel a bit nervous, suddenly unsure if this had been what he really wanted. Kit hadn’t said a word. He was just staring at you as you rambled. “I didn’t throw any of your things out. The are at a storage place in…”

You didn’t get further before his arms were wrapped around you, and his lips silenced you with a sweet, tender kiss. A kiss that was so filled with love and affection it almost brought a tear to your eye before Kit pulled back with a teasing glimmer in his eye.

“Giving me you, are you? Does that mean all of you by chance?” Kit teased, never letting you out of his arms or letting his eyes leave your face. You felt a blush creep into your cheeks. You had been together for almost a year, and he still made you giggle and blush bright red like a schoolgirl talking to her first crush at times.

You had had this moment planned since way before Christmas, but actually doing it was nerve-wrecking. Usually you were not the one in charge of your adult moments. Well you had been a few times and you knew Kit didn’t mind one bit. The thought of what you were about to do made you blush even harder before you manned up and regained your composure. You bit your lip as you opened your jacket, revealing what you were wearing to him, or not wearing as the case might be. Kit’s dark eyes instantly turned almost black as his eyes roamed your very light dressed body. You let him take in the site of you for a few seconds before you let the jacked fall to the ground. You turned away from him, making your way towards your bedroom, turning in the doorway to see Kit standing in the same spot with his mouth slightly a gab.

You giggle, making a come her motion with your finger as you leaned against the doorframe, and Kit was on you in seconds, hungrily kissing your breath away, and it took all the willpower you possessed to pull away from him to speak.

“All of me, Kit. Forever, or as long as you will have me,” you promised him, and his face lit up in the sexiest smile you had ever seen. An amused, surprised squeal fell from your lips, when Kit’s hands closed around your waist and lifted you off the ground before throwing you onto the bed. Before you could even comprehend what had happened, he was on top of you, sweetly kissing your lips for a few seconds, only stopping long enough to make you a promise that rang through your head as he made love to you that afternoon in you new home.

“I’m never letting you go, Y/N/N.”

Kit Tag Team

@blacktithe7 @curliesallovertheplace @adriellej @nikolanna @my-youngworld88 @kitharingtonfanfiction @talkficstome @ftsgerald @imaginesheaven @mrsbarry-allen-1031 @macchimacchi-chan @supernaturallymarvellous @evansrogerskitten @a-girl-who-loves-disney @sleep4eternity @ashiewesker @breexwrites @14readwritedraw96 @mytestamentofyouth @audasia25

[fandomsandfeminism]

When Yuri!!! on Ice was first beginning, it was compared endlessly to Free! Iwatobi Swim Club, but now that both shows are completed, does that comparison hold up?

Text Transcript under the cut

Hey, so do yall remember in the build up to the Spring 2013 season when Kyoto Animation announced that THE SWIMMING ANIME was going to be a full series and the internet, particularly Tumblr, lost its collective shit? I do. I definitely do.

And I’ll be honest, I watched both seasons of Free! Iwatobi Swim Club, and I enjoyed it immensely. I’d probably enjoy the movie too if it EVER GOT A NORTH AMERICAN RELEASE. (Come on Crunchyroll, funimation. Why are yall like this?)  I liked the pretty boys and the pretty animation and the fun opening and ending and holy. Shit. the fanservice.

So when, in the build up to the Fall 2016 season, Studio Mappa announced Yuri!!! On Ice, I was pretty excited. It seemed to promise a lot of the same things that Free had: Cute boy sports anime with fanservice and pretty animation. It promised to be like Free! But the Pool is Frozen, the Boys are back in town 2.0 Winter edition. Hell yeah.

Now, those qualities don’t inherently mean that I was going to love the show. Heck, 2016 Summer’s attempt with Cheer Boys was boring as hell. I don’t think anyone even watched it.

But never, really, in a thousand years, did I think that Yuri!!! On Ice was going to be BETTER than Free. But, let’s be honest. Yuri!!! on Ice is better than Free. Much, much, better than Free.

*Please note: Spoilers ahoy!*

So here is my thesis, if you will:   Free! Iwatobi Swim Club and Yuri!!! On Ice, despite their obvious similarities, have 3 very distinct differences which cause Yuri!!! on Ice to be more enjoyable and satisfying for me personally: their treatment of same-sex attraction, the development and variety of their secondary characters (particularly women), and the maturity and realism of their emotional depth.

How the shows treat same-sex attraction. For this section, we need to talk about Queer Baiting. What it is, how to spot it, and why, as a queer fan, it kinda sucks.

So definition first. In general, queer baiting is a term used to describe an attempt by canon creators to woo queer fans and/or slash fans by hinting at LGBT+ characters and/or relationships but with no intention of actually making it canon. This is done either by introducing a character who is coded as queer in some meaningful way, or by hinting that two same-sex characters might be attracted to each other but never confirming these things. Worst yet, these HINTS tend to be explained away as jokes, as humor. Often, instead of getting same sex couples, the idea of same sex couples is made into a joke.

Now, the term Queer Baiting comes from a very western context. It is a concept developed in the West to talk about western media, and there is some debate about whether or not that specific term can be applicable to anime and eastern media. Especially since a lot of anime that engage in this aren’t trying to bait QUEER fans, but are specifically trying to bait straight women who like watching hot guys make out. (But then, that could be argued as being partly true in the west as well.) Regardless of whether or not the specific term Queer Baiting is the best to use here, or if we should go with Fan Baiting, or some other alternative, the underlying concept is the same: A show deliberately hints at a queer relationship and then never delivers in order to appeal to a wide variety of fans but lacks real representation.  

So, does Free! Iwatobi Swim Club bait? Hell yes it does. It very intentionally seems aimed at Japanese Fujioshi, Japanese straight female fans who like slash and yaoi, and, to an extent, queer fans, who are incredibly interested or invested in seeing same-sex relationships in media. (There’s a whole conversation to be had about fujioshi culture and how it objectifies queer men, but that’s for another day.)

And let me be clear: Baiting doesn’t inherently make a show bad. If nothing else, it can lead to a very vibrant fan community. And as a queer anime fan, I fall for this shit hook line and sinker every damn time. I’m basically helpless when it comes to this stuff.

But make no mistake, baiting isn’t a good thing. It isn’t progressive writing. It isn’t diverse writing. It isn’t writing that helps positive minority representation in media. The goal of baiting it to titillate fans with emotional fan service, but not actually commit to writing lgbt+ characters.

