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davestriderascend · 9 months

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the homestuck reread, pt 6

ive finished it. the main comic, anyway. theres still all the bonus content to slog through and the postcanon stuff, but i finished the main comic, and you know what? i think thats a feat enough all on its own. so heres the recap of the end, from act 6 act 6, on.

heres the previous recap, and heres the first one if youre new.

act 6 act 6s intermissions and subacts works according to similar rules as act 6 acts 1-5. the acts are short and all about homosuck (excepting the last one), while the intermissions are where literally everything else is happening. that said,

Act 6 Act 6 Act 1

this is the beginning of homosuck. its just, absolutely classic homosuck. at the end, caliborn corrupts the game file, creating the glitches that plague most of the a6a6 intermissions. homosuck is, of course, fucking hilarious and meta and the stupid art style lives rent free in my brain and i find myself drawing in it constantly. basically, i had a good time. theres not much else to say.

Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 1

we pick up where we last left off with the introduction of grimbark jade, crockertier jane, and hics plot. the kids have been split up among the planets, and roxy and jake are in jail. john is struggling to control his retcon powers, and hops around time and space mucking things up, while jade tries to chase him down. this is where the big character selection screens and unclickable characters joke really gets going.

Act 6 Act 6 Act 2

this is the section of homosuck where john teleports himself into the narrative and bitches a lot about how much it sucks.

Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 2

this is where things start building up to game over. aranea inserts herself into the narrative. jake goes ultra hope mode. jade dies. jake dies, but gets better. terezi beats the shit out of gamzee. jade joins callie in the furthest ring, and jane might too? idk. tbh, intermissions 1-3 kind of blend for me. which is obviously bc theyre a part of one big overarching narrative.

Act 6 Act 6 Act 3

this is the part of homosuck with the animes. this also may have had some kind of impact on how i doodled growing up. this is also the part where john beats caliborn up. the act ends with the game over animation, which leads directly into the following intermission with no real clear separation between them.

Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 3

this is the part where everyone dies. well, the intermission as its marked on the hs map is literally just condy killing aranea, mostly, but the game over animation leading up to it kills everybody. john is the sole survivor.

The Characters

i think here, therefore, is where i must give my final thoughts on the pre-retcon versions of characters. dave and karkat are a lot closer than i remembered- i thought we as a fandom kind of made that shit up? but they are, in fact, besties. jakes crybaby breakdown in these three intermissions is.... well theres a lot to unpack around jakes ideas of masculinity and how hes sexualized and smarter people than me have done it, so i probably wont. otherwise idk that i have like, super coherent thoughts that are worth getting into.

on the whole, the pre-retcon versions are more dysfunctional, more insecure, and more toxic in their relationships. they dont spend as much time with each other as they mean to, they dont look out for each other as much as they wish they had, and theyre all so insecure all the time about everything, especially the meteor crew.

Act 6 Act 6 Act 4

caliborns tablet is broken, and so hes back to his shitty straight line doodles. the whole act is literally just him bitching and moaning about how hard his life is as a pitiable little guy.

Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 4

this is the one where terezi tells john how to go back in time and fix everything. roxy and john both make deals with their denizens to survive, which means that all other versions of john and roxy will die in every other timeline. roxy has a funeral for rose, vriska and meenah start dating and sort of give up on all of their plans, and terezi and john pitchflirt a lot. this is also the act where jane and jade hang out w calliope and talk about what happened before they woke up w her.

The Characters

something i thought was worth noting is that in this intermission, both jade and jane confess that grimbark and crockertier essentially removed their consciences and allowed them to follow through on thoughts or desires they usually wouldnt express- meaning a lot of the nasty things they say are their actual feelings, deep down. theyre both really ashamed of it all, particularly because they meant the things they said. i think reviewing these sections of hs will be really important for character analysis relating to the two of them.

we also learn that roxy just like. really likes funerals, for some reason. it feels like a mirror of dave, and daves interest in dead things.

Act 6 Act 6 Act 5

this is the claymation homosuck, that tells the story of the juju said to defeath le and how le came to be. this is also where that big stupid animation involving illuminati and le's timeilne comes from.

i remember when homestuck ended that whole juju thing was like, the BIGGEST plothole left behind that made everyone nuts. how did they get in the juju??? DID they defeat le??? how did they get to a point where they could do that?? when tf did they all go back in time and fight caliborn like that??? the epilogue tried to answer these questions, but with how much success is largely up for debate.

Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 5

vriskagram. this is the part with all of those reunion conversations, with the plans to take out the bosses, with the sprite prototypings, with meenah and (vriska)s breakup, with tavros assembling an army, with the pre retcon terezi and vriska finding each other in the afterlife, with caliborn approaching his denizen, with jade, jane, and callie finding alt callie and waking up (callie coming back to life), and with the kids splitting off into groups to finally take on the bosses. everything right up until collide is right here.

The Characters

i have to comment on this. post-retcon, the kids are so much more... mellowed out. theyre in healthier, stable relationships, theyve matured a lot, they talk through their problems, and the nature of the act in general is such that the jokes take a backseat to genuine feelings and reunions and elaborating on relationships weve been waiting to see the payoffs for for ages. its setting up for closure, and it makes the following act hit so much harder for sure.

in retrospect, i think this is probably part of the reason so many people were averse to the epilogues. i genuinely dont think the tone of the epilogues is significantly different from early hoemstuck, its classically hussie in a way that i never questioned reading it for the first time, possibly bc in addition to reading hs i had in fact also read ps, jb, and bq, so id just been exposed to more of it. i also revisited logs a lot, and i think most people didnt. instead, their last and strongest memories of hs was this incredibly sincere, sweet act, which is really a MASSIVE outlier.

anyway, things that i thought were of note: jake hates crowds. not only is he really uncomfortable, but roxy backs this up by commenting on how reluctant he was to spend time w the whole group in their session, and john makes a similar comment about jades gpa liking his space so much that he moved to an island.

dave tells dirk that he hasnt told anyone else about his bro and never would, including karkat by name. he feels that dirk is the only one he really can talk to about it, and the only reason he spoke to dirk about it in the first place is bc dirks existence is just uniquely distressing enough to trigger a breakdown where he blurts it out. also on the topic of dave, i think dave first mentions paleontology pre-retcon, rather uncertainly, as something he could have gotten into but never did, to the point where hes not even sure if paleontology is the right word to describe his interest. as the comic goes on, he seems to become more confident in asserting that he wouldve liked to become a paleontologist.

callie, terezi, and jade all struggle with feelings of insecurity and worthlessness, either because they feel that they have no purpose, because they feel empty somehow, or because they feel secondary to an alternate self.

despite dvekat """""officially"""""" getting together in post-canon content, theyre alluded to being together in this act, with terezi and vriska stating that theyve settled into some kind of quadrant, japrose saying karkat has a matesprit, and daves intense aversion to answering any questions about romance, suggesting that he may be in a relationship and too embarrassed to talk about it. theres room for debate, i guess, but it really read to me like they were already together and just quiet asf about it.

anyway my favorite conversation in this act is by far the one between roxy, rose, and kanaya, and rather than even say shit about any of them i am just going to insist that you (by which i mean future me, probably) give it a reread bc its the best.

Act 6 Act 6 Act 6

collide. easily my FAVORITE flash animation in homestuck. i actually still have my old shirt that has the collide frame of dad punching through the brick, though its so full of holes ill have to repurpose it now. the rest of the act is everyone meeting up post battle and getting ready to receive the reward. ngl this act made me legit cry its just. SO good. the fraymotifs are awesome and the battle feels difficult and long without being boring, and there are so many genuine moments of emotional sincerity mixed in with punchy, exciting scenes. its just great, and the art is fantastic. i have a new pfp locked and loaded, believe it.

Act 7

act 7 is a single animation wherein alt calliope blows up the green sun, the universe tadpole becomes a frog, vriska and the ghost army unleash the second weapon, caliborn defeats his denizen and gains his le powers, wv and pm toss the rings in a volcano, and we get a preview of how earth c has developed.

the animation in this act is gorgeous. god, its so fucking stunning. the movement is so smooth, and the particle effects were really impressive. also, the tadpole was so cute.

Credits/Snapchat

theyre fucking cute. there isnt much to say, because there isnt much there. the last little plot mess with jane and the moon exploding has never made sense to me and likely never will. i get headaches trying to figure out why hussie released these if they wanted to also release the epilogues, given that they directly contradict each other more often than not. moving on.

Final Albums

during all of this time, no albums were released. however, directly after the end of hs, three were.

Collide

collide was previously my favorite album. what can i say? the music goes hard. yes its just the songs that are in the collide animation, but who cares, and also go fuck yourself. i am a really big fan of oppa toby style and just how fucking. fundamentally toby it is, god. however, heir of grief is literally my favorite homestuck song in existence period. its so bittersweet and yet the sound is so full and and the ups and downs of it are just really potent. plus, guitar is my favorite instrument and i really like the guitar in this :)

Act 7

its literally just the singular song used for the act 7 animation. i mean, its a good song. but it is literally just one song. weird that they gave it its own album tbh.

Vol 10

MY NEW. FAVORITE. ALBUM. there is not a single solitary miss on here. reading through the track commentary, its obvious that this album was created to be an ode to the end of homestuck, to show how far weve really come. it remixes so many classics, and for many of the artists who worked on this album, it was a chance to revisit stuff theyd done before and show how much theyd grown since they started out. every single song is so full, moving and beautiful and breathtaking. its the most polished album by far. i dont think i can pick a favorite song because theyre all so good. the album also wraps up in the most perfect and bittersweet way, and its just. ugh. this was such a perfect way to end.

