#hell middle school was the first time i interacted with a fandom

[nebulastarss]

You know how wild it is to see comments on YouTube of children going "i subed. im 7"

I did not interact with the YouTube comments until I was a teenager. I have made a grand total of less than 5 comments. Because I'm a pussy who was scared of saying something stupid and having the internet show up at my door to shank me. Yknow. Exactly what I was taught would happen.

And I stare at these comments and I think to myself

'If you knew your address, you would've posted it.'

[danganronpa-obsession-hell]

The double standard of Sayaka Maizono

Hi! It's been a long while since I've posted here, but I spent Christmas writing this 4 page tangent on this whole ass feeling I have about a Danganronpa character.

Please enjoy.

WARNING FOR MAJOR DRV3 SPOILERS NEAR THE END USED AS A COMPARISON, MAJOR SPOILERS FOR PARTS OF THH AND MENTION OF SUICIDE

Why is Sayaka dictated to be a lying, cheating snake to most of the western Danganronpa audience?

You could say that this is because her plan was to frame Makoto for the murder of Leon, in which yes this is true, and yes, she deserves some criticism for that. BUT, there’s a few points here I’d like to argue in defense of Sayaka.

I’d like to state that Sayaka isn’t even one of my favorites. I like her, but she’s not one of my all-time favs. I have little bias for her. So, this isn’t some kind of hate speech about one of my favorites getting mischaracterized, I just think people should remember these things about Sayaka and a few other characters.

First of all, what was Sayaka’s plan?

Well, she traded rooms with Makoto in secret to the other students in order to murder Leon in Makoto’s room, framing him in order to graduate and leave the killing game. Well, this might be slightly untrue.

Indeed, she did make this plan, but we are forgetting the fact that the presence of the class trial is something that was only announced after Sayaka’s murder, which means she could’ve thought of this situation entirely differently. In her mind, most likely she’d murder Leon, everyone would think Makoto did it, and then she’d be free to go back to her idol group. To her, there would be no lying during a trial and having to face those she lied to and betrayed, they’d be a distant thought left behind as she goes back to her normal life.

Of course, things didn’t go this way, but I’d like to give Sayaka the benefit of the doubt as Makoto does for several other characters.

There’s also the debate of what Kyoko said during the final bits of chapter 1, about Sayaka leaving Leon’s name on the wall in order to ensure Makoto would live. There’s the debate of if she left it so Makoto could save himself, or if this was simply to get back at Leon for, yknow, murdering her. And yes, this could go either way, it’s left up to what the player thinks, but what I do know is that Sayaka seems to care for Makoto a great deal. Remembering him from middle school, the interactions they had in the Danganronpa 3 anime Despair Arc, hell, Sayaka’s free time events make it so obvious she cares for him in a lot of ways.

It’s all up to the player to decide if Sayaka is innocent or not, but saying she never cared for Makoto is what is hard to believe to me.

What is the double standard against Sayaka?

I have reason to believe the fandom is unjustly biased against Sayaka for a few others of its characters, specifically Aoi and Kyoko. Let’s go chronologically, and begin with Aoi

Aoi’s betrayal

In chapter 4, Sakura, Aoi’s best friend in the killing game, commits suicide in order to sacrifice herself and make up to the other students for being the traitor. Because of false evidence planted by Monokuma, Aoi believes Sakura killed herself because the others hated her as a consequence for her betrayal.

Because of this, Aoi plans to frame herself as the killer of Sakura to get herself and the rest of the students killed by way of a wrong guess and execution.

You can already see similarities here, but instead Aoi is aiming to kill everyone including herself on purpose as a way to “die for their sins.” And obviously, she has her reasons to believe this. She’s a very “grab a bull by the horns,” kind of person. She was also very emotional as of just losing her best friend right in front of her.

My argument is, why does Sayaka not get this kind of sympathy?

In Sayaka’s free time events, she mentioned she had to do a lot of unpleasant things to get where she is as an idol, and although we do not hear of these things, it’s left to the imagination, especially because an idol career in Japan is notably hard on younger girls in showbiz.

Both cases, emotions were running high. Sayaka losing everything she worked for in an instant if she doesn't kill someone, and Aoi just losing her best friend right in front of her eyes. So why is Aoi forgiven, and Sayaka not?

In fact I never hear anyone bring up Aoi’s attempted betrayal in chapter 4, almost as if it never happened. Yet Sayaka is treated so much differently when these betrayals are incredibly similar. Hell, you could even claim Sayaka didn’t know anyone but Leon would die for her crime. (In danganronpa the stage play Leon was also acting real creepy towards her so, can you blame a girl for going after the easiest dude like Leon or Hifumi) But Aoi was prepared to let everyone die for a lie, albeit she did not know it was a lie, but the problem still is evident. She was forgiven a lot easier than Sayaka when she had the experience of 4 class trials at this point, fully knowing the consequences of her actions.

All of this could be forgiven, because both are technically Monokuma's fault. And I would forgive it if it was only Sayaka and Aoi. But it’s not.

Kyoko’s betrayal

In chapter 5, Kyoko is framed by the mastermind for a false murder in order to stop her from coming too close to the truth and destroying the killing game. Kyoko claims herself that if she dies, the mystery of the school would never be solved. And yeah, that’s a pretty good reason for not wanting to die. Until Makoto gets framed instead.

The entire ladder half of the trial, Kyoko is actively framing Makoto because there is no other option. Sacrificing him, to keep herself alive. Sound familiar?

You could say a lot more is at stake this time, and also Makoto did end up getting out alive, but Kyoko had absolutely no idea that Alter Ego would save Makoto when he did. Kyoko was fully willing to let Makoto die a bullshit death so she could solve the mystery of Hope’s Peak and the killing game.

Obviously, I do think she feels guilt for this, but again it’s almost as if it never even happened in terms of how often it’s talked about.

There’s also the question of if Makoto did end up dead, where would Kyoko go from there? He was the only one she trusted and told everything she knew to, and if things went wrong that would be it. Byakuya and her butt heads in every trial, Hiro and Toko are both idiots, Hina is entirely too gullible and trusting. There’s no one left to put her trust into as fully as she did to Makoto.

Again, framing someone in order for a selfish goal and not seeing the consequences, these three instances share that one linking factoid.

But while Sayaka is demonized and called a lying snake, Kyoko and Aoi are fan favorites who get a lot of love from fans.

Why are they different?

V3 SPOILERS AHEAD FOR COMPARISON

I think it’s all about screen time. Sayaka was the first murder of the entire series, obviously she’s nowhere near developed as someone like Kyoko, Toko or even Rantaro from V3 as he becomes plot relevant later in the game after his murder. Sayaka does have somewhat the same effect on Makoto that Kaede does on Shuichi, a lingering first death that dwells on the male protagonist as they potentially loved this girl.

There’s also the fact that not everyone in the first Danganronpa game was created equal, as Sayaka and Leon do not have the full 6 part free time events later characters get in subsequent games. (Leon gets 3, Sayaka gets 2, other characters suffer from this such as Mukuro, Taka, and Mondo) This leaves a lot of Sayaka blank, to fill in if you will, and why I think she’s overlooked in general.

There’s one last thing I’d like to say in defense of Sayaka and even Aoi and Kyoko. They’re teenagers.

The class Makoto is in, is first years, they’re basically teenagers still with these incredibly gifted talents being forced to murder each other for their freedom, dumb decisions are evident in this situation. The pressure, the stress, the fear, all of it twisted up can cause anyone to make decisions they normally wouldn’t. And I think that goes a long way for someone like Sayaka. Who worked for her talent endlessly and it obviously means the world to her if she’s willing to murder a stranger/friend to continue it.

In the end, Sayaka made mistakes, she should be held accountable, but she’s not an evil snake who used Makoto as she saw fit. Everyone in Danganronpa should be held accountable accordingly for their crimes, but obviously Sayaka is not as evil as say Celeste, Korekiyo, Mikan, or hell even Junko. Honestly, she was just a teenager in a desperate situation, it’s like cornering a rat, something is bound to happen.

Thank you for coming to my stupidly long ted talk.

[canarias-stuff]

❄️I Will Be Here When the Snow Falls Again❄️

(Ayase Momo X Takakura "Okarun" Ken)

WARNING: MANGA SPOILERS!

Summary:

Takakura Ken was socially awkward and a massive alien nerd, but he wasn’t an idiot—or at least, not a complete one. Ever since the whole mess with aliens and paranormal battles began, he felt like his IQ might’ve dropped a few points (the absurd situations probably fried a few neurons). Not that he cared much. He had more friends now than he ever had in his entire life.

But the point was, even if he was clueless about human interaction most of the time, Okarun knew when something was off with Ayase Momo—his first friend, best friend, and now girlfriend.

...

Or, a story where Momo is thankful to have this people as friends. For having Okarun.

Author's notes:

Hello!!!

So, I started watching Dandadan, and OF COURSE I couldn't wait for more episodes and went straight for the manga.

Really, my first reaction was "What the hell is this?", and now I am like "When the hell I gonna get more chapters!". hahahaha

Dandadan is really great!^^ So that's why I had to write something for the fandom!^^

The story takes place after the current manga arc. The characters are a little bit OOC I guess, but it's just that the story called for that...

I hope you enjoy it though.^^

Link AO3

The cold wind fluttered the curtains, the days were becoming colder and colder, and in a few days the snow would start to fall and turn the scenery all white.

Usually Momo wouldn't mind cold weather, hell! When Evil Eye destroyed her house, she even went in the middle of night to the local supermarket to get card boxes so they could make an improvised wall to shield them from the cold night air.

So no, the cold wasn’t the problem, but the time of year.

It was mid-December, people were in a festive vibe, but she was dreading it more than the last few years.

“Momo!” She heard her grandmother call from down stairs. “Are you awake?!”

“Tch! Of course I am, grandma!” The brunette snapped, closing her window with more force than necessary, and grabbing her bag that was on her desk.

“You are going to be late to school.” Turbo Granny, who kept her cat form and returned a few weeks after she regained her powers, snickered at her. The entity wouldn’t admit it, but she was definitely trying to find a way to turn Momo back to her normal size back then, and when she couldn’t find a clue, she decided to share part of her spiritual power with Okarun again, so at least he could help Momo.

“Oh, shut up, old hag! I’m not in the mood!” Momo answered, grabbing a toast with strawberry jam from the dining table. “I’m off.”

Seiko watched her granddaughter leave in silence, a slight frown creasing her brow. Turbo Granny, too, narrowed her eyes.

“What’s gotten into her?” The spirit muttered.

The medium lit a cigarette, exhaling a long plume of smoke.

“Don’t mind her.” Seiko said quietly. “It’s just that time of year again.”

…

She was crying on her pillow when the door to her room was open and a soft voice called her name.

She didn’t answer, choosing to keep her face hiding in her pillow.

The side of the bed sank under her mother’s weight.

“Let’s go to Grandma’s place?”

And that finally got her attention, raising her head to look at the smiling face of her mother.

“Grandma’s place?”

“Yes, Grandma’s place.”

She cried excitedly and jumped at her mother’s embrace.

…

Takakura Ken was socially awkward and a massive alien nerd, but he wasn’t an idiot—or at least, not a complete one. Ever since the whole mess with aliens and paranormal battles began, he felt like his IQ might’ve dropped a few points (the absurd situations probably fried a few neurons). Not that he cared much. He had more friends now than he ever had in his entire life.

But the point was, even if he was clueless about human interaction most of the time, Okarun knew when something was off with Ayase Momo—his first friend, best friend, and now girlfriend.

The thought alone made him blush. He never imagined he'd have a friend, let alone a girlfriend, and yet here he was, watching her from a few meters behind as she walked ahead of him.

“Ayase-san!” Okarun called out.

Normally, the brunette would whip around and scold him for still calling her "Ayase-san" instead of her first name.

We’re dating! Drop the formalities! She'd say.

But after calling her by her last name for nearly a year, it wasn’t so easy to switch to “Momo” overnight. Besides, she still called him "Okarun" instead of "Ken," so they were even.

Except today, she didn’t even seem to hear him.

Okarun frowned. It has been like this for a few days now. Momo had been spacing out—while walking, eating, and even during conversations. Just yesterday, she almost started a fight with Shiratori after accidentally "ignoring" the pink haired girl. Chaos ensued.

No matter how many times Okarun asked what was wrong, Momo always brushed it off with a smile and said, "Everything's fine ." He didn’t buy it. But he knew how stubborn Momo could be. She wouldn’t open up until she was ready. For now, all he could do was stay by her side, watch, and wait.

“Ayase-san!” he called again, catching up and placing a hand on her shoulder. “Ayase-sa—”

Before he could finish, he was slammed against the wall by an invisible force. Oh, crap. He should’ve seen this coming.

...

“...-san?”

Momo felt a hand touch her shoulder, and without thinking, her powers reacted. She flung whoever it was against the nearest wall.

“H-Hey, Ayase-san?!”

“O-Okarun?!” Momo gasped, snapping out of her daze. She quickly released him from the hold, eyes wide with guilt. “I’m so sorry! Are you okay?!”

He gasped for air but raised a hand in front of him, trying to calm her down.

“Yeah, I’m fine, don’t worry.”

“Ugh, sorry...I was distracted.” Momo muttered, her face flushing with embarrassment. What if she had seriously hurt him? “But it’s your fault for sneaking up on me, Okarun!”

“Hah?!” Okarun’s indignation was almost comical. “How is this my fault?! You’re the one walking around with your head in the clouds!”

“Who’s got their head in the clouds, you alien nerd?!” she shot back, the usual fire in her voice returning. Okarun felt secretly relieved. “It’s probably you, with your head full of UFO’s and alien conspiracies!”

“By now, you should know they’re not just conspiracies! And it's UAPs!”

