#i'm super shitty this is gonna be the worst

[hells-greatestdad]

// ramblin abt shit that no one wants to hear bc personalllll and maybe sorta trauma dumping

in tags

you been warned

[anonymusbosch]

work was so bad the last couple days tho. disregarding the fun readings it was like 90% trying to fix problems that other people were just breathtakingly unwilling to fix

[daydreaming-in-daisies]

aaaaaand now I can't sleep bc of anxiety about my future and whether or not I'll even graduate next month 🙃

[darlingbabyboo]

Hiii! To begin with I just wanna say that I love ur work and the way you write, it's literally the highlight of my day! <3 Can I request fluffy headcanons about the kawata twins? ( because we all know those two babies are super underrated and it's such a mood-killer to not be able to find any good fics about them ಥ⁠‿⁠ಥ ) Seriously, the amount of fics about them is SO limited that I'm desperate at this point :') Thank you in advance! ❤️

Fluffy Headcanons w/ Souya and Nahoya Kawata!

It's so true, these two are criminally underrated and they're such good characters and I love them with all my heart my god. Thank you so much <3 for the compliments and sorry that I'm doing this so late. I already did something similar with Angry, so his section might be a little shorter than Smiley!

Nahoya Kawata (Smiley)

Okay I know you want fluff but Smiley was ranked number 3 from Top Worst Boyfriends 😭😭😭

He was ranked number 2 from the Best Runners and that's bcs he's so good at running away from his problems

He is a little bitch and a menace to society

You want attention?

He wants to go the mall and pretend you don't exist

You want affection?

Well he wants to go to bed leave him alone :/

You want a cutesy petname?

Isn't babe good enough for you?

He has a whole lotta issues okay and he is not the best at giving you the attention that you deserve

He's also a little mean tbh

Just because you think your sweater is cute doesn't mean he does 🤨

He's also shitty with comforting you

He sees you crying and he just stares at you 😐

This sounds really bad so far but the thing about Smiley is that when he commits to someone he fucking commits

He knows that he's not the best (Angry loves reminding him that everyday) but he really fucking tries

Yeah he's jackshit at comforting you at first but when he realizes that you're obsessed he'll do his best to make you feel better

Homemade food to make you feel better, saying sweet words to you or just staying by your side so you know that he won't leave your side

He's your ride and die

He knows that he might be harsh too and balances with sweetness

He might not like sweater but ig you guys can go to the mall and you can get whatever you want or smth, you want a manicure sure whatever you want, of course you can get that shirt you look great in it whatever it's no big deal 🙄

He loves you okay he's not the best at expressing all the time but you're everything to him ❤️

Souya Kawata (Angry)

Boyfriend goals 😍

He's a worshipper okay, you're not just his partner you are his god

He will do anything for you

Hungry?

Five course homemade meal already made

Tired

Lay down, the bed's made, the pillow's cold and the blankets are fluffy

Are you stressed for your test?

All day study buddy right here, doesn't even care if he doesn't understand what you're studying, he's gonna do the best he can to support you

If you wear makeup I 100% believe Angry would be the type of person to help remove your makeup after a long day

He's also the type to ask a million questions while you're doing makeup it can be a bit irritating but it's coming from a sweet place

Loves stuffed animals and is willing to share the love

Gifts you stuffies all the time (his favourite is the conger eel, that's so cute I love him too much ❤️❤️❤️)

You two would have dates where you bring your favourite stuffies or where you chill on each other's bed with your stuffies 🤗🤗🤗

His brother makes fun of him for how whipped he is and while he's a little embarrassed, he is not ashamed of you

Why would he be embarrassed you're perfect, who wouldn't worship you 🥰

[vastderp]

I Had A Baby Brother

My brother was found dead last tuesday in his apartment.

He died anywhere from Sunday to Monday, and his landlord got worried and checked up on him and found him on the floor with one hand over his face. There was an open jug of methanol nearby. My sister thinks he drank it, I pray he didn't. It was an ugly, fucked up death.

He was in declining health this past decade because he was a paraplegic and uncontrolled diabetic. There are systems in place to help with low income people in his condition, but they were barred from him as he was a convicted felon.

He went from learning to walk again in the physical therapy pool to drinking a gallon of vodka per day, growing more hostile and bitter as the pain got worse, until his body just gave out. He drove away his friends, he drove away his family, and then he hit the floor and never got up.

I was meant to view the body with my sister and her grown kids, but the funeral home couldn't tell us where his body had been sent, and stopped answering the phone on friday before memorial day weekend, and then we had to wait for someone to follow up on my sister's dozens of phone messages, which they finally did, to try and make their little profit.

My sister, who has been handling all of this along with my niece, selected a different funeral home for the cremation because the first one was disgraceful with my mother's death in 2007, and they're disgraceful all over again with my brother's now.

At one point today they finally established contact, and asked how my sister wanted to handle the arrangements for her "father". O how casual the not giving a fuck goes! Dude pressed to make a sale even after she told him how unhappy we were with their work.

All this to say that I have a car full of inherited possessions, unused medical gear, and the shitty fucked up remnants of my brother's shrine to Mom.

Good old Mom may have died almost 20 years ago, but her gentle, loving mission to smother her only son to death (and probably into eternity) is finally successful. Of all of us, I've often wondered who got it worst: The golden child, the scapegoat, or the parentalized invisible middle kid. Now that one of us has effectively committed suicide, I guess it's for the scapegoat and me to hash out who gets second place. My mother crippled him long before his car accident, in one long and winding but uninterrupted line of consequences from his birth to death. I consider it a murder-suicide. Which was which? They were both the killer, and both the victim. Enmeshment is a motherfucker.