Final Thoughts

it holds up. i mean, yeah, it has its fucking problems. however, hussie manages to capture the feelings of being a teen growing up on the internet so fucking well, and no one, ever, has written young girls like hussie has. i cannot think of a single comparable female cast in anything. there are so many really potent and genuinely touching moments alongside so many hysterical ones, and you know? i think we really forget how ahead of its time hs was in terms of gay rep.

hs was the first time i ever saw a gay couple get together in media. it was the first time i ever saw two guys kiss. it was the first time i ever saw a nonbinary character! rose and kanaya started flirting in the first few acts, and they not only survived until the end, but got married and raised an entire generation of kids. never before had i ever found myself shipping a queer couple that became canon. so its always gonna hold a special place in my heart, really.

but yeah, against all odds, i actually really enjoyed my reread. there were some rough moments, in terms of like, major bigotry hussie has and wrote in, but overwhelmingly its easy to remember why this had such a stranglehold on my life for like. idk, five fucking years? more?

my opinions have shifted around some, though, as ive gotten older.

i think, on my first read, my favorites list wouldve looked like this:

the kids: dave was my favorite, unequivocally. i think ive mentioned this before, but i imprinted on him instantly like a baby bird. i was inexplicably obsessed with davesprite and abro, also, to the point where i liked them even more. i think dirk and his splinters were favorites of mine mostly just because i viewed them as dave 2, the sequel. i liked john a lot while reading, but lost interest as the comic went on (i regained that interest much later). i always liked rose and roxy, but a large portion of that was due to their relationship to the striders.

the trolls: i imprinted on vriska instantly. she felt like the answer to the rep id been searching for my whole life. there has never been another female character like her, and there may never be again. i have always loved her and i will defend her to the death, however, after finishing my read, i never did engage w much fancontent. sollux was another early favorite of mine, though he was in hs so little that my passion sort of faded with enough time. karkat, conversely, grew on me progressively, starting as a character i was indifferent about and becoming probably my favorite troll. i was pretty attached to eridan, and violently outgrew a brief gamzee apologism phase. i liked kanaya, but she grew on me even more with time, as did aradia. equius i discovered a sudden passion for years after reading the comic for the first time.

dancestors/ancestors/guardians: ugh. ugh. i dont even remember my favorite dancestor. i dont wanna think about it. i was really fixated on them but moreso than liked them i think i just hated everything everyone had to say about them and had to be right always. my favorite ancestors were psii, dualscar, and the sufferer, and i dont want to even talk about the shipping i was up to. my favorite guardians were very obviously the bros. goes w/o saying.

carapacians: i thought droog was the coolest mc member for some reason, and itchy and crowbar were my favorite felt members. could NOT tell you why. ar and wv were my favorite exiles. i think i just thought ars little outfit was sick. i dont have toe xplain why i liked wv, everyone likes him.

pesterlogs: i recall once claiming that The convo between hal and dirk was my favorite. i also know i was a very big fan of anything erisol said ever (and sollux, similarly). however, i dont think i had one.

ships: i was a really hardcore drkjake shipper (all splinters included) while i was reading, which branched into an interest in johndve with enough time. i got big into just about every combination of eridan, sollux, karkat, and dave (sprites included), except solkt, and eventually i got rlly into aradve, dvejake, and jhnhal/johndrk. i am censoring to keep myself out of the tags. i think, in most recent years (prior to my reread), my faves were eridve, dvekat, and jhnhal?

current fave list, post reread:

kids: rose. rose rose rose. i adore her so much. roxy is a close second. there was a moment where i prefered jake over roxy, in those really early a6 acts, but she came right back in strong and reminded me why i adored her so much. hal is also very high up there. not dirk- just hal, because all of his conversations are literally so funny. john is great and i love him, my feelings about him really havent changed at all. the striders on a whole were a lot less interesting to me on my reread, though, and now theyre the characters im mostly just invested in for their connection to the lalondes. ive conquered whatever toxic masculinity i was battling when i first read hs and come out loving wizards. feminism wins.

trolls: vriska remains the og. she is still iconic. no one is doing it like her. i wont suffer argument. sollux is also still fucking incredible. my feelings about both of them havent changed in the slightest. kanaya was one of my faves this reread, and i think i really just didnt appreciate her the first time. she has such a great dry wit, and there are so many really cute, very touching moments with her. i think other than those three, i have discovered a new love and respect for equius and nepeta. i am still probably not normal about eridan. karkat, like the striders, was less interesting to me this go around. i still like them, dont get me wrong, just not as passionately as before.

dancestors/ancestors/guardians: my favorite guardian is johns dad (and also janes, bc theyre like, the same person). johns relationship w his dad is just so important to me. i couldnt give LESS of a shit about the ancestors. ive outgrown it. im different. im better now. but unofrtunately, kankri is...... sighs. probably my favorite dancestor now. hes just. so fucking funny. pray for me.

carapacians: jack is the best, period. dunno how i ever thought differently. cd is probably my second fav mc member now, just cuz hes a funny little dude. crowbar is my fave felt member bc hes the only interesting one, ig? but i dont care that much. wv is my favorite exile.

pesterlogs: every single convo between hal and jake was my new favorite for a long time, basically, up until that roxy rose and kanaya convo came up out of the blue and smashed that to pieces. definitely my favorite. its like, the perfect culmination of all of the things i love about all of them, all in one place. however, honorary mentions go to vriskas speech about being a hero, which has lived in my brain rent free since the first time i read it, and also probably The conversation between dirk and hal, bc lets be real it is pretty sick.

collide is my favorite flash animation by far, heir of grief is my favorite song, and vol 10 is my favorite album, as ive mentioned

ships: i am now an insanely hardcore haljke fan. that is most of whats come out of this tbh. i still think eridve is hilarious for no real reason i can explain, and halqius rules. arquius<>davepeta i also have strong feelings about suddenly. pay absolutely no attention to the fact that these are 75% hal ships he is just really shippable ok. butyeah mostly when ive freshly read something iactually. dont care that much about ships? that tends to come later, with too much time spent in the fandom. im sure ill be obsessive about some roxy or rose ship in a year from now

but yeah i think. those are all of my thoughts for now!! and i will just continue to chug my way through the bonus content, and probably make recaps about those eventually. if you read all of these thanks for coming along on this wild little ride. i am genuinely SHOCKED i finished the main comic in less than a month. and relieved, also.

#hs reread #recaps

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yalkini · 1 month

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II2 EP 15 Thoughts and Observations

Because I really need to get this down and thought it'd be fun to get other opinions. So yeah its been 5 days but just in case. Spoilers duh.

0:02 - Taco seems to have lol idk how to say this but authorized herself onto Mepad like idk system restart i don’t know how electronics work but clearly this resets when she dies

0:16 - i didn’t really pick this up the other times i’ve watched but why does Mepad want to meet Taco in the first place? everyone knows about what she did last season and really it is in his best interest to not interact with her as an assistant. Plus his want to help comes during the events of the episode (he gets really attached) So i’m intrigued Mepad. why?

0:23 - hehehe this callback to to funny to just gloss over it. plus Taco’s reaction is golden

0:48 - Taco gets lonely. okay but like it makes sense since she was outcasted by everyone she knows but she also chooses people (Mic and Mepad) for her own gain, but they are also people who don’t know much about her. but also since she messed up with mic she feels like she cant go back insert tacos tirade

1:24 - when this is the most united the grand slams have been and they aren’t even in teams anymoreeeee

1:54 - gotta love lightbulb here cause compared to the grand slams the bright lights know how to talk, confront, solve problems and they grow from it. ill talk more about it when lightbulb gets eliminated and the hotel scene

1:58 - ahahaahah that look they gave to each other is so good cause lets face it the situation was not the same - as suitcase elaborates during the challenge but a fun little nod to it

2:02- when lightbulb reacts to ‘team’s gone’ - especially cause that’s where her insecurities lie - but gotta love that baseball’s trying to cheer her up

2:14 - oof the guilt on baseball’s face after ‘close with your allies’ but also again more contrast bt the grand slams and the bright lights - lightbulb never uses the word allies. she calls them her friends. while the grand slams really focused on the alliance they had though it really was only baseball nickel and suitcase. which is probably why suitcase focuses on what allies are supposed to be for far too long that and well it takes her 4 episodes to really answer knife. even with balloon when he gets eliminated, she characterizes his actions as something an ally would do even though they were also friends. basically suitcase has like no friends. that’s what i got out of this apparently.

2:46 - lol knife you can answer one of those questions

2:59 - realizing we see a lot of knife’s guilty face this ep

3:11 - ik suitcase is hyperventilating here but the green outline for invisibility is cool

3:22 - its literally paintbrush coloreddddd sobbing

4:28 - hahaha lightbulb you have no idea. so much foreshadowing peeps. so much

4:48 - ljhaujdivjkaouhdfjkan tacos tirade oh boy there’s too much here to unpack i had to look up so many words thank you cakebrunch for storyboarding this

5:07 - pfffftttt lightbulb i love you girl

5:31 - ‘i wont live in the past….. uh huh taco. yeah right

5:53 - “and we lose more than we gain. taco losing the two people who she cared about - also mic doesn’t have the gain on her back which is funny. but yeah basically taco saying that this games costs friendships which she reiterates during the challenge

6:14 - she has given up on the prize now after what was desperation of last episode

6:35 - lowkey mepad doesn’t really answer tacos question here. but he is indeed right. i feel like the things mepad says could have a bunch of different meanings, not sure how right they are but observations none the less. “incapable of starting over” could be a metaphor for revival based on the previous lines. but also since he’s just really observing taco just stating the truth and she can just start over, which he elaborates during his part of the duet. however the fact he says ‘i don’t know who you lost’ feels more like “oh taco lost someone who couldn’t get revived, which feeds into his “of course not” beforehand but also his whole thing with marshmallow. and lowkey it doesn’t have to go down the permadead route either, despite bow being dead she still exists and marshmallow found a way back to her and honestly, ‘is it not possible to get them back’ most likely means to mepad at least, ‘can you not just talk to them again’. But with taco, no matter what she does and she knows this, she can never go back to the way it was with pickle or with mic which segue back to the song—