They started walking again, bickering like usual. People passing by glanced at them curiously—an odd couple arguing about aliens and ghosts—but neither of them cared. They were in their own little world, and nothing could break that bubble.

...

“See you at lunch, Okarun.” Momo said with a wave, flashing him a smile before heading to her class.

“See you, Ayase-san.” He replied, watching her until she disappeared down the hallway.

By the time they reached school, their argument had mellowed into an actual conversation, and their hands had been intertwined the entire walk—only letting go moments before they parted ways.

It wasn’t a secret that they were dating. The entire school knew something was going on between them long before they realized it themselves. To outsiders, everything seemed normal. But to those who knew them well—especially those closest to Momo—something felt off.

“Was Momo okay today?”

Vamola’s worried gaze met Okarun’s as he sat down at his desk beside her.

“I stayed at Aira’s last night, so I couldn’t walk with her this morning.”

Okarun hesitated before answering. 

“She was really distracted…again.” He didn’t mention the sudden use of her powers. “I’m worried, but Ayase-san won’t say what’s bothering her.”

“Maybe she’s finally realized how awesome I am and is trying to figure out how to break up with you!” Kinta Sakata chimed in, his usual smug grin in place.

“That was completely unnecessary, Sakata-san!” Okarun snapped, his face a mix of horror and disbelief.

“And rude.” Vamola added.

“But don’t worry, Vamola! My heart will always belong to you!” Sakata continued, striking a dramatic pose.

Okarun sighed. Ignore, ignore.

“Should we try talking to Momo again?” Vamola asked, genuine concern in her voice.

Okarun shook his head. 

“No, it’s better to wait until she’s ready. Forcing her to talk won’t help.”

But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t seek out someone who might know what was really going on. Someone who had been with Momo far longer than any of them.

…

One moment they were singing a song playing on the radio and laughing at her silly questions about the lyrics, and the next the world was turned upside down. Literally.

Her ears were ringing and her eyes couldn’t focus, the world was spinning and the lights were just blurs.

What happened? She wondered, confused and scared.

“Mama?” She called, but no response.

Tears started to form in her brown eyes.

“P-papa?” She tried, but again, no response.

…

Pairs of eyes shifted to the brunette girl staring out the window, oblivious to Miko and Kei's attempts to get her attention.

“She’s been like that during classes.” Jiji pointed at Momo who didn’t move an inch from her desk even after the bell announced the lunch break. “Something is seriously wrong with Momo!”

“Should I knock her in the head?” Aira asked, arms crossed defiantly.

“You just want revenge for yesterday, Aira!” The red headed tall boy cried.

“I’m planning to talk with Seiko-san.” Okarun suddenly cut the bickering between Aira and Jiji. “She may know what is going on.”

“And do you think that she is going to say anything?” This time it was Rin’s turn to voice concern. “I mean…if it is about her own granddaughter's privacy, she may be tight lipped about it.”

They looked at each other, but after a moment of silence they came to the same conclusion.

“Nah…” The answer came in unisom.

“Yeah…no way…” The class rep sighed in the end.

“Momo’s working her shift today.” Vamola chimed in.

“Then after school I…”

“I’m coming too!” Aira cut Okarun off, her frustration clear. “I don’t know what is wrong with Momo, but I just can’t take that weird attitude anymore!”

“Shiratori-san…” Okarun smiled. Those two had a really hard start, but it made him happy to see that despite their differences, Momo and Aira became good friends.

“Me too!” Enjoji exclaimed, his usual dramatic movements and faces forgotten. “Gotta help Momo, right Okarun?”

“I still have a lot to repay for Ayase-san’s help too!” Rin said with conviction.

“Count me in too!”

“And he …” The pink haired girl pointed at Sakata, eyes glaring at Jiji. “...just want to hear some gossip.”

“No, no! I am really worried about Young Ayase-san!” Kinta tried to justify himself.

And as the scene started to become chaotic again, Okarun couldn’t stop the laugh that escaped his lips. He was glad that these people were his and Momo’s friends.

…

“It’s a miracle...”

“Her only injury was caused by the seat belt...”

“But her parents…”

“I heard that the other driver is gonna make it…”

“A tragedy...and she is so young…”

…

“Momo-chan? You already cleaned that table three times…”

A hand was waving in front of her face, and it took Momo a second to realize that she had already taken the plates and tea cups to the kitchen, and that she has been cleaning the same table for a while.

“Ah, sorry senpai!” She said, embarrassed. “I got distracted for a moment.”

Her coworker placed a hand on Momo’s forehead, checking for signs of a fever.

“Hum, you don’t seem to have a fever.” However, the worried expression never left her face. “Are you having troubles at home? Or maybe with your boyfriend?”

“No, no!” The brunette exclaimed. “I’m just…under the weather I guess.”

“But that’s no good either.” Her senpai commented. “You should go home early today.”

“No, I’m really f-”

“Nope.” The older maid interrupted, her voice more decisive this time. “Go home, Momo-chan.”

“But…” Momo began to protest.

“No ‘buts’. Besides, we’re almost done for the day.” Her senpai smiled, pointing at the clock.

Momo’s brown eyes met her senpai’s gentle but insistent smile. In the end, she knew she couldn’t argue.

“Okay.” She sighed, giving in.

…

“So…” Seiko’s gaze swept over the teenagers sitting before her, each one awkwardly perched on their knees. “...what kind of trouble are you all in this time?”

“Seiko-san…” Okarun began hesitantly. “Why do you assume we’re in trouble?”

The older woman crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow.

“Because that’s the only reason you ever come to me.”

“Or for free food.” Turbo Granny snickered from beside the elder Ayase.

None of the teens could deny that. Vamola just let out a laugh.

“But that’s not why we’re here today!” Jiji bravely restarted the conversation.

“Yeah, right!” Aira chimed in, nudging Okarun with her elbow. “We have a question!”

“And for just one question, all of you had to come.” Seiko said flatly as she lit a cigarette, clearly sensing this was going to be a long talk.

The group turned to Okarun, waiting for him to speak.

“I…” He hesitated, then corrected himself. “No,��we are worried about Ayase-san. Something’s up with her, and she won’t talk to us about it.”

“Is she…sick or something?” Rin asked cautiously.

Seiko sighed deeply.

“No.” The wave of relief that washed over the teenagers’ faces might have been amusing, if the subject hadn’t been so serious. “Momo is perfectly healthy.”

“Then what’s wrong with her?!” Aira blurted out. “She’s been acting off for days!”

Seiko closed her eyes briefly, and the teens held their breath, bracing for the worst.

“It’s almost Christmas.” She said quietly.

Okarun blinked, confused. Did he hear that right?

“So what?” Kinta broke the silence, voicing what they were all thinking.

Turbo Granny caught the lingering gloomy tone in Seiko’s voice, and if she learned something in all these years as a spirit, was how to identify grief.

“You see, Momo’s parents died on Christmas Eve.”

…

When she was just a seven years old child and her parents asked what she wanted for Christmas, Momo said that she wanted to visit her grandmother in Kamikoshi.

During normal days traffic was already bad enough, let alone holidays. So the initial answer was “no”. And because of that, Momo cried at her pillow almost every night until Christmas Eve, when her mother entered her room, and told her to bring warm clothes to Kamikoshi.

She couldn’t be happier inside a warm car with her parents, singing Christmas jingles and asking her mom and dad what some words mean, and why they were being sung like that.

The white snow was falling outside, it was a beautiful sight. Momo would have a white Christmas with her whole family.

Or so she thought.

Everything happened so fast, that she didn’t know what hit them.

She yelled as the car turned around a few times, finally coming to a stop when it hit the guardrail. Her brown eyes couldn’t focus and her ears were ringing, she could barely distinguish the static coming from the radio and cries for help outside the car.

“Mama?”

What happened?

“Papa?”

It hurts.

“Mama! Papa!”

It hurts so much!

“Say something, please!”

She looked outside, there were shadows going from one side to the other, but the last thing that she saw before passing out was the snow piling outside of a broken window.

.

.

.

When she opened her eyes again she was laying in a bed, white sheets, a gown that she didn’t remember owning, and white walls…her bedroom was pink…did they arrive at her grandma’s house?

But why did no one wake her up? She wanted to chat with grandma and give her the drawing that she made as a present…but she was so, so sleepy…

“Grandma…”

Someone took her hand. It was warm.

“I’m here, Momo. Don’t worry.”

“...Okay…Grandma…” She closed her eyes, but her grandmother’s hand never left her small one. She smiled before drifting to a dreamless sleep.

…

“It was snowing, and the driver of the other car was driving too fast, so he lost control of his car and crashed into five other cars, one of them belonged to Momo’s parents.” Seiko continued, her voice distant as she absently played with the ashes in the ashtray.

“The car overturned, and they died during the crash, it was a miracle that Momo got away with only the injury caused by the seat belt holding her in place…well, now that I know that she has psychic powers, I would say that her powers were activated during the situation to protect her, and got sealed when she was safe again.”

No one said a word, so she continued.

“After their deaths, she came to live with me in Kamikoshi. She’s usually bold and strong-willed, but around this time of year…” Seiko trailed off, her gaze softening. “It always brings her back to that day, I guess.”

Turno Granny stared at the floor, she knew how to comfort the souls of the young girls who lost their lives violently, but did she know how to do it for the living ones? For Momo?

“I don’t know what she is thinking. Maybe she thinks that her parents' death is her fault, but Momo never talked about it with me.” The medium said with a sigh, finally meeting the group’s eyes. “She cried twice in front of me, and it was when I told her about her parents and during their burial. After that, no more tears, but she does space out like this every year, it’s just that this year…it’s worse for some reason…”

She paused, taking in the teenagers' solemn faces. 

“I hope you can stay by her side.”

And before the last word had fully left Seiko’s lips, Okarun was already moving. He bolted to the front door, leaving his shoes behind, knowing he wouldn’t need them. He flung the door open and sprinted into the cold night, heading straight for the place he knew Momo would be. The others followed a second later, their footsteps quickly swallowed by the darkness.

Seiko slowly stood and moved to the door, leaning against the frame.

“You don’t need to worry, Granny.” she said softly, sensing Turbo Granny’s presence beside her. “Those kids have got this. I’m sure of it.”

…

“It’s going to snow.” Momo murmured absentmindedly, coming to a halt as she gazed up at the dark sky.

This is so depressing…

It’s not that she dislikes the snow, but it still brought memories that she would rather forget about…not that it was possible anyway. Maybe she should ask Aira to knock her in the head to see what happens…

She sighed. That was one stupid idea, her mood was really affected by the nearing holiday. There was no way to forget about Christmas when every nook and cranny was decorated with green, red, twinkle lights and Christmas trees. Also, she wanted so badly to spend the holiday with her grandmother, Turbo Granny, with her friends. 

With Okarun.

But…was she allowed? Was she allowed to celebrate?

Truth be told, she didn’t remember a lot about her childhood before coming to live with her grandmother, and if it wasn't for the photos, she wouldn’t even remember her parents' faces, but the memories of the accident were intact.

If she hadn’t asked to come to Kamikoshi that day, the accident wouldn’t have happened and her parents would be alive.

Momo knew that she had been acting weirdly these last days, that her boyfriend and friends were worried about her, and rationally speaking, she shouldn’t feel like that, if someone was wrong was the driver who caused the accident, but still, it was difficult to just accept that when the ��what if’s” came to mind.

And after seeing and fighting ghosts for most part of the year, Momo couldn’t stop but wonder if her parents were still here somewhere, if her parents turned into some kind of entity - maybe something like Mai was before?

Were they…waiting for her?

Momo slapped her cheeks with both hands, startling a few passersby who gave her odd looks. She didn’t care. She couldn’t afford to think like this. It wasn’t like her at all. And it’s not like she wanted to die or anything…still…

“This sucks.” She muttered, gritting her teeth. “What if’s fucking suck!”

All that Momo wanted was…

“Ayase-san!”

…to spend time together with the people that she cared for, but she was scared.

“Okarun? Wh-”

Before she could ask what was happening, Okarun wrapped his arms around her, holding her close.

…

Okarun was grateful that Turbo Granny had decided to share her powers with him again. It meant he could fight alongside his friends, no longer just being a burden to them. But right now, as he held Ayase Momo in his arms, he felt more thankful than ever for the old granny’s power.

Using the curse's speed, he had reached her faster than he could in his human form. And honestly, who cared if he was barefoot in the middle of a busy street in winter? He certainly didn’t.

Leaving Momo alone for even another second—that’s what he couldn’t bear.

“Okarun?”

Her voice was soft, confused. Usually, he’d walk her home, their hands intertwined, sharing a conversation, laughing at something silly. But he never hugged her like this—out of nowhere, and definitely not in public.

“How did you know I left early?” she asked, though she made no move to pull away from him.

“I didn’t.” came his muffled reply, his face buried in the curve of her neck.

Momo hummed.

“And you’re barefoot.”

“...I was in a hurry.”

That made her laugh.

“Don’t laugh!” Okarun exclaimed, cheeks burning red as he finally lifted his head to look at her. Now that she mentioned it, he felt a bit self-conscious. But seeing her laugh—even if it was at his expense—warmed his heart.

“You don’t have to walk me home every time. I’m pretty tough, you know.”

“I know! But I…I was worried!” Okarun said, his words carrying more weight than just concern for her safety. Momo probably understood the double meaning.

Without thinking, she leaned her forehead against his shoulder and sighed, tired.

“I actually talked with Seiko-san.” He admitted, knowing he couldn’t lie to her.

“Of course you did.”

“...Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine. I guess I’ve been too stubborn.” Momo said quietly. “I should’ve just told you what was on my mind.”

“Are you okay?” Okarun asked softly, his hands resting on her back, pulling her closer.

In response, Momo gripped the front of his school uniform tightly. 

