#i have my own big gripes with things that happened in that season okay

[ssaalexblake]

Reactions to 13 and Michael Burnham are my supervillain origin stories. People saying very obviously racist and/or sexist things to do with them and their respective shows and not realising it, thinking that that makes it not racist and/or sexist is so old. So old. And to be fair, there's a fair amount of homophobia too, it's just I only really fandom on this site and that's much rarer on here than other places.

[toastybugguy]

i cannot ask this ina way tht does not sound accusatory or sounds like i ship it but what r your opinions on stydia as a whole????

oh god…. I’m not sorry to all the stydias out there but I… hate it. SO much. O|￣|_

STYDIA LIKERS PLS TAP OUT NOW rant incoming

I’ve GOT to gripe, but like. Let me just say. Stiles and Lydia as bi/pan solidarity best friends is my EEEEVERYTHINGGG. There’s some moments between them that I SOOO love, except it’s only the platonic ones (n if you’re me, you’re reading intended-to-be-romantic scenes as platonic on purpose bc hey you’re allowed to care for someone’s safety and well-being in a FRIEND way OKAY). I need them 2 be bitchy best friends so much, that’s my lifeblood.

But romantic stydia…. SO truly bad. I hate the early 2000s-2010s trend of “guy being straight up creepy and obsessed is an endearing trait” thing they use to introduce it. Then stydia didn’t even exist after like, season 3a, but all of a sudden they NEED it to be the center of season 6a so they bring it back in a WHIRLWIND. Stiles saying “remember I love you” kills me bc like. Brother you have been dating Malia. You fully were not even interested in Lydia anymore I HHSGHSGGGj. They had to REAAALLY force that one convo in 5a (?) where Scott, Kira, Lydia and Stiles go to Eichen and Scott and Kira basically exposition at each other about how they’re soooo good together (what. why. where is this coming from. show me your proof Scott. SHOW ME YOUR PROOF!!)

Not to mention it undermines the other relationships so much bc hello? Out of Scott, Malia, and Lydia, Lydia is the LAST person that would be likely to bring Stiles back. They absolutely had the weakest connection out of everyone there. Also the panic-attack-stydia-kiss— NOOOOO nononono. BAD SO BAD. I FHJSHJFUckin digress.

I’ve said this before but I reaaaally really hate how Lydia’s arcs are often completely thrown out when love interests are introduced, and that still definitely happens with Stiles. Suddenly in 6a her entire character revolves around him and how much she loves him and needs him and Totally Has The Whole Time !! HHHHUH ?? Because MEANWHILE we’ve had a big arc about Lydia coming into her own and realizing her powers and that pretty much grinds to a halt once stydia starts trying to be canon.

Not to mention the fact that you get about 5 seconds of stydia being canon on-screen before it becomes irrelevant again, so whYYY did we do this in the first place ??? I’MMHDJGHJ

I may or may not make a more comprehensive version of this post at some point in the future, I’m not sure, cos this is just me off the cuff spouting my issues with it. Not as well articulated as I’d generally like. BUT. yea. I am a hater. my overall reaction to stydia is EUGH AUGH… ECK…. BAD……..

Anyway. Platonic best friend stydia is REAL in my HEART!! 🫶🫶

[dhampiravidi]

🧥 for your muse to give my muse their jacket when it’s cold out (Pogue giving his jacket to Jayn because she's probably not as used to chilly autumn evenings as he is~)

Jayn always had mixed feelings about September. It was her birthday month (and Caleb's), and she took an odd sense of pride in being a Virgo. September meant that Spooky Season was near--but it also meant that school had already begun. And it was the month when most of the day would be a hot 85 degrees...until the sun decided to go home for the evening and drop things down to 50 degrees. The big drop hadn't happened, so Jayn hadn't brought a jacket on her date with Pogue. REGRET, her mind and all the teeny hairs on her skin screamed as she and her boyfriend left the gelateria. Mind you, the only reason they were outside was because she'd started to get sleepy, given the amount of carb-laden, delicious, perfect food in her tummy.

It was all Pogue's fault. He'd endured her griping, worrying, and (a tiny bit of) crying concerning the big Modern Greek III test Jayn had. She loved hearing Greek, but trying to conjugate the words, not to mention remember all the grammatical rules, was so confusing to her. Their group put in extra effort to help her study and just support her in general, until she finally had to confront the test on her own. Somehow, she scraped by with a B+. Pogue rewarded her with a surprise date, picking her up on his motorcycle as usual. Pastries and coffee, then a trip to a science museum (it was for Pogue's homework but they had fun), the most AMAZING Italian food, and a showing of one of Pogue's favorite movies (The Boondock Saints; Jayn liked it because she enjoyed both violence and young Sean Patrick Flanery), and finally they ended the day by picking up some gelato to go. They'd planned to stop at some of the shops, but they were both starting to get tired. As usual, they would drive back with leftovers. If either of them began to doze off, Jayn would teleport them back to Caleb's. Neither of them had anticipated how cold it would get.

Jayn yelped right as Pogue cursed under his breath. He was able to adjust in a couple of seconds, having gone through mini snowstorms in Massachusetts before. But poor Jayn was a California girl--one who had never been to Tahoe, one who loved and preferred Southern California's mid-70s to the current 50s. "Jay?"

"Hm? y-yES?" she squeaked, trying to get Pogue going with her in a brisk fast walk. In her mind, they just had to hurry. Soon enough, they'd be on the motorcycle, hopefully, surrounded by the warm winds of freedom instead of cold breezes--

Pogue was laughing. Curious, Jayn turned around. "Jay..baby, c'mere."

"What...?"

"You're freezing. C'mere." She pouted and frowned, mad that he was laughing at her discomfort. He always loved how emotive she was, even though she could be a little crazy sometimes. At least she wasn't keeping how she felt a secret from him. Pogue took off his beloved leather jacket, holding it so his girlfriend could put it on. Her eyes widened in surprise.

"Pogue! No! I can't--no. Then you're gonna be cold." Damn. The way she cared for him always made him feel special.

"Then you can warm me up when we get home." It was so easy to make her flustered, even though they'd been dating for a while now.

"Yeah, okay, fine." Jayn carefully moved the bag holding their gelato from one hand to another as he helped her put his jacket on. They both laughed--his sleeves were several inches longer than her arms, so much so that he took the bag from her hands and just let her flail around.

"Haha, alright Little Penguin Love, c'mon before you freeze."

"Little?!--my gods, Pogue--ugh, fine." He turned to go, and she stopped him by gently bumping into his side. Jayn managed to grip his sides (sort of). "Thank you. For everything: putting up with my venting, and inability to decide on food, and my--" He interrupted her with a kiss. Rude, the logical, boring part of her brain muttered, as she smiled with tired eyes. "I love you, too."

"Hey, keep those eyes open. I want a good cuddle before I go."

"No. Stay the night."

"Yeah. Okay."

[akingtinubuanglupa]

Christmas Seasons and Memories

Despite no longer identifying as a Catholic, Christmas remains my favourite season. It usually means reconnecting with family like all the other holidays, it also often means visiting the provinces to greet relatives from far away Merry Christmas!

The season would start early in comparison to the West. Remember the Mariah Carey "she's thawing" memes? Yeah good luck SCP, we have Jose Mari Chan who has thawed two months early in September every year. I can promise you, I've spent Octobers roaming a spookily decorated National Bookstore while also hearing Christmas jingles. Despite my father's griping and complaints, I loved hearing that. It was nice to associate my birth month with Christmas since Halloween brought its own monsters and scars to me.

Even my asthma which gets triggered during the Christmas season wasn't enough to dampen my mood. As far as I'm concerned, it was a fantastic season, and I felt things would be okay for a little bit.

Our Christmas tree would be brought down on November with all of us helping decorate it. It was a smallish tree we’d have to put on a table to get some height and it’s old and leaning to one side but it has so much memory to us. Our belen, the nativity scene, was this old thing too. We had to glue all the figures on the scene but two have stopped attaching to the floor of the barn and the angel keeps falling off. Then came the tinsel (we saved some green tinsel to use for grass in the belen) and then the Christmas lights that played carols in a tinny sounding way. I remember that some of our Christmas balls bounced too which delighted little me. Sometimes we’d watch Christmas movies like the Santa Clause or something.

Then we also have simbang gabi, the midnight mass. We’d wake up so early to be dragged off to church on very cold mornings. It’s customary and it happens during advent. But the thing was, we were allowed to stay in the car if we’re too sleepy or my mom would bribe us with street food stalls like kwek-kwek or Japanese pancakes. After mass though, my mom would buy us puto bumbong to share along with some bibingka. 

I remember the stress of childhood when my mother used to bring us to the mall but distract my sisters and me by sending us off to the distant parts of the mall where we won't see her or my dad buying us our gifts or the all-day preparations for Noche Buena done by my late grandfather and mother where we would have to wait all day before we held our Christmas (kinda Christmas Eve) dinner as a feast with our neighbours. Of course, attending mass on Christmas Eve is also a big part of this. We don’t really pay attention but a nativity play is done every year and the church inside would be packed with people. Sometimes to the point that we’d be at the ukay-ukay store in front of our church. Throughout it all, stalls upon stalls of vendors for foods or toys or drinks would be stationed around church. (I always succumb and buy the pink popcorn if ther vendor’s there, if not we have the Manong who had been selling siomai by the church since I was little, if not well, kwek-kwek had always been a favourite.) Bringing home puto bumbong and bibingka is always a must, of course. 

Karaoke was a must, and the older men would be seen getting drunk while we children played street games or talked about inconsequential things.

Those Christmases were good, we would sometimes be lucky enough to have lechon but even if we didn't, good food and family were enough to make Christmas good. A gift or two is also welcome, of course! Then come Christmas morning, our parents would wake us up, bundle us up (even though, unusually enough, Christmas mornings and Christmas day itself was relatively warm and not freezing like the days leading up to it) and get us into the family van (back when that old dinosaur was still a thing in the family) to make an hours-long drive to Bulacan where my paternal grandmother's side would be. There, we'd get our Aguinaldo (Christmas money) from older relatives like our titas and titos and grand-aunts and uncles. We would also have to eat at each house or we also get to bring home Noche Buena leftovers if we asked for them, we get to play with our cousins and also just catch up on family news. The next day, it's off to Cavite to visit my mom's side of the family.

As time went on though, our Christmases became humbler in many ways. Especially after our father quit his job claiming too many things at once. Christmas became a regular day for us by then. There were years where we don’t get gifts, others where our gifts could be pencil cases or wallets. My kind of Christmas gifts to my family was when I bought a bunch of books for my sisters and some things for my parents when I was working in BPO. After I quit because of my deteriorating mental health, we went back to these humble Christmases.

Tragic as it was, we didn’t go back to these Christmas spreads and gifts and revelry until after my mother passed. I don’t know how to take that but we began setting up our old traditions again but now without the bells and whistles. 

Christmas back then was this big event with gifts of toys or books and so much stuff but at the root of it all it always boiled down to us having many memories we won’t forget. Our experiences sculpted how we saw the holidays and the fact alone that we’ve come out of the hardest times of our lives and are still hoping for the best is a lot for us to say.

Maligayang Pasko at Manigong Bagong Taon!

(Merry Chrristmas and a Happy New Year!)

[josiebelladonna]

(re: i might have to revise the date of posting as the seasons grey, simply because i could lose the internet again - we're supposed to get even more snow come wednesday, delightful, i say - we've been getting snow as early as veteran's day, so you can imagine how i feel about it at this point. also, i wrote this about a week ago, so if anything sounds a bit weird or doesn't make any sense, it should explain why)

another reason why i think i might change the date is that i have this sneaking suspicion that the green druidess and temple are going to do something crazy when i post on that day, just knowing how they are. i feel like they're going to dogpile me like what happened with dead man walking and the apple shed because they’re not only paranoid, but they apparently think everyone following them is that gullible—knowing the sheer amount of people who use google docs to write their fics while simultaneously gripe about big corporations like google surveilling us all, i understand the logic there in a twisted way. doesn’t make it right, though.

how did i start suspecting this, you ask? very simple: whenever i say anything, either one or the both of them would update one of their fics, as if to one-up me and prove me wrong, which tells me they stalk my blog (why else would they be doing this?) case in point, as of writing (2/22), the green druidess’ account is essentially dead, there hasn’t been an update to anything since late january and her birthday (when i asked where she was, i was legitimately asking as well as testing the waters there). i noticed temple went quiet, too, about a week after she did. i did fuckuary and then i didn’t update anything simply because i needed to rest for a bit: i’ve been writing vigorously since late 2017, i deserve a break and do nothing but make art once in a while (so, if either of them say anything about me going quiet as if to imitate them… no. it’s just another lie on their part amongst an entire batch of lies). plus, some things came up in my personal life that needed tending to, and i didn't have internet the last four days: so, figure i'm going to be silent for a time. it actually wasn’t until i reblogged that poll about writing methods when i started thinking about the sheer amount of hypocrisy on here. this led me to thinking back to the aforementioned “clap back when i clap back” habit that temple and the green druidess do with me and i started putting two and two together. i wondered if they have something planned for that day, too. maybe they’re going to whup up on me and continue with the kvetching like what they did twice before. fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me; fool me thrice, i have a decision to make. naturally, i have to think ahead—winter weather at the peak of a mountain will put you in a “think ahead” state of mind for the foreseeable future.

to be transparent is a beautiful thing, but a little opaqueness will take you so far. it’s okay to be a little mysterious, especially now with ai watching our every move. i will not be surprised at all if my suspicions are absolutely correct; and i won't be surprised if they don't act.

yeah, i have this habit of jumping the gun, i’ll admit it. but it’s only because i just really love doing this and it’s exciting to post stuff on ao3. when temple republished "can’t lose you" on the green druidess’ birthday, it was odd to me at first, but when i thought about it, it sounded an alarm bell to me. it came immediately after those three posts. totally took advantage of a habit of mine: i gave kudos to sort of throw a cog in the machine (that's a really good way to mess with someone, too, doing anything that agrees to disagree with them), but i knew i needed something else next to it. a bigger cog. a wooden shoe. my own air conditioner and radar detector (if you’ve read now it’s dark, you get the reference). something to completely humiliate them both, make them feel the same way they made me feel in late summer 2020 but walk away from it in grace.

get revenge on the bully but do it in literally the most innocuous way possible and walk out the other side by living on and proving myself, as eddie vedder would say.

and like i said earlier, the loss of the internet for a time has been a mixed blessing with me. there just has to be a way to get inside their heads somehow and put an end to this ridiculous feud that i literally didn’t even want in the first place. i have to put an end to something that has gone on for far too long for everyone's own good: really, the only person to put an end to it is me. i can move on and walk my walk all i want, but this shit needs to stop, and it has to stop by way of my thinking ahead and making them fall flat on their snotty, spoiled, entitled fucking faces.

i hope all of you reading this can understand where i’m coming from with this and you can understand my logic behind it because it’s not like the smartest and most emotionally intelligent of people are following them (or are on here for that matter: look no further than the utter prevalence of those cancerous, brain-dead posts about mutuals, or the rise in ai art, either. we can add "reading emotions" to "critical thinking" on the list of things that tumblr absolutely sucks at). it's imperative to stick to your principles, absolutely, but sometimes principles take a backseat when it comes to standing up for yourself, especially when your opponents are two of the most emotionally dim, insecure-in-their-sexuality writers here at the granular level.

i read the first six chapters of like loving the dead and aside from that one chapter that pretty much trashed joey, i literally don’t remember anything other than a line at the end of chapter six kind of letting us know that lizzy is cruel and manipulative (art does imitate life once in a while after all). i read them twice and i only remember a couple of things that happened: same story with louder than love, even with as much as i liked it; i barely remember anything past the first six or seven chapters.

these are the women who are trying to destroy me, writing fics that i can't remember unless i make fun of them. and by the way, i really wish this hadn't been made into an issue of internalized misogyny because... it's not.

at least, not on my end, it isn't.

[makeste]

BnHA 6th Popularity Poll Reaction Post - Risky Spoiler-Dodging Edition

hey guys, so seeing as the results from the 6th popularity poll were leaked today, I figured I would do a separate reaction + analysis post this year, rather than piling it in as an extra on top of the chapter reaction post tomorrow. I figure this makes more sense anyway, since they’re really two completely different things. also this way I can write as much as I want lol.

also, just fyi, I am still completely unspoiled for chapter 293. and probably the smart thing to do to keep it that way would be to log off tumblr and hold off posting this until tomorrow, but I apparently have no impulse control today so oh well. anyway, so I’m hoping you guys will keep this spoiler-free if you don’t mind! as always, I would prefer to just jump right in completely unaware tomorrow like Troy returning to the study room with the pizza boxes lol.

okay so this first part is just going to be my predictions. fyi I am writing this part on Wednesday night, and then I’ll add on the results part on Thursday or Friday (ETA: Thursday, apparently, since I am impatient.)

okay so first of all, just as a refresher, this poll was open to Japanese voters from Aug 3 to Sep 30. meaning chapters 279 through 285. meanwhile last year’s poll took place around the tail end of the MVA arc. so between then and now we had Heroes Rising, the Endeavor Agency arc, and the War arc up to the part where the 1-A kids took on Gigantomachia in Gunga, and started battling Tomura in Jakku. so technically only a couple of arcs, but a LOT of stuff going down in them. oh and season 4 of the anime as well

so! firstly, I predict that my truculent africanized honeybee son will hold on to his crown at #1, coming off a year in which he did some internship-boosted soul searching, borrowed OFA in movie canon, and finished out the voting period as the my-body-moved-on-its-own character development MVP. like CALL ME CRAZY lol, but I’m pretty sure his title is safe. and then after him will be Deku and Shouto as usual

Aizawa should hopefully also have a strong showing because the dude had a banner fucking year. reunited with his old dead friend, took on Tomura with his hopelessly inept hero pals, and then chopped his fucking leg off. he had better be in the top 10. his fucking leg died for this, idk what else he has to do

Endeavor also stands a decent chance of doing well given the internship arc and the final episode of season 4. which I’m sure will go down just swimmingly if that does happen lmao. especially if he somehow manages to rank higher than...

Dabi, which I don’t think he will btw, but you never know. anyways though, but I’m thinking Dabi’s going to have a stronger showing than in past years (in the last poll he only got 367 votes and was ranked 19th). mostly because of his fight in the Gunga mansion, and his cheekily censored name reveal to...