I'm super bitter, really fucking sad, and incredibly proud of what's left of my family for how they're coming together now. (Except my dad, who is in another state, petting his dogs, because I don't think he can really deal with this shit).

So what's left? To go put some cologne on his corpse when they finally let us go view what's left of him. He always liked to smell nice and he probably doesn't right now.

They'll cremate him, and give us a ridiculously heavy cardboard box of ashes that we'll have to carry out, knowing it's all that's left of a lifetime of struggling and pain. Probably we're gonna mix his ashes with Mom's, and make that lifetime of enmeshment official.

I hope if they go to the same afterlife, he kicks her in the cooter. I hope she kicks him back. I hope they can see each other with eyes unclouded by trauma, and forgive each other for the choices they both made. I hope they forgive me for still being mad at them both for not being stronger. I hope I will forgive myself for a lifetime of resentment and blame. I sure got enough time for that.

Jason was funny, weird, secretly really smart but never made a point of it. He was stylish. He was a broken man who could have made better choices and didn't, who was happily fed poison until he couldn't live without it, who was basically his own whole ass Pink Floyd song. His violence sent me running into a better life. His death sent me trudging back into a damaged family with gaping holes like torn out teeth, into the arms of my sister, and we reconciled. There's just us two left now, and it's our job to make something beautiful come out of this jerry springer childhood we shared. We're doing our best.

Dozens of catheters still in the package. Leakproof bed padding in a plaid pattern. Gallons of creams, antacids, fiber supplements by the jar, pressure sore ointments, fungus treatment creams, lidocaine pads, antibiotics, antipsychotics, a hash pipe or two.

An entire apartment hoarded with moist towelettes, pressure garments, and cleaning supplies. An entire life choked with mental damages and crying relatives. I put on CeeLoo Green's "Robin Williams" and sobbed until my face felt burned. It helped.

All the usable/safe to give away medical equipment is being distributed to the other impoverished disabled people in his apartment complex, who will hopefully put it to good use. I got his old manual wheelchair because sometimes I can't walk. I'm terrified of becoming more like him, so back to phsycial therapy I go.

The rest?

The memories, the pity, the jug of methanol that I pray he never actually drank, the stain he left on his floor after a lifetime of compulsive tidiness, the shrine to the woman he killed who also killed him? All these things I will keep with me forever. I will honor him. He could have been so much more, for so much longer. He had a whole story I'll never know. He contained incredible kindness and generosity, and also a rage so deep it was fatal. He was only 41.

If you can spare a couple bucks for the gofundme my niece set up, it'd really help make the financial side of this horseshit a little more bearable while we do all the shit that comes with a death. Thank you for taking the time to read this post, for your sympathies, and for reading my fucked up family trauma dump. Rest assured there will be more.

Dear god, will there ever be more.

Send help. Send pizza. Send sad hip hop. Hail Atlantis. Hail Jai.

[olderthannetfic]

I'm definitely a cunt, and I know some people are gonna be like "how dare u!" but luckily I'm anon, so there's that. But I really hate how obvious it is with a lot of people when they fake having ADHD or ADD, autism, DID, depression, tourette, schizophrenia, BPD, the list goes on, probably the entire fucking psychologists handbook by now. I mean, it's already painfully obvious that shits afoot when it goes from 1 person talking about their experiences to 1000 with all their super special quirks and haha look at me I'm so special, even more special than everybody else. And then a few months most of the those 1000 new people are just back to posting as usual before they had their fun cosplaying as having a random condition.

Worst part is these assholes get to just walk away in a few years, while people who're actually dealing with these mental disorders, illnesses, being neuro divergent have to still deal with it in their day to day life, and we got to deal with the added stigma from all these larpers completely butchering what it's actually like to have these conditions.

And all the people who say that alllll the self diagnosis are definitely just as valid as a real evaluation. I'm for self advocacy and saying maybe I might have this. Trying to find ways to cope with a shit situation, even if you can't afford a real evaluation. That's how many people actually find the strength or the will to get actual help in some form. But people claiming to 100% have a mental disorder, neuro divergence, mental illness, whatever the fuck, because they clapped to the beat of a song, or started breakdancing when the beat drops in some shitty pop song can fuck off. Especially those shit ass videos that are like "if you breathe air, and drink water you might just have aaaaallllll the mental stuff haha knock yourself out, btw besties all the professionals who spent 10+ years studying this shit are wrong, no exception." and then pretend that people with real evaluations shouldn't speak because they have privilege, like what in the fuck?

Self diagnosis can't ever be as safe as getting a real evaluation because there's a too large overlap between vastly different conditions, and just because you have some symptoms from the currently most popular trend on tiktok, doesn't mean you can't have a completely different condition with completely different needs. Saying you might have something is valid, saying you 100% without a doubt have smth bc the internet told you is dangerous and at worst might actively harm you.