And make no mistake, anime as a whole does not have a GREAT track record with representing lgbt+ people in positive ways. There are exceptions, naturally, but as a whole, there isn’t a lot there that is positive and well done. And if you are invested in seeing that kind of representation, constant baiting can be frustrating and disheartening.

So Free! Baits. The characters flirt and look at each other longingly and splash in the water together and take random spur of the moment vacations to Australia to meet each other’s foster families and all their emotional stakes are tied to each other and nothing. Ever. happens.  

Yuri!!! on Ice though?

Yuri!!! On Ice came through for us. I think the fandom is still a little bit in shock. I’m in shock. Because like...this shit doesn’t happen. It just doesn’t happen. But here it is! It happened. They flirted. And blushed. And kissed. And rings. RINGS. YALL. ENGAGEMENT RINGS. And holy shit, the pair skate?!

We have professional figure skaters tweeting about this show and the creator talking about how Yuuri and Victor can’t live without each other for real, and how so many fans got on twitter to thank her for the kiss in episode 7 because this kind of thing just….never happens.

I...I’m sorry. It’s just so, so incredibly rare for us to get healthy positive depictions of same-sex relationships outside of the very narrow genres of Boys love (and Girls love) in anime (which can and do have their own issues). And while Yuri!!! on Ice may not always be EXPLICIT with the romantic elements of the show all the time, they are far from subtle. The repeated declarations of love, how Yuuri is skating to show his love, their love, how meeting Victor has taught him about love, how Yuuri has taught Victor about life and love, only the most hard hearted adamant could try to no-homo this pair. And since the finale strongly implied a sequel, and Kubo has said she would like to continue the story, I think it’s safe to hope for even more romantic development in the future. (Like….a wedding? Please?)

So for those of us for whom seeing depictions of same-sex relationships done well is very important, this is like, a big deal. That’s not to say that Yuri!!! on Ice has perfect same sex relationship representation and is the sole standard bearer without flaw. It certainly has pros and cons, and has it’s own place within the Japanese media landscape. But it’s certainly good, and certainly more satisfying than Free! For me as a queer fan.

But it is not all I’m going to talk about. Baiting VS canon may be the most obvious, and important, difference between these shows, it is not the only one.

2. Side characters! Are like, a thing! There are girls in this show too!

Quick! Name all the female characters you can from Free!

Who all could you think of? The teacher- Ms. Amakata, and Kou, right? Maybe you remembered that Kou has that friend, but I bet you forgot her name (It’s Chigusa). Maybe, like, the wife that Rin stayed with in Australia? Makoto’s little sister? It’s pretty scarce. 2 secondary characters, and maybe 3 tertiary ones.

And it is understandable why this is. It’s a cute boy sports anime. Any amount of time we spend giving Kou screen time is time we aren’t watching Nagisa and Rei flirt. Makoto, being total husband material, is the only one of the boys who we really see their family. Rin and Kou rarely interact. Nagisa’s family is only talked about but never seen. Haru? Was ...born from the ocean, I guess.

Amakata and Kou do have personality, and I love them. But they are only two secondary characters.  Makoto’s sister only exists to characterize Makoto. You can’t describe any of her thoughts or likes or personality beyond that relationship. The wife in the couple Rin stayed with? I can’t even find her name on the internet.

Now, name all the female characters you can from Yuri!!! on Ice.

So, there’s Minako. And Mari. And Yuko. And the triplets. And Mila. And Sara. And Yuuri’s mom, Hiroko. And Yurio’s ballet teacher Lilia. All of these characters are seen multiple times, have speaking roles, and have some thought written into them beyond just what their presence tells us about the men. Yuko was the star of the ice rink when she was young. She’s a young mother who still loves skating. Minako was a dancer and owns a ballet studio, loves drinking too much and wants to meet famous skaters. The triplets are young girls who are skating otaku, are over zealous and like being on social media. We can describe nearly all of these characters in meaningful ways without even mentioning their relationships to men.

And look, It’s not a secret I’m a feminist. I like seeing well written female characters. But more than just my preference for some female characters, a lack of women can make a story feel a lot narrower, the world less fleshed out and believable. This gender disparity doesn’t break Free! By any means, and plenty of anime are incredibly girl heavy with almost no boys. We know WHY this happens too: It’s done to more aggressively market the show to an intended gender demographic. But to see a Sports anime able to include a decent number of developed female characters, I think, is a testament to the strong writing of the show and its wide appeal.

3. The emotional maturity.

The last meaningful difference between the shows is probably the most nebulous to describe. The best I can do is this: Free! Tries to capture how emotional teeangers feel about their inner conflicts in exaggerated and juvenile ways.  Yuri!!! on Ice shows adults navigating their inner conflicts in more natural and healthy ways.

A lot of this can be boiled down to the character’s ages, and the assumed age of the intended audience, but I think the quality of the writing affects it too. So when the entire swim team has a melt down because they secretly suspect that Rei is cheating on them with the track team, or when Nagisa runs  away from home forever because his parents want him to focus on school and not swimming, or when Rin breaks down crying all the goddamn time in season 1 because of...sexual tension with Haru? Or when Rin has to kidnap Haru for a vacation to Australia to save him from an existential crisis we all kinda...roll with it, and post gifs about all our feels, and accept it because they are TEENAGERS  in ANIME so everything is really dramatic.

Now, Yuri!!! on Ice is a sports anime about ADULTS. Yuuri is 23. Victor is 27. That doesn’t mean they don’t have problems or deal with drama. But it does mean that problems are met with a sense of realism. Look, Yuuri’s dog died and he bombed his tournament and ends up crying in a bathroom stall. It’s sad, but he doesn’t try to run away and live in a tent. Macchin gets sick and might die, and Yuuri is afraid Victor leaving might make his performance suffer. But they talk about it, and Victor goes to be with his dog, and Yuuri does his best. Yuuri has anxiety that flares up, and Victor does his best to support him. When Victor is overwhelmed at Yuuri’s anxiety and messes up at being a good coach, Yuuri and him talk about it. THEY TALK. LIKE PEOPLE DO. The most emotional drama we get in the series is when Yuuri is considering retiring and cutting things off with Victor in the finale- which gets resolved by the end of that episode. But no one has to bottle up secret career ending injuries for an ENTIRE SEASON from their best-not-boyfriend because they are over dramatic high schoolers.

Ultimately this last point probably matters a lot more to me than most people. Anime as a whole is so super saturated with teenagers with hyper melodramatic emotions that having a sports show where the characters react in reasonable and healthy ways is just really nice.  

