#i would go more in depth but alas. as I’m making this I’m 16 so I haven’t learned all the fun maths lore yet

[locusfandomtime]

The maths fandom is wild. “Real” and “imaginary” numbers? I think you mean canon and non-canon. You guys seriously go “this is my number oc his name is i and he is the square root of -1” when in numbers canon lore it’s actually impossible to square root a negative but sure whatever. “Complex numbers”? I think you mean a character x oc ship. “f(x) = 3x - 5”? That is self-insert fanfiction.

[leafinthebreeze]

“The road that is recovery from a childhood without a mother’s love, support, and attunement is long and complicated. One aspect of healing that is rarely touched upon is mourning the mother you needed, sought, and — yes — deserved. The word deserved is key to understanding why this remains elusive for many women (and men): They simply don’t see themselves as deserving, because they’ve internalized what their mothers said and did as self-criticism and have wrongly concluded that they’re lacking, worthless, or simply unlovable.

When I learned that my mother was failing 16 years ago, I did not go to see her, even though everyone in my life — including my therapist — thought I should go for “closure.” But I was wise enough to realize that they hadn’t walked my path, and their vision of closure was based on novels and Hollywood movies in which a-ha! moments flourish and mothers always love. In real life, I would ask the question I always wanted to be answered — “Why didn’t you love me?" — and she would refuse to answer, as always, but this time her silence would stretch out into eternity. I didn’t attend her funeral, either. But I did grieve — not for her, but for me and my unmet needs. And the mother I deserved.

"As I started finally to see her for what she was and how she will never be the mother I need and want, I started standing up for myself and setting boundaries, and her anger and insults got worse. Finally, I put my foot down and told her I would no longer tolerate her behavior and stopped all contact. And, NOW, I am really in mourning. I finally acknowledged the truth, and it hurts like hell. And I’m at the age where some of my friends are starting to lose their moms to old age and their stories, of times with their moms, are heartbreaking to me… I guess I just started this mourning process, and I’m still in it." —Annie

Grieving the mother you needed is impeded by both feeling unworthy of love and, more important, what I call the core conflict. This conflict is between the daughter’s growing awareness of how her mother wounded her in childhood and still does, and her continuing need for maternal love and support, even in adulthood. This pits the need to save and protect herself against the continuing hope that, somehow, she can figure out what she can do to get her mother to love her.

This tug-of-war can go on for literally decades, with the daughter retreating and perhaps going no-contact for a period of time and then being pulled back into the maelstrom by the combination of her neediness, hopefulness, and denial. She may paper over her pain and make excuses for her mother’s behavior because her eyes are on the prize: Her mother’s love. She puts herself on an ever-turning Ferris wheel, unable to dismount.

Those who concede the battle — going no contact, or limiting communication with their mothers and usually other family members — experience great loss along with relief. For the daughter to heal, this loss — the death of the hope that this essential relationship can be salvaged — needs to be mourned along with the mother she deserved.

The depth of the core conflict can be glimpsed in the anguish of those daughters who stay in the relationship precisely because they fear they will feel worse when their mothers die.

The stages of grief echo a daughter’s recovery from childhood.

In their book On Grief and Grieving, Elizabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler point out that the five stages of loss for which Kübler-Ross is famous — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance — aren’t meant “to help tuck messy emotions into neat packages.” They instead emphasize that everyone experiences grief in a unique and individual way. Not everyone will go through each stage, for example, and the stages may not necessarily follow in the expected sequence. That said, the stages are still illuminating, especially when seen in the context of an unloved daughter’s journey out of childhood, and they make it clear why mourning is an essential part of healing.

Denial: As the authors write, “It is nature’s way of letting in as much as we can handle.” With the experience of great loss, denial helps cushion the immediate blow, allowing the person to pace the absorption of the reality. That’s true for death, but it also applies to the daughter’s recognition of her woundedness. That’s why it can take years or decades for the daughter to actually see her mother’s behavior with clarity. Counterintuitively, some women actually only see it in hindsight, after their mothers’ deaths.

Anger: In the wake of death, anger is the most accessible of emotions, directed at targets as various as the deceased for abandoning the loved one, God or the forces of the universe, the unfairness of life, doctors and the healthcare system, and more. Kübler-Ross and Kessler stress that beneath the anger lie other, more complex emotions, especially the raw pain of loss, and that the power of the grieving person’s anger may actually feel overwhelming at times.

Unloved daughters, too, go through a stage or even stages of anger as they work through their emotions toward recovery. Their anger may be directed squarely at their mothers for their treatment, at other family members who stood by and failed to protect them, and also at themselves for not recognizing the toxic treatment sooner.

Anger at the self, alas, can get in the way of the daughter’s ability to feel self-compassion; once again, it is the act of mourning the mother you deserved that permits self-compassion to take root and flower.

Bargaining: This stage has to do with impending death most usually — bargaining with God or making promises to change, thinking that “if only” we’d done x or y, we’d be spared the pain of loss. With death, this is a stage to be passed through toward acceptance of the reality. The unloved daughter’s journey is marked by years of bargaining, spoken or unspoken entreaties in the belief that if some condition is met, her mother will love and support her. She may embark on a course of pleasing and appeasing her mother or make changes to her behavior, looking in vain for the solution that will bring the desired end: Her mother’s love. Just as in the process of grief, it’s only when the daughter ceases to bargain that she can begin to accept the reality that she’s powerless to wrest what she needs from her mother.

Depression: In the context of a major loss, Kübler-Ross and Kessler are quick to point out that we are often impatient with the deep sadness or depression that accompanies it. As a society, we want people to snap out of it, or are quick to insist that if sadness persists, it deserves treatment. They write instead that in grief, “Depression is a way for nature to keep us protected by shutting down the nervous system so that we can adapt to something we feel we cannot handle. They see it as a necessary step in the process of healing.

Acceptance: Most importantly, Kübler-Ross and Kessler are quick to say that acceptance of the reality isn’t a synonym for being all right or even okay with that reality. That’s a key point. It’s about acknowledging the loss, identifying the permanent and even endlessly painful aspects of it, the permanent changes it’s made to your life and you, and learning to live with all of that from this day forward. In their view, acceptance permits us “to withdraw our energy from the loss and begin to invest in life.” Acceptance permits the mourner to forge new relationships and connections as part of their recovery.

What does it mean to mourn the mother you deserved?

Just what it sounds like — to grieve the absence of a mother who listened to you, took pride in you, who needed you to understand her as well as she understood you, a woman willing to own up to her mistakes and not excoriate you for yours, and — yes — someone to laugh and cry with.”

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/tech-support/201703/daughters-unloving-mothers-mourning-the-mom-you-deserved

[hopeymchope]

I finished World’s End Club

The hardest thing about completing a Kodaka or Uchikoshi game is always that bereft feeling; the knowledge in my heart that there’s nothing out there that will fulfill me as much as these guys’ stories do, and now I’m fresh out of their stuff once more. Y’know? It’s like “Well shit, now I have to settle for something lesser.”

Anyway. I finished World’s End Club. The whole thing took about 16 hours (according to the in-game clock on my save file), and I’m currently redoing a couple of stages for stickers that I missed. I doubt that’ll last me more than another hour, though, so I should be 100% finished at 17 hours. Granted, that’s with me bypassing the first hour because I’d already completed it in the demo... so that makes it around 18 hours long in total. Much shorter than the average Uchikoshi or Kodaka work, clearly!

And man, they sure do pack a lot of twists and turns into those 18-or-so hours. Admittedly, there is time to slow down and talk to the characters to learn more about their backstories or what they’re thinking (typically during “Camp” scenes). But the other two types of scenes — “Story” and “Act” scenes — are chock-full of new reveals or weird plot developments up until like, hour 15. It’s all of the usual twistiness of an Uchikoshi story compacted into a shorter timeframe. 

In addition to this being shorter than Uchikoshi’s or Kodaka’s most notable prior games, it’s also much lighter. Despite somewhat dark themes cropping up at a few points, this is a far kinder and more uplifting game than Zero Escape or Danganronpa ever were. I mean, hey, it’s about a group of 12-year-olds, so it almost necessitates that lighter tone. 

I’ve mentioned this before, but I love the core cast of kids. Sure, there are a few of them who remained thin enough that I never got very attached to them, but I mean, it’s a pretty big cast. Most of the storytelling time is spent on the central plot, so I understand the shorthand of using some stereotypes in there. Some of them do get mined for depth. If there’s one problem with them, it’s that they’re too young for me to feel comfortable shipping any of them. :P They’re BABIES! 

The bottom line here is that I loved the latest Uchikoshi-penned ride. I will remain in the tank for his works for a long time to come. But now, In order to actually list and go off on some of my (relatively few) gripes with the game, I have to get into Spoiler Mode. 

MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW THE CUT!

SPOILER MODE  ACTIVATED

Look; I didn’t love all of the twists thrown at us. I can come up with workarounds for some of the ones that bugged me, but let me go off on which twists most irritated me and why, okay?

 First off, the reveal that all of the strange monsters and creatures were just “illusions” doesn’t make any sense. If they were just illusions, there’d be no physicality to them. So there’d be no way that a giant pillbug could abduct Pai, or that some Yetis could run off with Pochi or Yuki. So they’re very obviously NOT just illusions. Hell, while we’re at it, maybe we should inquire as to how we got “Game Over”’d by a bunch of things that weren’t there. Some of the available deaths are even specific to the exact form of the monsters we see, like if Reycho gets snapped up and chewed up by one of the large flytraps in Kagoshima. You’re telling me an illusion did that?! Maybe they’re some of MAIK’s robots that are projecting illusions around themselves or something? That seems like the best way to accept this. It keeps the basic spirit of what MAIK said to be true while also justifying how it could operate. And yet..... the game even goes so far as to claim that Pielope’s transformations are just illusions. For some, that makes sense, but we clearly physically interact with at least one of those transformations — the kids actually grab onto the Train Pielope and hold onto numerous individual parts of his transformation while riding the train. So again: That CAN’T be an illusion if you can grab onto all the parts of it. So... what gives? If Pielope never physically transforms, then how’d they grab all the pieces of her transformation like that?

The twist with Reycho doesn’t quite work logically, either. For starters, if you go back and read his “inner monologue” dialogue from the game, there are numerous instances where the dialogue doesn’t seem to fit with it being the thoughts of the “Otherworlder” OR Pochi, the two parties supposedly controlling him. The thoughts in question only work if Recyho was somehow thinking for himself already, so I guess we have to fanwank it and just assume that his “self-awareness” was starting to come through early? (I didn’t care for the reveal that Pochi was controlling Reycho either, because it has this whole tone of “You were controlling someone who never mattered because they were just being controlled by somebody else who wasn’t even the player character, ha-ha!” But the later twist that the “Otherworlder” was actually controlling Reycho made it better for me, so I’ll let it slide.)

The other thing that didn’t work for me is the reveal that Pochi is a robot. Even events that come AFTER this reveal are made more problematic as a result of it. First off, it makes it confusing as to how/why certain “X-Type” robots exist. I guess MAIK created the X-Type robots? Because he somehow reached the ability to communicate with another world? If so, where are the other X-Types? We know there have to be some others if Niyan and his gang are already familiar with the whole concept. What was their purpose? Did MAIK also program his own robots to have emotions?  Because Pochi is clearly very emotional. Even though MAIK hates emotions... ? Perhaps this game isn’t meant to answer everything, and they’re setting up for some kind of sequel. I find that pretty unlikely, but I can’t say it’s impossible. However, the big reason I don’t like the Pochi Robot reveal isn’t really the logic problems with it. It’s that they knew we’d like Pochi because he’s an introverted gamer, but then the reveal of his true nature takes all that away. He was never a gamer at all. He wasn’t even all that shy. He was just keeping to himself to hide his true nature... and his “gaming” was just him controlling Reycho. So the things that your players were most likely to dig about him are utterly erased. So in the end, who is Pochi? He’s a compassionate, heroic, self-sacrificing protagonist. Which makes him a lot more generic. 

A closing thought: If, by some miracle, this game ever gets a follow-up sequel or spinoff, I see a lot of potential in how they could mix and match the various characters’ abilities. I understand that the platforming isn’t really the point of the game, and that’s why it feels undercooked... but that also makes it the area that could most easily be improved upon. I was initially excited for the chance to be able to swap between characters so that I could have Mowchan turn into iron, then Reycho would throw him onto a ledge. Or maybe Pai could block an attacking enemy while Tattsun shoots it! Alas, this is a simpler game than that. And while I am ok with that, if they ever take another shot at it, it doesn’t have to be this straightforward and simple. They can have more fun with the platforming side. Let’s go ahead and mix and match our powers!

[charlthotte]

Breaking Through the Iron Wall - Aone Takanobu x Reader

Chapter 16

It must have been approximately three hours before we arrived back at school, in the early noon, with almost everyone staying slumbering the entire time - their gentle - and not so gentle snores ringing through the air. While I saved the page I was reading, Coach Oiwake instructed me to wake the rest of the team up.

One by one, I went around the team, waking them - some much easier than others. That was, until I came to rouse Futakuchi, who had no desire to depart from his dreams, sleeping as still as a log. Several shakes of his shoulders later, he still hadn't arisen from his drowse, no matter how hard I shook. Until, Kamasaki, the idiosyncratic schemer with his water bottle in hand, unscrewing its lid, ready to ensue utter chaos. And with a squeeze of the container, the liquid had sprung itself into Futakuchi's face, its coldness stirring him immediately, but unlike the rest, he quickly entered an unbridled rage directed straight at the conniver, Kamasaki.

Subsequently, with a new burst of vigour - Futakuchi leapt from his seat, bounding after his attacker, spitting a slew of obscenities from between his lips. Waving his arms around in unadulterated fury, he relentlessly chased Kamasaki around the car park, screaming that he would get his revenge in due time - causing a whole bucket of catastrophe. Without wasting any time, Takanobu and Coach Oiwake swiftly bounded out from the coach, rearing to hinder the fight between the two feral children. 

It took nothing more than a slight interference from Takanobu, a stern glance - for the two opposing teens to immediately put a halt to their skirmish, sheepishly apologising to each other, even if that was only for show. 

With a defeated sigh, Coach Oiwake beckoned the rest of us out of the coach, gesturing for us to listen to what he had to say, "So, I know that you're all exhausted and you've all worked incredibly hard today - and there isn't much time left of the school day anyway, so it'd be pointless if you went back into lessons now. Therefore, I will be giving you all the permission to head home slightly earlier today. You're all dismissed, I'll see you tomorrow." Then, he bid us farewell, waving us away with an unenthusiastic gesture.

And with that, each one of us grabbed our bags and jackets, eagerly heading out of the school gates, but still being absolutely enervated. However, that meant that the usual train that Takanobu and I would catch wouldn't be coming for quite some time to come - so we would have to loiter around somewhere until that time came. 

After waving goodbye to the rest of the team, Takanobu and I began strolling slowly towards the train station, but since we had time to kill, we turned and passed down different streets, until we came across a dainty, sweet, little café - its outside adorned by trellises; bound by tresses of white wisteria. The entire aura of it was truly welcoming and mellow, practically ushering us inside its doors.

"Hey, Takanobu - do you want to get something to drink?" I asked him, feeling somehow uplifted from the scenery around me.

From the way he responded, I could feel the exhaustion exuding from him - his eyes drooping gracefully while he sedately nodded his head, apparently too tired to entertain a conversation.

As soon as I walked through the doors the delightful aroma of pastries and beautiful beverages floated towards me, swimming through the air. I took a deep breath, savouring the delicious fragrance, before I ordered drinks for both Takanobu and myself - but before I could get my wallet out to pay for what I was purchasing - beside me, Takanobu delved into his bag at the speed of light in an attempt to get to his wallet, too. I gave him a glance to cast my disapproval, firmly placing my own upon the counter to pay. "How about we call this a reward for playing super well?" I chuckled, tilting my head to the side.

Takanobu sighed, seemingly defeated, nodding before sinking into the collar of his jacket. It genuinely looked like he would fall to sleep at any given second.

In a small matter of minutes, our drinks were ready - but rather than stay inside, we both made the unconscious decision to sit on one of the tables outside. After all, the sun was shining radiantly, along with the wisteria adorned trellises compelled me there, as if its aura gave me a sense of belonging.

"(Y/N)?"

My eyes flicked away from my drink, landing upon his face, "Yes, what is it, Takanobu?"