Hawks, who is also going to rank pretty high here, I think. might be he loses some points for killing off Twice, but his back was basically to the wall there. and he has always been very popular, and I think season 4 will also give him a boost, along with his heavy involvement in the first half of the War arc

Tomura was already in 6th place last year and I think he cracks the top 5 this year. he’s gotten exponentially more popular since the MVA arc, and got a boost in the last poll even though his flashback had only just barely happened, and he hadn’t finished Awakening yet and all that stuff. anyway, so he’s only gotten cooler and more tragic since then so I think he makes a big play here

Kirishima, Momo, Tokoyami, and Mina should also hopefully do well, since the poll opened right in the middle of all that Gigantomachia action, and Toko had just got done being an absolute badass and protecting his birb dad. I don’t think he’ll quite make it to the top ten, but he should

and last but not least, I’m hoping that Mirko will come out and take the polls by storm, although I have no clue how popular she is in Japan lol. she’s clearly Horikoshi’s favorite though. she SHOULD be everyone’s favorite, but I mean, we’ll see how it goes

anyway that’s it as far as predictions! and so now, through the magic of writing stuff at different times, we will fast-forward to the part where we actually find out the results!

OH MY GOD YES, STEAMPUNK KHLKSLLKL. HERE FOR IT. JOLLY GOOD SHOW. 5 STARS

Kacchan looks SO COCKY and SO HAPPY and SO ADORABLE, YES I SAID IT. he is adorable as FUCK. I don’t quite know what it is about this particular Kacchan that just screams “LOOK HOW FUCKING CUTE MY STUPID, LOUD SON IS WITH HIS BIZARRE WINDOWPANE-LOOKING CONVERTIBLE SUNGLASS GOGGLES and his POORLY TIED CRAVAT”, but I think it’s because he looks like if a Digimon character and a FMA character had a baby

anyway, so it looks like most of the people present here are more or less who we expected to see. except that I can’t tell for sure if that’s Dabi or Shindou, and if it’s Shindou I’m going to punch somebody in the face so you will have to excuse me

Iida wearing a TRENCHCOAT and a TOP HAT with ENGINE EXHAUST GOGGLE ACCENTS is my new favorite Iida of all time. take note how there is no possible way he can wear those goggles with them sitting on top of his hat like that. plus he’s already got glasses on. these are just purely for aesthetic and IF THAT AIN’T JUST THE STEAMPUNK WAY

Deku out here speaking softly and carrying a lead pipe. Kacchan you best look out. seems like he’s done watching you take first place year after year while he languishes in the number two spot. your only hope is that he trips while attacking you because his boots are unbuckled

Shouto’s standing over there with the rest of the non-first-and-second-place characters, but what are the odds his results are actually within spitting distance of Deku’s same as always. anyway he doesn’t mind, though. also his outfit is by far the most sensible one here, but if you look closely he’s got some sort of fire extinguisher/jet pack thing strapped to his back that’s got a control switch on his belt. Shouto are you jetpacking or putting out fires

Kirishima out here all “I’m not sure what steampunk is so I’m just going to take off my shirt and pose”

AIZAWA WITH THE EYEPATCH SKLKSDLKFJLSKJLDFKJSLDFFJLDKSJFL:KS. SIR. SIR. also, lowkey furious that Horikoshi refuses to show us the automail leg that he is clearly sporting here but which we just can’t see, SHOUTO MOVE GODDAMMIT

Endeavor has TWO fire extinguisher-slash-jetpacks. THE BETTER TO... WHATEVER. look at you here in the top ten again. you really live for that controversy

HAWKS OUT HERE WITH HIS STEAMPUNK BEATS BY DRE AND HIS WEARING A RING ON EVERY FINGER. nice to see you’ve still got your wings there, kiddo. then again Deku still has both of his arms too so who even knows what is going on

BUT SERIOUSLY THOUGH, IS THIS DABI OR SHINDOU. as if I don’t know the truth deep down in my heart. y’all I am gonna flip lmao. it’s not that I dislike Shindou, strictly speaking. but just... I can’t explain what it is, but if you put him and AFO next to each other and told me “you can only punch one”, I would be having a serious crisis. just, THIS FUCKING GUY, idek. STOP SMILING

Tomura looks like he just wandered onto the set here by mistake and has no idea where he is or what is going on. it’s because you’re wearing a bigass severed hand that’s blocking your entire view, Tomura. just take the hand off your face my sweet murder dumpling

anyway! so I managed to also find a link to the full poll results while somehow managing to avoid spoilers, and then I wanted to compare the results to last year’s poll, and so I made... this

hopefully you can all see this. if you’re on desktop you might be screwed, but on mobile you should be able to click and enlarge it. I mean, assuming you actually give a fuck about boring poll analysis spreadsheets lmao

anyway, so there were actually 13k fewer votes cast this year which is a bit of a surprise. is the series not still growing in popularity? do people apparently have better things to do during their quarantine lol

anyways but despite this, and despite getting 8k fewer votes overall, Kacchan still managed almost twice as many as his closest competitor. well fought, Deku. please put down that pipe

I somehow always underestimate the power of ship popularity to influence these things. but for example, it looks like Present Mic got that Vigilantes Trio bump. ride that wave for all it’s worth my man! hell, you got me on board

Iida fucking Tenya somehow got some sort of POWER BOOST out of NOWHERE which I can’t explain at all lmao, but I’m here for it. NOT BAD FOR AN OLD MAN

Sero managed to get the exact same number of votes in both 2019 and 2020. clearly the most loyal fans in the business

Mirko being all the way down at #20 is, of course, a travesty, and I hereby nominate her to be the one to punch Shindou in the face

ngl though, the lack of a single female character in the top ten hurts just a bit. it’s not overly surprising, but still. the worst part of it is that even if you kicked Shindou to the curb and moved everyone else up one slot, it would still be all dudes since Mic beat out Momo by a margin of a little more than a hundred votes. hard to stay mad at Mic for too long, though. ah well

Tomura actually lost a bunch of votes which is a genuine surprise to me. I know the villain standom isn’t as dominant in Japan as it is in Western fandom, but still. you can go ahead and punch Shindou too I guess

Tokoyami lowkey doubled his vote count over the past year while hiding down there at #18. he is slowly becoming more powerful. biding his time

anyway so I think that’s it! I mean not really, but I’m getting kind of tired lol. so just, you know, insert the usual gripes at Overhaul’s ranking here, although we can be happy about Magne making her way onto the list (r.i.p.), and Mineta and AFO taking a very satisfying slide down (all the way out, in AFO’s case; good riddance you bum). Hadou also got a huge boost which is awesome. Mustard’s persistent ownership of the #36 spot will forever remain a mystery to me, but oh well

anyways, this was fun. and I really do feel like everyone is looking away on purpose so that when Deku brains Kacchan with that pipe in about two seconds from now, there will be no witnesses, oh my fucking god

[littlemisssquiggles]

What do you think of the idea of Emerald/Oscar? They have some soft moments together.

Hello Sweet o/ Well this squiggle meister is definitely on-board with the Green Team/Emerald City pair as a FRIEND-ship with Emerald being yet another proxy big sister figure to “adopt” Oscar as their close companion whereas the little prince in turn could finally provide Emerald with the strong and devoted family type of bond that Emerald truly wants and failed to garner from the villain side especially with Cinder Fall who she saw as a “mother” or close guardian figure who saved her from her former life of poverty.

Another reason why I like the Emerald City duo is because I’d like to think that part of Oscar’s willingness to believe in Emerald and desire to look out for her stems from him and Oz essentially fulfilling Hazel’s role of continuing to watch over her in his absence.

After all, it wasn’t just Oscar to be saved from Monstra. Emerald was too. Hazel Rainart gave his life to ensure that both Oscar and Emerald were finally free of Salem and since Hazel is gone, Oscar probably sees it as his right to stand by Em in his place; especially since he also owes her for his salivation.

Plus, a second reason why I think the showrunners may be pushing the Emerald City bond is because, ultimately, Emerald will become the next Fall Maiden; replacing Cinder Fall. 

Think about it. Professor Ozpin was the Headmaster of Beacon Academy. Beacon Academy is the fortress secretly housing the Vault of the Fall Maiden which contains the Crown of Choice---the only relic that Salem couldn’t acquire on her own since the true path to claiming it still rests in Ozma’s memories. Memories that will soon be passed onto Oscar Pine who is Ozma’s current incarnate officially succeeding Professor Ozpin.

Even if Oscar gains the knowledge to locate the Relic of Choice; he and the heroes would still need the hand of the Fall Maiden to open the vault. And as it stands, the Fall Maiden powers still rest with Cinder Fall who Emerald Sustrai was a former affiliate of and whom she shares a bond with; whether Cinder dares to admit it or not.

You see where I’m going with this?

 Emerald becoming the Fall Maiden after Cinder has been a headcanon for her that I’ve been rooting for since the conclusion of V5. Based on how things are shaping up and what is required to move forward, I think Cinder’s final curtain call may be drawing near and what would actually be most fitting is if Emerald is the one to deal the killing blow to Cinder.

As a matter of fact, it would almost be symbolic if Emerald is the one of all characters to be the one to put a stop to Cinder---not only saving the others from her but also ironically saving Cinder from herself. Emerald killing Cinder would be an act of mercy from someone who genuinely loved Cinder and wanted nothing but the best for her. And why I love this idea is because it would be a fantastic parallel to the end of Cinder’s backstory in the Midnight episode.

In RWBY V8CH6, Cinder’s path and descent in her megalomaniac madness was forged the instant she killed Rhodes. Say what you will about him as a character; Rhodes cared deeply for Cinder…even up until the moment she cut him down with the very same weapon he gifted her. 

So with that in mind, imagine how fitting of an ending it would be if Cinder died the very same way she was ‘born’, essentially.

You can pretty much say that the person we know Cinder Fall to be was born when she killed her former mentor and the one person in her life that actually genuinely cared about her at the time. 

 So…imagine the poetic irony that would be for Cinder Fall to now die---killed by the hands of her own former apprentice and the one person in her life who genuinely cared about her at the time---Emerald Sustrai.

Imagine if…Emerald kills Cinder and Cinder gets a strange sense of déjà vu because not only did her surprised expression at being killed by Emerald reflect the one Rhodes made to her the night he died but through Emerald, Cinder sees her former young self---the side of her she discarded when she chose her path that night. 

Cinder began her path with the bloody end of a blade through the chest of someone close to her. So for Emerald to kill Cinder the same way---even better if it’s done with her very own weapon---then that would be…downright perfect as ending to Cinder’s arc.

Apologies to all the Cinder Fall fans reading this post. The CRWBY showrunners have had Cinder dance with death one too many times. I myself have honestly been curious about how Cinder’s story was going to end in the canon. While I still like my Red Queen headcanon for her, I would be okay with Cinder dying if Emerald was the one to kill her.

NOT Ruby. NOT Jaune. But Emerald. If there is one character who would be most fitting to be the one to put an end to Cinder Fall, it would be Emerald.

Killing Cinder, especially if it was done in protection and/or aid of the heroes, would be the final nail in Emerald’s own arc of “switching sides”.

As stated back between V6 and V8, Cinder was technically the one thing still tying Em to the side of evil as she once remarked that she was only on Salem’s side out of her loyalty to Cinder. Emerald already left Salem but Cinder still lives as an anchor to possibly tempt Em back to the side of evil. But if Em were to be the one to stop Cinder, then that cord would finally be cut thus cementing Emerald as being on the side of good---officially in respect to her story.

Emerald helping to save Oscar and return him to his allies on Monstra doesn’t make her a “good guy”. Emerald helping our heroes take down Ironwood, help Penny and save the refugees of Atlas and Mantle doesn’t even make her a “good guy” either.

But stopping Cinder Fall for good---to be the one to put her down and essentially save everyone from the monster she knew Cinder would ultimately become if not stopped--- that, to me, would be the move to officiate Emerald Sustrai as a “good guy”.

Even better if Cinder were to plant the tough choice right in Em’s face. Imagine if…Cinder puts Oscar’s life in danger and orders Em to be the one to kill Oscar for her; like the devoted pawn she always treats her as. Imagine if…Em is placed in a position where she is made to choose between her old loyalty to Cinder as a villain or her newfound loyalty to Oscar as a hero.

Just as how Cinder was Emerald’s anchor to the villains on Salem’s side, Oscar is technically now Emerald’s anchor to the heroes on Ozpin’s side. So if Cinder forces Em to kill Oscar but Em ends up killing Cinder instead to save Oscar for a second time----this would be it. This would be the deed that cements Emerald as formally giving up on Cinder and fighting for the side of good; at least in my humble opinion.

And the cherry on top would be that killing Cinder causes the Fall Maiden powers to go directly to Emerald and if Emerald becomes the Fall Maiden---the maiden tied to the vault and relic housed in the school that is tied to Professor Ozpin whose very successor is her closest ally on the hero team---I’d like to think this would be a perfect conclusion to Emerald’s “arc”. I think that could work epically.

This is why I’m rooting for Em to become the next Fall Maiden. This happening would definitely further cement the Emerald City dynamic since Oscar’s new “big sister” or rather “cousin” would be the maiden tied to “his” relic needed to open “his” vault hidden in “his” school.

(I think I’d rather refer to Emerald as Oscar’s adopted cousin since I low-key like the concept of Oscar taking Emerald back home with him to Mistral only for her to be adopted immediately by his family since Emerald was an orphan who grew up on the streets and never truly had a family of her own but ultimately finds one with the Pines who willingly take her in. It FITS; dagnabbit.)

My one gripe with Emerald City duo though is that I wished it had better build-up throughout the series run. I’d be lying if the fact that Emerald and Oscar barely had any interactions prior to V8 definitely hurts the believability of them suddenly being close now with Oscar willing to vouch for the good in Emerald…even though he literally just met her like yesterday according to the timeline.

I know it helps the meme of Emerald “only knowing Oscar for 24 hours and would be willing to kill anyone who dares to hurt him” but from a storytelling perspective, I really wish the development of this dynamic had been delivered better. I mean I’m happy that we finally got the payoff of Emerald and Oscar becoming friends and seeing Em joining the heroes thanks to her friendship with Oscar…but it’s like eating a delicious cheese burger without the cheese.

You get to see the beginning of it and the joyful payoff of the end but the middle part that was needed to make it fully work is non-existent and ends up hurting it in respect to consistency. 

While I understand that Emerald helped to save Oscar’s life---that’s not really enough to sell his sudden faith in her. At least for me. Can’t speak for everyone else. Since, like I said, we barely got any scenes of Oscar and Em interacting before she showed up to help get him out of Monstra.

The ONLY thing that’s canonically helping sell Emerald City to me is the fact that Hazel was shown to care for and look out for Emerald’s wellbeing in the past and since Oscar spent more time with Hazel; by extension; custody of Em was transferred to Oscar/Oz the minute Hazel died…especially since, he was technically the one forced to kill him when he sacrificed himself to stop Salem.

I guess I just personally would’ve liked to have seen these two interact more over the seasons, particularly for V8 while Oscar was imprisoned. 

Perhaps that chance will come now that Em is on the team working with ALPN. And it would probably work even better if Em becomes the Fall Maiden. But for now that’s mostly just speculation.

All in all, bottom line---as I’ll say again, this squiggle meister really likes Emerald City as another close friendship dynamic for Oscar and Em respectively and I’m looking forward to seeing how this dynamic develops over the next season. 

I’m curious to see how much more Em and Oscar can help each other as friends especially since Oscar still has own inner demons with the Merge to deal with emotionally and I’m especially curious to see how Em would react to reuniting with Mercury in Vacuo now that she’s joined the heroes---even better if she’s now the Fall Maiden after killing Cinder. 

That should be a fun development but we’ll see how that goes. In the meantime, hope this lengthy response answers your question, Sweet XD

~ LittleMissSquiggles (2021)

[butwhatifidothis]

I did it! Finally fucking did it! I 100% the support log for 3H….Holy shit, that took longer than I was expecting, lol. 

(Long rant, so heads up.)

I came in thinking “Oh they finally time-locked the supports, so I don’t have to have the damn cursor mocking me every time I open the menu like in Awakening and Fates, hurr hurr”. No no no no no. At least for Awakening and Fates, it was on my dumb ass for pressing the S-support and saving when I knew I shouldn’t. First off, if they wanted us to regain supports for Byleth in NG+, why the heck are supports for characters like Edelgard, Rhea, Dorothea and Lindhart locked? I don’t mean time-locked like the post-TS supports in a regular playthrough, I mean deadass “you can’t buy this, period” locked. “Oh it’s because you haven’t advanced that far in the story yet”. I can buy post-TS supports for the other characters, what makes El and Rhea exceptions?! The only thing that would be lost is that I don’t have to replay their entire route to get their S-support twice. It’s not like there’s enough differences between Bylad and Bylass to warrant the supports being locked, none of the characters specify a specific gender in their dialogue, and as far as different models go, changing models during a cutscene is coded into the game, so that should be no issue.  

After going through the monastery option enough times, the hubworld is in this weird limbo state where it feels like it was made specifically for Byleth’s benefit (faculty training, recruiting party members, etc,) but the rest of the party seems to benefit from it instead (Instructions, Motivation points, etc). The Explore vs Battle options just don’t mix well, which feels like poor design choice. You can focus on auxiliary battles to raise your party’s level, but at the cost of potentially missing out on more party members. You can instead focus on the monastery to recruit party members, but at the cost of Byleth falling behind due to splitting activity points between recruiting and faculty training, and being in the monastery means less time grinding for levels. This isn’t as much of a problem in NG+, but if a game needs NG+ to lessen a design problem, then that’s more of a sign to me that the idea itself needed more ironing out. 

 As far as using the monastery to raise support points goes, the hubworld definitely needs a revamp. The only (good) options available are Meal Time and Choir Practice, with the latter being limited to once per week and the former making me think that the monastery must eat their own weapons to survive due to how fucking scarce food ingredients are. Getting meat and fish isn’t too big of an issue so long as you have enough money, but produce might as well be an urban legend. There were too many times where I had 60+ fish/meat, but produce was at fucking 1. I get that they wanted to be “realistic” in having seeds grow once per week, but if it’s at the cost of a gameplay element being nigh unplayable, then some more thought needs to be put into it. Sothis is a goddess of life and time, maybe her powers allow Byleth to make plants grow faster. Just something to make this section actually playable. 