--

[crushedsweets]

may we get some like random hc? i just like hearing them.

ok im so bored and have no ideas but i will talk and see what emerges. ok actually now that im done i wrote a lot LMFAO

natalie's hair was always really fucked up growing up. tangled, dirty, matted, etc - generally neglected. eventually her dad just gave her a shitty ass bob so they wouldnt have to deal with it anymore, which grew into a shag that she wore throughout highschool. after highschool, she never cuts her hair. she doesn't take GREAT care of it, but she keeps it brushed - never wants to deal with matted hair again

natalie also kept the literal clock in her eye until she was about 22. she wore a medical eyepatch when at work and made up some health excuse, but she EVENTUALLY got an actual prosthetic eye when she was around 25. . . and it is in fact clock designed. but its more comfortable and less risk of infection

after the whole nina leaving jeff fiasco, jane realizes how much her job (private investigator) has been impacting her health. she begins getting teaching credentials to be a college professor. mary, her wife, teaches elementary school. they compliment each other nicely

jane also began dipping into some gothic looks after meeting nina. at first, it was because she was playing undercover (paid by Liu) to figure out what Nina's deal with jeff was - so she knew nina was in alternative crowds, and tried to dress the part. then she started to get into the silhouettes and lace and jewelry and whatnot. but she still is usually just in classic, simple dresses and jewelry

natalie, toby, and nina all smoke weed. natalie is the worst of them. kate gets super paranoid when she's high, and jack just doesn't like it. all of them drink though, usually when they hang out at the proxy cabin, toby will open a 6 pack and they'll chat or something.

nina would cut a very shallow smile into her cheeks basically every week from ages 17-22. it was just the first layer of skin and would bubble up some blood, but it was never that severe. the skin on someones face heals really well, BUT nina did it so often, it's permanently scarred. she uses makeup to cover it

nina gets a motorcycle after she leaves jeff!!!! it's her easiest way of getting to and from her friends in the woods, and she thinks she looks super badass. she's got it wrapped in pink and has a pink helmet and everything. clocky n kate have been her backpack a few times. toby refuses to try, and jacks too big.

BEN, Jack, and Jeff all frequent the dark web.

since I know it doesn't make sense for all of them to even have wifi in the woods, I THIIINK i'm just gonna chalk it up to BEN's presence. he is a wifi tower. or something like that. when he's off and away(which is rare), they all lose signal and r pissy about it.

nina goes to raves. frequently.

when kate is finally getting pushed to get away from slendy (since O/S are both getting weaker and starting to fall back into hibernation), she gets a job at a morgue. night shift, quiet, private, used to everything, etcccc etc etc

[tocomplainfriend]

Funny thing (not really) I’ve noticed is that Viv has always fetishized m/m relationships. There’s obviously Stolitz, but it goes back way further. There’s Addison from Zoophobia being shipped with a guy who works at his high school, but to mention that Viv has drawn NSFW of them despite Addison canonically being a minor. There’s also Autumn and Rusty, the former whom gets bullied by Rusty cause Rusty is secretly in the closet. Ten years later and she’s still weird about m/m relationships.

TW: fetishizing Queerness

I tried to search a little for Addison's age. In the wiki, that I know Viv did not write it says he is 18, other post say 17- there are people saying the age got changed too? I know almost nothing to zoophobia- if anyone knows about this claim, share your knowledge and importantly evidence of the age thing in specific? I do know about those snake drawings. And also was Viv 19? Have no clue-so I'm not gonna super talk about it without knowledge.

About the Rusty thing, I don't think Viv is a good enough writer (of relationships especially, cause Stolitz mainly) to pull that relationship or story. I don't think she can pull the idea of the closeted bully, purely by the fact that she doesn't understand or acknowledge the problems Stolitz has. If she needs to put down characters to make Stolas seems better and try to justify the power imbalance. I don't think she could write this if she wanted to. This closeted gay bully is such an old trope, too. I think the worst you can do (also as a non-amazing writer) is actually tried to make a romance out of it? Cause a lot of these tropes are more like "HAHA THE BULLY IS GAY HAHAHA", rather than "aww the bully was just sad and gay all along". I don't like it. (also this includes when the bully doesn't bully his romantic interest)

A lot of problems in mlm stuff Vivziepop does is similar to those Yaoi fetishization shit. Where there are also power imbalance. Also, this treatment of the characters like Moxxie? Like he is bi, and with Millie- and his treatment is so shitty. The hole thing of MILLIE PEGS MOXXIE, and that funny cause is less manly of him? Or where the succubus sexually assault them and that is funny??? (that one is not even Blitz being an asshole to him, it's made to act funny). As soon there is something viewed as feminine from him, the show makes fun of him. His feminine appearance in Unhappy campers also leads to make fun of him. Where he is the most vulnerable and insecure is that episode. He is more objectified in a feminine appearance.

Just the entirety of Stolitz is literally a lot of yaoi-sh problems. Also, I do see a lot of red flags in how they wrote Fizz and Asmo'. Because Fizz was insecure af, that he needed the approval of Mammon as an imp. Mammon was using the power that he had over Fizz to use him to get money. He got his approval from Asmo another sin in a higher position of power. (The power imbalance is not the problem vibes). Plus, The Big dominant protector and the sub small uwu cure relationship. Fizz, compared to the first time he appeared, he is so vulnerable and acts so cutesy. Like, the confidence he had during the S1, disappeared so bad. Acting so nice to Glitz and Glam, felt like cutting out all attitude to "uke-fing" him into needing a savior. They make him so powerless

Fizz, a quad amputee, was put in a vulnerable situation related to his trauma and where he lost all his limbs and horns. All to make Blitz "redeem" himself and make them friends again... THAT SUCKS.

Also, there was the fact of how over-sexual all the male mlm characters are, too. Like, Chaz was so much more sexual than Verosika as a succubus.

IT JUST SUCKS.

[aihoshiino]

chapter 142 thoughts!

HEADS UP: In this review I discuss fictional depictions of sibling incest as well as a brief reference to both fictional and a real life suicide. As usual, feel free to skip if you're not in the right zone and I'll see you next time.

thank you for the kind words from everyone when i was still in the Slime Era of feeling sick lol. i'm like 80% back to full power now!