So what am I saying? What’s the point? Am I saying Free! Is a bad show? No. If you like cute boys doing sports things and can stand or even enjoy the baiting, then hell yes. Watch the hell out of it. Go nuts. Draw fan art and write fic and fight about Makoto/Haru vs Rin/Haru vs Rin/Souske (RinHaru 4lyfe).

But I think it’s important that we appreciate when a show is pretty good and pretty fun like Free, and when a show goes above and beyond. When a show has real canon representation for same sex relationships, and a decent gender balance, and well conveyed emotional depth, I want us to care. I want the difference between a 7 out of ten anime and a 10/10 anime to matter. I want us to recognize when a show makes history.

So yeah. Yuri on Ice isn’t “Like Free, but the pool is frozen.” If anything, Free is “Like Yuri on Ice, but lukewarm and tepid.’  

Thanks for watching this video! This channel is brand new, so any likes or comments are super appreciated. I’m really new making video essays instead of just tumblr posts, but I had a lot of fun working on this, and I hope to make more videos like it. If you enjoyed listening to a millennial feminist with a BA in English ramble about stuff I like for a while, feel free to subscribe. I will be trying to make more of these soon.

[courage-a-word-of-justice]

Nanbaka 17 | ACCA 3 | ReLIFE 7 - 13 (FINAL) | D Gray Man Hallow 2 - 6

(Nanbaka 17)

I bet the fandom makes, “Something is breaking. It’s my heart,” jokes from now on. Or something similar to that. Fandom is corny like that.

I only just realised, but the green numbers that appear at the start of the OP are cell 13’s prisoner numbers. D’oh.

Couldn’t you just grab the shackles, Rock?

Chibi Hajime? Never seen that one before.

It just occurred to me that Qi may have done this.

There seems to be a patch of purple on Jyugo’s torso…for some reason.

Upa did it…?

Hey, that Bruce Lee quote came back…! There also seems to be a Bungou Stray Dogs vibe going on, not really being helped by the fact Yuto Uemura is Atsushi and Jyugo. Tsukumo is Yuri from Yuri on Ice, which is kinda funny.

I…accept your man candy! LOL.

Kiji and Uno are crazily on the same wavelength…

Oh wow, Uno just pulled out the Dazai stops.

“10 minutes later…”

CGI doors…what a pain in the butt.

The eye style on Uno makes me LOL too hard.

(ACCA 3)

Oh, so the OP’s red bird is an acca. Okay.

Potato gratin on toast. Never tried it, but I like potato gratin on cheese and cheese on potato gratin.

Bar Tattler. Perfect name for a place to spill secrets.

Wow. Formal dress isn’t that different to ACCA wear but it makes people look completely different.

There were huggggggggggggggge strawberries last time, remember?

Ooh. Things are getting interesting thanks to Mauve and the 5 General guys.

(ReLIFE ep 7)

Isn’t that Windows 7 Yoake has?

I never asked this, but what happens to failed subjects?

Hmph. They say in Japan that a guy and a girl sharing an umbrella is romantic.

ReLIFE really addresses the difference between personal involvement and work involvement.

Yoake really does remind me of Dazai sometimes.

LOL, Onoya, Yoake. Meanwhile, is that a pink computer? Don’t think I’ve ever seen a monitor that’s pink, although I have seen a pink brick phone and a pink laptop.

Arata’s senpai’s tale matches Yoake’s relationship with subject 001, now that I think of it.

I wanna know more about Amagase-san.

Love bubbles and sparkles, LOL. You are one strange character, Yoake.

You can easily tell Arata’s saying sumimasen , even if there are no subs.

Why did “I don’t have a car!” make me laugh so much?

I think there was an excess “and” in the subs somewhere when Yoake was reporting near the end of the ep.

(ep 8)

The animation on Oga’s hand was unnatural (as in, his second and third fingers were too far apart) when he waved.

“In the pink of health”? Never heard that one before.

“Appetite” is probably the wrong word for it, Amatsu-sensei.

He didn’t react by laughing at Tamarai’s, but I guess that would’ve been misinterpreted and/or impolite.

The final year of high school is all about going all out…

Is the pill in the eyecatch always blue? I saw it was orange last ep.

There appear to be English dictionaries on Inukai’s shelf.

You can see the bags under Tamarai’s eyes.

Revenge of the CGI balls, LOL.

You can see how much Asaji wants to help when he reaches out but then he takes it back. Huh.

Update: I was familiar up to about this part in the manga.

(ep 9)

Omurice. I like that word. Omurice. Omurice. Probably because “omelet rice” sounds weird…Omurice.

Do you think ReLIFE would benefit if its fandom had more memes? Because bees. The Bee Movie seems to be pretty popular as a meme subject these days.

Is this why people always want younger people to enjoy their youth? So they don’t have their dreams crushed later?

The three line eyebrows are distinctive, but they look a bit weird.

Oga, you innocent butt. Blinking ever so innocently at Kariu.

How ironic of you to say, “The last thing you need is a fall”, Oga.

Hishiron can’t be a soccer nerd. “Gooooal” doesn’t suit her.

Doesn’t Kaizaki have any better clothes than black and grey shirts?

Hishiron has her school bag.

Bullying is a Big Deal in Japan, where you’re not meant to pick on people at all. Western cultures wish for outgoing people, so for someone like me who sits more on the introvert side, life kinda sucks.

Seriously, An and Yoake, get together.

*facepalms* What a dork, Kaizaki. Hitting your head in you panic like that won’t get you anywhere.

That’s a weird way of putting that, Hishiron. “[G]et revenge with someone,” that is.

About the entire plotline: It’s easier to “regress” when it comes to writing stories but harder to “regress” when it comes to real life. It must be because of how used to living and growing up people feel.

(ep 10)

At the top of the staircase, Hishiron looked so confused (after she said that she’d watch the tournament).

“Of course I know.” – (Chorus: Of course Yoake knows.)

You’re too darned strong (regarding the door), Kaizaki.

I heard there was an English dub of ReLIFE. Hopefully they can sell the Hishiron voice well enough.

The first time, I was wondering what came after this.

(ep 11)

Why do people say stuff like “I’ll come with”? I’ve said it before, but never questioned it until now.

I actually think Onoya’ll be really grumpy when she wakes up.

I guess it’s the hairstyle, but I look at Yoake and I’m seeing Dazai…again.

I bet Arata will be sad once it ends, LOL.

Black companies – corrupt businesses filled with salesmen and women who can’t escape. That’s basically what I’ve picked up from Osomatsu-san, anyway.