6:55 - hahahahaha mepads partttttt its actually really interesting bc the more he trys to console her the more info he gets about taco. ‘the whole slate has fallen apart-taco that is not true there are other ways to’ (i presume fix it)’ its too late-its not to late- for me to restart’ (its here where mepad probably learns the severity of what taco has done so instead he) ‘lettuce taco bout it…’ sorry bad joke. basically mepad really wants to help taco and she’s why too riled up right now especially considering she’s just singing about how terrible the game is, so mepad is like’ lets talk after you’ve calmed down.’ can’t tell if ‘you’re no menace’ is supposed to be comforting or truthful but its probably both since mepad’s saying it. and well ‘how did they hurt you’ feels like a response to taco after she’s like’ but its not i its they….. spiel.’ ‘please think this through’- why does it sound like ‘please think about taking one therapy session with me. it’ll do you good’

7:20 - hahahaha foreshadowing to our finalists ey - and insert a free session of mepad’s therapy ‘healing is a process’ as we see the cracks form in tacos shell hahaah. well i guess dying and getting revived was a process but yeah not the kind mepad’s thinking of. anyways taco is lowkey ranting at the contestants which is hilarious as mepad’s there trying to help her. and again she continues this sentiment during the challenge

7:41 - ‘all the beans that get spilled wont be mine’ - again the challenge but also i would like to add that this episode made me realize that taco has what i assume is meat inside her and i thought all this time she was just lettuce and tomatoes. i even had to look at the plushie and low and behold there is meat. but then i was talking to a friend about how it would be funny if it were beans bc… well of this line and bc she’s british… so yeah haha

7:48 - ‘no i’m fine’ mepad’s little lean over to say something is everything to me but i really think he would have just said ‘but you aren’t fine. clearly your crack is affecting you but taco just shushes him hahahaha

8:22 - so like i wonder what questions mephone would have asked. because i don’t think he would’ve went down the whole twisted therapy session. but i also cant bring myself to see him ask stupid questions either…

8:37 - i really like how we get to see knifes reaction bc from his perspective, mic left bc of taco so he thought he was done with that drama as he so says, so when taco appears he’s just like ‘ what the heck why are you here i thought this was over with’

9:12 - ‘what are you doing’ i kinda forgot that mephone doesn’t know that taco basically kidnapped mepad so to him its like mepad left him to help her which at least by mepad’s answer makes it plausible

its challenge timeeeeee

10:04 - look how defensive knife is about all this bc taco will expose everything and everyone well… mostly him and he realizes quickly that she is targeting him

11:49 - i love this especially with the fact it comes right after lightbulb’s, well her first question anyways. bc baseball’s advice for lightbulb really hit for her like immediately but nickel’s reassurance for baseball has never felt true bc of what happens in his team. baseball even says that he missed everything that was going on in his team and that’s because baseball, i think anyways is pretty selfish. i’ll touch more about this during his elimination but he doesn’t want to admit that he’s a bad team leader, which is why he gets this outburst when the platform lowers and while bad team leader doesn’t necessarily have to equate to putting the team ahead of himself, except it does bc it mattered to nickel and it matters to suitcase. baseball needs validation. its easiest to see this through nickel and suitcase where nickel just gives it to him and baseball seeks it out from suitcase but most of all he doesn’t want to get his feelings hurt and we see what happens when it does so he needs someone to blame which was suitcase and then mephone but never himself

12:04 - there’s a good comment about how everyone answers i thought it was pretty high up but it might’ve dropped or its just me being blind but knife twists tacos words bc he doesn’t want to give anything up. but also this is just him retaliating against taco, him trying to find the loopholes of her questions to keep him save in the game and to the others

12:47 - pftttttttttttt tacos too proud of herself

12:53 - ill talk about suitcase eventually i swear but here’s just more of baseball being in denial ‘suitcase doesn’t care about’ what? who? testtube? who knows but also baseball speaking for suitcase like he knows her. he doesn’t. and he’s trying to justify himself through suitcase which is like huh. so yeah baseball here just cant admit his wrongdoings at the moment. ‘victim of circumstance’ here we have baseball pushing the blame onto maphone hurray even though was was partly at fault yayyyy

13:50 - hehe lightbulb raises her hand and foot okay but yeah. while knife lightbulb and suitcase’s choices make ‘sense i don’t really understand baseball’s? is it just so he can try to justify himself more? bc that’s what i’m getting from him

16:03 - its funny because they both describe the other like that but don’t really see themselves like that also love that we actually don’t see the answer suitcase gives but we know what it is. but it also shows how knife cares for suitcase to an extent that not even baseball gives (bc he really mostly cares about his feelings) and why suitcase eventually chooses knife for the final 2

16:38 - suitcase its time. so clearly suitcase is not ready to talk about it but she’s not going to back down either. ‘i see weird things like that all the time’ i like to think that she still has her back turned towards taco and is talking to the fire and turns around when she says hallucinations. i feel like that hits harder bc not only is she putting herself out there in front of everyone, this is the first time she actually says it and accepts it herself. and then she becomes so done with everything. such a mood. oh boy here we go with baseball againnnn just mentioning it bc this ties to his elimination

17:23 - tacos tirade pt 2

17:49 - gotta love how mephone is literally just sitting on the floor like a kid observing all this therapy session when he’s the one who needs it the most

18:05 - oh you knowwww just makes a whole new season and gets even more traumatized

18:51 - when it looks like knife and suitcase are giving each other another look okay this one is probably more incidental bc here tacos speaking from experience go figure. but it really only feels like knife got bridges burnt here after tacos questions. since well suitcases were burnt long before that…

19:05 - haha gonna learn something from season 3 buddy or what. i would love to talk about tacos speech but dang it feels like there is no explanation needed

19:42 - hello i wont live in the past taco so here’s i wont face my past taco instead. taco cracks bc she cant face her truths. she hides away from them. the real question is who taco thinks is coming but honestly it really could only be pickle. mic is the one who left her and i feel like she could explain herself, probably not in front of a crowd but this is an extreme reaction and well, knife knows more about taco than most

20:17 - mephoneeeeeeee noooooooooo

20:28 - THE PAINTBRUSH SIGNAL EVERYONEEEEE. so lightbulb talks about saving taco twice here and in the hotel but like are they actually going to do that that would be insane. anyways the bright lightssss ahhhhhh you guys are toooooo wholesomeeeee so back to lightbulbs insecurities about herself and her team. i love you bright lights the healing environment is too real. anyways the way lightbulb has to ask painty ‘like actually’ just to make sure its true and obviously it is. and when paintbrush tries to leave ‘there is nothing i want more than to win this game’ bc all lightbulb wants is to reunite with her friends again and it to adorable and shows how close the bright lights are and i’m going to talk even more about them

21:47 - mephone you are not fooling anyone

22:22 - ‘allies give you strength’ and while lightbulb doesn’t really categorize the lights as allies they are her friends and oh boi here it comes… to clarify i’ll be talking about the team composition from like kick the bucket or something. so anyways this line lightbulb says really rings true for all of the eliminations of the bright lights and there’s also the fact that, with the exception of fan, but that gets fixed later on cause his arc wasn’t done yet, none of them left alone. so let’s start with marsh. so obviously marsh left the show for bow. bow gave her the strength to do that and brought apple along. then with paintbrush, they left with baxter. fan well officially goes with testtube and lightbulb with paintbrush. arent they all cuteeeee we love their consistency. butt also each bright light elimination arc ends really nicely and its too wholesome

22:39 - mepad can teleport by himself bc taco died ? also i like how he teleports them up on a truth platform also i wonder how the melifetm app organizes the players cause its not alphabetical or by deaths. the way he has to clarify my show, he does it again later

24:03 - ‘for your approval’ where have we heard that before hmmmmm. yeah the wording here really brings back memories doesn’t it

24:13 - ‘i hate you’ mephone just drowning it out this guy

24:22 - baseball again with pushing the blame

25:12 - the way baseball smiles after the platform rises like his truth is going to fix something.

25:19 - so these close ups. baseball knows she’s not going to choose him. and then there knife who’s nervous for like the first time in his life and is surprised when she chooses him hahaha but hey after a couple episodes suitcase finally answers knife “what is an alliance to you”

25:39 - this has the same feeling as walking on ice around someone that has anger issues except its her anxiety. and while its a nice sentiment for her to not explain herself bc she doesn’t have to, baseball seems to say this for himself not for suitcase. baseball doesn’t want to hear the truth from her mouth. he doesn‘t want to face it bc he knows he was in the wrong and wants to preserve his feelings. he does get better though he finally confronts it in front of lightbulb bc she knows nothing about the grand slams so honestly just being away from the game can really help him learn to grow from his mistakes

26:18 - mepad giving taco strength to finish things though.