He pointed to the abundances of wisteria around us, his eyes filled with adoration as he scanned the scene, "What do they mean?"

Giggling at him softly, I answered his question - but, before I did so - a warm pang palpitated inside me. Was it my stomach? My heart? I couldn't tell. "Like most things, wisteria can have more than one meaning. First, it can symbolise the longevity and figurative immortality of life, illustrious beauty and absolute infatuation." Suddenly I halted my explanation, hesitating when I spoke those last two words, for some reason unbeknownst to me.

'Absolute infatuation'

Sensing that I had zoned out, I quickly carried on with my diatribe, "But, every part of the wisteria is poisonous, toxic, deadly even. Especially since it is a rapidly growing plant. Now, I'm not completely sure about this, but I'm quite positive that that gives the wisteria its other meaning - warning profusely about how dangerous 'absolute infatuation' is - and how quickly it can grow, and eventually, take over everything you once were. After all, unfiltered, unbridled love... it's terrifying." I looked down at the floor, slightly embarrassed by the subject at hand. 

Faintly, I could hear a soft chuckle from Takanobu's side of the table. That was until, he said something, something so quiet that even I struggled to hear him. Two words that purely shook me to my core. It may have simply just been me overreacting, but alas - I believe it was called for.

"You're amazing."

In an instant, my eyes gaze shot straight up to meet his. My eyes widened and my mouth parted slightly, hanging agape in revelation. I wanted desperately to reply to him, but at the time, I was incapable of forming coherent dialogue. Wringing my hands together, I laughed awkwardly, trying desperately to form a reply.

After taking several shallow breaths of reassurance, I made my best attempt at speaking, despite my mind had gone into complete overdrive, "Thank you, Takanobu... You're rather amazing, too."

My heart thrummed at a pace so terrifyingly loud that I worried that everyone within a kilometre radius could hear it. I felt stupendously awkward after that, with my gaze darting from place to place, searching for something to distract my mind from the inner turmoil I was experiencing.

After shifting my line of sight many times, the only thing I was drawn to was Takanobu's face. It was like I was magnetised towards it. Unequivocally compelled towards him.

Our eyes met each other, and in that instant that they did, everything froze, everything fell silent, the world stopped turning. In those few seconds, no one existed but us.

And even though, every thought in my head told me to turn away - I was frozen too, our gazes seemed to be permanently latched to one another, neither one of us wanting to break away first. 

However, after a small eternity of making unrelenting eye contact, I was the first to break away, staring straight down at my beverage until I had finished every single last drop of it.

Neither of us spoke until we were walking back to the train station, following a road that I had never come across before. But, the complete opposite could be said for Takanobu - as he abruptly tensed up and stopped moving entirely when we passed one house in-particular. Its garden and exterior were completely barren, devoid of any wisp of joyousness - every inch of the walls covered in a dull, draining grey. There was no light or life exuding from the inside of the house at all. Its overall lack of spirit made it seem like someone had abandoned it, many eons ago.

Noticing how visually distressed Takanobu was, I finally broke the silence, "Hey, what's the matter?" I asked.

Before he replied, he swiftly moved further ahead until that house was out of his line of sight, "Nothing, it's just a place from my childhood." He whispered, careful to make as little noise as possible.

"Are you sure you're alright?" I questioned, growing increasingly concerned about the way Takanobu was acting.

"Yeah." He hesitated for a beat, "Could we please go to the train station now?" His eyes shining with an immense tone of pleading.

"Oh... Of course." I said, leading Takanobu away from the house that seemed to be haunting him.

It took significantly less time than usual to arrive at the station, as Takanobu was walking at a much speedier than what he normally did. Which, ending up being quite a fortunate thing, as we only got onto the train with as much time as a blink of an eye able to pass, before it would have set off without us. 

However, nearly straight after we sat down, Takanobu's head began to loll downwards - snapping it back up if it ever drooped too low. Eventually, he leant against the window beside him, his eyes fluttering open and closed - his entire face relaxing as he began to fight a losing battle between him and the valiant forces of slumber.

While he drifted off to sleep, I couldn't help but admire the view in front of me. The way the Sun hit his face in the most perfect manner, the way his chest slowly rose and fell with each inhale and exhale. Something about it was just so ethereal, and even though my conscience told me to look away, I couldn't divert my line of sight. Once again, my eyes were frozen in place.

Just before the train arrived at my stop, I gingerly took Takanobu's shoulder in my hand, rousing him softly, waking him from his slumber - and as he rose from the depths of his dreams, his eyelashes fluttered delicately across his face, fanning perfectly over his cheeks. But, as I got up to leave the train, so did he - not realising that he wasn’t yet at his destination. He must have have been confused, nothing more. 

As soon as we departed from the carriage, Takanobu immediately began conversing with me, "(Y/N), would you mind if you came to see Shiro with me?" He gulped, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down in some sort of trepidation. "I don't think I could do it alone."

I wasted no time with replying to him, "I wouldn't mind that at all, not one bit." I said, looking into his eyes, noticing something, some kind of aura shrouding him - one that I had never seen before - and much to my chagrin, I couldn't determine exactly what it was. Was it fear? Anxiety? Or perhaps something completely different?

Looking down at the pavement as I walked back to Takanobu's house, I could not hinder a peculiar feeling in the pit of my stomach, making it churn and flip around inside of me. And once again, I was questioning all that I knew. Putting all those queries to one side, I tried to coerce myself into believing that it was only a worrisome feeling for the sake of Shiro's health. But, deep down - I somehow knew that that wasn't true at all, I was only masking what thing was truly there - as a voice inside me, told me I wouldn't be able to handle the magnitude of the way I really felt.

Even by the time we had arrived at his house, I hadn't once let my vision deter from the path I was walking, it was almost as if I couldn't bare to look Takanobu straight in his eyes while he would look back into mine, in fear of something unknown.

While Takanobu opened the door to his house, the unease exuding from him was truly insurmountable, so much so, that anyone in the prefecture could feel it.

And that was completely understandable.

He didn't come running, nor did he walk over.

It was almost as if he didn't exist anymore.

Instead, he laid on the sofa, a morsel of what he was before - bones protruding under his skin, his fur thinned and brittle, his eyes no longer holding the spark of life that had been there before.

Shiro was merely a husk now.

Beside me, Takanobu's legs wobbled at the sight set before him - almost dropping to his knees in disbelief. 

Immediately, he ran to Shiro's side, seemingly forgetting his exhausted state - stroking the dog's back feebly, his hands quivering as he did so - careful not to disturb his friend before him. 

Ejiri must have noticed the sound of the door unlocking, quickly bounding down the stairs to greet us - wearing an expression showing both happiness and sorrow. Without wasting a second, she hurried towards the cowering form of her nephew, wrapping her arms around him with much vigour - truly ecstatic to see him again. Takanobu sunk into her arms, even though, he stood a whole head higher than her - resting his head upon her shoulder, beginning to silently sob into her, his breath hitching and releasing at an unkempt rhythm.

"Don't cry, honey... He's here now and that's all that matters in this moment." Ejiri spoke, patting her nephew's back in an effort to calm him down, "I'm here for you, darling... I always will be." She smiled serenely, "I travelled halfway across the world for you, I dropped everything I had for you - but, I'd do it again infinitely. I will never let you feel isolated again. So, know that I will always be there - no matter the time, no matter the place, no matter what." She reached up and ruffled Takanobu's hair, guiding him towards the sofa where Shiro laid. Then, she turned to me - her arms outstretched, carrying a grateful grin on her face, "And you, my dear - I can't express my gratitude for you enough. You have helped my boy greatly, especially in these not so nice times." After briskly patting my arm, she popped up from the sofa, heading towards the kitchen.

Looking over to the sofa, I saw a sight so beautiful, yet heart breaking - seeing the dreary eyes of Shiro droop in a daze, seeing the immense hurt burning behind Takanobu's eyes. I made way over to them, kneeling on the sofa next to the sick animal, stroking his back, careful not to cause him any pain.

As Ejiri came back into the room, a steaming mug in hand - Takanobu lifted his gaze away from Shiro, "How long?" He uttered, his eyes beginning to prick with a single tear.

She sighed, preparing herself for the news she was about to deliver, "Three days at best." She whispered, furrowing her brows, "I'm sorry."

Takanobu's arms dropped suddenly, in shock - bringing one of them up to cover his mouth, he whimpered, squinting his tears away. His body began trembling, shaking along with his lamentation, his breaths becoming laboured. In that moment, there was something in his eyes, a heart wrenching realisation that what was to come was absolutely inevitable. His face froze in place as tears continued to cascade down his cheeks.

Feeling his sorrow alongside him, I rushed over to his side by pure instinct - comfortingly caressing his back, while leaning my head on his shoulder. The sheer amount of pain he was feeling genuinely hurt me, too.

Takanobu took in an unsteady breath, "(Y/N), will you be there... When it happens?" He spluttered.

I twisted my head upon his shoulder, now facing his tortured expression, "Of course I will."

He smiled slightly, trying to hide the pain - wrapping one of his arms around my shoulder, rubbing into it gently with the pad of his thumb. We stayed like that for a while, enjoying each other's company while we could - Takanobu never letting Shiro leave his sight for a single second, as if he thought if he looked away - he'd disappear.

Eventually, enough time had passed, so that Takanobu's exhaustion had caught up with him. So, I shimmied from underneath his arm, slowly manoeuvring him so he leant upon the sofa, his head resting next to Shiro.

Not wanting to impose upon their household any longer, I grabbed my belongings, heading towards the door. But before I did, Ejiri came shuffling towards me, signalling for me not to depart just yet. "One minute, (Y/N)! I wanted to give you Takanobu and I's phone numbers before you go." She paused, handing me a slip of paper with two numbers on it, "For when the time comes." 

I took the note, thanking her for her hospitality - leaving the house in quite the sullen mood.

Upon arriving home, I was greeted by an overly enthusiastic embrace from my father and a lack of her presence from my mother. The usual.

My dad requested that I told him all about the trip to Tokyo - but of course, I left out some of the details - for the sake of my dignity. And in return, he began drabbling about his recent experiences at work, leaving me truly enthralled by his anecdotes. After a long while, he ended his side of the conversation - finally letting me head upstairs into my room. 

While I unpacked my bags, I took the hydrangea out from between the pages of my book, admiring it for a minute or two, before putting it back in the book - letting it rest there as a memory from the trip. I smiled at the thought of it, and how little of a thing that flower was - yet the amount of significance truly resonated with me.

For the rest of the week, everything flowed by rather smoothly, lessons being as average as they could be, Futakuchi being his usual self. Except for Takanobu, who seemed to become more and more solemn as each hour passed by. I didn't think that any person could ever appear that doleful. That was, until late Friday night, as I laid on my bed, trying desperately to fall asleep - my phone began to ring. On the other end was Takanobu's voice, tremulous from the fact he was crying. He didn't need to say much, I knew what was happening. His voice rang out...

"It's time..."

[theastrophilearchitect]

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming...

Writing journey #4.

15/05/2021 07.22 My break has officially been over for five days, and i have done some writing, but it’s been incredibly inconsistent, so I decided to start this blog post over. Bay Tree has been archived, and though FSB isn’t done, I’ve realised I need to take a step back. It’s why writers leave weeks at a time between drafts--so when they return, they’re in a different mindset, and can improve their work.

For this same reason, I need to take a step back before I finish my outline. My thought process is becoming monotonous, which means I’m losing my excitement. When you start a project, you have the idea in your head as perfect, and when those ‘vibes’ become tangible, it is less exciting. That’s unavoidable. But I just need to take a step back, so when I return, I have fresh ideas, and the plot becomes more exciting to me.

So today, I’m going to start brainstorming a new idea I had, which I don’t have an alias for yet, and I have an idea to essentially bind every project I have together, but not in Grishaverse- or Shadowhunters-style where you need to read ten books just to read the one you want. Just a nod to anyone who does read multiple, like when Aelin falls through worlds and sees Rhys and Feyre for a split second.

So. Let’s brainstorm.

My plan, I think, is to alternate weekly. This week, I’ll work on the new one, next week I’ll do FSB. I could just take this new idea and apply it to FSB, except I just don’t see how that would work. I have different worlds in mind, and this new one is a fantasy where FSB is sci-fi(/fantasy. It’s kinda both).

16/05/2021 07.07 I really wish I was a pantser. Even though I haven’t got to the editing stage, my favourite part of writing is implementing new ideas and making changes, but I’m just not a pantser. I need to know where each part is going. Instead, I have to sit here, brainstorming, for days, to figure everything out.

18/05/2021 07.06 I did a lot of work on the 16th, but I was busy yesterday, and didn’t get any writing done, because, when I was free, I was just reading. So, I’ve decided I’m going to at least write before I leave the house, which gives me about 45 minutes this morning. 

23/05/2021 18.30 Based on the fact it has been five days, I think you can tell how good I’ve been about keeping writing. The problem is that I don’t actually have much past a concept for my new project, so I’m trying to figure out how, precisely, I could merge the two projects. FSB is interesting, but doesn’t have a huge amount of depth, which adding the characters from the new project would absolutely do, while the new project is lacking plot, which FSB (at least the first book I’ve planned) does. So, I’m going to start a new Scrivener project, and consider how I can merge the two concepts while implementing both plots.

Is it too much? I have only two main characters in FSB, but five in the newer one, which gives me seven main characters, divided into three groups. And do I want to write a book with so many separate storylines? I know readers (myself included) always end up favouring one storyline over another, getting annoyed when certain POVs come up. I don’t know what to do.

I could keep the new project, but implement FSB? Hold up. New Project (NP) has two protagonists who could undergo a similar development to the protagonists of FSB... I had a plan for the male protagonist of FSB, his arc, which wouldn’t work for NP’s male protagonist, but would work perfectly for its female protagonist...

Tumblr’s glitching. It wouldn’t let me reblog a post earlier, and now it won’t let me save this draft. Please, no.

Okay, so I had to copy what I’d written for today, disconnect and reconnect to the Wi-Fi, then wait for my drafts to load to paste it. Going great!

21.00 So I didn’t get a huge amount done, because I caught up doing ~evening things~, but I at least have a plan going forward, which is an accomplishment

30/05/2021 09.29 I’ve spent the last couple weeks doing everything I can to avoid writing, but i now have an insane amount of free time, so I have no excuse. I want to use this time in a productive way, and, for me, that means writing.

03/06/2021 10.31 I swear to god, I’ve had ‘writing’ on my to-do list every single day, except not doing it is probably my own fault, because it’s been so far down on the list. Also, I’m doing a buddy read, but am also unfortunately descending into a reading slump, so even reading 50 pages takes me about 90 minutes--they’re not even long pages.

I actually went back onto my old Wattpad account earlier, where I found a load of old, unfinished stuff, but none of it was as bad as I thought it would be, and the ideas weren’t bad. I just really have no idea what it is I’m writing right now, and I hate trying to figure it out.

11.30 There are so many Ss in the word ‘assassin’ this is not okay.

This is actually going so well. I have two storylines in my head, a complex cast of characters, and I’m so looking forward to plotting this.

04/06/2021 08.04 Look at me, two days in a row. Anyways, I’m thinking I ought to name these characters ASAP, because it’ll be easier to shape them to their names than it will be to find a name which fits them once they’ve been shaped.

14.41 Here’s what I’m realising: I like to pants plots, but I can’t do that while I’m actually drafting, so I think my plan is actually to bullet point everything that happens, then revise that, then start drafting, so the story is basically set in the first draft.

I’ve actually gone through a lot of stuff--I have workable plot material!

17.16 So, me being me, I’ve semi-outlined (I say semi-, it’s more like a tenth) a trilogy, meaning I have ideas for three books following this storyline, and it... makes sense. It’s the kind of story where I can follow multiple arcs, a few at a time, instead of several overarching ones, or maybe it’s just that I’m letting myself.

07/06/2021 16.44 I don’t have a damn clue what I’ve spent the day doing. I haven’t done anything in a couple days because it was the weekend and I was busy, but I’m back now. The thing is, I haven’t spent the day reading, watching, drawing, or doing anything, really--it’s escaped me. But, at the very least, I’ve relaxed, so who cares?

I’m not applying story structure to the ideas I’m having quite yet--rather, I’m just developing them to see how they bloom on their own, then I’ll fit it in; it just seems like a more natural and effective way to develop.