Notice the pill is normally white/blue. This time it was black/blue.

There’s a very Western feeling to this. No wonder the West likes this more than Japan itself. It’s also quite the sociological study. It helps that this was one of the only two shows I watched in summer 2016 the first time around (the other being Boueibu s2) – I can see “One Wish They Never Wanted” reflected in this, and knowing me and the hard times I went through at the end of the year, it was most likely deliberate. After all, they do carry similar themes.

(ep 12)

I think there was a central institution uni applications go through in Japan. In my country, they have something similar.

I shipped Kariu and Oga so hard during these last two eps. It helps that I almost never take the shows with the ships.

Ow. That burnt so much, Arata.

Such a convenient hole in the wall.

Kamioka’s hair looks a little puffy.

You jerk, Arata. You didn’t think “the same thing”. You thought nothing of the sort!

Why is Arata a fish? Probably because Kaizaki means “ocean peak” (or something like it).

What’s up with that statue?

August 10th, 6:30 pm onwards.That’s when the fireworks festival is.

Arata’s got his own harem~! (Neener neener…and so on.)

(ep 13)

Why are only the girls in kimono?! (Update: Or is that yukata?)

You suave, suave player, Yoake.

The white figures really aren’t helping their case…

The blue and yellow sign tells you there’s a traffic obstruction due to the fireworks.

They’ve got some heavy focus on the earrings in a certain shot. It’s such good news for the ship.

Holding hands is a much bigger deal in Japan than it is in the West.

Of course Tama is such a target for mozzies. She’s so big in that region.

The fireworks look so lifelike in this anime!!! I said that for Showa Genroku too, though.

Like an ephermeal flower, a fireworks exists…or some other weird Yoda stuff like that.

Arata’s seems to be blue, while Chizuru’s seems to be green for the sake of colour coding.

Onoya’s fan says “festival” on it.

The pill background looks kinda like footsteps. It must’ve been deliberate they used such a pattern.

Off model at its worst (when the duo sat on the bench).

Dangitfalsekissscene!

LOL, lookit Hishiron’s creepy face.

Nothing is better than a properly-pulled-off bookend.

Welp, that’s the end of that. Hopefully we can meet again sometime, for some other show.

(D Gray Man Hallow ep 2)

Every time I see this ep, I think of a song. It’s this one, to be precise about it. Never mind about the music video, the lyrics and title suit it too well.

Poor Tim.

Ooh, macaron cake!

I forgot who Phantom Thief G was the first time. Then I checked him up and I remembered.

Wrong “throw”, subbers.

This scene where Link is crying is…very odd. There’s a lot of logic that really should be obvious that gets bandied about here.

Really? Fanservice?

If he has Innocence, Timothy’s guilty (in a sense). How ironic.

How do people even evaluate the Akuma’s level on sight?

(ep 3)

“Soul mate” is probably overreacting a little too much.

What a weird butt Galmar is. I can understand his reasoning for what he thinks though.

(ep 4)

People can never seem to agree on how to spell Tyki’s name.

Renny? Seriously, I laugh too much. “Lenny” would’ve been a proper name, but that’s a guy’s name. Then again, this is anime we’re talking about...

Tim’s so cute with the ZZZs.

That burn, Allen. So deep.

“This is the order of the Pope.”

“Hunting Exorcists, huh?”

(ep 5)

Everyone spells Alma’s name as Alma Karma, but the book cover says Alma Carma (sic). Huh.

Sometimes I question the need for a science section in the middle of an Akuma vs Exorcist war.

What the freak, Earl? Don’t scare me like that!

Improper poses? That’s so threatening. (sarcastic)

Unnecessary fanservice, number 2…? (Specifically the “you perv” bit.)

(ep 6)

A-hey. Young!Kanda animated in such a way that it invokes humour…it looks like Yurio. Lots of things remind me of Yurio these days.

How do they know exactly how many seconds it’ll take until the Seconds regenerate?

It’s bunny!Hoshino!

Such gallows humour. That’s why the novelty wore off on this show.

I think the word they mean is youkai instead of sprite.

The jackets come off…kinda sorta.

Is it “dreamed” or “dreamt”?

Can people even hear using stethescopes? I’ve never tried it myself, but I want to know.

Sometimes you forget Allen’s there.

How’d blonde guy (Edgar) get that blood around him?

[kepesh-yakshi]

I’ve been tagged!!!

I was tagged by @wyndx (you’re awesome!) great questions in this one!  I’m going to answer yours, my fair tumbling friend!

Rules:

a) Always post the rules, answer the questions, then write 11 questions of your own.

b) Tag 11 people.

1. Do you have a hobby outside of gaming?

I have a few, though gaming has been taking up most of my recent time.  1) I am a writer by both hobby and pseuo career (aka, I do not yet make enough to cover any bills, but I get something for it sometimes).  2) I love archery, and thus play an archer in most of my games.  My favorite bow is my newest:  a Bear Cruzer, it’s blaze orange, though I don’t count it as one of my “required orange” wearables. To be honest, I like to deck out in all blaze, so other human hunters can see me while most animals can’t discern my orange from actual camo.  3) Most of my work life has been devoted to security of some kind.  I spent ten years with the TSA, and now am in retail security, and though it is my job, it’s also a major interest, and in a way, hobby of mine.  Enough so that I read and chat with others in the field about it.

2. What Dragon Age companion could you see yourself actually hanging out with in real life?

Honestly?  Cassandra.  In real life, my closest friends (I have three) are all tall, strong, beautiful women, all but one are of culture aka, they choose a non-mainstream lifestyle and are proud of their heritage or path or belief(s), yet are still welcoming, open-minded, intelligent, forthright, and forgiving.  Great role models.  I stand 5′8″ - shortest on mom’s side, tallest on dad’s.  Cassandra would be one of those three.  I could see her in modern day calling me for a cuppa coffee and talking about her newest discovery in classic romantic literature.

3. What is your favorite movie?

Shawshank Redemption, hands down.  But...Dumb and Dumber is my favorite laugher.  Arlington Road pisses me off to tears, so it is among my favorites because it moves me so much.

4. Which DA game did you play the most?

Inquisition.  It was my “welcome to DA” game.  I am on Windows 10, and the other games don’t play well with this OS. and that sucks. But I am working on it. Origins, so far, has been a blast to play, so far!  I have not really started DA2.  But I can’t wait to get into it.

5. Would you ever move somewhere else to live?

Yes!  I lived in Durango, before, back in the late 90s.  I’d definitely do it again!  Beautiful place with great people!