I'm gonna be totally up front and say I really think this is one of the worst chapters we've gotten in a while but here's the twist: it's not for the reasons you probably think!

We're following up basically right off the back of last chapter and immediately I am kind of mad at how shitty the series is continuing to do Miyako with regards to the movie arc. She was a total non-factor in the RBKN conflict and now that Aqua and Ruby are being pressured into doing something they have both verbalized that they don't want to do she's just like well gosh i feel complicated but what can i do :(. Having the setup almost 20 full chapters ago of Miyako expressing that she wants to step up and do more for Aqua and Ruby as their mother and then having her completely failing to intervene on their behalf here is just wild.

In general, the way everything is being set up to force this kiss feels so… well, forced. Even if Kaburagi (as the story says) insisted there be a kiss scene, there are a million ways to fake a kiss that doesn't involve actors actually kissing. Body doubles! Camera angles! Putting your thumbs in the way! Unless Kaburagi said "I want 20 full seconds of Kamiki sticking his tongue down Ai's throat center frame", there is absolutely no reason "a kiss scene" needs to mean "these two blood related twin sibling actors actually kiss". The whole thing is just so incredibly contrived.

And honestly? The fact that both Ruby and Aqua have expressed a 'no' and are being forced to do this anyway is the part of this chapter making me the most actively insane. It is absolutely mind boggling to have spent half of last chapter on a Miyako monologue about how immoral and unethical it is when people's ability to give informed and sincere consent is compromised by the entertainment industry and to then follow it with a whole chapter of basically every character we're supposed to like flaunting a total lack of respect for Aqua's comfort and consent in this regard, up to and including the completely insane scene of two adult women lecturing Aqua about how he isn't allowed to have boundaries. What the fuck is going on here!!!

This is especially frustrating because I actually really like a lot of things about the scene with Yoriko and Abiko… even if there's some stuff that really kind of broke me lol. Like uh, wasn't it a really huge plot point in Tokyo Blade that a mangaka couldn't be expected to turn out an entertaining theater script because those are two entirely different kinds of storytelling…??? But whatever.

Off the bat, I have really mixed-leaning-negative feelings about the reveal that the KamiAi romance scenes we'd gotten were entirely fictional. On the one hand, I actually feel pretty validated - I had guessed that the full-immersion-flashback presentation was a hint that we were being presented with a falsehood and it implicitly confirms something I've been saying from the start that 15 Year Lie's version of events has to be taken with a grain of salt, both because it contradicts known events and facts and because so many other people have interfered with it. Having that made textual and being able to confidently say it helps a lot in discussing what this means for the story.

But like… that means we wasted a whole bunch of time on shit that was made up and didn't matter! Like, thematically speaking, I think this is potentially interesting but I just keep getting stuck on the fact that we were given a super interesting scene finally fleshing out and giving us info about both a character and a relationship we've been absolutely starved for details about, only for the story to turn around not two chapters later and go "and my source? i made it the fuck up". It just totally dashes all the enthusiasm I was feeling and it also makes it way less rewarding to try and dig into what 15YL is doing when at any time, all of this potentially interesting character work could be revealed to be total piss in the wind.

Stepping back from that… in total isolation from everything else, I do think this talk with Abiko and Yoriko about what it means to write stories is interesting from a lot of angles. While I don't think these two are the 1-to-1 author avatars for Aka and Mengo fandom treats them as, they nevertheless clearly serve as reflections of the two's experiences and viewpoints about the manga industry and specific and the art of storytelling in general, allowing the story to play around in the quasi-metafictional space it does sometimes, where it uses in-universe fiction as a method of commenting on itself.

In that sense, I think Yoriko can be understood as speaking for Akasaka here and discussing some of his feelings as a storyteller of Oshi no Ko specifically. OnK has never made a secret of the fact that it's drawing on Akasaka's real experiences in the entertainment industry but perhaps less obvious to overseas fans is the inspiration it takes from real life issues in contemporary Japanese pop culture, too. Infamously, Akane's arc very transparent drew inspiration - if it wasn't reconstructed entirely - from the suicide of Hana Kimura, not even six full months after Kimura's death. When the anime aired, Kimura's surviving mother (imo, rightfully and deservedly) lambasted the series for using her daughter's death as the fodder for entertainment without consulting her surviving family. It wasn't even that she disagreed with what the series was saying - she just wanted someone to have some consideration.

This is what Yoriko means when she talks about the responsibility a writer has to their stories. When you write a piece of fiction as highly visible as Oshi no Ko currently is, it is your responsibility to consider the impact your words will have on the world. No, fiction does not directly impact the real world in a physical, tangible way but if we are careless with our stories, we can regurgitate and perpetuate dominant cultural narratives that very much do cause real, tangible harm to marginalized people. Hikaru Kamiki isn't a real person, but there are undoubtedly people in OnK's readerbase who see their experiences mirrored in him. Airi Himekawa isn't real, but people like her exist. Akane Kurokawa isn't real but Hana Kimura was.

This discussion also serves as an interesting warning to Aqua himself, though maybe not quite in the sense Yoriko intended. Aqua's revenge has always been something treated, in-universe, as a sort of fiction in of itself; Aqua calls it his 'revenge play' and his primary method of pursuing it is to become an actor. It's a retribution narrative about real people and Aqua is its author. But as Yoriko reminds him… stories can kill. Especially ones featuring real people. Aqua has been telling himself a comfortable lie for years that only he will be hurt by his own inevitable self destruction but Yoriko reminds him that he isn't the only person involved here and that he is inevitably going to cause great pain to the people he loves if her continues down this path.