Yeah, no. It’s too late in the day for this. I have zero motivation.

08/06/2021 09.49 Maybe I’ll accomplish something today; who knows? Certainly not me.

I’m now applying the 3-act structure, but I’m realising I have way too many details worked out for this--switching to more acts.

22.20 Why am I doing this to myself? I wish I could say I’m not entirely sure, but it’s because I can’t sleep, because this project, and my character Lihan, are the only things I can think about, so here I am. I don’t want to be a night writer, but que sera sera (I wish I could type accents on an English keyboard).

23.22 I accomplished more in the last hour on this project than I have in the last four days.

09/06/2021 - 1,115 words 09.29 I really hope I don’t prove today that night-writing is my sweet spot--I don’t want it to be. Can the world just let me have a functional sleep schedule??

Anyways, so, as I’ve mentioned before, I use Scrivener, which enables me to sort which documents are part of the manuscript from the ones that aren’t. I’ve been working outside of the manuscript, but I think I’m going to move them into it--I have a plan I believe will be more effective for my own drafting. I think I very much need the events to be set in stone before I begin writing in actual prose, so how can I do that? Especially when I also enjoy pantsing, but not in prose?

Here’s the plan: I plot out the main events, then bullet point everything in very high detail, similar to what many people call a zero draft, in which they draft a book in short form. I’ll sort the bullet points into chapters (but not scenes, because as I discovered with Bay Tree, I find scene-blocking makes the narrative less natural), leave it alone a while, then revise, so I can have my plot more-or-less set in stone before I work on prose.

As a result, I’m going to shift my plotting into the manuscript section, because it is, essentially, an early draft, and also I want a word count as a progress metre.

13/06/2021 - 1,611 words 8.18 Alas, I have been busy the last few days, but I’m here now.

9.20 The amount of secrets and who-knows-what in this story is genuinely absurd, but I’m sure I’ll clean it up eventually.

14.01 A few days ago, I came across a post about balancing large casts, which is exactly what I have, and the first thing it mentioned was the two-trait rule, in which every character has two traits completely unique to them, to help both reader and writer differentiate. Which I’m now going to implement.

14.42 I have these two characters, and I know exactly what I want their dynamic to be, except I can’t decide who should be which part of it.

I have made my decision. It probably works better now, but it does alter their roles, so I need to fix that.

I literally swapped them round solely because I decided one was taller than the other and thought it would be more interesting if the short one was the sadist. Why do I make my own life so difficult?

14/06/2021 - 1,574 words 11.08 I didn’t make an enormous amount of progress yesterday, but I did make some, and made notes of ideas for relationship arcs last night, so I count that a victory (forced optimism--surprisingly effective). I’m currently just working through bullet-pointing book one, while making notes of events I want in the rest of the series (I’m projecting three books, and telling myself I will finish them). I’m currently fiddling with one of my storylines to see how I can mould it to FSB’s and OH MY GOODNESS I JUST HAD A GREAT IDEA must take notes, one moment pleaseeee.

Okay, so I have four bullet points for relationship arcs and an idea to adjust one of the storylines--I’d say I have six main characters, two of whom are really the protagonists, two of which are my favourites, and the other two are fun, but in need of development. They’re split into a group of four and a pair, and I’m definitely more into the storyline of the four, mostly because the four contains my two favourites, and it’s more developed than that of the pair.

I’ve been keeping a list of things to add: motivations, loose plot threads, plot points I want to include--I really need to re-organise it.

On another note, I am so glad I named the characters as early as I did. I’m debating having two of the characters swap names, but I don’t think I will, because I will absolutely mix them up, and one of them is part of the perfect ship name.

My mouse isn’t working. I changed the batteries, but it’s not working, so now I get the joy of trying to figure out if the batteries I put in are just old or if the mouse no longer works, which would suck.

Yes, I’m going to describe this. Mostly because when I changed the batteries the first time, it took a minute to stop working, and this will waste a minute. So, first set of batteries, which we’ll call set 1, don’t work. I don’t know if it’s both or just one, but if it’s one, I don’t want to throw away both. I take out set 1, I put in set 2. Set 2 works perfectly. So it’s not the mouse. Now I take out battery 2B, and replace it with 1A, so I have 1A and 2A in here. I know 2A works, but I’m not sure about 1A, but the mouse works, so 1A is fine. Let’s replace 1A with 1B.

Yep. 1B is the problem child. 1A works fine, but 1B doesn’t. Lovely. Crisis averted. It would’ve really sucked it I had to get a new mouse. And back to writing!

12.13 I’m bouncing between documents as I organise, which means my word count is actually decreasing, so I feel like I’m making significantly less progress than I am.

I just realised my two protagonists are cousins. I’ve had it in my head that one’s father was the brother of the other’s father, but somehow I didn’t realise that makes them cousins.

I’m about to delete a list because I’ve reformatted it--my word count is currently at 1,958, but is really about to drop.

AND NOW WE’RE AT 1,572. My session word count is -32. Minus thirty-two. I hate it here, but it’s fine, because we’re ~developing~.

15/06/2021 - 2,113 words 09.39 It’s not even technically summer yet, but it’s too hot, and I hate it here. All the windows are open, so everything’s cool, there’s a nice breeze, and lots of light, but the birds are so loud, and I have to keep all the doors closed because the open windows send them swaying and slamming. You know when you close a door when all the windows are open and it slams? Yep. Not into it. 

I feel like every day I try a new way to organise my plotting. I’m unsure as to whether that’s helping me or holding me back, because it forces me to review what I have, which usually sparks new ideas, but I’m not convinced I’ll ever get to the end as long as I keep doing this.

21/06/2021 13.40 I spent the latter half of last week with zero motivation, then I was busy at the weekend, but I’m here now. I’ve been trying to make myself write basically all day--I have a plan, and a list of things I’ve come up with the last few days, but I just couldn’t make myself do it. I’m not in a good mood, but maybe this will help.

I have, however, just reminded myself that I need to prepare this week’s post, because I sincerely doubt either this or my ongoing Recent reads will be ready for Friday. Actually, if I do quite a bit of writing this week, this post might be, but I’m not willing to bet on it.

And oh, crap, now I just want to write a blog post.

No. No I don’t. I started looking at the list of ideas I had, and now I’m just not feeling it. I’m pretty sure when I open my document for this project I’ll lose all motivation too, but it’s worth a shot.

There’s a specific relationship in an anime I recently watched that I want to pull apart--there’s this ship, and the author of the manga has called the two characters ‘soulmates’. There’s just this huge amount of tension between the two, and I want to re-watch the show because I love it, but also so I can take notes to figure out what was so effective about it.

13.53 I’ve been doing this for 13 minutes, but I do think I need to leave this project/outline alone for a bit, give it an opportunity to ruminate, to evolve. In truth, I may not even come back to it until I’ve re-watched the anime I was talking about so I can tear that ship to pieces.

17.33 So I just learned brainstorming is apparently significantly easier on paper. Hm. I’ve just worked out so damn much, stuff I’ve been struggling with.

18.00 I have successfully tied up so many plot threads, simply by working with pen and paper. This is revolutionary. (I know, not really, but it is for me, someone adamant about working with a keyboard and monitor)

22/06/2021 09.42 Seriously, why did I never try actually working on paper before? Something about holding a pen to paper and scribbling and drawing a mindmap--it just works. I’ve been obstinate about avoiding working on paper because I hate physically writing, yet here we are.

25/06/2021 11.09 I’m really not managing much reading at the moment--since I started reading manga, my attention span has just gone down the drain. I’m currently reading Mister Impossible by Maggie Stiefvater, and I don’t think it helped that I had to stop less than a third of the way in to do a buddy read, but I just don’t have much motivation to read it, though I do so want to. I haven’t been listening much to audiobooks lately either, because when I’d usually listen--when I’m getting dressed, waking up, going to bed etc.--I just want to listen to music, because I also recently fell down the well of k-pop, and the group whose discography I’m getting to know at the moment is BTS. Basic, but they’re the fifth group I’m doing, and they have so many songs. Which would happen after eight years, but still.

I want to read so, so badly, but I just don’t feel like reading Mister Impossible. But I do want to finish it before reading anything else. I think I’ll finish my current audiobook, then if I’m still feeling stagnated in Mister Impossible, I’ll switch to the audiobook of that, then just take a break from reading until I’m ready to actually read. 

But this post is for writing, not reading. I did write on the 23rd, but I just didn’t update this post. The 24th I was busy, but my wall is now covered in post-it notes of world-building, characters, gods, plot points, and a whole load of other stuff.

Also, I had an idea for a book title this morning--not for this one, just in general--and when I went to add it to my list, I found a title that would so suit this project. I don’t want to say it, but let’s just say this project will be called ItLotG--or not. That’s a hideous combination of letters. I promise it is actually a good title.

11.52 I’m having another crisis over these two characters. I’m thinking it would make more sense to have L’s betrayal ‘arc’ initiated before the catalyst, or rather have it be the catalyst, except the problem there is that they’re not in the city they need to be in to receive that offer.

UNLESS,,,, what if this point happens just while they’re in the capital.... I’ve got it. 

17.16 I’ve been taking notes this whole time of everything I want to happen in books 2 and 3, and I have so much now i think they’ll be so much easier to plot than this one.

The downside of working mostly on paper is that my plans on Scrivener have been refined to one document, which is now only 878 words.

Right now, there’s a glaring hole between the midpoint and the ending, but my climax is one of those where the climax itself is a very small part of a bigger event, so if I figure out what I want to happen in this big event which is essentially the whole of the third act, I should be able to fill in the rest of Act Two with the setup for that.

So I’m leaving it there for both today and this post. In the last month or so, I decided to start over and mash two projects together, which created a whole new storyline I love, and now I’m mostly done with the first outline. I want to treat outlines as more than just preparation for drafts, because I find notes so much easier to edit than actual prose, and I hate writing without a clear idea of where I’m going. 

I think I’m going to call these ‘runs’--an outline is a run through, a draft a run through, so I’m nearly done with my first run, and I’m very proud of that, so go, go write the idea you have, drink some water, take a nap if you need one, eat if you haven’t eaten in a few hours, and I’ll be back with another writing update innnnnnn probably august, honestly.

Go write that idea!

[littlehollyleaf]

(I had a really long, detailed version of this....... but Tumblr ate it D’: so this is... heavily abridged, sorry!)

Tagged by the ever lovely @castiel-saved-me-from-myself​ <3

pick 10 ships without reading the questions

Interesting... ok!

1. Dean/Cas (obviously)

2. Aziraphale/Crowley

3. Nygmobblepot

4. Foxma

5. Babitha

6. Amy/Rory

7. Nomi/Amanita

8. Eve/Flynn

9. Catradora

10. Cosima/Delphine

1. Do you remember the episode/scene/chapter that you first started shipping 6?

I think I started shipping Amy/Rory during the Venice fish monster ep - cos that was when I felt Amy really did love him back and they had a future together. Before I suspected that her running away with the Doctor was a sign she and Rory weren’t right for each other.

2. Have you ever read a FanFiction about 2?

Only read a handful of Ineffable fic. Overall I’m perfectly happy with the canon alone.

3. Has a picture of 4 ever been your screen saver/profile picture/tumblr?

Yes I’ve had Foxma themed phone backgrounds and a tumblr header :)

4. If 7 were to suddenly break-up today, what would your reaction be?

Disbelief and disapproval. Nomi and Amanita were one of the great constants of Sense8 for me. I think a break up would be out of character for them tbh. Plus it would be denying the black and trans characters a rare example of a happy ending, which would suck.

5. Why is 1 so important?

I wrote such a detailed thing about how DeanCas is not only important to me personally but also how I feel it’s been important for TV/media in general... ugh, tumblr!

In a nutshell - this ship helped me better myself in various ways. It introduced me to fandom,  which boosted my confidence and independence via increased socialisation; it encouraged me to write more, which improved my writing skills; meta discussions educated me on lots of issues, inc. but not limited to abuse, sexuality, gender identit, autism and racism.

I also genuinely believe that the loud and open fandom support of the ship has been a significant help in the ongoing battle for more and better queer rep in media.

6. Is 9 a funny ship or a serious ship?

Serious! Catra and Adora’s relationship is a core part of the whole show, relating to lots of the wider themes of abuse, toxic behaviour, growth and forgiveness. Plus the significance of a same sex romance involving the lead character in a CHILDREN’S CARTOON really cannot be overstated.

(but it is also cute and funny sometimes :p)

7. Out of all of the ships listed, which ship has the most chemistry?

I’ve spoken before about having issues with the concept of ‘chemistry.’ If I ship characters it’s usually because I find the combination of their characterisation and story arcs interesting/compelling. I often don’t notice (or I guess care about?) chemistry.

So I think I’m not qualified to answer this one.

8. Out of all of your ships listed, which ship has the strongest bond?

Agreeing with @castiel-saved-me-from-myself​ here - you can’t really beat the Ineffables millenia long romance :)

9. How many times have you read/watched 8’s fandom?

I’ve rewatched The Librarians 2 or 3 times now. It’s DAFT. But it’s fun. And Eve and Flynn make me feel warm and fuzzy.

10. Which ship has lasted the longest?

Again, as @castiel-saved-me-from-myself​ said - it’s gotta be the Ineffables, both within AND outside of the story, since Good Omens was originally published over 30 years ago and the Zira/Crowley shippers have been going strong all that time. Otherwise it’s DeanCas.

(though idk if Catradora was a ship back when the original She Ra cartoon was airing, or when the original cartoon was made, so it’s possible that is also a contender!)

11. How many times, if ever, has 2 broken up?

Lol at @castiel-saved-me-from-myself​ for getting Nygmob for this one, as their relationship is, like, 90% break up :P

For the Ineffables though it’s basically just the once - when Zira chooses Heaven over Crowley. Not made such a Big Deal in the book IIRC, but in the show it’s the infamous Bandstand Break Up scene.

All other separations are only minor, temporary squabbles imo. Which is what makes the Bandstand scene so PAINFULLY, BEAUTIFULLY, ANGSTY AND EMOTIONAL and why I love it so! 

12. If the world was suddenly thrust into a zombie apocalypse, which ship would make it out alive, 2 or 8?

I figure angels and demons probably can’t be killed by zombies, so the Ineffables are the most likely.

But Eve and Flynn did actually face off against zombie-ghost things in an alt universe during a whole Loom of Fate plot and survived, so I think they’d probably also make it.

13. Did 5 ever have to hide their relationship for any reason?

No, Babs and Tabs were always open about being together, even when Tabs was also in a relationship with Butch.

I might argue they hid the depth of their feelings for each other though, even from themselves, and instead made out what they had together was just a casual ‘friends with benefits’ type thing.

Though Tabs did hide things a little when she sent assassins after Jim cos she blamed him for putting Babs in a coma. She clearly knew her brother would disappprove, which is why she didn’t tell him what she was doing. I guess that kinda counts as hiding her relationship with Babs? She was trying to conceal how much Babs mattered to her?

14. Is 4 still together?

Lol, Foxma were never together (ALAS!). But the show did end with their lingering fondness for each other intact I think.

15. Is 3 canon?

Is Nygmobblepot canon? Rather a touchy question for the fandom tbh.

If we are talking EXPLICIT canon - then no. 

They never got a kiss or a MUTUAL love declaration (and they had a controversial ‘we’re brothers’ exchange in the penultimate episode) - ergo there is not enough, imo, to say they ended the show officially romantically involved.

However, Ozzie DID EXPLICITLY DECLARE HIS ROMANTIC LOVE for Ed, and that was never rescinded. There is also LOTS OF SUBTEXT floating around Ed to imply he reciprocates. Plus they did end the show together as clear Partners in Crime.

So is Nygmob subtextual canon?

I would say yes.

But explicit, CANON canon?

A frustrating no that fandom remains, understandably, critical about.

16. If all 10 ships were put into a couple’s Hunger Games, which couple would win?

I think a toss up between Nygmob and Babitha - because everyone else has too many morals that would hold them back from killing :p

(and since Ed and Oz have both bested Babs and Tabs in the past I lean towards them... but it would depend on when in Gotham canon the games were happening!)