6. Do you have any new year’s goals for 2017?

Two:  one is recurring and doesn’t count because I do it every year.  “physically” get back in season.  Enjoy the summer months in a great body, then throw it back to the fat hell in the winter months.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  But this year, my goal is to not have to explain myself for what makes me happy.  I am me, I do me, and if people don’t like it, that’s their shit.  I just dropped a long time friend of six years because she took my self-deprecative humor personally.  Tired of that shit.  I am not a doctor, psychologist, etc, and i don’t want your family drama, and i should not have to explain in detail why i do not wear makeup when YOU KNOW I am transitioned to male.  UGH.  I do not and will not explain myself.

7. Do you have any pets?

One cat.  I rescued her over the summer.  She was five when I met her.  She actually picked me out.  We’ve been best buds ever since.  Her name is Crackers.

8. Where in the world of Thedas would you a)live b)vacation c)avoid?

Live:  southern Marches or northern Fereldan.  Close to water (fishing!!!!) and seems to be a nice easy community gathered around the area.

Vacation:  Nevarra or Western Approach.  Culture and food for the former.  Hunting and endles beauty of the sands for the latter.

Avoid:  seheron.  Stories like what comes out of there kinda push me away.

9. Are you a reader? What is your favorite book?

YES!!!  Classic Lit.  Favoite book is The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay.  A pro hockey player friend gave me a copy.  I’ve shared it with many.  I also love The Count of Monte Christo (Dumas) and The Idiot (Dostoyevsky), but I can’t limit to just three.  I have so many I love and so many I have yet to read.

10. Any secret talents?

I am left handed to a fault -- I crook my hand when I write.  So my secret talent is that I can sign my name upside down, right side up, top to bottom, left to right, and even backwards.  I can also blow bubbles out of my left eye (dog attack severed my tear duct when I was 13). And I was a goalie for an inline hockey team in an all-mens league between 2001-2005.  Once held 6 records before it got popula.  1) most shutouts in a season (36).  2)most wins in a season (36), 3)first female goalie to make it to regionals (lost 2-1 in triple overtime, other goalie bought me dinner, I thought I had a husband at that point LOL)  4) longest game ever played (still in the record books at 4 hrs 36 minutes)   5) hottest game ever played (126* outside)  6)coldest game ever played (-20 outside) -- last two records were october 2003 in Texas within three weeks of each other.  the last three still stand.  LOL.

11. Do you ship any rarepairs?

Rarepairs?  OH like leliana and sera?

My questions:

1. If you could pick any superpower to have what would it be?

to be able to see 5 minutes into the future. 

2. What is your preffered race and class in the DA games? human rogue archer

3. Favorite food? Grilled chicken breast.

4. If you could choose to live in any fictional universe which would you choose? Either Dragon Age or Elder Scrolls

5. Anything you really want to see in DA4? Nevarra

6. Are you in any other fandoms? Elder Scrolls

7. Biggest fear? Death :(  it’s something we all will deal with, but I fear it.  I have heard that fear of it means we have much more to live for, and we need to be stronger in our own personal convictions.

8. First Video Game you ever beat? Legend of Zelda (Adventures of Link) or Shadowrun (on Genesis), I forgot.

9. What’s your hogwarts house? (if you know) Slytherin -- which is funny, because I hated that house in the first movie.

10. Are you a night owl or a morning person? All-nighter, baby!!!

11. What’s the best advice you’ve ever recieved? Don’t give up on you!!!! My 11 Questions (answered) : 1.  Who is your hero? Me, first and foremost.  I’ve been through shit that people often write books about. And I’m still here and still enjoying life. But I also love my life coach, J, who guided me through the process of dropping all hindrances and learning to love my inner child. 2.  Have you ever met someone you looked up to and were happy about it? YES!!!   She left me with some keen advice.  Sylvia Browne is her name. She passed into the next world, so to speak, but when I met her, I was working the walkthrough at TSA, and she was in a wheelchair.  I was pre-transition (I am ftm), and she complimented me on my kindness and asked if she could give a reading.  Of course I agreed, after complimenting her on her books.  She said to me, “you are going to change.  A metamorphosis.  It will be painful but worth it to you.”  Almost exact quote, that was back in ‘08.   She also said that I would be a beacon to others who need to grow out of their boxes if I overcame my own obstacles.  She’s been right so far. 3.  What are your three current favorite songs? Sorry - Justin Bieber (the kid is good, I have to give props here  -- I jam to this) Can I get a - Jay Z (high school favorite, still a favorite) The entire Under Reprisal CD by Threat Signal -- I kill workouts to this CD Anything at all from Fear Factory -- because again I KILL my goals with their music blasting. 4.  Favorite pizza topping? Meat. 5.  Favorite obscure movie? Hmm...The Upside of Anger (Joan Allen and Kevin Costner).  Joan is my favorite actress. 6.  Are you a sports fan at all? YES to almost everything.  I played goalie in roller hockey. 7.  What tumblrs do you follow and love but haven’t given love to? (tag the person) @meridok and @customhawke ... and @my-mother-mercury

damn fine tumblrs, there. 8.  Any crazy bad habits? I bite my nails almost religiously, though they’re quite healthy, despite this. 9.  What career do you think you had in a past life? A scribe or bard.  I love to sing and write, now. 10.  What is your best feat ever?  Ran 2.6 miles in an airport terminal to exchange switched laptops between two high-up people in two major and well-known companies.  Both offered jobs to me afterward.  Hmm, perhaps I should contact now for career purposes. 11.  What is your favorite motivational quote (or one you made up)?

“The ability to not know is an essential quality in learning anything.” -Jeff Brooks  (article here)

My 11 Questions (for those I’ve tagged) : 1.  Who is your hero? 2.  Have you ever met someone you looked up to and were happy about it? 3.  What are your three current favorite songs? 4.  Favorite pizza topping? 5.  Favorite obscure movie? 6.  Are you a sports fan at all? 7.  What tumblr do you follow and love but haven’t given love to? (tag the person) 8.  Any crazy bad habits? 9.  What career do you think you had in a past life? 10.  What is your best feat ever?   11.  What is your favorite motivational quote (or one you made up)?

