#honestly she just has strong opinions on a variety of subjects

[sage-nebula]

If I play video of my dog howling, it always makes her start howling again IRL. She's basically like, "I said it before, and I'll SAY IT AGAIN." Honestly gotta respect her commitment to her word.

[vaultsixtynine]

Oh please give us your bg3 review IGN style

69/420 not enough gates

more genuinely (trying to keep this mostly spoiler free but there are a few for act 3 characters and brief discussion of the end of the game):

pros -

before you even see any of my petty complaints: bg3 GOTY no contest. i just have an opinion about everything on earth. okay let's keep going.

extremely well crafted characters and, in most cases, character arcs. fleshed out, feel real, feel lovable even though they are all so distinct. quality of character design and voice acting goes without saying. really powerful reflections on power and those who abuse it and the myriad of ways that power can be inflicted on others - on their bodies, on their minds, how it shapes them, how they can recover and heal from that.

wonderful attention to detail in almost every sense - storytelling, beautiful world, wonderful combat variety and interest save for a few standout "you just want this to be Hard so you put More Enemies In" exceptions, cool items, adventuring feels fun, there's plenty of secret things to discover.

just so fun to play and explore and exist in the world. if one beat isn't landing, there will be five more elsewhere that will. there is something to love for everyone in this game.

i was raised on forgotten realms rpgs and (obviously personal bias here) this scratched an itch so deep inside me that i hadn't realized was basically unfulfilled except for by a few rare exceptions. i loooooove a good fantasy rpg. baldur's gate 3 is a Really Good fantasy rpg.

i love you jaheira. if there's an old lady in a video game with a positive relationship to my pc that i can get emotionally attached to I Fucking Will.

dammon i also love you please call me, vesper, the real person. anathema the in-game player character can go do whatever she's gonna do but me and dammon should meet up. i wanted to be a blacksmith when i was 14 is that doing anything for you.

larian took the opportunity to play with some underlying assumptions that have been built into the world of d&d since it was created, most specifically "is there such a thing as inherent good or inherent evil". this is a very strong through-line, but it leads me into our next sectionnnn [drumroll]

cons -

no fat people. this is frankly just kind of embarrassing in a way that will make me incandescently angry if i think about it too long <3

pacing between acts is not the best. they wrote and built themselves into a corner with act 1 being the early access phase and i kind of wish they had been willing to Alter act 1 in a meaningful way to correct the rest of the game. this is probably my Biggest Core Complaint that has the largest leg to stand on. i'm not going to go into further detail because it requires extreme spoilers.

simplistic interaction with the concept of religion in a game world dominated by gods and their machinations.

unfortunately subject to many of the frustrating facets of the d&d multiverse. druid's relationship with nature vs. civilization. paladins in their entire. i could go on but this isn't really larian's fault, and they already were playing with...

the concept of intrinsic good/evil mentioned above AND the discussion of abuse/power/etc. - this was very interesting and powerful to me. the act structure pacing was kind of fucked up from inception. this all combined into what i felt like was a... Perfectly Fine but Honestly Weirdly Flat ending. it's serviceable. i will probably never think about it again until i replay the game. when i compare it to some other rpg game endings, it feels almost as though it's an afterthought, a thing to be checked off a list to say 'i'm done' - not a meaningful resolution to these questions and concepts they spent so much time and effort setting up. this is obviously my personal opinion and it probably landed differently to others, but i found myself feeling like the game had already ended with the resolution of actual core character dramas earlier in act 3, rather than the Actual ending. it didn't say anything important to me in a game that had already gone well out of its way to say MANY important things to me, and thus it felt very odd.

vesper's feeling petty category (ACTUAL WRITTEN-OUT SPOILERS) -

orin was my favorite of the chosen and i wanted her to be scarier and more of a genuine menace. the bhaal cult stuff was some of my favorite in the game but i wanted it to take a genuine detour into being a horror game for just a lil bitt

love the emperor specifically his extremely divorced energy with the pc. however. he spends the entire game constantly saying how much he hates the elder brain, how much he hated serving it. you can go out of your way to be kind to him, connect with him. he IS a bastard and i don't want to diminish that in any way, but i feel like the orpheus/emperor decision was nearly arbitrary in how it got resolved - binary switch, none of your repore-generation with yon emperor means Anything; he's spent all game manipulating you (in a nearly player-like fashion, might i add, which i thought was fun) and yet also is clearly attached in some fashion; you could argue that his apparent vulnerability and attachment was also just a manipulation tactic but i would have liked to be able to influence him for just a moment. a little reverse osmosis. we've been doing everything your way, babe, let's do it my way for once. AT THE VERY LEAST: why did he join the netherbrain. that just feels silly for his character. him throwing a fit and saying "FINE you can't fire me I QUIT" and fucking off would've still been better than going over to the netherbrain. imhco.

i liked durge soooo much but the reveal was a TAD too "oooooooh YOU'RE revan" for me.

i know i already wrote about this in the cons section but GOD the jumbled act pacing. this could be a full essay on that alone.

^^^ sorry one more sentiment about that. it kind of ruined the building of atmosphere in this game and that's so sad to me because i love Atmosphere more than almost any other game trait and when games pull it off? they become immortal inside of me.

there are clearly so many spots where something got cut and nothing filled the gap. in most cases it's tolerable; your brain can glide over it. in SOME cases it's so obvious that it becomes distracting and frustrating - the missing niece vampire in cazador's mansion, karlach and gale's companion quests Writ Large, yetcetra.

what the fuck is going on with halsin's writing. he's a delightful hunk of a man who doesn't seem to realize he's the stupidest druid alive who can't decide his actual philosophy one way or the other. not his fault. i just want to know what the hell happened there.

MISSING OWLBEAR CONTENT I WANT TO SEE MY BOY GROW UP BIG AND STRONG BUT HE JUST ARRIVED TO THE FINAL FIGHT ALREADY BIG???? I FEEL LIKE I MISSED MY BABY'S FIRST STEPS AND FIRST WORDS I FEEL LIKE THE WORST PARENT ON EARTH.

[casualmaraudering]

What are some of your Remus x Fabian/Redwolf (?) hcs?

oh anon you know the way to my heart, asking questions like that,,,

when they first started talking, Fabian made a note of all the books Remus reads (and very often he rereads his favourites) - mostly muggle novels Fabian never even knew existed cause he's pureblood. he read them all just to have an excuse to talk to Remus

Remus is generally quite a sleepy person, but after the full moon, he's basically asleep 99% of the time for like two whole days. Fabian makes a habit of wearing something comfortable or generally warm during those days, cause Remus usually sleeps on his shoulder

Fabian wears suspenders a lot. Remus approves a great amount

the first few months of them dating, Remus spent a great deal of time making sure none of Fabian's dormmates will notice that he slept there or spent time there cause he'd hate to be the center of gossip, honestly. All of them know, cause Fabian told them, but for the sake of Remus's sanity they just pretend they don't notice the clothes he leaves or if he happens to bump into someone on the stairs

Fabian and James get along quite nicely - they're both Quidditch captains so they'll often banter about that

with Sirius, it takes a bit of time to get used to Fabian. he finds it hard to accept someone new into their group, especially someone he doesn't know, but with a little bit of time, they become really good friends. mind you, they're a type of friends that insult each other and bicker (mostly on Sirius's part) but it's all with love

they may or may not have scheduled to have Prefect rounds together. and then may or may not have sneaked off to make out in some random corner of the castle

once during a hogsmeade weekend, Remus mistook Gideon for Fabian. He walked up to who he thought was Fabian and stood on his tiptoes and kissed the corner of his mouth and then started chatting about his plans. in his defence, they are identical twins and were wearing casual clothes. but once Gideon explained that he is, in fact, not Fabian, Remus wasn't able to look him in the eye for like a month without wanting to die

Fabian actually found that quite funny tbh

Fabian is a person with a rather healthy diet, since he does sports. Remus,,,,,, Remus is not

their life habits are actually polar opposites. Fabian has a set, normal bedtime and gets up in the morning - Remus never knows when he'll go to sleep or how long he'll sleep. Fabian has a healthy diet, and Remus is content with eating popcorn for breakfast. Fabian is sporty, Remus would rather die than ever do any sport of any kind.

but they make it work. Fabian coaxes Remus to do some yoga and a little bit of running (it's actually not that bad once he's used to it, but Remus is never going to admit it), and Remus gets Fabian to loosen up a bit and convinces him there's nothing bad with having some junk food after dinner every other day

Remus sleeps clutching a pillow which Fabian finds unbelievably cute

Fabian sleeps with socks on sometimes. Remus has very strong opinions about that

Fabian is closeted when it comes to his sister and mother (Gid found out by accident once). his family is very important to him, and so he's terrified of them taking it the wrong way. but when he takes remus home for the holidays once (as a "friend"), everyone absolutely loves Remus, including Molly's kids.

and Fabian's mom isn't easy to fool. she knows. she's just waiting for Fabian to be ready to tell her

Hope adores Fabian but she adores every person Remus has ever dated lmao. she does genuinely think he's a good son in law material (Remus blushed all the way to his ears when she said that once)

Remus lives in a muggle home. and Fabian lives in a pureblood home. the cultural differences,,,,,, oh boy

Remus almost died when the mirror in Fabian's bathroom spoke at him. yes he's spent several years at Hogwarts but there's still so many things he doesn't know

Fabian thinks automatic coffee makers are the best thing humanity has ever came up with (they froth milk!!!!! and Remus has stencils to draw little hearts with cinnamon!)

Remus doesn't like to sleep in complete darkness, but he's also embarrassed about it. once Fabian connects the dots, he ends up researching spells and then eventually will just charm a few little firefly-esque lights floating at the top of the bed canopy

Fabian is notoriously late for everything. classes, study groups, prefect meetings, dates, you name it. once Remus learns that it is A Thing, he starts just outright bringing books to dates. he then points out how much of the plot he managed to go through in the time it took Fabian to arrive

Fabian takes up a healing class in school when he learns Remus is a werewolf. he thinks of Remus as someone who he's staying with in the long run, so he figures he might need to know basic aid spells

Remus didn't tell him immediately, of course. but Fabian isn't stupid, it wasn't hard to see that there was something up and all of Rem's friends seem to know what that is.

Sirius eventually told him, actually. Fabian was being a bit annoying about it, it made Remus feel bad (and, of course, Remus thought that Fabian will break up with him the second he knows), so Sirius was pissed and called Fabian out and then told him.

it took a bit of adjustment. but the longer Fabian thought about it, the more it made sense. and at that point he's pretty much in love so he can't just let something stupid like that ruin it

since then, Sirius and James deem him worthy to actually enter the Marauders. they show him the cloak, the map, let him in on all the secrets and all. they do still give him the whole "we'll kill you if you hurt him" talk, but he's now officially a friend

Lily has a habit of running in the morning, with Padfoot. Fabian eventually joins them

Lily and Fabian actually become the mom and dad of the group cause they're the only ones with functional braincells and all (there's something about ginger hair, they have smarts and self preservation instincts) - yes, James is a mother hen, but he's also impulsive and comes up with most stupid and dangerous pranks. Remus is smart but he also forgets to take care of himself. and Sirius is, well... Sirius

and Remus has actually dated both Lily and Sirius before, that's often a subject of jokes (especially James joking that he's the only one immune to Rem's charms)

Fabian is Scottish. turns out Remus is extremely weak about kilts

they both grew up basically in the middle of nowhere so they like to climb trees and take walks in fields/forests

Remus's patronus used to be, of course, a wolf. the first time he cast it, he understandably hated it and refused to cast it again. a few years out of school, on a university exam, he had to cast one again. and it changed from a wolf, to some type of bird he's never seen before

it confuses him a lot, and he spends a lot of time trying to figure out why would his Patronus change. it isn't until he talks to one of his professors and they say that it might change in an instance of true love, that he asks Fabian about his own patronus. which is a hawk (a red tailed hawk, to be exact)

Sirius James and Lily tease him for weeks

they both come from families of relative poverty (Fabian is a pureblood, but his father's death was a very complicated matter with a lot of bullshit from the ministry, so the family didn't manage to get any of his money) so they value work incredibly, and also work extremely hard during their first few years out of school. They still live with their parents during that time just to save up. buying their first house together is one of their proudest moments in life

Fabian is a professional Quidditch player and so he becomes the honorary favourite cause "sorry Moony, but he has free tickets to the VIP seats at all the best matches"

Fabian also loves photography (especially muggle cameras - he says they're much better than wizarding varieties). and usually he likes to take photos of nature and wildlife, but he has an entire growing collection of photos of Remus (even carries a small photo in his wallet, cause he's a sap)

[the-astrological-alchemist]

What the Sun Signs Think About Astrology

*This is all conjecture and is based on personal experience/observation. There’s obviously going to be exceptions as I believe ones feelings towards astrology is based on one’s whole chart along with personal life experiences. So, please, don’t take these as hard-core facts. Just because I say a certain Sun sign is typically dismissive, an unbeliever, or is negative about astrology does not mean that every person with that Sun sign is.

Aries- Both curious yet dismissive. Even if they don’t believe in it, they don’t care if you do. Aries is adventurous at heart, similar to Sagittarius albeit in a different way, and love to stay active and just do something. They’re not afraid to try new things. On the other hand, though, Aries is known for making snap-judgements and being impulsive. For example, a guy at work mentioned his birthday coming up, and I passingly went, “Oh, you’re an Aries.” He immediately went, “Oh, that’s not real. It’s a load of nonsense.” I laughed awkwardly, which he picked up on, and immediately went, “It’s completely fine if you’re into it! Didn’t mean to just bash you there.” I have yet to meet an Aries that actually believes in astrology, but I have met a few that are curious and interested in discussing it!

Taurus- A bit skeptical but likely to believe in it. I’ll admit that I don’t know a lot of Taurus’, but, even though the one’s I do know don’t believe in astrology, there are a few YouTuber and Blogger Taurus’ that love astrology. With this one, I do believe that it depends on how they were raised, as the Taurus Sun placement is one that’s a little stubborn and resistant to change. So, if a Taurus Sun grew up in a strict household or any household that taught against astrology, or other systems, a Taurus Sun will be more skeptical and less likely to believe astrology is anything other than a hoax. On the other side of the scale, if the Taurus Sun grew up either hearing positive or nothing about astrology, it is more likely to pique their curiosity.

Gemini- Bro, it really depends on the Gemini Sun. Seriously, the majority of my comments in this post are based on commonalities and generalities that I’ve noticed from the Sun signs based on experience. Usually, I can guess what a Sun sign is likely to sway towards, but not Gemini. Gemini’s are wild (in a fun way); their likes and dislikes along with their openness to things can change rapidly. They’re all a bit chaotic in their own unique way, which I both admire and fear. I have a Gemini friend who’s a pagan witch; they are open and curious about astrology, supportive of others liking it, and wants their own chart read, but their liking of it is casual. Another Gemini friend heard the word astrology and went: “Astrology’s a load of bull” and I was like “Oop-.” Others I met don’t care whatsoever and don’t have an opinion. Others think it’s fun but not true. Basically, Gemini’s like a box of chocolates: You never know what you’re gonna get, but, boy, is it fun to find out.

Cancer- Skeptical and dismissive or supportive. I’ll be honest here in admitting that I haven’t knowingly met a lot of Cancer, and those I have met have all been middle-aged women, so it’s fully possible that younger Cancers that were born in the 1990s or 2000s and not the ‘60s believe differently. Every Cancer I’ve met has been religious- which is in no way a negative thing, nor am I saying every Cancer is religious, and some religious individuals do like astrology anyway-and either vehemently thought astrology was evil, a hoax, or “a load of crap” (a quote from my mother). A few that a friend of mine met (who are our age or slightly older) don’t believe in astrology, but don’t judge if you do and don’t mind giving you their birth info for your own purposes. Personal experience aside, Cancers are intuitive, a bit psychic, maternal, and emotional. So, if they like you and you like astrology, there’s a good chance they’ll be supportive. I don’t doubt there being Cancer Suns that believe in astrology, and, again, I haven’t met many Cancers that I know of. Due to Cancer’s loving nature, there are probably many on the opposing scale that believe in astrology or are at least supportive. 

Leo- Doesn’t believe in it. Fun fact: any other Leo placement is more open and likely to believe. Leo Moon? Sure. Leo Venus or Mars? Why not? Leo Suns? Nope. Similar to Gemini, kind of, Leo Sun’s range between “It’s cool if you like it, and I don’t mind learning more about it, but I personally don’t believe in it” to “Astrology? What a load of crap!” So far, I’ve only met one Leo that’s warned me against astrology because it’s a gateway to evil, but that was my grandmother, so I consider that an outlier. Another coworker of mine mentioned her birthday being August 14 or something, and I went “You’re a Leo” (I need to stop casually blurting out people’s Sun signs). Her immediate reaction was, “None of that is real. It’s stupid.” She then backpedaled and demanded, “Why do you like it? Tell me.” Now, she’s super nice and a funny person, but I internally panicked because it was confrontational, and I don’t find confrontation very *groovy*. Now, I’ve met people with other strong Leo placements that are amateur astrologists or at least enjoy discussing and exploring it, so I’m not sure why Leo Suns are different. Still, due to their warm and magnanimous nature, if they know you like it, you may receive presents that relate to astrology because they know you like it. 

Virgo- Open, curious, supportive, but still a bit skeptical. Virgo’s are inquisitive, curious, and skeptical by nature. Now, skeptical isn’t an inherent negative; it just means that they’re not likely to believe or accept something without meticulously examining and researching for themselves. Really. I Virgo’s make up the majority of my friends- which wasn’t intentional, I just kind of find them and adopt them- and all of them ask so many questions. Despite not liking to accept things at face-value (which can be great in some situations but bad/unnecessary in others), Virgo Suns love learning and love having discussions (with those close to them) about a variety of subjects. They may be cautious in experiencing new things physically, but intellectually? Go for it. They love hearing about what their friends are interested in, unless their friends are being stupid, even if they don’t personally agree. So, even if they don’t fully believe in astrology, I’ve also found them to not not believe in astrology. They’re open to it and enjoy hearing you tell them about their charts or hearing you ramble about it as they would if you were rambling about a book you liked. 

Libra- Open to it, curious, and supportive. Similar to Cancer, I haven’t knowingly met a lot of Libras. Those I have met, though, are curious about astrology and openly supportive of you liking astrology. They want to learn more about it, although they prefer others educating them rather than sitting down and doing it themselves because they get to both be with someone they enjoy being around and ask questions. They tend to find astrology fun, exciting, and/or interesting. They’re also friendly and personable by nature and tend to enjoy talking to people, so they don’t mind. I’ve found Libras to, generally, be open to or actively spiritual. A good Libra friend of mine is a pagan witch whereas others I know are extremely curious about witchy things and want to talk about it with someone. 