17. Has anybody ever tried to sabotage 10’s ship?

Breaking up Cosima and Delphine was a LITERAL PLOT POINT of Orphan Black at one point, so very much yes! I forget the details (the show got very twisty, with lots of different organisations working on different agendas in the shadows), but I’m pretty sure Delphine was shot because she was protecting Cosima. I remember it BROKE MY HEART and I thought it was a casebook example of Bury Your Gays. But, spoiler: it wasn’t ;)

18. Which ship would you defend to the death and beyond?

Going with DeanCas, because I think that, historically, it’s the one that’s been in most need of defending.

19. Do you spend hours a day going through 1’s tumblr page?

Not anymore I’m afraid. Though 3 or so years ago I used to spend most of my free time on DeanCas and spn meta. Ah, nostalgia.

20. If an evil witch descended from the sky and told you that you had to pick one of the ten ships to break up forever or else she´d break them all forever, which ship would you sink?

Foxma. Because while I adore the idea of a messy, confused ~something between them, in my heart I know that Foxy deserves better :P

I was too tired to bother with tagging the first time I completed this - DEF not gonna bother now!

Play if you want - it’s fun :D

[lesceriises]

—— carlota ninette

CHARACTER AVAILABLE?: YES PINTEREST AVAILABLE?: YES FULL BIO AVAILABLE: YES. the (unfinished) bio bellow is based on a fantasy setting. in a real life setting carlota’s mother didn’t disappear she died of childbirth complications. also if you have a muse you think would fit any of the characters mentioned in her bio and would like to write them... i'm game if you are. NOTES: if you have a muse you think would fit any of the characters mentioned in her bio and would like to write them... i'm game if you are.

IDENTITY

FULL NAME:  

AGE: verse dependent  

GENDER IDENTITY: female, she/her

SEXUAL IDENTITY: heterosexual

IDENTIFYING TRAITS:

sociable, bubbly, energetic, romantic, intuitive, impulsive, kind, compassionate, audacious, youthful, low-key very sad and depressed, curious, passionate, slightly ditzy, well meaning, romantic, at times speaks without thinking, used to be very gullible growing up, insecure, authentic, bad liar, self-deprecating (particularly as of late)

OCCUPATION: verse dependent

OTHER DEVELOPED VERSES: real life, asoiaf, harry potter [x], historical

APPEARANCE

HEIGHT: ‎5 feet 5 inches (1.70 m)

HAIR & EYE COLOR: brown & brown

SENSE OF STYLE:  enjoys looking stylish but values comfort above all else. doesn’t follow fashion trends but enjoys playing with styles. has worn pant suits, bowties, and ties to several events. she often opts for comfortable flats (even trainers when she was younger) when wearing long dresses that cover her feet. 

TATTOOS: 2 pretty much always covered. 1 dainty lavender tattoo under her left breast, 1 small conch shell on the inside of her left arm

FACE CLAIM: lily james, dakota johnson, camilla luddington, idk man

RELATIONSHIPS

PARENTS:

  terezia and henrique

SIBLINGS:

 OTHER NOTABLE FAMILY:

 manuel (paternal uncle)

RELATIONSHIP STATUS:  verse dependent 

CHILDREN: verse dependent. for the sake of practicality usually none.  there’s a verse where she has a step-child though.

BASIC BIO

when terezia was seven, she had a vision. they came and went in her family, but terezia only had a couple through her life. she saw herself saying goodbye to a man and knowing it was the last time. when the time came should she choose to stay, she knew she would be gone before her time.

( a life time later she will be sitting in the parlor a hot summer morning, looking at her husband waving him goodbye, and as the realization bubbles up to the surface of her brain she will want to stand and tell him to hold on for just a moment, narrow the space between them and hold him tight.

but that’s not how it’s supposed to happen so she won’t. she’ll do as she saw when she was a child, bringing her palm to her lips and blowing him a kiss before he walks down the lavish corridor out the grand door. and she will eat her breatfast, and she will play with her children, and she will put on her hat and go for a walk in the sand, and then she will enter the lighthouse and that will be the end of that.

for better or for worse, terezia has never been afraid of the unknown.)

// DARLING. DEAREST. DEAD.  //

most of them don't want her there. a beautiful, poised, and compassionate but quirky woman who is fascinated by the things that so often scare others. she'll casually speak of death while tending to her flowers, she'll wear black to the beach and ask "can i try?" when she sees locals working on their traditional crafts. her curiosity has always come first, her fears and judgement later. she knows they think he deserves someone better. but they picked each other, all the way back to when they were sixteen, and for them, that's enough. adversity and disapproval was but a pebble in their shoes.

(she knows he's the one when he talks about the old neglected building at the edge of his home overlooking the sea.)

to henrique there was never a doubt that, if she'd have him, he would spend the rest of his life alongside her. if others feared she wasn't good enough for him, henrique worried he would never be worthy enough of her, and that she would end up stuck in a life she deep down deemed too boring and formal.

even when they were only sixteen, terezia was quick to remind him that that's not only his choice.

( "sometimes i think i'm cursed", he confides in her one day, "i have plenty of luck for the both of us." she replies.)

they raise a close-knit family - a little too close-knit some would say, but there's a kind of paranoia in the back of their brain (they know not everyone cares for terezia, and henrique was nearly taken from his parents as a child and with his eldest and only brother being disowned a lot of resentment lingers in the air). they like it though, and their children like it too.

// I MUST BE A MERMAID. I HAVE NO FEAR OF DEPTHS AND A FEAR OF SHALLOW LIVING.   //

when ninette is born she already has four siblings to keep her company. she doesn't know how not to be a family person - how not to be surrounded by people. at times her parents' peculiar ways felt suffocating to her, and for a long time, ninette struggled to fully grasp why her parents always want to know where their children were and who they were with.

her innate almost childlike passion and curiosity for life as well as her casual lively demeanor have always been both a blessing and a curse and often landed into trouble. she’s well-meaning, always, but sometimes speaks without thinking or does things impulsively. she’s a little bit air-headed and selfish in this manner, and her emotions and feelings often control her more than she controls them.

still, she has three older brothers with very strong personalities so from a very early age she’s been trying to keep up with them and showing them that girls can do everything boys can. she’s never been rebellious or assertive by nature, although she likes to make bold choices and statements at times, but having a lot of brothers just forced those sides of her to develop.

ninettea can be an incredibly stubborn person.

- - - when ninette was 6, tereza gave birth to martim. it was an exciting occasion, and ninette was overjoyed about having a baby around.

the first time ninette felt true fear and hesitation in her life was when her mother asked her if she would like to hold her brother. he looked like a doll, but he wasn’t one, and she feared she would hurt him, drop him or bump his head against something. and first time ninette was truly able to grasp what the world responsibility means, was when she held her three day old brother in her arms.

alas, the joy of the occasion didn’t last.

tereza had already been ill while pregnant. sometimes she wondered if she would see something, but she had long ago gladly accepted that she didn't share her great-grandmother's gifts.

she choose to press on - with her pregnancy and her projects.

they aren't keen on her working, but she loves her job. the department of mysteries is a fascinating place and her curiosity binds her to the study of time and matter. while pregnant, terezia renovated the old lighthouse at the very edge of the property by the sea - were not for the rocks, it would be possible to jump from the first floor of the lighthouse to the sea as the drop wouldn’t be significant. terezia turned into her study: while it was an intellectual space, it was also always open to her children with large comfortable pillows scattered on the floor in every room. one of ninette’s most cherished memories of her mother is of sitting on the floor of the lighthouse watching her clean her work-space, melodiously singing away, windows open.

one hot summer afternoon terezia sent two of her children, ninette included, that had been playing in the lighthouse back to the main-house. the hours passed and when a servant went to check the lighthouse, the lights were on and a door was open, but terezia was nowhere to be found. her neck-scarf was found clinging to the rocks, wet with sea water.

terezia’s disappearance shocked the avis family to its core and sparked all sorts of rumours: that she had run away, that she has taken her own life, that she had been killed, that she was conducting illegal experiments… they were endless. when the ministry investigated, they took several of terezia’s notebooks (which they never returned) from the lighthouse. ninette was only 5 and her way of coping with her mother’s disappearance was to believe she was a mermaid who had returned home.

( the first time ninette experienced heartbreak wasn’t when she heard her mother had disappeared, or the day they gathered by the seafront and threw flowers and paper boats into the ocean in her homage. she cried, she hurt, but it all seemed so surreal it took a couple days for her brain to register what had happened. no, the the first time ninette experienced heartbreak was weeks after, when she fell down a tree and hurt her arm and rushed inside the lighthouse calling for her mother. she knew she would get scolded for climbing that tree but she didn’t care - she wanted her mother to comfort her. it took minutes to dawn on her that she could call all she wanted that she wasn’t going to get an answer back, now or ever again. that was the first time ninette ever felt her heart shatter inside her chest. )

one of ninette’s siblings believes their mother was taken by merfolk who were enchanted by her voice. another that their mother conducted an experiment which accidentally sent her either back of forward in time. ninette isn’t a child anymore and, objectively, she knows it’s silly and preposterous to actually believe that her mother was under some sort of spell which wore off and she was forced to return to her mermaid form. still, that’s how she chooses to see it.

every other alternative is too awful to consider.

- - - (she nearly drowned twice: once when she was 7 and another time when he was 16.

the second time was a dumb accident and she was intoxicated but first time - the first time was only two years after her mother’s disappearance. she didn’t even realise what was happening and came out of it swearing she had heard her mother’s voice and was simply chasing it.

both episodes left her with underlying mental scars that usually only surface in nightmares.

despite this ninette has never been fearful of the sea and gleefully runs towards it, diving in, always with her head underwater, feeling like she’s at home.)

- - - she's seventeen and sitting at the table suggesting they all work on renovating the lighthouse together over the summer, having it all beautiful by the day of their mother's disappearance as a kind of homage.

natalia's knife scratches against her place with a squeak. it's a warning but ninette presses on until natalia says she refuses to partake in such nonsense - if ninette wants to save the lighthouse she can and should, but, she says, snapping, suddenly and vicious "don't make it about mum." pedro is too busy to dwell on it too much, louis prefers not to remember, and martin seems to choose to honor his mother's memory by not being stuck in the past - but the others are unable to let go in their own ways, natalia going as far as securing a summer internship in the ministry not out of passion but out of an uneasy sense of lack of closure and obligation.

it's an uncanny quietness that falls in the dinner room, especially when all the siblings are present and all ninette can muster after a long pause of sinking her teeth in her bottom lip, with a sob sitting in the back of her throat and watery eyes, is a quiet "she was my mum too." 

- - - in her teens ninette felt very isolated and out of place. the brother she was closest to was always busy, she wasn’t close with her only sister, all her friends seemed to be getting boyfriends and girlfriends and preferring their company to hers, all her friends seemingly wanted to be grown-ups while ninette just wanted to enjoy her youth… and on top of it all she missed her mother dearly more than ever before. it was a complicated time for her and thus she ended up sacrificing a part of her personality by giving into peer pressure and hanging out with people who seemed to fit in (at least from her point of view) better than she did.

surrounded by people but all alone. that’s how she felt.

it didn’t help that her father sent her to boarding school.

she was never supposed to go to one but after the death of her mother her father thought it was for the best that she did. it’s a very controlled environment, she will come home every other weekend, she will be safe. it’ll be good for her. are words her father told himself often and which no one ever heard.

ninette was extremely upset and sad over this. while she loves meeting new people and visiting new places, she’s also very much a homebody and family-centered. being apart from her family and friends she had known all her life brought her great pain and frustration. at the time, she also couldn’t understand her father’s change of heart, and a part of her felt like she had done something deeply wrong.

her teenage years were somewhat tumultuous, especially because she wasn’t making the right kind of friends - the ones that are good for you. this lead her to have made several questionable life choices, tasteless jokes, and started a couple rumors. she also got in the habit of drinking too much and doing drugs (she never officially went to rehab but she was very close to and she honestly probably should have gone. nowadays she stays away from drugs and sticks to only one or two glasses of wine or champagne every other meal as she knows that if she doesn’t hold herself back it can become a problem).

all of this is, mostly, behind her thought. it took years but she realised she was fostering unhealthy friendships and habits and that the longer it took her to walk away the harder it would become to do so at all. so, one day, without any warning, in a dramatic but determined gesture, she simply cut them all out of her life.

- - - ( “what is it with you and your uncontrollable need to be liked?” one of her acquaintances from boarding school asked her once, and she was already a little drunk, so the words don’t hit her as hard as they normally would have. her shoulders simply rose and fell in a lazy shrug.

“i don’t know.” it had been an honest answer, she kept talking anyway, no filter between her thoughts and her mouth. “i guess i - well, i’ve never been the pretty one, or the smart one, or the brooding one, or the bold one, or the funny one… but i’ve always been good at meeting people so i guess… i guess very early on i just thought ‘maybe i can be the likable one’.” )

- - - her father died of heart disease when she was 21 and in england studying. tommy, her boyfriend, is there and his presence helps ease the pain.

it’s funny, all those years they spent in such proximity and yet they had never truly known each other until they were miles away from their families and on their own.

this is what having real friends - real love in your life feels like, she remembers thinking when tommy has his arm around her shoulders and her best friend cosima holds her hand.

- - - ( there’s something special about all of the fancy formal and informal highly decorated parties and events taking place towards the end of the year.

there was a time in her teenage years when she had stopped feeling this way ( at that point in her life being surrounded by people only made her feel more alone ), but she was glad that wave of depressing isolating disenchantment seemed to have passed and be well behind her. not even know did she feel tempted to circle back to it; while the last handful of years had had their downside moments, they been good to her, sometimes better than she felt deserving of.

it was nice to be able to catch up with those she didn’t get to see as often, even if only in a superficial manner, and comforting to realise that time and distance don’t matter when it comes to some friendships.

it was perhaps a little sad or even pathetic to admit it, even if only to herself and nobody else, but she had needed this - was thankful for it. all the mingling and socialising and re-connecting and helping out and offering support to others when needed ( because in these events, after glasses of moët & chandon, feelings often get the best of people ), it was all helping keeping her busy and distracted.

at the very least, she could thank tommy’s parents ( whom, truly, she was still fond of ) for that. the holidays themselves were going to be painful, she had been bracing herself as best as she could for it, but until then she didn’t have much time to sit around dwelling on how her life had so suddenly been thrown upside down for there were too many events and parties to attend to or help plan. not that the heartache she woke up with, carried with her all day, and said goodnight to every night ever let her forget it, anyway.

these days, she had been trying to think of the pain that made it seem like one of her limbs was missing as a friend - as a reminder that it only hurt was much as it did because it was had been something good and real.

( and my god, she misses it every day and it hurts so overwhelmingly much everywhere all the time - even when she happens to laugh the underlying pain is still present. and not having a best friend there with her any longer makes it all a thousand times more difficult to bear. )

they have known each other all their lives and were together for three years. they grew so much together, shared so much - they had hopes and dreams and they were going to get married and… then it was over, just like that. all it took was a dinner with his parents to tell him they had found someone perfect for him.

ninette knows that there is always someone better than her, but it hurt anyway.

maybe it’s weird, but she has never wished she could blame him or get angry at him for not standing up to his parents - for doing exactly what they ask of him. she has always known him as such and never expected him to change.

she doesn’t believe that she’ll ever not want to share things with him ( even the smallest most mundane things at times ), but she hoped that one day thinking of the pain as something good would help make everything easier. that it would help her no longer feel like something had struck her in the chest leaving her forgetting for to breathe for a second when she remembered she no longer could just call or text or want to see him.

because she still did.

and it was such an excruciating journey to go through time and time again; the innate knee-jerk reaction to want to tell him about something or simply ask him about his day, only for a second later to dawn on her that she couldn’t, or rather, shouldn’t. she still spoke to him when they happened to be thrown under the same roof, all quick and polite conversation, desperately attempting to maintain some sort of normalcy, as if it was possible to act the same way she did before they had been together.

but was easier for both of them to keep a distance, ninette had easily and gladly respected that. it didn’t feel like it, not in the least, but it was.

he wasn’t here tonight however ( and she suspected cosima wasn’t either ) but was going to have to face him again eventually and in a bittersweet way she didn’t mind it - seeing him would hurt, but she also missed being in his presence.

she could swear that even in the noisiest of rooms, the quietest voice could mention his name that her ears would somehow be able to hear it, and she always stops everything she’s doing and thinking about to try to listen. even when she’s speaking to other people her attention always wonders to whatever voices are speaking his name - she can’t ever keep herself from paying attention to what’s being said about him.

maybe she should, but he’s still a dear friend ( he’ll always be a dear friend, he’ll always have a part of her heart ), even if they haven’t talked in a while.

nothing could prepare her to hear cosima’s name in the same sentence as tommy’s though.