That's why this chapter is so frustrating. This is all good, meaty character work with some great thematic overtones… and it's all in service of contriving this scenario where Aqua has no choice but to tongue his sister on camera and for some reason, nobody is pointing out the million and one alternatives to this deranged scenario.

But anyway. Enough beating around the bush: let's talk about That Scene. And despite what everything I've said this post might lead you to believe… I actually really like it.

I don't know exactly what activated to make her go sicko mode but Mengo has been really on fucking fire with her art on the series lately. It really jumped out to me in 137 but she's honestly been cooking since the very start of the movie arc. It stands out especially strongly in Aqua and Ruby's talk on the balcony in ways I really vibed with. The whole scene feels like Ruby's shoujo brainrot and the cold reality of what she's tiptoeing around suggesting to Aqua are battling out for dominance over the framing. Ruby's stubbornness is such a force to be reckoned with that it almost wins entirely but there are moments where the lens cracks and we see things as they are. Aqua's discomfort practically radiates off the page this entire conversation.

Not only that but… jesus christ, Ruby. Just look at how she's framed when she first enters the scene.

That oppressive silhouette, her shaded eyes and that sinister smile… I probably don't need to tell you that's NOT how you typically frame a romantic heroine. She honestly almost looks more like a villain.

But Ruby quickly reasserts control over the framing. Or rather, what she's suggesting is such a sugary shoujo fantasy, the framing has no other option but to comply. At last, Ruby steps out of the shallow channel of plausible deniability and puts into concrete words what she has been thinking and longing for these last twenty chapters: for her to retake her role as Sarina Tendoji and for Aqua, in turn, to play Gorou for her once again. More than that - she pushes him for a concrete response to her love at last, not as Ruby but as Sarina; not only does the paneling repeatedly cover the eye with her star but in the final panel where she unambiguously propositions Aqua, the star is completely gone. This is what Ruby is offering: to completely sever her connection to Ai and the new life she has built on that foundation and to return to being Sarina, if that is what the doctor she loves wants.

This is SUCH an incredibly effective scene. It's excellently done and the art is fantastic. It finally draws out and makes explicit the underlying disconcerting subtext that has been swimming under the twins' relationship since 123. It works fantastically well… in isolation. But when taken into the context of the rest of the story it just feels so… unearned.

For the last 20 chapters, we have had absolutely no serious insight into Ruby's feelings re: the reveal of Gorou's new identity as Aqua. We didn't see her grapple with it or have to adjust to it at all. It was like a switch flipped in her brain and she was suddenly a 2010s fanservice imouto splooging about her oniichan. Her interiority in this regard is completely absent. Whenever the subject is addressed at all, it is made into a joke with Ruby as the punchline. There has been no serious build up to this moment or any meaningful time spent on Ruby's feelings about Aqua and as such, being asked to take it seriously now feels so incredibly jarring.

I've said this over and over in other places but I'll make this clear here: the handling of Ruby's feelings is not bad because Incest Is Morally Bad or whatever. At the end of the day, OnK is fiction and fiction is a space that allows us to explore ideas and scenarios that would be unpleasant, dangerous or even downright immoral to try and interrogate in real life with real people. Not only that, but AQRB's situation is so far removed from anything any real person could experience there's very little risk of it acting as a harmful reflection of a real person's life. But because OnK had the space to do just about anything with this idea, I'm so incredibly baffled that it chose to do all of nothing. This is a plot point that has been cooking since the literal first chapter of the entire series and now, just under four years and over 140 chapters past our starting point… and this is the best Akasaka can do? Dated brocon humor that reduces Ruby to a shallow gag character, denying her the opportunity to have deeper, more complex and ugly feelings and denying her the respect of examining those feelings with honesty?

It sucks. This whole thing really sucks. As someone who loves Ruby so, so much… this really just feels like an insulting way to have handled what should have been one of the most interesting and engaging parts of her series long arc.

I do think this chapter is the beginning of the end of AquRuby's time in the endgame couple race, if it was ever seriously in the running to begin with. Ruby embracing Aqua with a proposition in those final two panels echoes Akane doing the same in chapter 72 and the fact that this cliffhanger ends on the proposition and not a kiss implies to me, structurally speaking, that we are heading for a rejection. On top of that, we're pretty far away from the manga's ending still and Kana's romantic resolution with Aqua hasn't gotten its time to shine. All those factors together makes me feel pretty certain that this is the final nail in the coffin and we're just waiting to see how Aka sticks the landing.

After all - Ruby is asking for his response as Sarina. And if this is Sarina asking for his love one last time… we already know how Gorou's going to respond.

[allwormdiet]

Gestation 1.2

There's such a specific pain that comes from the person you trust the most stabbing you in the back, I don't know if it's the worst pain in the world but there's really nothing else with that... I dunno, that feeling that the ground's gone out from underneath you. And knowing about Annette's death, and that I think Emma becomes this way as a kind of idolization of Sophia... it's just a bad situation that gets worse with context and over time. Utterly miserable.

Two hundred pages of notes on your own powers and training as a superhero is like. So fucking much. I don't think I'd manage that one, I don't know how many people could match that one. Is this a side effect of Wild "7000 page novel" bow being the author here? Is this what he considers normal?

Bless Taylor for making even a token effort at trying to look at the bright side of a shitty situation, I don't know how long that's gonna last but even now she's still trying.