The final thing I wanted to talk about when it comes to the monastery is that, for some baffling reason, it is entirely possible to lock yourself out of key events like S-supports or being able to choose CF, simply by skipping to the end of the month. I’m not sure why this is a thing. It’s not like the game was designed with speedruns in mind (I mean, it is possible to beat a route in an hour, but fuck me if I ever succeeded in that), and nothing happens like a prompt popping up that you have to explore the monastery during that month or even limiting your options to just Explore (which the game has done before). This is especially weird for the quest in getting Jeralt’s ring (how to access S-supports), since Byleth is supposed to be sad in this month, so not being able to do seminars or Byleth being undeployable during auxiliary battles would make sense. 

The option to choose CF is even worse though, because at least for Jeralt’s ring it’s a Red Quest that doesn’t allow you to finish exploring unless you complete it. For Edelgard, however? A dime-a-dozen quest prompt you can entirely look over and skip. No prompt by the game, no indication to talk to Edelgard, nothing. FFS, Rhea’s tea time quest was given more thought. At least her quest marker is a unique color. 

(End of rant…sort of) 

…So anyways, that was my experience with the game, lmao. Now you or someone else may be thinking, “nonnie, if you had this many problems completing the game, why did you bother?”, and the answer to that good question is…I’m not completely sure, lol. I know there’s more than one reason why, so bear with me here. I know part of it is due to sunk-cost fallacy (“I’m already this far into the game, I might as well fully complete it”), but I think a bigger reason is because I knew ahead of time that the routes were so similar to each other that there was little point in having a route split to begin with (except for CF, but who gives a fuck about that?). Despite all of my bitching, I do really like 3H even if I admit that it’s my least favorite FE game that I’ve played so far. I guess a part of me just wanted to like the game more despite my issues with it. 

Now that I think about it, maybe the main reason was for fear of future mainline games. People are fear to like whatever part of a game that they wish, but I do think that 3H introduced some fundamental storytelling flaws that I’d rather not see repeated in the future, with me focusing on 3 in particular: 1) The Monastery, 2) Route Splits and 3) Byleth. 

Aside from what I already talked about in regards to the monastery, if we are going to get another hubworld in the new FE title, have it to where it doesn’t conflict with how the rest of the story is presented. Is it better to simply tell us that the Western Church is xenophobic in an easily skippable side quest early on, or is it better to show us? Enemy Western Church NPCs going after foreign party members like Dedue or Petra more aggressively and calling them “animals” or the like, the map having Duscari NPCs locking themselves indoors for fear that the Western Church will persecute them, things of that nature. Is it better to tell us that there has been civil unrest in the Empire and the citizens revolting against Edelgard, or is it better to show us? Enemy Adrestian Civilian NPCs, assassins specifically going after Edelgard in a map, maybe one where a large farmland has been stripped bare. Things like that. 

I’d rather do away with the Persona-calendar/Monastery hubworld, but if they are here to stay then they need enough content in it to keep the player engaged for 20-odd chapters, because there isn’t enough content in Garreg Mach to even hold up 12 chapters. Speaking of more content, if there’s going to be another route split in the next title, then there needs to be enough differences in the routes that actually warrants having a route split. Fates already did this well in having the route split be early in the game, along with the plot and story maps of each route being different, you could even skip to the route split moment on subsequent playthroughs, so 3H’s approach in having to play the same 12 chapters 3-4 times just felt like a massive downgrade. Playing multiple routes should feel rewarding rather than tedious, is what I’m trying to say. 

Finally, and most importantly, I know that no one at IS is reading this but on the off chance that someone is - please, for the love of God, do not make another blank-slate/self insert main character like Byleth. Or at the very least, don’t have them be the focal point of the story, it’s a big reason why AM just works better than the other routes. For a game like FE, “self-insert” and “protagonist” goes as well as oil and water. Now, out of those three flaws listed, the Byleth one is what I’m hard set on. The monastery and route split flaws, my opinion might be flexible within reason, but the Byleth one…not so much, lol. If we really do get another self-insert doll for a main character, that alone is going to make the next game a hard sell for me, because seeing all the praise Byleth got (and has been getting) makes me fear that IS is going to take the wrong lesson from this and think they don’t have to put effort in making their protagonist anything resembling an actual person and their audience will still lap it up. It would be one thing if I just hated the character, but I don’t. I’m disappointed, which is even worse.

…With that said, it’s still better than whatever the heck Cap’n’Crunch is doing. Okay, rant over. For real this time.

—

I agree with a lot said here! But I do have a few disagreements, though they’re mostly my opinion than anything else lol

And this first one is probably like, extremely unpopular given how much shit I’ve seen flung at this aspect of 3H, but like… I actually really like the Monastery? Like yes, absolutely, it should have done more to not shelter the player from how bad the war is and it should change more with the world instead of being in this mostly limbo state where apparently seasons don’t real. I definitely also have those complaints, but to me, the Monastery was fine for the most part. A lot of the issues you brought up, like supports and Faculty Training and supplies for eating, weren’t a problem for me almost at all. My only real gripe is with how hard it is for Byleth to get training in Flying, Mounted and especially Heavy Armor without NG+ unlocking weapons ranks, since they don’t have access to Weekly Chores. I do believe I still managed to recruit everyone while only unlocking C in Faith on my Maddening playthrough of GD, but it certainly wasn’t easy. But I feel a lot of the problem people have with it are on subsequent playthroughs where they’re trying to do things like 100% any aspect of 3H, which yeah is gonna exacerbate the issues tenfold. Cuz like, while those three weapons ranks I mentioned are hard for Byleth to raise, on Normal mode you have unlimited auxiliary battles to help with all the other ones. 

Like, I wanted to get Claude’s Dex to the max amount right? Just cuz I felt like it. And in doing that I found out just how tedious it is to get levels once a unit gets to a certain point, just cuz while Normal Mode gives you the Retreat option that lets you keep exp so you can drop a unit down on a yellow spot and get a decent boost in exp… you can do that like, twice or thrice on a story chapter. Once if it’s auxiliary (and not the freebie one). And that’s if you even have internet. And using the greenhouse to get Ailiell Pomegranates was a pain because they weren’t really guaranteed even if I used nothing but the right seed - doing that is more consistent, but not always, and I usually only got one anyway. It was annoying! But I was also doing a specific thing that’s gonna heighten the flaws in the system that I never would have noticed - didn’t even notice - unless I did that. The flaws are still there, don’t get me wrong! The Monastery definitely still needs improvement, battles still need to be a little more streamlined for future playthrough, but the flaws can seem a bit bigger than they are once you do certain things outside of a casual playthrough, know what I mean?

But, for example, when replaying 3H on hard mode and looking to recruit everyone after my no recruitment run, I didn’t come across any dilemma over “recruitment or Byleth being good, pick one.” That was the run my Byleth was usable, in fact - my first blind run that was no recruitment (save for Shamir) had my Byleth be pretty much completely useless while literally everyone else was fine. Also never came across problems with supplies for cooking (or at least not any big enough to comment on). So like, while these (and the above stuff) can certainly be problems for players trying to do everything everything in 3H, at least from my experience I just haven’t come across them. The monastery itself definitely needed a better story implementation, but yeah. I could’ve just been lucky tho lmao

I don’t mind how they implemented trying to get on CF at all tho lol. If you’ve been playing the game like it suggests you do - supporting characters and exploring the monastery  there’s no reason for players to have missed getting on CF. If players wanted to ignore one of the biggest aspects of the game I don’t really feel that bad for them when they miss out on very achievable things. Plus, CF’s requirements are nothing in terms of FE’s madness when it comes to getting on a route. It may be more specific than any other route, but like I said, playing the game as the game tells you to would naturally land you in it (the only thing that might be a bit unfair is that I think if you talk with Edelgard at all that month you have to decide right then and there, and then the whole month is lost. Kinda ass). 

Binding Blade, for example, requires you to do specific things that few first time players would think to do in multiple, random chapters in order for you to get the best ending. With absolutely no warning as to when these chapters happen and what to do in them. And some of these requirements are not fun lmao, I’d prefer how they did it with CF than with how they’ve handled ~secret~ stuff before personally

Pretty much agree with everything else though! While 3H is actually one of my more favored games in the series, I’ll be the first to admit that its storytelling is in dire need of improvement. Having the story and lore of the game just be spat out in lore dumps and this or that NPC just isn’t that good. Or if they are going to do that, at the very least give some visuals to go along with it! Imagine how much impactful Rhea’s story would have been if it was in a visual format, like CGs and/or a cutscene. It still would be an info dump, but at least we can see for ourselves how horrific the Red Canyon was for her! And I do not want another avatar in whatever next mainline game we get, personality or not. We’ve evolved past the need for self-inserts that all the characters Just Like lmao

But thanks for sharing your thoughts!! And sorry that it took so long for me to get to answering ;w; 

[takerfoxx]

Magia Record, Season 2, Finale, First Impressions!

Houston, we have several problems.

As I said before, there is a lot I like about the finale of the second season of Magia Record. Granted, I wasn't actually expecting them to wrap things up here, so I wasn't disappointed like many others were when it ended on a to-be-continued, as that was what I thought would happen. But there were some major issues that I'm going to address later.

But let's get to the good stuff first: Tsuruno. Like with Sayaka when I first watched the original show, she became a favorite of mine. I dunno, I just like the upbeat go-getter characters, doubly so if it's to hide a broken interior.

Now, Tsuruno has been very absent this season up until she became an Uwasa, but they definitely made up for lost time. And we got to see in very painful detail just how wrong Yachiyo was about her, how much she never knew her friend. And once again, I really love how the PMMM franchise as a whole handles flashbacks and character exposition. From Kyouko's puppet show to Mitama's shadowplay to the stage play we got here. It's a very effective way to impart information while leaving the audience fully engaged.

Tsuruno is someone who was with Yachiyo from the beginning. Maybe not as a member of the villa because she had a family and a job and such, but still part of the team. But as the tragedies we saw last season began to pile up, Tsuruno began to break right along Yachiyo and resolved to overcome her weaknesses to prevent them happening again. But unlike Yachiyo, Tsuruno didn't wall herself off, but instead doubled-down on her cheery attitude and outward display of confidence she didn't feel. Of course, it doesn't help much when you learn that the witch that you just killed was also your departed friend.

And Yachiyo acknowledges this. She realizes that she wasn't the only one hurting, and was deeply regretful for only focusing on her own pain, and resolves to do better. And when she again tries to connect with Tsuruno, it works. I admit, I did get a bit of a lump in my throat when everyone was celebrating having saved her. Sometimes the good guys do get to win. And I especially loved this little line by Iroha.

"We're all weak. So let's support each other!"

Beautiful.

It's interesting how many parallels there exist between Yachiyo and Homura, and yet how different they are. Homura became singularly obsessed with a single person to the exclusion of all others, while for as much as Yachiyo wanted to save Iroha in particular, she is more focused on rebuilding her found family as a whole. Kind of makes you wonder how Homura would have turned out had she bonded with everyone, or if Yachiyo had to endure the same time loops Homura did.

I'm also interested in where they take Kuroe. I'm assuming that her shadow self is her Doppel taking control? I did catch the big of meta-commentary of her Doppel telling her that she doesn't belong with the others, considering that she's an anime original character not from the games.

And finally...huh. Nemu recognizes Iroha, so I assume her memories were never taken like the others. But is she implying that Ui never existed, that she was a false memory created to motivate Iroha into...something? That would be quite the twist, and would also fit everything that has been revealed before.

Now, let's get to the parts that I didn't like.

To start, for as much care as the OG squad were given in previous episodes, here their wrap-up felt pretty rushed. I get that they couldn't just re-do the whole flashback stage play for Mami, but even so, it was a bit too easy. And Kyouko definitely should have been the one to make the connect, as she was the one who already saw Mami at her worst. It's a minor gripe, but it's there.

Okay, now let's talk about the green elephant in the room.

=sigh=

The production on this season has been something of a trainwreck. I commend the creative staff and even the animators for still putting in a valiant effort, but it's clear that there are some major issues going on behind the scenes.

Now, we all know of the issues Studio SHAFT has been having these last few years. And the pandemic hitting Japan especially hard definitely didn't help. That's probably part of the reason why they only went for eight episodes this season.

Even so, the last few episodes were blatantly unfinished in places, from the really dodgy animation to the Meguca faces even in close-up to some parts with the dialogue outright missing. And now there was the issue with missing subtitles, and in some very important parts at that! So kudos to that fansubber who stepped up to fix the situation.

Now, I don't know if this error was on SHAFT or Funimation's end, but after this and seeing what happened to Wonder Egg Priority, it's clear that something is breaking down behind the scenes. I know anime and manga are very cutthroat industries, and you have to work yourself to the bone to churn the product out as efficiently as they have, but let's face it: it isn't worth putting the production crews through this. Something needs to change. Don't know what, don't know how, but as an industry something needs to change in how their staff is treated. I just hope that it actually starts.

[omegatheunknown]

AEW Double or Nothing 2021

In which the spirit of WCW is alive in confusing and delightful ways and we are left to parse whether overbooking and extracurriculars are offset by having actually very good wrestling happening at the same time.

- Lessons learned from Revolution on the production side? Maybe just cool it on pyro, though the rappelling adventure in the Stadium Stampede showed some of that now-characteristic 'trust us it'll look better on TV' flair. Hot crowd tends to paper over most woes, and the crowd was pretty hot. My one gripe is that the casino theme is hanging around like yesterday's takeout containers. Nothing wrong with clinging to a theme, I just think it's time for season 2. My suggestion? Under the Sea.

*Pre-Card Serena Deeb (C) v Riho for the NWA Women's Championship (***1/2) - Serena Deeb's star has finally risen. She's a remarkably consistent technician and she can get a match out of anyone at this point. She's working at the level of Mercedes Martinez or Madison Eagles at this point, it's amazing that she was overlooked or considered fit only to be a coach for so long. With the NWA belt she has this new swagger, she's basically everything Tessa Blanchard might bring to the table with none of the downsides (Serena has a lot of friends and seems like a lovely person, even!) - Riho's back and here to stay. Her time in Stardom didn't do much for my evaluation of her, which is that there are many better wrestlers that would be better representatives of the joshi style and she's merely pretty good. - The match was very good. Serena showcased a champion's aggression against a sympathetic Riho, they really work well against each other, Deeb's technical prowess against Riho's flexibility led to a very dynamic finish.

*Main Card Hangman Adam Page v Brian Cage (***1/2) - Here the shenanigans start. Brian Cage is on Team Taz, Team Taz has nothing else much to do tonight, so why wouldn't Team Taz flex their muscles, bait us with HOOK, etc? (Because it would be nice to have some variety in the card in terms of a match where one competitor stands across from another competitor?) - Hangman is (checking notes) yeah, still over as fuck, as befits the Anxious Millennial Cowboy. Cage terrifies me, he's a child's drawing of a body builder. He do be very agile for a man of his immense musculature tho. They match up well, Page is biggish for a flyer, Cage loves to play catch. Nothing much to write home about, other than Hangman's beautiful moonsault to the floor and what was overall a very good curtain jerker. - Okay fine, I am curious about Cage's reluctance to lean on the goons, Starks can't come back soon enough.

The Young Bucks v Jon Moxley & Eddie Kingston (***) - I will not be referring to Mox & Eddie as (The) Wild Things because it gives me 'he calls it the wacky line' flashbacks for some reason. - The Bucks have to cheat and abuse Rick Knox's attention span constantly to be on even footing with Mox & Eddie, which is a clever sort of thing that gets washed out by the appearance of LG and Karl Anderson, which again, is cool in a vacuum but was the story of the evening. - Pace was weird - repetitive in eliminating Eddie, then Mox fights back, failed hope spot, Bucks team up, Eddie saves x2/3 in a row. - Mox, unlike Cody (in so many ways,) will probably actually be taking some time off with Renee, which is the kind of thing I would prefer not to know in terms of booking, but they really uh, put him down on the canvas here, and it felt pretty finale-esque.

Casino Battle Royale (n/r, but on the balance pro) - Any changes to the theme of the PPV would likely include changing up the nonsense suit format of these largely joyless slogs. - Obviously anticipating a NJPW talent, or... I dunno, actually -- Lio Rush was a surprise. Got in a quick demonstration of his otherworldly quickness, and you know what, there's probably a fun place for him in AEW. He'll need some friends, of course, feel like Team Taz might fit his temperament. I wonder if he was aware of the Mark Henry news... - Christian does not need to win this kind of match to get a title shot, obviously, but that said it was super lovely to use him to give Jungle Boy the shine. Jungle Boy would be a license to print money if he was even as big as Hangman. - Could register some continued griping about how Penta is not getting his due in AEW but he also literally was dressed as the Joker so I'm low on sympathy on this one particular night.

Anthony Ogogo v Cody Rhodes (*) - I did not like this. It's hard for me to read jingoism as a face move to begin with, and Cody's was egregiously tone deaf and kinda silly yet delivered without a trace of irony because Cody doesn't do irony on purpose, ridiculous neck tattoo aside. - Great argument to be made that Ogogo just isn't experienced enough to be winning matches against Cody. But like, what are we doing here? Cody needs to take some time off, maybe. I thought that's what was happening when he had his mini feud with Penta that really just ended in quick decisive Cody win. I though maybe Cody was being turned when QT and The Factory snapped-- sure, they're a group of impotent player 2s, but Cody is an out of touch elitist with a callous and manipulative streak. Alas, also no. America #1. - Cody is approximately 8 times as tough as Billy Gunn based on his weathering of the one punch man. Match ran a bit long given how little there was to go on. Cody gigged? Quelle surprise. - Cody had the best match on the card like, 3 out of the first 4 AEW events or something, and that was all booking and storytelling. I do hope Cody follows Moxley's lead into a little sabbatical.

Miro (C) v Lance Archer for the TNT Championship (**1/2) - Card's hossiest hoss match, a quick burst reminiscent of a car wreck. Absolutely hit on what it should've hit on but a little slow moving considering it went all of 10 minutes. - I will not complain about Jake the Snake, who I love. And also the gimmick spot, with Miro very astutely yeeting what was definitely a snake in a bag (surely.) back down the tunnel.

Dr Britt Baker, DMD v Hikaru Shida (C) for the AEW Women's Championship (***) - Picked up a lot of steam toward the end but seemed a little toothless (heh) until the last five. - Shida 'deserved' some more time as champion in front of crowds but also it's time to let heel Britt reach her peak, I can't even imagine how obnoxious she can be as the champ, it's going to be great.