“i swear. cosima. ”

it hits her like a mallet to the temple and suddenly it’s as though the air had been sucked out of the room, leaving her feeling slightly dizzy.

all at once she feels the pain of cosima’s sudden and inexplicable ghosting, the pain of when tomás told her they had to end things —- and now the pain of hearing the two of them are together.

it’s heartbreak all over again only this time times three, and ninette stands very still, not even daring to open her mouth, afraid that if she makes the slightest of movements she’ll disintegrate into a million pieces. 

it’s an awful thing and she hates herself for it, but doubt and insecurity immediately begin to cloud her mind like they hadn’t in years, and she can’t help but wonder if cosima and tommy had been together before…

no. she admonishes herself.

tomás wouldn’t have done that to her, he would never cheat on her or lie to her, and, despite all that happened ( and which she’s still struggling to wrap her head around ), she wants to believe cosima wouldn’t have either.

“wait, don’t you know her car?” all eyes turn to her and the world begins moving at a regular pace again.

ninette reminds herself to breathe. slowly.

she was like a sister to me, she thinks.

“we were friends.” she replies.

“why would you have befriended her?” “she befriends everyone. but it’s a gift car, i don’t have it.” 

the voices and their playful bickering become background noise but the grin was still gracing her lips - or rather, now plastered on her lips, but the people around her didn’t seem to notice the slight change.

a part of her was thankful for it.

another wanted to fall on the floor with her flowy elie saab dress pooling around her like a kind of protective shield, uncontrollably sobbing her heart out and to hell with whoever saw it and what they thought.

she can feel her chest collapsing in on itself.

breathe, she reminds herself again. she had learned many things during her three years ( which felt more like a whole lifetime ) with tommy and how to breathe when the world seems to be falling apart had been one of them.

breathe.

“i should go check on my sister.”

it’ll be fine. it’ll be fine. it’ll be fine. it’ll be fine. it’ll be fine. she repeats the worlds time and time again inside her brain as she walks away, her hands tightly holding the flute of champagne close to her chest. not tonight, she concedes, but it’ll be fine it’ll be fine it’ll be fine .)

- - -

marcus left her with a dismissive hand-wave ( these things always seem to happen in public with her, like a cruel cosmic joke designed to humiliate her ). he had said it was for the best. she hated that she hadn’t seen it comes and she hated the desperation in her tone when he began to walk away from her. there’s a part of her that still thinks if they were alone she would have thrown herself onto the floor at his feet ( maybe if she had cried hard enough, begged hard enough he would have stayed ). she had felt safe enough to believe that they had each other and that was that. why would you leave the person you’re with to let politics decide which stranger to marry in the future? she felt pathetic that she believed that, and she could feel herself slipping again.

everybody leaves. always.

she ended up resorting to finding comfort in bad old habits and companies. at least those are the ones who seem to be always there, ever constant, and they welcome her back without judgement.

her eldest brother grew increasingly worried and one day the two had a quarrel in the palace’s foyer after ninette showed up to dinner so merrily out of it she could barely stand. at one point he tried to reach for her but she pushed him away - once, twice, trice, and on the forth time he lost his balance and fell down the long imposing staircase.

she was so inebriated that it took her brain moment to register what had happened but once it dawned on her she was immediately struck by a wave of frantic panic and promptly made her way down the staircase ( nearly tripping on her own feet and tumbling down multiple times ). her brother was still conscious when she reached him, falling on her knees by his side, already crying and apologizing. the last thing he told her was to leave so no one would blame her for what had happened.

[abundantchewtoys]

Homestuck Candy p33-36: War, Clowns, Spiders, and Frozen Pizza

So, we kind of already started reading page 33 before quitting, previously. So I'm psyched for John's awkward greeting of Vriska Lalonde after just having seen her dancestor roll of into the underbrush, heheh.

Also, I'm getting the feeling that the Postscriptum could end up being the Candy path's intermidquel. In that it could very much take place, here, as Lord English arrives. Well, it depends on how many pages are going to be spent on his arrival and Calliope's fight to dispose of him, of course.

But it would be funny if the Candy path had its own Postscriptum that's an intermidquel for the Meat path!

---

Page 33

... Wow.

Vriska L. was happier to see John than I would have thought! Hahah, she thought she wouldn't have to deal with her parents when war came 'round. Keep dreaming, girl!

Rose was wearing an Alternian military armour! That's a cool visual.

But most importantly... It turns out Rose actually DOES remember that fateful morning - 16 years ago, apparently, so they're around 39 now. That was a very special exchange. Rose remembers (or has started remembering again, after one of John's outburts), but she has kind of stopped CARING. She's no longer concerned with an alpha timelines and shoulds and coulds, and even states she believes this timeline's events are not really that important. (Which is still weird to hear, given how invested she is in the cause.) Still, it's good to know John has someone who shares his feelings in this regard!

I guess knowledge really can be a burden, and we saw how it ate up Meat Rose. So I understand how a "veil" like this can help Rose. It's the better variant of being too drunk, with too much of a migraine, to focus on her powers, like in the Game Over timeline. It kind of feels as if this timeline is shielded by something, Voiding out canon influences. :P

What she says, how these events do not have to fit a narrative, is probably also a stab at readers being at a loss at how events are unfolding in the Candy path. MST3K mantra and all. It's not canon, so don't throw such a fit. :P Guess the sweetness that comes with Candy came in a few unexpected shapes!

As for John... When he talked about finality and such, I thought two things can happen now. One is... This page ending with THE END. (Which it didn't.) The other is... John deciding to let go of his fears and misgivings about this timeline, about relevance. He might go make up with Roxy and Harry Anderson, and fall into the role of a father as if no time has passed at all.

I'm seriously doubting he's going to end up fighting Lord English when he arrives. Don't get me wrong, it would be awesome. Candy John finishing what Meat John started, even though he chose to stay instead of go. Lord English being his final boss battle in both timelines, an inescapable foe to the end. But this talk about finality being up to him, seems more to imply he's going to give up on some of the things he worried about.

Granted, I still would like him to free Tavros from Jane's influence, I just hope it isn't a lost cause.

---

Page 34

Bwahahaahahahahahah!

First, Harry Anderson and Vriska blasé calling each other to comment on the boring parts of the war front proceedings they're on opposite sides of? Perfection. Just, perfect rendition of the teen spirit.

Okay, secondly, I guess it's quite heartbreaking to see Harry Anderson & John's relationship has dropped to a low point here, but alas, living up to the high standards set for him by Dad Egbert was never in the cards for John. It's the Jake genes, he has potential for horrible weak, sobbing overreactions. Also, parental neglectfulness, apparently. :( Even though it's mostly unwilling from John's end.

But thirdly? Yeah. Vriska L.'s oversized ego was in need of a quick deflation, lest it grow to Serket proportions. What better way then to have an image branded into your thinking pan of possibly the worst romantic pairup in the history of Paradox Space? :Page

Also the fact that their shrieks echo Vriska being sucked into a black hole and also irrelevance. Circumstantial simultaneousness never felt so karmic.

---

Page 35

I.

Wuh.

Okay, first, yeah, it was pretty obvious to me Gamzee was deliberately hate-flirting with (Vriska) there.

But.

Wow.

Well. I guess if anyone could keep down the clown, they must have had ALL THE LUCK, in the end. Though... That would mean this Gamzee never finds Calliope and Caliborn, which seems like an unexpected turn of events.

So... In keeping with the strings of random events that seem to happen in this timeline a lot... I think chances are high that Jane finds Gamzee's body at some point in the future, and revives him?

Gamzee's end was certainly karmic when you consider what he did to Equius. And he's been a fairly awful person for all his live, even if he never crossed some lines in this timeline vs. the Game Over timeline.

Still, poor (Vriska). She can't keep the lid on this, not outside of canon anyway. WE know - the fandom will have discussed this in depth.

At least now it is time for the meeting we've all been waiting for. I want to see how (Vriska) handles being on the non-alpha side of a conversation between Vriska's, now. They're near the same age, aren't they? (Vriska) was nearing 8 sweeps as well, she mentioned it to Meenah before the army was assembled.

But they're even more different than the old (Vriska) was different to her. And current (Vriska) has just had the bedrock of her personality drilled into, she admitted as much.

Props to whoever decided their first exchange should mirror Dave and Davesprite's.

---

Page 36

...

Wow.

Okay, THAT was unexpected.

For one, go Jake! Finally got the nerve to just stand Jane up and leave that abusive relationship. That's something I don't see him work the courage up to do in any other universe, any time soon, unfortunately. As for Tavros... Eesh, I wonder just how similar, genetically, he and John are. They're probably closer than him and Harry Anderson, seeing how John mentioned it, courtesy of Roxy's genes.

It was wonderful to see John and Jake have a healthy heart-to-heart. It reminded me of their conversation on the endgame platform! Jake was very right in defending himself, since John wasn't in the situation he was in, he was an onlooker. A well-meaning one, that extended a hand, but Jake was just lacking the strength at the time to take it.

And okay, it's true, Jake might have switched into hopeful mode a bit too quick, courtesy of the low truthful stat of this timeline. But who cares?! He's silly, he's hopeful, and he might go on to be a better man!

As for John... I think what he needed most was someone to tell him, really LET HIM KNOW and FEEL, to his face, that he personally shouldn't feel like he has to have the weight of the world on his shoulders. But also, that he should keep his eyes on what he values most. Lest the dread for the bigger picture rob him of all the little wonders, the small hours, that matter most in a life.

For John, that means he should reconcile with Roxy and Harry Anderson, regardless of how "real" they all are. Because that's his legacy. Trying to be the best dad he can be, faulty as he still is, as a normal human being.

It's the best thing that could happen, it seems, John and Jake meeting up. The best for both of them! ... Guess I'm shipping John <> Jake now.

[migleefulmoments]

More Crissmyglitz Wedding Guest Angst: part 2

OMG they won’t let it go. Crissmyglitz-Guest Gate. The ccers are still obsessing over the #CrissMyGlitz guest list. As I pointed out in my first post (X), every single photo posted in round one of Crissmyglitz-Guest Gate was taken while Darren was working. That’s right, every single photo the tinhatters presented as “Darren and a real friend” was taken at work. For a fandom who constantly remind the world they are astute and ALWAYS PAYING ATTENTION TO DETAILS, it was a supermassiveblackhole.  

In part 1 they presented Elvis (X), Alan Cummings (X),  Jenna Ushkowitz (X), Laura Osnes (X). In part 2 they added Jane Lynch, Matt Bomer, Matt Morrison, Kevin McHale, Lena Hall, Ricky Martin and Edgar Ramirez.  Idk what was worse, that they didn’t learn any lessons after part 1 or that the fandom egged them on in utter delight.

cc-still-going-strong

Keep on.

I love your guys’ game 🤣🤣🤣 

chrisdarebashfulsmiles

I like this game  

(This got SUPER RIDICULOUS LONG so under) 

This is the LAMEST shade ever thrown and they were eating it up. Abby spent her Sunday adding to the nonsense and trying out sarcasm. She brought up the algorithm nonsense again and I can’t stop shaking my head.  The fact that it’s easier for them to believe that someone wrote an algorithm to determine the guest list for Darren and Mia’s wedding rather than simply to acknowledge that they don’t really know Darren at all is absurd. Rational people would see Darren’s guest list and realize that they got it all wrong.  Rationale people don’t see wedding photos and spend 7+ months proclaiming it’s all fake because he clearly is much better friends with former coworkers, Edgar Ramirez and Lena Hall than he is with Jennifer Coolidge and Pamela Aldon based entirely on the fact that nobody posted social media pics with Jennifer or Pamela. 

Mysterious absence part 2- Let’s do this…

1. LENA HALL

(see part 3 (X) for further information)

ajw720

(Opening Hedwig LA 11/16 from Lena’s IG)

(From Lena’s Twitter and Instagram July 28, 2016 (X). They were Flying to perform at DNC see pic below) 

(AGAIN- same night as #1-Hedwig’s opening night LA 11/16)

(Dec 12, 2016-I don’t know the context of this one. It is obviously her photoshoot and he popped in for a pic.  See below: another pic from this photoshoot posted to her IG. This is actually a nonword photo)  

ajw720:guess the algorithm eliminated her for joking weekly that DC had all the privileges of homosexuality but none of the responsibilities…… 

(Oh ho ho ho...the shade of it all).

chrisdarebashfulsmiles: Probably.

ajw720: Or perhaps it eliminated her as when D was kissing her on stage, he was giving his PBB the finger?  Remember that time 

(No, actually I don’t because that is nonsense. Darren flipped someone off from stage? Right because that is such professional. You believe that perfect, well-mannered Darren Criss would flip off his fiancee while working? That’s very inappropriate behavior during working hours, especially in front of a big audience of people- each with a cellphone. It’s also very risky to flip off the woman he is engaged to- the cc secret might get out.  If Darren is terrified to come out and terrified to breach THE Contract, why would he risk if all just give Mia the bird? Giving someone the bird is hardly a satisfying diss for anyone over the age of 12).

flowersintheattic254: Maybe the algorithm excludes those who like way too many posts on that had Ch/ris in them? 

(OMG- Lena “liked” some pics of Chris....a pig just flew by my window. It’s almost like Hollywood is a small town and people know each other. 

(No dates so it’s impossible to know what the context of the posts but that is typical of the tinhatting- they aren’t concerned with accuracies)

leka-1998: When the difference in chemistry is undeniable even in pics that show nothing but hands, that’s probably an issue. 

(I have never in my 51 years heard someone claim a married couple had no chemistry as evidenced by their hands in a photo taken specifically to show off their nail polish or that a PR photo for a Broadway show showed more chemistry than the actual couple. I mean seriously?)

(I will give this one to them as as personal photo )

(Is “hand chemistry” a thing? I’m only speculating here but is the degree of hand chemistry a function of the depth finger-penetration-on-finger-penetration?  Cuz.....that would make total sense amiright?)

cc-still-going-strong: Keep on.

I love your guys’ game 🤣🤣🤣 

(Blergh) 

ajw720: Seriously is that his wife on the left…..oh 

(hahahah nice try Abby, you have every single photo of Mia memorized- its actually a very sweet photo) 

(I can’t with this entire post. She wasn’t invited because he kissed Lena on stage as per the script? Oh wait- no- she was not invited because he kissed Lena on stage and he flipped off Mia (how they know he is flipping off Mia is anyone’s guess. I like to imagine he is flipping off the tinhatters). But wait- is he actually flipping off anyone? No, no he actually isn’t because that would be terribly unprofessional. Darren is at work and his bosses would not appreciate him flipping off anyone the audience. No actor who wants a career is going to  flip off someone in the audience while just-fingers crossed- hoping the message is received by the intended person and not a critic or investor.). 

(Work Pic. He is NOT giving anyone the finger- his finger is actually just in the shadow from Lena’s outfit). 

(Lena is working: As for Mia banning Lena from the wedding- in a recent post by Lena,  she talks about catching up aka they don’t haven’t spent much time together lately and notice the Mia hashtag) 

(The tinhatters like that she alls Darren wifey but in fact she calls all the Hedwig’s “Wifey”. She has a lot of Hedwig photos on her social media- the vast marority are NPH).

(Lena’s Christmas photoshoot as mentioned above)  

(I probably should have led with this but I wanted to prove them wrong in all the ways possible  Lena was busy on February 16, 2019 performing at Lincoln Center. She may have very well been invited. See my update (X) 

2. EDGAR RAMIREZ

 leka-1998: Yet another person missing on February 16

(PR for ACS: A photoshoot for promotion aka PR) 

(I am not sure about this pic. Darren posted it on his Instagram and Edgar responded  “love you brother”- that’s sweet and all but what does it prove- nada. I am sure they really had a great time together filming ACS and felt close, but they haven’t maintained that relationship-at least not publicly -since they end of awards season. I’ll give the tinhatters half a point for this one- but  bear in mind- I’m being generous because it looks like a PR pic) 

(PR for ACS; ”GQ Style & Hugo Boss Celebrate Amazing Spaces”- see photo below). 

(PR for ACS Emmy: This is from the 2018 Emmy “For Your Consideration” on 3/19/18.)