26:55 - they’re allianemies

27:10 - oh mephone. next episode you’ll get the closure and therapy you deserve. i hope.

final thoughts/ tldr

i bash on baseball too much for no reason, suitcase and knife become friends, lightbulb finally reunites with her team, taco and mepad are going to finish things, and mephone needs therapy.

the grand slams were always about the playing the game while the bright lights were about the experience and the connections and the friends along the way

and finally based on 4 episodes of Inanimate Battle… Knife be winning

I dont think any of this made sense but hey lets discuss. I spent 3 days on this... brain be fried

#inanimate insanity #inanimate insanity 2 #ii2 ep15

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skykittywhatchamahcallit · 1 year

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ive seen your posts, and saying that radfems believe literally every single man ever is Wicked and Not Oppressed In Any Way (and therefore we completely disregard any other axis of oppression such as race, sexuality and class) is quite the strawman.

i have met some pretty dreadful women and girls and relatively decent boys. radfems do not believe men are intrinsically evil or other sex essentialist bs.. there is nuance in oppression as sex is not the only way to be oppressed, but even rich (in the few cases where its the women own money and not her husband/father/male relatives) western, white, straight, feminine women experience misogyny; in fact its literally the only way a woman so privileged can experience oppression, in the form rape (96% of rapists are men including men who rape men), domestic abuse, wage gap, glass ceiling, harassment at work, etc... all problems faced by women disportionately/solely, and who even the most oppressed man alive would not face, and when men face violence, it is mostly carried out onto them by men.

the majority of serial killers and rapists and domestic and animal abusers are overwhelmingly men and in a system and culture that protects violent men and fosters antisocial behaviour in men... (its almost like... a system of male violence?? caused by male socialisation and privileges under patriarchy that makes it easier for men to gather together and do deplorable things) and women face fgm and sexual violence and honour killings and are unwanted by their families and coerced into prostitution or forced to give birth its very clear to me that sex based oppression is real and affects our lives like a lot.

and being nicer to men wont fix any of these things.

and women and teenage girls who play in a 16 to 1 male dominated hobby have been sent letters with sperm in them and women have been shown to play less aggressively when they think theyre playing against a man online... idk suddenly it think its okay. to not include trans women in female only chess tournaments... its a 16:1 hobby there'd probably be a lot of them and usually these places want to include nonbinary people as well and then its just a queer space i suppose. so its not even those who id as women only anymore; then theres no place for young girls to play chess anymore.

im going to reread will to change this evening. It's been like a long time (6 am here sorry to bother you) but idk probably not gonna change my mind on an entire millennia spanning structure designed to subjugate female people or whatever... you probably arent going to either. change your mind, that is. you will likely not even read this, and people are going to continue to mischaracterise radical feminism, and i will lie on the floor,.. why

I’m not mischaracterizing radical feminism at all, I’m afraid. The essentialism comes down to “all women victims, all men oppressors” whether it’s ever meant to or not. We see irl white women weaponize their sex and their race to oppress black men(who are seen as predators for being black and for being men).

The mere fact there is no framework and minimal sources and support group for the reformation of men is what currently makes it difficult-er to move forward. As bell hooks succinctly put it “in order to have loving men, we must love men.”

When we forget that the enemy is the patriarchy(the framework that puts men and women into seperate, distinct categories with rigid gender roles) and instead believe the root(as radical is meant to be used as in the terms of Radical Feminism) is men. We forget, brush over, ignore how women add into the patriarchal landscape by making patriarchal men and women.Yes, this is our work to do as well, even as females, as social women. To unpack and recognize how we may be contributing to this system of oppression. Misogyny is not solely a male problem, and it is everyone’s job to learn and teach how to unpack it.

#good morning btw I’ve got a slightly clearer head this fine morning #it’s hot and rainy wagh #sky gets political #radical feminism #intersectional feminism

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misterbitches · 3 years

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i keep thinking about this and coming to more conclusions like both as an artist and me.

we always think first about the aggressor and not the victim. so, for example, with history 4 and yong jie what will their relationship look like now given the trauma? if they have no interest in fleshing this dude out and having him just be an annoying clingy little ugly bitch then acknowledge that pain and how it will affect them. it’s so easy for xing si to get over being raped? what about xing si’s relationship with his mother? what about the fracturing this does to the family when there’s an intense violation that was aided and abetted by the mother?

that would be far more fascinating trying to figure out and they could still have them be together if they so desperately need it but they can’t ignore everything. that means the trauma will permeate through every part of your life. it’s hilarious that so many fans say the portrayals are realistic because they are not. these shows do not have the time and many of the writers or producers do not have the care or prowess—or will have to cut things to please the state—to execute this. they expedite the healing process but we are left reeling.

in film school one of my teachers was always like, “what happens in the world when the film ends?” and this is something to ask. are we approaching it from: a man falls in love with his brother who raped him and the mother encouraged it and the shock and taboo of that or are we approaching it from a man is forced and trapped into a rship and stockholm syndrome and how that plays out. even if they stayed together even so it would give us more reason and understanding and then we see and know the foundation is built on nothing but darkness and may never recover. after this chapter ends there may be destruction; it’s possible because that’s how it all started.

but after this story ends, in the way it is presented, what will happen? it’s not just entertainment and that doesn’t mean it’s as big of a deal as i think it is even as i write these things. these are just things to keep in mind and things i think the younger viewers absolutely need to see. for themselves like as creative people and enjoying the media they consume and seeing what works and what doesn’t especially when a work serves a purpose. nothing is made for no reason so don’t expect it to be. to me i’m like: why was this made and what could have been better?

there is NO improvement which is why we run around in the same circles. the way to untangle that is being clear about the message and its faults. the audience can’t be clear about it if the show isn’t doing its job for a team of professional fucking writers trying to entice people by poorly approaching topics and leaving them empty handed. life is not as hollow as these things make it and yet we eat it up hook line and fucking sinker.

time and time again we see what these things must establish and how far they can push themselves. it isn’t until the material world gets better that we see a turn in the media but time isn’t linear. sometimes things are worse in years, sometimes things are better. these tropes last because they are a direct reflection of life and the failures in society. so of course it’s about the perpetrator and how they can get their prize but not how we can manage these things when there is a clear victim and we pretend like it isnt there under some sense of potential reform. 1. people do not need to be reformed in a story and that isn’t what this needs 2. is that compelling? 3. yes morally grey things exist but this is not morally grey when it is a violation adn that person’s action was not morally grey. there was a victim and he neeeds to be away from that victim. if he is going to stay we need to see the affects of him being there as real things and there is nothing realistic about that. in no fucking world would someone like xing si a grown adult fucking man be able to temper things that quickly as in the show. NONE. that shit lasts forever but we are supposed to see them kiss and be liek “aw wow morally grey” like what about him is morally grey in relation to xing si? specifically. whihc is the personhe will be with forever.

no it’s how do we get ourselves to see him and engage with him. you can engage with him or be enraptured sure but that doesn’t mean anything and it doesn’t mean the writers are even doing anything with it! i’m glad eveyrone can garner there own idk ideas or get what they want out of a work but what about the victims? what about the relationships? what happens when the story ends? what are dinners like? cos their lives don’t stop when it’s not being recorded (as in these worlds we are shown are always going to exist so they continue on even without us seeing it. so the characters don’t have a stop point we just usually see their happy ending and many times with shitty relationships it’s like why are we here now?) at this point it’s comical and it’s boring.

there’s a film i like with cameron diaz where she falls in love with someone who kidnapped her for a job. there’s no perosnal connection which really helps as well. he did it for a job, doesn’t know her, they fall in love. they get together at the end. that still affects her but it’s also way less psychological trauma then somoene stalking and grooming you and violating you and trapping you by direct action and constant manipulation. there’s no way to turn that around and it’s even worse when you try to with literally no other explanations. like who are these fucking characters and why should we even want them to continue to be here? yong jie could have even been a vehicle to help xing si like idk unpack everything in his brain in a helpful way even through his violation. they chose none of that lmao i could write a better fucking script and im a moron

why should we believe in their love? why should we believe in yong jie? why should we believe in any of these people when they don’t prove shit to us. they just exist. why is that interesting? why do we root for them? that’s certainly not something they even asked themselves cause they sure as shit don’t know. the writing here cannot make up its mind on its own morality and i think the idea of morally grey only works if you have a fucking idea of what you want to do not just throwing shit at a wall. and we feel something for these “morally grey” characters—frankly this term is also a mistake because it’s so much about good/bad and ignores history and peoples lives and what leads to events and it is a super WASP-y concept in its current iteration anyway with a belief that punity is justice when it is not. that is why i say get the fuck away from this dude instead of going to jail. we could see yong jie grow but FUCKING OUTSIDE OF XING SI.

aey from lovely writer is one where im like wow i feel so bad 4 u i think ur gonna like kill urself someone get this messy ass bitch some help. people hate this kid and they totally can! i feel bad for him! dont love him and maybe i wont even want the best for him but rn im like “omg i dont want u 2 die sir.”

i dont feel that way in many other shows. i feel fucking nothing for these men. not yong jie and not even the old guy from modc im just like ok you exist and i’m going to ignore you. there is nothing in my chest lmao. i look at them and feel cold, couldnt be drier, cos it’s stale and boring and trite and nothing new at all. it’s not realisitc and it’s not even entertaining. it’s just...there.

i mean it’s there with the reminder of “oh man i am not interested in your love story also isn’t your boyfriend like 40 and you’re 17? why do you like each other again? does this kid have parents? Wait, what’s happening? uhhhh am i supposed to like this? where are his parents? what’s gonna happen when he turns 23 and realizes how fucked up that shit is? can we see that?” and before u know it the sex on screen is over so that was just unpleasant all around.

and i cannot give u a single reason for so many couples why they like each other. like literally what on earth is there for the two of these people to be attracted to. at least one is being swayed by power but what’s the other one doing? oh nothing he just sucks? ok got it.

if we don’t approach it from a “how do we get people to like a shitty person or a person who does things that harms others” it continues on like this. questioning questioning questioning the comfortableness and never thinking about what the fuck the victim can do, what the fuck is even going on in their heads. and if they can’t do that then we go back to the question: what is the purpose of it? if the answr is “just because” then you have a failure on your hands and a lot of annoyed people. sorry not sorry

#history 4 #history 4: close to you #lovely writer #a thot

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thefoulbeast · 4 years

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A little bit good deal of character analysis in regards to Saburota Todou in the Kyoto arc. This is for my own benefit bc I’m writing smth involving him...

Skipping over the 1st appearance in ch16 because it didn’t really have what I was looking for. Instead I’m skipping straight over to ch25 where Tatsuma shows up and they fight.

This got. Very Long And Very Rambly. So uh, yeah.

tw for canon typical violence and gore

So - Todou already has considerable enhanced physical abilities and regeneration before Karura. Granted, not as strong, but still there.