Sting & Darby Allin v Ethan Page & Scorpio Sky (***1/2) - Such is the power of STING that I feel like I might be underrating this match... I mean it was an okay match about very simply getting some revenge and the sixty year old man did a very subdued Code Red and a slightly less subdued dive. He's also Sting. They missed an opportunity in calling it the 'Scorpio' Death Drop, but the main takeaway here is you see something like this where it's The Icon and you start to understand why WWE trots out their legends to come out of incredibly still kick ass without bending their knees. - The difference, I guess, is that Sting is absolutely being used to build up Darby Allin, whereas it's not like the fed brought back Goldberg and his attendant aura to pump up... anyone but Goldberg?

Kenny Omega (C) v PAC v Orange Cassidy for the AEW World Championship (****) - Off the top I have to say I'm very sad that the rest of the Galaxy's Greatest Friends were seen only very briefly, nice of them to bring OC's backpack. - Also have to point out that PAC's promo featured one of my favourite jokes, that Kenny must be short for Kenneth as a sort of legal/birth name belonging to a professional wrestler. (See also: Samoa Joseph) - And Mr Cassidy certainly did try in this match, ragdoll sells and all. Kenneth and PAC are absurd talents who bring aerial, power and technical maneuvers in equal measure and OC is not doing any of those on the same level, but he picked his spots, showed his genre savvy and hung in there to the point that he wasn't just the fall guy. - The extracurriculars continue in a match that was already a little overboard for silliness due to asymmetry... I think if you're the Invisible Hand it would've made sense to save up all your tricks for this match, but who am I to question the golden goose? - Sure, Kenny and Don ran the classic heel manager interference spot and taking out the ref in desperation spot but having to take out the ref because PAC wouldn't break the hold is fun, as is the stupid/inspired sense in running the 'smash opponent with the belt' spot four times so as none of your heavy gold prizes feel left out. (I love that AAA Mega Championship, they weren't on TV so we get to see it?) - "Fuck You, Don," indeed.

The Inner Circle v The Pinnacle in 'Stadium Stampede II' (***1/2) - This one had to grow on me for two reasons, first that it's usually pretty unforgivable to co-opt the main event spot from the championship match, and second to law of diminishing returns on dumb gimmick matches. - But grow it did. There's a full on meat locker? Commentary will refer to a cardboard cut-out of Shahid Khan as Tony Khan's father (that's canon now,) and Jericho will lovingly pat it? Konnan happened to be the DJ at whatever night club there is a Jaguar Stadium? Spears surrounds himself dramatically with chairs and his hoisted by his own petard? - Ultimately it comes down to letting Sammy shine. His involvement with the Inner Circle has sometimes come at the cost of being able to showcase that prior to AEW he was an ascendant talent in PWG, on his way to Ricochet level feats of acrobatic excess. Still feel like Sammy could've/should've been the one tossed off the cage a few weeks ago, but even better is being the guy getting the pin in the ring.

[andrewmoocow]

Steven Universe Alternate Future chapter 22: Pumpkin Patch (originally published on August 9, 2021)

AN: At long last, the homestretch of Part 3, which I have already dubbed the Tearjerking Three last time. And for our first entry into this trilogy, we finally get an update on the relationship between Peridot and Lapis, which I found to be done so dirty in Future as a Lapidot shipper. I mean, they didn't even interact with each other even when they were in the same episode together! Plus, Pumpkin just disappeared into thin air once the movie came along, leaving the only hint of where she is now are those similar gourd puppies from The Future. But enough griping, let's get my personal answer on what really happened, and maybe a big surprise that I no doubt have already spoiled on DeviantArt anyways.

Synopsis: Steven, Peridot and Lapis reminisce on the anniversary of Pumpkin's death.

Cast:

Zach Callison as Steven, Pumpkin

Shelby Rabara as Peridot, Squaridot

Jennifer Paz as Lapis, Laz, Zuli

Estelle as Garnet

Michaela Dietz as Amethyst, Ocean Jasper

Deedee Magno-Hall as Pearl

Uzo Aduba as Bismuth

Amy Sedaris as Teal Zircon

Jeff Bergman as Farmer

Featuring Billie Eilish as Turquoise

--

"Maybe I'll find myself smiling on that distant shore," Steven sang to himself while gazing at his watch as the oven timer counted down in front of him. "Maybe I'm not alone."

The timer beeped, notifying Steven that whatever he had in the oven was ready. After putting on some oven mitts and opening the oven, Steven pulled a pumpkin pie out and set it on the counter to cool. "This one is for you two, guys." He said before gazing at a nearby calendar that read June 7th. "I remember it like it was yesterday." Steven then began to reminisce on the aftermath of his visit to Homeworld.

--

A few weeks the Crystal Gems have successfully convinced the Diamonds to help them in healing the corrupted Gems on Earth, these Gems now needed somewhere to live. As far as Steven knew, there was no way they could expand the Temple to make room for all of them, and he's sure none of the newly healed Gems wanted to return to Homeworld, so the Crystal Gems decided that their only choice now was to build them their own little town. They had some basic ideas down, but all they needed now was a name.

"How about Peritropolis?!" Peridot suggested as she wrote down her choice of name on the whiteboard, with little sketches of her face surrounding the name for emphasis. "Pretty cool, huh?"

"How about something that won't stroke your ego?" Steven frowned at the idea.

"What about Barnstantinople?" Lapis proposed. "We are building it around where the barn used to be after all."

"Speaking of which, how's clean-up on that going?" Amethyst asked, looking out the window to gaze at the wreckage that was once Lapis and Peridot's barn house home. "I think some bits of it might be useful somehow."

"I say we put that on hold." Lapis stated. "That old barn caused just as much harm to Peridot and me as much as it did good."

"You serious about this?" Peridot asked her blue roommate. "I mean, we had so many good memories in there."

"Yeah, and a lot of those memories were you just bending over backwards trying to keep me happy." Lapis added. "I know you're still sad about me jumping ship and coming back with only a "Hey", but I still got things to work out, y'know."

"OK." Peridot said just as their pet Pumpkin opened the door. "Oh, hey Pumpkin!"

In contrast to Peridot being excited to see Pumpkin, the little canine fruit let out an exhausted bark before sitting down to nap, revealing wrinkles around her eyeholes.

"Hey, is your little buddy there doin' alright?" Bismuth asked. "I barely know a thing about the lifespan of organic creatures, but even I know she ain't doing so hot."

"Oh, I'm sure she's just tired!" Peridot assured Bismuth. "Just needs to rest, that's all!"

"Don't be so sure Peridot." Garnet advised the little Gem. "Pumpkin was brought to life with magic, which means she's probably lived longer than a pumpkin normally does."

"Just let her be happy Garnet." Pearl whispered into Garnet's ear. "She's already been through so much recently, and I don't think she can take anymore."

"You sure she's OK Dottie?" Steven asked Peridot regarding Pumpkin. "Nothing lasts forever, you know."

"Oh, she just needs some extra time in the Sun!" Peridot laughed. But despite her insistence, that wasn't how the story really went.

--

"Okay, a little to the left!" Peridot commanded Squaridot as the eye Gem Peridot levitated a lifeguard chair around while Bismuth, Ocean Jasper & Teal Zircon dug up the ground to build a swimming pool. "No, your other left!" she corrected herself. "Wait wait, your other OTHER left!"

"There's no such thing as an other other left!" Squaridot yelled and grumpily set the chair down next to where she was standing. "How's this?"

"Perfect." Peridot gave her fellow technician a thumbs up before turning around to see the Lapis twins walk towards the construction site. "Oh, I see our lifeguards wanna start early!"

"Why was it necessary for us to dress in these?" Laz wondered while modeling the red one-piece she was wearing. "I don't think red is my color."

"I don't know about you Laz, but I make this look good!" Zuli declared while flaunting her body in a matching outfit. "We look just like the hotties on Coast Patrol or Destiny from CPH season 3! By the way, where's Lapis? She's head lifeguard, so shouldn't she be out here with us?"

"She still has the suit, but she's not coming out because today is a special day." Peridot stated. "It's the anniversary of a certain something."

"Hey, I think I can see Steven's car!" Ocean Jasper cried out as she peeked out of the hole to find Steven disembarking from his Dondai Supremo and walking over with the pumpkin pie in hand. "And he's got a pie, maybe as thanks for our hard work."

"Naw, I don't think it's for us Ocean." Bismuth said just as Steven walked over to Peridot. "I think we should leave them alone for a bit and get back to work."

"Aw, but I wanted a pie!" Teal Zircon complained.

"I see you got the pie." Peridot said to Steven while gazing at the pie in his hands. "In case you're wondering, we worked on a new meep morp last night dedicated to her."

"Okay, why don't you show me?" Steven offered.

"I'd be happy to." Peridot smiled before turning back to everyone at the in-progress pool. "Keep up the good work everyone, I'll just be taking the rest off!"

"Yeah, take some time for yourself, Peri." Bismuth replied while Squaridot used her burgeoning ferrokinesis to lift the blacksmith out of the pool. "Just don't get too teary-eyed and fill up the pool early."

"Yeah, we're planning on filling the pool for our opening ceremony!" Teal called while struggling to get out.

"And I'm just gonna catch some rays." Laz declared as she sat down on a lawn chair, pulled some sunglasses over her eyes, and began sunbathing. However, her moment of peace was cut off by Zuli loudly blowing into her whistle and laughing.

"So, who's the pie really for Bis?" Ocean Jasper asked as she climbed out the pool before helping Teal and the two sat down next to Bismuth.

"You two got a moment?" Bismuth asked, and the Jasper and Zircon nodded in affirmation. "Well, the pie is actually for a friend of theirs."

--

Steven and Peridot kept walking away from the pool and eventually found themselves in front of the Little Homeworld house that Lapis & Peridot shared. It looked like a smaller version of the barn the two Gems once lived in, but instead of being decorated with a mishmash of items around the barnyard, it now looked like Peridot did most of the construction with bits of metal and advanced technology sprinkled onto a simple-looking two-story cabin.

"Hey Lapis, we're here." Steven called out to Lapis as he and Peridot entered the cabin to find Lapis napping on the couch with a manga on her lap and a red one-piece hanging on a clothes hanger nearby. "Lapis, wake up."

"Agh, don't go with her Pierre!" Lapis yelled as she woke up from her nap and rubbed her eyes to find Peridot & Steven before her. "Sorry you guys, I was trying on my lifeguard uniform, but then I got bored and decided to relax a little."

"You still remember what day it is?" Peridot asked while Steven presented his pumpkin pie.

"Yeah, I still do." Lapis declared sadly. "Want to see the meep morp we've been working on, Steven?"

"Sure." Steven replied before the two Gems took him upstairs to their shared bedroom & workshop, where a very large sculpture of Pumpkin stood, a big smile permanently etched onto the front beneath a pair of innocent eyes. "Almost like the real thing. Except bigger."

"Showing this to you makes me miss her even more." Peridot began to hold back tears. "I still remember how I coped with it too."

--

The groundbreaking ceremony of what would soon become Little Homeworld went quite swimmingly for the Crystal Gems, thanks to the support of their Beach City friends and the Diamonds. But amidst the rejoicing of a new beginning for Gems on Earth, there was some bad news that flew right under everyone's noses.

After Peridot marked the giant pit where the barn once was with Little Homeworld's flag, Pumpkin came strolling up to her green owner looking far wearier and more decayed than she did previously, a sight which worried them greatly. As soon as the ceremonies ended, Pumpkin was rushed back to the beach house.

"Please Steven, you gotta do something!" Peridot begged Steven while Pumpkin laid before the trio with a heavy sigh emitting from her mouth. "Pumpkin doesn't have much time left, surely you must have the solution like you always do!"

"I'm really sorry Peridot." Steven said regretfully. "As much as I would love to help you and Lapis out, Pumpkin wasn't long for this Earth anyways. Death is a perfectly natural part of life. It can be real sad and scary to watch someone you treasured so dearly go, but ultimately, their time will come all the same."

"So, she was going to die regardless?" Lapis said apprehensively while stroking the living gourd's rotting body. "I don't really see how this is possible since you did bring her to life with your powers, but I can deal with it."

"Well, I'm not!" Peridot objected tearfully. "It's not fair! I've already been through so much, why does the universe have to keep nailing the hammer into the coffin?!"

"Peridot, I know you're upset, but you gotta listen." Steven tried comforting his little green pal. "Death is completely natural, even if it's scary. I mean, my dad might die someday, and so might Connie. I'm not sure if I can die like a human though."

"Well, your race is different." Peridot declared. "None of you will ever know what it's like to live forever!" With that, she stormed out of the beach house to vent, leaving her two friends to worry for Peridot.

"I don't think I want to know where this is going." Lapis muttered.

"If it's anything like what happened to Peridot after you left Earth, I don't think she'll take it very well." Steven agreed.

--

Using a trashcan lid, Peridot flew far away from the general area of Beach City and into the countryside, where farmlands were very prosperous. Farmlands like the ones she and Lapis tended to together in the past, and the ones where Pumpkin was born. The very sight of all these fresh crops made her more miserable. What gave them the right to grow so healthy while Pumpkin looked so withered?

"Rackum frackum produce, I'll show you what for!" Peridot mumbled as she touched down in front of a pumpkin patch and swiftly got to work on destroying them. "You walked so Pumpkin could die!" she yelled as her green body became covered in orange pumpkin insides. "Why can't anything go my way for once?!"

"Hey, get offa my crops ya gremlin!" a farmer yelled at Peridot while stomping over to her with a pitchfork in hand. "You got any idea what it's like to work so hard on a great harvest, only for it to be ruined by a bunch of punks?!"

"No, but I'm sure you don't know what it's like to love someone only to lose them!" Peridot argued with the farmer, a retort that stunned him a little before he tried to look more sympathetic.

"Coping, eh?" the farmer said. "Look, you have every right to get mad, but that don't mean you can just stomp all over someone else's hard work! You gotta find better ways to vent, ya know!"

"Look, sir, I literally just ran away from home, I don't have time right now." Peridot coldly rejected the farmer's advice.

"Well, looks like you left me no choice." The farmer shook his head before reaching behind his back and pulling out a scary mask to frighten Peridot with. "BOOGEDY BOOGEDY BOOGEDY!"

"AAAAAHHHHHH!" Peridot screamed loudly before flying away from the farm on her lid.

--

As soon as Peridot returned to Beach City, she soared right towards Steven's house, where she found him making a grilled cheese sandwich, and began pounding on his window.

"Steven! Steven!" Peridot yelled from outside, getting the half-Gem's attention. "Let me in, I wanna talk!"

"You know you can just come in yourself." Steven suggested before opening the door for his green friend. "How have things been going?"

"I got an idea for you." Peridot stated. "How about in exchange for helping me with Pumpkin, I'll do something for you in return. Just name your price, I'll do anything!"

"Peridot, are you trying to bribe me into saving Pumpkin?" Steven asked. "Didn't I tell you earlier that death is a natural part of life?"

"But you managed to save Lars from death with your crying!" Peridot objected. "Why can't you do the same to Pumpkin?! Why does she have to die while so many other pumpkins have to live?!"

"Pumpkins?" Steven asked. "What other pumpkins?"

"I vented my frustrations by whaling on some farmer's pumpkin harvest." Peridot confessed innocently. "He didn't take too kindly to that."

"I think I know where this is going." Steven realized. "Five Stages of Grief, right? First was anger, now you're bargaining. Which means depression might not be too far behind." Just then, as if on cue, Steven's phone started ringing with a message from Lapis that he readily picked up. "Hello?"

"Steven, is Peridot there?" Lapis asked from the other end of the line. "Ever since she fled the house, I took Pumpkin back to our place, and now she wants to see us both before, you know."

"See what I mean?" Steven declared to Peridot, who was now on the verge of breaking down because now, she finally realized it was too late. "Do you want to see her?"

"Yes please." Peridot began to sob and hugged Steven tight. "Promise me that you won't ever leave too, Steven."

"I promise." Steven stated, hugging Peridot back.

--

Meanwhile, at the massive construction site that would soon become Little Homeworld, Lapis gently watched over the slowly dying Pumpkin, whose normally bright orange skin now had splotches of grayish-black, as she let out a weak yip. "Don't die yet, sweetie." Lapis assured Pumpkin. "Peridot will be here soon, I know it."

And right on cue, Peridot and Steven soared right towards Lapis on the trash can lid to see Pumpkin off one last time. Peridot raced as fast as she could towards the groundwork for her and Lapis's new home and tightly nuzzled her pet gourd, unaware that it wasn't in the mood for such a tight hug.

"Peridot, let her go! She's in pain!" Lapis yelled while prying the sentient pumpkin from Peridot's embrace, much to the green Gem's agony.

"No, please!" Peridot cried. "Just let me hold her!"

"I'm sorry Peri, but I don't think she can take much more!" Lapis argued while on the brink of crying just as much. "Pumpkin's already dying. She's so scared right now, so let's just-"

"Don't try to argue Lapis." Steven solemnly interrupted Lapis. "Peridot's already having a breakdown as is."

"I'm sorry about that." Lapis quickly apologized before she turned to Pumpkin. "Pumpkin, if you can still hear me, I want you to know that you and Peridot were the only things keeping me sane here, even when I ran off to the moon." She said to the dying fruit. "I can't thank you enough for brightening my day with your cute little smile, your barking, and all the days we spent playing together. Even if we find a replacement, none can ever replace you, little guy."

"You want a turn, Peri?" Steven said to Peridot.

"Fine, but I won't like it." Peridot sniffed loudly as she walked up to Pumpkin. "You were like an offspring to us, Pumpkin." She said quietly. "When I first saw your little carved face, those adorable stubby legs, it filled my heart with so much joy. Figuratively, of course, since we naturally don't have hearts. But every step we took together, every struggle, kept me grounded here on this crazy planet. Oh stars, now I won't know what to do now."

"Mah, mah," Pumpkin barked weakly with her last breath. "Mommy."

"I promise you," Peridot declared while her gem touched Pumpkin's forehead. "I'll never forget."

And with that, Pumpkin gently shut her eyes, allowing herself to pass on with her mothers and her creator by her side.

--

The funeral that followed was a private affair, with only the other Crystal Gems, Connie and Greg in attendance, and Pumpkin buried outside Peridot & Lapis's house. However, it was after the funeral when trouble began brewing. Just like when she had first begun living with the Gems, Peridot began hiding away in the bathroom for the next week to grieve the demise of Pumpkin and seemed resilient in refusing to come out, no matter how much they tried.