“I am.”

“Ayase-san…”

“I am, really. It’s just that…” She paused, searching for the right words to explain her tangled emotions. “...I keep wondering if it is okay to be happy with everyone? Will something happen again?”

Okarun’s eyes widened. Oh…so that was the problem.

“My parents died because they wanted me to be happy during Christmas…sometimes I wonder if I robbed them of their happiness. If I cut it short.” Momo spoke slowly, as if weighing each word. Okarun stayed quiet, letting her finally share what had been weighing on her. “And I know that it’s ridiculous to think like this when the wrong one was the dude who caused the accident.”

If I had just asked for a doll or whatever as a present…

“But every year when Christmas is just around the corner, I can’t help but doubt if I’m not as guilty as the other driver.”

Am I allowed to be happy?

“Back then, all I wanted to do was spend the holidays with my family. All my family. My parents. Grandma. But look what happened.”

She wasn’t crying, and Okarun didn’t know if it was bad or not, right now, Momo was just telling him what had been in her mind so far. So he just kept holding the girl.

“I…” The girl gulped. “...I guess that every year I wish for the same thing, but I’m scared to wish to be with everyone and something like that…happens…again…”

…

It felt good to let it all out.

Momo felt like she could breathe again after so many years. And being held like that by the person that she loved was comforting.

“Ayase-san…” It was the first time that Okarun spoke after hearing what was on her mind. “...are you dumb?”

One. Two. Three.

It took her brain 3 seconds to process his words.

“Hahhhh?! What did you just say?!” She yelled, pushing away from her boyfriend and almost instantly regretting the loss of warmth. “Here I am pouring my heart out to you, and all you can say is that I’m dumb ?!”

Okarun adjusted his glasses, but the irritation was clear on his face. He wasn’t usually one to get angry, but something had clearly struck a nerve.

“It wasn’t your fault Ayase-san!” He said almost exasperated, something that Momo saw just once, back at when she tried a risky move against the alien who could carve out the space. “And how could you even guess that an accident would happen?!”

She couldn’t rebut it, because her rational side knew that it was impossible to predict such things.

“Ayase-san.” His voice saying her name was gentle again, it just wasn’t in his nature to stay angry for a long time, and Momo was glad for that. “If you wish to be with everyone, just say it.”

The girl bit her lips.

Was that okay? What if…

He reached for her hands, clasping her cold fingers in his warm grip.

“It’s okay.” He reassured her gently.

Oh…did she just voiced her thoughts?

“There’s no what if’s here.”

“Can I…?” Her voice wavered with hesitation, but Okarun smiled and nodded.

“Just say it. Be selfish for once, because I know—everyone knows—how much you care about us.”

She gasped softly at his words. And for the first time in years, tears welled up in her eyes, threatening to spill over.

“MOMO!!!”

They didn’t even have the time to turn around to see what was happening, because one second it was just her and Okarun, and the next they were tackled to the ground by Aira, Jiji and Vamola.

“Momo!” Vamola cried again, her arms around the brunette’s neck.

“You are a real skank, Momo!” Aira yelled beside the alien girl, eyes red and puffed,  “Just say something!”

“YEAH! I mean, the ‘just say something’ part, not the ‘skank’ part.” It was Jiji’s turn to join the chaos, his bigger stature over Okarun who was face planted in the floor. “Just share your worries with us!”

“Aren’t we friends, Momo?!” The pink haired girl said with a frown. “We care about you!”

Momo’s eyes widened at Aira’s words.

“Wahhh! What are you guys doing?!” Rin cried upon arriving at the scene just to see five of her friends scattered on the cold sidewalk. “Did you guys seriously just jump on her?! We are in public!”

Their bubble popped, and they finally remembered that yes, they were in public, and that people were staring at them disapprovingly for causing ruckus in the middle of a busy commercial street.

“How dare you guys run giving one hundred percent, when I can muster just ten percent.” Kinta arrived last, gasping for air, still, Momo was a little bit touched that he cared enough to keep running. “Why are you guys like that?”

Momo started to laugh at the same time that some tears started to fall from her eyes. She could feel her boyfriend and friends staring at her with shocked expressions, but the situation was looking so ridiculous that Sakata of all people was the one pointing it out (not that she could fault him for that). However, who wouldn’t think weirdly at a bunch of teenegers laying on the floor when the weather was cold?

“A-Ayase-san?”

Okarun was right. She cared about all of them, enough to overthink whether she was allowed to be happy. But it was a two-way street. They cared for her, too—enough to sprint through the cold night to scold and reassure her.

Why had she been so worried in the first place?

She didn’t even know anymore.

Taking a deep breath to calm herself, Momo finally responded to her friends’ words.

“Thank you.” She said from beneath the weight of Vamola and Aira. “I love you guys.”

Thank you for caring.

They stared at her for a moment before breaking into smiles.

“Of course.” They all replied in unison.

Thank you for being my friends.

“Now, I would really appreciate it if you get off of me.” Momo said, her voice strained. “I mean, people are staring…”

"Oh, stop complaining!" Aira shot back, though she begrudgingly began to stand. "It's your fault anyway, skank!"

“Hah! I didn’t ask to be jumped on!” Momo yelled from the floor, still stuck there as Vamola slowly got up. "How is that my fault?!"

"Now, now, Aira, don’t be like that." Jiji chimed in, coming up beside the pink-haired girl. "You were so worried about Momo, you were practically crying on your way over here."

"N-no, I wasn’t!" Aira stammered, her cheeks flushing pink as she started walking away, but Jiji followed, teasing her relentlessly. "Nonsense!"

"She’s not cute at all..." Momo muttered under her breath.

A hand suddenly appeared in front of her, and when she looked up, she saw Rin standing there, offering to help her up.

"She has her own way of showing she cares, Ayase-san." The class rep said calmly, pulling Momo to her feet.

"I know." She assured softly. "And I'm sorry for making all of you worry."

"You don't need to apologize, but please, lean on us when you need to." The girl replied with a warm smile.

"Yes! Call on me for anything, Young Ayase-san!" Sakata struck a dramatic pose before sprinting off, as if making a grand exit.

Rin just chuckled and began following the others, leaving Momo with Okarun. After all, she had a feeling they still needed some time alone.

"Okarun..." Momo called softly, turning to look at the boy who seemed a bit shy after his antics in the street. "I...I want to have a Christmas party."

Okarun blinked in surprise at the sudden declaration, but his expression quickly softened. He smiled and reached out to take her hand. Momo immediately intertwined their fingers as they started walking again.

"Is that so?" He asked, his tone warm.

"And I want to invite everyone."

"Okay, I can help with the invitations."

"...You're coming, right?" Momo asked, her voice quieter now.

"Of course. I'll be the first one there."

Momo grinned, her heart swelling with a warmth she could hardly contain. There was only one way to express what she was feeling. Without warning, she stopped in her tracks and gently tugged Okarun closer.

“Ken.” She could practically see the moment his brain short-circuited.

"A-Ayase-s—"

His words died on his lips as she pressed hers to his. The kiss was brief, but it left Okarun's face bright red—though Momo’s cheeks were burning too. 

Laughing at his dazed expression, Momo tugged him along again, stopping a few steps later to gaze up at the first snowflakes of the season. A White Christmas.

"M-Momo!" Okarun suddenly stammered.

Now it was her turn to be taken aback. Despite his face being beet red, Okarun stood tall beside her. This time, she felt the blush creeping all the way up her neck.

"W-what?! Are you really saying my n—"

But before she could finish, Okarun leaned in, catching her off guard with a kiss of his own. It seemed like he was learning how to surprise her now, but who was she to complain when her shy boyfriend decided to make the first move?

When their lips parted, Okarun didn’t pull away entirely. Instead, he rested his forehead against hers, gazing into her warm brown eyes.

"Now you're just copying my moves." Momo teased, but her smile didn’t falter.

"Well...sorry." Okarun replied, a bit shyly.

"I'm not really complaining, though."

He nodded, unsure of what to say next, but Momo didn't mind filling the silence.

"Thank you, Okarun." She whispered softly.

Okarun smiled and gently tightened his grip on her hand.

"Any time, Ayase-san."

Thank you for being here.

"Ah! Why are you calling me that again?!" She suddenly exclaimed, pulling back slightly but never letting go of his hand.

"It’s your name!" He retorted, adjusting his glasses with a slight frown.

"Wahhhh! Momo!" Vamola’s voice cut through the moment from afar. "Jiji transformed! The snow’s too much for him!"

"Takakura! Let’s fight!" Evil Eye shouted, pointing dramatically at Okarun.

"You’re such a pain in the neck!" Aira groaned, clearly irritated.

"Huh? What’s that?!" Rin asked, looking bewildered, the only one unaware of Jiji's Evil Eye transformation. "Is he some kind of vampire too?!"

"And you’re a pain, too!" Aira snapped at her.

"Where’s my Kintabot when I need it?!"

As the chaos unfolded, Momo and Okarun exchanged tired looks, both barely holding back exasperation.

"Let’s go?" Momo asked with a sigh.

"Yeah..." Okarun muttered, already anticipating the headache to come.

Still, despite the madness, Momo found herself at ease. No matter what kind of chaos her friends got into, she liked things just the way they were.

"Evil Eye, today’s Thursday, not Tuesday!" Momo called out as she and Okarun walked away, their hands still firmly clasped.

Thank you all for being here.

Ending notes:

So, first: The manga/anime implied that Momo lost her parents, that's why she went to live with Seiko, and I wanted to explore it a little bit. I really don't think that Momo would think that the accident was her fault, but I can see her overthinking about it anyway, but she does have great friends, and I know that they would be there for her.

Second: For this story I wanted Okarun to still have his powers, so I had to made Turbo Granny come back. But I really think that she went out in a adventure to try to help Momo to go back to her original form.^^''

Well, I had fun writing the oneshot, and I hope that you liked it too.^^

See you guys!

P.S: English is not my native language, so I'm sorry for possible grammar/spelling mistakes.

[turtleshelf]

As a middle school teacher who is still deeply entrenched in the Pjo fandom, let me tell you it gives a very different context to these characters than I had when I first read the books. I went from a troubled kid with a turbulent home life to an educator working primarily with kids with behavioral issues, but interacting with all types of kids and. man.

Kids are resilient, it is a phrase you hear over and over and over again when you work with them, but when you're an adult you're able to see how truly small and scared and vulnerable even the toughest kids are.

I often look at my students and try to imagine them in the Pjoverse and it makes me incredibly sad. Even the kids with the brightest fires burning in them, at their core, want to be safe and cared for.

I've watched kids labeled as "lost causes" have full breakdowns after getting in another fight because they're so tired of being angry. I seen kids other teachers insist will give me hell because they "just don't care" sit quietly and respectfully and do their work for an entire day. I've seen kids faces light up as I help them with their work because they finally understand the concepts they didn't understand in class. I've been on the phone with parents as they cry because my phone call was the first positive phone call home about their child they've received in a very long time. I've watched the relief wash over kids faces when they realize all their missing work that's been piling up is completed finally.

And I finally understand, when you read Pjo as a kid it's a heros story, kids just like them that are not only capable of something great but are made for it. The idea that they might not be broken, they're just different from what the world expects.

When you read Pjo as an adult it's a tragedy, kids who have been failed at every turn in their lives, from the moment of their births, forced to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. Kids who have been labeled instead of loved, who believe you can be great or you can die trying, but that's the only way people will notice you.

Luke's motivations and Percy's growing bitterness make a lot more sense the older you get. It's why characters like Sally, Paul, Jo, and Emmy are so important. To me they represent something incredibly important, adults who understand even when they don't understand and never think more or less of the kids infront of them than who they show they are right then and at their core.

Idk I've been thinking about this a lot this year, Rick being a teacher when he wrote Percy Jackson makes a lot of sense to me actually. I bet he was a very good teacher.

[internetgiraffekid1673]

What the Hell is Wizard101 (and Pirate101)

I'm making this post for the lovely @ellazimmermansblog, who is very sweet and wants to actually have half a clue what's going on in the fandom that I'm in but she's not. And oh sweet cheese and crackers. You asked for it. I tried to leave this in the comments. I really did. This is gonna get long, so feel free to read this in chunks or disregard it or just read it whenever you get the time.

Genre:

Wizard101 is a JRPG or junior-role-playing game that's also an MMO or Massive Multiplayer Online game that was big in the 2010s. In case you don't know what those are:

A JRPG is a game where you basically play as the protagonist of a middle grade fantasy/adventure story, meaning the target audience is usually 7-13. Think Pokemon or Kingdom Hearts.

An MMO is a game where everybody who plays the game is playing at the same time, in the same world. You can always interact with other players and are heavily encouraged to team up and collobarate.

While it is advertised as "free to play," it's only free for like the first hour or so of playtime. You can do the tutorial and like two other areas before you have to fork over some cash for a membership.

Basic Story:

Anyway, the spoiler-free story of Wizard101 is that you are a young Wizard enrolled in Ravenwood School of Magic by Headmaster Ambrose. He found you magically transported from "a strange world that doesn't believe in magic" (read: Earth). He believes you may be "the one we've been searching for." After doing a personality quiz to decide which school of magic you belong to, your enrollment is immediately crashed by Malistaire Drake. He used to be the Professor for the Death School, until his wife fell ill and he went mad with grief and turned evil trying to bring her back.

After beating up your would-be teacher, you learn that he's been unleashing scores of undead onto Wizard City, mind-controlling people, is going after major infrastructure, and is just being a dick in general because he's eeeeeeeeviiiiil. Ambrose turns you loose in the streets to help a number of other student NPCs save the city and do general damage control.

The main story of Arc 1 basically has you trekking after Malistaire like a lunatic, cleaning up his messes and trying to stop him from breaking the world apart while he attempts to ressurect his wife. This is where me and my brother J-Dog are at in our playthrough.