(man i wish i could do backflips like that when im 56 lmao)

He’s been planning this whole fiasco for over 10 years now (Myou Dha joined the order 10 years ago, and that’s when he first started on manipulating Mamushi)... I wonder how long he’s been eating demons and stuff? How did that even start? How many has he gone through over time? Things to ponder...

Anyways, my biggest question here is... what the fuck is up with his pain tolerance?

He’s straight up getting barbecued and all he has to say is, “I can’t heal fast enough!“ He doesn’t even look a little distraught. Just mildly inconvenienced by the whole thing. (Also - what kind of knife is that? The shape & handle is really funky :O)

I think he was originally intending to like. Eat Karura as soon as it showed up but he had Impure King as a last resort in case he couldn’t overpower Tatsuma (as was the case). The guy really did all his research and had a lot of back ups planned huh.

...I also want to know just how he managed to find out all the stuff regarding the Impure King. How exactly did he know that it hadn’t been destroyed completely? How did he know about Kurikara being empty? And the deal between Karura and the Head Priests?

Sir please cite your sources I’m so curious...

Back on track though! Stuff happens, Tatsuma gets it in the neck with the weird knife, Todou’s all healed up from those nasty burns again and it’s all dandy.

And then we get straight up fire eating.

Again... that should hurt, no? That’s mouth, throat, oesophagus and probably tracheal burns. And Todou just... doesn’t care. He’s still as calm and collected as before, no indication of discomfort. Personally? I’m unnerved by this lol.

The closest we get to discomfort is this when he groans a lil bit after he’s done eating but I think that’s more the stomach upset. From this point on I guess we assume he doesn’t feel pain from fire... but I’m still squinting at everything before this...

Adding this purely because I love these panels. This guy is so messed up. So very very messed up lol.

[Skip forward everything Im not interested in right now]

Someone is having a bit of a bellyache. This is why we don’t eat things while they’re still alive, sir!

But upset stomach or not, he’s still??

“Yeah it’s fine - hello yukio how have you been? - yes, I’m ready to throw hands with you; pain who?“

also... he may be a Huge bastard but I absolutely love how!! Polite he is!!

“Thanks for cooperating ^w^“ <- Todou after cutting off Yukio’s escape route with a wall of flame. lol. However he got evasive when Yukio asked: “What the hell are you?“

He seems to happily give out tidbits of non-vital information, but he obviously knows when to keep his mouth shut (10+ years spying on True cross and no one knew? This guy is very clever! Very tricky! Many secrets!)

I’m sorry this whole thing is so funny... Small, polite talk during fighting is exactly the kind of unhinged I expected from him and he did not disappoint in the slightest. Bless. (I mean he does admit that he’s only doing it to rile Yukio up a few pages later... but still... This man knows just how to get under people’s skin and is so very good at it...)

Also I love how this fight reveals so much about his character so subtly?? I honestly just rec ch28 for p much most anyone would need to get a feel of him as a character.

He’s got this new body and these new powers and the first thing he does is fight a teenager for shits and giggles. Except both the teenager and the younger body keep reminding him of his own youth.

Lower right panel... his face says they’re not happy memories. (In my very biased opinion I would call that expression a mix of “oh whoopsie” and “these memories literally make me want to die”) (And oh Boy does it go well with ch106 pages 23-26 where we actually see how the Todou brothers interacted with each other and that is So Much To Unpack i dont even know where to start lol)

And then right after remarking that family is a sore spot for Yukio, he immediately goes “lmao me too I get it“ ( it’s actually ”Heh heh heh! I feel such a connection between us! Asleep or awake, you’re always hung up on your family! I understand. I used to be the same way.“)

And then finally I reach the part that originally made me want to re-read his scenes in the Kyoto arc...

Todou literally getting his brains blown out with water type bullets 😍😍😍 This is literally the only instance of him admitting that something hurt that I could find so far! What the hell! But that’s not all!

Even then he’s still smiling! He’s still playing around! He got shot through the head, said “oh ouchie“ and immediately shook it off and kept trying rile Yukio up like nothing had happened. Pretty fucked up in my humble opinion, not gonna lie.

“Ah yes I’ve sustained a horrific facial wound let me just dab at it with a handkerchief for a bit that’ll do it.“

He does underestimate Yukio though, becaue he doesn’t see the naiads coming at all. But even with the whole water prison, it bothers him for a few seconds and he’s back on track. He’s very... I’m not sure if tenacious is the right word, but perhaps diligent? Goal oriented?

Very hard to knock off balance, that’s for sure! And even if you manage to catch him by surprise, he seems to adapt very quickly. He’s just genuinely fighting Yukio to have a good time and doesn’t see him as a serious opponent.

But the chilling bit is that he was going to kill Yukio, just like that. He got a feel for his new abilities, had some fun at the expense of Yukio’s emotional state, reminisced on his past for a bit... and that would have been it, if not for the Satan-eyes.

Anyways this got so much longer than I wanted it to lol and I managed to fry my brain so I’ll leave off here. Maybe I’ll do smth aditional later maybe I wont. But just know that I am screaming about this unhinged bastard like 24/7 ❤

Idk if anyone even got to the end of this but I wanted to put my thoughts down somewhere I could find them later lol. Thanks xoxo

#ao no exorcist #ane #saburota todo #character analysis #the written words #saburouta toudou

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adventuresloane · 4 years

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Chicken Soup for the Undead Soul

Summary: "'Alright, I'm here to make chicken soup and accidentally scorch your petunias,' she said, 'and I've already...well, sorry about that.'"

This is...bonding? Kravitz thinks this is bonding. (Taako gets sick and Lup and Kravitz cook for him idk what else you need to know.)

Rating: T (for safety)

Relationships: Kravitz & Lup, Kravitz/Taako

((Yes it’s another of my ask meme fics I polished up and put on AO3 u gotta deal))

Read on AO3

As was her wont, Lup called, "Anyone home," didn't wait for a response, and then phased into the house through the two inches of wood. Kravitz stopped, then set the lamp he was holding back into the box of baby blue packing peanuts. He waited for the smell of burning living room curtain to reach his nose. Luckily, it didn't, this time.

She floated in the foyer and looked around in a confident, surveying manner, skeletal hands on her hypothetical hips, as though he weren't standing right in front of her. "Alright, I'm here to make chicken soup and accidentally scorch your petunias," she said, "and I've already...well, sorry about that."

Those had been purchased and planted hardly four days prior, but Kravitz didn't remark on that. "Lup. You don't know how glad I am you're here."

She gave a congenial little shrug, causing the flames that rose from her shoulders to shiver upwards before falling again. "Well, hope I didn't keep you waiting. How's Taako?" The question came out quickly. It was particularly relevant today, but it was also one of the first things she asked every time she came in. "That doofus had better be sleeping."

"He's trying upstairs, I think. Not that I would get my hopes up."

"'Trying?'"

"Yes." Kravitz waited. The black, featureless face inside her red hood stayed fixed on him, and she did not carry on the conversation as he'd hoped she would. It seemed that she wanted more from him. "Well...well, I think it's hard for him. He hasn't slept once in the time that I've known him, or in the past decade at all, as far as he's told me. I'm sure he's out of practice if all he does is Trance."

"Oh! Right, right," she said. There was a beat, and then it passed. In the same tone that she'd had when she'd first floated in, she continued, "Well, whatever. He's lucky he's capable of lying in a bed at all."

"Ha, yes," Kravitz said, right before he said nothing. For a few moments that felt too long and vaguely sweaty to him, he stared at Lup, and presumably she stared back, in spite of the fact that he couldn't tell where her eyes were. Her spectral form bobbed slightly up and down in the air, and flames with dark red centers licked off the char-black bones of her hands, and suddenly he was rather glad she always knocked rather than, say, floating up through the floor unannounced when she felt like it. And now the silence was decidedly awkward. He pushed aside one of several unopened cardboard boxes with his foot. "Um, it's his own fault, really. Taako's been spending all his time trying to unpack and organize the house at the same time he's getting things organized to start his school. It's no wonder he's fallen ill--"

"Language." He turned to face her when she piped up. "Just say 'got sick.' No one says 'fall ill' anymore."

He couldn't quite hold back his grimace.

"Hey, you were the one who asked me to correct you when you talked like an old geezer."

This was true. It was also true, he was sure, that she enjoyed chastising him for a change, when normally he was the one telling her what to do during reaper training. He moved on. "Anyway, like I said, I'm glad I have you here to help now."

"Everything going alright so far."

"Yes. Well, I think so. I pre-salted the chicken, like you said. It's been waiting for five hours."

"That'll do. We can start on the broth. So how about the seasonings I told you to get? Did you pick up the rosemary?"

"Yes."

"And the parsley?"

"Two teaspoons of dried."

"And the oregano?"

He screeched to a stop, balked. There was no way. He had double- and triple-checked the list she had given him. He couldn't have missed anything. Could he have missed anything? He didn't know anything about cooking, but Taako always said something about the balance of flavors, and what if he'd just pulled a playing card out from the middle of the tower--

She laughed. "I'm fucking with you. Lighten up, dude." She attempted to pat him on the shoulder as she floated past him into the kitchen. Her hand passed right through him a couple times, but eventually she hard enough to make contact. Sometimes she spent a lot of time trying to touch corporeal things. Maybe that was how she'd burned the flowers. "Anyway, who's gonna use oregano when you've already got a buttload of rosemary in there? Come on."

But that was what he was here for today, to be her hands. According to her, there was precious little room for error when making this soup if they wanted to do it The Right Way, no leeway for her to accidentally drop in too much celery or pepper. There was precious little room for error, Kravitz reminded himself as he followed her instructions to strip the chicken meat from the bones.

"I bought a few different kinds of noodles, since I wasn't sure what was best," he said. "There's those twisty egg noodles, thin pasta, the flat ones--"

"Flat," Lup answered rather like a patient schoolteacher, "and don't break them up when you put them in the soup. He'll slurp them up one-by-one when no one's watching, but he'll never admit that."