"C'mon P-Dot, open up!" Amethyst called while pounding on the door. "If you're planning on flushing yourself down the toilet again, let me tell you again, I tried that once and it didn't work."

"I think I know what to do." Greg proposed his idea and held up a boombox that began playing a song he knew she would recognize. "I look up to the sky, that's full of stars-"

"I'm trying to mourn here, leave me alone." Peridot despondently declared.

"I say we should respect her wishes." Garnet stated before she turned her gaze to Lapis. "Unless…."

"You think I should go in there?" Lapis asked.

"You are quite possibly Peridot's closest friend." Pearl agreed with Garnet.

"Closest friend?" Bismuth raised an eyebrow. "C'mon, we all know there may be something more than that!"

"Well, okay then." Lapis finally accepted with a shrug and slowly pushed the door open. "Wish me luck." She then said before entering the bathroom and closing it behind her. "You still in here?"

"So, they sent you in now." Peridot observed hoarsely. "I may have lost all hope, but I can still hear you know."

"They do say we're the closest." Lapis said before she sat down on the edge of the tub where Peridot had hidden herself away beneath a cocoon of Steven's bedsheets. "Come on now, get up and sit next to me."

"Okay, if it's you, I'll talk." Peridot succumbed to Lapis's offer and rose from her comfy shell to talk with her barn mate. "I'm sorry for worrying you all this past week, it's just that Pumpkin was basically our baby! Watching her die was like watching a child die!"

"Except the child wasn't human, it was a magical living pumpkin." Lapis remarked, which caused Peridot to glare at her. "No offense."

"But still, outside of our relationship, why did you volunteer?" Peridot wondered.

"Well, because I wanted to return the favor." Lapis answered. "Remember what happened after that boat trip I took with Steven and his dad?"

--

As soon as Lapis dropped Steven and Greg off at the docks following the boat trip gone wrong, she needed someone to lean on in her time of need. It didn't matter who, it could be any of the other Crystal Gems, or one of Steven's human friends. But right now, there was only one person, or rather Gem, that she could turn to.

Lapis could now see the barn in the distance, and as reluctant as she was to admit it, Peridot was the only one who could understand her regarding a certain Quartz. "Peridot, are you there?" she called for her green housemate. "I'm back!"

"Lapis, so glad you could make it!" Peridot exclaimed while racing out of the barn. "I discovered that I can move spoons with my mind, I made some decent progress on my Camp Pining Hearts essay; though I'm still stuck on the poutine theory, and-" However, she realized a bit too late what Lapis was feeling. "Is something the matter?"

"Steven and I found Jasper during the trip." Lapis said morosely. "She wanted to fuse with me again because she says I changed her. And to be honest, I think it was kind of my fault. Unfusing with Jasper drove her mad and I even said I missed taking all my frustrations out on her!"

"Lapis, are you serious?" Peridot gasped in alarm.

"Yes, I'm serious." Lapis declared as her eyes darkened and she turned away from Peridot. "Go ahead, run off and live with the Gems again so you don't have to be another one of my victims. If Jasper says I'm a monster, then I guess I really am one, especially after the way I treated you when we first moved in together."

"Okay Lapis, I don't want your garbage right now!" Peridot yelled, briefly breaking Lapis out of her funk with the almost exact words she described the tape recorder she broke. "I can see you're very stressed out. You want to scream so bad, to hit something, to let your anger out! But whatever you do, don't lose it on other people."

"Wh-what are you saying?" Lapis asked.

"I'm mostly just repeating stuff I read online," Peridot admitted. "I think what you need is a way to vent healthily, maybe on a perfectly defenseless object."

"Like what?" Lapis raised an eyebrow in suspicion.

"One second!" Peridot exclaimed while walking into the barn and coming back out with an alien plush wearing a top hat and bowtie that she gazed at with a solemn expression. "I'm so sorry my sweet." She said softly to the stuffed toy before presenting it to Lapis. "Go ahead, hit it as hard as you can. Or maybe something else violent, whatever."

"Okay." Lapis sighed as she began feeling around the toy for something to do before grabbing at the bowtie and ripping it off the alien's neck, causing some stuffing to spill out of the hole she created. "Whoa."

"So, how did that make you feel?" Peridot asked as the alien dropped from her grip.

"Good." Lapis muttered in awe of what she just did. "I feel so much lighter now, like a real adrenaline burst."

"See, as I told you." Peridot smiled happily. "You just needed healthier ways to relieve stress."

"You're right." Lapis agreed when she got an idea. "Now, how about I try something a little heavier?" She then glanced over to a nearby pickup truck and used the water from Peridot's makeshift pool to lift it into the air. "How about this?"

"Yeah, I think that could work." Peridot nervously replied before Lapis suddenly tossed the truck into the air. "NO WAIT, THAT'S A LITTLE TOO-" she screamed and covered herself to avoid getting hit, but the truck instead crashed into the wall over the barn entrance, creating a massive hole that the vehicle filled. "Hm, guess I was wrong."

"Well, if we're gonna be living here together, why don't we make ourselves at home?" Lapis laughed and put a hand on Peridot's shoulder.

"Yeah, I think this is a good start." Peridot agreed while wrapping her arm around the taller Gem's waist and the two began brainstorming ideas for remodeling the barn.

--

"Yeah, I really was there for you back then." Peridot realized with a grin. "And from then on out, we were so close."

"You bet." Lapis replied and cupped Peridot's face in her hands. "Let me be a shoulder for you to cry on this time. I love you Peridot."

"I love you too Lapis." Peridot responded happily before the two began to kiss, and their gems started glowing as they began to fuse into a tall, slender Gem with turquoise hair, dark cyan hair in the shape of a maple leaf, Peridot's glasses, Lapis's top with a bright yellow star on it, a skirt with a bronze ribbon around her waist and dark teal sandals with bronze accents.

The new, accidental fusion of Peridot and Lapis looked around the bathroom and gazed down at her four hands. Feeling around her body, she felts the gems of her components on her forehead and back before coming to a shocking realization and let out a loud, confused scream. "AAAAAHHHHHHHH!"

"Is something wrong?!" Steven exclaimed as he barged into the bathroom to discover the fusion before him and started screaming as well, but this time in joy. "AAAAAAHHHHHHH!"

"AAAAAHHHHHHHH!" the new fusion continued screaming and covered her face in alarm at Steven as the two continued shrieking at each other.

--

"But was that fusion really an accident or maybe something more?" Peridot asked while she, Steven, and Lapis walked outside to her and Lapis's garden in their backyard.

"Maybe a mix of both?" Lapis answered with a shrug. "I mean, we did kiss each other after saying "I love you" to each other, but the fusion part came out of nowhere."

"Still, we were all so happy to see you two fuse at last." Steven said. "Words could not describe how long I've been waiting for that moment."

"I couldn't shapeshift, so I just assumed I couldn't fuse as well." Peridot observed before they happened upon a makeshift tombstone that read 'In memory of Pumpkin. A good girl to the end.' "You know, all this talk reminds me of a song I've been writing for the past few days. It may seem a little short and I pulled from other sources, but it's the best I got."

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Lapis suggested eagerly. "Sing for us."

"Yeah, we never heard you do a solo before either." Steven agreed with the ocean Gem.

"Okay, if you insist." Peridot declared before she cued a nearby Robonoid tending to the garden to start playing jazzy music, and she started to sing. "My sweet little pumpkin o' mine, a living gourd with a smile so fine. You made us smile with your bark, your stem's like emerald, and filled with seeds of gold. You were our most beloved work of art."

Almost as if Pumpkin was coming back to listen to Peridot's eulogy, many similar living produce like additional pumpkins, some gourds, and squashes, began coming out to watch. "You saw fields of corn, sandy beaches too. In summers so warm, it was just us and you." Peridot continued singing. "And I think to myself, what a wonderful pet."

Soon, Lapis began to join in on the song as well. "Though your time was short, like all things are." She joined Peridot in singing with her own solo. "We'll always think of you, when we look at your star."

"Our sweet little pumpkin of ours," the pair finished the song and embraced each other. "You were a wonderful pet."

With that, the two Gems fused into Turquoise, this time on purpose while surrounded by living Cucurbita, and smiled.

"Thank you for coming today, Steven." Turquoise said to Steven. "It really means a lot to us."

"Nothing to it girls." Steven smiled while rubbing his finger on his upper lip.

In Memory of Thea "Muriel Bagge" White

June 16, 1940 – July 30, 2021

"What courage you have."

--

So ends the first installment of the Tearjerking Three. In comparison to what will come next, I'm pretty sure this will be tears of happiness at these two dorky barnmates basically becoming an item at last and even fusing too (also, I totally took Turquoise's design from @artifiziell, she makes some amazing stuff, go check her out). But next time, we move on from someone being dead for real to someone being dead to Steven. Can you guess which one? Oh who am I kidding, if you watch me on DeviantArt, I basically spoiled everything after this.

[mckinlily]

So, I'm legitimately curious: What did you think of Kuron? I mean, I have my own AU ideas about him, and one I'm trying to write right now about how he can 'survive' the whole fiasco of his fate in V6, but I'm curious to know other opinions. :)

I’m happy you asked! The clone arc spawns so much fandom creativity. Though I’m not sure I’m the best person to answer this. Mostly because my feelings about Kuron aren’t informed so much by Kuron himself as by where I was at mentally and emotionally when season 3 dropped.

When I first got into Voltron, I was a young twenty-something in grad school, overwhelmed by adult and personal life, no idea what I was doing, far away from my family, and terrified that I was replaceable and forgettable to the people I loved most as well not even cut out for the career that I was going into debt for. (I’m glad I did it, but grad school kind of completely destroyed my mental health and only that I’m writing this now am I realizing exactly how bad it was). 

In the midst of all this, I met Shiro. Here’s was another young twenty-something, completely out of his depth, trying so hard and so scared of failure. I especially remember realizing that Shiro was scared of being rejected and replaced by the people he loved and sacrificed for. But he was Shiro. He was competent and strong and so, so good. Obviously HE deserved his team and family and every good thing in the world. And he had a team that (I thought) recognized that in him. So I told myself, if Shiro can handle being responsible for Voltron and the entire universe, I can survive grad school. And if even Shiro doubts his worth to his friends and family when he’s Shiro, then my own fears about my loved ones were unfounded too.

And then season 3 hit, and I have to hand it to them, I don’t think they could have triggered every single one of my worst fears better if they had tried. Yes, no one will really care if you’re gone. Yes, all your loved ones will just move on if you disappeared. No, you aren’t capable or worthy of what you want to do. You are literally replaceable.

And Kuron was a big part of that. I pegged immediately that he wasn’t the same Shiro I had fallen in love with in the earlier seasons, and although I never hated him or thought he was at all at fault for whatever Hagar had planned for him, I could never get over the feeling that I was being lied to. That was not my Shiro, but the story kept trying to convince me it was and it wasn’t. And I was projecting HARD onto Shiro, so I didn’t just react to Kuron as the clone of my favorite character but like if Kuron were a clone of ME that was taking my place in MY family and everything was trying to convince me it didn’t make a difference. Your family still gets a version of you (and maybe even, less deep and struggling version of you, one that’s a little less in all the ways that just make you palatable), so why should you have a problem with it? They’re good, possibly even better, and so they never needed you, right?

Meanwhile, I felt so guilty about reacting like that. Because for all that I hated everything Kuron represented and seemed to say about me, I also knew he was a victim. I could see how hard he tried and that he was also struggling in an impossible situation he didn’t even understand. Kuron deserved love and support and a family just as much as Shiro did. But for Kuron to get the things he so desperately wanted, it seemed Shiro would have to lose those exact same things, and I couldn’t figure out a way to get out of the zero sum game. Particularly because they both needed so much intense personal and emotional support from their team. And as much as it isn’t fair, I knew from long personal experience that emotional resources are not infinite, and if you can fake being reasonably okay, the people with the most obvious emotional needs will always be taken care of first. And I couldn’t see in such a situation, and with Shiro being the self-sacrificing person that he is, Kuron not winning that unspoken competition. Meanwhile, if I tried just putting Shiro first anyway, I felt so guilty because Kuron deserved all the love and support too.

Which isn’t to say that a story can’t manage to be fair to both of them. I think a few fics have even managed to do it (The Monster in the Mirror by squirenonny is perhaps the most satisfying one I’ve found, and I continue to be astounded by how it manages to cover so much while also staying relatively short. How???! What did you have to sell???). There are also plenty of fics that are still good, and some that even enjoyed, even if they don’t strike the balance that I really want. I’ve just never managed to find the balance I feel like I can write. I still feel some guilt about that because Kuron deserved so much better, but I’ve also accepted that fanfic for me is self-indulgent and about writing the stories I need. So, for instance, there is no clone or clone arc in Stars From Me which is 100% a story that I needed to tell for me.

I will say, that until they killed Kuron off in a move I did not see coming at all, I fully expected to embrace Kuron once the truth came to life and I was able to interact with him as himself instead Not Shiro (Stop Lying!). But that never happened, and he was never given that chance. I’m...honestly still shocked that didn’t happen. (I also have gripes about how the clone arc makes no sense from the Galra/Hagar POV, but that’s for another post and also assumes Voltron was trying to have a coherent plot at that point which is demonstrably false.)

Anyway, all that is probably WAY more personal information than you were hoping for. The TL;DR version is I think Kuron is a good character (and a good person) who tried so, so hard in circumstances that, narratively speaking, are extremely interesting. I just never managed to latch onto him the way I did with the rest of Team Voltron, and there’s a little part of my that irrationally and unfairly resents his existence. I am even sometimes very interested Kuron stories, but I am very, very picky. And I’ve had to quit some otherwise good stories because they inadvertently threw me into a bad headspace.

So how’s that for an answer? XD

[handlewithkara]

Thanks, I hate it

So, I was trying to rewatch season 3 again and wow, I remembered why I hate it (and particularly 3B) so much. Maybe hate is the wrong word. There is good things in there. Things I can appreciate. 

But I feel like my biggest gripe with it, more than shipping, more than characterization is that it is really hard to watch a show when you very fundamentally disagree with a position the show takes. 

And I think I knew that that was going to be the case I think from the moment Mon-El has his revealing conversation with J’onn in 3x13. J’onn is a character we are supposed to like, so it was pretty clear to me, that in this case, the position he took in this conversation was a position the show takes. 

Here is goes: Supergirl Season 3 firmly takes the position that it is the morally right thing for Mon-El to do is to not tell Kara that he has feelings for her. 

(the show also takes the position that it is honorable of Kara not to tell Lena her secret identity, situations that are paralleled on occasion. I think the situations are somewhat different, but still think that in both cases the position of the show is questionable or at least something I really disagree with)

First: What I think they were trying to achieve with this

1.) One of Mon-El's character flaws was arguably lack of restraint. Showing him holding back on telling Kara shows that he has matured. 

In this area I feel like the biggest disagreement is likely one of taste. If one likes Mon-El, one might argue that yes, lack of restraint and consideration was a character trait and flaw of Mon-El's, but "curing" him of this flaw arguably makes him at lost less entertaining as a character. 

The other problem is that Mon-El still has certain moments which the show itself characterizes as lack of consideration. Seems kind of late for him to still be learning this lesson on the fly? Rather than just struggling with it? Still, one can argue the fact that he was struggling with this issue on a relatively high level is a way of showing that he has changed a lot and is in a very different place. 

2.) Telling Kara about his feelings while she is still hurting and confused especially when he is unsure himself, yes would arguably be shitty. 

Now, this I partly get. When Mon-El comes back Kara is in a lot of emotional pain, she is distraught, she is confused, she is dealing with a lot. 

If at this point Mon-El goes to her and tells her that he's still into her (but there is still a chance that he still wants to honor his commitment to Imra more) that would cause her a lot of additional pain. 

Not that I think it would have changed a lot in how Kara would react or how much would have happened between them, but the same decisions would likely have caused her a lot of additional anguish. That would have been jerking her around and playing with her feelings by my defintion of things and in that case, I agree, he shouldn’t tell her.

Getting her hopes up just to leave again would so not be cool. 

3.) Talking to Kara about how he is struggling too might hamper their ability to fight Reign.

Now granted, this is just my personal feelings, as this wasn't really a topic that the show brought up itself. Still, this is something I could at least picture being a concern for these characters, that they want to put their feelings aside till Reign is defeated. (and in a way... that is what happens on the show, Karamel start getting a lot shippier in the time when they mistakenly think Reign has been defeated)

Second: Why I think it's wrong

The show over and over goes over the concept that it is wrong to tell somebody the truth just to make yourself feel better. And I keep thinking... why?

I agree with the concept that it is morally wrong to cause pointless pain to Kara by telling her. The thing is ... is it really pointless?

I fully agree that if Mon-El had fessed up to her at some point late into the season, it would have temporarily made Kara's life more confusing... but .... wouldn't that be worth it? Simply in the interest of things being more honest between and the information being out there?

And why isn't "it would make Mon-El feel better and lift a weight off his shoulders" a totally legit and fair outcome? Why does that have to be cast as "that's selfish and so he should never do that"?

I can maybe get that in the beginning when Kara is still super raw and emotional, but later on? Kara is a strong person, with a great support system. And I get that it's immoral to draw her into messy marriage issues.

But I don't see how just telling Kara what his emotional state is does that. He could just tell her "I'm really struggling too, but I'm trying to hold it together. This is hard for me in particular because I’m dealing with a lot of additional political weight being placed on my shoulders".

And yes I can envision a world where that makes communication between them even harder and it makes fighting Reign harder. But I still think it would be worth it for the benefit of things being more honest between them. And I would have said that both characters are emotionally strong enough that they could handle it.

Third: Why I’m beginning to think that they genuinely believed that

You know, for the longest time I thought, okay, maybe they just disliked Mon-El and wanted to get rid of him, so maybe they gave him a shitty story and that's all there is too it.

But the longer things go on, the more I get the impression. OMG they were actually serious about that?

In season 3, they draw strong parallels between it being honorable of Mon-El not to tell Kara and it being honorable of Kara not to tell Lena her identity. This is most explicit in The Fanatical where Mon-El says exactly that in a traditional "he gives advice about Lena, but he's actually talking about himself" scene.