(PR for ACS. This is hilarious....so Edgar is doing a red carpet interview and Darren walks by him and Edgar walks away with Darren. OKAAAYYY-what does this prove? Again, they are at a work event- so far all the pics with Edgar are from work events except maybe 1) 

(PR for ACS- photoshoot. While the sentiment is sweet, Edgar hashtagged it #ACS and #Emmys. OMG how much ccproof do you need to understand that this is PR? ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION? Me think not cuz he freakin’ tagged it for you and you still don’t understand that it was promotion for the Emmy. He-lar-E-ous!)   

chrisdarebashfulsmiles: I like this game 

(of course you do- it’s catty, bitchy and pointless.  I’m glad it makes you happy because this has been eye-opening as to the extend that you are collectively super bad at separating Darren’s personal life from his work life) 

ajw720: @leka-1998​ this friendship seems very contrived to me, constantly calling each other brother, they aren’t nearly as close as say D and J/ennifer C/oolidge or B/en F/eldman or P/amela A/ldon…………… 

(Ohhh ho ho ho sooo funny. It’s so funny I forgot to laugh...har har har aha  Since Jennifer, Ben and Pamela actually got invites to the wedding, it is clear that they are indeed close to Darren or Mia, soooo the joke doesn’t actually work. As for Edgar being his closest friend because he called him “brother” during a big ACS promotion push-I’m not feeling it.  What is so baffling to this “stupid stan” is how the tinhaters CAN’T SEE the details right in front of their faces.  The Darren-Edgar love-fest was hot and heavy during the promotion of ACS and then it stopped all together...THAT is the definition of PR. I am sure they actually did like each other during the production of ACS, but when the project ended they both moved on to other projects and other friends. I’ve had coworkers -and I’m sure many of you have too-that I adored and I never wanted lose the connection we shared while working together but alas, the romance fizzled after we no longer had the workplace in common. Obsessing about the meaning of the almost-2-year-old photo of 2 strangers is pretty silly)

ajw720: The Algorithm is a very scientific way to figure out the wedding guest list-no doubt it knows who D is closest to and would not lie….. 

(The problem is simple- there are no social-media pics of Darren (or Mia) with Jennifer, Ben, or Pamela which means, according to the cc-logic that it didn’t happen-aka they aren’t friends. In order to explain why the trio were in fact, at the wedding, the THE Algorithm was created. This Algorithm is a very scientific way to figure out the wedding-guest list-no doubt it knows who D is closest to and would not lie. The cc posse hate it when they don’t know what is going on Darren’s life which is why we are talking about a fake “CrissMyGlitz Invitation” algorithm 7 months after the wedding).   

ajw720: @chrisdarebashfulsmiles It is seriously my new favorite game and there are so many people that the algorithm eliminated.

(Seriously? There are what- 2 or 3 photos that aren’t definitively traced to work This game isn’t working out the way the posse believes it is. This is however, THE definition of confirmation bias clouding their judgment).  

3. KEVIN MCHALE

ajw720:Poor KM didn’t make the cut either. Perhaps his invite was eliminated by the weird algorithm for tagging d at his 30th right below c, yet d not pictured? He clearly considers d a good friend as he invited him to the party.

(Did Kevin suggest he was devastated to miss the destination wedding of his former coworker? Kevin and Darren went out with their former-Glee castmates maybe once or twice in the last four years- they are hardly besties. I don’t remember Kevin and Darren as being particularly close while Glee was in production. They are literally former coworkers.)

(Kevin inviting Darren to his birthday party doesn’t indicate that he “clearly   considers d a good friend”. It seems like I remember the party was a surprise party?) 

ajw720: Thankfully I think they’ve made up as d had no problem straddling him recently.

(OMG seriously? They are former coworkers in which some level of friendship exists. Darren straddled his leg while sitting on a very crowded seat- he wasn’t riding Kevin while they had sex in public.)

(ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION? Darren invited the Glee peeps that he has consistently been close to over the years - Max, Harry and Chord).

ajw720: So many mysteries. But hey D&M’s new straight couple besties, Al/len & his wife, made the cut!

(Nope, no mysteries at all. Darren simply cared more about inviting people that mean something to him and Mia rather than those who mean something to the tinhatters.)

flowersintheattic254:  @ajw720 I expect old habits die hard with K and D. They were always flirty and fun. Maybe Mr and Mrs Le/ech are stricter regarding lap sittering. That’s probably why (nods head).

(nods head and wonders if tinters were drinking early on Sunday because this thread is petty, dumb and not at all funny or clever.) 

ajw720: @flowersintheattic254​ they are WAY too comfortable together, way more chemistry than D has with his bride.  I’m thinking that was the algorithm’s issue.

(Comfortable? Chemistry? WTF, he looks like he is passing a kidney stone and Kevin is coaching him through it.) 

flowersintheattic254: @ajw720 especially when you consider that the only similar pose with M has D holding his own arm to his chest. No chemistry at all!!!!

(Do you guys actually believe the nonsense you write or did you give up on 2/16/19 and you're just blowing smoke up each other’s ass now because I gotta tell you, the second-hand embarrassment is really uncomfortable now)   

 flowersintheattic254:It’s the pic on the boat with the fam. Can someone add it as I cannot find it?

leka-1998

ajw720: Not even close, if i didn’t know, i would say KM&DC were the couple and i t think the algorithm knew.  It is magical how that algorithm works.

(Ooooh right...it’s so confusing, I can totally understand your befuddlement!) 

(In all seriousness, watching this fandom’s toxic nonsense is like watching Kellyanne Conway and Lindsey Graham defend Trump’s baloney.  Everyone knows they are full of shit but we are powerless to stop it. The damage they are doing will take years to repair- if not decades)   

(Oh....Will you look at that. That is a screenshot taken from a video that is actually cute and shows a smitten Darren cuddling with Mia. Color. Me.SHOOK) .  

4. MATT MORRISON

standingoutsidethefire: I thought of another ..

That the algorithm just didn’t seem to include ...

standingoutsidethefire: Clearly these two don’t have any affection for each other

standingoutsidethefire: Not friends at all

standingoutsidethefire: I get why MM wasn’t included ..I really do 

(Maybe a personal- photo though likely at an show or industry event)

ajw720: Hate each other

(Once again, almost all -if not all - work pics)

5. MATT BOMER

leka-1998: “He’s just a really, really good, grounded person, and I think someone who I’ll probably always be friends with.”

- M/att B/omer

(Holy shit, Matt said something nice about Darren when asked about him by during an interview... no doubt when they worked together either on Glee or ACS) 

(According to Bride’s Magazine, “How to Make Your Wedding Day About YOUl” June 2017. 

5. The guest list is one of the most difficult decisions. Should you invite your mom’s work associate? Great Aunt Gertrude whom neither of you have met? Everyone from the gym? Communicate communicate communicate. One piece of tried-and-true advice is ALWAYS invite the person who said nice about you to the national media. You won’t regret it and most likely that person will give you the best gift).  

(Work event) 

(Work event)

(Wait -isn’t this Blaine and Cooper?)

(Work event)

Leka-1998: But the great algorithm said no.

ajw720: My understanding is they despise each other, cannot stand to be in the same room together. 

(Nobody ever suggested that).

ajw720: #funny #so many of the univited #queer

(seriously “#queer”? No, not cool)

flowersintheattic254

True they have clearly and from the beginning disliked each other intensely.

ajw720: But see @leka-1998​ there is D calling him handsome, we don’t want to have anything that even hints at d talking about a boy in that manner at the sham mockery, i mean nuptials……………….  Because D is the STRAIGHTEST MAN ALIVE!!!!!

(OMG,,the sarcasm isn’t working).

[bettercallsabs]

A/N: yeah, I’m still around, surprise. Lol. I know I said part 11 would be the end of this series, however, when writing book two, I realized, completely the last 7 parts worked far better in this book. So alas, here is part 12! The story is getting darker, and the drama is building up to a shocking twist. Be prepared.

Mob boss Steve Rogers x Reader x Monster Bucky Barnes

Warnings: it’s a mob fic, so...

Series Masterlist// Thee Masterlist

The wind howled fiercely as it tore relentlessly through the the foliage. You watched through a rain distorted window, as the roaring sound of thunder crashed overhead. Yough sighed heavily, turning your back to the large bay window, sinking slowly into the depth of the paisley patterned armchair. You gazed down at your little, swollen belly, your hand circling it in conform. It had been days since you’d heard from Steve. He hadn’t phoned, even when promised you he would. And you couldn’t help but fear the worst…

It was just over 3 months ago that you and Steve had been married, and what a magical night that was, what a magical time it had been- Steve and you had grown closer than you ever thought possible over the last couple of months, up until 4 weeks ago, when Bucky went missing.

Steve passed the length of his study, glasses sitting on low on his nose, face contorted with thought. His hand ran through his disheveled hair in frustration. You softly knocked at the partially open door, watching has his head rose to meet yours. “Might I come in?”

you asked in a hushed tone.  He said nothing, only nodded and with a swift gesture of his had he beckoned you into the room. You wasted no time welcoming yourself into the room, waltzing your way towards him as your arms found their way around his waist. Your hands folded over his the center of his chest, the flesh of your cheek resting against the jaggedness of his shoulder blade. His hands fell over yours, the heat of his palm brought a comfort to you, his thumb running the length fingers.

The air lie thick with silence, neither of you speaking for what seemed like an eternity.

You had no idea what troubled him so, you just knew it couldn’t be good. Something in your gut told you it was related to Bucky.  And by Steve’s demeanor and erratic behavior you knew it couldn’t have been good.

For a while, Bucky had been doing some “undercover” work for Steve. His opposition was to gather intel on rival gangs- after the fiasco that had landed you in the hospital with a lovely broken bone. They were inherent on finding those responsible, amongst other things. Bucky had gotten in deep, after falling out with Steve, he had become more involved with Steve’s rivals, they began to trust him, thus giving him more information that he could relay onto Steve, until he decided to make an appearance at the wedding…

“Steve?” You kept your voice low, smooth and sweetg, no more than a hum in his ear as you spoke. You moved around him, your face mere inches from his now, as you cupped his face in your hands, your thumbs grazing over is scruffy cheeks. You brought your lips to his, in a soft kiss-expressing the words you couldn’t seem to say. He kissed you back, but it was hesitant at first, as if his mind was elsewhere, as you knew it was- before it became urgent, hungry. His hands crept into your free fallin hair, as he pulled you deeper into the kiss. You kissed him back, savorying every lic k of his tongue, every caress of his hand.

In these trying weeks, Steve had been distant, he rarely slept, or ate, or paid you much attention, and in your sensitive state, you savoured his attention. You wanted nothing more than to be in his presence, you craved it. But a feeling was telling you to give him the space he needed.

“I’m going to brew some coffee, care for a cup?”

Steve’s eyes met yours, the endless pools of blue glistened with vulnerability and aching. Your thumb traced over his cheekbone, following the line of his jaw in a gentle caress, before hovering over his soft lips.

God he was beautiful. Dangerously beautiful, and seeing him this way made your heart sink.

Steve brushed straggling strands of hair from your face, tucking them neatly behind your ear as he cupped your cheek in his hand. You leaned into him, relishing his touch.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Steve lightly kissed your forehead, running his hand over the length of your shoulder, falling to your hand, which his gave a faint squeeze.

“Coffee sounds great. I’ll be out in a moment.”

With a quaint smile, you nodded, giving his hand a kiss before making your way out of the study.

The rich smell of freshly brewed coffee filled the large kitchen. You clutched your mug tightly, your hip resting against the counter as you gazed out of the misty, rain covered window.

The sound of banging at the front doors echoed throughout the house, drawing you back to reality from distant thoughts. Peering out into the foyer, Marcus was nowhere insight. He must be on the other side of the manor, and given your curious nature, you decided to open the door and investigate.

Heaving open the heavy door, a cool mist whipped against your nose. The petrichor smell of the falling rain sent shivers of up your spine. You loved the comforting smell.    

Locking out though sheets of rain, leaving ripples in the puddles that collected along the walkway, was barren. You leaned out of the threshold, holding tight as you starched on your tippy toes still nothing. No one is sight. Stepping back in, you stumbled a bit. You looked around, making sure there was nobody around to catch a glimpse of your clumsiness.

Out of the corner of your eye, you spotted a large blue box in your peripheral. You walked out onto the front porch, droplets of rain just grazing your shoulder, as you reached down to pick up the box.

It looked like a flower box, a tad bit heavier than flowers, but it smelled of flowers, sort of, but an overpowering sour stench leached from its edges. You held out the box, stretching your arms as far from you s you could, your stomach becoming unsettled as the awful smell wafted into your nose. You rushed into the kitchen, nearly throwing the box into the table with a loud thud.

“What’s that?”

Steve’s voice startled you, causing your heart to jump in your chest. You hadn’t seen him standing in the kitchen, propped against the counter stirring cream into his coffee.

“I think pregnancy has made you more jumpy. Never thought that was possible...” Steve chuckled lightly, utter music to your ears. It’d been far too long since you’d heard that magical sound. “So what’s with the box?”

Steve asked, pushing himself from his propped position against the counter.

“I’m not sure. I just found it on the front porch. Looks like flowers or something.”

Steve’s brow furrowed as he took a sip of his coffee.

“I wasn’t expecting anything, but might as well open it.”

With the go ahead from Steve you couldn’t deny the slight of excitement to figure out what was in the box, despite the smell.

Nothing could have prepared you for the trepidation that wait beneath the cover.

A blood curdling scream slipped from your lips as you stared in horror. Severed arm with detached fingers had been put on display, draped over a dozen white roses caked in dry crusted blood. Maggots adorned the decomposing flesh, the reaked to high heavens.

Your hands clasped over your mouth as a stream of tears flowed freely from your eyes. You weren’t sure if it was shock, the sight of a severed arm or a combination of the two, but you couldn’t stop the sickening creeping up from your stomach. -at this stage in your pregnancy, you know there was no point in fighting it. Holding back would only bring suffering in the end….

Steve’s hands rubbed at your back, soothing you the best he could. You looked up at him, eyes red and  puffy from tears. Without hesitation, his strong hands clutched at your shoulders, pulling you back from the traumatizing site.

“Marcus!” Steve shouted, his booming tone echoing of the walls of the large house.

He pulled you into him, holding your head against his broad chest, comforting-even though his body was stiff and shaky- you as he brushed at your hair sweetly.

The patter of Marcus footsteps grew louder as he grew closer. You could tell by the sound of is encroaching steps that he was sprinting, his footfalls were short and sporadic, very unusual for Marcus.

“You called sir?”

“Take her to our room please, and watch her.”

You head jerked up, eyes searching Steve’s. His icy blue eyes were dark and brooding. His jawline was rigid, teeth clenched.

“Steve-“

“Please, just go with Marcus, I don’t have time to argue right now.”

“Just tell me what’s going on, what is this?” You wanted answers, needed answers. There was a severed arm in a box on your kitchen table, surely Steve didn’t expect you to go on your merry way, no questions asked?

“Now is not the time y/n. Please, just do as you are told!”

Steve snapped. His voice was low and angered as he turned his head away from you.

“Come now Mrs.Rogers.” Marcus voice was soft, as he gently placed his hands on your shoulders, coxing you towards the hall. Reluctantly, you allowed Marcus to lead you away, glancing back over your shoulder at Steve, you could see sadness in his eyes, as his posture slouched, palms resting on the wooden table top.

“God dammit Bucky...”

You strained your ears to hear him, his voice was but a whisper as he spoke.

Your breath caught in your throat as everything became clear. That arm... that arm in the box, it belonged to Bucky...

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[bearsinbees]

How grammar school fucked me over

Right, I'm English so I'll take a second out here to explain grammar schools to the rest of the world. Effectively, it's like a gifted and talented program which has loads of eleven year olds take a test and if they score high enough they get to go to a special school, and fair enough the schools are almost always better than the free ones a lot of kids would've ended up at.

Take me, for example. I'm fairly well off but definitely not to the point that I could afford to go to private school. The school which I inevitably would've ended up at was also where all of my primary school bullies would go, and had a reputation for being a bit rough anyway. So I clung to this escape of grammar schools, took the test, passed, and off I went.