"Right." He wanted to say, I knew that. He didn't exactly know, not from experience, and yet it was the kind of thing he'd expected from Taako. He felt like he didn't have to be told.

"That comes later, though," she said. "The noodles cook separately, and it doesn't take long."

"Oh. Alright."

"We used to make the noodles from scratch back on the ship and save them for rainy days, but store-bought's gonna have to do. Hey, do you have a pepper mill?"

"A what?"

"You know, for grinding up fresh-cracked pepper. Taako likes a lot of it."

Kravitz thought. "I think Taako does, but it might be in storage." He clumsily tried to get his nails under the papery skin of a garlic bulb, trying to peel it off. "Did he tell you he likes it fresh-ground better?"

Lup cocked her head a little. "I don't think he told me, per se. He just...well, he always used to like it that way, at least."

He nodded, stiffly. Then he continued nodding through a litany of other questions and corrections from her, about keeping the skin on the onions when he puts them in and how often he'll need to skim the fat from the top of the broth and how to extract the flavor from the bones and how much anise to add. There was a temptation to remark that he could, in fact, operate a stove. But he would say this for her: for someone who came across as so impulsive sometimes, she was surprisingly fastidious when it came to cooking. She knew everything about this dish. About what Taako liked about it. Given that he didn't feel hunger and as such hadn't done much in the way of cooking for hundreds of years, he had little choice but to listen to her. Although it would be nice if she could stop instructing him long enough for him to try to absorb what he was doing, so that he could remember all these details himself, for the next time Taako got sick.

He was so busy trying to keep up with her that he barely registered it when she abruptly switched to praise. "You're not half-bad, Skele-friend."

"Huh?" he responded, all dignity. "Oh, well, I'm just doing what you tell me. Or trying to."

"Yeah, well, you're doing a good job of it. Especially since you haven't taken orders from anyone less than a goddess for, what, a few centuries?"

"And you haven't made this recipe in quite some time. It's incredible how well you remember it."

She paused. "Taako's the one who always used to make it, actually," she murmured. "I'd be the helper. Unless I was the one who was sick. Then he'd do it himself. I feel like it's about time I returned the favor."

Kravitz couldn't keep from grinning at the thought. "I had a feeling he'd be a caring older brother."

"He's not my older brother. We're twins."

"Who's older, though?"

"Neither, we were born at the same time!"

"So you're the younger one."

She attempted to give him a playful shove. "Of course you'd take his side," she said in an exaggerated grumble. "I suppose you've had siblings?"

"Yes," he said quietly. He returned to stirring and said nothing else. Mercifully, she got the hint. After a moment, she materialized a white wand of sharpened bone into her hand (one of Barry's ulnas that he'd gifted to her, she'd told Kravitz once, which...said something about their relationship, alright). He watched her point it into the broth.

His side-eye must have been more obvious than he'd suspected, because she huffed when she caught sight of him staring. For someone whose face was little more than a black void with an ember-like glow of red at the center, she could give quite the eye-roll. "Relax, Mr. Death Cop. It's healing magic." She stopped for a moment, apparently to judge whether she could push her luck. "Though, you know, necromancy is hardly different from the stuff clerics do every day."

"I'm no great arcanist, Lup. I just take down cultists. And you know that whether or not clerics do it doesn't matter to the Raven Queen. Whether it's Vampiric Touch or Revivify, it's still a corruption of fate."

"Alright, spare me the speech, please. I'm just saying," she said with another shrug. "I am an arcanist, and I can tell you that it's the same kind of magical energy to heal or hurt, just flowing in different directions."

There had been an eon when he had felt that as opposed to simply knowing it, back before he'd had a scythe or a home in the Astral Plane. When he could ease his mother's headaches with a song.

"Shit," she shouted out of nowhere, and simultaneously, blue flames from the gas burners shot up suddenly. Kravitz scrambled for the heat dials. "Shit, wait, I just remembered something."

"What is it? Did we forget something?"

"Doesn't everything he eat taste like Gogurt now?" Her voice began to pitch up a little, grow strained. "What if he can't even taste the soup?"

"It's okay, Lup," he responded before she could go on. "I've asked him about that. He said soup doesn't count for the curse. He'll be able to taste it."

"Oh." She sounded as though she'd let out a sigh of relief, though she lacked lungs. "Okay, I just wasn't sure. Magnus had to tell me that, you know. I wouldn't have even known Taako was cursed otherwise."

Kravitz glanced her way. "Does that bother you?"

"It's not like he has to tell me," she said quickly. Then she hesitated, which, as far as he had learned, was not characteristic. She could be patient, but not hesitant, not unassured. "It's just weird that I...don't already know, I guess. I've just--you'll want a chef's knife for that."

"Which one is--?"

"Curved blade. And it's easier if you don't move the knife back and forth. Just pass the carrot under the blade while you chop." She sighed. "Anyway, I just missed things. A lot."

Kravitz bit his lip. "Well...you still know him like no one else. You realize that, don't you? I feel like I'm playing catch-up with all the rest of you. You all had a hundred years to figure him out. And you in particular had quite a few more."

"You're not doing too bad on that front already, bud." He could have sworn he saw a smile peek out from under the hood. He didn't recall her ever calling him "bud" before. "Not from what Taako's told me, anyway."

He stopped stirring the wooden spoon through the golden fluid for awhile. "I guess it's good you'll be moving in with us before too long, huh? We can bring each other up to speed."

"Listen, this shit's gonna be done before long. Why don't you take it up to him yourself?"

Kravitz looked her way. "You sure? It's your soup. You don't want to come up with me?"

"I'll see him plenty later. I'm sure I will."

Minutes later, he was knocking on the door of Taako's bedroom--their shared bedroom, now, with a new king-sized bed and mattress. There were a few instances of throat-clearing before Kravitz heard a croak of "Come in."

He pushed through the door, steaming bowl in both hands. "Hey, darling, have you slept at all?"

"Can't sleep at the best of times, babe." Taako followed up the answer with a snort. "This cold's some bullshit."

He chuckled. "I told you you'd get sick if you kept working like you've been."

"Can it, Bone-Hands McGee." He sat up and struggled to sniff some air through his stuffed nose. "Hey, is that--?"

"Lup helped." He lifted his shoulders in a way that he hoped would come across as self-effacing, as if the soup in his hands didn't smell like absolute heaven.

"That so?" He wiped his nose with a tissue, though not before Kravitz saw the blush creep into his warm cheeks. He saw that blush a lot, and always just at the moment that the two of them met eyes. Each time was a gift, whether Taako meant to give it to him or not. "Let's give it a whirl then."

Kravitz sat next to him on the bed and watched the whole while as Taako held the bowl under his nose, let the steam waft up into his sinuses, tipped his head back to show his smooth neck and closed his eyes and drank the broth slowly. Then he licked his lips abruptly and said, "Not bad for someone who considers fancy wine to be an entire meal. Hey, get out of my bed of contagion. You're the one who's gonna get sick next."

He chuckled and ran a hand through Taako's already pillow-ruffled hair. "That's the nice thing about being dead already, sweetheart. I can't get sick." To prove the point, he kissed his cheek.

He kept doing it, in fact, as he and Taako sat together and as the soup was slowly consumed. He hummed softly, then sang more so. And a few times, when he touched his lips to his boyfriend's skin, he tried to dredge up the kind of magic that he hadn't hadn't used for centuries, for the majority of his life. Not since he'd been alive. It felt far different from the kind he used to electrocute or grapple a necromantic cultist, and at first it felt like trying to run water through a pipe that hadn't seen a drop in decades. But he felt the warmth of the magic like he felt the vibration of his vocal chords, energy coming from deep inside of him, from nothing. Taako seemed to breathe more easily as the Healing Word took effect.

It was after the bowl had been sitting empty for awhile that Kravitz felt Taako's breathing slow next to him and take on the rhythm not of meditation, but of sleep.

#lup #kravitz #taz lup #taz kravitz #lup taaco #taako #taz taako #taako taaco #taz #the adventure zone #taz balance #the zone cast #fan fiction #taz fanfic #taz fan fiction #domestic fluff #fluff #food cw

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hongism · 3 years

Note

Nfsjxbaksmak just cjsncksmxnak still PROCESSING oh my GOD CALY IMMMM SHE WENT PSYCHO MODE I STANN JISUNG WAS READY TO SHIT HIS PANTS AHSHSHAHAH MADE ME SMILE--- but but but joong actually showing emotion to y/n? Are we- are we slowly getting there 🥺 AAAAAA HWA ARE YOU OKAY LEMME GIVE THAT MAN A HUG HE SUFFERS BY HIMSELF TOO MUCH and honestly caly I'll be expecting mingi and san back in the next chapter this has now become torture I WILL SUE MAM just let us get the so long waited y/n and san reuniting bdhsjdksk and the spoILERS IT REALLY WAS Y/N SAYING THAT HAHA LOOK AT HER GO but the nightmare??? I feel like there are more stuff to know about that stupid nightmare something isn't siTTING RIGHT WITH ME NUHUH idk there was a LOT to unpack her caly cjskdkska it was INTENSE but chapter 16 still takes the cake fjsbdk oNCE AGAIN THANK YOU FOR BLESSING US WITH YOUR TALENT THIS CHAPTER WAS *CHEFS KISS* - 🌧

hheHEHEHHEHEHehHEHEHEHHE alexa play psycho by red velvet and monster by irene and seulgi 😃😃 she out here instilling fear into the hearts of men (jisung) heh joong finally breaking even just a little it is indeed beautiful we love to see it :3 SEONGHWA darling beloved seonghwa im sorry for causing so much chaos and pain on our poor baby i promise it’ll be over soon ;-;

dearest san and mingi as well i promise they’ll be back soon i PROMISE okay im not bluffing this time we will have them back soon TEARS the san and y/n reunion yall it’s gonna be SO GOOD it might be my fave thing ever okay doiafjodij yeah. y/n DID GO PSYCHO bestie went off love that for her !!!

listen the nightmare had so much to unpack i know i know but all is well all will be well everything is fine okay yes chapter 16 still worse huh intriguing indeed 🧐 it’s a shame yall are in for a break after this i wont have a chance to do it again for a WHILE BUT THANK U! FOR READING AND ENJOYING !