I’m breaking the rules and tagging less than 11 people (sorry). Tagging:  @meridok @archievement @customhawke @cuddlingcassandra @fereldan-dog-lord @my-mother-mercury @solasofficial @dragonageconfessions @dawriting @earthen-soul @fantasyartwatch

[werewolfmind]

L.I.S   B.T.S thoughts under the cut

in summary though: not a fan. The vibe of the game is off, the writing is cringey (and not in the charming way the original is, in the IM AN EDGY ANGSTY TEEN way where LIFE IS SO HARD, I dont like chloe, I dont like rachel, and cant forget the blatant “everyone is crap and takes their own issues out on everyone else” problem thats expanded to ALL characters instead of just Chloe

sighs

CAN WRITERS AND FANDOM FUCKING LEARN THAT JUST BECAUSE SOMETHING BAD HAPPENS TO A CHARACTER, IT DOESNT EXCUSE FUTURE OR PAST ACTIONS WHICH HURT OR ENDANGER OTHERS

AND YEAH SHIT CAN HAPPEN TO CHARACTERS AND YOU FEL BAD FOR THEM, BUT BEING BULLIED OR AFRAID DOESN’T MAKE KILLING OKAY, ESPECIALLY IF ITS OUT OF REVENGE 

--------

DID THE WRITERS BUY INTO THE ‘POOR BULLIED NATHAN’ THING IM PISSED NATHAN WAS A VICTIM AND I FEEL BAD FOR HIM BUT HE STILL DID SOME PRETTY FUCKED UP THINGS ON HIS /OWN/ LIKE THREATENING MAX AND CHLOE AND OH YEAH HELPING VICTORIA RUIN KATE AND POSSIBLY GETTING /HER/ KILLED AND IF YOU FAIL TO SAVE KATE HE REALLY DOESNT SEEM AFFECTED BY IT SO YEAH

HE EXPRESSES REGRET FOR RACHEL LATER AND IS GENUINELY WORRIED FOR MAX BY THE END, BUT AT THE TIME THESE EVENTS ARE HAPPENING HE STILL DOES SOME PRETTY AWFUL FUCKED UP THINGS NOT UNDER JEFFERSON

———

why do I feel hetero-hate coming from this game?

Cause look okay I know this is cliche to say but really. Warren was portrayed as some pathetic puppy and the writers give you like 10 chances to hook up with Chloe but theres only 1 right way to play things if you want Max/Warren

Now in BtS HOW many girls hit on Chloe and Rachel JUST in chapter 1 (to the point where its hitting Mary Sue levels. No everyone is attracted to the bad girl aesthetic ok?) In addition to Chloe blowing off her bf of 2 months because she got roped in with Rachel…

And like. Okay. Chloe is gay, POSSIBLY bi? So far we know she was attracted to/dated guys up until the events of BtS and shes kinda figuring out her sexuality. Max has the option of both Chloe and Warren, and assuming outside of game mechanics being able to flirt with Chloe while crushing on Warren means she’s bi and just never considered girls until Chloe came back into her life…

BUT the overall feel is that guys = bad, girls = good. The guys are either sexist, overbearing, or downright scumbags (not mention certain homicidal fucked up ones). And all the girl pairings consist of the sweet/shy girl crushing on the badass punk (Chloe or Rachel)

Not to mention the fact that theP.ricefield shippers overlook and even DEFEND how abusive and manipulative Chloe is to Max IN CANON and their very first defense is “gay ships need more representation stop hating”. Tbh I wouldnt be very happy if the first REALLY good representation of an ace character was of them also being emotionally abusive to their partner

idk. this fandom and now the pattern in the games of man-hating/portraying specifically lesbian relationships as picture perfect to Mary-Sue levels of writing? Honestly, it pisses me off

————

lol yeah

the entire vibe of this game is “straight relationships suck”

because you know

just having a good girl-girl romance wont actually send a positive message ]]

#ooc

#im

#YES OK WE GET IT YOU HATE GUYS AND STRAIGHT PEOPLE

#no really#Warren and William are the only two guys in boh games so far#that ARENT complete assholes#i mean like wow#teenage boys can be awful#but fucking REALLY?

——-

#WOW#and I liked Rachel#until she turned into a bitch and yelled at Chloe#what#youre mad because you saw [spoiler] but instead of just telling Chloe#you attack her and then go all#'yu dont ask a girl out and then not buy her a drink’#glad to see Chloes into the same type as her#girls that verbally abuse you for things wthout telling you what the real problem is#(honestly this says more about the writers views on women than it does on their relationship or the characters…….)

——–

AND WHEN CHLOE CALLS RACHEL OUT FOR SUDDENLY TREATING HER LIKE CRAP

RACHEL LASHES OUT

“I forgot its always about you. sad chloes fucking sad again!”

And you know what? THIS MIRRORS HOW CHLOE TALKS TO MAX WHEN SHE ANGRY

THIS IS LITERALLY A CYCLE OF ABUSE THAT ONLY END BECAUSE PEOPLE DIE

THIS IS NOT AN OKAY RELATIONSHIP, EITHER OF THEM

————-

you wanna know the real romance of theis game series?

Kate/Max and Max/Warren. aka ships that stood by each other and would never hurt each other and value each other for their brains and kindness over how “cool” they are ]]

#ooc

#funny how theyre both Max ships

#really tho

#Kate/Max = the ACTUAL true gay ship

#fuck you writers

——–

“Because I dont want to ruin this the way I ruin everything else in my life”

RIGHT THERE

THERE IS THE POWER DYNAMIC YOU SEE IN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIPS

RACHEL LASHES OUT AND ATTACKS CHLOE WHEN CHLOE WAS TRYING TO HELP

CHLOE CALLS HER ON IT AND GETS ANGRY

RACHEL WALKS OFF

AND THEN NEXT THING CHLOE SAYS TO GET HER TO STOP IS ESSENTIALLY SAYING THE FIGHT IS HER FAULT

AND RACHEL’S ANSWER? “What is ‘this’ exactly?!”

not adressing the real issue, instead bringing it back to the DAY-OLD RELATIONSHIP between the two making it seem like Chloe’s playing games

like jfc I could understand if theyve been hanging for a WHILE and Rachel thinks Chloe might leave her or keep waiting on her to make the ove

YOUVE KNOWN EACH OTHER FOR 24 HURS AND YOU WANT TO MAKE IT ABOUT CHLOE NOT MAKING A MOVE ON YOU?

SHE MANIPULATES THE CONVERSATION TO BE ABOUT HER WHILE YELLING THAT THATS WHAT CHLOE DID

FUCK YOU RACHE

————-

#ok#chloe finding the car#was hard to watch#her reaction there is understandable#ooc

——-

#this writing#its gone from cringey to#just bad writing#characters knowing things they shouldnt#and contrived convos#lol nope#this is dumb#ooc

——-

Ravens….Rachel’s scream…..

um

did the writers watch TW and rip off Lydia cause

——

Hey Rachel, good job causing an out of control forest fire because youre upset

look your dad cheating sucks but can you not destroy nature cause of it?