Also, okay, the dismissal of Taylor's power isn't just textual, it's coming from inside the house. Kid, your power is great, that's the self-loathing talking, you're gonna change the world with that shit.

Also lmao @ Taylor's lack of killer instinct, how long does that last I wonder.

Is a little interesting that Taylor doesn't even necessarily get the full factual information of a bug under her control, but I guess that's not really necessary for her power to do its thing.

Also interesting to note that Taylor still has nerves about her bugs, considering how much art I've seen of her absolutely crawling with the things. Guess that attitude doesn't last super long.

Okay so I think there's actually a lot to unpack in this section so I'm gonna get into it

There's an immediate and sharp divide between independent capes like Taylor and the big dogs who have people to take care of things like costumes for them, and that divide is only going to become more stark over time. I don't even know what the solution for such a thing would be, you can't exactly do small loans to anonymous capes for this kind of thing and any kind of neutral third party that could do this would be an immediate target for stealing customer information. It's a logistical concern, and a thorny one at that.

The cleverness with the spider silk and the subsequent roadblock of realizing that it's hard as fuck to make a costume out of spider silk are both great. Awesome idea that's immediately undercut by a complicated execution, I wonder if that's gonna come back up at any p

I'm a little curious about the exact decision making on Brockton Bay's location. Not to say that it's a bad call off the bat to put it where it is, more that Wildbow seems to have immediately made a call, realized it was going to complicate some things, and then made a workaround. I dunno how different the story would be if it took place further south, if at all, but it stands out to me at least.

(It is also a little funny to imagine that Brockton Bay is more popular with capes because it's easier to wear silly costumes in the local climate, I don't think it's true but not-trueities are fun)

Taylor's resourcefulness is an immediate standout trait in this chapter, I think this is the first time I learned that the armor plating was literally made from reinforced exoskeletons but wow what a cool and slightly gross detail.

I'm sure this will be the only time that Taylor feels a bridge has been burned beyond the point where it's worth mending and move to take decisive action in whatever direction doesn't involve that bridge, yessir. This will definitely not be a recurring behavior in this character.

Immediate Thoughts

More time spent getting to know Taylor. The plot isn't so much moving forward as getting into position at the starting line, which gives us time to get used to her perspective and her thought patterns. What I wanna know is how she thinks being an independent superhero is gonna, like, work? The likely answer is that she hasn't thought that far ahead and is just gonna like, wander around looking for random encounters. She's still too square (and broke) to get a police scanner or something like that, that's for sure. Wait to see what happens, I guess.

[11queensupreme11]

im a senior in high school and after i graduate, i'm gonna move out for college and while i was rereading, i just realized how badly this whole thing has ruined percy's life. it just dawned on me how horribly uprooted she was from everything she knows. she was still in high school, probably needed to prep for psat/sat, get ready to move out etc, only for all that to go away cuz now she's been isekai-ed to a new world and has a bunch of yanderes after her, she will NEVER get that normalcy back 😭

EXACTLY!!!!

percy's not much of a planner like anthonius, but she did have SOME sort of idea of what to do in her future (especially now that the war's over and she regained the hope that she could actually make it to adulthood-)

she had all these hopes and dreams! she was still in tenth grade (a sophomore in high school)! she just passed her driver's test! she got her first actual part-time job that wasn't exploiting her for being a child! she needed to prep for her psat! she wanted to graduate high school and attend a community college for the first two years to save up on money, then transfer to a university that would hopefully take her and her shitty record! she was still a little tenth grader who didn't quite know what to major in, but that was fine cuz she still had years to go until she needed to make her decision! 😭

THERE WAS SO MUCH SHE WANTED TO DO BUT NOW IT'S BEEN SNATCHED AWAY FROM HER 😭😭

there's no way she's ever gonna get that normalcy back even after poseidon starts to care for her. there's no way he's gonna let his precious daughter attend a mortal high school. moving out for college? absolutely not! moving out in general cuz she's older now and it's about time she left the nest? NEVER HAPPENING! getting a job? don't be ridiculous!

what is she gonna do now? her plans for the future won't happen. is she just gonna remain with her father forever? get forced to marry someone and have kids? she had so many options back in the pjo verse, but now they're all GONE.

and the worst part? it's when she gets yoinked back to the pjo verse. you'd think that's a good thing but by then she had already accepted her place in the ror verse and started to make a life for herself there, only for it to be snatched away AGAIN. after she regains her memories, she's gonna be devastated cuz it's like starting all over again. she missed her friends and family, but she misses her loved ones back in ror verse too!

plus, she's been gone for two years now. she should be in her senior year of high school, ready to graduate, but she can't because she missed so much. there's no point in starting over, she'd have to settle for a GED but that'd make her chances of getting into college harder because she has no diploma, AND she has a terrible school record and super suspicious background. she could always attend new rome university, but she's kinda getting sick of the gods ruining her life at this point. maybe she should just run away to alaska??

of course, she's not aware that the yanderes are plotting to get her back and they're not afraid to kill the people she loves too, which again, only ruins her life even MORE than it already has been 💀