#🌧 anon #mists of celeste #moc: spoilers #anon #asks

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sparring-spirals · 5 years

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Jester is Fine (spoiler she’s not)

aka my long ass Thing about Jester and her upbringing and also why I have so many feelings about her tendency to suppress negative emotions and IDK I JUST WANTED TO WRITE THIS SINCE HER BACKSTORY REVEAL IN EPISODE 8 LET ME LIVE.

Disclaimers: Im not entirely caught up yet but I know the primary plot points and bigger convos (thanks tumblr lov u). Neccesary spoilers will be tagged as I go down the post. Mostly spoils for ep 8? And I guess their Activity post blue dragon.

part 1 because whoops this got looong.

Okay, so we start at the beginning, at the very first backstory drop; because, Jester was the first person to give up her backstory, in its relative whole. Which makes sense! Right? Its not like she has anything to /hide/. Because everything about her childhood was Fine. Great! actually, great, super great. Her mom loved her! So much! and she got an awesome room and got to play pranks on people and had the COOLEST BEST FRIEND EVER who taught her how to play even BETTER pranks, and like, it was awesome, even if-

even if she couldn’t /leave/ her bedroom and she needed to keep her existence a secret, and her mom sometimes was too busy to tell her stories or sing her to sleep, but sometimes she’d sit by the door and listen, so basically the same!

!!! :)

Even here- 8 episodes in, relationships still forming, a general hesitation to tread on anything too heavy- you see the unease on the rest of the party.

Caleb: So where were you at this point?

Nott: Just trapped in your room?

Jester: Well no, I wasn’t trapped, but you know- (*1)

Caleb: Did you get to go to the park? Did she read you stories, did she do the things that parents do?

Jester: She.. read me some stories! And a lot of times I would listen at the door and hear her sing.(*2)

Beau: Did she tell people about you?(*3)

Jester: *laughing* No.

Fjord: I imagine that would affect her business a little.

Jester: Exactly. I totally understand, she loves me so much. She really, really does. It’s just, you know, people frown upon courtesans with daughters.(*4)

Okay, so before anything else- we unpack this.

1: This is important to Jester- that she wasn’t trapped. Like, cmon, Jester has read books- SO many books, she knows all the stories, about girls being locked in high towers and- she’s not that! She wasn’t /trapped/ because she didn’t want to leave, not really. She wasn’t trapped, it wasn’t against her will, at all. (continued in 4)

2: The positive spin, the pause- and then the of course! In some form, it wasn’t exactly like how Caleb described,, but it happened! It still counts! (Also because this imagery broke my heart: a child jester, wanting to be sung to sleep or told a story but knowing her mom is busy, a young jester, alone, behind a door, listening to a song that isn’t for her but letting it wrap around her because-

because what else is she supposed to-

3: Putting this in because it makes sense Beau, of all people, asks this question. Beau who (Beau spoiler) was never the child her parents wanted, who was the disgrace, who was dropped in favor of a different child the moment they could do it, who was sent away and forgotten and will always live with the knowledge that she was a /disgrace/ to her family, a disappointment- something to be hidden. Looking at Jester; beautiful, bright, sweet Jester who is soft and easy and bright in all the ways Beau has never been- and thinking of her being hidden away, like a stain, like a disgrace.

4: This is perhaps the most important thing- that Jester isn’t upsetwith her mom because how could she be? Her mom loves her. So much. None of this was ever about making Jester suffer- god no, her mom always tried so hard to make Jester happy and comfortable and- her mom did good, her mom did a wonderful job, and she was just making the right decision.

Her mom loves her.

And you know what? She does. So much. I haven’t yet reached them meeting Marion, but I do know that much; that her mom really loves her, so, so, so much. And thats part of what makes this so painful, and part of why its so vital that Jester always speaks of her childhood with a tiptoeing sort of cheerfulness, why she’s always so insistent that it was fine, it was fine! Because, if its not fine, if it wasn’t fine that she grew up locked in a room, no friends, no company, not supposed to ever leave- then its really not fine. It means Jester, despite everything she has tried to tell herself, is not fine. Was not fine. For years, then something was wrong, something was extremely wrong, and that means she has to face that, deal with it. More than that, if it wasn’t fine, then it means that her mom, her mom who loved her so much and tried so hard to keep her happy, failed. Her mom did bad. That not only did her mom do bad things for her- arguably to her, not only did her mom directly play a part in making things not fine-

her mother did bad. to her. This isn’t just about Jester, this isn’t just about how she was incredibly, achingly lonely for so much of her childhood and how badly she wanted friends, how she ached and burned for friends and just wanted someone, anyone, to be her friend, more than an oft-vanishing green cloak, she wanted people and friendship and companionship and she just wanted to not be alone in her room, traveler please please please-

This is about how she would have to know that someone who tried so hard to keep her happy, tried so hard to not hurt her, someone who truly, genuinely loves her, hurt her anyway.

And that, that’s the most painful part, because that’s always such a fucking difficult lesson to learn: That sometimes people can love you, really, genuinely love you, and still do you wrong. And knowing they hurt you will hurt them, and admitting that, admitting that is sometimes just as hard as the initial damage, and moreso for someone like Jester who so badly wants to believe the best in people, especially the people she loves, and who is at her core, a protector (tm Laura Bailey).

She will never, ever face the extent of her own pain if it means she can, even indirectly, shield someone she loves about from that pain too.

….

ok i dont have a good ending for this but uhhhh PART 2, COMING AT SOME POINT: Why Jester Lavorre knowing about everyone’s tragic backstories DEFINITELY means she wont be acknowledging her own issues anytime soon.

#....oops my hand slipped #jester lavorre #jester #critical role #cr #critical role campaign 2 #character meta #character analysis #jester meta #im supposed to be workin my b #i have so many feelings about this blue tiefling

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luhvelight · 5 years

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Hi idk if you answer questions like this but ,is J the one? Are we meant to last? - S 💓 thanks

Hello S! I usually dont pull over 3 cards but 4 cards jumped out at me during your shuffling. You recieved the reversed The World which indicates a Yes, reversed Ace of Cups which indicates a Yes, reversed Knight of Swords which indicates a Yes and the upright Death which indicates a No. Since all three of the Yes cards are reversed, instead of saying a definete “Yes” its more like saying “Yes, but..”. We have alot to unpack here so get ready! :)

So for the reversed Ace of Cups talks allllll about self love and the importance of it. The reversed Ace of Cups generally has two different meanings which is great because one of these messages could maybe apply to you or J. So the reversed Ace of Cups really suggests that you maybe just starting to practice self love or started introducing yourself to the importance of it. You maybe noticing the effect in which practicing this self love has had on your life (and it maybe entirely positive for the most part). You may be really intune with that side of yourself that also calls for self forgiveness, self acceptance and most importantly self care. I feel like this could also suggest that you and J, are extremely intune with one another aswell. The love you both have for yourselves are continuesly impacted by the love you both show for one another. On the FLIP SIDE, the reversed Ace of Cups could also discuss not necessarily a lack of self love but an intense awareness of love in general. This awareness may cause one of you to be scared of being vulnerable and may cause you to repress alot of emotions. It is completely okay to not be prepared or willing to share emotions. It is really important that you both remind eachother that you are here for eachother. Do not rush the other to automatically tell you what is wrong or bother the other to constantly tell them how you feel. Lots of people actually find it easier to show their love and then eventually learn (and feel comfortable) to express that love verbally. This kind of reluctance to say “i love you” or express emotions in general could be due to past relationships (wether it be romantic, platonic or familial). Just remember to be gentle, patient and open minded with one another.

The reversed World card discusses a lack of effort and looking to take the easy way out. There does come a time in relationships where itll just go completely stagnant. Both parties feel a sudden halt or resistance to change. Everything may even feel a bit boring or lackluster. This is natural thing to feel and do not fret when that feeling does come. The World is telling you that yes, if you do truly WANT J to be the one, you must put in the effort and so does J. Its all about taking care of the relationship. Nourishing and nurturing one another. If you can survive this rough patch, than you develop the strength to survive alot more tough goings. Overcoming this builds courage and promise that the relationship wont crumble because of something minor. In rough patches, it is especially important to communicate so that both parties can figure out how to make the wrong, right. This kind of interaction not only builds strength, but trust aswell. You can trust eachother to tell one another when something is wrong or that you will eventually come to terms or conclusions on important matters.

The Knight of Swords is here to warn you to slow down. There might be moments in the relationship where you may have the tendency to move too quickly. The Knight of Swords is urging you not to rush and truly do take the time to get to know eachother before hitting the important milestones in a relationship. It is always important that in budding relationships we wait to see what the other individual is truly like after the honeymoon phase is over. The honeymoon phase is typically very intense and we ignore alot of potential red flags because we are so in love. This is when we start to see our partners in more of a natural light. It is important you take the time to see J as who they are (the same goes with J seeing who you really are). This is when things start to get a little bit serious and we start showing our partners the genuine and raw sides of ourselves. It is important you both get familiar with one anothers flaws and personality quirks. The Knight of Swords is also encouraging you to not act impulsively or irrationally and really think deeply about the important steps you want to make as you hit every milestone in the relationship.

The Death card is widely misconceived and people usually see it as a negative card. But it is card that talks alot about transformation and personal growth. There may be now (or at some point in the relationship) where a personal growth session maybe in order. A past situation maybe hindering one of you from moving on or accepting a better future. This just comes as a warning that if you do want the relationship to last you both must be willing to let go of past situations or negative patterns that no longer serve the both of you.