Scorpio- Doesn’t believe in it, but are curious and don’t care if you do. Scorpios are stubborn but intensely curious. So, even though they’ve already made up their mind on the subject, they’re going to ask questions. Every Scorpio Sun I’ve met does not believe in astrology, but they range in how dismissive they are of it, if at all. One Scorpio friend immediately, and with the authority only Scorpio’s are capable of, declared astrology as fake, but was supportive of me when I considered making a small business where I interpret people’s charts. He was also like, “Yeah, you can believe in astrology, but it’s still wrong” and I was like “Bet.” Another Scorpio friend doesn’t believe in astrology, but wanted me to do their chart anyway because they want to learn more about it. Another Scorpio (my dad), was just like, “Cool tattoo” when I got the Pisces constellation, and just asked if I liked astrology. So, similar to quite a few other signs, Scorpio Suns are less likely than others to believe in astrology, but they couldn’t care less if you or anyone else likes astrology. 

Sagittarius- Open, curious, and likely to casually believe in it. Sagittarians are curious, open, and adventurous by nature. Seriously, similarly to the rest of the mutable signs, Sagittarians have a bunch of interests and are naturally more open-minded leaning. They’re artistic and they love to learn, even if their attention easily strays towards something else that caught their eye. Even if they never personally research into astrology, they are supportive of others liking it and may even do something artistic for their friends based on it. They may even spontaneously get a Sagittarius tattoo, or you may spot some astrology books on their shelves. They’re also hella supportive of their friends loving astrology and will encourage your interests, so they’re safe to talk to about it. Overall, Sagittarius Suns are more open to astrology and likely to believe in it or, at least, not not believe in it.

Capricorn- Believes in it. So, Capricorns are stereotyped as super serious, money-oriented, stubborn, and authorities. Honestly, though? Every Capricorn I’ve met either believes in astrology or likes learning about it. One of my best friends is a Capricorn, and she loves astrology. Other Capricorns I’ve met either also believe or won’t say definitively that they don’t; they tend to be like, “I lean towards not believing in it, but I honestly don’t know much about it so I don’t mind talking about it.” Capricorn Suns are actually pretty supportive of their friend’s interests, unless those interests are harmful in some capacity, then the Capricorn Sun will turn into a disappointed parental figure, and you can physically feel their disappointment. Anyways, yeah. Capricorns tend to like astrology. 

Aquarius- Open to talking about it, supportive if you like it, but are unlikely to believe it themselves. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve met Aquarius Suns that do believe in astrology and are astrologists themselves, but the majority that I’ve met lean towards “I don’t believe in it, but I hella support you believing in it.” Some are just a hesitant no when asked if they believe in astrology, but will elaborate that they’re willing to learn more about it and clarify that just because they lean towards no doesn’t mean that astrology isn’t real whatsoever. So, similar to Sagittarius and Taurus, Aquarius Suns are open to astrology and leaving their belief in it up in the air rather than closing the door on it altogether. 

Pisces- Likely to believe in it or at least be supportive of others liking it. I also haven’t met a lot of Pisces, and don’t actually have a fellow Pisces friend. I don’t know, man. You put two Pisces Suns together, and we struggle to get past the initial awkward and polite shyness. It’s not impossible, but I digress. Anyways, Pisces are likely to be supportive even if they don’t personally believe in astrology. Pisces are natural people-pleasers because conflict is stressful, and we hate being burdens, which is something we have to work on. Pisces Suns are also empathetic and sensitive. Thus, they don’t want you to feel like they’re judging you because they also hate being judged for things they like. Pisces is actually pretty underrated in the Zodiac, with most memes not being super nice, and, due to Pisces nature, astrology at a glance doesn’t look super enticing to a Pisces. However, due to their generally open nature, if a Pisces Sun can get past the initial astrology memes, they’re likely to believe in it or at least be curious.

So, overall, I’ve found mutable signs (Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Pisces) the most open or curious about astrology. 

Sun signs most likely to believe in astrology appear to be Taurus, Sagittarius, Capricorn, and Pisces. 

Sun signs least likely to believe in astrology are Aries, Cancers, Leos, and Scorpios. 

Finally, Sun Signs that are kind of in the middle due to their curiosity are Gemini, Virgo, Libra, and Aquarius. 

[bevvydraws]

This is going to be my feelings/opinions towards all of the main characters in Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc. This is directly related to my interpretation of events in the series! If you disagree with my thoughts/feelings that’s totally cool but this isn’t meant to be a debate! 

A lot has been going on right now and I don’t have the energy to do much digital art right now, so I figured I’d just open up a little more about one of my favorite series! Maybe I’ll do my opinions on characters for the other games next. 

** This post will contain information that will spoil the series for you, so continue at your own risk**

Makoto Naegi:

Honestly I really like Makoto. He is really average but honestly I think that’s what makes him so appealing. Not only that, but he comes off with a type of charisma that only “average” people can pull off. He has a base knowledge on a variety of subjects that allows him to talk to the other students. That and I find the concept of his “luck” very interesting. Also, side note, but that sprite of him focusing with his finger under his chin is probably one of my most favorite DR sprites ever. It’s just so cute! (I might redraw it someday hehe) 

10/10 

Aoi Asahina: 

While I adore Hina, I really wish that they would have made her more than just a ditzy character who was obsessed with donuts in this game. I loved her energy though! Her interactions with everyone always made me smile. My appreciation for her character just increased exponentially after watching the Despair Arc of Danganronpa 3. All in all I’m super glad that her character survived in THH.

8/10

Byakuya Togami: 

Honestly, I have mixed feelings about Byakuya. I think he’s a great antagonistic character, truly, but beyond that I’m not sure. I definitely think that his character is humbled throughout the course of the game, and in later games/animes he seems a lot less asshole-ish, but I’m not sure if I like him or hate him. I guess that just goes to show just how great he is as an antagonist. One thing I thought was hilarious though was how he casually admitted to being a true-crime nerd. I’m really glad he survived because I think his “talent” was really important for the Future Foundation. 

6/10

Celestia Ludenberg: 

Okay so real talk, I used to be a huge Celestia fan when I first stumbled across the series. But now, I don’t really like her character all that much. I think that out of all of the killers in THH her motive was the most shallow and that really is terrible considering how much potential she had. Her disconnect with her true identity could have made for an interesting character arc. And I really hate how they gave her literally the most complicated murder scheme when it would make sense for her to take a little risk as possible. Her character design is really cute though. 

5/10

Chihiro Fujisaki:

I think Chihro’s death was one of the hardest for me in the game. I played through all of his freetime events and was super attached to him (I know, a horrible idea in a game like DR), and as soon as he died I was just in shock. One thing I love about how they portrayed his character was truly allowing the brilliance of Chihiro shine through even after his death. He created the AI that not only helped aid in their escape, but ultimately saved Makoto's life. I also really liked the juxtaposition of Chihiro and Mondo (the seemingly weaker one ultimately being stronger after all). All in all, Chihiro is a great character. 

10/10

Hifumi Yamada:

I’m not really a fan of Hifumi, but I definitely think he gets wayy too much hate or just gets overlooked completely. I think that the creators leaned a bit too far into the stereotypes for him, and that made him come off as stiff and just… there. I knew from the very beginning that he wouldn’t survive, and honestly he’s the only character I had that feeling with (minus Leon). There are some quirks about him that I like, though, like how he never fails to refer to the others politely.

4/10

Kiyotaka Ishimaru:

So I originally found Taka annoying but after playing THH again he became one of my favorite characters. I find his enthusiasm adorable and his free time events boosted my admiration of him. He’s the only Ultimate that makes a conscious effort to prove himself and not rely on his prodigy-type status. And his relationship with Mondo, albeit short-lived, was so pure. It was so obvious to me that he was happy to have a friend (because Mondo is the first friend he’s ever had), and having that suddenly ripped away and listening to his desperation at the end of chapter 2 made me sob. 

10/10

Kyoko Kirigiri: 

Kiri’s background made me feel really sad for her. I first thought she was just the aloof, cold, smart type that was a bit snobbish. But then you realize that she’s been raised to not be in the spotlight, to work alone and without credit behind the scenes. Detective work is basically her birthright and she’s clung to that like a vice. Her character development throughout the game was really nice, and I think her and Makoto are super cute for each other. The side plot with her and her dad in DR3 made me really sad, too. I really liked overall that she was unapologetically holding true to her beliefs, even if it made her come off as cold. She was a solid, strong female character. 

8/10

Leon Kuwata:

It was super obvious from the beginning that Leon was gonna die. There was 0 attachment to his character for me and he just came off as just...kinda there. I don’t really have much to say about him, other than that I’m not a fan.

1/10

Mondo Owada: 

Mondo was such a big sweetheart in his freetime events. I thought his character was really well rounded and I was so sad that he ended up killing Chihiro. Despite that, I thought it worked really well for the story and played off of both of their weaknesses. Again I really loved his friendship with Taka, and having it formed and ended so quickly surprisingly hurt. 

8/10

Sakura Oogami: 

Honestly I didn’t like how they made her character the spy, because it seemed ridiculously out of character for her. Honestly I think this would be something better suited to Celeste, as she would view it as a way to increase her chances of living if she’s in “kahoots” with him. I dunno, I think the spy thing was unnecessary anyways. I loved her character though and her friendship with Hina was super cute. I also loved how they mentioned that she wanted to embrace her femininity while also not wanting to give up being the strongest person in the world. 

7/10 

Sayaka Maizono: 

Honestly even though I’m not the biggest fan of Sayaka I really like the role she played at the beginning and I think they played it off perfectly. Her desperation fueled by the fear and harsh reality that comes along show business and easily being forgotten really works in the narrative. She seemed like a well-rounded character but I think that if she had lasted past chapter 1 I would have liked her less. All in all her character did a great job of kicking off everything. 

6/10

 Toko Fukawa: 

I hate how they portrayed her character in THH, but her obsessive and odd behavior (outside of her split personality) is easily explained by her traumatic past. She obviously has a warped sense of what “love” is, and that plus her intense delusions turned into obsession for Byakuya. I started loving her character a lot more in UDG, when she started becoming more well rounded and open around Komaru. 

Also, I loved Genocider Syo’s personality. While I obviously don’t condone serial murders, I think that her character is extremely interesting. She doesn’t try and condone her own actions, admitting there is no rhyme or reason. Plus I think it’s really interesting that she considers herself a “professional” and is incredibly particular about the details. 

Overall 6/10 in THH

Yasuhiro Hagakure: 

I feel like Hiro gets a lot of shit as a character because they think he doesn’t contribute anything. I think he adds a lot of much-needed comic relief. Also I think that everyone glosses over the fact that once Taka goes silent he actually tries to encourage him to speak up again. And then tries to do his part and keep everyone together and upbeat. I really think that Hiro is a fun character who deserves more love, even though I can’t say he’s one of my favorites. 

7/10

Mukuro Ikusaba:

I wish Mukuro’s personality would have been able to actually show through in the game. The only glimpse we really see of it is in the bonus school mode while she is still posing as Junko. I wish in the anime they’d have harped less on her odd obsession with Junko and focused more on her internal struggle. I think her character has potential but I can’t say I was particularly attached to her (I suppose that was kind of the point, though). 

4/10

Junko Enoshima: 

Junko is probably one of the most well-written villains I have ever seen in a series. At first I thought it didn’t make sense, and was confused how one person could have so much influence on a mass amount of people. Then it was revealed in later installments that Ultimate Fashionista was not her real talent, just a cover she forged for herself to help her blend in to the school. Her real ultimate talent as the Ultimate Analyst allowed her to predict people’s actions and more importantly, their reactions. Her innate ability and incurable boredom made her seek out something unpredictable: despair and chaos. I think what made me love her as a villain was the line “You can’t argue with me, because there's no reason for anything that I do.” 

As a villain I give her 15/10. If I were to rank her as a person? -11037/10

Overall Opinion: 

I really find most of the characters charming but it’s super obvious when comparing this game to the others that these characters were not as fleshed out as characters in other games. I found it hard to be super attached to most of them and felt that some of their actions were really uncharacteristic. However I really do like the characters and what they add to the story, even if some of it doesn’t add up completely. I’m the least attached to these characters out of all of the characters in the DR series, although there are obviously some exceptions. I think there couldn’t have been a better opening cast of characters.

[faakeid]

About k*i and j*en*ie news

Honestly, I didn’t expect to write something like this today. For real. It’s the first day of the year and I personally have other projects to concentrate. But here I am. And I know some people know this blog to exploring kd dynamics and when that mess happened in 2016, this otp especifically was mentioned a lot. But, at least for now, the impressions related with jgin and jnne won’t involve kd. Actually, it will be more a collection of thoughts about k*i persona and how his “romantic affairs” publicized can fit an agenda. Before starting, I just wanted to say that I’m surprised (positively) by the fact that people aren’t freaking out about it like happened with kxk. Back then it was a huge mess, but now even outsiders see it with some doubt. Somehow, people are opening their eyes and it’s really good, so congratulations!

Okay, so, talking about k*i persona. I think I mentioned this many times before, but k*i is and always was a character. Since the beginning S*M gave him this role of being the “sexy dancer”, seductive and womanizer. It’s obvious when you watch Wolf’s drama, for example and a live performance of them of the same song.

This intro has a huge meaning pointing towards what i’m talking about. The other members are close with the girl, but he’s the only one who can have some sort of approach with the girl.

Never forget Choco Bank, the webdrama that showed the most lover boy side of him

The problem is that the face behind k*i, jgin, never fit this description. In interviews, variety shows and other appearances, he never showed himself as the kind of guy the agency was pushing him to be. He was quiet, even shy, wasn’t comfortable with people he wasn’t close to and he expressed it really well (but he always showed how much he cherish someone he loves), talked about subjects like books, favorite movies, life philosophy, motivation... In other words, he had K*i’s face, but inside he expressed himself as jngin.

Things were normal until kxk news blow up back in April 2016. The chaos was made by then with the pictures, the photoshopped pics of them kissing, the date Dispatch chose to reveal the news (doing it on April’s Fool doesn’t help the news crediblity, I’m sorry), the fake receipt of a bought condom and so on. That and other factors were more than enough to bring him down. It was visible his distraught in many occasions and how it affected him (even in terms of projects). So, it’s obvious to conclude how that year was bad for him.

In 2017, things started to change for him. In june of that year the couple was reported to have broken up. Around the time, his media appearance got bigger and bigger. He had roles in dramas and covering The Big Issue magazine (which sold 80.000 copies, proving his popularity was getting stronger). 

In June 2018 he got strong on Instagram activities and had the opportunity of showing different sides of himself there (and a lot of other projects as being on another magazines, going to “Gucci Cruise 2019 Fashion Show” (and getting huge attention) and the list goes on.

Of course it’s good to see him getting the attention and recognition he deserves as an artist and dancer. But with all this activities, it’s easy to see that k*i’s persona blent better throught time. And with all this focus on his past “public relationship”, roles he gets, it’s easier to visualize him as the person he was projected to be from the start.

And now we go back to where we started: k*i and jnne dating scandal. 

This time, Dispatch didn’t commit the same mistakes she did with kxk. And at least ex0 doesnt have activites like they had right after the news blowed up (Lotte, jgin crying, never forget). SM waited a little longer to confirm (while YG was super wtf with all of it, as usual). Is there chances to see their rs as real? Only time will tell. But the point here is that SM always benefits from k*i “indiscretions” (if it wasn’t the case, they wouldn’t be willing to confirm everything). Dispatch too, considering that their goal is to spread news and make people interested in it. 

While readin The Korea Herald’s article about the subject, they posted a fan comment that was amusing to me. In the comment the fan said:  “If the rumor is true, be happy with each other.”. But why say that if the company confirmed it? And in a comment made in Allkpop website, the person talked about the affair and said at the end “unless SM wants to distract y’all from something happening in EXO again, hence the dating ‘scandal’”. It’s not the first time this tatic was used.

So, like someone asked: why is always jgin the one who’s caught up on rs scandals? Because it fits his image. Every group has someone with a specific role: the funny one, the quiet one, the sexy and so on. K*i’s actions just matches the role that was given to him from the start (if it wasn’t the case it wouldn’t have anything talking kxk dating back in 2012). When someone does an action that goes distant from the image they want to show, it’s where the blacklash happens (Sun*min getting married, Hy*na rs and so on). For k*i, a guy like him, he just need to see him dating. So he appears more easily than other members that can be also dating.

I hope this text could explain my opinion and show my pov well. Like I said, I wouldn’t mention kd here because it’s not necessary, for now. Considering what happened in 2016, things can be a little awkward for jgin, but he will get better stronger than ever in a few months. And, again, if this couple is not a stunt, don’t worry. Time will tell.

[ludicrousperson]

Get To Know Me Questions (Very long)

thanks for tagging me bubs @meeresnaechte <3

1. What is your first name? Michelle

2. What is your nickname? Michi, Ischi, E.T., Valera

3. What is your zodiac sign? Aries

4. What is your favorite book series? Definitely the Harry Potter Book Series

5. Do you believe in aliens or ghosts? I believe in ghosts but not really in aliens? The term ‘aliens’ is so stigmatized, that I don’t support this term and it’s definition. But somehow I slightly believe that humans are not the only ones in space.

6. Who is your favorite author? Haruki Murakami

7. What is your favorite radio station? I don’t really listen to radio, but when I do, I skip along through every station while driving car.

8. What is your favorite flavor of anything? I love to try the variety of all the flavors, but my go to flavor is definitely chocolate hehe.

9. What word would you use often to describe something great or wonderful? Lovely or Cute/Adorable. I love it when something or someone is just themselves and it’s so pure and lovely and I want to give it/them all my heart.

10. What is your current favorite song? Don’t Settle - Ben Kyle

11. What is your favorite word? It may seem so casual but the word ‘Thanks’ or ‘Thank you’ (‘Danke’ in German) holds so much power and lots meaning. For me it is another way to express my thankfulness and love I hold for my friends and family. ‘Thank you for seeing me’, ‘Thank you for making me laugh’, ‘Thank you.’.

12. What was the last song you listened to? I am You - Stray Kids

13. What TV show would you recommend for everybody to watch? Breaking Bad, Narcos, Stranger Things & Goblin (KDrama).

14. What is your favorite movie to watch when you’re feeling down? Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban & Therapie (by DieAussenseiter, German Youtuber).

15. Do you play video games? Currently I play ‘The Last of Us’. But rather than playing I really loooove to watch Let’s Plays of for example ‘Detroit: Become Human’, ‘Resident Evil’ aaand so on.

16. What is your biggest fear? Darkness & Loneliness. 

17. What is your best quality, in your opinion? I can be really spontaneous and would steal a car to drive to the ocean just for one hour so we can watch the sunset. Also I am really honest. You did something bad that’s not quite acceptable? Let’s talk it out and I will stay by your side to help you change your thinking/behavior or simply your mistake (vice versa counts for me).