[66sharkteeth]

just wanted to say that last week's FP episode was such a great gut punch for me, my jaw dropped. it was beautifully done; Bell's and Jericho's stories being told simultaneously was a super effective contrast. Bell's side of things feels like acceptance of the flaws of the present society and moving toward progress in changing it, while Jericho's side feels like total rejection of the flaws of the present society and moving backward from progress to destroy it instead. thus we remain stagnant in this shitty status quo, and Jericho recreates his trauma around his autonomy being taken from him by doing the same to Bell in a way. AND in the process my favorite character is killed. augh it hurts :'-)

i've been a long time reader since the first version was posted on DA and man it's just cool as hell to see how this story has evolved. i really admire and appreciate your dedication to it. i've always found CoB a very unique concept with a ton of potential and i'm so grateful and SO excited to get to see it through to the end after all these years. it continues to impress me more and more as it progresses. i have the webtoon app exclusively to read this lol. thank you for all your hard work creating it!

i got a handful of asks about this week's episode, but i'm gonna respond to this one for now bc it's been sitting here for almost a month since i got it while it was still on FP

first off, i'm glad this ep hit w/ so many people! i'm gonna share my own thoughts soon, maybe tomorrow rather than my usual friday "weekly thoughts." a little off topic and TMI, but i actually got the worst food poisoning of my life last week and I've kinda just been a pile of mush incapable of coherent thoughts since. Today's the most normal I've felt since that all hit tho, so hopefully by tomorrow I'm capable of structuring thoughtful posts again.

But anyway, thank you! I put so much more of my brain power into that ep than I normally do and I'm glad it paid off haha. I'll elaborate more in my weekly thoughts, but it means a lot that people are appreciating it.

[nico-esoterica]

Can not stress enough that this is ALL manifestation is. It's just time and attention you put into yourself every day even if it's a shitty day. It can be giving up and choosing to start over tomorrow but instead of beating yourself up you're like, "You know what? Tomorrow will be better." And even if you do wind up beating yourself up, spiraling, and breaking down, it's giving yourself compassion and space to be a messy human and caring for yourself every snot-nosed step of the way.

It's in the little things, honestly. That starts with thinking in your favor at least once a day and continuing that over and over. Then over time your brain adjusts, even if it fights back at first (it's okay!), and something shitty happens and you're like, "I'm gonna make this work anyway," or "I bet this will all work out somehow," and it does. It isn't any overcomplicated and is so bare minimum that a child or someone at their lowest can do it. In my experience, if you can find one thing to tell yourself that thinks in your favor when things are at their worst, you can apply it to any situation. It becomes ingrained in you that you, in fact, CAN make something work.

I know what it's like to have trauma, live in scarcity, and be super neurodivergent w/ intrusive thoughts, etc. What I began relying on is finding a way to Regulate My Nervous System and thinking favorably even if my brain gave me absolute hell over it. But I learned to take care of myself like a plant and began caring about my own (mental) well being by learning not to absorb what was happening to me by being neutral to it and thinking better thoughts. Your perspective inevitably changes or shifts a teeny bit. I personally believe that small steps lead to miles over time, because they do.

Wtf did Glorilla say? Everyday the sun won't shine, but that's why I love tomorrow

[jinxed-sinner]

Talking about the potential in Lucifer and Alastor dynamic, but it would be interesting if their relationship ended up being the opposite of the relationship Alastor and Vox have going. We know Vox and Alastor used to be good friends but are now enemies, Alastor and Lucifer could go from enemies to good friends (in general I wanna see Alastor have more interactions with male characters, ex: Angel Dust, to see how the show is gonna handle his distrust of men and if he is ever gonna get over it at some point in the show).

Honestly this is one of the reasons I'm so excited to see their dynamic develop. I think I've said it before but Alastor very clearly doesn't trust men (with the exception of Husk; if he didn’t at least trust Husk’s judgement he wouldn’t have told Mimzy to leave I think), and if Lucifer could gain his trust and show Alastor that not everyone is going to hurt him? 10/10, Vivziepop PLEASE

I think it'd be good for Lucifer too. Lucifer views Alastor (and almost every other sinner) as a "violent psychopath hellbent on causing as much pain and destruction" as possible. Lucifer is basically in the same position as every single fan who sees Alastor's morality as black and white and says Alastor's evil. Lucifer doesn't know there's a pattern to Alastor's attacks (that being, he only attacks when provoked and he doesn't attack innocent people). Lucifer doesn't know Alastor's past. All Lucifer knows about Alastor is what he saw in Dad Beat Dad, which was:

Alastor getting under his skin for not actively being Charlie's dad, and I think Lucifer knew Alastor's goal was basically "purposely get under his skin for the lolz" (this would additionally probably clue Lucifer into the fact that Alastor is manipulating Charlie)

Alastor being a cannibal, which he would've easily been able to surmise from Alastor not just attacking the loan sharks, but also eating them

Alastor just overall being a fucking jackass

Lucifer doesn't know why Alastor is the way he is (and we don't either, although I find speculating on it fun). We don't know if Lucifer knew Alastor fought Adam (although there's a non-zero chance he would've heard about it from someone). Lucifer only knows Alastor at a surface level, which is the case with every other sinner that exists.

Even if Alastor and Lucifer don't become best friends, if they become friends in any capacity, it'd be good for both of them. Alastor would realize not everyone's going to hurt him, and Lucifer would realize that each sinner has their own story, whether he thinks it justifies how they act in Hell or not. Hell, if Alastor was canonically abused by his dad and that did contribute to him being a serial killer, I can honestly see Lucifer feeling bad for his first impression of Alastor being "bloodthirsty psychopath" because he's like that for a reason.

If Lucifer can learn that even the worst of the worst might not be as shitty as he thinks, I think it'll help him a lot. If Alastor can realize that not everyone wants to hurt him, that'll help Alastor a lot.