But there are 4 arcs, and the story continues WELL after you mop up the Malistaire problem. It's basically the Young Wizard saving the spiral from major threat after major threat, trekking through quirky worlds willy-nilly, and meeting a massive and entertaining cast of NPCs, all with different motivations and sidequests and problems for you to solve (or cause).

Each world in the spiral is also kind of an analogy for a real life place or a popular fictional story, but you replace all the humans with anthropomorphic animals (I'm really not sure why this game isn't more popular with furries). Marleybone, for example, which is where my brother and I are right now, is analagous to Victorian era England and populated by a bunch of stiff-upper-lipped dogs that nobody likes, mutliple crime rings of cats, and a contingent of Irish foxes that only appear in the less-popular but very good companion game: Pirate101 (I'll get to that).

That's the most basic I can make the gist, but there's still a lot of other basic information that might matter when I talk about it, so I'll put that under a cut!

Magic Basics:

The 7 main schools of magic that you can play as, and what they're general purpose/ability is are as follows:

Storm: Hit things really hard in exchange for a low accuracy rate and lower base HP. Glass cannons basically. This is what I'm playing as.

Fire: Also hitting things, but focuses more on damage-over-time spells that kill your enemies slowly.

Ice: Damage Sponge. They have the highest natural health pool, access to some decent spells early on to reduce damage, and even have a taunt spell that can draw enemy fire onto them (this isn't very useful in practice from what I've heard).

Those are the three elemental schools. The next three are spirit schools.

Life: Healers. What did you expect? They're the only class with the ability to heal other players. They get a high health pool, really good accuracy, and a lot of healing spells, but they're less good at hitting things and dealing damage. This is what J-Dog is playing as.

Myth: Summons. You can summon lots of different minions to help you out. From what I understand, each minion plays slightly differently and you're supposed to build different strategies around what they give you.

Death: Drains. Stealing health from the enemy basically. A lot of their spells will hit the enemy really hard, and then give half of that back to you. Because of the capability to hurt and heal in the same turn, they're the best to solo the game with.

And finally there is a school that lives in between Elemental and Spiritual:

Balance: battlefield control. They have a lot of damage increasers and damage reducers, and have the capability to mess with the powers of any of the other schools.

While each class does have it's unique and specific niche, they do all have the same main function: summon a monster to hit your enemy. All the combat in the game is done in a summoning circle where you take turns summoning monsters to hit each other. Each side can have up to 4 allies at a time (are we sensing a number theme yet).

Each enemy in the game has an assigned school that they belong to. Casting spells from the same school as them does less damage, while spells from the opposite school are stronger. Opposites are as follows:

Life and Death

Fire and Ice

Myth and Storm

Balance is a special snowflake that has no opposite :)

Your ability to cast spells depends on your Mana, which can be restored with blue wisps of magic floating around the world. Your ability to not be dead depends on your health, which can be restored with red health wisps.

Most spells that you cast, especially damaging spells, have a chance to "fizzle" or fail to cast. It's like missing in a pokemon game. This is the bane of every player's existence.

There are also Astral Schools later that do other things, but I ain't got there yet, so it's whatever.

Extracurriculars:

There are a number of other fun things you can do in Wizard101 that don't involve saving the world:

PvP: player versus player combat! Get the shit beaten out of you by people with more time and money! For fun! Beat the shit out of other people and win arena tickets, which can buy you cool prizes like better gear!

Pets: You can have a number of adorable little animal companions that, if you take good care of, will help you in combat! Some of them cast spells on their own, some of them give you extra spells to cast, some of them have passive abilities that increase your strength, and all of them will get more helpful the more you train them. You train them via minigames, like teaching them to dance or having them eat snacks off a stage or FIRING THEM OUT OF CANONS (amongst other questionable activities).

Gardening: Take care of the weirdest assortment of magical plants you've ever seen, in exchange for harvesting them for money and crafting ingredients and treasure cards and stuff. All of them are puns btw. Like. I have laugh-o-dils, despairagus, baby carrots (literal screaming baby carrots in diapers), and dandelions (which have actual lion faces) to name a few.

Fishing: Pull weird magical pun-based fish out of the water and sell them for exorbitant amounts of cash or stick them in your aquarium or something!

Monstrology: Study various creature types by killing them a lot until you become an expert and can either summon them as minions, stick them in your house, or just get EXTRA good at killing them.

Crafting: Use natural ingredients you found across the spiral (reagents) to make better gear yourself!

There's also photomancy, but that's just a glorified screenshot feature and we all know it.

NPCs:

Me and everybody else who plays this game is fucking obsessed with all of the non-player characters in both games. There are so many of them though, and they're so different from each other, that you're better off just asking who's who every time I post about one.

Pirate101:

While the Wizard is off being a tragic chosen one saving the spiral from various world-ending threats, there are other adventures going on underneath their nose! Pirate101 takes place at the same time and in the same universe as Wizard101, but never interacts beyond vague references.

The basic spoiler-free plot of this one is that you are a young orphan who got thrown into prison after crossing the Clockwork Armada, a tyrannical army of steampunk clockwork robots who want to conquer the world and end our God Given Right to steal shiny things (and also suppress free will or something. Idk. I never got that far).

You're broken out of jail by eccentric pirate captain Boochbeard and his monkey first mate Mr. Gandry, drag a fellow captive along with you, beat up one of the high-ranking members of the Armada, and are taken to the pirate safe haven of skull island. You're introduced to it's steward, the successful and retired pirate Captain Avery, who immediately enlists you as his errand boy/girl/goblin thing. You meet one of the first companions of your crew, Bonnie Anne, and together you run some turncoat sharks out of town.

After proving yourself to Avery and getting swindled out of a real ship, you basically spend the rest of the game chasing after untold gold and riches, beating up the Clockwork Armada, and helping out unfortunate souls where you can.

The critical difference between wizard and pirate though: The wizard makes temporary NPC acquaintances and even a few true friends, but they're always left to fight alone with just themselves (and a few other wizards if you're playing the game multiplayer, as intended). Meanwhile, the pirate is collecting ragtag companions for their motley crew like they're pokemon cards. Some of them are looking for adventure, others money, others freedom or a new life, and a lot of them just feel like they owe you because you beat them up.

All of these NPCs join your crew and you can have up to 3 of them in a fight with you, in addition to a pet. They all have highly entertainig personalities and different sets of abilities that are useful in different scenarios.

Pirate101's combat is much more up close and personal, playing more like chess where you have a bunch of different pieces that you have to strategically move around to hit different attacks with.

The different classes of pirate, which are determined by which crime got you in jail at the beginning of the game, are as follows:

Musketeers (my fave): guns and traps. The idea is that you don't have to get too close with them.

Witchdoctor: magic! They function sort of similarly to wizards in wizard101, but they can also hit things over the head with their staff and get stabbed, so no they don't.

Privateers: Healing, boosting, and commanding other pirates

Bucanners: Big sword that hits one thing very hard (and also big defense) at the cost of more agility and freedom to move.

Swashbuckler: Also hitting things, but less defense and health in exchange for more agility.

Pirate101 also has ship combat. While Wizard has convenient magical teleporters to move you between worlds, Pirate101 said "get in your boat and drive there yourself." You basically fire canonballs at each other until one ship gets damaged so badly it stops moving and gets boarded, at which point you transition to regular combat.

Pirate101 is in general, the neglected younger sibling. Kingsisle doesn't pay a quarter as much attention to Pirate, but it's still really good.

Apart from the companions and the combat, the biggest difference in pirate is probably your lack of supervision. You don't constantly have people glaring over your shoulder and telling you what to do, you just have a ragtag gang of misfits and a general order to "get money, don't die, and don't be a dick." The pirates get to be very chaotic in comparison to the wizards.

Holy mackeral, that was a lot. Anyway, I played both games a lot as a kid and spent my summer allowance on memberships for them. Now that I have an adult brain and adult money and am a lot better at video games, I have returned to enjoy them again, and I am dragging my brother along with me (don't worry, he's having fun too).

I highly recommend that you play them both, they're very fun. But this post should be a good guideline if you don't want to put that much investment into it, but still want to have half a clue what I'm talking about when I bring up either game. Thanks so much for asking!

[gayestyttdblog]

~ warning: gray let the yap demons get to them at midnight on caffeine and this is the result ~ im literally feeling sickened by how much i love yttd. like i think it affected my life more heavily than i thought. i first played it sometime right after 2-2's release, i was probably about 12 or 13. i only played it because i loved danganronpa at the time and heard it was similar, but oh god did i rewrite my own fate with that decision. my love of this game, and more so my love of nao, predates a lot of aspects of me. i loved nao so much, i cant even remember why. i knew she was my favorite from the moment i saw her on the game's little banner. i loved her at such a surface level that it feels like i grew alongside my relationship with her as a character. when i first played the game, i was a middle school girl who was kinda sad a lot of the time. i saw nao in her weak moments and related to her. she was a comfort to me. then i got older, and i started to look into her more as i looked into myself. how she coped with things, how she grew throughout her arc, hell even her queercoded-ness seeped into me lol. and now im here. i turn 19 next year, im an art student in community college, and down to the little things i just... act like nao. its like i loved her so much i took on all the things i loved and became a version of myself that i loved just as much. and i think thats really beautiful. i didn't pay much attention to the game for a good while, probably 2-ish years while i was in an iffy relationship. about 3 months ago i started talking to a friend of a friend and we realized we both loved the game in the past and so we started a playthrough. we both forgot half the plot so it was basically like it was all new. the amount of joy i felt during those long nights of staying up and theorizing and making memes and laughing and just.... living. it's immeasurable. im in probably the best spot ive ever been in mentally and i attribute part of that to how yttd has affected me over the years and how its come back to me now. making this blog was definitely impulsive. i was in the midst of an identity crisis and all i wanted to do was talk about this game. i couldn't do it on my old blog, so i made this one. being able to be a part of the fandom and try my best to actively contribute to it has been such a blessing to me and ive been trying to figure out a way to thank all the people who have interacted with me and engaged with all my nonsense on here without it sounding weird and out of place. let this be my really awkward thank you to this community lol. i love this game and i love what it's done for me. here's to chapter 3-2's (definitely upcoming and very soon) release :)

[naluwalker]

Rinbachi, Rinbachi, Rinbachi

I have a lot of love for Rinbachi, so I suffer a lot from it being a somewhat strange couple within the fandom. This love comes in part from Rin and especially Bachira being my two favorite characters, so I like to constantly visit this couple's tag on Ao3.

My taste for crossover stories also makes me regret that there really aren't any good crossover stories about this couple, or at least I haven't been lucky enough to find any, so I'll start throwing out ideas here, to at least expel the insects that eat away at my brain.

Let's start:

Some time ago I found a Rinbachi fic in which after his fight with Sae, Rin simply sends everything to hell and leaves football to start dedicating himself to art, which surprised me quite a bit because considering that Rin is a person who literally he lives and breathes football one would think he would never give it up and continue like in the manga, using his anger as a shield and moving forward with determination and spite, but on the other hand, Sae also hurt him a lot and a normal person could also just let it all go and distance yourself from the sport simply so as not to be hurt again. If he doesn't have to play then he wouldn't have to see Sae again, right?

Knowing Blue Lock's Rin, he would never do it, but a Rin from a different universe could make this decision, and that's how this starts.

Attention to the crossover with Welcome to the Ballroom.

After the admittedly traumatic fight with Sae, Rin simply sinks into depression and abandons football completely. Just seeing a ball is painful, being on the field causes him a panic attack and he has a complete collapse. In another universe, the Itoshi couple does not pay much attention to how the relationship between both brothers deteriorates and the damage this causes in the future, in this Mayuri Itoshi, totally concerned about her son's mental health, but without knowing how to help she talks to her husband Ryō to do something before Rin gets worse than he is and they both feel that staying in the house causes more damage than Rin can bear at the moment, so they send him to Rei Itoshi's house, the Ryō's recently widowed mother, thinking it might be good for both of them in the long run.

In this way, Rin Itoshi ends up moving to her grandmother's very large mansion in Chiba.

Rei Itoshi is a woman of regal bearing, strict and cold like her name, without his grandfather by her side to soften her thornier side, Rin does not know how to interact with his grandmother and cannot even say that he knows much about her.

Despite this, Rin spends the first week of his new life peacefully, until Meguru Bachira arrives knocking on the door and making a fuss, disrupting his life again.

In another universe, Meguru Bachira and Rin Itoshi would meet years later in the middle of a survival of the fittest project created to test their desire for victory and, above all, their egos, in the Japanese soccer world. In this universe, Meguru Bachira was born with the opposite gender.

Having been born a woman, in a country like Japan and involved in a sport like soccer, no matter how much drive, talent or love for the sport she had, things were not on Meguru Bachira's side and unfortunately she was crushed by people's expectations around her, and the ensuing bullying caused her to leave the field halfway through her second year of middle school, even though she never put the ball down.

In the midst of the biggest downturn of his life, while dribbling around town, Meguru found himself helping a grumpy old woman find her lost purse. Having spent the next few hours helping said old woman find her lost bag, Meguru found herself approached by the old woman, who, having noticed her depressed state, sat her down next to her so she could tell him her worries and in that way, Meguru found herself minutes then crying profusely and spilling her guts in front of a total stranger.

The old woman patiently listened to the girl talk and vent for the next hour, about her situation, her desires, her dreams, and the damage that other people's expectations were doing to her, and that sometimes she felt like she was simply sinking, unable to handle her own feelings emotions and sometimes not even her mother's support could get her out of the spiral of anger, pain and sadness in which she was drowning.