18. What is your worst quality, in your opinion? My mind. I get nervous and tell myself that I am weird and that I am just annoying. That happens even when I am with my closest friends. Plus, I am sometimes very hot tempered. In a conflict I want to understand what my opposite thinks and what their opinion is, but it turns into me shouting quite fast.

19. Do you like cats or dogs better? Honestly I like both, but since I am allergic to cats, I love and praise doggos.

20. What is your favorite season? Spring Spring Spring and a bit of Autumn.

21. Are you in a relationship? No.

22. What is something you miss from your childhood? I miss that my parents never lived together and that I have never seen them together in one room.

23. Who is your best friend? I have 3. One I met through the Internet in 2013. One I met in school 4 years ago and that I didn’t like at the beginning and one who reached out to me in 2017.

24. What is your eye color? Brown

25. What is your hair color? Brown

26. Who is someone you love? My friends and my granny

27. Who is someone you trust? My friends

28. Who is someone you think about often? Someone who I can share my happiness with but haven’t met yet.

29. Are you currently excited about/for something? I am always excited for the little things. But right now I am lowkey excited for what this semester in University will gift me.

30. What is your biggest obsession? Music & Photography

31. What was your favorite TV show as a child? Spongebob and Disneys Recess

32. Who of the opposite gender can you tell anything to, if anyone? I have more male friends than female friends and I can talk as openly to them as to my female friends.

33. Are you superstitious? Slightly

34. Do you have any unusual phobias? I wouldn’t count it as a phobia but I get panicked as soon as I see too many people around me.

35. Do you prefer to be in front of the camera or behind it? Behind it. I love to capture the pure beauty of the nature and of my friends being themselves. I want to capture their beauty forever, even when ways start to split. The memories won’t disappear.

36. What is your favorite hobby? Photography.

37. What was the last book you read? Ein Kind - Thomas Bernhard

38. What was the last movie you watched? Annabelle 3. Saturday at a drive-in cinema with my best friend and her friends.

39. What musical instruments do you play, if any? I can’t play one but I am trying to learn the piano.

40. What is your favorite animal? Whales, Koalas and Birds.

41. What are your top 5 favorite Tumblr blogs that you follow? Definitley @loewen-gebruell, kuss an dich

42. What superpower do you wish you had? Teleportation & Invisibility

43. When and where do you feel most at peace? At the ocean. Just watching the waves and the sun and the wind and the people. It feels like time stops while time is running by.

44. What makes you smile? When other people are happy, doesn’t matter if it’s because of me or because of something/someone else.

45. What sports do you play, if any? Zumba/Dancing, Handball and Badminton.

46. What is your favorite drink? Waaaaater

47. When was the last time you wrote a hand-written letter or note to somebody? For my best friend on her birthday as a present in May.

48. Are you afraid of heights? A bit, depends on my current anxiety level haha

49. What is your biggest pet peeve? Aggressiveness. I am so afraid if people get aggressive. 

50. Have you ever been to a concert? Yes. K.I.Z. in Essen & Monsta X in Berlin.

51. Are you vegan/vegetarian? No.

52. When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up? I always wanted to teach or help children. Now I am trying to fulfill my wish into becoming a psychotherapist.

53. What fictional world would you like to live in? Aaaaaall the way Hogwarts.

54. What is something you worry about? I worry about my own future and about my family.

55. Are you scared of the dark? I am literally so scared when it gets dark. I need someone by my side to keep calm.

56. Do you like to sing? I love to sing and I would have already become a popular singer but sike my voice sucks so bad I don’t even like to speak in general because of my voice.

57. Have you ever skipped school? Yes hehe

58. What is your favorite place on the planet? Wherever I know I am not going to stay forever.

59. Where would you like to live? I want to live in so many countries, but I am afraid to settle down somewhere for the rest of my life.

60. Do you have any pets? No.

61. Are you more of an early bird or a night owl? Early bird, but lately I am more a night owl uhu

62. Do you like sunrises or sunsets better? Sunrises. Even though I find sunsets so surprisingly beautiful, I cherish sunrises a lot more. My heart feels like ‘here we are, leave it behind, you had time, it is a new start, you can do it in your own pace’ and it just feels warm.

63. Do you know how to drive? Yes and it’s the only thing I am 100% confident in lol

64. Do you prefer earbuds or headphones? Earbuds.

65. Have you ever had braces? Yes I had and I plan on getting some again.

66. What is your favorite genre of music? Ballads & a mix of EDM and POP

67. Who is your hero? May I say ‘Gronkh’?. He is a Youtuber and I watch him and his videos since I am 12. He has been with me for all the past years and he is still with me even though I am 20. His words always gave me courage and gave me what I never received from anyone else. He has a strong Father Role in my eyes.

68. Do you read comic books? No.

69. What makes you the most angry? Lies

70. Do you prefer to read on an electronic device or with a real book? A real book.

71. What is your favorite subject in school? German & Chemics

72. Do you have any siblings? Yes, 4 Half-Siblings, all younger than me.

73. What was the last thing you bought? A hoodie for the drive-in cinema at night.

74. How tall are you? 170 cm

75. Can you cook? Since I live on my own I cook a lot and I didn’t get food poisoned yet so I think I can cook.

76. What are three things that you love? Late Nights, Spontaneous Roadtrips & Laughs.

77. What are three things that you hate? Toxicity, Self-Centered People & Hate in general. 

78. Do you have more female friends or more male friends? More male friends.

79. What is your sexual orientation? Straight by now but I don’t care who I am going to fall in love with.

80. Where do you currently live? In Austria for my studies.

81. Who was the last person you texted? My bestie @meeresnaechte

82. When was the last time you cried? Yesterday night.

83. Who is your favorite YouTuber? Gronkh.

84. Do you like to take selfies? Depends if I need a new profilepic.

85. What is your favorite app? Spotify & Tumblr

86. What is your relationship with your parent(s) like? Not good at all. My father disappoints me and breaks my trust to him everytime I visit him and my mother tries to be my best friend since she can’t act as a mother.

87. What is your favorite foreign accent? Slavik and Australian.

88. What is a place that you’ve never been to, but you want to visit? Mongolia, Southern America and Antarctica.

89. What is your favorite number? 16

90. Can you juggle? No

91. Are you religious? I have been raised strongly catholic but I got myself out of this close minded thinking. Even though I don’t practice any religious “doings”, I try to compare my experiences with the religions opinion.

92. Do you find outer space or the deep ocean to be more interesting? The deep ocean. The deep ocean is all around us and is covering 71% of the world we live on. So many lives live deep down in the ocean we have never seen and it’s the most undiscovered place on earth.

93. Do you consider yourself to be a daredevil? No.

94. Are you allergic to anything? Cats, Dust & Wheat

95. Can you curl your tongue? No

96. Can you wiggle your ears? No

97. How often do you admit that you were wrong about something? 60% wrong, because I always try to see the good in someone and while not only hurting myself because of another disappointment, I hurt my closest friends as well.

98. Do you prefer the forest or the beach? The beach. But the forest has something magical that will always leave me stunned.

99. What is your favorite piece of advice that anyone has ever given you? “Do what makes you happy.”.

100. Are you a good liar? No and I don’t want to be.

101. What is your Hogwarts House? Hufflepuff

102. Do you talk to yourself? Most of the time since I live alone uhm

103. Are you an introvert or an extrovert? I am a situational extrovert.

104. Do you keep a journal/diary? No, my Tumblr Blog is my diary since 2013.

105. Do you believe in second chances? Yes.

106. If you found a wallet full of money on the ground, what would you do? Search for an ID and try to reach out to the person who lost it or give it straight to the owner of the place where I found the wallet or give it to the nearest police station.

107. Do you believe that people are capable of change? I have split opinions on it.

108. Are you ticklish? Yes.

109. Have you ever been on a plane? Yes.

110. Do you have any piercings? Yes, recently got a helix.

111. What fictional character do you wish was real? Neville from Harry Potter, just imagining him as a best friend wow

112. Do you have any tattoos? Yes a Plumeria on my right arm.

113. What is the best decision that you’ve made in your life so far? Not listening to others and making my own experiences.

114. Do you believe in karma? Yes.

115. Do you wear glasses or contacts? No.

116. Do you want children? Yes, 3 to 5 children, but only if I am financially stable and if I can rely on my partner.

117. Who is the smartest person you know? Smart is anyone who found a way to live happily.

118. What is your most embarrassing memory? I don’t want to get reminded ciao

119. Have you ever pulled an all-nighter? These dark circles under my eyes aren’t from sleeping.

120. What color are most of you clothes? Black & maybe some red here and there.

121. Do you like adventures? Always down for them, text me and I will show up at your front door with backpacks full of snacks and drinks and blankets let’s get it

122. Have you ever been on TV? No god thanks stay like this

123. How old are you? 20

124. What is your favorite quote? I have so many saved on my phone and written down in my notes, but one which I get reminded of most of the time is ”Erkennst du die nächste Gelegenheit, wenn sie passiert?” (”Do you see the next possibility when it’s happening?”).

125. Do you prefer sweet or savory foods? I have a sweet tooth but spicy food has a special place in my heart.

People I want to get to know better:  @perrfectly @kuntergrau-mohae @loewen-gebruell

[sarcasm-and-studying]

We Don’t Talk About the Stories

October 13

Before I start, let's get one thing straight.  I'm not the type of person to fall for some run of the mill conspiracy.  I don't believe in magic, and I take most things told to me with a truckload of salt.  I mean, when you spent a good nine years of your life believing your house was taken over by a secret race of anthropomorphic gloves, you tend to start being a bit skeptical about the world around you.

Having said that, I truly believe my history teacher might be an immortal.

It started off as a joke, one of those blatantly untrue ‘rumors’ everyone spreads to feel like they’re a part of something bigger than themselves.  It was somewhere around mid September when we all collectively realized that perhaps we weren’t completely lying to ourselves after all.  

Mr. Robert T. Johnson is a quirky man with giant gold-rimmed glasses and a curly beard concealing most of his face.  He dresses in vests and bow-ties that come in a variety of earthly tones, and he uses phrases like “that’s so Jake!” - phrases we’re pretty sure no one’s used in over a century.

I want to put a disclaimer here - a disclaimer that is brought on by my confidence in the second paragraph of this entry.  Every ‘proof’ I have to offer of the supernatural is purely circumstantial, and can be, in theory, explained in a perfectly rational way.

At any rate, a huge reason why these rumors exist is because of Mr. Johnson’s stories.  Every once in a while, he gets a droll look in his eye, and the class always exchanges excited glances.  The stories range from the slightly peculiar to the straight up ludicrous, yet every student believes without a doubt that Mr. Johnson actually did punch a Nazi in a French aquarium, or that he actually did date an attractive acrobat who scammed a loan shark out of half a million dollars.  

Yet these stories never have any time stamps, and whenever someone inquires Mr. Johnson as to when he actually had time to go on these adventures, he always gets flustered and quickly changes the subject.  Pretty soon, we learned not to ask too many questions.

The most notable one of these incidents took place at the concert of some obscure musician with an unfamiliar name.  By next period, someone googled the guy.  Apparently his last concert was in 1903.

Yet we’d already learned not to ask too many questions, so we left the answers up to our own imaginations.  And our imaginations did run wild, leading us to the perhaps slightly irrational conclusion I am sharing with you now.

December 27

My hands are almost shaking as I write this.  I wish I didn’t believe the rumor, I wish I could listen to my rational mind.  Yet the further I go into the school year, the more I seem to stop listening to logical reasoning of any sort.

The last few months have passed without any major incidents.  Mr. Johnson remains as suspicious as ever, although new ‘proof’ has come up.  My teacher seems to… imply he knows a lot of languages, as in his stories he regularly talks with residents of other countries.  As always, he dodges questions, though.  He doesn’t strike me as a language kind of guy, and however many he knows, it’s probably more than an average person learns in a lifetime.  

The girl who sits in front of me in homeroom has never talked to me before, but today she leaned back in her chair and rested her elbow on my desk.  

“You’re in Mr. Johnson’s class, aren’t you?” she inquired, her voice quivering with excitement.  “Here, take a look at what I found while researching my forensics project!”

It was a scan of a news article with a giant picture of a policeman leading a man away in handcuffs.  The policeman looked exactly like Mr. Johnson, except clean-shaven and without glasses.  

The only problem was that the photo was taken in Ohio, and the policeman was identified as ‘Mr. Green’.  

Oh, and it was taken in 1923.

“Mr. Johnson, do you have any ancestors who lived in Ohio?” I asked him at history that afternoon.  “A grandfather, perhaps?”

Mr. Johnson stiffened up at the word ‘Ohio’.  “Why do you ask?” he inquired, exaggerated nonchalance barely concealing a panicked note in his voice.

“I... was just wondering,” I replied, shifting awkwardly.

“My family did move here from Ohio!” he told me with a hearty laugh, switching to a laid back tone of voice.  In a matter of seconds, all his tenseness had evaporated.  “How did you find out?”

“A friend of mine was researching for a project,” I blurted without thinking.  “She saw a picture of a man who looks just like you in some article about a murder case...”

.

A few days after that, Akane told me the scans had vanished from the internet.  As soon as I came home from school that day, I messaged a few of the websites that previously provided the scans, asking them about the disappearance.

.

A few weeks have passed.  Not one of them has replied.

February 16

The history teacher next door has left.  It happened without any warning, and I am yet to meet a person who isn’t surprised by Mrs. Sheldon’s disappearance.  She was an old, sweet lady, someone who has spent a good portion of her life teaching at our school.  For her to leave like that, here on Friday and gone on Monday - it greatly disturbed the status quo.

According to the dean, Mrs. Sheldon has grown extremely sick and won’t be able to come to school for a while.  She knew neither this mysterious illness nor how long this ‘while’ was going to last.

The new history teacher is a woman in her early to mid thirties, with a round, trustworthy face and strong arms.  Her name is Mrs. Merri.  She has started to decorate her classroom, the most notable of her posters being a ‘cheat sheet’ on some war we aren’t supposed to learn about until next year.

A girl in my math class was crying because she missed Mrs. Sheldon so much.  I feel sorry for her.  Fortunately, it doesn’t seem like Mr. Johnson will be leaving anytime soon.

March 24

I have asked around about what Mrs. Merri is like.  People seem to have different opinions of her.  Most people say she is nice, but some of the more ambitious students complain about how she doesn’t seem to be too experienced in teaching a history class.

People have mostly stopped talking about Mrs. Sheldon.  Now, it’s just one of the many interesting things that have happened at my school.

April 2

I usually get a little early to school, and I often hang out in Mr. Johnson’s classroom for ‘tutoring’ until the first bell rings.  Today, however, his door was locked and he was nowhere to be seen.

“It seems like Mr. Johnson is running late,” Mr. Merri said.  She was leaning on her door frame, smiling openly.  “Why don’t you come into my classroom instead?”

“Sure,” I shrugged, glancing behind her into the open room.  Almost a dozen students sat at the desks, pouring over textbooks or conversing in hushed voices.  I recognized Akane, as well as some other kids who I usually saw in Mr. Johnson’s class.

I took a seat next to Akane and pulled out my phone.  For a while, we all worked in relative silence.  

“I see a lot of unfamiliar faces today,” Mrs. Merri remarked at some point.  She was perched, nonchalantly, on her desk, gazing over us in amusement.  “Don’t tell me Mr. Johnson always gets this much more students in the mornings.”

Someone assured her this was an unusually busy day.

“He seems to be a good guy,” she continued.  “I’d like to get to know him better.  Does he tell you guys stories in his class?  Because I’ve only spent a few days talking to him and I’ve already heard he’s been all over the world.  Asia, Africa, Europe…  And he’s been all over the US as well.  Has he ever told you guys about Ohio?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Akane freeze up mid-page turn.  

“Not really,”  I said nonchalantly.  “He’s mentioned vacations in different countries, but you make it seem like he’s some sort of world traveler.  I certainly don’t remember anything about Ohio.”

I remembered a rumor about how some girl saw Mrs. Sheldon in a grocery store recently looking very healthy and very much not like a person who has to leave school because of a mysterious illness.

“He doesn’t really tell stories,” Akane picked up.  “He’s honestly a reserved kind of guy when he teaches our class.”

The rumors about Mr. Johnson’s mysterious past, Mrs. Sheldon’s sudden disappearance and quick replacement, the absolute confidence with which Akane and I delivered our lies - all of these things led a few of the other kids in the classroom to slowly nod their agreement.  

Mrs. Merri regarded us with a cold, skeptical stare.  Now she didn’t seem so friendly anymore.  “So he’s told you… nothing?  Nothing about his personal life at all?”

“Honestly, yeah,” said someone to my left.  “I wish he’d tell more stories.”

“Mr. Johnson’s traveled across Europe?” piped up a boy in the front.  “That’s amazing!  Could you tell us more?”

Mrs. Merri let the topic evaporate, and in less than a minute the first bell rung.  I’m going to tell Mr. Johnson about this, Akane told me under her breath as we filed out of the door.

Mr. Johnson did not tell our class any stories that day.

June 12

The next day, Mr. Johnson did not show up to class.  

We later found out he had left a note of resignation on the principal’s desk the afternoon of the incident.  He didn’t answer his email, and his phone went straight to voicemail no matter who called him or when they did it.  Most of his belongings were left in the classroom, never to be picked up again, which would’ve been cause for alarm if it wasn’t for the disappearance of a whole row of books on his bookshelf, a whole row of books we knew Mr. Johnson cherished dearly.

So wherever he left, he left of his own accord.

A few days later, Mrs. Merri was replaced by Mrs. Sheldon again.  Any questions about her alleged illness were avoided by both her and the school staff.

Now, more than ever, I suspect that both Mrs. Merri and Mr. Johnson have giant secrets.  I don’t think I’ll ever find out, though.  

I never saw either of them again.  

[wakraya]

Alright, let me put a few points of stuff I’ve seen on the tags to rest here.

1) Jades Are A Rare Caste.

They are implied to be less plentiful than other castes, yeah, I believe Seadwellers are also rare? But here’s the thing- We have six Jades. When someone says “There’s twice as many Jades as we have Rusts or Bronzes”, it sounds like, shit, yeah weren’t they supposed to be less abundant? Except. They’re still, in total, just Six. Alternia is a planet. Lore-wise, they may be a less plentiful Caste, but they’re not even... In the double digits. This is not even the population of a neighborhood, Xefros’ suburban area likely had more Trolls in total than there are Trolls in this Troll Call, and besides it’s likely all Jades are in the same place for some reason- Jadeblood School is the biggest headcanon right now, for example, so... Why wouldn’t you have a bunch of Jades there?

2) Jades Are All Female.

This is a straight-up misconception, yeah they’re mostly girls, but canon still leaves room for Jadeblood boys. So Male Jadeblood? Yeah, can happen, and there’s nothing going against the canon here.

3) Trolls Have No Concept Of Gender.