Honestly considering how their first meeting went and the fact that Lucifer still seems to hate Alastor as of the end of The Show Must Go On, I'd be surprised if Lucifer and Alastor aren't instrumental to each other's development. Obviously, Lucifer being at the hotel in general is going to be crucial to his development as a character, but I genuinely think Alastor and Lucifer are going to be incredibly crucial to each other's development. Lucifer met Pentious and Angel when they'd already gone through some level of character development, Lucifer is going to actually be there for whatever character development Alastor goes through, and I think Lucifer being there to witness someone like Alastor improve to any extent is going to be super important for his development.

[avissapiens]

Jockbull Summer Final Week Set A (1/1/24-7/1/24)

Model Used is Tsonghan Wu

Here we are bros. I decided to end it early since I accidentally started the Jockbull summer in like the last month of Spring. So we’ll call this a season. 8 weeks and then onto the next. Additionally, interest largely seem’s to have waned and I wanna focus on giving some more stuff that’ll keep your attention rather than flooding your dashboards lol. These will be my last set of diary write ups. And then next week I'll have a retrospective detailing how things went and what I'm likely to keep

1.

I’ll be straight and real with yall. This was probably the worst week yet lol. Mentally i just wasn’t here. Lots of stress and strain. I do have a new workout structure, that includes AMRAP pushups near the end. Diamond push ups that really tire you out by the time you finish all your other training, but its not quite the same or for the same purpose. I tried to sort my time table so that Pushups were combined with the times i wanted to work on my PT cert early in the day. But that has yet to really work out.

2.

Keeping with the smite idea from previous weeks I managed to go on a 3 game win-streak. Total ez streak, possibly because my Elo was reset from not playing in such a long time. But dunking is still dunking and you still get the mental endorphin rush from winning. Only thing that broke the streak is that my Duos partner (yet another Muscle brained Gym bro that i’ve known for years) had to dip mid game. Tragic.

3.

Since this is the last week and its even I didn’t throw anything out. But I am going to have one final push to get some of the last chunks of shitty oversized clothing out of my life. Gonna make an attempt to throw out 4 more pieces of clothing and then the lot will be going to the charity/thrift shop.

4.

I’m good enough at this. I’ll use it more often. And I am 100% going to do that Bro voice file at some point in the future.

5.

There is an episode of Baki where the main character is lying in bed with his girlfriend horny as hell, and they are about to fuck when Baki’s father, Strongest man in the world Yujiro, appears out of the darkness to cheerlead them fucking. And more than cheerlead. This man encourages the most relentless rauchy unending stream of fucking bitches from his 18 year old son. Literally morning noon and night boning down. It sounded like a passage from Alpha breeder. Unbelievable. Why doesn’t this show have more fanart?

6.

A kind of gymbro failure story which makes me sound like a bit of a douche but i also don’t care.

I’m pretty regularly one of the bigger guys in the gym at any given time. Not always. And that’s not really a compliment to me and more of a dunk on the kind of establishment that my gym is. So this one dude has kinda latched onto me as his story for hope cause of all the weight i lost and how much i’ve grown. I think he’s convinced i’m going to give him the secret formula and not just tell him “Just keep training and eat properly.” He came up to me this week and asked if he could come and workout with me another day. Gave some spiel about needing someone to motivate him and keep him going. He’s another immigrant too. So I commiserate with that and I told him sure, even tho i don’t particularly like training push with other people. But then on the day he was supposed to come at the time we had set up he just…didn’t show. Which makes sense. I tried telling him, motivation should be internal. Consistency comes from discipline. But he didn’t want to hear it. And so the outcome made sense. I wasn’t super broken up about it, Just meant i got to train push on my own in peace and quiet.

[cipheramnesia]

I'm gonna write a story about a kind of low level eldritch / fae style of entity. It's a lightly dionysian sort of creature, and the sigil for calling it is a phone number in sharpie on the bathroom wall of an incredibly shitty dive bar that says "For a good deed call" above it. When someone is really drunk and hopeless if they accidentally read the graffiti it shows up to use its limited power to try and help.

So one day this down on her luck MMA fighter or something is drunk, lost like five or six consecutive fights along with her girl and is like just once I wanna be a winner and the entity appears and is all like "Okay let's do that" and next fight it makes the other fighter just a little off their footing, just enough that this babe can win the match.

But as soon as that happens she gets whisked away to the Golden Lands for their once a century match up to determine who gets rights to the most fertile territory for growing some grains or whatever, like zero relevancy or even earth shattering stakes, but a big deal to the Golden Lands or the Silver Tribes, whoever gets that spot because of the extra food and all such, so the match is a traditional deal and the winner gets to ask the princess for one favor, and the losers are stuck there for another century if they live that long.

Anyway our multiplanar favor maker is still along for the ride because now it has to make this girl who pretty much lost almost every match, it has to find a way to sneak her into winning a contest against the greatest fighters from all the worlds. She wasn't supposed to be there, it was the other guy who was supposed to be the champion but she was like I'm a winner at the worst time.

As things turn out this "princess" is our fighter's ex, who dipped out because her parents revoked her travel privileges to force her into the match duties which she doesn't much care for, but they just sort of yoinked away the planar travel capacity and she's stuck in the Golden Lands which is like super lame and not fun like hitting up rock shows at dive bars and reassuring her hot loser girlfriend she's still a badass.

Which is basically the story, hot loser accidentally ropes in minor mythical entity into helping rig fights so she's not stuck in some weird other dimension her whole life and then discovers if she wins the fight she gets to see her ex-girlfriend again. Literally everyone wants to back out of this as fast as they possibly can, but the only way out is through.