Now, I'm not going to go into depth about this, but one of the main arguments for grammar schools is their inclusiveness- anyone from anywhere can go there and get a good education, whether they are well off or not. But alas, the questions on the entry exam are fairly specialised, and whilst they are a good indication of overall intelligence, they are still often the kind of thing you can learn to be good at. So, the rich kids get tutoring, and they get in. Put alongside this the journey time and cost, (I travel an hour to school and an hour and a half back every day on public busses, which cost a few hundred pounds a year. School busses cost £400 per term) and you have a whole lot of kids who could've gone to private school taking the slots meant for the disadvantaged kids.

But the main issue that I can see, especially from the inside, is the expectations. Being constantly told you are one of the smartest children in Britain takes its' tole. Getting lower than a grade seven (an A equivalent) feels like failing here. When all of your peers cry if they get lower than 70% on tests where 30-40% is a pass, it is difficult to not press these expectations upon yourself. I didn't even realise that this wasn't how people in other schools think until I started attending clubs where people would come in grinning saying they'd got a grade six (B equivalent) on their latest exam.

The amount of mental breakdowns I witness each week is worrying, not many of my friends actually seem mentally stable at all. In fact, I know of three people who self harm, and two with eating disorders, and these are just the people who trust me enough to confide in me. Anxiety and depression are more common than hayfever.

Some subjects are so heavily favoured by the school it's laughable- stem subjects, for example, are so much more heavily funded than any of the arts, and being good at an art or humanity is often seen as unimportant- people can be amazing, almost fluent in three different languages and still believe themselves stupid because maths isn't their strong point. In fact, no matter what subjects you want to take forward to sixth form (16-18 years old, you choose 4 subjects to continue) you have to get sixes in maths and English- even if you're doing art, drama, languages and the like.

What makes matters worse is that we share a single councilor between four different schools, and so access to therapy has to be prioritized- I've seen cases of people being turned down for not being actually diagnosed with any mental health issues, despite the signs of them being clearly there. We had a talk from university medical students a couple of months ago about mental health, and watched the girl who I'd had to hug as she cried about how fat she was leave the room in a fit of tears when eating disorders were even mentioned in passing. She wasn't the only one who had to leave the room.

And what, with us being "intelligent young ladies" (I'll avoid the topic of being a trans man in an all girl's school for now) we are all constantly aware of the imminent threats of climate change and politics and all the rest of it. If you want to, imagine that whole gen z "I wanna die" *finger guns* thing times a hundred with extra doses of political revolution in the air. That's what our social interactions mainly involve. We are over informed and aware on all that's wrong in the world, and it's slowly eating us from the outside in. Children in grammar schools are treated like young adults from the age of eleven and we simply don't have the energy left to be children any more.

Tldr; grammar schools are elitist and classist; they pile stress onto literal children in order to cut childhood short. Rather than continuing this, put more money into the education of disadvantaged areas, fund the schools which poor kids end up in, and for god's sake have a councilor in every damned school.

[whenfrasermetbeauchamp]

To my annoyance, I lacked several of the herbs I needed for the sleeping tonic I had in mind. But then I remembered the man Marguerite had told me about. Raymond the herb-seller, in the Rue de Varennes. A wizard, she had said. A place worth seeing. Well, then. Jamie would be at the warehouse all the morning. I had a coach and a footman at my disposal; I would go and see it.

A clean wooden counter ran the length of the shop on both sides, with shelves twice the height of a man extending from floor to ceiling behind it. Some of the shelves were enclosed with folding glass doors, protecting the rarer and more expensive substances, I supposed. Fat gilded cupids sprawled abandonedly above the cupboards, tooting horns, waving their draperies, and generally looking as though they had been imbibing some of the more alcoholic wares of the shop.

“Monsieur Raymond?” I inquired politely of the young woman behind the counter.

“Maître Raymond,” she corrected. She wiped a red nose inelegantly on her sleeve and gestured toward the end of the shop, where sinister clouds of a brownish smoke floated out over the transom of a half-door.

Wizard or not, Raymond had the right setting for it. Smoke drifted up from a black slate hearth to coil beneath the low black beams of the roof. Above the fire, a stone table pierced with holes held glass alembics, copper “pelicans”—metal cans with long noses from which sinister substances dripped into cups—and what appeared to be a small but serviceable still. I sniffed cautiously. Among the other strong odors in the shop, a heady alcoholic note was clearly distinguishable from the direction of the fire. A neat lineup of clean bottles along the sideboard reinforced my original suspicions. Whatever his trade in charms and potions, Master Raymond plainly did a roaring business in high-quality cherry brandy.

The distiller himself was crouched over the fire, poking errant bits of charcoal back into the grate. Hearing me come in, he straightened up and turned to greet me with a pleasant smile.

“How do you do?” I said politely to the top of his head. So strong was the impression that I had stepped into an enchanter’s den that I would not have been surprised to hear a croak in reply.

For Master Raymond resembled nothing so, much as a large, genial frog. A touch over four feet tall, barrel-chested and bandy-legged, he had the thick, clammy skin of a swamp dweller, and slightly bulbous, friendly black eyes. Aside from the minor fact that he wasn’t green, all he lacked was warts.

“Madonna!” he said, beaming expansively. “What may I have the pleasure of doing for you?” He lacked teeth altogether, enhancing the froggy impression still more, and I stared at him in fascination.

“Madonna?” he said, peering up at me questioningly.

Snapped abruptly to a realization of how rudely I had been staring, I blushed and said without thinking, “I was just wondering whether you’d ever been kissed by a beautiful young girl.”

I went still redder as he shouted with laughter. With a broad grin, he said “Many times, madonna. But alas, it does not help. As you see. Ribbit.”

We dissolved in helpless laughter, attracting the notice of the shopgirl, who peered over the half-door in alarm. Master Raymond waved her away, then hobbled to the window, coughing and clutching his sides, to open the leaded panes and allow some of the smoke to escape.

“Oh, that’s better!” he said, inhaling deeply as the cold spring air rushed in. He turned to me, smoothing back the long silver hair that brushed his shoulders. “Now, madonna. Since we are friends, perhaps you will wait a moment while I attend to something?”

Still blushing, I agreed at once, and he turned to his firing shelf, still hiccupping with laughter as he refilled the canister of the still. Taking the opportunity to restore my poise, I strolled about the workroom, looking at the amazing array of clutter.

A fairly good-sized crocodile, presumably stuffed, hung from the ceiling. I gazed up at the yellow belly-scutes, hard and shiny as pressed wax.

“Real, is it?” I asked, taking a seat at the scarred oak table.

Master Raymond glanced upward, smiling.

“My crocodile? Oh, to be sure, madonna. Gives the customers confidence.” He jerked his head toward the shelf that ran along the wall just above eye height. It was lined with white fired-porcelain jars, each ornamented with gilded curlicues, painted flowers and beasts, and a label, written in elaborate black script. Three of the jars closest to me were labeled in Latin, which I translated with some difficulty—crocodile’s blood, and the liver and bile of the same beast, presumably the one swinging sinisterly overhead in the draft from the main shop.

I picked up one of the jars, removed the stopper and sniffed delicately.

“Mustard,” I said, wrinkling my nose, “and thyme. In walnut oil, I think, but what did you use to make it nasty?” I tilted the jar, critically examining the sludgy black liquid within.

“Ah, so your nose is not purely decorative, madonna!” A wide grin split the toadlike face, revealing hard blue gums.

“The black stuff is the rotted pulp of a gourd,” he confided, leaning closer and lowering his voice. “As for the smell…well, that actually is blood.”

“Not from a crocodile,” I said, glancing upward.

“Such cynicism in one so young,” Raymond mourned. “The ladies and gentlemen of the Court are fortunately more trusting in nature, not that trust is the emotion that springs immediately to mind when one thinks of an aristocrat. No, in fact it is pig’s blood, madonna. Pigs being so much more available than crocodiles.”

“Mm, yes,” I agreed. “That one must have cost you a pretty penny.”

“Fortunately, I inherited it, along with much of my present stock, from the previous owner.” I thought I saw a faint flicker of unease in the depths of the soft black eyes, but I had become oversensitive to nuances of expression of late, from watching the faces at parties for tiny clues that might be useful to Jamie in his manipulations.

The stocky little proprietor leaned still closer, laying a hand confidentially on mine.

“A professional, are you?” he said. “I must say, you don’t look it.”

My first impulse was to jerk my hand away, but his touch was oddly comfortable; quite impersonal, but unexpectedly warm and soothing. I glanced at the frost riming the edge of the leaded-glass panes, and thought that that was it; his ungloved hands were warm, a highly unusual condition for anyone’s hands at this time of year.

“That depends entirely upon what you mean by the term ‘professional,’ ” I said primly. “I’m a healer.”

“Ah, a healer?” He tilted back in his chair, looking me over with interest. “Yes, I thought so. Anything else, though? No fortune-telling, no love philtres?”

I felt a twinge of conscience, recalling my days on the road with Murtagh, when we had sought Jamie through the Highlands of Scotland, telling fortunes and singing for our suppers like a couple of Gypsies.

“Nothing like that,” I said, blushing only slightly.

“Not a professional liar, at any rate,” he said, eyeing me in amusement. “Rather a pity. Still, how may I have the pleasure of serving you, madonna?”

— Dragonfly In Amber

Photos: Starz, Season Two, Episode Two, April 16, 2016

Gif: headoverfeels.com, Season Two, Episode Two, April 16, 2016

Book: Dragonfly In Amber, Diana Gabaldon, 1992

Tumblr: September 28, 2018, WhenFraserMetBeauchamp 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿❤️🇬🇧

WFMB’s Tags: #Outlander #Season Two Episode Two #S2E2 #Not In Scotland Anymore #Dragonfly In Amber #Chapter Eight #I remembered the man Marguerite had told me about. Raymond the herb-seller #Madonna!” What may I have the pleasure of doing for you?! #Claire Fraser #Maître Raymond #83 #092818

[lilyginnyblackv2]

Okay, so I got an Anon ask about Buffy Season 12, Issue #2...

I finished writing it and I thought published it, but I guess I didn’t and it got accidentally deleted. The main question that I answered was focused on how it makes no sense that Buffy is the only Slayer to keep her powers and memories (since the Slayer Line should run through Faith) and general just talking about the poor quality/state of this issue of the comics. I saved some of my post, so I’m to paste that here and then rewrite the parts that didn’t get saved:

I’m falling asleep a bit as I type this, so I hope there aren’t too many mistakes here. Anyway, on to this Ask!

Hello there, anon! :) Yeah, I definitely agree with you. Season 12′s writing has been MESSY. And not just with the time travel stuff, everything is just so lacking here. (Though, really, the time travel plot already has some fans asking “Why didn’t FDW do this?” or “Why didn’t Illyria do that?” and etc. Unless you are going to do a purposefully silly and funny take on time travel ala Back to the Future, then you need to be meticulous with the details...And I don’t think they have been.) The depth of the characters and situations are gone. I feel like all the characters are shallow versions of what we’ve gotten over the years and that is most likely due to the length of the season, but also to poor choices for what to include and exclude from the story (there were often times when whole pages worth of bubbles and discussion were wasted on information that both the readers know and the characters, which just makes for bad info dumping that takes up speech bubbles that could have been used on something else).  On the TV show Whedon was able to get away with placing emotional impact over logical plot progression or plot holes and such. Those emotional moments often paid off, but here I just can’t see it working because the characters are just shells of what they used to be (largely due to the character growth resets in some of the characters like Buffy - we can see it here especially, where Buffy appears to be mooning over some of Angel’s lines and things like she was a 16 year old again and I just - ugh - the way she is behaving here reminds me so much of that truly awful scene from Season 7 when she reunites with Angel and -bleh- ...I was so hoping relationship stuff would just not be focused on at all in Season 12, but Whedon felt the need to make it messy and shoehorn it in - even though everyone is pretty much 100% done with all this back and forth relationship stuff, ugh). So yeah, getting back to what I was originally saying before that tangent there... there is no emotional connection or involvement from the audience to the characters in this season so far. We have had barely any truly memorable, deep, or important interactions and I just feel like there is so much missing from them as characters. As for the memories situation...the only thing I can really think of is that Buffy and Willow decide to do the same spell that they did at the end of Season 11, just modified to include both powers and memories. If Buffy once again acts as the connector for the Slayer Line to the Scythe, which would work as the conduit for the spell/magic that Willow is performing, then I could see Buffy being the only Slayer to retain both her powers and memories, while all the others (Faith included) loses them. (Though, I do also believe that there is some debate/discussion/fan theories out there about whether or not Buffy’s resurrection in Season 6 caused the Slayer Line to default back to her). It would be nice and more interesting to see some other means by which this power and memory loss could happen though. I kinda hope this whole depowering and loss of memories ends up either a) not happening at all or b) happening through some other means because the above is just a rehashing of something we’ve seen before and I wasn’t really all that comfortable/okay with seeing Buffy depower all of the Slayers and repower them again without any of them having a choice. It’s the same issue that I have with the ending to Season 7 (though I understand that both situations were done in the middle of battle for the good of the world). But regardless, the ending that we got presented to us here was so awful and sends out an awful message. I’m fairly certain Harmony will be an unreliable narrator in the end, but even with lies and rumors and faulty memories, some bits of Harmony’s info dump from the future must contain some accurate bits to them.

[intagiio]

Hi. 1-40

Perish.“1: did you ever think you were straight?”I mean yeah but also like no“2: what’s your favorite element of gay culture?”I mean idk if this counts but the fact that gay people can all of a sudden cling to a fucking TV show and like .. make that show.. i think its rlly funny also its the only way i know what stuff to watch. “3: are you femme, butch, or neither?”i guess neither but probably somewhere in the middle and im certain if i had the motivation i’d be more femme lol“4: do you prefer to date femmes or butches?”femmes lol“5: what’s the worst part about being a lesbian?”well i’m not Technically a lesbian but anyway other than the general societal disapproval,,, probably the fact that.. it’s so hard to date lol like idk“6: what’s the best part of being a lesbian?”when women do date each other, it’s oftentimes very.. soft.. and comfortable..“7: how long were you questioning for?”literally fucking never i just always assumed i was either bi or gay bc like there’s no way i couldn’t have been shdjjfsjd“8: what’s the most annoying thing straight people do?”exist probably. jk but get annoyed at like pride month and FUCK I HATE WHEN THEYRE LIKE “don’t politicize this!!!” when something shows support for the LGBT+ community“9: what do you look for in a girl?”honestly fuck if i know anymore but probably humor and like... idk is a good listener? or can talk to me lol like.. conversations are nice... “10: of you had to marry someone you know right now, who would you choose?”well i certainly can’t say that on tumblr dot com“11: do you have a crush right now?”lightweight yeah but no but yeah i think it’s more of an admiration but huh idk“12: do you fall in love easily?”well. fall in love is a loaded term probably tho“13: is there anyone in your life right now you think you’ll date in the future?”well probably not but maybe“14: is there anyone you want to be kissing right now?”i guess but no also“15: do you think you’ve met your future wife yet?”absolutely not“16: top, bottom, or vers?”well I’M a top “17: is there anyone you wish you could fuck right now?”oh yeah duh but it’s all rather unfortunate“18: rough or gentle?”depends on the mood! duh. gentle tho... :’)“19: how many stereotypes do you fit into?”i’m sure a lot“20: what version of the lesbian flag do you like most? (butch, lipstick, original, etc.)”i feel so out of the loop but probably the original“21: do you have a good gaydar?”honestly yeah but no at the same time like i’ll miss rlly obviously gay people and think they’re straight but kinda just get the ... less obvious gay ppl“22: be honest, would you rather be straight?”lol sometimes but also... women are superior to men at least in terms of romance so also no“23: are you cis?”yessir“24: are you a sugar mommy or a sugar baby at heart?”don’t ask me that but sugar baby definitely“25: are you committed to someone at all right now emotionally?”nope!“26: are you looking for a serious relationship currently?”not really bc i leave in like three months“27: is there someone you’d like to be in a serious relationship in?”i mean kind of but alas not really i just romanticize the thought of people“28: do you want children?”yes!!“29: is your family accepting of your sexuality?”absolutely not“30: how confident are you in your sexuality?”i mean i know i’m not straight bc i enjoywomen but thats about it so i’m fairly confident in that“31: are you polyamorous or monogamous?”monogamous as fuck lol“32: what’s advice do you have for your 12 year old self?”yeah maybe dont fucking do any of the shit you do and maybe try to be a better person idk also ur not going to stanford lol dont think u are“33: have you ever been to a gay bar?”nope“34: leather jackets or flannel?”flannels fuck i love flannels!!! at one point in time i owned 13“35: describe your dream girlfriend”uhhHhh funny... understanding... loyal... lol, uhhh... like someone who is simultaneously a caretaker and wants to be taken care of... u know ,,,??? also attractive but thats just me being superficial i think. i was gonna go more in depth but perhaps i should not on this public website. anywho. someone who cares about the world and is motivated and doesn’t do things just .. to have the right stance on it. ya know? yeah. also a dog person bc i want a corgi w her. frick“36: do you have any lesbian friends?”yessir but i have more bi friends sooo“37: what elements of gay culture do you actively participate in?”i’m gay“38: do you find straight people irritating?”i mean not bc theyre straight obviously but yeah occasionally“39: would you rather adopt a kid or have a biological kid?”well i don’t want to give birth but i do want to have a biological kid. i would like to do both i think.“40: do you love yourself?”i think i’d like to but i think i just think nobody else does, so i don’t know why i would. i’m rather neutral to myself and i kind of see my brain as separate from my body like i’m.. two different people. lol #gemini. u know what i mean tho. so i don’t hate myself but i’m not entirely favorable towards myself

[sinnhelmingrmoved]

{{INTERVIEW QUESTION GALORE}}

FILL IN THE QUESTIONS AS IF YOU ARE BEING INTERVIEWED FOR AN ARTICLE AND YOU WERE YOUR MUSE.