This one is honestly baffling to me because I haven’t heard about this until the discourse today. I am assuming this comes from the fact Troll Reproduction doesn’t care who provides the genetic material? Their reproduction is not tied to gender, which has made people assume Troll junk is the same for both guys and gals. Except... That’s about it. Even though it’s silly because they’re bugs and implied to be hermaphroditic, they still show sexual dimorphism. And even if they didn’t, they still have a concept of Gender, merely based on the fact there’s Troll Boys and Troll Girls? He/She divide? With Hiveswap expanding on it and showing us there are, indeed, NB Trolls that prefer They/Them. This Gender Divide is actually talked about by Porrim, who also implies that while Fuchsia-down Alternia seemed a Matriarchy, Purple-down it was actually a Patriarchy, informing us that not ONLY is there sexual dimorphism, but also, a cultural divide. By saying that Lanque can’t be Trans because Trolls have no concept of Gender, you’re either mistaking headcanons for actual canon... Or being transphobic by equating genitalia to gender. In which case, fuck off.

4) Trolls Don’t Care About Fashion.

This is something Karkat says, and I believe Kanaya also implies she cares about it more than it’s usual? But Fashion in Troll Culture, seems to be exactly like Mail. Karkat mentions there’s no Mail they do not get a Mailbox with a Flag, yet we see Xefros get mail! Except it’s not Mail. It’s parachuted delivery straight from a website. There’s no standarized Mail system on Alternia, but that doesn’t mean companies can’t deliver things themselves, directly to their Hives. Similarly, Trolls have no concept of Fashion- They don’t care about things such as trends, variety, being dressed properly. And... Hiveswap doesn’t break this. They have more colorful clothes, and some look pretty good! But. Look at Cirava. They’re an absolute fashion disaster. Diemen is just dressed like a hot dog. The Jades all seem to wear uniforms of some sort. Fozzer and Marsti, Skylla, they are more akin to work clothes. The Soleil Twins and Marvus are more flashy, because they’re likely part of a spectacle. Most of them are either a sort of uniform or outfit that’ll fit whatever they’re doing, or a basic color with their symbol somewhere. And you can go from Bright Pink Bathrobe Stelsa, to Pirate-Clad Remele, and back to Punk Denim Elwurd. Not being Fashionable can be about trends, they may simply dress however they want, because of their interests, or their jobs.

But let’s think about this another way. Let’s say that, yeah, they did retcon Troll Fashion- Would... Would you really be mad if they retconned Troll Fashion. Like... Would you be happier if every Troll shown was wearing a plain black shirt with their Symbol, and pants or a skirt, with slight variations of a jacket or a tank top. I don’t think there’s a single Hiveswap design I dislike, and they’re all visibly varied and easily recognizable, and tell a lot about the character, which is like. Character Design 101? So I honestly don’t know what the complaint here is exactly, except Canon Purity.

5) Hiveswap Ruined Fantroll Variety

How. First of all, the entire previous point. Just, expanding upon basic Troll Clothes, showing us the extent of how Trolls dress. But also like... What did they limit exactly? We’re going to learn more about Trolls and Troll Culture and Biology, of course headcanons are going to clash with canon, but so far, what have they limited? I’ve heard about Horns, but like... These horns have all been so varied, and sure there’s stuff like hooks with Ceruleans and Jades, and Four Horns with Golds but... This pattern is also broken, with Azdaja having three, for example. We’ve seen new Psionic colors, we’ve seen stuff like Horn Piercing, we’ve seen Troll Twins, we have seen horns where the orange part starts at different heights than you’d expect and even some of the parts jutting out having their own red-orange-yellow coloration separate of the main shaft of the horn. If anything, until now, there’s always been headcanons for Horns, like, “Oh this is their symbol so it’ll be like this”, or “this is their caste, so, they’ll have big horns”, but no, we have Purples with small horns, we have Bronzes with curly horns downwards, we have a cerulean with super uneven horns, we have a gold with three horns, we have a teal with flat horns, we have rounded horns, we have hotdog horns. I’ve heard people wonder about some Horn Shapes in the prior weeks, about how they didn’t match their restrictive headcanons, and NOW you tell me they’re restrictive? There’s also been complaints about caste roles and stereotypes, and I feel people really forget that Alternia is a Tyranny that forces the inhabitants in roles they are most likely not happy with, specially for the lower castes. Like... Rusts are disposable, and likely to be bound to a life of servitude. Because they’re the lowest of the low, society treats them as such, and there’s stereotypes like Indigos being strong, but that’s not any more restrictive than Psionics being a Gold-only thing, and much like we see Zebede not having Psionics or Elwurd and Mallek having normal eyes to every other cerulean’s messed-up ones... There’s exceptions to the rule everywhere. There have always been.

I’ve also seen complaints about no mutant bloods or things like Albinism and such? And like... The fact they didn’t include it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. We actually got Freckles with Zebede, so it already implies skin conditions are a thing, so Albinism could happen, if anything we have more PROOF that it may be a thing! Complaining about a lack of Limebloods and Violets, too, is just nitpicking, we know there will be Violets eventually, but either we haven’t been shown right now, or they’re just. In the sea. And we’re in the land. And Limes are likely to be a plot point, I’m expecting at least ONE Lime (Fiamet), if not more to show up at some point, and if there’s NO Limebloods I’m sure there will be at least talk OF Limebloods and their whole, you know, extermination, which is a canon thing that happened.

6) The Game’s Representation Is Bad Representation

Listen... Listen. I have friends ecstatic that there’s at LEAST three non-cis characters in Hiveswap (One trans boy, two NBs), without counting the possibility of other characters being Trans (Pretty much anyone could be), or NB (Like, I think about half of the characters don’t have pronouns on their bullet points?), not to mention, further acts with new characters. Hell, even Xefros or Dammek or Joey could be Trans. We. Literally know nothing about these characters, our information is so limited, and yet there’s already people cheering about it and super happy to see representation and I’ve seen one person in the tag encouraged to come out because Lanque is Trans. There’s also at least two Jewish Trolls, plus the possibility of Kanaya being Jewish as well, either her, Rose, or both. And yet, even though they have simply said this, in good faith, respectfully, and trying to add diversity to their roster, and even though we literally know NOTHING of how it’ll be handled yet, you... Bash them for it?

Like, okay. Lanque. The big topic today. He’s not particularly masculine, but as has surely been repeated over and over and over again, not all trans men are masculine, and not all trans people suffer dysphoria. And yeah, it’s true! It would be nice if there was a more masculine trans man! It would be great if there were trans girls! It would be great if there were more diversely coded NB characters! And there may be?? There’s going to be more characters, if not in this Act, in future Acts, and of the ones we’ve seen, many of them could still be NB or Trans. Like... Again. We’ve got three bullet points from each character. Like, I’m sorry you didn’t get a trans character that you could identify better with yet? But that doesn’t mean you have to bash the one we got? When there are people genuinely happy and encouraged about it? You’re not being progressive. You’re being an elitist asshole, if you only accept 100% perfect representation suited to your tastes, and everything else is garbage, or god help me, ‘fetishization’ or ‘disgusting’ (I have heard both on the Tags), like seriously. You’re being the oppressive one. You’re the one making representation harder than it should be.

Oh and if you’re on the OPPOSITE side of the spectrum and simply being Transphobic or saying how all of this is ‘pandering’ to the audience, really I have nothing to say, if you cannot have basic empathy for a group of people finding representation in a game which source material is extremely queer, and have to resort to bashing it down, screw you.

7) WhatPumpkin Are Doing A Bad Job

This is your subjective opinion, and I’d dare to say, a wrong opinion, but let’s not go there for now. WP has suffered a lot of hate for some reason? There have been lies and slander and bashing for absolutely no reason. People hate Cohen for some reason, and have demonized him, when so far what I’ve seen about him is that he’s a pretty chill dude. The writing of Hiveswap wasn’t like, a masterpiece? But it was fun and it got a good bunch of chuckles out of me and made me care for the characters, and even got me a bit scared and sad at some points during the game! It has that Homestuck Spark, and if you say ‘it’s not like Homestuck’, you’re... I’m sorry, you’re just an elitist, or simply don’t like the style anymore? But it carries a very similar charm.

I’ve heard complaints about Hussie not being involved in the project- Which is false, he did write the entire story FIRST THING, and is overseeing the whole project with the rest of the team. There’s also been criticism towards WP ‘failing’ at representation (Before actually seeing the representation apparently, again, we know NOTHING about the game and how it’ll handle stuff so far), and also accusing WP and Cohen specifically of adding representation because of Woke Points and like... WP are Queer as Heck? I don’t know all of them, I don’t even know how many people are working at WP. But they’re not all straight 100% for sure, and I believe they’re not all cis- And even if they ARE all cis, I also doubt a group working on such a Queer game would NOT hear out from Trans friends. What I’m trying to say, is that they haven’t shown at any point disrespect of ignorance regarding the diversity they want to tackle, they’re not doing things out of bad faith, and we haven’t seen how they handle it yet. Even if they didn’t handle it ideally! Does it need to be absolutely perfect, there can be missteps on the way there, god dammit if someone’s trying to better themselves but not quite getting it right you don’t insult them and tear them down! You show them what to do better next time or where they are mistaken, by pessimistically ignoring what they’re trying to do out of spite you’re discouraging good will and being an asshole! Which leads me to my last point for now.

8) They Could Have Told Us We Were Misgendering Lanque

This one is... Really, a bit ridiculous. Okay, let me explain. If someone is Trans and you misgender them accidentally, they’ll tell you quickly and you’ll, hopefully, correct yourself. Obviously. When the Trolls leaked, everyone latched onto Lanque as ‘Butch Lesbian’, and clung to that hope, and now that they were proven wrong, there was salt, at first, and THEN came the talk about Misgendering Lanque. And let me tell you, I think this is very selfish of everyone saying it.

What WP likely thought would happen is that they’d reveal Lanque to be a Trans boy, and people would be like “Oh! Nice, Trans Rep!”. Sure they could’ve told us back then but... Why? Lanque is not. A real person. He’s a fictional character, he’s not going to be offended because you thought he was a butch woman for a few months, in fact the SILHOUETTE alone ALREADY had people clinging to him as a butch woman. If he were a real person? Of course there’d be a quick correction. But he’s. A character. He’s just a god damn character. Who is Trans, out of good faith by a very Queer company, showing us a Trans man, who is a character, and expecting that, like NORMAL PEOPLE, we would not do something like THIS.

When you criticize WP for not telling us Lanque was a Trans Man, all I’m seeing is a shift of blame, not wanting to simply admit you were wrong and jumped to conclusions, and like- Even if there was Fanart or Fanfic of Lanque calling him a woman briefly, shipping him around mistakenly, who cares? You just. Go. “Okay, I’ll change it” or “Whoops haha this was from when we didn’t know he was a Trans boy!” Why the militant hatred? Why the absolute disgust shown today? I can’t understand, I simply cannot understand why your first reaction to “Trans boy Jadeblood” is “WELL I THOUGHT HE WAS A BUTCH LESBIAN!! I WASN’T WRONG BY ASSUMING THIS, WHATPUMPKIN WERE FOR TRYING TO MAKE THEIR GAME MORE DIVERSE”. It’s like... You just. Correct it? You just correct yourself? And yeah you can want more masculine Trans boys, that’s fair! But dismissing what we got, entirely, and insulting it, and getting like THIS, and blaming the team, it just seems.

Narcissistic. It seems narcissistic and extremely self-centered, and perfectionist to the extreme of not wanting anything other than a complete and absolute ideal, that may fit you but may also not fit others.

In conclusion?

People are happy about representation. This isn’t destroying diversity or representation, this is not reducing customization of Fantrolls, this is only building MORE on the already expansive system, and giving us representation and hope for MORE representation in the future, and if you cannot be happy for a genuine, good natured, and honestly, perfectly fine attempt, if you cannot feel empathy for the people who did feel for this representation, if you can only want to find reasons to bash something down and demonize something good and point out how BAD and NOT GOOD things are and how MUCH BETTER they could be, then honestly, you’re a deeply unpleasant person.

Give things time. Give people with good intentions chances. Learn to backpedal and learn from mistakes and simply correct yourself when you’re wrong instead of going down a hateful spiral. Learn to separate fiction and reality. Just like... Think, for a moment, when you’re writing something down- Is it a jaded opinion, or an objective fact? Will it hurt and discourage people who’re genuinely happy or trying to make others happy? Why do more harm than good when there are good intentions paving the way?

I just simply cannot understand the basic lack of critical thought and empathy of some people I have seen today, and hopefully with this I can make my opinion on the whole absurd Discourse that transpired today clear.

[woohooligancomics]

Webcomic Whimsy: Furry Experience!

Welcome to the Woohooligan Weekly Webcomic Whimsy! If you're a webcomic author and would like a review, you can see my announcement and review rules here.

Title: Furry Experience

Author: Ellen Natalie • Patreon • Facebook • Twitter

Site: Smack Jeeves

Genres: Comedy, Drama, Furry, Mormons

Rating: G (?)

Updates: Saturdays

My Starting Point (requested by artist): Page 182 (I'm not sure if they're arranged in chapters -- the archive doesn't seem to have chapter numbers)

Synopsis (from the About page): Three roommates attending college in Utah Valley. Between their different backgrounds, beliefs, and friends, there's sure to be lots of comedy and drama before anyone earns a diploma.

This starting page is probably a decent example of what you can expect from Furry Experience. Obviously the characters are anthropomorphic animals, as you'd expect from the title. The main characters are college roommates, so you would expect that kind of sit-com-esque, day-in-the-life humor. And the art is of good enough quality that we're not scratching our heads about what's going on here.

Ultimately, yes there's a good bit of comedy and a little drama in it, but the drama seems rather tame and the comedy seems very much of the family-friendly variety. I think where the story really excels is in a kind of smooth-seas, non-threatening character development. The characters never seem especially challenged by the events in their life, despite plenty of displays of emotion, and there are lots of scenes of friend and family bonding. To be honest, a lot of it feels to me like the TV commercials the Mormon church sometimes airs, where something ostensibly portrayed as bad seems to have happened, like the kids got their dress clothes all dirty, and just as the parents are about to lay into them, they start a water-fight with the garden hose instead.

I seem to always be waiting for something more outlandish or more personally challenging to happen to one of the characters and it never really does. Maybe it's just me, maybe I'm conditioned to expect that from the TV shows I watch. In any event, if you like friend and family bonding and g-rated humor, this might be for you! :D

The first several pages of this story arc is all three of the roommates continually changing the whiteboard to pass the dishes chore onto each other until Cat, who I presume is a dimwit stereotype, reaches the conclusion that the whiteboard is cursed, rather than that her roommates have been changing it.

Some people might not like me saying this, and fuck them. I like the fact that the cast is weighted on women. I counted fourteen female characters to six male on the about page. The reason I say I like this is because culturally, we've been programmed to expect the cast to be heavily male weighted. This programming is so strong, that when you ask people to estimate the number of women in a room, they usually will say "about half" when the room is actually only 20% or one in five women. Despite its sexist origins, Star Trek: the Next Generation did a better job featuring a 6-to-3 cast ratio in the first season, before Yar died, leaving the ratio 6-to-2. To be fair, Furry Experience isn't even that heavily weighted, the men are slightly less than one in three, so it's comparable to ST:TNG's first season.

The whiteboard joke ends abruptly after a few pages once Cat destroys it, and without showing any further bickering over the dishes chore, so those several pages are essentially a really short comedic subplot or a really long self-contained comic strip.

Then we're on to the next story which starts with Ronnie and her friend Vikki visiting a book-store at the mall. I have to agree with Ronnie here, I've been inside Mormon book stores and I'm not sure I would call it "culture". Mormons are if anything extremely conservative, so aside from picking up on some of their religious idiosyncrasies, the Mormon bookstore would actually restrict the amount of alternative views you're exposing yourself to, not expand them. I personally was raised Mormon (I'm Unitarian / positive agnostic), and my mother was Mormon until some time in my mid thirties. She still refuses to believe anything a liberal says, but takes on face value anything said by a conservative, like for example that Trump never said "grab them by the pussy" (even though he and his wife both admitted it on TV and during the debates), because the whole tape was manufactured as a part of a grand conspiracy. As far as she's concerned, the conspiracy is more believable than the idea that Trump said it, despite the fact that there are numerous TV apperances showing Trump bragging that he wants to fuck his daughter. :-/

But I'm off topic... Ronnie and Vikki are going to the Mormon book store. If you're unfamiliar with Mormonism, Utah is like the Mormons' Vatican... Well, Salt Lake City is, but also most of Utah. Mormonism is such an entrenched part of the state that it's actually somewhat difficult to live in the state without being Mormon, because you can't go or work anywhere without the Mormons in the office giving you crap about the fact that you drink coffee. (They have a religious prohibition on coffee like they do alcohol and cigarettes.)

Honestly, it's hard for me to say much about the following page except "agreed".

So they leave the book shop and they're talking about hanging out the rest of the evening and of course, like I said, it's hard to live in Utah if you're not Mormon, the subject comes up again.

Yes, that's really a thing, Mormons are supposed to have a "family home evening" (most of them do it on Monday), in which they have a gospel lesson... but because it's super hard to maintain that amount of bullshit for such an extended period of time (they all just spent three hours at church the day before), most of them don't manage to have their gospel lesson ready and then feel guilty and go out to eat somewhere with their family instead. And this isn't even mentioning the host of extracurricular church activities they're supposed to engage in, like their weekly study-buddies with other church members.

So the discussion about where to hang out leads to some mystery about what Vikki is hiding at her apartment.

Ronnie decides to stalk Vikki to find out what's wrong with her apartment, and thanks to the laws of sit-com world, what's wrong is that all three of Vikkie's roommates aren't just practicing Mormons, they even bought the "god is watching you" poster from the previous page.

Ellen told me that this series included furries, comedy, drama and Mormon's in that order. So I'm taking her word for it that most of the content isn't specifically about Mormonism, but she did start me out right in front of an arc about how annoying it is to live in Utah if you're not. Vikki's roommates are all attending "Furry Young" university in Provo (Brigham Young is the university owned by the Mormon church) and have stereotypically conservative, female career goals like school teacher, nursing and housewife.

When the discussion turns to the typical Mormon attitude that "of course everyone wants to get married", the story does briefly touch on one of the more awkward and imo hilarious aspects of Mormon religion: if you don't marry on earth, you get to marry one of god's soldiers in heaven! :P

It seems a little odd to me personally that Ellen sidestepped the fact that the Mormon church is polygamist, so it wouldn't matter that those soldiers had already married, because they would get to be wife #3 or 8 or whatever and should be just as happy with that. :P But damnit, Ronnie, don't use the G word in front of the roommates, it really upsets them, and Vikki still has to live with them.

I mentioned all the extracurricular churcch activities, right? Basically the Mormon church expects its members to fill every waking moment with church doctrine in some form. On the toilet? Great opportunity to brush up on Leviticus!