Well, if you tell [her] the truth, you'd be doing it to make yourself feel better, not her. So maybe, in this case, it's, uh... Not telling her the truth is the noble thing. It's a sacrifice you're making to protect her.

(Bless Chris Wood, I think he looks entirely unconvinced by his own dialogue here)

Fast forward to episode 100. The big anniversary episode. The one that celebrates Kara and her influence on people. And this episode is full of people assuring Kara that her motivations were noble AND it ends with Kara embracing this point of view and putting her foot down (and no, I don't think that the writers intend to take that back and portray that as Kara misunderstanding something when this is the big celebration episode)

Executing The Premise

Either way. The whole season consisted of people preaching to Mon-El that he shouldn't tell. So Mon-El tries to do the right thing and keep his feelings mostly close to his vest.

And then it just ends!!!!

I'm sorry, this just feels wrong. It feels like there is something missing. Like either Mon-El should be rewarded for holding back (either by him realizing that loves the future best anyway (instead ... the opposite of that happened) or him actually getting a better chance with Kara somewhere in the future when the circumstances are better). Or in lieu of that, a storyline that makes it explictly clear that Mon-El was being a dumbass, did exactly the wrong thing and that is what costs him his chance with Kara. Except that didn't happen either.

Instead he disappear uncommented into nothingness and the only other glimpse we see of him is till an episode that actually doubles down on the message of 3B.

Summation

So my deep, fundamental gripe with season 3 is that I just deeply, deeply disagree with the central thesis the season puts forth (keeping things from people is not just understandable and excusable, but actually morally good) THE SHOW DIDN'T EVEN DELIVER PROPERLY ON THE STAKES AND MORAL STANDARDS THEY BUILT UP.

That's why season 3 was frustrating and hard to get connected to on multiple levels when it comes to these central story tenants. You have these characters discussing and debating and going back and forth and here I’m sitting, watching them and going “Yes, but this moral conundrum is stupid” (I had this reaction during pretty much any Mon-El scenes in regards to telling the truth and during any of the Kara and Lena arguments). I think even if the show had told a "clean" story with their premise, I still would have been sour on it when I just so fundamentally disagree with the premise on a personal level.

And that is in addition to the entertainment level of "I just don't think that it's very entertaining to watch characters who are constantly holding back to be heroic and moral and honorable" (compared to holding back for personal reasons like insecurity, something that is way more interesting because that is compelling characterization a lot of the time and casts telling the truth as characters facing their fears or seeing things weren’t as bad as they imagined it). 

I disliked that honorable holding back in Kara/James and I disliked it again in season 3. [yes I think it’s marginally better set up in season 3 simply because Karamel had an actual relationship as the basis rather than just the potential of a flirtation, Mimra were married and there was a political reason why it had to stay that way rather than Lucy in the end being just a nice girlfriend/boyfriend relationship ... but just because it is a slightly more solid version of that trope doesn’t change that that trope is bad and boring to me]

Look, this isn't about morals. This isn't about me thinking the show would have been better if Kara would have thrown herself at James in season 1. It's just that those stories are (to me) fundamentally boring to watch and there was a reason why I preferred the chaotic back and forth of season 2 Karamel. So in a way, I felt fundamentally betrayed by the story even without the ending, because to me the season betrayed a lot about what I liked about Karamel in season 2 and made them more like Kara/James whose story I often did not care for for a reason. I'm not claiming that season 3 was devoid of good things, outside of Karamel or within (and I will try to make posts on that), but in regards to Karamel, a lot of these things were new areas, new themes or side aspects compared to what their strongest threads were in season 2.(for what it’s worth, I think the normal, “soapy” way to tell this story would have been not that Mon-El tells, but that Mon-El keeps it quiet, but somebody else blabs out the truth and Kara finds out anyway and is initally mad at Mon-El. Would still have been a cop out compared to how I see this conflict, but it would have been a more normal story compared to “everybody tells Mon-El not to tell and he mostly doesn’t”)

But I can put my shipper values aside. I can try to appreciate a story for its craftsmanship or for what it is trying to do even if things don't go my way. But it's really hard to get invested in a show if you just don't see eye to eye with one of the core themes the show proposes.

And that’s why I have a lot of animosity left towards this aspect of season 3. 

[patrickswayzeme]

Description: Klaus has to open up to Diego to prevent him from making a similar mistake. 

Warnings: Light swearing, implication of ptsd, angst 

Characters: Klaus Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves

Pairings: Past Klaus x Dave; past Eudora x DiegoSo I got this prompt back in AUGUST and I started on it then but then stuff kept happening and I never finished it. But now I finally did! The prompt was Klaus finally opening up to his siblings about Dave and the Vietnam War.   I want to more sibling and probably also have the rest of their conversation, but here’s the start! Thank you so much for the prompt and i’m so sorry this is so late and I’m not sure if you’ll even see it because you are on anon. 

*Since this isn’t the point of the prompt, I am not going to try and plot out what the heck is happening in season 3, but let’s assume that they are out of the house and staying somewhere together in the city, Reginald knows they’re there, and they know about the other academy, and there’s tension there but they’re trying to figure out how this timeline differs from theirs.*

--------

It was early in the morning, sunlight was only just visible over the horizon, Klaus was sitting on the roof of their new temporary family home. He mindlessly rubbed his fingers together, pulling at his shirt sleeve with his thumb. It felt strange to sit up on the roof like this without a cigarette between them, but it had been stranger to consider one and not hear Ben’s nagging. His absence was louder than his company had ever been, and Klaus didn’t want to acknowledge it. 

He had been up there for most of the night, not wanting to disturb his siblings. He leaned back on his elbows and closed his eyes for a moment, starting to doze off as the incessant chattering of the dead was slowly replaced by the chirping of birds. 

He felt a loud bang and a vibration under him and jolted awake. His whole body shook and he quickly rolled over on his belly to try and miss the bomb and started sliding.

   Diego had thought he was being respectful to his siblings by sneaking out the side window. He knew they would roll their eyes at his “dramatic” exit, and maybe he did always choose the action movie route over the conventional, but that didn’t mean there was no thought put into it. When he turned the corner to the front yard it was very apparent that his plan had failed.  Two legs, clad in tight black leather, were dangling from the roof, desperately trying to find something to get a foothold of.  He looked up and saw Klaus’s fingers slipping on the edge of the roof. He instinctively grabbed Klaus by the waist, pulling him backwards so they both tumbled to the ground, Klaus’s fall mostly broken by Diego. 

“What the hell, Klaus?” Diego griped, wiggling out from under his brother and dusting himself off. 

Klaus lifted his head up off the ground, eyes big but glazed over, like he was just taking in his surroundings for the first time

“Oh, you know, just some morning yoga” Klaus joked softly, as he attempted to pull himself up off the ground, but his arms gave out and he let his face fall in the dirt and just laid there, letting out a weak laugh. 

“Klaus, come on, get up, you’re fine..” Diego insisted, rolling his eyes as he turned to his brother to lecture him more. He noticed how he his brother was shaking. Maybe the fall was worse than Diego thought and he was just getting too use to hard falls like that.

“I’m sorry I scared you…I thought you were in bed…you okay?”

He asked as he crouched down, his tone a little softer now. He tried to remember the way Eudora used to talk to victims and emulate that. Maybe Klaus was just pulling his leg, but something about him seemed…off.

"Oh nothing, just being a fuck up...” Klaus sighed, through a pained smile. “It’s fine, you should go to bed, I’m sure you’ve been up all night, you know...saving lives..” He laughed weakly as he quoted his brother back to him, expecting an angry rebuttal, as he took the hand Diego had offered and pulled himself up so they were both sitting on the ground. 

Diego didn’t react to the joke and now that Klaus got a good look at his brother, he realized he didn’t look like he had been up all night at all. No knives strapped to his body and he wasn’t even wearing all black. He was wearing a nice button down he must have gotten at a thrift store or something and his hair, still long from the 60s, has been brushed and probably had some kind of gel in it, Klaus was guessing. 

“Did you get your job at the commission back?” Klaus asked jokingly, with the air of a proud dad.

“no, I was just...going…out.” Diego said cautiously, his eyes shifting to look at the ground. 

He started getting up again, his focus turning to his own discomfort. 

Klaus recognized that desperate, uncomfortable look.

“Diego...” he started, not sure how he was going to broach this topic if his suspicions were correct. 

“Klaus, it’s late, you should go to bed, I’m just…going shopping.”

“Oh, I’ll come with then, I’ve really had a hankering for chocolate milk lately” 

Klaus scampered up, playing along that he really believed his brother’s obvious lie.

"I’ll pick you some up, but you should go back inside...if you’re okay.” Diego glanced back at him, still not able to put a finger on what was wrong with his brother. “No broken bones?” He asked raising an eyebrow, like he thought Klaus might not tell him if he did.

Klaus playfully patted himself down and then threw his hands up in the air. 

“Nope! All good here! Take me away from this place! Unless...you’re not going shopping.” He added, tilting his head inquisitively... his smiles faded, and he dropped the lightness in his voice. “New timeline, gotta explore right? I know you will never take my advice so, my advice is, go ahead, go find out, it will definitely do your heart wonders.”

Diego bulked a bit at the bitter sarcasm and scoffed. “I don’t know what the hell you’re on about, but I’m gonna go okay? Go get some rest or some coffee or something…”he called back dismissively   

Klaus’s shoulder slumped but he didn’t say anything. He just let his body slide back down to the ground, letting the tree support his back. “Yeah, what do I know about dead lovers and messed up timelines…” he sighed to him, closing his eyes, an instinctively reaching for Dave’s dog tags around his neck.

Diego sighed and willed himself to turn around. He didn’t want to but as the founder of team zero, it was his job to act like it.

He sat beside his brother again, under the tree and put a shaky hand on his shoulder. Klaus didn’t respond, but he didn’t shake him off either. 

“Hey look...you wanna tell me what’s going on? I feel like I’m missing something.” Diego said a bit clumsily.

Klaus shook his head. “It’s fine, Diego…you should go…”

“You knew that I was looking for her?” Diego asked, still slow and unsure.

Klaus nodded.  “Of course…. it’s what I would do…I mean, what I did….except…” He trailed off. He was waiting for Diego to cut him off or get upset that he was insinuating that they were alike in any way.

“Except what?” Diego encouraged.

“Well, I had a reason. You don’t…if you find her, then what? You’ll beat yourself up about it and if you don’t…you’ll be heartbroken all over again..” Klaus didn’t look at Diego as he spoke, but at the grass, still wet with dew. He kept thumbing the dog tags around his neck.

“Wait…the guy you told me about…you saw him again? When?” Diego asked, now genuinely curious and confused. He frowned, trying to remember everything Klaus had told him. He usually didn’t think twice about things his brother said. He was starting to realize that might be part of their problem.

“In Dallas…he was five years younger and had no idea who I was….”

Diego nodded as he listened, eyes out of focus, trying to process,  “fuck” was all he managed to say,  inhaling  sharply.

Klaus laughed. “yeah….fuck.”

“So…did you do what you needed to do? You said there was a reason?” Diego asked, not sure if he wanted to hear the answer, but he really didn’t know what else to say.

“Yeah, and I just made it…so much worse, I mean, big surprise right?” He laughed bitterly, just on the edge of a sob.

Diego unsurely raised his arm to pat Klaus on the shoulder. Klaus flinched a little and Diego  immediately withdrew and looked at the ground, trying not to process the immediate guilt he was feeling.  

A few seconds later he felt a little nudge on his shoulder. Klaus had leaned against and already closed his eyes before Diego could say anything.

“You’re not anymore of a fuck up than the rest of us…” Diego said after a few minutes of silence. “I know I give you shit for it, but….” He trailed off, trying to find the right words to say what he meant.

“That’s nice Diego, but I know you don’t believe that…and that’s okay! I tried to do something right, I fucked up, and I have to deal with that…but you’re smarter than me, so you don’t have to.” Klaus replied, eyes still closed.

Diego laughed, causing Klaus to slip off his shoulder and push back in playful retaliation.

“Now I know you don’t believe that. You might be crazy, but everyone knows I’m the dumb one.” Diego was still laughing, but didn’t make eye contact.

Klaus turned to him and looked really serious, and lowered his voice to a raspy, kind of batman rip-off. “You know Diego, you’re not anymore of an idiot that’s the rest of us….I know I give you shit for it, but…” he looked away dramatically.

“shut up!” Diego protested, pushing him away, but he was laughing. “I don’t sound like that…”

“no…” Klaus said thoughtfully, settling on his back on the ground, not bothering to get back up. “But I thought you wanted to be Batman?” He said pointedly, opening one eye to look at Diego’s reaction and then scampering up, before his brother could get to him.

“You better run!” Diego called after him, but didn’t actually bother to get up.

Klaus, peaked out behind the tree they had been sitting by. “There better not be anything in your hands…” he warned, looking around to make sure Diego wasn’t going to throw anything at him before cautiously making it back to where he was sitting before.

They sat there for a few more minutes in silence. Diego wanted to ask more questions, but Klaus finally looked a little more like his normal self. So, he would ask them later.

“Do you want me to take you to the store so we can buy chocolate milk?” Diego asked, in a tone that couldn’t be described as anything besides “annoyed older brother” despite, Klaus technically being older now and never letting him forget it.

“Only if you’re buying.” Klaus joked, “but yeah!” He jumped up enthusiastically. Diego got up a little slower, but followed, in an over the top show of put-on reluctance “ okay, let’s go.” 

[yurimother]

Top Yuri Anime Poll Results

Whether it is subtext or explicit, cute or sexy, school love or gay action thrillers I love yuri anime. These series either focus on or contain elements of female same-sex relationships. Pride month is the perfect time to look back and reflect on the best of this genre. I teamed up with OG Man of The Yuri Nation (yurination[dot] wordpress[dot] com/) and together we put out a poll asking what you thought the top yuri anime series were and over 1000 of you responded submitting almost 5000 different entries. We spent hours combing through the data, analyzing and commenting on the results and we would like to share our thoughts with all of you. Enjoy the reflections of me the yuri critic and OG the dedicated yuri fan!

These are the Top 20 Yuri Anime as voted by you

1. Bloom Into You - 692 Votes

OG: Be it East or West the YagaKimi took the world by storm. Citrus and BiY once again taking the top two spots remains unsurprising.There is something undeniably fascinating about our leading ladies consisting of an asexual slowly coming to love her senpai back but restraining herself for various reasons. The biggest one being said senpai having a deep case of self-loathing and a fear of romantic reciprocation, also for various reasons. She is like “I love you but please do not love me back”. Then there is one of the most popular “cursed” lesbians of all time in Sayaka, the fantastic adult side-couple (The world needs an anime starring lesbian adults/mothers) and the various other characters who have their own interesting tales to tell. The series absolutely deserves a spot in the Top 10 though it would not be in my personal Top 3. Oh and as Yurimother said the presentation was fantastic.Visually stunning from start to finish in my opinion. Special mention goes to the criminally underused first-person “camera”. So cool.

YuriMother: I agree with this series deserving a spot in the top ten even if not the number one slot. For me, it was good but not great. Moments such as the aforementioned adult couple as well as stellar art and a phenomenal score made this series enjoyable but they were not enough to overshine the problems of the narrative. For the love of the Yuri Goddess, this series is crying out for asexual representation but insists on carrying on with its confused romance. Enough complaining though, many people love Bloom Into You despite its faults and I agree. The characters are interesting and lovable and it manages to tell a yuri story more real and complex than the typical fluffy girl meets girl narratives.

2. Citrus - 452 Votes

YuriMother: The presence of Citrus and Bloom Into You prove two things to me, the importance of recency, as both anime aired only last year, and the sheer popularity of these series. Both had established and extremely successful manga runs which were adapted into English by the publishing masters of yuri, Seven Seas. Citrus is a contentious series, to say the least, as it includes elements of (non-blood related) incest and non-consensual actions as part of Mei and Yuzu’s “relationship.” However, if you possess the magical power to turn off the part of your brain screaming at you that those aspects are deeply problematic or if you seek a different interpretation then Citrus can be downright WONDERFUL. I actually loved this anime series for its characters, amazing animation, and salaciousness. As OG said, it is an operatic concussion of emotion (seriously everyone in the series needs therapy) but my is it fun to watch. The Citrus anime also holds a special place in my heart, as the first serious piece I ever wrote was a review for it over on Okazu (nice plug)! Citrus is certainly not for everyone but those that stuck with it and overlooked some of the problems ended up loving it.

OG: Here we are again with Citrus at #2. My thoughts on the series remains the same as in the previous two lists I discussed (the Akiba Research and goo Ranking Japan lists), overrated. Good soap opera/telenovela-esque series but my feelings on the cast are mixed (which I imagine was the writer’s intent). My main issue has always been the obstacles repeatedly challenging Yuzu and Mei’s feelings for each other instead of it focusing on “Hey. We like each other but our parents got married. What do we do? Can we keep our desires for each other in check?”. Instead it is one newcomer after another who want to eat either Yuzu or Mei and Yuzu repeatedly asking herself if she really wants robo-stepsister patties? I will give the anime adaptation credit. The story was easier to enjoy animated than drawn. It also helped that I grew up in a telenovela loving family. The characters’ actions, reactions and emotions were depicted better in the anime. I still consider the show’s greatest accomplishment being the humanization of Mei-Tron. In the manga it took a post-epilogue continuation to show readers “Hey everyone. Mei-Tron was human all along.” whereas in the anime I sensed the small bit of humanity quicker than in the manga where I continued seeing her as a block of wood with a brain up to the point where I dropped it. Harumin though is the greatest regardless of anime or manga adaptation. Bless her. Regardless of how I feel about the series I get its massive popularity. After all, were the rest of the story to get an animated continuation I would gladly pick it up...Not the manga though.

3. Sakura Trick - 342 Votes

OG: There are fans who understandably would disagree with Sakura Trick’s praise but I will always defend it and the anime as one of the very best in the genre. First off it aired at a time where animated on-screen close up kisses (specifically consensual ones) between ladies were rare. Haruka X Yuu’s relationship was believable for the most part. Even their season finale resolution, them not getting what being “in love” meant at the time, made sense though I get why it left some scratching their heads. Probably not the best “manga lure/bait” end I suppose. On the bright side Kotone X Shizuku’s story definitely did not have the two doubting their true feelings for each other. I do hope Kaede X Yuzu eventually hooked up in the manga as they too had potential to be a lovely couple.