Tagged by @fulgurantfirstborn Tagging… y’all! >:3c

[In honor of who I was tagged by, I’m answering all of this for the DS AU]

1) What is your name? “Hel.”

2) What is your real name? Chuckling, the creature shook her head. “That’s it, just Hel. That’s all anyone ever called me in the catacombs, at least.”

3) Do you know why you’re called that? A shrug of the shoulders was all she could manage at first. “Honestly? No. It’s not something I ever really thought of. The Gravelords being a morbid lot probably has a lot to do with it, though.”

4) Are you single or taken? “Single. Unbelievable, isn’t it? You’d think being half-Hollow would have all the pretty young things wrapped around the block.”

5) What are your powers and abilities? “I have some dominion over death, as well as a certain aura that tends to.. deteriorate those lesser creatures around me. As the old stories put it, I ‘unleash a miasma of death and disease.’ Besides that, I’m quite good with my scythe. I can make quick work of anyone who comes grave-robbing, or who think they’re going to get an easy kill on some wandering Hollow.”

6) What color are your eyes? ”Green.”

7) Have you ever dyed your hair? “No. I don’t see how it would take, with how dark my hair is. If it was lighter, I might be willing to try, but alas.”

8) Do you have any family members? ”The Gravelord has been very much a father and guide to me, and his Servants are as good as family. The Fenito, likewise, are my siblings.”

9) Do you have any pets? “I do! A little billy goat that I found in my wanderings. Agdayne said I wasn’t allowed to keep him in the graves, though... So he lives with Lady Gwyndolin. I try to visit as often as I can.”

10) Tell me something you don’t like. “Zealots, for any faith. It can make the worst of those who only mean well, though I’ll thank you not to share my feelings on the matter.”

11) Do you have any hobbies or activities you do in your spare time? ”Wandering is, I suppose, much of my hobby. Other than that, I adore reading! Sometimes I might... meddle... in the affairs of other kingdoms. If Gwyn’s children are allowed to do that, why shouldn’t I?”

12) Have you ever hurt anyone before? “I try to avoid it, but... The world is not always that simple.”

13) Have you…ever killed anyone? ”I... prefer not to. I’ll take a peaceful death over having to kill, but I have had to shepherd people a bit more forcefully in the past.”

14) What kind of animal are you? “Hm. A bat, perhaps? I come out of the dark and take wing wherever my lord has use of me. It could certainly work.”

15) Name your worst habits. ”I know I tend to chatter, something I have tried to curtail whenever I catch myself. I’m also... Quite loose with my superiors. Most don’t mind! But it’s something I know I have to work on, because one day someone probably will mind.”

16) Do you look up to anyone? “I have nothing but the utmost respect for Lady Gwyndolin. She is a wonderful woman and a fine leader, and I wish that I could be even half the lady that she is. Artorias is also worthy of utmost respect, and I can only hope for the chance to serve my Lord so loyally.”

17) Gay, straight, bisexual, other? ”I... I do not know. I’ve never exactly had to ponder any such subject. Women are lovely, but there are certain men who I find of interest.”

18) Do you go to school? “I never did, but sometimes I play schoolmaster when my little bone babies want to play pretend.”

19) Do you ever want to marry and have kids someday? ”That’s... Ridiculous. Who would have me? Who would ever want me to breed?”

20) Do you have any fans? “My bone baby friends assure me that they are always cheering me on, wherever I might be.”

21) What are you afraid of? ”Reasonable things. The Abyss, the end of the Age, harm coming to those that I love. I fear heresies that threaten my lady’s crusade and her father’s legacy. I’m...” Cheeks burning with shame over her own weakness, she gnaws at her lower lip. “I’m terrified of losing this world -- that one day it will all be a husk of what I know and adore now. I’m afraid that would break me.”

22) What do you usually wear? Tugging at the frayed skirt of her ensemble, she curtsies with a smile. “What you see now -- my dress, my breastplate, and this veil. I admit, it all looked much nicer before I wandered so far out.” Twisting the gossamer fabric of her veil around her rotted fingers, she seems timid for a moment --- “This, especially. I started wearing it to fit in with Gwyndolin and Gwynevere, but it’s gotten quite worn. It’s probably the entire reason people want to confuse me for Velka.”

23) Do you love someone? ”My lord, his servants, the dead, and Lady Gwyndolin. If you mean to narrow the definition to romance alone... Then no.”

24) What class are you? “Captain of the Gravelord Servants. A servant to my Lord-Father, and a guide to those who seek him out.”

25) How many friends do you have? ”Much more than you’re likely to believe looking at me. Chief among them the Moon herself.”

26) What are your thoughts on pie? “Too sweet for my liking, unless it’s a good meat pie. Those are the kind I could eat hand over fist if allowed.”

27) Favorite drink ”Ooh, there’s this local liquor in Astora that can knock a grown knight onto his back! It’s quite warm and smooth, and I adore it. I never did learn the name, but I swear it’s like drinking sunshine.”

29) What is your favorite place? “Anor Londo. . . Don’t tell the Servants or the bone babies I said that. I can only stand the dark for so long, and I swear home is my second choice!”

30) Are you interested in someone? “You keep asking about my personal life as if something is going to change after a series of different questions. The answer remains no.”

31) What’s your dick size? "I don’t... I don’t have one.”

32) Would you rather swim in a lake or the ocean? “The ocean! I hear there’s all sorts of fascinating things in the depth, and I would love to meet a few if I ever had the time!”

33) What’s your ‘type’? “This I can answer, at least. Someone strong, in terms of will and power. Someone who can keep pace, someone who can even bring me to task. It wouldn’t hurt if they were older, too, but... I know that’s a preposterous idea at my age.”

34) Any fetishes? “By the Lords, don’t ask me that. Please don’t. The last time I was persuaded into that silly truth-telling or consequences game I was assured that wanting to be tied down and dominated is a wholly normal desire, but it still embarrasses-- Oh, damn it.”

35) Top or bottom? Dominant or submissive? ”You knew what you were doing. You bastard. Fine. I would prefer to bottom. I submit totally, or at least... I think I would.”

36) Camping or indoors? “Camping! I love being able to look up at the stars and the moon, hearing nature around me, the threat of attack always spicing up an evening. There’s nothing better for the soul.”

37) Are you waiting for this interview to be over? “That depends: How many more personal questions do you intend to ask?”

[crystalnet]

State of the Art: JRPG Spotlight-

Issue #1- 2017 at a Glance- A quarterly or bi-annual journal on the JRPG at large, focusing on recent releases, trends, quarterly reviews/analyses and upcoming release hype.

The other night I was getting yet even deeper still into the freshly minted minor-masterpiece that is Xenoblade Chronicles 2 when it dawned on me just how good 2017 was to the quaint little genre known as the JRPG. I knew all year while it was happening that some special games were getting released with a certain regularity, but now that the dust has fully settled, we can look back and be conclusively impressed by such a stellar stretch. 

3 or 4 years ago I think people were getting ready to pen their moratoriums on why big developers and JRPGs should soon plan on never intersecting again save for small-scale handheld releases, and now here we are and Japan is seemingly back on top as far as role-playing goes. That return-to-form didn't always seem so inevitable as it is now that it's fully underway, especially after a somewhat shaky stretch for the genre during the 7th generation. Indeed, high-definition graphics and devs who catered to Gatorade-guzzling gamer bros seemed to not be the boon to the genre that old-school role-players really needed, and even the first couple of years of the 8th generation saw the genre to still be on slightly shaky ground, without a ton of great titles to point to from those initial years. 

But then throughout the 7th gen a little franchise called Dark Souls (a JRPG in spirit, though not quite in practice, in many ways) started to build a little following, generating new interest in things like difficulty, customization, and innovative diagetic story-telling. As of the middle of this decade though, the genre still doesn’t have all that much of a presence compared to the late 90s heyday of JRPGs. Cut to 2016 though and Square drops FFXV which is a solid, if not-perfect realization of the 30-year-old standard-bearer of the genre, (a herald of sorts, if you will) and BAM. 2017 begins and in quick succession Nier Automata, Persona 5 and Breath of the Wild drop, all to stunningly positive reception. Now BotW, like Dark Souls, is not as much of a JRPG as the other 3 releases I hope to focus on, but Zelda has always had it's toe in the same waters as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, borrowing and simplifying elements of role-playing games from an action-adventure perspective, and in turn, also influencing those very JRPG franchises it seemed to pay homage to. 

This wasn't just a coincidental blip of releases though, proved largely by the fact that all the way at the end of the year, Xenoblade 2 would also drop, and show yet again how the JRPG can be fresh and vital, and can be a Nintendo-exclusive at that. Indeed, I hope to demonstrate my thesis that it was a particularly strong year by triangulating my discussion around Nier A, Persona 5 and Xenoblade 2. Not only are these three very strong titles, they are also all pretty vastly different styles of JRPGs, which I think displays the health and potential of the genre even better than the fact that they are so individually good. First of all we have an industry veteran and mad-hatter in Yoko Taro finally coalescing a fully-realized vision of action-JRPG greatness by collaborating with Platinum games to make something as heady, and intellectual as it is well-designed and fun to play. That game is something like a Hegelian Philosophy PhD driving a Lamborghini in terms of the amount of stuff going on with the writing and character development, all while sporting a super classy luxury sports-car, six-cylinder engine. For long-time fans of Taro, I don't think this direction could have ever been predicted, though they may have secretly dreamed of such a fusion of form and function. 

The best thing about how simultaneously weird and playable Nier A is for me is the way it hearkens back to the golden age of PS2 JRPGs for me personally. Without pinning it to a single PS2-era title, it gives me the same feeling that games during that console could consistently deliver on: a fully realized fantasy/sci fi world, a deep-yet-approachable combat system, a weird and very-Japanese, but also deep-as-hell plot, and a certain functionality that games like Kingdom Hearts 2, Rogue Galaxy and Final Fantasy XII delivered on back then. I don't mean to say it's derivative or stuck in the past, it's just that, the highlights of the PS2 days are my go-to precedent for what a good modern, post-16-bit JRPG is, since that equally sweet ps1 era can only be reasonably emulated on smaller and/or handheld retro-style releases. And while the story’s depth and esoteric nature recall the plot’s and worlds of PS1 and 2 greats like FFX, Xenosaga or Vagrant Story, the combat itself feels as fast-and-furious as hack-n-slash classics from then like Devil May Cry. 

So while Nier had action-(j)RPG style gameplay covered, Persona 5 was there for all the turn-based devotees, and oh boy were we there for it also. That game was a huge victory lap for Atlus, who has built up a deep fanbase over the past decade, largely because of youtubers (at least in the west we can thank the cult-y presence of its fans online for the slow-burn development of an army of Atlus acolytes, whereas P3 and 4 were only barely noticed in the States back when they actually first came out.) And they finally capitalized on that hard-earned interest by finally following up P4 after nearly a decade, and while they were at it, they also showed everyone that fully turn-based (not even slightly active-time) systems can still melt faces, please crowds and feel fresh, which is no mean feat at all in a world where some question if turn-based is officially dead save for retro-homages. 

And while Nier captures a kind of ethereal PS2-esque quality, Persona very literally pulls some of the PS2-era goodness into the future by updating and refining the awesomely deep and OCD-enabling systems of the now holy-grail-level PS2 era Persona games. Yes, wandering around Shinjuku, going on supportive dates with classmates, building up your relationships in general, and working a part time job between study breaks has been fully realized for the modern gamer, and it is glorious to behold. 

And that takes us to Xenoblade which out of all the titles I might be most surprised by. Being a bit of a Xeno-noob, I wasn't sure if the release was going to be a major or minor event for role-players, especially given Nintendo's spotty track-record with the JRPG, usually sporting all of maybe one or two truly notable ones per generation, as well as their tendency to censor and/or smother developers. But alas, Xenoblade is fully-formed, proper, brimming-with-life and as deserving of the title of new standard-bearer to the genre as any of the other fantastic JRPGs released that year, many of which I won't even get to. 

As is the case with the others, it seems to draw on PS2 era greatness in someways, by building on battle systems like the ones in FFXI and FFXII, while also being an actual descendant of the Xenosaga series that rocked that console, and also still draws on PS3-era titles that were successful (though smaller in number there were some good ones!) like Ni No Kuni and the Last Story. This is a round-about way of saying the combat system is an excellent take on the free-moving active-time auto-battling-but-with-real-time-triggers-style combat that started to show up towards the end of the PS2's life-cycle just when people were realizing the days of pure turn-based role-laying may be limited. And it also delivers on all those other check-marked boxes that any truly great and special JRPG must deliver on including: emotionally stirring and unique soundtrack, a deep and rewardingly complex story with all sorts of specific and detailed lore, a really nice visual style, and some incredibly beautiful locales. Okay that last thing isn't even a thing JRPGs usually have to deliver on, but it sure is a highlight. Some of the locations you move through during your travels in this game are breathtaking, and even more impressive than the  similarly psuedo-cell-shaded style of Breath of the Wild, whose open-world Monolith Soft also worked on (though you can't climb all over these areas I should say). 

I'm as blown away by the suddenly addictive combat (once it fully kicks in and you are given full control over 3 blades around the 15 hour mark) as I am by the surprisingly moving, funny and immersive story. I can be a little skeptical sometimes when approaching JRPG stories, but by all three of these aforementioned titles, we were treated to surprisingly mature and complex narratives, with refreshingly grounded and/or thoughtful characters. Indeed, with this many games firing on all these different cylinders (I didn't even mention the soundtrack to Persona 5 or Nier OMG), you know something special is happening.

So there you have it, three wildly differently styles of JRPG, only unified by their consistent top-tier quality. An old-school turn-based lite-novel hyprid, a full real-time action-RPG for philosophy students, and a MMO-style combat fantasy epic. And on top of all that there's myriad other fantastic releases, or even re-releases like the Final Fantasy XII Zodiac Age remaster of FFXII, one of my favorites and oft-forgotten FF titles that I think got overlooked slightly upon initial release precisely because of the way it showed other developers the way forward from pure turn-based combat. 

And then the behemoth that is Breath of the Wild saw a tried-and-true franchise get fully revitalized in a way that drew on the weapon system of Dark Souls as much as it did the food system of Odinsphere of all games. And like I said, though not a true JRPG, it shows that role-playing adjacent titles are also showing a come-back. Survival components in video games were always the more practical, realist cousin to role-playing/stat-grinding after all. 

So where do we go from here? Well 2018 will show us whether 2017 was a stand-out year or just the beginning of a trend, but all signs seem to point to an ongoing upward trend if releases like Monster Hunter World are any indication. Ni No Kuni 2 is due out soon, Octopath Traveler, which should make good on the idea of a retro-JRPG, and Kingdom Hearts 3 at the end of the year all help to paint the picture of an equally formidable year. Alas, Nippon is poised to continue its domination in coming months. All in all, fans of the genre should be very pleased, and if you haven't checked out one of the aforementioned titles get to it, because all of them are excellent, even if Xeno takes about 15 hours to truly get rolling and Persona takes a whopping like 20. All good things come to those who wait, after all.~