Okay, that's actually a sweet moment between Ronnie and Vikki, and as much as I think Vikki's approach was off, at least now I understand why she was going to the Mormon bookstore. This page was originally published in 2012... I don't know, it seems to me like using Google on your smartphone would be an easier way of learning the Mormonisms than frequenting their bookstore. Google? Why? I have libraries!

So Vikki's roommates want Ronnie and Vikki both to participate in their "family home evening" (which, when you're not living with family, necessarily beccomes "roommate home evening"), which involves praying, singing hymns and a lecture about the importance of marrying in the Temple (a place non-Mormons aren't allowed to go, so obviously you have to marry within the religion to do that). As this is about as appealing as sand-papering your eyeballs, Ronnie gets them out of it by suggesting a "more interactive" activity so she can get to know them better: doorbell ditching! Which, to Vikki's surprise, the Mormon girls are toally into! Because when Mormons do it, they leave cookies, so... for all their faults, at least they're engaging in random acts of diabetes. :P (Fun fact, Mormons use more sugar in their cooking, are heavier set, and have more diabetes than just about any other religion.)

And then rather than buy cookies at the store (it's Monday, they're allowed), they start baking cookies at the last minute to go doorbell ditch them. The point of this page is primarily about how jargon-laden Mormonism is and, although I'm unfamiliar with these specific terms, I don't doubt them.

This story wraps up with a sentimental exchange between Ronnie and Vikki, which seems to me to be much of the flavor of the series as a whole: yes, there's your typical sitcom humor, but the overall tone feels to me less "let's make this hilarious" and more "even Lifetime movies have comic relief". Obviously that's a personal opinion and mileage varies.

The following story centers on one of the few male characters, Hunter, who's also college age, though still living with his parents. He's decided to make (nude) modelling for college art classes his full-time job, which sets the story up for tension between Hunter and his mother.

It isn't apparent until the following page that Mom is aware that Hunter's job is getting nakedy naked in the colleges of the world's most sexually repressed city ... seriously, there's probably more fucking in the Vatican than in Salt Lake. Probably a lot more. Anyway, Mom doesn't like it, that's why she's helicopter-momming Hunter and calling to set up job interviews without his consent.

And like I said before, this is where the story gets real Lifetime on us, with Mom talking about Hunter's entirely non-sex job like he's an alcoholic or a drug addict and this is an intervention.

I definitely have some questions about the pirate job. If we're talking movie or theater, that might be pretty cool, but it would be so much cooler if someone's hiring crew for a replica of the Queen Anne's revenge to terrorize rich people on their yachts in Lake Erie. It's probably disappointingly, a mascot job for a seafood restaurant or worse pirate-themed tax prep. "We be takin' deduction ARRR!"

Yes, he's deep undercover in Salt Lake City, trying to recover state secrets stolen by the Illuminati and hidden in the Mormon temple. Okay, that may not be as funny to you, but it's hilarious to me... after growing up with my Mormon mom, who's now a non-denominational pagan (ask me about her salt altars) who obsessively watches atheist YouTube channels. :P

Honesty, yes... that goes over great with Mormons who're so sexually repressed their sex organs have literally shrivelled up and become vestigial. Seriously, these people think kissing on the lips is a sin.

Oh! Hunter's family are mormon, wow... I sort of assumed they were the rare non-Mormon family in Utah... When I was younger, I think my mom's reaction to me being naked for money would have been on the order of apoplexy or a stroke. But I can certainly relate to the sleazy sales company -- I've been on a few of those interviews, even tried to work those jobs once or twice. Ugh! The only bright side there is that when you do eventually go to hell (and you will), the job will have prepared you for it.

Yes, an hour is a typical amount of training in a lot of telemarketing jobs, and they're just as evil as the door-to-door sales job. I'm pretty sure I saw Stabby's owner on the cast list page, so I guess not all the characters know each other.

Called it! I really wish it had been actual pirating on Lake Erie. :-(

Meta joke! It must be about a webcomic I haven't read. I have no idea why Panda-Joel works as a joke.

Anyway that story ends with Hunter getting a concession job at a movie theater to replace Luke (Joel) and the end of the tension with his mother is that the job is great because it's mostly at night and fits neatly into his existing schedule so he can work both jobs and save up to potentially move out. Mom appears stunned at the news, which I'm guessing is supposed to mean she's not entirely happy with him moving out (and we know she wasn't happy with the art-modeling job he's still keeping). So I think the "punchline" there was "be careful what you wish for". As a former Mormon, I can't tell you how Mormon that whole thing feels. It's all so... mundane and uncomplicated. I'd have tried to end that story with a more challenging, possibly even surreal punchline, like the introduction of Stabby.

Artist insert. There's usually a single-page joke between stories and they're all labelled "filler page #". This one is 28.

I like the fact that the whiteboard changes mid-scene when it's obvious nobody's touched it. It may have just been a callback to the haunted whiteboard from the previous story, but I just think it's a cool bit of meta humor in general. I did the same thing with writing on the walls of the women's bathroom in the Pit (hell's bar, run by Azrael, who's Grumpy Cat's dad).

Again, this is Salt "No Sex Period" Lake City.

And just like they have a prohibition on sex, they also have a prohibition on ... you know, fun.

Tricking your kids out of things they want is really the job of being a dad if we're being honest.

Like I said before, the strip seems to focus primarily on friend-and-family bonding, sort of a furry, colorized Leave It To Beaver. So if you like family-friendly sitcoms, give Furry Experience a look!

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[janiedean]

While i hate antis and their bullying everytime they shaming a fictional ship because i believe that "Fiction is not reality", I also agree that fiction can be a good role model for the real world for example : Diana's characterisation in Wonder Woman to show us more variety of strong woman character or Theon's PTSD scene to how us what REAL PSTD scene looks like (and we're mad when people keep saying that Theon just being coward in that scene). How should we balance the two, in your opinion?

okay, so, first thing, I think we need to make a basic distinction and state that fiction influences reality and people might be influenced by fiction do not mean the same thing whatsoever.

then we have to make another distinction ie there’s such a thing as massively consumed fiction and less consumed fiction/fandom and both are also different.

then we also have to state that one thing is emulating characters, one thing is finding them interesting or recognizing yourself in them.

last thing that instead is valid for everything, one thing is good things being represented in fiction, the other is bad things being represented in fiction.

let’s go from easier to hardest.

easier: massively consumed vs fandom. now, what people on tumblr fail to realize is that most of the planet doesn’t not give a fuck about fandom or engages with it. I mean, if you’re into it you would, but I know a bunch of people who are nerds/into fandom who don’t ship nor are into fanfic. fanfic/fanart/whatever influences people maybe on a fandom-level, but if you assume that people at large might start thinking incest is fine because thor/loki exists (which is a purely fanon thing) or because jaime/cersei exists (actual mainstream stuff but not as large as idk SW), you’re frankly deluding yourself because only thor/loki shippers give two fucks about thor/loki and not counting a few people I can think of, no one thinks jaime/cersei makes incest okay nor abusive relationships okay. thor/loki isn’t even represented in fiction, it’s fanfic, jaime/cersei is represented in fiction, but no one would think either thing makes banging your brother okay whether it’s dysfunctional (t/l) or just downright abusive (j/c). in that case assuming that if you’re into t/l or j/c you want to bang your brother is the bad case which assumes that whichever fiction in existence influences reality directly.

that said, no one is actually wanting to make a social justice point while having jc being a thing or t/l being dysfunctional. it’s dynamics that are interesting to explore.

wonder woman giving more variety to a strong female character instead is extremely mass-consumption media which would show a lot of people that different type (because a lot more people watch DC movies than GOT) then you show them differently and they might start thinking differently about strong female characters. or idk black kids seeing the new star wars and liking that there’s a black lead (same for the mcu and falcon/black panther) is also an extremely mass-consumption thing, because of course most people watch star wars and know what the hell star wars is. in that case you have fiction making a positive impact on reality (or maybe reflecting reality) but it’s also, like, reasonable. because sw-the-movies have impact and normalize that the leads in the story can also be not always white blonde men with blue eyes, but the star wars fandom - and I’m just talking about the part that produces fanfic/fanart and not about the people cosplaying stormtroopers and so on - influences shit. no one is going to make people think force-choking someone is going to be okay because k*ylux fic exists, same as no one thinks that killing a bunch of children is okay because anakin did it in the prequels and no one is ever gonna think you’re a psychopath because you stan k*ylo ren same as no one who watches star wars (IN GENERAL) sees kylo and thinks WOW HAVING SUCH A BAD VILLAIN WILL BE A BAD INFLUENCE TO CHILDREN, because a generation or two grew up thinking vader was cool but no one ever thought what vader did was right. I mean, people who don’t have issues distinguishing the two facts (and usually the people who do are radical SOMETHING, conservatives or antis or whatever) are entirely aware that reality lets itself being influenced by fiction to a certain degree when it’s about positive things, not for negative things at large.

now obviously you have exceptions like fifty shades of gray which is a bad fanfic that has turned mainstream (relatively) and so now there’s a bunch of people convinced that it’s real BDSM TM, but that’s because in society people don’t get educated about how abusive relationships work or toxic relationships work so they don’t recognize it in shitty fanfic turned mainstream, but that’s where you focus your efforts and educate people, you don’t say that since fifty shades is shit then you can’t write books or make movies about bdsm period, which is what the idiots seem to want.

now, moving on to point one: as stated above, *fiction* as a thing doesn’t influence reality or every kid who’s ever read HP would have committed suicide trying to fly off the window on a broom, which is a thing that we know doesn’t exist irl and cannot exist irl. and mainstream fiction can influence reality as much as we let it for positive things, because honest, who’s ever turned violent because of videogames? no one, but since we all have violent instincts buried somewhere maybe killing people in a videogame lets you blow off some steam and whatever because you know it’s fake. of course there’s the matter of age appropriate content, but if a parent lets a seven year old watch GOT or play GTA and then that kid is traumatized it’s their parents’ fault, not the fault of the media which was clearly labeled for adults. or I mean, I read/watched media that was above my age when I was ten but I was ready for it and my parents knew it, if I wasn’t they wouldn’t have let me.

also, on the ptsd angle: in the punisher there’s plenty of examples of realistic ptsd post-war, but I haven’t seen anyone yet say anything sensed on what was to me the most realistic and well done character in that sense (lewis wilson) because people kept on saying he was *white terrorist* and that the show didn’t excuse his action with *mental illness* without knowing that having ptsd post-combat is like, being mentally ill. that show was excellent rep in that sense, but have people in fandom caught up on it or understood it? meh. people outside it yes, and maybe some people on here, too, but not as many as I’d like. same goes for theon - WITHIN FANDOM because the ptsd thing was fairly understood OUTSIDE IT. which means that the real world is getting more sensitive to that narrative, tumblr isn’t. in that case, the real world is letting himself be influenced or touched by that narrative, tumblr isn’t. what do we know.

so, tldr for this part: fiction only influences X as far as you let it and people in general do know that if wrong thing is depicted in fiction it’s wrong. I mean, I never heard of anyone becoming a pedophile after watching or reading mysterious skin, which is a really fucking good movie which doesn’t romanticize the subject at all. 

now, about the last part ie personal identification/emulation: now, never mind that emulating a character is usually done by the time you’re ten and before then you pretend to be batman while playing with your friends but you know you’re not batman, and past five you do know that if superman can fly, you a regular human being can’t. the point is that fictional people are written by real people, so if they’re realistic and the writers write them well, they’ll be relatable, and if they’re relatable they might influence you as a person or make you find shit out about yourself that might change you, and in that sense it does influence reality somehow, or if you use it to cope with trauma then it surely helps you, but who you relate to isn’t what others might. we can say that we have basic level, representation level, using-it-to-cope level.

now I’m gonna go use myself as a template since I’ve for good and for bad have used fiction to cope with shit for my entire life, so. under the cut because this is long and the next part is all personal shit so people should have the right to scroll past it xD

basic level: when I was fifteen I was having a shit time, I read the dark tower, I ran into my Favorite Character Ever, the guy used shitty humor to deal with crap all the time, it was a tendency I already had and I went like ‘okay if it worked for him why didn’t it work for me’ and today I’m someone who deals with about anything by using shitty humor or joking about it and it’s helped me tremendously honestly, if I took everything too seriously I’d be a terrible person. also, that helped me with self-confidence to a point and blah blah blah it made my life tangentially better. but that was just, like, about me. and I didn’t certainly try to emulate the guy’s worst flaws, because that wasn’t the point. anyway, I found the guy relatable but I didn’t see him as, like, representation or anything.

representation level/slightly coping level: I read asoiaf when I was twenty-two. I am sad I didn’t before because when I ran into brienne I was slammed with a brick in the face that was saying OH HEY THAT’S SOMEONE WHO’S ACTUALLY LIKE YOU/HAD YOUR EXPERIENCES. I don’t just relate to brienne, I identify with brienne to a fairly bad degree, and I’m really sad I didn’t run into her before because I might have gathered a great deal of self-confidence from seeing that there was a main character somewhere who was ugly/seen as ugly by anyone else and still was an a+++ person who could do worthwhile things and was a viable love interest for Hot Guy. (idk if it shows when I write jb fic but it’s there, so.) did brienne change my life? not as much as she could have if I had read acok when it was released, but she did give me some hope that with GOT becoming mainstream not-conventionally-pretty women would get some mainstream rep, because sure af there wasn’t much when I grew up. if that happens? fiction did influence reality, but in the wonder woman/good kind. again, no one (me or anyone else) would want to be like brienne by GRABBING A SWORD AND KILLING PEOPLE, we’d rather probably just get confidence/inspired by what she does. because she’s a well-written character that entirely gets it.

except that a lot of asoiaf fans think that she’s boring or useless or see nothing in her. which is fine - it’s not their target I guess, but again, a character who’s extremely important to me means nothing to other people and certainly doesn’t influence them.

coping/potentially badwrong coping level: so, as a person I’m really not into badwrong/dysfunctional dynamics that don’t make people better. as such, I tend to ship healthy couples/dynamics where the two people make each other better.

which is why I never was remotely interested in thor/loki as a thing in my entire life until two months ago - WAIT - and for all my time in the mcu I always felt a visceral dislike for loki I never really dwelt upon while at the same time whenever I saw thor bashing (ie he’s an idiot or he’s a bully or he doesn’t understand loki and the likes) I always felt a visceral distaste in my mouth like NO DON’T IT’S NOT LIKE THAT, but since it wasn’t even my favorite mcu franchise and thor isn’t my favorite mcu character I never, like, thought about it. I just went with the obvious ‘everyone likes loki because ANTAGONISTS which I don’t get and I get angry on thor’s behalf because he doesn’t deserve that shit’. all good until I watch ragnarok which is, like, COMPLETE CRACK ON A STICK AND NOT A SERIOUS MOVIE AT ALL and which probably did not mean to be a psychological textbook and at the end I’m like ‘fuck okay maybe I ship it a bit and now that loki’s done with the angst maybe I can tolerate him’, and then not long later or so I get hit with another ton of bricks in the face and realize that of course I always had that feeling, that was because thor and loki had the exact same dysfunctional dynamic I had with my former best friend of fourteen years that I haven’t talked to for at least seven years and which is like the root of 70% of the issues I have. all of them. and like, loki was like her except Much More Extra and on a larger scale, thor was me except Much More Extra and the more I think about it the more it just fits 100% and you don’t even wanna know how I’ve spent this last month, because I had no idea I spent six years with those feelings about that dynamic because of that, I had no idea I actually found thor that relatable on a visceral level and I still have Unresolved Issues with that person and I can’t solve them with them personally for reasons. if I actually end up writing them fanfic where I, uh, subtly address personal issues and it works, then that badwrong-ish fic has influenced me for the best (and says all that I realized it just when they reconciled, I didn’t let myself do it before). but like, that wouldn’t mean that I wanted to bang my ex-friend or that I suddenly approve of incest - because sure af I didn’t want to bang her and sure af I didn’t turn into PLEASE DO BANG YOUR SIBLINGS WHENEVER YOU WANT (ew no). that’s the damned difference. thor and loki banging in whatever fanfic won’t make anyone excuse incest and won’t influence anyone outside thor fandom on ao3 - hell, at most it’s going to influence me because if I do it I’m doing it to work through my issues. it doesn’t change reality at large.

like, fiction can be a model for something you want to see more of or you can find characters role models or relatable and it can present you a view of the world, but at the end of the day we all know that it’s not real and we only use it to filter reality and/or ourselves through it and it helps us doing it, which is why something that makes sense to me - ie that thor is extremely relatable - won’t make sense to someone who finds loki relatable for reasons I couldn’t even begin to imagine. maybe the same piece of fiction/media both influences us, but it influences us very differently because we see it through different lens. and the thing is that if you conflate the two things and start emulating characters past the age of four then you have a problem distinguishing the two things and you need to get over it/get help/whatever, because to everyone else it’s normal to see the world through fiction or part of it. if you do because I know people who think fiction is merely fiction and don’t understand the point of relating to a character in the first place. 

so like tldr, fiction influences you as much as you let it and it’s something you use actively and that is there for everyone to interpret, but it can’t, just existing, influence anything especially because if no one reads it or watches it then it’s useless. and since most **problematic** stuff is consumed by people who actively look for it and know what they’re doing - again, no one reads tentacle porn on ao3 if they don’t like tentacle porn - you can’t say that by existing, incest fic or badwrong fic normalizes abuse, because it only does if you let it and if you don’t know what abuse is and you can’t recognize it for what it is. like, a piece of fiction doesn’t need to spell THIS IS WRONG for you to know that I dunno t/hramsay fanfic is not what you should want in a relationship, you have to know that, and that’s on you, not on something that’s not mass-consumption - because badwrong fic and stuff is usually written by badwrong fans for badwrong fans, not by hired disney writers for star wars movies that have to be good for children, adults, nerds and the mass audience at large.

you balance the two by knowing that badwrong stuff is wrong irl (and it’s not a stretch) and by looking at the world through the lenses of whatever not badwrong fiction you enjoy/like/relate to, which can also be badwrong of course (see the thor/loki rant above) but like the fact that it does it to us singularly doesn’t mean that all of a sudden THE ENTIRE WORLD IS INFLUENCED BY THE EXISTENCE OF FAKE THINGS.

nor that WE SHOULD PUT THAT MUCH IMPORTANCE on fake things, because one thing is all of the above, another is saying that a piece of media is trash because it doesn’t have the representation you want in it or thinking that since something exists in fiction then you won a social justice battle. again: fiction is a tool, it’s not the ending nor the beginning of anything. having more black people in media won’t be what stops black people go to jail in the US at a higher rate than white people for the same crimes, but it might help making people relate to someone who’s different and so normalize some stuff... if you watch/consume that media and choose to engage with it. (ie, brooklyn 99′s boss is a gay black man in a stable relationship with a white professor and it’s not what you usually see on tv and it will work for casual watchers, but I doubt someone who usually watches fox news then also watches b99 - you can’t win your wars through fiction, to convince the fox news watcher to not vote trump you have to talk to him and not show him a sitcom. and mind that this can be reversed ie all the anti-russian/islamic propaganda in the US which tends to normalize russians/muslims as The Bad Guy - it works along with other things, not just on its own) the key is in knowing that fiction is made by people and consumed by people and eventually begins and ends with the people who make it and consume it in whichever way, and not in thinking that it’s above us and is something divine that changes the world just by existing.