By the time she finished, the night was closing in on them and Meguru's throat hurt, the old woman stared at her with her eyes the color of the frozen sea and she was beginning to feel uncomfortable. When she finally spoke, the old woman told her to see her the next day and gave her the direction of her house before simply getting up and leaving Meguru sitting on a small bench.

Meguru found herself the next morning standing in front of a mansion that was probably worth several times her own house and was beginning to feel nervous. When the old woman opened the door, Meguru was beginning to wonder if they were going to sell her organs somewhere before the grumpy old woman led her into the house and guided her towards a specific room, and when she entered, her mouth dropped open what could only be a large ballroom.

The old woman introduced herself as Rei Itoshi, declared that Meguru would become a competitive ballroom dancer and that she was not allowed to refuse.

Even though any complaints she might have had crashed into the stone wall that was Rei Itoshi, Meguru decided to listen to the old woman and dove hard into ballroom dancing, and before she knew it, she was totally in love. It wasn't football and it would never be the same, but suddenly, Meguru didn't feel so alone or so pressured by others, and even if they still saw her strangely, Meguru found solace in the intensive training and muscle soreness that came with each day of training as she moved tirelessly around the room.

She learned a lot about dancing, and found herself becoming close with the woman who had forcibly brought her to the ballroom. She discovered that despite her strict and perfectionist character, Rei Itoshi was a bleeding heart and could not help others when she had the means to do so; that she had recently lost her beloved husband and was too stubborn to follow him so quickly, but the loneliness of his departure still haunted her strongly; that she loved her family, but without Kiyohiko there to soften her strong character she didn't know how to connect with them without being scorching and prickly; that she was worried about her eldest grandson, who was pursuing his dream abroad and barely communicated with his family; and mainly that Rei had been a competitive ballroom dance teacher for over fifteen years and had a gold medal at the World Games. She swears her jaw dropped when she heard that last bit.

As Meguru moved forward with competitive dancing, she ran into the annoying wall of her peers not lasting long. Either they couldn't keep up with her or they found her strange or creepy, and while the latter hurt her, the former were her main source of irritation. In soccer she could do things alone without them being a total impediment, here the partner was essential and she would throw a giant tantrum at Rei-baachan if she couldn't support her next partner for the time necessary to participate in competitions.

Then, while she was complaining about her situation she was informed that Rei's youngest grandson was moving into her house indefinitely and that she needed the boy to settle in and relax, so she had a week off and used it to find a competent companion or she wouldn't be allowed to train until she got one, much less participate in a competition. Meguru sometimes thought that Rei-baachan was a first-rate tyrant.

After a week of going around and asking every male acquaintance she had, Meguru finally returned with her tail between her legs to report her failure in her quest and face Grandma Rei's judgment, until she was met with the most turquoise eyes and the most toned legs she had ever seen.

Meguru Bachira only needed one look to decide that Rin Itoshi was the man she needed and she was determined to make her teacher's grandson her definitive companion.

On the other hand, Rin doesn't know how to get rid of this crazy girl who watched him for two seconds before jumping on him and asking, begging and crying for him to become her dance partner. His grandmother on the other hand doesn't even try to help him and she simply compliments the girl on her excellent eye for finding good men, Rin doesn't really want to know what that means. Thus, Rin Itoshi, like Meguru Bachira years before, finds himself thrust suddenly into a dance hall.

[badlucksav]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

Thank you @nyamadermont for the tag!

1. How many works do you have on Ao3? 199. I don’t know what the 200th will be yet 😅

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count? 1,836,320. That’s a whole lot of characters kissing.

3. What fandoms do you write for? My most common ones are Avatar: The Last Airbender and Avatar: Legend of Korra, but I’ve also written fics for The 100, Six of Crows, Law & Order: SVU, Spiderman (Tom Holland), Harry Potter, MCU, The Last of Us, Soul Eater, Spy x Family, Stranger Things, and Twilight.

Honestly though I haven’t been writing much fanfic. I’ve shifted what focus I have for writing to poetry and original fiction.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

1. The Proposal — a Zutara AU based on the 2009 Sandra Bullock & Ryan Reynolds movie of the same name.

2. An Unlikely Alliance — a Zutara season 2 divergence fic where they find themselves traveling together

3. Your Number 1 Fan — a NSFW Zutara AU where Katara is a cam girl and Zuko is a subscriber

4. Perks of Being Your Neighbor — a Zutara modern AU with fluffy good “neighbors” tropes as well as big brother Zuko to an orphaned Kiyi.

5. Play with Fire — yet another Zutara modern AU. This time, they’re in college. Slowburn, tons of pining.

5. Do you respond to comments?

I try to! Comments are a writer’s lifeblood. The only time I usually don’t is if the comment is rude or demanding of an update.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

That would hands down be The Conduit, if only because I left it on one hell of a cliffhanger and then never wrote the sequel.

My bad yo

Second angstiest (sort of?) would be The Ghost of You (iykyk)

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I like happy endings, so I feel like most of my fics have one. I’d say, for the level of pining and enemies-to-lovers aspect, The Proposal probably takes that cake.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Can’t get hate if you write rare pairs or rarely post

But yes, I used to. It actually drove me away from posting on ffn, and also drove me away from the Zutara fandom for a long time (and even still, I’ve never really come back).

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Oh yes, oh yes I have. And I write everything from soft vanilla first time sex to dirty kinky hot sex. Fully depends on my mood.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I don’t write them much, but the crackiest one was definitely the drabble I wrote throwing Rocket from Guardians of the Galaxy, Joel from The Last of Us, and Kaz Brekker from Six of Crows into an elevator together.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

I think I’ve had a few requests for permission to translate, but I’m not sure if anything was ever actually translated.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I co-wrote with @idklolwot!

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

Oofers, what a loaded question. All time favorite? Like I have to pick one?? Impossible.

It’s a tie between Irosami and Zutara.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Oof, at this point like all of them 💀 at least as fanfic. I’m considering taking some and turning them into original fiction.

16. What are your writing strengths?

People seem to like the character interactions I write as well as how i describe settings and the character’s inner monologues.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I definitely find the climax/conclusion to be the hardest. Maybe that’s why I never finish fics.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

If I spoke other languages fluently, I think I’d give it a try. But I don’t, so I won’t.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

First fandom I wrote and posted for was Avatar: The Last Airbender. But I recently unlocked memories of writing super cringe Twilight fanfic in middle school that never saw the light of day.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

This answer changes often. There are so many fics I love for different reasons (The Conduit is some of my most creative work, The Fire and the Flood is some of my best writing, The Proposal is actually finished…) but as of right now, it’s The Fire and the Flood. Maybe because I’m rereading it and falling in love with it again.

Tagging some of my favorite writer folks. If you’ve already been tagged, feel free to ignore 🤣

@orangepanic @neva-borne @mycomfortblanket @krastbannert @authorjoydragon

[belit0]

Unbreakable Bond (part 1)

TW: none (yet)

Pairing: Uchiha Izuna / reader

All humans are born with a guardian angel, yet they can only see them face to face when turning 20 years old.

(Y/N)'s seems a little bit unconventional, because where all protective beings are serene and calm, hers knows only chaos and violence. Hell breaks loose over their heads when they finally meet, and as her angel's purpose gets compromised, it forces an ancient war to take place between the two.

Uchiha clan, but with a twist.

Sooooo, hi!! I decided to come up with a fic exclusively for all my Izuna lovers!! Being part of a community that loves a character with zero visibility in the fandom, makes me take the determination of writing everything I want to read for him. I have been thinking about this idea for quite some time, and just haven't had the time to write. Here, finally, is chapter 1, and there will be lots more to come, cause I'm planning to make this a series for him!! So yeah, I hope you guys enjoy this as much as I do, writing content for Izuna is my first passion. I'll appreciate any type of feedback and interaction you want to give me, and if you have any suggestions, let me know!!

As (Y/N) remembers, her guardian angel was always chaos.

While other people received calm and peaceful solutions to their conflicts, her companion was always violent.

When (Y/N) was five, she had the naive idea to play in the forest behind her house.

Climbing different trees and hiding in the bushes, she stumbled upon a beehive, hidden high up. In her innocence, the little girl wanted to investigate, quickly provoking the honeycomb's owners. The insects proceeded to attack her, but before one of them could even sting her, the tree fell to the ground, severed from its trunk in a perfect slash, crushing them all in the process. (Y/N) landed without any trouble on her two legs, as if someone had picked her up and placed her gently on the ground. At her age, she did not understand what saved her from such a brutal attack and fall, and it was the perfect opportunity for her parents took to explain the spiritual presence that would be with her for life.

At the age of 12, a group of three girls decided to pick on her at school.

They would taunt her purely out of envy, wanting to make her feel less, despised, and ugly. They would say horrible things to her, bully her in the corridors, and abuse her, destroying her self-esteem. One time, the leader of the group decided to physically attack (Y/N). Before the girl's hand could connect with her face, she went flying backward, slamming into a wall and falling to the ground in an explosion of crying. There was a mark on her chest as if someone had kicked her before she could get close. They never intimidated or messed with her again, knowing something powerful surrounded and protected (Y/N).

At 15, she met the first repulsive man of her life.

One of her classmates, hopelessly in love with her, had no better idea than to try to win her over with teasing and harassment. He would insist again and again on his love, pestering and chasing her wherever she went. He didn't understand how repellent and unattractive his attitude was, leading a group of annoying young men who were only dedicated to disturbing girls. One particular afternoon after school, the group of idiots followed her on her way out, berating her in mid-stride. They surrounded her with more than 6 boys, with the main idiot standing in the middle of the circle. Before any of them could do anything to her, they all fell to the ground in coordination. There was blood everywhere, broken arms, mangled noses, and legs contorted at unnatural angles. (Y/N) thanked aloud the angel who must have been around her, and walked out of the scene in shock.

When her first boss, at the age of eighteen, wanted to get handsy with her at work and misuse his authority, the man's house appeared all over the local news channels in flames. No one could explain the cause of the fire, but all his belongings had been destroyed in the blaze, leaving him completely homeless.

(Y/N) was aware guardian had unusual ways of acting, comparing her experiences with those of her parents and friends. No one had ever had such a fiery and violent spiritual companion, crude in his actions and ways of protecting.

Her parents, for example, lived a quiet life with their protectors. Both their angels resided between heaven and the forest behind their house, visiting them and coming when summoned, dividing their time between above and earth. What her friends related was a similar situation. Their companions were not with them all the time, coming only when needed or called by their humans.

In (Y/N)'s case, it seemed to be with her 24/7. It helped her in the mornings to gather her things for school, with books flying from one side of the room to the other and landing perfectly inside her backpack. During work, and in the summer months, the angel would generate a cold draught of air for when she wanted to go out for a break, and during winter, a warm stream of wind to keep her warm.

It was a pleasant companion, a constant presence, someone to always count on.

(Y/N) has never seen her guardian and does not know its name, has no idea if it is a man or a woman, the color of its eyes or skin, or what its hair looks like. She only knows their bond is stronger than anyone else's with their celestial beings.

In a few weeks, she will be twenty and will have to face the physical image of her partner for the first time. To know, finally, who is hidden in that cloak of invisibility constantly separating them.

On a hot summer night, (Y/N) returns from work and walks quietly on her way home, constantly thinking about what it will be like to meet her angel. She has only a few hours left, and soon will be face to face with the one who has been with her since the beginning of her life.

One of her closest friends had her birthday 3 days earlier, living the experience before and being able to tell her a little about it. The girl recounted how she met her spiritual companion, a female angel named Sakura, with pink hair and green eyes. The heavenly entity waited for her sitting at the table, and when the clock struck 12:00, she was finally able to see her. They talked about everything that had happened to the young woman during their years of invisible separation, and at the end of the night, the angel retired to heaven, letting her know she could call her whenever she wished.

The experience sounded calm and serene, friendly, but for some reason, (Y/N) sensed hers would not go the same way.

She arrived at her lonely flat at about 10:30 and decided to take a bath, be in the most presentable condition. When she got out of the shower, she did a short video call with her parents, who were miles away since she moved to study in another city.

When looking at the clock again, it was 11:30.

She ordered some food and it arrived 10 minutes before 12:00. (Y/N) rushed to eat, as if she had to be still and silent as her twenties loomed over her head. She finished her plate in less than five minutes, at the sensation of the last french fry getting stuck in her throat.

Desperate and alone, she began to choke, no less than three minutes before the special moment. She tried to stick her fingers down her throat, running to the bathroom in panic, trying to free her airway. No longer keeping track of time, her only priority was to stay alive and not be killed by a potato. Her vision started to blur, with less and less air in her lungs, while she collapsed to the floor in front of the toilet.

Just when she thought there was no hope, she felt two hands grab her under her arms, lifting her up and pressing into her stomach.

After several pushes, the rest of the unchewed fry flew out of her mouth, as (Y/N) coughed and tried to catch her breath. She fainted before she could see the identity of the one who had saved her, further postponing meeting her angel.

[astrxlfinale]

Knowing a partner well can potentially make writing together a lot easier.

Repost it up. No reblogging.

--------

NAME: Jace

PRONOUNS : He/Him

PREFERENCE OF COMMUNICATION : Tbh DMs and Discord are the best way to go. If I'm ever calling you up in 4k, we've probably know each other for a hella long while at this point in this hobby. lol

NAME OF MUSE(s) : Caelus (Honkai Star Rail)

BEST EXPERIENCE : In particular it was a RP in my manga days of RP with my Oga Tatsumi muse. Me and a bunch of Nintendo related muses (After playing the hilarious spectacle of Shut up and Jam Gaiden, proceeded to do a shounen-esque RP of basketball that went into comical perfection. Rosalina Nintendo did indeed nuke everyone at the end with her Cosmic, universal shattering dunk.

It was GLORIOUS.

RP PET PEEVES / DEALBREAKERS :

:| So uh, there may be a bit to this.