[todokori-kun]

(sorry for disappearing, I had to go to bed ^^;;)

It says the video’s unavailable in my country ;-; gah. I’ll go search it up on youtube later and see if there’s a different video

You might not believe this, but I don’t cry while watching anything. I FEEL the pain on the inside and it hurts a lot but I just can’t cry XD like, the closest I got was when I watched the last movie of the Hobbit trilogy and that was only because the Hobbit/LOTR series has been a part of my life since I was tiny and my mom got me to read the books. And even then I didn’t actually cry; my eyes started stinging a bit but no real tears. I also got close while watching Inside Out, which was a little annoying because I didn’t even like the movie that much- I just related to the ending scenes (the family feels) and suddenly got all emotional because of that.

This is gonna make me sound like a heartless monster but I didn’t even cry during the last episodes of Your Lie in April…

(I’m a crybaby in real life, though LOL seriously anything can make the tears start falling to the point where it’s actually kinda frustrating)

Hisoka’s the trash LORD. Almost equal with Furuta, really.

It’s weird, though: a lot of people call him a pedo for his reactions to Gon but I don’t think that’s what it is…it’s not an attraction to Gon himself as much as it is an attraction Gon’s abilities and what he’s capable of? (which is still pretty creepy tho lol)

Yes, you should be done with him. Throw him back in the trashcan where he belongs. (he does have a really good voice though)

TYSM ;-; I’ll send you some soon, then! <3

Oh, my sister’s too little to watch most anime, but I’ve let her and my cousin (who’s just…seven? Eight? I think?) watch a little bit of Attack on Junior High. They ship Annie/Bertolt and both of them are huge fans of Annie and Mikasa. Also Levi, sorta.

I also let my sister watch the first episode of YoI (I forgot about the naked Viktor scene until it was actually happening but decided that it’s probably ok since it’s nobody makes sexual comments on it and besides, stuff like Doraemon shows 100% nude characters anyway). She didn’t get everything that was going on other than the fact that Yuuri lost and had to go home but Viktor was going to teach him how to skate again, but she liked it a lot and she kept singing ‘History Maker’ non-stop for a LONG time. She’s learning cello right now and she also kept making me show her cello covers of History Maker on youtube.

I’ll (probably) try to take it slow :) and I’ll definitely let you know when I start playing/finish a route!

DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING TO MY HEART WITH THOSE PICTURES. NO. STOP IT. I REFUSE TO STAY IN THIS FLASK- I REFUSE TO ADMIT DEFEAT-

(seriously though wth that middle picture is adorable)

Idk how it ended up that savage. I swear I wasn’t trying to be mean *innocent smile*

TYSM, Luna. What would I do without you?

But wait, you had a hard time writing Evans/Kimblee headcanons? Here- 

‘Evans: KIMBLEE NO

Kimblee: Kimblee Yes ;)’

that is literally the only headcanon you need for this relationship.

I just think Nishiki/Luna would make such a cool, sassy couple. Like, all other people and ghouls are just peasants next to the two of you, step aside Touken- bow down to the real king and queen

Still gonna try tho because tbh Greed/Luna keeps turning into a bigger OTP :) (I’m seriously really happy you’ve enjoyed all my headcanons up ‘til now though <3)

I used to 'like’ (‘like’ as in 'you’re a fun character to analyze and make headcanons about but you’re also sorta terrible’) and still find him an interesting character, but not as much as I used to…probably becase I’ve been losing interest in Kuro itself lately? Like, I still like it and I’m not going to drop it, but this arc dragged so much that even the plot twist couldn’t completely save it for me ;-; and nobody can deny that Seb IS trash. So on second thought, I ship Seb/Luna as more of a frenemy/enemies thing LOL please destroy the trashcan demon Queen Luna

I actually really liked Pietro and I’m still not over the fact that he had to go and DIE

Hange-Luna friendship would honestly be amazing. You’d always be joined by Evans-Moblit though lol

(Ok ok ok but after realizing that some of Tatsuo’s earlier designs look a LOT like an even leaner, meaner version of Kimblee…what if Kimblee was Tatsuo and Naomi’s oldest sibling. Imagine that messed up family. Oldest child is a mad bomber who’s been in jail for years. Second child is an bloodthirsty sloth who just DOESN’T CARE, ok. Third child is screaming on the inside 24/7 because her brothers suck.

Tatsuo likes his big bro’s style but thinks the explosions are a bit extreme. Naomi hates both of them. Just, I’m having so much fun imagining the family reunion when Kimblee gets out of jail.

Also if Kimblee actually DID care about his younger siblings to some extent, let’s go back to that Hamilton AU. Shuu, if you thought Tatsuo’s reaction to the Kaneki Pamphlet was scary…)

Tysm for answering my random, sorta creepy question ;-; that’s a good way to deal with things :) I just asked hoping to maybe get some advice because I’ve been having trouble expressing/dealing with anger lately and it’s just kinda painful XD

OMG. I’ve always wanted to do aesthetic edits but I still don’t quite get how to do them (I don’t have photoshop and it seems you have to pay to download it so I have to figure out how to do it on Gimp (which I do have) or somewhere else…). These are AMAZING! The masquerade is lovely, really reminds me of some sort of fairytale, the Ballerina one is beautiful and has a 'classic’ feel to it, if that makes sense? (Also loving that Hamilton reference, it fits perfectly.)

Luna’s mood board is so pretty though. Love all those pastel colors and that 'seductively takes off glasses’ XD Also just from the pictures I guess you like sweet food?