[sixbucks]

Activists say Tom Cotton has issued do-not-call-or-write notice to some constituents

Posted By Max Brantley on Thu, Jan 18, 2018 at 8:13 AM 

Ozark Indivisible, the activist group that has been pressing members of Congress from Arkansas on health care, immigration and other issues, reported on its Twitter account last night that people calling Sen. Tom Cotton's office had received cease-and-desist letters and posted the image above.

The letter:

This letter is immediate notification that all communication must cease and desist immediately with all offices of US Senator Tom Cotton. All other contact will be deemed harassment and will be reported to the United States Capitol Police. The Office of US Senator Tom Cotton.

I've placed a phone call and sent an email to Cotton's press aide to ask if this is legitimate and, if so, what prompted the letter. She has not responded.

Billy Fleming, a Times contributor, also sent me a copy of the image and an account from a person who reportedly received the letter. That person wrote:

I received a letter from the office of U.S. Senator Tom Cotton from Arkansas after calling and expressing my grave concerns over his actions and support of this administration's agenda concerning a wide variety of subjects from the attack on our healthcare, DACA and immigration issues, to national security, to the rise of white nationalist fascism, to the environment, the gutting of our State Department, the attack on the free press...and similar deeply troubling actions & motives I've seen Senator Cotton support & condone. It was odd to receive this letter as I've called other Members of Congress to express my strong thoughts and opinions about their actions and thought this to be not only my duty as an American citizen but my First Amendment right granted all U.S. citizens by our U.S. Constitution, the foundation of our Democracy. I believe if Tom Cotton's office were to respond as to why they sent this letter, I think they just honestly don't want to listen to any citizen's opposing view or hear the numerous grave concerns U.S. citizens have about the serious & ongoing attack on our Democracy and past election cycle in which a foreign, hostile Russian government interfered, they don't want U.S. citizens to call and speak their mind and truth in a very direct manner and they obviously don't want to be held accountable for their words and actions while serving all the people in this nation. I may have used unprofessional and unbecoming language at times as the anxiety and stress of what I'm witnessing is at times too great a burden to control and I have vehemently expressed my righteous anger at Senator Cotton's complicitness with this harmful regime.

Fleming said he knew several people who'd received such a letter. He said he believed they all had made repeated phone calls to deliver similar talking points, but he said they were unlikely to have made rude or disparaging remarks.

The lobbying HAS gotten heated.

Circulating yesterday was the film of an effort some months ago by a Boone County activist to pose questions to Rep. Steve Womack.

She was persistent. He was not amused.

Yesterday, demonstrators — self-identified as being from "shithole countries" — were asked to leave Cotton's Washington office after a noisy encounter with staff members who told them they'd be arrested for unlawful entry if they didn't leave. They did, chanting "Dream Act Now."

Democracy can be a noisy thing. It seems to have some impact on members of Congress, too.

Tags: Dream Act, Ozark Indivisible, Tom Cotton, shithole countries, cease and desist letter, Image

https://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2018/01/18/activists-say-tom-cotton-has-a-do-not-call-or-write-list-for-some-constituents (paywall)

[oneletterwrites]

Queen for a Day

Part of this au (X)

As the proclaimed 2nd Prince, it had been Matthew who needed to move homes. Feelings of nostalgia and bitterness filled him as he and the castle attendants packed up his things in trunks and boxes to be moved to the Olive Kingdom where he is to live from then on.

He knew the day would come after he and Lovino officially became married but the day came far sooner than he would have liked. He didn’t feel ready to be completely removed from his old home but there is nothing he could do to change it.

He got over the feelings as quickly as he could. Lovino needed him to be strong, sometimes strong enough for the both of them. He could do that much at least. His spouse had days in and out of studying and learning how to rule a kingdom. It had been easy to forget during their engagement that Lovino would be King.

They had spent most of the time engaged just getting to know each other, maybe learning soft bits of each other’s kingdoms, but nothing business for so long. To be thrown back into such an unforgiving atmosphere put both of them in a loop is confusion. Lovino got over it quicker, but some times it shook his anger well enough.

Matthew enjoyed the soft moment they could spend together after hours. They would met up in their bedroom and Matthew would hold his hand as he ranted on his day, sometimes laughing at his venting but never causing Lovino to be too cross with him. He always managed to get Lovino to calm down enough to lay beside him and sleep the troubles away for tomorrow.

Those moments held something special in his mind. A simple time where they could be open and honest with each other. They would cuddle up to each other and whisper words of encouragement. A simple moment of loving that brought a little more joy to their upturned world.

The subject is sensitive to them both. Matthew knows this, that’s why neither of them have brought it up. After spending so long together, it would make sense for some form of feelings to be shown, but what kind they are is still an unknown factor. 

Lovino must enjoy his company to some extent, enough to be that kind of genuine open and honest with him, but are his feelings that of a love variety Matthew does not know. He’s not too sure of himself either. He does adore Lovino, but the romance of it all could be a figment of his own mind.

Engagements aren’t meant to be romantic for the people involved. They are not intended that way at least. They are alliance forming for royals more often than not. The people of the kingdoms can marry for love, or riches, or other selfish needs. A part of him hopes he’s not making up the happiness he feels.

Lovino makes him feel special in any way at least. There are very few that he’s seen that his spouse can talk to without feeling judged. He’s happy to say he is one of them. Knowing Lovino trusts him enough with who he really is makes him feel like there could be something more.

It doesn’t help that the kind of affection he has for Lovino hasn’t been entirely exclusive. For as often as Matthew smiles Lovino’s way to maybe help him relax, he’s just as often turning his head behind him to where Gilbert always is to smile his way. The now personal servant instead of ‘footman’ has very much been the cause of Matthew’s happiness and joy.

The effort and care Matthew has given him is far more than any other being he has ever met. The amount of self hatred that has been gnawing Gilbert to the bone has slowly been unraveled bit by bit not only by Matthew, but Lovino too. That of course does not help the confusion.

He wants Gilbert to like himself, as much as both Matthew and Lovino do. He knows enough that Lovino would never want to see Gilbert feel like he’s not worthy for anything. Especially the hints of affection they do give him. Matthew isn’t too sure where Lovino stands romantic wise with the beautiful servant, he can only hope for something good.

Still it does not help his own thoughts. He knows he feels something for both of them, but the likelihood of them both feeling the same to the other too is unheard of. Rules would forbid it and the secrets would need to be kept. He would lose his head if someone then insulted Gilbert, and Lovino has definitely shown he would not stand by. It would be a disaster.

Oh but it would be wonderful too.

“Are you listening?” The stern voice knocks him from his daydreams about his spouse and servant. Matthew snaps his head up to Queen Carmen. She’s smiling down condescendingly at him, knowing for a fact that he had not been listening and waiting to hold it over his head. Matthew sits up a little straighter.

“My apologies, my head seemed to have gotten lost in the pages,” He says. It’s not the biggest half truth he’s ever said. Carmen hums and goes back to her own book. Matthew settles into his chair just slightly as he continues to read over the history of the Olive Kingdom.

As the future queen, it’s his job to know about what he is to be ruling. Customs and traditions, laws and regulations, wars and treaties he hadn’t even been alive for. So much history and not much he can do but compare it his own homeland.

A peaceful kingdom, almost as much as the one he used to live in. The Glow Kingdom has been one of the most war-less kingdoms, opposite to the Scorch Kingdom who decides it necessary to pick fights as often as possible. He supposes he might be lucky to be in the Olive Kingdom instead.

Their laws are fairly simple, a little skewed towards the royals in his opinion but his own homeland had been no better, potentially worse if he looks hard enough at the laws that have been doctored. Maybe he’ll be able to talk to Lovino about that when they rule together. It would probably make the villagers like them more.

He grits his teeth when it comes time for the section about ‘unwanted’ persons. Maybe it is against his own ancestry, but the thought of others being unwanted because of what they look like is brainwashing at its finest. He understands it, but there are some thing, some people, who are beautiful despite what other may say of them.

“So Prince Matthew.” Slowly Matthew raises his head to the Queen. She’s got a simple smile on her face, one that looks like it holds poison underneath. He takes a quick glance at her handmaiden, a simple girl with what could be considered ‘plain looks’ by most in this kingdom. Though they may have gotten rid of the ‘footman’ principle, they still keep those of lesser looks around, a leftover from the once wide spread tradition.

“Tell me something young prince,” The queen goes on, not really getting to her point fast enough for Matthew’s tastes. He closes his history text softly and waits as patiently as he can. Finally she looks up to him.

“How on earth did you find someone so horrendous to be your servant?” The words are cold and it makes Matthew’s blood boil anyway. He keeps a neutral expression for as long as he can.

“He came to me, helping me when my carriage got stuck on the way to visit your home the first time,” He admits only enough to say what he needs to. Away from the queen’s cruel eyes he holds his book with white knuckles to try and keep himself under control.

“On the outskirts I presume? How dreadful,” She says and leans back to enjoy her book again.

“It is not,” Matthew speaks before he can fully tell himself to not. The queen just hums a small tune as if to ignore him.

“What does my son think of him?” She asks though. Matthew highly doubts Lovino is her actual son but he doesn’t comment on the thought.

“My husband enjoys his company as well,” He says. The queen shoots him a look for his words and Matthew tries to hide a knowing of what she might be picking up. Rather than Gilbert’s servitude, it is his existence they like most. Perhaps not the right words to say.

“His company,” She repeats but with malice neither would ever use in regards to Gilbert. Matthew takes a deep breath.

“Yes, his company is rather enjoyable and far better than some,” He says though he shouldn’t have. He stands abruptly, trying not to glare at the queen when he bows to her politely. There’s a dark look on her face but she remains smiling. He leaves the room without closing the door behind him.

It takes him half an hour to start regretting his word choice, but it felt good to tell her so. For all he’s worth he’d rather spend seconds with Gilbert than any amount of time with that wretched person who thinks themselves so much more worthy than Gilbert.

He collapses to his shared bed and curls up, trying to calm down as best he can. He’s angry though. Gilbert is his friend and a trusted companion. He wouldn’t give him up even if they offered him plenty of other ‘prettier’ servants.

The knock on the door startles him and Gilbert enters even without acknowledgment that it’s okay. He spies Matthew looking disheveled and almost walks out to give him space when Matthew flies from the sheets to wrap him in a tight hug.

He can hear Gilbert swallow hard but the embrace is returned soon enough. It’s comforting, a sense of home that he doesn’t much have any more in the Olive Kingdom. Gilbert pets his hair and holds him tight and that’s all Matthew really needs.

“I don’t like it when they talk bad about you,” He says once he’s calmed down. He sits on the edge of his bed, playing with the hem of his shirt. Gilbert cackles at his words from across him, something he never would have done two years ago. Matthew gives him a chiding look.

“Plenty people do, it does not matter so much any more,” Gilbert tells him honestly and Matthew has to sigh and put his head in his hands. It does matter though, it matters to him.

“They should keep their mouths shut,” He hisses and again Gilbert laughs. He comes closer to put an arm around Matthew and nuzzle into him. Matthew accepts the affection. Words burn on his tongue, wanting to ask a thousand times what Gilbert’s feelings are, to say a thousand times how much Gilbert means to him. It’s all cut short by another servant coming to tell him dinner is served.

It is by far the awkwardest meal Matthew has had in the Olive Kingdom. The King says nothing as he usually does but the Queen is less chatty, and when she does talk her words are clipped short. It doesn’t help that she only talks to the 2nd prince, who under her sharp words has grown quiet. Lovino is no where to be found.

Matthew sneaks looks at Gilbert behind him through out the meal, looking for some sort of comfort in his presence. Gilbert smirks softly at him when he catches Matthew looking and it’s enough to get him through the meal. Still he excuses himself early to continue his reading. It earns him a sassy remark from the queen that this time he manages to hold his tongue against.

He lounges in a chair back in his room, reading over some more historical texts about the kingdom. Gilbert is on the other side, fiddling with some tools that remind him of home. That’s when Lovino barges in, a mess of a person with a sour expression on his face that is worse than the one he normally wears.

“Fuck,” Is the only coherent thing he says when his words run off into nonsense. Matthew is quick to drop his book to his chair and go towards his spouse. Lovino is pulling at his clothes, trying to get out them. They are tattered and messy. Matthew helps him get out of his outer shirt, leaving the thin under shirt on his skin when he manages to get Lovino to look at him.

“What happened?” He asks softly and Lovino, for all his hands move, does not get farther away from the soft touch of Matthew’s hands on his shoulders. He rants and rambles hard about the lessons he had today. Arithmetic and numbers and words that hurt his brain and so mush professional letter practice and essays that made his hand hurt. Then to top it all off he had a sparring lesson that no one told him about.

“You’ll never be prepared in battle so why should you now,” He says in a high pitched voice to mock his sparring teacher. He drops to a bench on the side of the room and Matthew sits next to him, rubbing softly at his back to maybe help soothe some of the sore muscles there. Lovino only huffs and puts his head in his hands.

It’s quiet as they soak in the words Lovino spouted at them. Matthew and Gilbert share a look of unknowing. Matthew eventually leans his head on Lovino’s shoulder comfortingly.

“You’re doing so well,” He says and Lovino scoffs, dropping his hands to just glare at the bed across from them.

“To bad it’s not enough.” He spits and Matthew snatches him by his face to make him look his way.

“You are enough,” He says sternly like he might have said it to Gilbert. Lovino scrunches up his eyebrows, judging the stubborn look Matthew has on his face. He melts down to a calmer state and Matthew releases him, just slightly.

“I’m trying, but they never seem to think I’m trying,” He says softer this time. Matthew goes back to cuddling him.

“They know you will be king, they want to make sure you’re the best you can be, and you will be,” He tells his spouse. Lovino sighs and rests up against him as well. The moment is softer now. Matthew raises his head which forces Lovino to raise his, bringing them almost nose to nose.

“You will be amazing,” Matthew says to him and Lovino rolls his eyes, not moving away. A soft smile comes to Matthew’s face. He watches as the last of the anger drains from Lovino’s face. They end up just looking at each other in a moment of stillness. Slowly but surely they get closer together.

The kiss is small and sweet, definitely less awkward than when they had to for the wedding ceremony. It’s only one and after Lovino drops his head to Matthew’s shoulder to just be.

Matthew smiles at the ground, bringing his arms up to hold his spouse to him. It feels right to be with him, to be able to have these moments with him. He sighs slightly and relaxes with him, holding him tightly.

Gilbert standing awkwardly, like he’s attempting to sneak away, catches both of their attention though. He looks distraught about something and there is no way Matthew would let him leave looking like that but Lovino beat him to it.

“Where do you think you’re going?” He asks with a teasing tone but not moving from his huddled up position in Matthew’s arms. Gilbert points to the door and sputters out some semblance to a statement but doesn’t get anywhere. Lovino holds out his hand and Matthew nods him over. Tentatively Gilbert does come closer. He kneels down between them and is brought into the huddle.

He rests his head on Lovino’s legs when prompted and Matthew moves one hand to run through his messy white hair. There’s something completing about the action that really settles Matthew. A simple sense of right and belonging. A lingering homesick feeling is pushed aside for this. Lovino is relaxed and Gilbert’s agitated expression is gone. It’s exactly as it should be.

“Lovino,” Matthew says softy, both of them looking to him with utmost attention. He keeps his eyes on the stone floor.

“I know we’re married, but sometimes marriages aren’t for.. anything else,” He says in some sort of explanation. Lovino looks up to face him properly and Gilbert tenses.

“If this runs deeper than just an outward appearance,” Matthew bulks up his courage to look Lovino in the eye.

“I would like to know,” He finishes his small speech and Lovino casts his eyes back down. He twitches and when Gilbert moves his head from his leg he’s quick to place a hand to him to keep him still. A silence stretches on and Matthew puts his head on Lovino’s shoulder to wait while his spouse thinks.

He looks to Gilbert then, another piece to their puzzle and Matthew isn’t sure where he goes. As far as he’s concerned he belongs right beside them. Gilbert is glancing between the two of them from his spot on the ground. Matthew calms him by placing a gentle hand on his face. Gilbert stalls for the moment, nuzzling into the touch.

“I don’t know,” Lovino finally says and breath escapes Matthew hard.

“There’s a lot of things going on, and I want to be sure of those, before I try figuring out-” Lovino takes a second to pause, slightly turning his head to the both of them in turn. Mathew takes a deep breath and rests into him more.

“Okay, me too,” He agrees. Lovino accepts the affection, pulling both of them closer to him. It’s not the most conventional embrace, but it is very them. He can feel Lovino’s arms around him keeping him close and the grip Gilbert has on where he can reach. That homesick feeling has vanished completely.

“You’re in this mess to I hope you know,” Lovino snaps down at the servant. Gilbert lifts his head and a disbelieving laugh escapes him. Matthew smiles at the reaction but makes a note to make sure later that Gilbert knows their feelings, whatever they are, are true and real.

They both refuse to let Gilbert leave, making him dress down as much as he’s comfortable and joining them in the large bed. Matthew is stuck in the middle with them holding onto his middle. It’s confusing what he’s feeling, but knowing he’s not entirely alone in it makes it easier to handle. One day when Lovino has a handle on him being king and Matthew has the power to talk about it, they can figure out what they mean to each other, and how Gilbert fits. By what Lovino said, he’s sure they both want him to fit.

For now this is okay. For now knowing they are in this together is enough.

[oumakokichi]

Hello! I hope this is not too much to ask, but would it be okay to ask for a brief description of your thoughts on all the V3 girls? As in, strong points (as characters), weak points, how the narrative treats them...

Sure anon, I don’t mind! This is a really fun question,actually. I really love the ndrv3 girls, and it’s interesting because I’d saythe strengths and weaknesses of them are pretty varied.

I’ll try and write a little bit about each girl in detail,but it’ll involve discussing pretty much the entire game so there’ll bespoilers under the read more! Only read if you’re comfortable with that!

I suppose the easiest one to start with would be Kaede, asshe’s our fake-out protagonist. Her strengths are pretty easy to see: she’scharismatic, likable, go-getting, and would’ve made a really excellentprotagonist for all these reasons, especially as her charisma in particularsets her apart from characters like Naegi or Hinata who weren’t especiallycharismatic or influential among the group at first.

One of her other biggest strengths in my opinion though isher distrust of people. Her paranoia itself is what makes her character themost interesting in hindsight; there’s something very chilling about going backand re-reading Chapter 1 realizing exactly how little Kaede could actuallybring herself to trust others.