Trauma/Stress Dumping: The #1 that will have me done at the drop of a hat. Since I even began rp'ing it's always been this thing, people seeking other folks/people who offer up solid chill times to just go and vent the entire world and then some onto them. Mind you a lot of these interactions being with strangers likely known for a week at most.

This literally has no changed a lick since middle school. Unless I've known you for a considerable amount of time, this is the easiest way to proceed breaking all contact with me.

Not to have this confused with venting on your own blog/space. I accept and always respect that boundary. Just do not use talking as an opportunity to lean into such subject matter. It's one of the central reasons I'm really careful in joining group chats to begin with. There is a difference in telling me that a day was rough/bullshit, AND letting me know of particular territory to be watchful for in discussion, then just using me as an outlet. Especially in what I take for a hobby.

Socializing =/= Writing time: While I enjoy the social aspect of RP in it's nature. I never want to be in a position where the hangout time I spend with you creates the curve of interaction. That easily exhausts me and takes the fun from things once I'm clued in. Honestly speaking, someone could never talk to me outside sparse words, and we just run around with our muses writing up all sorts of scenarios and it'd work perfectly. This is what I use the website for!

Plotting does not fall under this umbrella. If people need an angle to make their magic work, I'm all for cooperating with you, this again just leans into xyz activities outside the hobby. Stretching yourself too thin in this regard can genuinely screw people over in other long time hang outs too, I've learned that the hard way.

Reference of Son/Daughter talk in mention to the muse in question: While I've first seen it on this website, in the same vein it's made me incredibly goddamn tired as it reels directly into the conversation involving the infantalization of muses. This likely strikes the highs for me into terms of 'Fandom Curses' alongside 'One character quality defines the whole character in question.'. Let's not even get started into fandom habits shaping the perception of a character OUTSIDE of canon content. Having muses that had to deal with the primary talk point here, I've just said to hell with giving many things or people a chance.

It just comes off as a really weird practice to me. It leans off heavily into the realm of character disrespect on top of that, as these idealized fandom notions. (For Example: Kingdom Heart's Aqua being relegated to 'Momqua'.) It gets too 'family' oriented in a sense where these accomplished characters can't really explore the depth of both their struggles, triumphs and lows. So if you seen me avoid that like the plague, that's exactly why.

'Comfort Character' Projection: It aligns a smidgen with the above. But no, have no expectation that I'll ever be a source to live out these particulars with you if I happen to play that very muse. I've again not hesitated to cut off connections at all when people attempt to wire these expectations onto me. My iteration of the muse is exactly what you signed up for by following me, respect that, just as I respect your boundaries.

MUSE PREFERENCES: If we're talking about the TYPE of muse I enjoy? Delinquent muses take the penultimate crown. I love those rowdy but firm hearted types.

PLOTS OR MEMES : Throw both at me. Now days I've gotten particularly more experienced into the plotting department. In the same vein I can't have it entirely streamlined either. I gotta let the muses breathe their breaths and exercise their own voice and actions.

That said? Memes are eternal, just throw those in anyday of the week, even if they're in the old logs of my blog. I never mind that. Just the prompts and scenarios alone can spark forth some vivid ideas/adventures that do lead into plotting. So hell, both sides win.

LONG OR SHORT REPLIES : Either is good. Though, a forewarning that I CAN wind up getting wordy. This never has to be matched as I'm just a sucker for details.

BEST TIME TO WRITE : For me, it's normally times outside the midday. It's usually when I'm available, as you'd come to see me around mornings or nights. (Also it's the best focus time.)

I say normally however, there's also plenty of times I'd just be hanging around on/off periodically.

ARE YOU LIKE YOUR MUSE(S) : Outside of some brazen qualities. Not really no!

Tagged by: Not a soul! Yoinked it up myself.

Tagging: If you feel like lettin' the world know, then by all means!

[allyendergirl]

Ok so I pattern recognized my way into realizing I was gay. Accept through this years long “process” of pattern recognition, I never really had a big realization, I guess.

So in middle school I was first introduced to yaoi and gay slash fic. I’m pretty sure I discovered anime (free!) through MakoHaru doujins. So my first introduction to the greater online sphere was through heavily queer spaces and content. Eventually these bl interests lead me to interacting with this greater queer fandom space and I started to see posts about how these adults should’ve realized that they were gay in middle school bc they were shipping obsessed and were also very invested in gay rights, just like me, so I was like “ok so I fall into this stereotype I’ll probably realize I’m gay at some point”.

Eventually in 7th grade I pondered the idea that I was asexual bc I didn’t have crushes on anybody. Not fictional men, fictional women, real men or women, no one. I had a “boyfriend” in sixth grade, and I vividly remember liking this boy a lot in 4th grade and the affection waning in 5th but we were still really good friends in 6th grade so I gave it a try. I think this boy’s terrible reaction to me breaking up with him is the reason why I like women. Not the point tho.

Anyway I Strongly identified with asexuality in some aspects but not in others, so I didn’t make it apart of my identity.

In 8th grade I settled on yeah probably queer/just queer. Then late in freshman year I discovered Aegosexual and I was like hell yeah that describes me pretty good, but something was still off and I didn’t make it apart of my identity.

Then in sophomore year, when I started playing with sapphic for my identity. And I started seeing posts about lesbians high school journeys from identifying as queer-to-sapphic-to-lesbian, and I was like yeah that sounds like me, I remember thinking “yeah that’ll probably be me, and I’ll probably be calling myself a lesbian by junior/senior year”. So I just let it naturally happen. And it did happen, I eventually, naturally started to call myself a lesbian in my junior year of high school.

But I wasn’t fully realized yet bc I still thought I was technically some type of asexual until I came across a nsfw profile of twitter and the person like exclusively drew and retwitted horny art of women and I got horny for women for the first time. Took me a few tries to get an orgasim out of me but eventually I had my full lesbian sexual awakening in late junior year. So yeah, I now know that Im nOt asexual.

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[zorilleerrant]

20 and the batman fandom please

I first made this tumblr in 2016; I was here for 5 (maybe 6?) years before that but I never really interacted with anyone and I deleted all of those blogs. I think I must have interacted with Batman fandom somewhere in that time, because it's so large, and I was definitely looking at fandom blogs a lot of the time, but I know for sure I found some Batman content early on in the life of this specific blog. I reblogged it sporadically when I came across it, but didn't specifically seek it out until I got back into comics... which was because of timber going canon. I'd long been interested in queer readings of comics, and so this historical milestone was very compelling to me! It might not be Bruce or Dick, but a canonically queer Batfam member getting to spotlight a queer relationship? Hell yeah!

Now, if you want to know when I found Batman fandom in general, you have to understand my memory doesn't go back that far. I watched my first Batman movie when I was 4 or so and I never looked back. I was buying tie-in novels as soon as I could get my hands on them. I was borrowing comics from anyone who would give them to me. I was putting bat stickers on everything I could reach. When I discovered fanfic in middle school, I started looking at Batman stuff basically immediately. I was devouring Batman crossovers in all of my then-current fandoms. I think I was writing some, too, but they'd be buried in my notes on old computers and notepads so who knows if I'll ever see them again. I wrote a book report on a Batman book in elementary school; I did research projects on bats in middle school.

So the answer is I've always been in Batman fandom generally and since middle school specifically, and it was actually tumblr that I discovered much later than Batman.

[kpchrs]

Hey!😁I wanna hear about *your* ships now! No pressure.😊💌

Ohohoho.

Almost a year ago, a friend of mine asked about the same thing, but she asked specifically about my controversial ships lol Consider this post an update to that post cus I have more to say after some time.

But your question is about ships in general so, just for fun, let's turn the globe to years and years ago when Kris (aka me) was still very new in fandom.

And this is very, very, very long, btw, I'm sorry lmao I didn't know I was waiting for this day.

Ahem.

Middle-school Kris was a person who didn't understand the fun of shipping and fanfiction outside of canon; crackship, crossover, non-canon ship, or non-canon rareship, you name it. Kris was a canon main couple shipper. She didn't understand the idea of pairing someone who never interacted, like, huh? What? What are you doing? How can that be fun? Weirdos.

So as a result, Kris only shipped main couples. Also, the safe ones. Since this was in her anime era, her ships were like Ichigo x Rukia (Bleach) (my first real ship; still ship it but I have lost interest since it's sunken xD), Soma x Erina (Food Wars) (the story execution sucked so I lost interest but this was the ship that intro'ed me to Tumblr fandom community), Yona x Hak (Yona of the Dawn) (my fav shojo manga, dear to my heart but not in the fandom or read fics like others), and Okabe x Kurisu (Steins;Gate) (nostalgia now but I hugely loved this), and Twilight x Yor (Spy x Family) (fake marriage Mr and Mrs Smith? Just my shit).

They are all canon ships. You get it.

But then October 2022 happened. The exact date it happened is right after my birthday even LOL

As I have said in the Prev Post I linked above, basically I stumbled on the most influential fic of my life because it changed Kris' everything (my dramatics won't go away because that's how it feels lol) It's CORNY as HELL to list what change, but it's, um, the concepts of humans and bad and good people? And how I see fiction? Ask me in private if anyone is curious for details cus I can't bear to list it *shudder*

It's a fic of a non-canon rare ship. Crackship? No idea, but definitely rare.

And I didn't realise I had been following The White Rabbit to Wonderland, and when I realised what had happened, I hadn't tried to get out.

Caulscott (Life is Strange) showed me how fun it is to ship outside the canon. That ship also introduced me to how it feels to ship a controversial ship, since the guy is very hated in the fandom. In my above post, I called it "my descent to darkness" because that, I guess, was my first controversial debut. I really didn't like the public scrutiny of liking a controversial character btw LOL

I don't know what thoughts of mine I should add to this ship, but I was amazed at the creativity of the people who can transform and develop a blank and a totally BLAH character into someone I love. A BLAH character because Nathan is a one-dimensional one, whom previously I'd found a bit annoying. Admittedly, technically I love the character's potential more than the canon character, but my love for the Fanon Nathan still pours into Canon Nathan.

Hundreds of fics since then, this fic is still at the throne of my favourite fic ever. My friend and I called this fic "The Fic" lol

The fandom is only a handful of people now and it's kinda lonely, but they are my dearest mutuals. This ship made me return to Tumblr, actually, because I left after Food Wars lost me lol I will post more Caulscott tag posts when I have the inspo!

When I encountered Hellcheer (Stranger Things), I was very relieved because it's not controversial at all, because I was tired of walking on eggshells (yes, Caulscott, a dying controversial ghost ship was exhausting enough). But of course, as it turned out...not really, but I won't repeat what I said in the Previous Post. From this fandom, I witnessed how a ship of 5-minute screentime can be so powerful. I clocked Hellcheer when I watched the show, but before I processed it she's dead so I just forgot about it. It only clicked in my head because of a fanart. I was drawn to their different aesthetics; girly girl and a metalhead. It's a ship that started as a rareship, but it grew this far (3.5k on AO3 now) because the fandom is so passionate (and fueled by spite)! It amazes me.

Hellcheer is very versatile. Every AU fits them, I feel. It can be the base of every kind of romance drama possible, even the dark ones. But more than that, it's a ship of women's liberation, in every kind of way; liberation in love, in sexuality, and in creativity, also their liberation from abuse, from toxicity, from their caged body, and from societal pressure. This ship's core is woman, in the form of Chrissy. I think that's beautiful and surprisingly deep? I don't think it's deliberate, it's just the way it is because of the people in the community. This ship might only stem from 5 minutes of screentime, but this ship means a lot to many people. People who want to criticise it can gtfo actually hehe! xD

Hellcheer is reminiscent of my ship pattern before Caulscott. I mean, it's a cliché of loser boy / popular girl romance. I still looove clichés.

Then, one day, I heard the news that there would be a Hunger Games' prequel film. I'm a fan of the franchise so I was looking forward to it but I hadn't read the book. I wasn't feeling anything from the trailer ("Ugh, why President Snow is the MC, why he looks like Eminem here?"), since I was still in the chokehold of the original trilogy. But, then I saw posts about "People shouldn't ship Snowbaird! Snow is evil and toxic blah blah blah blah you are condoning blah blah blah blah (basically anti posts)" on Tumblr, I said, "Ha ha ha! Bring it on, bitches!"

I have been trained by Caulscott aka my first controversial ship. I have been living fueld by SPITE. I decided to ship Snowbaird that day to spite the haters. Even if I knew it'd be exhausting, I just wanted to spite the haters. That's a funny origin story lol I bought the book after that.

Because I didn't summarise it in the Prev Post, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes or TBOSAS is the prequel of the trilogy. It's about a teenage boy called Coriolanus Snow who mentors a District 12 tribute in the Hunger Games, Lucy Gray Baird. They save each other, they legitimately end up falling in love with each other, but Coriolanus keeps getting tested by the harsh world to let go of his thirst for power and choose love. Fear defeats him, however, and he hardens himself and gives up on love and humanity. He ends up becoming the future dictator, aka the main enemy of Katniss in the original trilogy.

The funny thing is I relate to the little bitch of Coriolanus Snow's narration SO MUCH. He has this Regina George in his mind he never voices out and, well, I relate to having a little bitch in my mind too, even though not to his extent, I would say. Like at some point in my reading I was like, "Oh, Lord in heaven, if I say that I understand/sympathise with this little bitch, I'll get cancelled, no?"

I hadn't finished the book when I watched it on the theatre and I spent 10 minutes trying not to cry that day, because he could have chosen love. He was sooo close to choosing kindness. And he didn't.