And wow. If the Blue one was really inspired by me, it’s creepily accurate (though those sneakers are too nice for me, I’d probably ruin them lol). Especially that 'overthinking always’ pic. It's amazing, I could stare at it for ages, tysm <3

Um, for ideas/suggestions…aesthetic edit for Saiko/Urie, our shared OTP? Or one for Shuu/Kaneki? Maybe? If it’s not too much to ask? ^^

btw, do you have playlists you listen to nowadays? Like, I’ve gotten obsessed with a ton of songs lately so

No worries, I went to bed shortly after that as well ^^ I completely understand that there’s a big time difference between here and Korea ;)

Ah, that’s a shame :/ Hopefully you’ll find a version that plays, because it’s a really tranquil song ^^ 

We’re opposites XD I can’t remember the last time I cried because of something that happened irl, but anime gets to me very easily (however, none of my friends know that and I always feel a bit smug when we’re watching sad movies and they’re bawling their eyes out while I’m unfazed). Aw, that’s actually adorable! I’ve never read or watched LOTR, but I’ve both read and watched The Hobbit ^^  At this point I can’t even say I’m surprised at that… What’d I expect anyway XD (about Your Lie in April)

Speaking of trash, I recently read a book that landed on the top spot of ‘Trashiest books I’ve read in my life’ and I’ve read a lot of books, so that’s not an easy feat. The whole time I was reading it, I was more or less like ‘Is this girl (protagonist) for real?’ Basically, she’s the typical ‘perfect, beautiful’ girl and her character flaw is supposed to be that she’s cold, but since she’s so intelligent and pretty, everyone worships her like a fucking goddess. Of course, she’s also skilled in combat and intrigues everyone, including the hot love interest, his hot friend, their hot enemy and probably all of the other males in the world. Most irritating thing about it? The book ends with the sentence ‘Let’s go home’. Obviously, that sentence has a lot of emotional value to me (Hideeeeee), so seeing it used in a supposedly bitter-sweet scene in such a bad book really makes me irritated. Do not underestimate the number of people you’ll reduce to tears with that sentence!

It’s… it’s still creepy as fuck, even though it’s not directly pedo… Yep, I’ll just return him to the trash can. He belongs there. ((I haven’t even watched the anime XD))

Ah, by the way, completely random, but do I curse too much? I’ve noticed I started cursing a bit more lately ^^;; So if it makes you uncomfortable, just say so!

Aw, that’s so cute! Junior High is actually a pretty good anime, though a lot of people I know would disagree with me. My favorite part was probably the one where they summon Levi by throwing a plastic bottle into the paper bin. The only thing I wonder about: Just what were the writers smoking when writing the script? It’s nowhere near as random as Hetalia, but it’s still very random. Worryingly random. I can’t believe I actually spelled that word correctly on my first try. Wow. 

I ship Berthold with happiness. Actually, I ship that whole universe, especially some individuals (ARMIN) with happiness. I ship Annie with Armin more, though. The blond OTP is cute~

That’s adorable! You probably know all the lyrics by now :P Did she ever learn the cover or nah?

Well, no one’s gonna blame you if you do route after route ^^ That’s what I did anyway *looks away with guilt* How’s Rod so far?

This is the moment where I put even more Urie/Saiko pics but the internet here is so shitty that I’m pretty sure it’ll die before I manage to load a single one. Yay.

I know, I almost melted while searching for those pics T^T Urie/Saiko gives me life. Ishidaaaaa come ooooh

Yeah, suuure, I totally believe that. Evans never meant to roast the flame alchemist. Nooo

Ahahahah, yeah, probably XD Who knows, maybe you could stop him from blowing up a building or two. Maybe. 

I cry. What did I ever do to deserve a friend this sweet? The last time I saw something that almost gave me diabetes was when I was watching Sweetness and Lighting, and it still wasn’t as cute as you! 

Honestly, I’m not exactly in the Kuro fandom, but the manga is intriguing enough for me to keep reading. Also, the art style is really pretty! And some of the arcs are my all time favorites. Not to mention, the little shit that is Ciel has somehow become my adopted son XD The thing Bassy would hate the most about me: I’m allergic to cats. I get a rash and start sneezing when near them. It’s gotten better in the last few years, but I’m still weary near them. Not to mention, getting red and itchy all over as a kid hasn’t really made me develop much liking towards the furballs. 

Well, what about the X-Men timeline? He appears there as well, right? I mean, I haven’t watched those movies, but I hope he’s alive there. I hope. 

We’d be the duo everyone is scared of, because we probably blow the lab up on a daily basis. You and Moblit have to take away the explosives XD Levi would (seemingly) hate me even more than Hange, cause I’m full 5cm taller than her, which makes me 15cm taller than him. Wow. He’s tiny XD And that just made me realize Armin and I would have that cute couple height difference, only I’d be the taller one :P I’m one of those people who are convinced puberty does wonders to him, though. Seriously, just google ‘Older Armin’

That’s... a very messed up family to say the least. Just. Wow. How can so much tragedy be crammed into genes?  Shuu better watch out when Kimblee hears what happened with his sis XD Somehow, I think that Kimblee’s version of Congratulations would involve shit blowing up.

It’s no problem ^^ If you want to ask any similar questions, feel free to! They’re not creepy at all. You should hear some of the shit I ask at times...  I hope you find a good way to deal with anger soon ^^ The only thing with my answer is that I rarely get angry, I mostly get frustrated. I’d recommend drawing as a way to express feelings. Bring out the red colors and murder that paper XD

Aah, I’m so glad you like them! I was really satisfied (ha) with them, since they were done in a rush ^^ Most of them were born from me finding one pic and thinking ‘I want an AU based on this pic’. For the masquerade, it was fans and ballroom, ballerina History has its eyes on you and the shoes. 

If you offer enough chocolate and/or cookies, I’m willing to sell my soul. I wish I was joking. I’m not.  I’m glad you like yours ^^ I was thinking about showing you the ones I made and was like ‘Why not make one for you?’ I remembered you saying you like blue, found some pics and ta-dah! It’s really fun to do, and it’s nice artistic expression for someone who can’t draw for shit XD

I’ve only managed to do Shuu ;-;

((It actually looks more like it was meant for Kanae XD))

Tbh, I’ve tried to do the other ones as well, but it’s pretty hard to find pics that fit =3= I’ll keep trying tho ^^

Also, I made one for Rod, since he’s your first route, but it’s actually spoilerish, so tell me when you’re done and I can show it to you ^^

I mostly make my own playlists, and the ones I have right now have a lot of Ed Sheeran, a shitton of soundtracks, a few idol songs and probably more remixes than it would be considered healthy.  Also, while looking at my playlist to answer this, I realized what I liked in a song: The beat.  Which actually explains why I always seem to prefer remixes more than the original song and why I’m a sucker for Woodkid songs, especially Run Boy Run and Iron.  Also, I adore soundtracks. I’m content listening to just those, especially if they’re fantasy or medieval XD

I get my pictures from Pinterest! A lot of artsy pics are uploaded there, so it’s easy to find what I’m looking for ^^  I hope you’ll start making your own edits soon! I’d definitely love to see how that’d turn out ^^