YuriMother: Sakura Trick has no real narrative, no great insight, and offers little intellectually. As a teacher, it makes me furious, as a fan of yuri, elated. The anime is beloved for its plentiful soft service, presenting a plethora of kisses, cuddles, and awkward thigh shots (ew). However, it was one of the first anime to include this much explicit yuri service without being pornographic. All the characters were cute and fun, even if there was little in the way of development or complexity, it worked for the series. If you want something to make you think or to learn about yuri, pass over this one. But, if you want a cute and meaningless anime definitely watch it.

4. Yuru Yuri - 337 Votes

YuriMother: OG may not be a fan of Yuru Yuri but I certainly am, which is fairly obvious to anyone who observes that a solid 20% of my communications occur in the form of gifs from this series. It is hilarious, cute, and playful. Just like Sakura Trick, this anime is an easy watch with ultimately little substance. However, the part of me that is not rolling of the floor laughing every time I watch Yuru Yuri lives in a state of pained existence with the knowledge that this work of all things ended up being so popular when people are telling interesting stories about queer women and people in actual relationship that manage to still be funny and adorable while having something to say.

OG: The undisputed most mainstream friendly yuri series there is. It is also one of the funniest. My one gripe is that excluding a select few the main draw of the show besides the comedy and yuri is the ship wars, meaning (almost any girl can be shipped with each other). Not a fan of that but hey, it brought Namori the big bucks so who am I to judge? In any case not much else to add. It deserves all the adulation it gets but the free for all shipping irks me. Reminds me of how they botched Chika X Riko in the Love Live! Sunshine!! Anime. If you were going down the Riko X Yohane route from the start then why give us Chika X Riko in the first half? Ship wars yo. Tch. Hopefully I properly explained myself..

5. Kase-san and Morning Glories (Asagao to Kase-san) - 289 Votes

OG: Still wish this got a 12-13 episode anime. The glorious movie showed how much it deserves one. Whether it will happen or not remains to be seen. In any case the beauty of Kase-san X Yamada is how simple their romance is. No strings attached whatsoever. It is as straightforward as a self-proclaimed “ordinary” cutie, Yamada, having a crush on the super cool school beauty Kase-san. Said beauty is revealed to be just as “adorkable” as Yamada. The other highlight is their story not ending once they officially started dating (as is the case with many romance stories) but that being only the beginning, like real life. From then on, side-stories aside, the two biggest challenges for the two is Yamada accepting that it is okay for someone as “ordinary” as her to be the “cool babe”s girlfriend and Kase-san finding different ways to express her love/hunger for the cutie. As for the OVA, cramming the second part of the first series in an hour definitely had the downside of excluding some important moments, yes, but it at least covered some of the best moments in the manga. The first half of the story was summarized in a five-minute music video. One last thing. The animation, though a bit too brought for some, was glorious. It also had some long pauses which were effective (The bus stop scene being the most infamous) but while I did not mind them at all even I will admit some pauses went a bit too long. A small nitpick all things considered. Fingers crossed one day we either get that 12-13 episode anime for the first series, the sequel or both. That is one of my dreams.

YuriMother: At last, an anime that I do not have to react cynically to! Kase-san is one of the single greatest works of yuri animation to ever to be created and its glory is rivaled only by the manga from which it originated. Despite being only a one hour long OVA this adaption told such an engaging and realistic (finally) story of romance and personal growth. We get to skip the meatless girl meets girls arcs and get into the depth and complexity as Yamada and Kase work to further their relationship. They struggle with the fact that they are two different people who want different things out of life and love and have to actually work on their partnership. Kase-san also includes signs of physical affection and love that are never lewd, immature, or gross, I do not even think I could refer to them as “service”. However, for me, Kase-san’s greatest victory (both the anime and manga) is in its escape from school romance, which in this genre is often a shelter from reality, allowing for women to be in relationships without actually being queer. Kase and Yamada instead make an effort to continue their romance and build a life that includes their relationship once they graduate in a triumphant final act. This anime is a slap in the face to the class S stories and sloppily sexualized works which proliferate the yuri genre. Asagao to Kase-san shines as a holy beacon for the greatness that this genre can achieve.

6. Puella Magi Madoka Magica - 286 Votes

YuriMother: Hurray!! For two entries in a row, I get to talk about series that I wholeheartedly adore without having to constantly attach caveats. Puella Magi Madoka Magica is not considered by all to be yuri, and that is certainly not what it is best known for. PMMM is however famous for twisting the tropes of the magical girl genre and creating one of the most cohesive and thoughtful narratives ever put to screen. This series summoned a new era for the magical girl genre (what OG humorously referred to as the “Moepocalypse”) but no other title managed to top Madoka Magica’s runaway success. Every aspect of this work is highly polished including character designs, a phenomenal soundtrack, and superb writing. This is not only the definitive work of its genre but of all postmodern anime. Whether or not one is a fan of yuri every anime fan should give Madoka Magica a watch.

OG: Meduka Meguca. Its impact in the “Moepocalypse” (Shows where cute and sexy girls consistently suffering physically and emotionally. These are usually dark magical girl shows.) genre and legacy are undeniable. It deserves all the praise it gets. It scarred many unfortunate souls, Homura is a legend in yuridom, Kyouko X Sayaka are glorious (Especially in Rebellion), Meduka’s Mom Junko is a Top Tier Sexy Mama, Charlotte the Witch is a very strange girlfriend and of course Hitomi is a walking anti-fun meme. The animation, especially the creepy doodle like monsters known as Witches are memorable. However, it is not my favorite Moepocalypse show. That honor goes to Yuki Yuna is a Hero.

7. Strawberry Panic - 224 Votes

OG: Like it or not Strawberry Panic is a yuri classic. I have a strong feeling that like many readers around my age (31 during this writing) this was their first 100% yuri anime. The cheese is real but it is the yummy kind of cheese and I loved almost every minute of it, except Amane X Hikari. That was the weakest of the love stories going on. Poor Yaya trying too hard (Not saying this in condescending way. She literally tried too hard). It is like a young adult lesbian novel but more fun. I mean Nagisa X Shizuma might as well be “Lesbian Twilight but not crappy”. Let us be honest, Shizuma is a vampire. Chikaru is an undisputed goddess and Kagome is the cutest.

Oh and I will repeat this statement till my last breath…

#TamaoWasRobbed.

YuriMother: I may be almost a decade younger than OG but even for me Strawberry Panic was my first yuri and it more than earns its nickname as the “gateway yuri,” although last year’s Citrus and Bloom Into You may be presenting serious contenders for this title. If for no other reason than nostalgia, Strawberry Panic remains my favorite yuri works but this ridiculous soap-opera of an anime does deserve a fair amount of recognition. I see Strawberry Panic as the culmination of the S subgenre revived by Maria Watches Over Us. However, this work succeeds at both parodying many of the tropes of S and yuri while breaking a few. However, its greatest accomplishment is introducing many of the young western fans of yuri to the genre. Strawberry Panic, you are an overly dramatic mess but thank you for all you have done.

8. Revolutionary Girl Utena - 176 Votes

YuriMother: Another gem of the yuri genre, actually scratch that, if works like Kase-san are gems then Utena is the minerals from which gems form. I think that is how it works, I am not a geologist. My poor analogies and subtle nods to Steven Universe aside, Revolutionary Girl Utena is one of the single most important works of yuri anime, possibly even more so than Sailor Moon. These two works were the dawn of the current age of yuri, an era spurn on by social progress and the internet into a place where more yuri works featuring honest depictions of homosexuality are flourishing. Utena laid the groundwork for queer representation in anime and for that I remain forever grateful to this masterpiece.

OG: I must confess. While I saw the movie long ago and thought it was cool I have yet to sit down and finish watching the main series. I cannot say much about this show other than it is another yuri classic. Possibly one of the biggest. I think I will leave this to Her Holiness because even if I had seen it I do not consider myself someone who possesses the sufficient intellect to properly explain why this is a legendary show.

9. Flip Flappers - 132 Votes

OG: I would need an essay to explain why this show is legendary. Let me see. It is a story of a girl who discovered her gayness thanks to her growing attraction to a lovable idiot/genki. There are references to Western media, dimension hopping (including Class S Hell), self-discovery, a sexual orientation journey, a tree, armored wedding gowns, crazy third wheels, Ku Klux Klan stand-ins…You know what? Just watch Flip Flappers. It is a hot mess of random, crazy, creative and thought provoking awesomeness with a wonderful dose of gayness. Glory be to PapiCoco. However, as Her Holiness mentioned this is essentially Ikuhara-san levels of weirdness (though not as complicated I feel) but as the plot thickens it all (sort of) starts making sense...eventually. That tree yo.

YuriMother: Flip Flappers was almost too strange and abstract even for me, and that is saying something. However, upon further examination, one of the most interesting works of yuri is revealed. This heavily stylized anime delves deep into the sexual maturation of its protagonist while examining the yuri genre and representation in media. Flip Flappers is the perfect marriage of heavy visual style and intellectual substance. Definitely give them one a.. err better make that three watches, as you will want to be sure to get everything out of this beautiful series as possible.

10. Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid - 131 Votes

YuriMother: This series is the closest anime fans have to a lesbian couple having a family that we have, and that is a shame. I LOVE family narratives, outside of the yuri genre Usagi Drop is my favorite anime. To me, seeing women balance life, a relationship, and children is some of the best queer representation there is. However, for every point in Kobayashi’s favor, there is also a glaring fault. Kobayashi is a modern woman in the workforce providing for herself and her “family,” but is borderline abusive to Tohru. Kanna is an inquisitive child being raising by two women, but there are weirdly sexual scenes featuring her. As previously mentioned on this list, if one can silence the reasonable part of the brain this work becomes enjoyable, hilarious, and adorable. Unfortunately, its faults prevent it from being more than an amusement and I seriously doubt that they will fade in the second season. But hey, it sells a ton of figures so… YAY!

OG: This series is one of the closest yuri fans have to a series starring a lesbian couple with a daughter and it is wonderful. Is the tale of an eternally grateful dragon who wanted to repay the human who saved her life, albeit drunk, by becoming her live-in maid. Tohru being a dragon girl had incredible power and could easily crush everyone in sight but preferred to try and understand humanity so she could live in peace with the woman she loved. It of course was hard at times but thanks to Miss Kobayashi slowly growing to accept her back (romantically she had a ways to go) and the two raising the adorable bundle of mighty puff known as Kanna they became a happy family. How long this relationship will last and whether Miss Kobayashi would come to fully love Tohru back romantically remains to be seen. I have high hopes it can and will happen. Kanna X Riko is precious (Yes. Even that scene). We even have a potential BL couple, which is nice. Not a fan of Lucoa X Shouta the shota. Not because of the age gap but it not being my kind of romantic comedy. It is the same reason I have a hard time buying Tsubame X Misha from UzaMaid. Mya-Nee X Hana from Wataten...maybe. At least Mya-Nee showed she is patient. Back to Dragon Maid. Great series. Naughty of course but great.

11. Sweet Blue Flowers (Aoi Hana) - 119 Votes

OG: Megane girl falls for a cutie but has a hard time confessing to her to the point she gives a relationship with another girl a try. Said other girl has troubles of her own courtesy of her own views on what love. Do not get me started on the OTHER girl who likes megane’s girlfriend. I did not even mention megane girl’s first love interest who she herself eventually begins questioning her feelings for the glasses wearing maiden. While this is well known throughout the history of yuri anime Aoi Hana made it clearer than ever that Yuri + Classical Music go hand in hand. Plus the show is quite pretty. Ultimately enjoyment of this series depends heavily on viewers’ patience.

YuriMother: Aoi Hana was ahead of its time in many regards. Most yuri during the early twenty-first century was unrealistic and melodramatic, especially with the revival of S stories. Aoi Hana instead presents a calm and realistic story that we still rarely see in yuri anime today. Instead of relying on tricks like service or comedy Aoi Hana presents a serene and character-driven story which is matched by equally calming scenery. It is certainly not the most thrilling watch, but a slow and beautiful slice of real life that remains one of the all-time strongest yuri works.

12. Yurikuma Arashi - 99 Votes

YuriMother: Yurikuma Arashi is strange, to say the least, but this is not out of the ordinary for legendary director Ikuhara, who also directed Utena. Parallels are easily drawn between this work and Flip Flappers, as they are both complex and encoded with enough symbolism to drown a bear. Yurikuma is one of my favorite works in the yuri genre and I have had more than a few heated discussions about interpretations of the work, including one memorable occasion when I was visiting a college professor and we ended up in a shouting match in the middle of the hall. However, while Flip Flappers holds a high degree of polish the same can, unfortunately, not be said here. Yurikuma Arashi has more than a few scenes of fanservice many of which overly fetishize the characters and relationship and some of the symbols, particularly lily flowers and the word “yuri” are practically beaten to death with an object I refuse to come up with because I am starting to have my fill of symbolism. However, despite some of its sloppiness, Yurikuma is one of the single most interesting and well-formed anime out there and analyzing it is practically a right of passage for seasoned yuri fans.

OG: Yurikuma Arashi is my favorite of Ikuhara-san’s series. To me it was the least complicated of his works but even so I needed help to understand the show. Luckily I had plenty of assistance. The meat of the story is more complicated but put simply it is about a war between a group of bear girls (and some human girls) who want to freely express their love and/or desire/hunger for each other and another group that amounts to Right to Censor from WWF. Like I said it is far more complex than that but that is the gist. The anime is quite ecchi and it has good reason for it. Again the gay bears are the more liberated of the groups and them getting more sexy scenes is meant to showcase that. Our heroine has good reason to be grumpy and a divine entity was introduced alongside a certain someone from a certain dark anime we already discussed.

In the end it is a show starring lesbian bear girls. I love love stories between women and i love bears. It was obvious I would end up enjoying this one. Like other complex stories it is not for everyone. Shows like Flip Flappers, Utena and Yurikuma have something of a learning people will have to get accustomed to in order to enjoy them.

13. Whispered Words (Sasameki Koto) - 88 Votes

OG: To me Aoi Hana and Sasameki Koto were always connected despite the former being a drama and the latter a comedy. Both star a female protagonist struggling with how to best tell the girl she likes her true feelings whereas their love interest for one reason or another makes it all the more challenging to get their feelings across. Both shows aired during a time yuri was not as popular of a genre as it would become over time. Perhaps if they had come out a little later when yuri was becoming more popular in the mainstream they would have fared better…Then again they may have helped set the groundwork for future yuri shows so it’s just as well they came out when they did. In any case both good shows worthy of “best of yuri” lists. SK has the dynamic of the megane in love and her somewhat airheaded love interest who specifically likes “cute girls”. Poor megane has a hard time figuring out what the airhead defines as “cute”. The show also features an amusing side-couple of an ojou-sama and her tsundere girlfriend. Not to mention the somewhat controversial side-girl who plays a more prominent role in the 2nd half of the anime. Heck, even Mr Crossdresser himself is cool. Let us not forget Miss “Ha Ha Ha!” Another really good show that I would love to see the rest of the manga get animated someday but considering most anime are essentially manga commercials and the SK manga ended the odds of a 2nd season are close to 0.

YuriMother: 2009 was a great year for yuri anime, with both Sasameki Koto and Aoi Hana, among other works, airing. But while Aoi Hana sought to resist many of the common tropes of the genre and tell a simple grounded story Sasameki Koto appears to have looked a the list of every convention possible and say “yeah I can do that.” It has melodrama, comedy, one-sided love, friend love stories, I worship this genre but even I think there is a limit. However, Sasameki Koto is one of the most competent yuri anime works of the current era. While all the tropes are present most of the problematic aspects of the genre are not. The story is well written, characters enjoyable, and art that is really well done for the time. I enjoy every watch and if I ever want to quickly download the genre’s tropes into another person's head I need only duct tape them to a chair and throw on Sasameki Koto.

14. Riddle Story of Devil (Akuma no Riddle) - 77 Votes

YuriMother: Akuma no Riddle was highly anticipated back in 2014, sporting a premise of student assassins that, while certainly not unique, was outside the norms for the yuri genre. It promised a dark and thrilling take on the yuri genre that would not become popular until the yuri horror trend a few years later. At first, it looked like this would be successful with an excellent setup and some pretty compelling characters but ultimately Akuma no Riddle fell flat and became more derailed as it continued. The monster of the week style of episodes left little room for complex plots and plans or proper character development, which is a shame because of how engaging so many of the assassins were upon original presentation. However, this show still has some of the best action in the yuri genre, placing it alongside series like Cannan and Utena despite its flawed storytelling. If nothing else, the anime may compel one to read the manga, which expands the story and characters more than the show was given time to.

OG: Professional assassins secretly gathered at an academy in an attempt to take the life of a seemingly innocent cutie to win the ultimate prize, one of whom wishes to protect the adorable redhead. Yes the manga, which is pretty much a Director’s Cut, is better and the anime would have benefited from having 20+ episodes instead of 12 and a delightful beach OVA but the show did a good job of showing viewers what each assassin was like, their motivations (though many of their origin stories were summarized in written biographies during commercial breaks viewers needed to pause to read) were clear enough and the duels, as brief as some of them were, had enough spicy goodness in them to be memorable, especially the ones in the latter half of the show. Oh, and although the manga wrapped up after the anime it had a very similar ending.

15. Revue Starlight - 72 Votes

OG: Gay theater girls who strive to become the top star, meaning the best actress or lead actor of the cast. How do they do it? By working hard and overcoming their personal hardships? Yes. That. What makes this show so wonderful despite being almost a year old as of this writing is not only do the ladies all have interesting stories to tell but so does the stage. Every song, prop, movement, dance, gesture etc. It is like the performers and performances are united. It is like in Spongebob where not only does the person in the boots tell a story but the boots as well.

Oh yes. I almost forgot to mention the mysterious underground theater and talking giraffe. Never forget the talking giraffe from Hell. #Wakarimasu.

Super cool and super gay.

YuriMother: Bushiroad continuously gets better at what they do, creating media franchises of cute girls filled with music and making mountains of cash from smartphone games. Inspired by the likes of Love Live, they created BanG Dream and last year Revue Starlight. However, where these franchises fell short Revue Starlight success. It never twists its characters to tell a story but rather creates compelling arcs around them. I thoroughly enjoyed and agree with its place on this list.