In the Prev Post, I said that I didn't know where to go with this ship. After months, I still don't really know, not gonna lie. This ship is a tragedy because both Coriolanus and Lucy Gray are stubborn ass people who I personally can't see diverging from the path in the book. The story takes that path because Coriolanus and Lucy Gray are the way they are. Don't get me wrong, Lucy Gray did everything right, running from danger. The key here is Coriolanus, and well, he's a stupid ass bitch. More tragedy is I think he just needed a slap to the face and everything wouldn't happen, but alas.

People would say, "Uh, so what, Kris. You have AO3." I know lol I read some fics too, but ironically, considering the next ships, the fics are toxic and I can't see that of them, it actually chokes me. It's 1k fics on AO3 now, but I haven't been around to read more fics. The second reason is because I feel weird with canon divergence, because I really can't see them diverge, but it's a very me problem. I prefer a Modern AU or Our World AU, where I totally can see them not being doomed.

Still love them, of course. The book message further underlined what I learned from Caulscott, about humanity and redemption blah blah blah (sounds cheesy if I write it down lmao) Also, also, the book reminds me of the beauty of literature. I don't read much because my attention span is bad, but I was so happy I found a favourite book.

Snowbaird fandom is not that big now, but it's the first fandom I dare to contribute to the tags and it's such a great experience to interact with a lot of people on your own posts!

[LOTSA SPOILERS FOR BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER BECAUSE I WANNA GUSH]

In Snowbaird Discord circle, one of my mutuals chatted with us about Spuffy (Buffy the Vampire Slayer). I'd known its existence since about a year ago because of fanarts (the Spuffy fanart you shared with me is the one that introduced me to BTVS, Far!) and been intrigued for some reason by it, but was discouraged by the number of episodes. She told us about the WORST scene of them (and of my fandom life) and the MOST BEAUTIFUL scene of them (quite possibly the most significant scene of my fandom life too). That beautiful scene made me "OK, I'LL WATCH IT GADDAMMIT".

After my experience with Nathan and Coriolanus, I was like, "Ha, bring it on. How bad could it be? I've been training all my life for this!!!"

Saying that it was a wild ride is a gross understatement. The show is PACKED with cancellable scenes and stories in today's age I was appalled.

I LOVE IT.

THEY SHOWED THOSE SHIT ON TV. I'M ROLLING. I DIED MULTIPLE TIMES. The showrunners and some of the writers were assholes but they didn't hold back, like at all. And I hate them but I'm grateful for it?

Spuffy is an enemies-to-lovers between Buffy, the vampire slayer and Spike, the evil vampire who has killed two vampire slayers throughout the century and is looking to kill Buffy as his third one. So they are the BIGGEST enemies you can get in the narrative.

It's the first time I think I found a real enemies-to-lovers because they are actually equal opposition (well, tho Spike becomes unequal to Buffy later on because of plot reasons). They spend the season they first meet trying to kill each other (and almost succeeded) and the next seasons as reluctant allies who find each other so annoying. They actually become a great fighting partner because no one else in Buffy's team is able to keep up with her. Until one day Spike realises that he falls for her lol

Okay, lore intermission! In Buffyverse, the moment they get turned, vampires lose their "human soul" (in the story, it functions as conscience/moral compass). A demon soul replaces the void and reanimates the corpse with evil. Basically, vampires are superpowered evil undeads stripped into Freudian's Theory of Human Nature: sex and violence. So vampires can eat and massacre a whole city and they won't feel any remorse. They get off on the violence actually. They are believed to be pure evil and thus the vampire slayer, the defender of goodness and humanity, must exterminate them all. Small fact but it is also believed that soullessness means they can't love.

But, Spike does. It's shown since the start that he can. And Spike. does. love. hard.

He hates it actually, falling for Buffy. He thought it was perverse and wrong (lmao Buffy agrees) but he just can't help it and in the end just accepts that he loves the slayer. The soulless love manifests in selfishness, creepiness, and toxicity. And the way he acts on his love is SO CREEPY I don't blame the homegirl at all for being utterly disgusted lmao I don't blame her too that she doesn’t believe that what he feels is love and she spends a loooong time denying that it’s love. Until…he does the most surprising thing of unselfishly protecting her and her family by sacrificing himself to be tortured. It secretly touches her. He does that a lot actually, defying the lore the universe has established. He destroys the lore Buffy and the others have believed. Vampires can't love, but he acts like he really does. Vampires should be violent, but he can be gentle. Vampires should be selfish, but he can be sacrificial. Vampires are dead, but he's the liveliest of all. Vampires only eat blood, but he also enjoys her mum's hot chocolate and marshmallows. Vampires should be evil, but he will fight on the side of good if it’s for her. And it scares her.

You know what? As much as I wanna continue to gush about the brilliant dichotomy of Spike's character, this won't end if I do so I'll stop here.

There is this whole season when Buffy faces the darkest year of her life and thus her dark side. She practically uses Spike for sex (that is unconsciously BDSM, thus very under-negotiable) to cope with her depression, self-hatred, and total numbness. Buffy, the hero, wouldn't sleep with evil, but she can't stop coming to him.

That season is where they are the worst for each other because she takes out her hurt by abusing him physically and, I'd argue, emotionally, and he accepts it all. He can take it all because, well, vampire. Not unfamiliar with mixing sex and violence, he is. He also won't die from non-stake-and-decapitation injuries anyway. And he has been begging for crumbs for so long. If this is the crumb, so be it. As long as he can have a bit of her, even if it's only her body and not her heart.

He lets her because he loves her, while she lets him because she hates herself. By being with Spike, she's punishing herself. It's a maladaptive coping mechanism. Spike is her addiction. Being with him is how she self-harms. She's so in love with death she uses an undead to feel alive in death and death in life. Spike does genuinely love her, but she doesn't want to believe it. She's ashamed. She denies herself of love because she thinks she doesn't deserve love.

(Well, he's still soulless so he tries to pull her into the darkness and entice her to embrace the darkness, because he thinks that's good for her (and good for him because he lives there, maybe he can have her as a whole that way.)

...I love it so much. Like forget about the wild juicy scenes between them that season. I'm grateful for it because Buffy is this superheroine, the epitome of heroism and altruism, the defender of humanity, the symbol of goodness, but she has deep darkness inside her.

I always relate to messy characters. Not messy as in a bad characterisation, but messy as in very human, flawed, insecure, inconsistent, selfish, prideful, hypocrites, making A TON of mistakes, doing bad things to feel better, etc. It's hard to explain why, but feeling seen is a part of it. I'm used to seeing a character doing bad things, then imagining standing inside their shoes and thinking, "Oh, I'd do that too." or "I understand their mindset" In conclusion, I love imperfectness, because I'm less than perfect. I'm grateful for a dark, slumped, lying at a low point Buffy, that she's messy and imperfect and so very human.

Of course, later in that season, there is that WORST SCENE (attempted rape scene, I'll just say it, everyone hates that scene, it was so irresponsible of the showrunners, there are lots of arguments why it shouldn't happen narratively but I won't get into that). (I don't know who will read this post but this is the biggest reason why I always emphasise please ask me for trigger and content warnings if you are interested in watching BTVS.)

Horrified, he goes somewhere to deal with a demon. He wants his soul back. He almost died for it, but he keeps fighting. For her. So he won't hurt the girl anymore. This is supposed to be impossible. No vampire in history has done it. Losing their human soul is liberating for vampires, actually. No conscience, no cage, no rules, you can do whatever you wanna do. But he gets the soul and becomes the only vampire who voluntarily gets his soul back, defying the lore again.

After that season, he is back as tortured because the soul is torturing and haunting him with every evil shit he has done. Of course, he doesn't expect to be saved or accepted, but Buffy helps him anyway. The last season is them becoming actual friends and partners (her right-hand man) and unflinching support for each other. This season is also where the MOST beautiful scene happens and just like how the depiction of Buffy's dark side touches me, this scene touches me too.

I said before that our dark side is human. But trying hard to live and still being kind is also a part of being human. And a person as a whole, even with their dark side, is still worth being loved. I don't know why this scene clings to my ribs until now. I don't know what part of myself is being comforted by it, because as far as I know, I have a very normal and uneventful life? But whatever, the peaceful feeling I get from it is significant. This scene means SO MUCH to me. I'm so very grateful it exists.

What I have written is only a few parts of why I love it, there are a lot more reasons why I love it (their partnership since the start, the way they can understand each other, the way that they are mirrors of each other, them being half light and dark themselves, etc), but I shouldn't write more xD

[END OF SPUFFY]

After Spuffy, I can't say I ship it, but I'm very fond of it. This is the ship why I made that post about ship pattern lol

It's Weslah (Angel the Series) from BTVS Spin-Off; a canon rareship. Lilah, the lady, has been the main face of this evil company, making her an enemy of Angel, the protagonist, and his team, who are again the defenders of goodness. It was established for three seasons that she is evil. Later it's shown that to survive the world as a woman, she has to wear the "evil" mask and trash her conscience. That's her method choice of survival. Meanwhile, Wesley is this British, pathetic guy in Angel's team who toughens up with the experience of fighting alongside Angel.

In Season 3, Wesley makes a big mistake, intended to protect but resulting in harming Angel's family. Angel tries to kill him and Wesley, even if he knows that he made a mistake, is hurt by it. He feels abandoned by Angel, the person who should have been his trusted friend, not giving him the chance to explain. I think it's very human, by the way, converting mixed feelings into bitterness and resentment, even when it's your mistake.

So in Season 4, Wesley and Lilah end up having a physical relationship. Normally, Wesley the White Hat wouldn't sleep with the enemy, like ever, but I think he wants to fill the emptiness. I'm not too clear on why Lilah consents, but I think she's a "Why Not?" woman. She loves Wesley's newfound darkness outside of her company's interest in him and she wants to corrupt him further.

I was like,

In the span of minutes. It is hot indeed.

Somewhere in their relationship, Lilah ends up really liking Wesley. I'd argue that she does love him, but Wesley loves another woman. In this relationship, we see Lilah's mask slipping a lot but she still wears it well, especially masking her hurt when she sees that Wesley doesn't love her like she does him. Wesley does have great affection for her though, I'd also argue he does love her but holds back. Being careful not to fall because, well, as far as he knows he loves another woman and he shouldn't love someone who doesn't want to be on the side of goodness.

Well, this is a doomed romance because it ends with tragedy.

I'd argue again that if Lilah switched to the good side, and they had enough time, they could have been together. But alas. (I know I could turn to AO3, but not many fics are there so yup. "Make one yourself, Kris!" I can't, okay 💀)

And this is a ship pattern because this is kiiiinda just Spuffy but gender reversal and less extreme (since they are both average humans lol) I see Wesley as reminiscent/a parallel of Spike since they are both pathetic British guys (not only that but deep spoilers if I explain), while Lilah and Buffy are the girlbosses, only the good and evil are reversed. Both Buffy and Wesley are on the line between "good" and "evil" in their relationship with Spike and Lilah, thinking that this relationship is wrong. I was disappointed with my predictableness, but this ship is still so very hot.

Okay, so I know I started this...essay with the preface that I didn't understand non-canon ships, when so far I end up shipping canon anyway, except for Causlcott. Well, I think in the end I found that it's still more natural for me to ship the canon ones. The difference is the popular or not (and the toxic or not xD).

But now I understand the fun of every kind of shipping. Truthfully, there are some ships I just don't understand but I really get the search for fun.

Looking back, I can see that my tastes never really change, it just widens into the more dangerous and controversial territory xD

Btw, my ship patterns have "cringefail" and "[gender]failure" too, but it's all the men. It's all the men. The men are the cringefail and manfailure. Oh my predictableness.

Thanks for the ask, Far! Sorry for the VERY VERY VERY late posting. A HUGE writer's block xD

[z-h-i-e]

New Year's Fanfic Asks - 4&5/5

The final installment for my good friend Anonymous...

16. Do you have that one fanfic that you wrote a ton for, ages ago, but never posted? Will this be the year, come hell or high water, that it WILL get finished and posted?

Oh, Unforgettable. You are basically done.  Someone just has to get my ass in gear and get it all put together and posted.  Probably me. But peer pressure helps, too.

17. Do you typically answer all comments/reviews individually? Do you plan to change the way you interact with your readers this year?

>.> This is something I am terrible at on AO3, but great at in emails and on Discord.  If you connect with me on Discord and show an interest in wanting to discuss what I’ve written, chances are we will end up in a voice chat where I will tell you stories that may never get written down and will wish you sweet elfy dreams when we part. Emails, there’s a good chance I’ll answer back and we’ll become email penpals and start writing fic together.  On Tumblr, I am likely to answer back.  On AO3, I have an embarrassing amount of unanswered comments (maybe someday we’ll play guess a number); I used to take one Friday a month, take myself to lunch at Panera, specifically one that I used as the basis for Salgant’s home, and answer AO3 comments. Then pandemic. So I need to get a routine going again.  But until then – I’m .zhie. on Discord, and I can be poked there. Or here. Here is good, too.

18. Do you typically post multi-chapters as you write, or finish it all and then start posting? Would you like to change your posting method? 

I am chaos. Both. Either. And I’ve even written and posted chapters out of order. I’ve posted them so out of order I’ve posted endings before the middle has been figured out. 

19. Would you consider non-fandom writing events, like NaNoWriMo or writing contests? 

Oh.  Oh, you have no idea.  I spent about 12 years as a NaNoWriMo ML, I run a state-wide writing Discord for the state I’m in, and I do in fact enter writing contests.  I was published as a poet when I was in high school, placed in a playwriting contest as well, had three different plays I wrote produced in a community theater type setting (I got to direct two of the three – two were comedies [those I directed] and one was a drama), and three times in five years been chosen for a local short works contest to be in their chosen ten for writing, and one of the years was a chosen photographer for the same contest (ten or less photos are chosen, and ten or less written works, and then they are read in public at an event night), and I perform at open mics on the regular, so locally, in person, not just online, a fair number of people know me as Zhie as well. (And at some of the public open mics, I do sometimes read fanfiction. The first one I read was back in 2005 or 2006, and it was a story about Celegorm, and then there’s been various stories since then, the latest one I recall was about Celebrimbor and Feanor reuniting in Valinor.  I read these while on a stage or in the middle of a room filled with people drinking fancy coffee drinks and eating pastries and there’s a couple of IRL fans who have recorded some of the readings, so they’re probably out there somewhere.) And I do all of those how to write sessions and events – at one of the writing groups I regularly attend (I’m a regular member of two in-person writing groups at local libraries) a member gave me the title ‘The Book Doctor’ and I kind of like it. 