Despite wanting tobelieve the best in people, she wasn’t someone who could actually do so, and itshows. This trait is something that humanizes her and makes her go from “relativelylikable self-insert protagonist” to “incredibly interesting protagonist wholies to the player and other characters and even herself.” I know it soundscontradictory, but that particular flaw of Kaede is one of the things I likebest about her, and what would’ve made her the most interesting had she stuckaround for longer, in my opinion.

Her weaknesses are… well, she’s mostly just limited to thepotential she could have had, rather than what we actually got to see. Bykilling her off so early, the narrative limits her autonomy and mostly treatsher like an object to be used for Saihara’s development. Even her flaws,including both her skepticism of other people and her willingness to kill aperson, are completely brushed under the rug by Chapter 6. By focusing only onwhat she meant to Saihara, and notwhat Saihara or anyone else in the group actually meant to her, the narrativeacts as though that’s pretty much the only important thing about her, leavingme rather… unsatisfied, in the end.

Next up, there’s Maki. Again with Maki, I feel like thethings I actually came to like about her the best are the things that make herflawed as a character. But those flaws are themselves interesting. I like thatMaki is cold, antisocial, and… well, for lack of a better way to put it, notthat bright. Maki has had all the compassion and kindness stomped right out ofher at an early age due to her assassin training; it makes sense that shewouldn’t necessarily be the nicest.

I like that shegets to display flaws more typically found in male characters—including Kuzuryuuand Togami. I like the fact that she’s an easily manipulated pawn in the grandscheme of things, because that makes perfect sense thematically with herbackstory as an assassin who has only ever been trained and pointed at targetsand told to kill without questioning it. Female characters should be allowed tobe cold, to be standoffish. They don’t have to be nice or even good peoplenecessarily, and the fact that Maki is arguably neither of these things issomething I really do like about her, since it’s such a break away from themold with main girls in DR.

Unfortunately, her weaknesses are along the same lines asKaede. The biggest flaw to Maki being regarded as her own character is, sadly,Momota. Everything about her character revolves around Momota. Every singlestep of development she makes is never attributed to her own doing, but toMomota, be it through direct or indirect intervention.

While I very much like the fact that Maki claiming herfeelings for herself is an important part of her making her own choices andrefusing to be manipulated by Chapter 6, the narrative really drops the ball bytrying to make Maki into this cute, tsundere, “shy, blushing maiden in love”every time the subject of her feelings for Momota come up. All her complexitygoes out the window in favor of playing right into tropes without any interestingsubversion at all. Not even to mention all the added layers of misogyny thatcome with their dynamic. What could have been a very compelling story aboutself-love instead boils down to a shounen protagonist guy telling a tsunderegirl that “girls shouldn’t use weapons, they’re better-suited looking cute andtaking care of children.”

And like Kaede, all of Maki’s biggest mistakes get brushedunder the rug by later chapters. I’ve mentioned it before, but Maki facesalmost no consequences at all for her reckless impulsivity. Not only does noone in the group bring up her attempt to kill Ouma; they don’t even bring upher attempt to murder all of them.Maki’s harsh, ruthless treatment of the entire group doesn’t even wedge so muchas a temporary hurdle into their friendship with one another, she neverapologizes, and it’s never addressed as any kind of issue or flaw by thenarrative. Most of the reason why it never comes up is because the charactersmostly act like “she was in love with Momota, so it’s okay.” I hope if we seemore of Maki as a survivor in any future installments, this kind of pitfallwill be avoided again.

Next up, Himiko. Himiko is perhaps one of the best-writtenfemale characters in all of ndrv3, in my opinion anyway. As a dark horsesurvivor who no one was really expecting, she displays tremendous character development, is funny and compelling, and ishonestly one of the characters you root for the most by the end of the game.Because her character arc has to do with her feelings towards Tenko, herautonomy is never limited to existing for the sake of a male character. She’sfeisty and likable, her FTEs are good, and she reaches just the right pointbetween comic relief and a genuine character in her own right who you want tosee more of.

She probably has the fewest weaknesses out of any of the ndrv3girls, too. Unlike Maki and Kaede, whose biggest weaknesses involve gettingwritten to help further either Saihara or Momota’s development, this neverhappens with Himiko. Beyond the occasional joke in poor taste (there’s a reallygross joke in Chapter 5 where Himiko mentions liking the soap opera-likedevelopment where Monotarou thinks he’s Monofunny’s abusive husband and startsbeating her), there really aren’t any bad scenes with Himiko in them. She’spresent in most chapters, especially Chapters 2 and 3, her characterdevelopment is gradual and well-written, and she’s just generally strong allaround.

Then there’s Miu. Honestly, I was not expecting Miu to windup being one of my favorite ndrv3 girls by the end of the game, but, well, hereI am. There’s something about Miu that I find so genuinely likable even whenshe’s being horrible as a person. Again, I think one of her flaws is the factthat she’s written to be so irredeemably awful, gross, and mean all around, forthe most part. She’s allowed to be crass in a way typically reserved only formale characters, something I like about her even when it gets a littleexasperating.

Not only that, but the biggest thing Miu has going for heris how incredibly plot-relevant she is by the end of the game. I would stillput her as one of my top picks for a character I wish had been a survivor. Hertalent is incredibly useful, on par with Alter Ego in terms of outsmarting theringleader and helping everyone to stay alive. Miu’s genuine, honest-to-godlove to invent and to create things that can “change the world” is one of themost interesting things about her, since it’s a stark contrast with hergenerally selfish and cowardly personality.

Her weakness is… well, there’s a fine line between crass andjust gross, and Miu often crosses it. Her love hotel scene is a prime exampleof this, since she pretty much just forces herself on Saihara and it’s playedfor romantic comedy. But this is a flaw I have with quite a few of the girls’love hotel scenes, really. If anything, Miu gets far more called out for hercrassness and gross comments than other characters of a similar variety (suchas Teruteru), because her low-standing within the group is lampshaded onseveral occasions.

Next, there’s Tenko. Tenko is a wonderful character,compelling and lovable and genuinely good as a person. It’s easy to see why shescored so high on the Japanese popularity poll. Like Himiko, she was anotherdark horse pick who I don’t think many people expected to get as attached toprior to the game’s release. But after the game came out, her strengths wereeasy to see: she’s brave, self-sacrificing, and wears her heart on her sleeve.Her genuine wish for Himiko’s happiness and development, as well as theprotector-type role she plays for most of the group, makes her extremelylikable, despite people’s fears about the whole “menace” thing.

The biggest weaknessTenko has though is the fact that it’s very difficult to separate her fromHimiko’s character sometimes. I love himitenko as a ship, including all theflaws and the potential for growth and development between them, but it’s truethat Tenko doesn’t really have the same level of depth to her that Himiko does.Looked at separately from her relationship with Himiko, there’s not really adefinite role for her within the group, and she suffers from similar problemsas Kaede and Maki in that sense, mostly being written to further anothercharacter’s development. But we actually get to see the bond explored betweenthem a little better than we do with Saihara and Kaede, or even with Maki andMomota, so I have fewer problems with this on Tenko’s front.

Next up is Angie. It’s kind of hard to know where to startwith Angie, considering what a mess Chapter 3 was in so many ways. But I’lladmit that I quite liked her as a force of chaos and “mid-boss” of sorts. Herself-serving interest in a “peaceful school life,” and the fact that she was willingto go on quite a power trip in order to enforce it, was a first in any DR game.Angie does and says extremely mean, self-serving things with a smile on herface, and that would’ve been a lot more fun if only she’d been written better.

Her weaknesses are… well, there are a lot. She’s a prettystraightforward racist depiction of what Japanese people think the “quirky,exotic foreign girl” trope is all about, not helped along by NISA inadvertentlymaking it like 10 times more racist by actually putting a name to her religionand god when there isn’t one in the original game. Most of the genuinelyterrifying things about her character, including the brainwashing implicationsin both the plot and her FTEs, never actually serve any kind of narrativepurpose, making me wonder why the narrative even brought it up in the firstplace if there were no consequences for it and no point.

Next, there’s Kirumi. Kirumi’s stone cold emotionalmanipulation in Chapter 2 is perhaps my favorite quality about her. The factthat she can be genuinely caring as a person, constantly putting others’welfare above herself, and cold enough to lie to people’s faces and makehorrible, awful sacrifices, is an extremely compelling trait. She has a greatdesign, she’s smart, and she’s formidable, much better at lying and attemptingto tug at people’s heartstrings than someone like Celes ever was.

Unfortunately, her biggest weakness is simply that she’s notvery relevant in the grand scheme of things. By getting killed off so early,Kirumi’s character never really gets brought up to serve a bigger purpose lateron. Many of the things in her backstory are overwhelmingly contradictory withother points of the plot—that’s the point, of course, since their backstoriesare all made up, but it’s still true that putting her as “the shadow PrimeMinister of Japan” was perhaps going a bit overboard compared to everyone else’sfictional backstories.

Kirumi mostly just lacks any real growth or development,again because she was killed so early on. She could have very well worked as aMaki figure, someone who thinks of herself as a tool and therefore neverprioritizes her own wants or emotions, but this isn’t something the narrativeever particularly addresses. So sadly, her long-term relevance is prettyminimal, and even though she had great potential as a female character with noties to any of the male characters, she never gets a chance to shine in thespotlight.

Lastly, there’s Tsumugi. I saved her for last because, ofcourse, it’s impossible to talk about her strengths without including the factthat she’s the ringleader. And she’s funas an antagonist. She’s smart, incredibly quick at adapting her story or makingup new lies on the spot, her ability to fly under people’s radars and hide inplain sight is fascinating, and it’s generally just a blast to go back on areread and see all the foreshadowing that was there the entire time.

One of Tsumugi’s biggest strengths is still, in my opinion,the fact that she’s not Junko. Forthe first time, Kodaka successfully pulled off a really greatmastermind/ringleader twist that didn’t involve falling back on Junko or herAIs. And all the red herrings and bait to make the player think that Junkowould be involved was just spectacular; you can really see why a lot of peoplewould fall for the Hope’s Peak remember light in Chapter 5, hook, line, andsinker, because it’s something the characters themselves fall for so easily.

As for her weaknesses, mostly it’s extremely hard toevaluate her as a character at all if you take her ringleader position away.That’s deliberate, of course, but it’s still true that where Junko reallyshines right now because of all we know about her from dr0 and other sidematerial, we know virtually nothing about Tsumugi at all beyond what we see inChapter 6, and even then we know she was lying about quite a lot. Tsumugi isspectacular as an antagonist, but it’s hard to evaluate “Tsumugi Shirogane” thecharacter without including her role as an antagonist, and that’s because sheintentionally made herself act as plain, boring, and uninteresting as possible.

Anyway, this got very long, but I think I covered all thegirls with this. I hope this answers your question, anon! I really like thendrv3 cast in general, so getting to talk about the girls in particular was alot of fun!

[sherlockmyonlychemicaldefec-blog]

Why I Love the imperfect Molly Hooper

If there’s one thing I learned from being in the Sherlock Fandom, It was to try to look at everything in variety of perspectives and not jump to strict, close-ended conclusions; that for me was and still is a terribly hard thing to do since I have a voracious need to have a final judgment on every subject I come across. Before reading this, I want you to know that I really want to start a series of discourse, because when I look at our talks in this way, what I say is only to start a chain of discussion, it is not definitive to me; I welcome any disagreement or questioning; that’s the whole point of this. In the case of Molly, I was never a hater; from the beginning, I cared about her very much. When I started to invest myself emotionally in Sherlock and John’s relationship, and when I saw arguments from Sher**lolly Shippers, I admit, I was a little defensive even though I never started to dislike her. Then the twitter argument happened, that whole twitt from a girl to Louise Brealey in which she told her what Molly taught her was how to’ let men walk all over her.’ At first, I was completely agreed with what the girl said, that Molly was not strong, that she only existed to be pathetically in love with Sherlock, a man that did not love her the same way she did. But then I thought, why am I criticizing her? Have I not done the same things she did in in my past? Have I not loved people who did not even knew I existed? The truth is, I care about Molly, because I can relate to her. Even though I try hard to put on this mask of strength, I have my moments of weakness; the truth is I think many women can relate to her in their hearts, as someone who deals with anxiety and lack of confidence and self- worth I can relate to every scene with Molly in it. The way she talks to Sherlock in TEH about her engagement, Tom and his family, there’s this fast and anxious tone in her talking, putting a lot of ‘ands’ in between,- I don’t know how to explain it you need to watch it yourselves- this is exactly how I talk sometimes. She does have the courage to tell Sherlock that she can’t do this again, that she ‘had a lovely day’ even though she is feeling very anxious inside, I can feel it just by looking at her face, I think everyone can. The whole Christmas scene her telling Sherlock how he keeps saying horrible things gets me every time. She is not perfect, but honestly who is? What is the definition of perfect after all? Sometimes I surprise myself deeply; not long ago, I believed that women in fiction are not allowed to have flaws ,that they need to be superwomen and my definition of being a superwoman was one who has turned off all emotions, is full of ambition and does not involve herself in any kind of romantic entanglement. I was wrong, I admit. Even though deep down I still like to present the persona of an emotionless, hard-working, independent young lady, I have my private moments of tears and heartbreak that no one knows about. I think it all comes back to whether you believe fiction should represent what ‘should be’ or what ‘is’. All that said, I don’t think that women who fit the stereotype ‘the strong woman’ are anything short of real, they do exist, but they are not the only type worthy of representing. To prove that I am in fact a hard-core fan of these types of women, I present you with ‘ Stella Gibson’, I am officially fascinated by her.

All these said, Do I think that is wrong for Molly to still be in love with Sherlock? Absolutely not, I don’t think one can be in control of the existence of an emotion, but I do think you can choose how to act on them. Do I ship Molly and Sherlock together? To be honest, and I repeat, these are all my personal opinions, I have tried to imagine how would their romantic relationship go and I don’t think it would work. I could have seen them having a future together if Sherlock did not use her as a replacement for John in THE (yes, he did tell her to be herself and not try to copy John, but still, he only asked her to be partners when John was not there), if he kept not calling her ‘ John’, if he did not put on a fake smile only to be vanished when Molly turned away and If he didn’t so explicitly mocked the idea of Molly being her girlfriend ;I still believe Sherlock cares about her very much and I did not need TFP to tell me that and no, this is not fake sympathy. Anyway, I’m not here to tell anyone who to ship;.people imagine different scenarios and decide which people can end up together; The only thing I’m trying to say in this post that Molly reflects parts of myself, and I think many other girls. I think many of us have or had that distant mysterious person in our lives whom we wished returned our affections; is it pathetic? I don’t really think so. I do believe that one-sided love could become a dangerous obstacle, end up in an abusive relationship and stop you from flourish; but at the end I don’t think one can stop ‘feeling’, you can only stop acting on them in harmful ways. I do have some very strong criticism of other aspects of how the character is represented however, first I really liked it better if I knew a little about her family, her life outside the lab; yes, we learned about Tom but he only existed to replace Sherlock for Molly. Another criticism I have is related to TFP (even typing its title is dreadful to me). I have absolutely no objection towards Molly still being in love with Sherlock and confessing it; what I do have a big problem with is the final scene with her smiling and the whole Steven Moffat’s comment on her ‘Shagging someone after that and being fine’. Would you just go and shag someone and be fine if the man you have been in love with for years had to tell you a phrase you’ve been wishing him to tell for ages only to save your life and then have you say it too? I wouldn’t. If people want to think that the ‘ I Love you’ was genuine and Sherlock was actually confessing, then why would Moffat say such a thing? I don’t honestly know, but I don’t think what happened to Molly in that dreadful episode was a ‘good send-off’, he only way I can interpret that scene was Molly was putting on a mask and burning inside, yes it is sad, but to me, that’s the only explanation. Of course people have their own reasons to believe that Sherlock is in love with her, but I have my own to prove he is not, he does love her of course, that was why the game was so painful for him to play, that was the whole point of that game, but he is not IN Love with her. With that view in mind, I don’t consider TFP a happy ending for Molly. With the view that the confession was two-sided and real, then yes, she was genuinely happy. Mine is different. All in all, I love Molly, she is sweet and she is strong in an unpopular sense. when I look at my own life, I see that I have been in love with people whom I knew I never had any future with, maybe not even anything in common, being with them would bring nothing but disaster to me, it would break me and violate everything I ever stood for, still could not help melting a little inside when they looked at me. Is it right or logical? No, I don’t think it is, but it is what it is. Not everything is logical; as much as I wish to become a robot, I know it is not possible. We are all human in the end.

What do you think?

[sage-nebula]

A L A N • S Y C A M O R E even though you don't have a last name for him because quite honestly the more headcanons the better

mfw you picked up on the hint I was dropping:

Sycamore should be his last name, anyway, if Augustine would just officially adopt the boy already. Plus, “Alan Sycamore” just rolls so perfectly off the tongue, don’t you think? ;)

A —What are/were this character’s best subjects in school?

He was home-schooled by Professor Sycamore, of course, and to be honest Alan was always pretty good at whatever Augustine threw at him (as in, he at least had “good” marks, and there was nothing he seriously struggled with). If he had attended a regular school, he is no doubt one of those that would have been chucked straight into whatever that school’s gifted program was. As it stood, he was home-schooled, so he had none of that pressure, but all of the encouragement and nurturing necessary to learn at his own pace, study what was most interesting to him, ask whatever questions he needed, and never be made to feel stupid if he did need to ask a question or needed help with something. ♥

That said, to actually answer the question: In terms of traditional academics, mathematics was definitely one of Alan’s strong suits, particularly in regards to geometry. As proven in canon (“Aim your Flamethrower at 53 degrees!”), the boy can pick out an exact angle in an instant. He’s good at sciences, too; biological science—and in particular zoology, given where he grew up—is his strongest suit, but he has also studied various other sciences (e.g. earth sciences such as geology and meteorology, physics, chemistry, et cetera) because he finds them interesting, particularly in the ways they can be applied to training, caring for pokémon, and mega evolution research. History, too, is interesting to him (especially history that involves pokémon—he loves reading about different legendary pokémon, the lore surrounding them, and especially finding evidence that it’s true), and he enjoys reading in his spare time. So, again, he really has a good spread across all subjects, even if math and science are his strongest suits, heh.