16. Konohana Kitan - 68 Votes

YuriMother: I know of Konohana Kitan for its constant presence at yuri events more so than the anime or even the manga. It is adorable, relaxing, simple, and fun. While it does not add anything super substantial to the genre it does not take anything either or present any objectionable material. The “plot” is nonexistent but that does not matter, as it is not trying to tell a story or make commentary, just be fluffy and simple.

OG: Konohana Kitan to me is a Girls Club (Cute girls doing cute things) and iyashikei hybrid anime. It is visually stunning as it is relaxing with Yuzu pretty much one of the cutest demigoddesses in existence. She of course is a chick magnet but her heart will forever belong to Satsuki.

17. Destiny of the Shrine Maiden (Kannazuki no Miko) - 65 Votes

OG: The other stuff on the show is still not that great but ChiMeko will forever stand the test of time as far as I’m concerned. Top 10 for their love story alone. Yes. I know THAT ONE SCENE continues being controversial and talked about every time curious new yuri fans witness greatness…but I will forever defend Chikane because I get where she was coming from. Would I have done something different? Yes. The thing is you need to put yourself in her shoes and understand what she wanted to accomplish and how far she would go to get it done. Kotoha is best side-character and Souma Ogami is real man’s man who does not deserve the hate. He was an honorable warrior to the end. He fought well and accepted defeat like a man. Plus his yell is inspirational.

YuriMother: My feelings on Kannazuki no Miko are incredibly mixed. It has many of the worst facets of early current era yuri anime, tropes include S, rape and… am I reading this correctly, demon mechs? Worst of all it presents a cycle, a never-ending loop that haunts the characters in the overarching plot and it does not resolve it. If a work ever presents such an element, like Puella Magi did, it must be overcome or confronted at least. Its presence makes the already cringy story feels cheap and lazy. However, I love the two female leads and their difficult relationship. I love the music, especially the hauntingly beautiful ending theme, and the final moments of episode 11 are some of the greatest seconds I have ever seen in an anime. I cannot wrap my mind around my view of this series but at the end of the day, I understand it. I do not believe that work like it would ever be warmly accepted today but for its time it does stand as a breakout piece of yuri anime.

18. Princess Principal - 61 Votes

YuriMother: Princess Principal is one of the best anime of the past few years. It had everything, an interesting premise, great characters, an incredible soundtrack. Alongside all this is the sharp writing and thrilling story. Princess Principal did everything Akuma no Riddle wanted to with an intriguing and action-packed story featuring strong characters. On top of all this, the animation is top notch. A six-part movie sequel is planned which has me somewhat concerned, but I am glad to see that it is being continued as the ending to the series was one of its weakest aspects. Now if you will excuse me, I need to listen to some jazz.

OG: Cute and sexy gay spies in a dramatic British Steampunk setting. What more do readers need? Allow Her Holiness to elaborate a bit further. Currently waiting for the multi-part cinematic continuation.

19. Izetta: The Last Witch - 60 Votes

OG: I am known for loving shows people do not think as highly of. Izetta: The Last Witch is no different. I love this show so much. Besides how certain events transpired some complained about the depiction of WW2. Basically think about people ranting about storylines and content featured in certain Call of Duty and Battlefield games. Here however, it is clearly a fictional great war inspired by WW2. I was invested in the following:

-The cute and sexy ladies.

-Seeing two badass lesbians lead an army against an evil empire.

-FiZetta’s romance. This of course being the major highlight. I love FiZetta so much. My sexy lesbian babies and Anne X Grea’s mentors. They taught them everything they know after all.

It is similar to how I felt watching Kannazuki no Miko where my focus was primarily on the leading ladies’ developing romance. The difference is that unlike Kannazuki I was also somewhat entertained by our heroines’ enemies along with their allies. Basically viewers’ enjoyment of the show depends on how seriously they take their history and are willing to overlook the liberties this story takes with its depictions of the weapons, military and the familiar evil empire. FiZetta are one of my favorite lesbian couples of all time.

By the way, in that famous scene, yes they did. Viewers just have to squint their eyes to see “it”.

YuriMother: Another show that I consider to have squandered its potential. I know that lots of people enjoyed this one, including OG but I could not bring myself to finish this constantly mediocre series. Perhaps I am tired of alternative light-fantasy European-war inspired plots. Trying to stand out in this bloated genre is difficult and Izetta fails. Izetta started strong and hooked many viewers with its amazing visual and auditory polish but this was quickly lost in the plot which, while set up well, struggle to gain any ground of pay off what had been established. On the yuri side, it did not really do anything interesting or satisfying, with plenty of scenes feature the character’s standing next to each other looking cute and one or two moments of actual yuri. I am glad that some of you were able to enjoy this one more than me at least.

20. Maria Watches Over Us (Maria-sama ga Miteru) - 57 Votes

OG: Like Strawberry Panic this is a “Like it or not” classic. Despite being a Class S show it did its own thing and became a pioneer for . It’s also responsible for the many yuri jokes related to all-girl schools in anime.Shimako X Noriko best Grande and Petite Souer! Yumiko X Sachiko were great too as the two grew to better understand each other. Most memorable scene for me was the panda costume. Even Sei is a sleeper icon in all yuridom. Yoshino X Rei had a very interesting dynamic. I actually think they are the real pioneers of relationships between cousins. Thank you YoshiRei. HaruKana, Kaede X Sara and several others owe you two much appreciation.

YuriMother: Another great and significant series, Maria Watches Over Us, took the tropes of early yuri works, Catholic schools, a lack of men, piano scenes, and emotional relationship rather than physical ones and turned the dial up to 11. For better or worse, it single-handedly revived the Class S genre and was copied (and parodied) endlessly for over a decade. However much I complain about S I actually do not think that we would have the current age of yuri without its popularity and proliferation at the beginning of the century so I owe a big thank you to Maria Watches Over Us for that. Ignoring its historical importance and literary significance the anime still presents an engaging plot with wonderful characters and more butchered French than my last trip to Europe. It is certainly worth a watch and worthy of a place on this list.

What do you think should be on this list?:

YuriMother: As I previously said, this is a pretty perfect list. As far as missing titles I can think of the following.

Simoun - not the greatest in terms of plot or animation but it had cute service and a fun action-packed plot.

Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl - This series may be strange and present the dreaded love triangle but it did its best to tell a transgender narrative in 2006, naturally this involved aliens, and I applaud it for its attempts.

Cannan - This series is light on the yuri but heavy on the suspense, action, and amazing character designs. The terrorist plot is exciting and the final train fight featured in the series is one of the greatest action spectacles in anime that somehow manages to remain grounded.

OG:

-Harukana Receive: Best all-female sports anime ever made. Plus the gayness is not subtle at all.

-Mikagura Gakuen Kumikyoku: Eruna Ichinomiya is an underrated yuri icon. While not the first of her kind (That honor, I think, goes to Galaxy Fraulein Yuna) she set the standard of cool and inspirational badass lesbian protagonists who are proud of who they are and...also happen to be super perverts. Eruna made it cool to be such a protagonist. It is nice seeing a lesbian lead who does not care what anyone else thinks. She is hungry for cute girl booties. While she often loses her control in the presence of pure beauty she, as an inspiration for others like her, has enough self-control to not go overboard (most of the time).

-Symphogear: Symphogear is love, Symphogear is life. Hopefully Season 5 will keep up the good work.

-Rinne no Lagrange: My favorite mecha anime and the reason I embrace OT3s when the signs are there. Not the greatest but man was it fun. Plus Madoka Kyouno is still sexy.

-Yuki Yuna wa Yuusha de Aru: My favorite Moepocalypse anime of all time. Yuna X Togo taught me to love and trust some people outside my closest family again.

-Mouretsu Pirates: If someone were to ask me “Hey OG. What to you is the perfect anime?”. I would tell them Mouretsu/Bodacious Space Pirates.

-Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl. Thanks to the first fan commenting and reminding me of it. Definitely worthy of a spot. #HazumuWasAlwaysFemale

Final Thoughts:

OG: Pretty good list and close to what mine would look like were I to make one. Reason I have yet to do so is because I do not feel confident enough to pick a favorite yuri anime of all time. Favorite yuri manga and couples? That I can do, but anime always seems to give me a hard time choosing my absolute favorites. Like I said though, a potential yuri list of mine would look something like this. I also found it interesting how similar the Top 10 are among both our respective fanbases and visitors to the poll conducted by the Akiba Research Institute.

YuriMother: I may have done most the complaining and left the praise to OG but I actually and really happy with this list. I think that every title presented is a worthy addition and while I would certainly move some higher or lower than their current placing I do not believe that these are too far off from my own opinions, which is surprising for a popularity poll. More than anything I am thrilled to see that works I dislike that I thought to be popular did not make this list. Perhaps I should have more faith in people and their opinions. Everyone did such a wonderful job voting and I am so grateful!

Thank you so much everyone for reading and for voting in the top yuri anime poll. To see the full results of the poll and to support yuri news, reviews, and content, check out the YuriMother Patreon. Happy Pride Month

[cartoonfangirl1218]

Riverdale should have been a Disney show

Riverdale should have been a Disney show. There I said it. I'll admit the first season was fine Great even. Self-contained with an intriguing mystery and you waited at the edge of your seat for what will happen next. But then... Part of the problem for me is because I've read the original comics since I was a girl. I still do get some from my mom, and the way they have changed the characters just bug me.Betty used to be the girl next door, always hopeful, smart, trying to figure out the mystery. And it was perfect that she was a reporter because Betty was always someone who valued honesty so her being the roving reporter was perfect. And her taking pills for anxiety or some sort of disorder was also a nice take because she does take on so much, and tries so hard to help and be good and nice and perfect. All the stress. Archie was also great in the first season. A bit horny, but he means well, and he truly is an average American boy so his big trouble of choosing between music and football. He's a klutz and sometimes his plans go sideways but he means well, he's all for family and Riverdale and school spirit. None of this whole Red Hood/semi mafia/wrestling nonsense. I actually really liked their take on Veronica, she still a bit materialistic and thinks she can depend on her wealth to get her out of trouble but I do like their take on trying to be enterneauripal and working to act less high class society girl as she was used to. 

Jughead, I'm conflicted with. Because he's good I guess as a brooding, investigative journalist he's good. It fits the setting of the show. But I do have a soft spot for him as the sane man to Archie. Going about his business, surprisingly philosophical. And you can't forget the most important attribute to him. His love of food! I miss that. Like the one scene in season 1, I forget what exactly but basically he ordered burgers and when Cole Sprouse just protectively held the burger to him...such a nice touch. That sort of guy I can see as a DCOM. The genius ditz I guess it's called. But he's not dumb. He just prefers napping to being awake. 

Now the others...omg.I have a bone to pick when it comes to the other characters in Riverdale. Josie and the Pussycats-- they are such lively musicians who solve crimes, sometimes in space. ABsolutely wasted here. Melody barely had any lines. And they didn't have Alex or Alexandra Cabot which was such a shame. I know, I know they're in the new Katy Keene show but having them be step-siblings who used to date is wrong and weird and bad and no! Stop having the twins in these shows with vaguly incesteous feelings. It's weird!

Kevin Keller, all his storylines revolve around his bfs or lack of bfs or how much he wants a bf. The Kevin of Archie comics was so much more well-rounded. He was head of ROTC, he was class president, he ran marathons, he was Veronica's bff, he was a reporter. He had an appetite to match Jughead's. He even had a brief crush on Jughead! He was so much better than this sham. He was confident in who he was and did his best to help others feel good about themselves too because he knows not everyone is lucky to come out as LGTBQ in a supportive environment. 

Reggie. I think not giving him enough of an arc in season 1 really backfired because if he appears, it's only as Veronica's arm candy. Which is a shame because he is a good contrast to Archie. A bit richer yet a cheapskate. Thinks he's a casanova, loves being the class prankster. A modern day politician with his sweet words when all he cares about himself. Basically like 

Yet he has his hidden depths with his neglectful workaholic parents and jealousy of Archie's popularity. Cheryl. Omg Cheryl. They have ruined you here. I'm sorry, I do NOT find any of her lines iconic. It's like she swallowed urban dictionary and a gothic novel and came out all jumbled in a google translate. She may be abused but the way she still treats others like shit and gaslights her gf and makes everything about her is just...ugh!!! OMg, comics Cheryl is actually fun and iconic. She's as rich and pretty as Veronica and unafraid to use it. She wants to be a star like a modern day influencer. She's a red-haired Sharpay Evans basically. 

Also Jason, her twin whom they sadly killed off. He was also fun like a meaner, snobbier version of Reggie. But with a huge crush on Betty which I think could have been used to milk such drama. 

Polly also got hit badly. She was a good older sister. She was a reporter, and inspired Betty's enviormental-feminist activities. A sane person. Not a cult worshipping cuckoo. Toni Topaz, ah she was so good in season 2 and then they made her Cheryl's arm candy. Alas. I liked her as a friend to Jughead. In the comics, she was his equal in food contests. That's no small feat. She was cool, and joined Betty's band and... she was her own person. Remember when Toni used to be a photographer for the South Side paper. Yeah. Basically Toni as a 3d character with personality. Please return. 

Dilton. Oh Dilton. Once the smartest person in the Archie universe and they turned you into a survival freak to get killed by the gargoyle king. Or whomever. I just remember he got killed somehow. Honestly, they should have stuck to smart Dilton. They need a smart scientist there, cuz no one is using their brains in Riverdale. 

Chuck. They have done you SUCH A DISSERVICE! So so bad. Chuck was a good person! He was a cartoonist, and a basketball player and Archie's friend. (Yeah, that's right Archie has friends in the comics. Even though Riverdale makes some effort to show Archie and Jug's bond, they're mainly consorting with their gfs. In the comics, they had guy nights. Reggie, Chuck, Kevin, Dilton, Moose. Come on show. Friendships are just as important.) And what did they do, make him a lying scumbag, turn him good and then have him arrested because of what Cheryl did! No, no no. Bad writers. Just no. Ethel Muggs. You have also been wronged in season 3. Making her a crazy freak. Ethel in season 1 was nice. Ethel in the comics is nice. Plain but with a good heart even though she had a slightly obsessive crush on Jughead. Here, making her cult worshipper.... smdh.  Okay at this point I know I sound like a bitter, bitter person complaining how it'S nOt liKE tHe cOmICs. But hey, I admit season 1 was good even if they changed the characters a bit. It’s just that I watched Riverdale because of the property it derived from. Because of the comics. At the least I expected some faithfulness to the characters. Not make them all so inconsistent and crazy. 

It's just the writing is so inconsistent! The plots hop around and so do their moods. Bughead and Choni broke up for one episode and then they got right back together. Even though they had VALID reasons to break up. Nope. That made fans mad. So they had to get back together. Ugh. And Archie got attacked by a bear and was so traumatized that he broke up with Veronica because "he's changed" for like two episodes before forgetting about it and going back to Veronica. Oh which brings me to the ridiculous "love triangle" of Archie/Reggie/Veronica where she couldn't choose. Please, Archie and Veronica were reuniting and planning to go run away for a weekend together. Reggie was completely forgotten until he walked in on them. And Veronica couldn't decide because she loves them both? No, she didn't. She may have felt bad to tell Reggie but it's not because she loved him. Forgetting a guy so quickly...yeah great proof of love. Horniness maybe. But her indecisiveness makes her look bad. Don’t tease a will they, won’t they when the answer is so obvious.  If you're going to do something like that, you should have there be something called CONSEQUENCES! They can get back together but at least wait. Wait 8 episodes at least so they can have character development. But who am I kidding. Character development is not the goal of this show. The character's just move because the writer's want them too not because it fits their personalities. Such as Archie's grieved reaction for baby Teeth in season 3. 

Not only do I have no idea when (the ridiculously named) Baby Teeth appeared, much less why Archie or I should care about his death. But sometimes the show juggles too much. Too many characters. Too many plots. It's all so ugh!!! So my final thought on this is... Riverdale should have been a disney channel sitcom. Archie comics are about family friendly entertainment and sometimes imparted lessons... well so does Disney. I get the appeal of having Riverdale reach a new teen generation, but from what I can see the only big thing Riverdale on CW is that it allows alcohol and gartituous sex scenes. 

Which is another small gripe of mine. I can handle sex scenes (hello Magic Mike XXL) but so many at such inappropriate moments too It's like that scene in an action movie where they suddenly kiss when they should be running for their lives. No teen is that horny all the time. Plus there's always less is more. If one kisses so much it loses the meaning. If you think your shirtless Archie is going to distract me from lack of plot haha. No. Plot and consistency still sucks and shirtless Archie does not make it better.

But Riverdale as a Disney show can work. After all the comic stories are a bit formulaic. It's all high school hijinks. And all the characters fit an archetype. Archie, the protagonist. Veronica, the fashionista. Betty, the reporter. Jughead, the slacker. Reggie, the class clown/bad friend. Cheryl, the Sharpay, Kevin, the sane one. And if people want a season long story arc with dramatics, Disney can actually handle it too. After all they had the mysterious "threat' lurking in the background of My babysitter's a vampire season 2. Or the Juliet and Mason saga of Wizards of Waverly Place. And if people want adult situations, look on to Jessie. Rewatching an episode now, there were so many adult jokes and references that flew over my head so they could sneak those in. Heck, Disney channel is infamous for all the innuendos they manage. And they handle consistency. Cody and Bailey broke up in Suite life on deck, they actually stayed broken up for a good half season. Gabe matured from a prankster tween to teen in love in Good Luck Charlie. Actions have consequences, characters grow. Storytelling 101

And the best part is they don't even have to think too hard for the plots of the week. They literally can build on stories from the comics. All 80 years of it. And I have put some examples right here from my own Archie comics. Like Veronica literally being the fashion police. 

Veronica and Cheryl teaming up + rolling around in their money. 

Cheryl changing the Cherry Blossom Festival to the Cheryl Blossom Festival 

Archie doing his classic Valentine's Day mix up

Veronica and Betty buy Cheryl’s maid service when her father forces her to get a job. 

Jughead and Trula (Jughead's nemesis & psychoanalyst in training) get amnesia and become friends. 

A boy dares to change Veronica

Jughead falls in love with the lunch-lady 

Betty and Veronica pretending to be distressed damsels to get Archie's attention (it backfires) 

Toni and Jughead foil each other in a food eating contest. 

Betty's cast causes more pain to other students

Reggie dates Cheryl (for real) 

Reggie helps Kevin dress for the dance and his mystery date 

Riverdale Shore. 

Cabot vs Lodge

I think all this pretty much illustrates my point. Archie comics equals Disney sitcom all by itself.