20. Any plans to work on original fiction this year?

Yes. Fingers crossed. I need this fantasy horror story out of my head and on paper. 

21. Will you try writing software, like Scrivener or those programs that won’t let you stop writing?

I have used some of those in the past, but I don’t really have much of a need for them anymore.  I do still enjoy a good session of written? kitten! from time to time, and I’ll use Fighter’s Block during nano or any time I need to write much faster. (It’s the only reason I managed to write 50K words in 10 days during NaNo a few years ago.) 

22. Do you plan to take writing classes this year?

I’m kind of at the point where I give writing classes. I enjoy going to the two in-person writing groups because I think it’s important to interact with other writers outside of one’s normal genre, and I have a lot of different people I interact with.  One of the groups leans more nonfiction, and the other is more fiction.  So there’s a guy who writes these nonfiction essays about dead people (basically, famous people, but they have to be dead, I think so that he can have a definitive end, but he’s recently started writing a book about banned books), a WWII vet who writes poetry about the war, someone who professionally is a blogger, someone who writes social psychology pieces, someone who writes these one-page anecdotes that relate back to a Bible passage, someone who writes anecdotes about Jewish life in the 1960s/70s, someone who writes blogs about libraries and books, someone who writes about economics. Then there’s someone who is a children’s author (3 books published), someone who writes YA fiction, someone who is an illustrator, another who is writing a theatrical play for a specific band’s music, someone who writes those nostalgic books full of postcards, someone who is writing her family stories down for her grandchildren to read later when they’re grown up in case she’s not around when they start asking about family history, a scifi writer, a romance writer, a fantasy writer, a songwriter. And me. Those live writing groups are better than any writing class. I get exposed to so many ideas and levels of writing and things I would never write but analyzing them gets me thinking about other things, and all in all, makes me a better writer. 

23. Would you like to go on a writing retreat?

I would like to host one.  I’ve done college-level coursework in convention and meeting planning, and I’ve done a lot of convention and event planning.  However, at this point, one of the above mentioned people in one of the groups does run a writing retreat, and she has two of the events of that retreat open to the public, so I went to one of the events this past November, and I enjoyed it.  So maybe I’d consider going to her retreat, especially since I wouldn’t have to majorly travel to get there. 

24. By the end of this year, you want your fandom to think of you as “that author who _______.”

I don’t need to wait until the end of the year.  In the back of a dresser somewhere there’s a shirt that has a big purple rabbit on the front and on the back, it says something to the effect of “I’m the author that brought your fandom cheesecake and flamingos and purple bunnies”, and that’s pretty much what I do and what I’ve been doing.  I brought a little chaos, as a treat, and people seemed to like it, so I just keep doing weird shit, like licking virtual couches in Yahoo!Groups or running an event called Screw Yule just because I could. I bounce around, from the fanfic and fanart groups, into the crafting groups, over to the gaming groups, around to the bookclub groups, sliding into the scholarly groups, and I’m always just a little quirky and a little unexpected and very authentically me–I’m just tiggering my way around, and like tiggers, the wonderful thing about zhies is that I’m the only one. 

25. If you answered questions from this list last year, find your answers and compare your goals to your results. How’d you do?

I did not answer these last year, but now that I have a full slate, perhaps I’ll have to revisit next year.

[scremsofpaim]

Tw for talks of SA and other forms of Abuse

Oh sweet marry mother of god, where do I begin.

First of all I think yall should know my background when it comes to HH and HB. I never got into the Fandom that much and because of that I never knew that much about the horrors of vivziepop's carrier.

Because of that, I was a causal enjoyer of HB and wanted to be an enjoyer of HH.

Now, I went into HH with an open mind and a hopeful heart because I really REALLY wanted it to be good and I really thought it would be better than HB. Cause quite frankly HB has its own fair share of issues that really need to be addressed. I watched it aaaaannnddd the writing was worse than HB. Now I really wanted to like it, I rewatched it 3 times with 3 separate friends to try to get their opinions on it so I could gaslight myself into thinking it was good. (In hind sight, I really wish I hadn't done this because apparently vivziepop is a horrible person, and I shouldn't have given her any views, but alas, I can not change the past)

But with every single rewatch of it, it just got worse and worse and worse. So here's all my problems with it in no particular oder.

Alastor, all of Alastor was a nightmare. For a character that was meant to be one of the most intimidating, his character design did not reflect that at all. The biggest issue I can speak on with his character is that he is possed to be this mentor to Charlie even though she is canonically 250 years old. Despite this, all of Alastor's interactions with Charlie on screen are completely negative, leading up the hells greatest dad music number. Because of that, the music number made 0 since, yeah sure mabye he uncollged a toilet one time (according to the song) or consuled her one time (according to the song) but none of that actually matter unless we see it on screen. You can't just say hey this guy is like Charlie's dad without something showing that before you pull out a gaint musical number about it. Like, at the very least, some level of build-up has to occur. Also the fact that he was just made to be a Tumblr Sexy man, and it's painfully obvious. Also, he's giving overpowered OC I made in middle school. Overall, he was very dissaptoing, very poorly written.

CHARLIE, Charlie was physically painful to watch. Charlie is basically just a middle school OC. She literally has the personality of a cardboard box for no reason. She is literally almost older than everyone at the hotel, and people treat her like a dumb teenager with a stupid dream. Mabye just mabye demon maturity works differently in hell, but by 250 years old, she should have a better grasp on how hell works and the extent of her powers. Speaking of which, it was really weird in the last battle that she left most of the security and fighting to her friends, who were significantly less powerful than her and literally had like no chance to win with out her taking some kind of Offensive position. Then, only after one of her friends dies does she get her crap together enough to realize she actually has to contribute to the fighting. Otherwise, they were all gonna die. Also, I understand she's meant to be a Pacifist, but her Pacifism comes off at best stupidity and at worst selfishness by just having all that power to protect the people you care about the most and being like "awww but I no no wanna hurt the angles even though I set up a whole army to hurt the angles for me waaah waahh" it's just bad writing. Overall, her character felt hollow and hypocritical.

Speaking of the finail battle, I think that lufcier coming in last second to save Charlie was because of vivziepops' daddy issues/hj

Vaggie, Vaggie felt hollow in a somewhat different way than Charlie. Even though they did try to give her some depth she didn't get more complicated than "I must protect Charlie and her dreams at all cost because I love her" even though Charlie doesn't even need protection. Also, their whole relationship ship felt very awkward and just... idk off, I guess? Like it didn't feel natural, their personalities just didn't mix in the way they were trying to portray it.

Angel Dust, oh lordy, where do I begin. First of all, I want to say this is where the mentions of SA begin far warning. Hot take, I don't actually mind angel dust becoming hypersexual because of his trauma. It's a very common thing but also... sexual harassment is not ok at all. There's also a lot of hypersexual people who don't have issues sexually harassing people, and in my experience, most of them don't. I can completely understand how angle dust ties his whole personality to his sex life and feels threatened if people don't find him attractive because to him, that feels like life and death level threat. Due to Vals abuse, if angle doesn't perform well bad bad things happen to him. So his whole life then becomes that performance. With that being said, he still really, really, should not have sexually harassed anyone and definitely should not get off the hook so easy with all of that. There were ways that vivziepop pop could have written his character without constantly harassing husk. Also, his particular targeting on husk made it seem closer to sexual harassment because you want to harass that person and not his constant need to feel validated. Basscily, I think expressing hypersexualty through media is ok and hypersexualty because trauma does need to be more talked about. But vivziepop could have handled it a lot better.

The overall plot was a mess. To understand this, you have to understand the difference between a character driven story and a plot driven story. A character driven story is where the focus of the story is on the characters and the events that happen in their life's that change them. A plot driven story is when the story focuses on the events of a story that are caused or influenced by the characters and how the characters change the plot. When it comes to a story about redemption, it's almost impossible to have a plot driven story, but that's what vivziepop did. There was really only one episode of character development, and that was angles episode. The rest of the episodes were plot based and jumped from plot point to plot point. I understand that part of this is because in the world of animation, you only get approved for a certain budget, and because of that, a lot of shows at an extremely limited number of episodes. Therefore, there is not a whole lot of room for character development, but also if you don't have room for character development. DO NOT MAKE A STORY ABOUT REDEMPTION FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!!!

End of my rant, let me know what yall think, sorry for any spelling errors I have dyslexia.

Does anyone feel like starting an unpopular HH opinion thread here?

To start this off, I prefer Sir Pentious in the pilot over the show. Don’t get me wrong, I still love him and he’s one of the few characters I actually like in this show. It’s just Pentious in the pilot for me is way more enjoyable to me, plus I loved Stumper as him. Not to mention I liked his “Hammy, but dangerous and somewhat competent supervillain” personality in the pilot over the show’s “silly harmless goofball” personality

Also feel free to list your criticisms you have of the show if you do, just don’t harass anyone.

[luvfae]

How did Eddie and Y/N Henderson first meet? Like obviously they knew each other from school, but what exactly went down the first time Eddie went to Dustin’s house? I wanna see this interaction so bad!

MY FAVOURITE

HENDERSON

PART THIRTY

fandom: stranger things

parings: eddie x f henderson reader

warnings: swearing, bullying, sexual references

masterlist

“Do you remember the first time we met?” Eddie asked you one day out of the blue, your head in his lap as his fingers played with your hair.

“What? Like back in middle school?” You asked, glancing up at him.

Eddie smiled, shaking his head at you. “No, like officially met. The first time I ever hung out with Dustin at your house,” Eddie said.

You furrowed your eyebrows. “Not really, why?” You asked.

“I was just thinking about how far you and I have come from then,” Eddie shrugged. “You were a total bitch.”

You gasped, sitting up to look at him, an offended expression on your face. “I was mean, sure, but a total bitch? That’s harsh,” you frowned.

“Need me too jog your memory, princess?” Eddie asked, kissing your forehead. You didn’t really get to answer his question, he just began talking.

-

You walked through your front door, discarding your backpack on the kitchen bench and pulling your tight ponytail out of your head, letting your hair cascade freely.

It was the first time Eddie got to see you up close and personal, got to see how you went about your life in a private setting. In the comfort of your home.

He had noticed you before at school and being his best friend big sister meant that he had heard quite a bit about you from Dustin. Things that he didn’t really believe to be true.

“She’s really not that bad, you just have to get to know her. She puts on an act in front of her friends.”

Although you were pretty horrible to your peers and liked to join in with your friends while they ridiculed innocent people for no apparent reason, there was one thing that Eddie couldn’t deny. You were hot.

Your eyes held a mean glare once you noticed Eddie sitting in your living room with your brother. His eyes were glued to your legs, practically drooling. He had never really allowed himself to completely gawk over you before, but man, that cheerleading mandated dress hugged your every curve.

“Why the hell is Eddie Munson sitting in my living room?” Was the first thing that came out of your mouth as you moved from the kitchen towards the couch your brother and unbeknownst to you, your future boyfriend, were sitting on.

“Eddie’s my friend,” Dustin shrugged. You laughed, glancing between the two. “What’s so funny?”

“He’s like 5 years older than you,” you said, crossing your arms over your chest. “Shouldn’t you be hanging out with people your own age?” You asked, eyes snapping onto Eddie. “Oh wait, I forgot, my bad, all the people your age graduated like what? Two years ago now?”

“Y/N!” Dustin exclaimed. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why she’s being like this,” Dustin sighed, talking to Eddie.

“It’s fine, Dustin,” Eddie shrugged, glancing over at his friend for a brief moment. “Mean girls turn me on.”

You gasped, eyes widening at his comment.

“Keep making fun of me, Y/N,” Eddie said, smirking over at your shocked reaction. “Something for me to think about later.”

“Ugh, gross!” You scoffed, stalking into your bedroom, slamming the door.

“Dude…” Dustin said, looking over at his friend.

“It was a joke, Henderson,” Eddie replied.

But it wasn’t a joke, there was an uncomfortable tent forming in his pants. It did in fact turn him on when you were mean to him.

-

Later that same night you ran into Eddie in your kitchen. He was grabbing a water the exact same time you had decided to get something to eat.

“You’re still here?” You asked. He glanced over his shoulder at you, an annoyed expression on your face. “Don’t you have something better to do? Or is hanging out with my 15 year old brother your only hobby? Is Dustin your only friend, aw, how upsetting,” you said, pouting at him.

“God, you are such a bitch,” Eddie laughed, turning around to face you.

You hummed, standing in front of him. You reached over him, grabbing an apple from the fruit bowl, taking an excruciatingly slow time to fetch your fruit, making Eddie shift uncomfortably.

“Don’t cream your pants,” you said before you spun on your heel, walking away from him and back to your bedroom.

Eddie let out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding in after your door was closed. That tent once again forming in his pants.

It was in that moment that Eddie Munson knew he was going to come around here more often.

-

“Okay, so maybe I was a total bitch,” you said. “And I apologise, but look at me now.”

Eddie grinned at you. “You’re not so bad anymore,” he shrugged. “Once you realised you didn’t have to put on that mean girl act in front of me, that’s when I really started to like you.”

“You’ve changed me Eddie Munson,” you said.

“How so?” He asked.

“You made me soft.”

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