But that said, that’s traditional academics. In addition to studying zoology for his work at the lab growing up (and I say “studying,” but let’s be honest: So much of it was stuff he simply learned by following Augustine around as his assistant), Alan also studied pokémon and battling techniques in his spare time even as a kid. Part of this is because Augustine’s father (Alan’s grandfather, lbr) had it in his head from pretty much the moment he met Alan that Alan was going to be a Champion someday. Augustine disapproved of this (only because he didn’t want Alan to be pressured into anything, especially when he was as young as five), but Augustine’s father persisted regardless, calling Alan “Champ-in-Making” as an affectionate nickname and getting him books that contained all sorts of knowledge about pokémon, their strengths and weaknesses, known abilities and moves, et cetera. Alan had quite a few of these encyclopedic books growing up (in-print Pokédexes is how they were often marketed), and he absorbed so much information from them without even realizing he was doing it (because he never really planned on being a trainer, officially—he just liked to read the books because he found the information interesting and, when he was little, really liked to look at all the different pictures of pokémon as he read about them) that by the time he did turn ten and get his License he could already give actually good commentary on battles he watched on television and the like. Of course, real world experience is something that can’t be replaced with books, but Alan picked up on the strategies he read about (and, at times, even critiqued them, getting information from different sources and questioning it just like Augustine taught him) to the point where, if learning to be a trainer had been a subject he was formally taught, it absolutely would have been one of his best.

(And yes, his grandpa was ecstatic when Alan won the League. “That’s our boy!” he said. “I always told you all, didn’t I? I told you he would be a Champ someday! I told you!!”

“Yes, dear, we know,” Alan’s grandma said, but she was smiling.)

L — What is their favourite board game?

Gomokunarabe (often times shortened to simply Go)! Augustine taught this game to Alan pretty early on, both because it’s one of Augustine’s favorites and (after he realized how bright Alan is) he figured Alan would enjoy playing it as well. He was right; Augustine and Alan play Go quite frequently, both before Alan leaves on his journey and after he returns. It’s relaxing and fun and Alan pretty much never says “no” to playing it.

A — What are/were this character’s best subjects in school?

Answered!

N — What do they usually eat for breakfast?

Something light. Alan has never been a big breakfast eater (just getting him to want to eat breakfast at all was something of a struggle when Augustine first took him in), because he’s pretty much never hungry in the mornings, and on some mornings even feels a bit nauseous. So his breakfast is always something nice and light, like a croissant (especially a chocolate croissant, which is really his preferred breakfast) and, of course, coffee. Always coffee. Once Augustine allowed him to start drinking it at age ten, he never looked back.

S — How stealthy are they?

Pretty stealthy!

When he was very little, and still living in Isolé Village, Alan became very, very good at making himself as quiet and small as possible. It was very, very easy for him to make the adults angry; he never meant to, he tried to be good for a variety of reasons (more on that in a second), but somehow he always ended up messing something up and making them mad regardless. For this reason, Alan did his best to stay out of the way and stay quiet. He didn’t consciously think, “I need to be stealthy,” and certainly didn’t think, “I need to sneak around,” because if he was accused of being sneaky he would have recognized that the adults were mad about that, and so he would have thought that he was being bad again and he needed to stop. But when you’re in an environment where everything you do is wrong, it seems like, and that you’re likely to get yelled at or punished if you’re being noisy or in the way, you subconsciously learn how to move so that you’re as inconspicuous as possible. Of course, he was still noticed sometimes, but Alan became rather good at staying quiet and slipping by. It’s no doubt how he managed to slip off to the mountains undetected in time for Genesis to take place. (Well, that, and the adults were pretty neglectful of him, but still.)

Once Augustine took him in, he didn’t really have a reason to act like this anymore (aside from one time he did slip off without permission, but … well, there will be a fic for that in due time), but some of the habits stuck regardless (i.e. he still steps lightly, just because that’s how he’s always been). But then he left on his journey, and then he was pulled into Lysandre’s service, and it wasn’t wholly unlike when he grew up in Isolé Village. Lysandre didn’t blow up at him for things—that was never Lysandre’s way of expressing anger—and he didn’t explicitly tell him that he needed to be quiet. But Alan had it ingrained in him in early childhood that he needed to pick up on subtle signs in a person’s behavior, little cues that they weren’t happy with things, and so he noticed when Lysandre was aggravated by Alan clicking his pens. He learned pretty quickly that Lysandre generally didn’t want him to say anything unless he was spoken to first. And though there were times when he pushed for information or otherwise talked back (not in a snarky way, even, but just in general) when he was told something, that usually ended in punishment (i.e. Lysandre using his pyroar to brutalize Lizardon in a “battle”). So he fell back into old habits and learned how to move quickly and quietly to wherever he needed to be. It pretty much stuck after that.

(Of course, upon returning to the lab, Augustine notices these things—notices how Alan hastily stops himself from clicking pens if he catches himself doing it, notices how he has to prod Alan to get his opinion or questions now, since Alan won’t speak up as freely. He notices, and it upsets him, but he doesn’t want to push Alan and so he usually doesn’t say anything about it.)

Y —What is one question they’ve always wanted an answer to?

Haha, oh boy. This one comes with some baggage.

If I was going to sum it up in one question, that question would be, “What is wrong with me?” But the thing is, something different is meant by that depending on the different areas of his life that we’re examining, even though it all comes around to the same thing.

When he was very little (read: pre-unofficial adoption, five and younger), he wondered this in the sense of, “Why don’t I have parents?” and “Why doesn’t anyone like me?” 

Alan was abandoned as an infant in the woods; he was found by the florist of Isolé Village and brought in, raised as an orphan who was passed from home to home. When he was very little, it took him some time to understand that this wasn’t normal; it took him a bit to catch on that he was the only child passed around like this, that all of the other children had parents who loved and took care of them year-round. He didn’t have that. He didn’t have parents. And he didn’t understand why this was; he hoped that he’d make his way back to his parents eventually, but it never happened. He never found his parents, they never found him. As far as he knew, they were just gone, or maybe never even existed (Maurice called him “changeling” sometimes, and so did a couple of the other villagers, and he didn’t know what that meant but thought that it was maybe why he didn’t have parents). And it went a bit deeper than that, too; he didn’t have parents, and he didn’t know why that was, and he didn’t know why his parents wouldn’t come get him (and thought that maybe he had done something wrong), but he also didn’t understand why no one liked him. When he was small, he would see that the other kids would be picked up and carried around, that they would be hugged, that they were … you know, loved by their parents. And Alan, being a small child pretty starved of this attention, was quite envious of this. He would try to reach out to some of the adults, sometimes, but even if it was just to tug on their shirt he’d find his hands swatted away, would be told to “go play” or “go sit down,” and he didn’t really understand why that was. So he tried to be good. He thought, okay, everyone’s always mad at me because I’m bad, but maybe if I’m very, very good they’ll like me, and they’ll be my parents. He always tried to be on his very, very best behavior regardless of who he was staying with, in hopes that they would like him enough to decide to keep him. It never worked, though he always understood when they were angry, and knew that it was because he had been bad, obviously, and he’d always get very upset with himself for this, because he messed up again and so no doubt they’d want to get rid of him again, why couldn’t he just be good?, and so that often led to him wondering “what is wrong with me” in the sense of “why didn’t my parents want me / why don’t they come back for me” and “why does no one here like me / why can’t I make them like me.”

Then Augustine took him in, and honestly, those next seven years were the happiest years Alan ever could have had. Literally, Augustine gave him everything he ever wanted … but it wasn’t official.

See, here’s the deal:

Augustine was pretty much the ideal father in Alan’s eyes. Literally, everything he ever wanted. But, that first night that Alan came home, Alan asked (in a really tentative, halting, roundabout way, because he was scared of asking and messing things up somehow) what he should call Augustine. This was Alan’s way of asking if Augustine was going to be his dad now. And Augustine (for reasons that make sense from his perspective, but that five-year-old Alan had no way of knowing or understanding), said, “Just Professor is fine.” To Alan, this was a pretty solid answer that, no, Augustine didn’t see Alan as his son. Alan was his assistant, and Alan was someone he was going to be nice to, and honestly, that was more than Alan could ever ask for, considering. But he didn’t want to be Alan’s dad. And that was fine! That was … I mean, it hurt, but again, he had been more kind in two days than anyone in Isolé Village had been for the past five years, so Alan was not about to complain.

More to the point, Alan thought, okay. For the past five years (or whenever he first realized things and was able to act on them) he tried really, really hard to get the villagers to like him enough to adopt him, and that didn’t work. Everything he did was wrong. But somehow he had managed to get Augustine to like him, right? Augustine seemed to like him. Augustine brought him home. So in Alan’s mind, the most logical course of action to take next was to apply the same logic: If he was really, really good, then maybe he could be good enough for Augustine to want to adopt him for real. He could graduate from “assistant” to “son” if he was on his best behavior and proved he was good enough. The perfect plan!

So in that sense, the question “what’s wrong with me” (or, perhaps better phrased, “why aren’t I good enough”) was sort of in the back of his mind even then. It sort of died down to a very low hum over time, something he only thought about whenever the fact that Augustine hadn’t adopted him was brought up (such as when someone asked, “Oh, is he your son?” and Augustine laughed and said, “No, no,” because he knew the person was asking if Alan was biologically his son, and meant that, no, Alan was not his biological son, but Alan took it the wrong way and always felt his mood / self-esteem drop because, god, he wants that more than anything, why can’t that be the case?). It was still something he wondered, as he laid awake some nights. He wondered what he could do to be good enough. But, because he was afraid of pressuring or pushing or being a nuisance to Augustine, he never asked. If he had, well … the official adoption would have happened sooner.

THEN (god this is a long answer, I’m sorry lmao) we move on to, well … canon, and everything that goes wrong in canon, and god if that doesn’t drag up a lot of this, because Alan has a guilt / shame complex the size of Prism Tower and thinks that everything awful that happened is his fault. Whether you’re talking about Hari-san’s coma (not his fault) or everything that happened in the Flare crisis (absolutely not his fault, but pointing out that Lysandre manipulated and used him doesn’t matter because, “Even if I didn’t know of the Director’s true goal, I still assisted him toward it”), he blames himself for it and thinks that it’s a direct result of him being a horrible person who made (at least in terms of the Flare crisis) “perhaps irredeemable” mistakes. In Isolé Village, everyone was always angry with him; they called him a little absol, bringing disaster everywhere he goes. And he knows that’s not true about absol, but this all makes him think that maybe it really is true about him. Maybe they were right all along. The Professor was always kind to him, always treated him with love and respect and care, and what did Alan do? Well, he was trying to protect the Professor, but then he ended up assisting toward a mass genocide. And yeah, it was an accident, but wasn’t it always an accident back in the village, too? He never meant to screw things up, but he always did. Maybe he’s the screw-up. Maybe there really is something intrinsically wrong with him, something really irredeemable about him, that no matter what he does or what he tries, someone gets hurt or something gets destroyed, because he really is just as bad as they always said. How does that song go? Ah, yes—

“I always thought I might be bad;now I’m sure that it’s true.‘Cause I think you’re so good,and I’m nothing like you.”

So by this point, the “what is wrong with me” question directly correlates not just to the fact that no one likes him, but that he thinks that he’s constantly leaving destruction in his wake, constantly hurting so many people, and he doesn’t know how to stop it because he never means to do it. “What is wrong with me,” “why am I like this” — at this point, these questions are directly related to his pretty much non-existent self-esteem, and, well, if Augustine doesn’t want to adopt him now … Alan doesn’t blame him. Not in the least bit. 

So, um, yeah. Orphan issues have always been pretty big with him, but they’ve evolved over time. Someone really needs to help him build that self-esteem back up, though. Lysandre pretty much completely destroyed it.

C — Can they swim well?

Well enough. He’s a decent swimmer; he’s not going to join a swim team any time soon, and swimming is really not his favorite activity, but he won’t drown if he needs to swim across a body of water. (He only swims free, though. He doesn’t know any other strokes.)

A — What are/were this character’s best subjects in school?

Answered!

M —What is their favourite dessert?

Dessert in general is pretty much Alan’s favorite meal, and it’s hard for him to pick a favorite. That said, he loves ice cream, and is especially delighted if ice cream is paired with warm cake (or a warm brownie—either-or). He loves chocolate, and especially dark chocolate (not white chocolate so much, though), and he likes coffee flavored things, too. (Like father, like son. ;D) Hazelnut chocolate is also really good, in his book. So yeah, something along those lines will definitely put stars in his eyes, hahaha.

O —What would it take to break them, inside and out?

Kill Lizardon, and especially do so in a way that makes him believe that Lizardon’s death is his fault. 

See, here’s the thing: If any of Alan’s loved ones died, he would of course be stricken with grief. His grief would be palpable; he doesn’t cry easily, but in this case he would probably be crying intermittently for a long while. He would eat less, sleep less (before sleeping a ridiculous amount), the works. In my immortality AU, he was even driven to near suicide after both Augustine and Manon died, though it should be noted that it was not just because they died, but also because he was immortal and that thought, the thought that he was going to have to live forever while everyone around him died, drove him to the point where he just wanted to end it. 

But you’ll remember (perhaps) that he didn’t follow through with suicide in that fic, and he didn’t follow through for one reason, and one reason only:

Lizardon.

Alan will be wracked with grief if his (human) loved ones die, but although it will take him time, he can heal, pick up, and move on. He can and will keep fighting. If he loses his other pokémon, again, that will hurt terribly, but he can keep fighting. Even if Gabby died, he could keep fighting. But if Lizardon died? He can recover from losing his father, he can recover from losing his step- / adopted siblings, he can recover from losing his qp partners if he has any. But Lizardon is different. Lizardon is in a different category altogether. Lizardon is his platonic soulmate. If Lizardon was killed, and especially if Alan was made to believe it was his fault (and honestly, given his guilt complex, that’s not hard to do, particularly if it was during battle), it would break him. It would completely and utterly break him. It’s not only that he couldn’t keep fighting after that (though in all honesty, if there is anything that could extinguish the fire within him, it would be Lizardon’s death), but it’s that he wouldn’t want to. If there is one thing that could honestly drive him to the point where he just didn’t want to live anymore, where he honestly wanted to die, that one thing would be Lizardon’s death (again, especially if Alan felt responsible). To sum it up with an excerpt from a WIP I’ve had in my drafts for about fifty years:

“You have to!” Manon cried, and Hari-san gave her ankle a consoling patas she thumped her fists against her thighs. “You have to let go of this—youhave to! You have to, because if you don’t they’ll never let you go—” 

“Like I’m missing much—”

“—and they’ll kill you! They’ll kill you, Alan, they’re planning tokill you! Lysandre said they’ll have to kill you if you don’t stop trying tofight them, and is that what you want? Do you want to di—?!”

“Yes.”

Although, that does bring up one small caveat.

If Lizardon is killed, and especially if Alan feels responsible, that will break him inside and out. But, if Lizardon is killed and Alan feels that someone else is also responsible, then he’ll want them dead first. In the fic that this excerpt is from, Lysandre wins and most of the people and pokémon in Kalos are killed. Relevant to this answer, Lizardon is killed specifically because Lysandre feels threatened by him (more specifically still, he knew from the start that Alan was not going to be okay with the fact that Augustine died as well, and figured that removing Alan’s teeth by killing his charizard was the best way to deal with that litlte problem … until Alan flipped out and tried to fight him anyway). Alan is devastated, and broken, and it shows. As he tells Manon pretty bluntly, yes, he wants to die. But before he does, he wants Lysandre’s blood coating his hands as Lysandre’s body cools on the ground. He wants Lysandre dead, and he’s willing to fight just long enough to make that happen if given the opportunity (which, handcuffed to a wall in a prison cell, he doesn’t really have the opportunity, but nonetheless). So in a case where Lizardon dies not only because of him, but also because of someone else, it’s more murder-suicide Alan would be after. Or even if he didn’t actively commit suicide himself, he’d call the police and report the murder after. Maybe he would even confess to a few crimes he didn’t commit to increase his chances of execution. Whatever, he doesn’t care. He literally doesn’t care anymore. Lizardon is dead, he died, he was killed, and it’s Alan’s fault even if it was also someone else’s, and he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care. Even if he’s not executed, whatever, he just won’t eat. (And he doesn’t, in the fic that excerpt is from, except Team Flare grunts literally force food down his throat on Lysandre’s orders to stop him from starving himself.) Basically, losing Lizardon—having Lizardon killed—would break him to the point where he literally would stop caring about being alive, wouldn’t even want to be alive anymore, and the only thing to get any fight out of him at all would be if he came face-to-face with Lizardon’s killer (provided someone else was directly responsible for his death). At that point, yeah, his hands are going for their throat, but otherwise? He just doesn’t care anymore.

And honestly? It’s not surprising, because just making Lizardon suffer is enough to hurt Alan deeply, especially (once again) if he feels he’s responsible for Lizardon’s suffering. I can’t say which fic it is because of #spoilers, but that’s going to be a pretty big point in one of the fics I’m currently writing. Even making Lizardon suffer hurts him deeply, so it’s honestly no wonder that he spent all of .01 seconds thinking before threw himself out of the plane in TSME 3, shouting Lizardon’s name about three times in the span of sprinting across the ice and throwing the ice chunks off Lizardon’s back. It’s no surprise that having Lizardon killed would break him. Alan can recover from most things, but this? However much Lysandre said, “You can get a new charizard” in that fic I took the excerpt from, there’s no recovering from this. He’s not bouncing back from losing Lizardon, just like Lizardon would not bounce back from losing him. If either one of them was killed before the other, they honestly would be irreparably broken. (Hence why, in the AU where Alan is killed from the Flare arc, Lizardon refuses to move from in front of his grave. He barely eats the food that’s brought to him. He waits there even though he understands what happened because … because that’s his boy, he can’t just leave, he can’t … !)

R — What are their hands like?

He has long fingers, and I actually headcanon that he’d be very good at piano if he ever learned. He’s certainly a very fast typist. His nails are usually short because he doesn’t want to risk accidentally scratching Lizardon too hard when giving him pats or scritches (of course, Lizardon is a dragon with tough scales, but nonetheless), and also because he has a bad habit of squeezing his hands into fists when upset, and longer nails can wreck his palms if he’s not careful. (Thankfully, gloves do help with that.) He does have a couple scars on his hands here or there, either because his nails did cut into his palms a couple times, or because various pokémon have scratched or bitten him over the years. (Some of them are absolutely from Gabby when he first wrangled her in Lumiose and brought her back to the lab—matching puncture scars on the back and palm of his right hand.) His palms tend to be free from callouses due to his gloves, but he definitely has some writing callouses on his fingers from pens, and the pads of his fingers tend to be somewhat tough as well since the gloves don’t protect those.

E — How are they with children?

Well, we’ve seen that in canon, haven’t we? ;) Alan is actually pretty good with children, normally (having learned from the best ♥). He’s patient, he listens to them, he gives good instruction and knows, generally, what to do to look after them. He doesn’t let them walk all over him (or at least he tries to set boundaries, whether or not they’re respected), but he is reasonable with the boundaries that he does set. At the very least, Manon and Bonnie both adore him, so he has to be doing something right, doesn’t he? (Even if Manon doesn’t always appreciate his teasing, and oh, does he tease her. He does it in the most serious way, too, so that she can’t always tell if he’s teasing or if he’s serious, and it drives her nuts … but she loves him anyway. He’s a great big brother, and she wouldn’t trade him for the world.)