#free tarot readings #free tarot reading #love reading

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pepperpixel · 6 years

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hi!!!! could u explain icegears to me? im really new to the fandom and i thought gears stressed iceberg out? idk aaaaah

(hi!! sorry this took me so long to reply too, i had to gather my thoughts.. on it. also i didn’t feel like writing an essay about icegears on mobile, but i’ve got a computer again so here we fucking gooooo!!)

icegears/gearsberg (whatever u wanna call it) is an extremely complicated relationship to unpack and really look at, and thats honestly one of the main reasons why i love it so much

i wanna give some context before i go balls deep in psychoanalyzing these fictional gays. so most of my ideas and feelings about iceberg and gears are based off of there characterizations in these specific tales!

Epitaph

Sex at Frigid Temperature

& In His Own Image

i’ve read other tales that include 1 or both of of them, but these are The Three that influence my specific characterization and interpretation of them and there relationship

the main big thing about this relationship that makes a lot of ppl rlly freaked out about it. is that iceberg kills himself. which is an entirely valid and reasonable reason to not like something. but i think what a lot of people miss or ignore or just don’t think about is that, its not the relationships fault that that happens, its the foundation’s. the foundation wants to make more gears, more emotionless work robots who don’t care about anything and just do what there told. and iceberg is the perfect target for it.

its very clear that the people in charge don’t want him interacting with anyone, they don’t want him doing anything. they’re basically keeping him locked in a glass box with nothing but more paperwork, more monsters. and a sort of attractive brick wall. the foundation purposefully isolates him from everyone who isn’t gears. and iceberg realizes that there doing this.

in ‘sex at frigid temperature’ iceberg decides to get into a relationship with gears, despite knowing what the foundations trying to do to him, because he’s a self destructive idiot. gears says yes, because of course he would. and so. there dating

the thing about gears, is that he does have emotions, and he does feel things, its just. theres no point in acting on them, or doing anything to express them. so he doesn’t. (and thats honestly rlly fucking sad!! i stg i could go on and on about how fucking sad gears whole situation is, but i wont cuz we gotta stay on topic here) there are a lot of moments in ‘sex at frigid temperature’ and ‘in his own image’ that show he really does and did care about iceberg, and wanted to be with him. the fact he keeps the note from iceberg seen at the end of ‘in his own image’. the ways gears expresses his affection in ‘sex at frigid temperature’ throughout the whole tale, ( seriously, you have to read that tale if you’re interested in icegears even a little bit.) it all points to him having real genuine feelings towards iceberg.

the thing is that iceberg and gears learn to understand and love each other. its not gears being ‘emotionless’ that leads to iceberg’s strife, if that were the only awkward, “stressful” thing in there relationship then they would be 100% fine. we can see in ‘sex at frigid temperature’ that iceberg slowly realizes and learns to appreciate how gears show’s his affection. that was not the main issue, in a perfect world with no foundation,(or at least a foundation that doesn’t fuck with its workers as much) they would most likely be totally fine together.

but the foundation does exist, and it absolutely fucks there shit up.

so in conclusion gears and iceberg are the ultimate tragic love story sorta problematic but not when you really think about it relationship in the foundation. and i would die for them

thanks for coming to my tedtalk

#i could go more indepth on both of them individually in this but i wanted to focus on them as a couple #because i have a lot of feelings about icegears and i want people to understand whyy #scp #scp foundation #icegears #gearsberg #dr iceberg #dr gears #almost forgot to put a readmore on this #assks #pepper words

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theblasianbarbie · 5 years

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lets get started early tonight bc i almost cried at work thinking about this

like no one wants me like if that makes sense. like men want me only sexually they only find me sexually attractive and im just on their to do list. no one ever sees me or meets me and thinks “i want to do this for her, i wanna do that for her” its like...i never felt special and no ones ever done anything special for me. ive been on dates yeah but no one really has like....done anything spectacular in regards to that. granted ive only ever been emotionally serious with one dude but idk we had special moments but like...we never really went on dates and like he was always busy and that sounds like bologna but he genuinely was but sometimes i cant help but think he just didnt feel like choosing me some days not to say i should come before everything but like idk...like no one wants me like that no one really sees me as anything more than temporary and it hurts so much. like i cant help but think how he probably gave more time to other women in the past or something again thats just me in my head but idk. like man....no one just wants to take my breath away like im not worth it and idk why. this dude wont tell me whats wrong with me and like i really just wanna know so i can fix it like i really wanna know WHY no one has ever been like “its her. she’s the one.” like idk man i feel so broken just tell me what the fuck is wrong with me and why im not special to anyone. like why does no one want me outside of sexual fantasy or to escape from their world.. im a person why does no one want to treat me like that. im not a sex machine and im not an escape im not a goddess. im a woman. i have feelings. a lot of them and i just want to be understood and heard esp bc i hear and understand everyone else. i wanna come home and not rub my own feet one day. i wanna come home and fall into the person who is my home after a long day. i wanna be a part of someones everyday. i wanna be at the start and the end. i wanna be my partners best friend bc this past dude was mine and idk if i was his but like...i wanna be one of the first ppl they think of when they get good news and one of the ppl they wanna hug when they get bad news. i want a lot i want a lot of simple shit tbh...little things that make me feel special. like someone seeing something and being like “oh that reminds me of the love of my life” like idk....i just feel so far removed from every dudes life that ive dated and what sucks is after me they always get with someone who looks like me or has the same aesthetic but is lighter or not black and its like....idk theres so much to unpack here

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scarlett-carson · 8 years

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Its funny, but not in a HA HA HA kind of way

things have been...all over the godsdamn place of late ive been busy ive been broken ive been, a bit under construction of late. there was a bit of a phoenixing going on behind the scenes and maybe not everyone knew it. or maybe they did and i am not as lowkey as i fancy myself to be sometimes. there was a bit of a semi-public accidental crash recently, so... it doesnt matter. no, i mean it totally matters but thats...not the point of this recently, i went on vacation. there was a road trip with my sister and it was all kinds of things. it was, above all....FUCKING NECESSARY but. to the point of this post:: we were driving back from a week in daytona and it was the middle of the night and we were talking about things and stuff and nonsense and serious stuff and bullshit and like...everything...because that is kind of this thing that we do sometimes and shes had kind of a rough go in her own way and i think we both sort of needed a quality 3am talk about what one wants to do when they realize they dont have to camp out at rock bottom anymore and that there are options beyond "idk, just not die i guess" and in all of the talk about all of the things, she asked me why i stopped writing. (because she is a cunt and kind of a sadist) i dont have an answer for that i have a list of like...bullshit excuses for why i dont write depression lack of focus nothing to say impostor syndrome "i cant i have rehearsal" etc etc etc but i didnt have an ANSWER in that moment but i did tell her that recently, id been thinking a whole lot about how i miss doing slam and spoken word. that even if i dont have the stamina to write longform anything, doesnt mean i dont have things to say and that maybe it would be a way to get my legs back under me but i dont know because its been a really REALLY long time and what if i dont know how anymore and the rules have changed and like nothing i have to say is interesting to anyone else or like what if there is something i feel deep all the way into my marrow, but like someone else can say it better? this bitch has the audacity to pull over to the side of the road. like in the middle of fucking NOWHERE mountainsville, kentucky or wherever the fuck we were...and goes "so, its funny you should mention THAT. its funny, but not in a HA HA HA kind of way. i have to show you this thing. but its going to kick you in the face. long dramatic pause, because she knows just a little bit too much about my life possibly twice" ...and then shows me the following spoken word piece on her spotify playlist: ~~~~~~~ **We never promised each other much, we were always just kind of touch and go. as if we knew we'd know that somehow we'd grow differently. so we did and we do and none of this is to say that it wasn't worth going through or that i care any less about you. shoulders to lean on are hard to come by. I know because there were times I would have broken my own neck just so that I'd have one of my own to cry on. And I remember when each finger was a pawn moving slowly across the chessboard of your body and we made each game last. Passed up each avenue of attack because neither one of us were trying to win So how do we begin again when that feels like now and this feels like then? When all I can do is tell you "if you've got something that needs saying, tonight I'm paying dues." I've got a pocket full of blues and two pennies to rub together Which means I'm wealthy enough that I can finally afford to pay attention. I'm listening. And I know right now I'm somehow like that kid sitting in math class, terribly aware of his first boner. It's hard. But difficulty has never been a good enough reason to describe the effort it takes to make the good times and the memories worth having. And they were and they are and I wouldn't have come this far if you weren't worth the sleepless nights where abandoned appetites of a heart, now rail-thin, because of the constant hunger strikes. In your absence, I'm finding value, because what starves you carves you, and I'm chipping away the rough edges of a statue built to memorialize everything we've been through. And when I'm done, I'm gonna set it against the backdrop of the sun and stare just no matter where I go, it'll always be etched into the back of my mind, stenciled in behind whatever future I have left to find. Maybe we were never meant to last. Maybe we're only meant to reflect fondly upon a past where we cast ourselves in the lead role of a one-year sitcom. One that had the critics standing, while putting hand to palm, in an ovation we're still getting curtain calls for. And the stage floor was a graveyard for the freshly cut roses that we waded through to take our bows and say thank you. It was beautiful. And it was and it is and none of it was ever show-biz. But we were waiting for lights to dim on a stage where we set ourselves to music. As if the swelling violins could ever mimic the hidden moments found in the theatre where we kept audiences stapled to their seats. And they watched us, looking for vacancies they could occupy in the spaces between our heartbeats, as if silence was a room for rent, and we both went "shh." But the beats themselves: they were loud enough to drown out the applause. And we laughed at the ushers left looking in the aisles for the dropped jaws of patrons who still can't believe we took time to find beauty in the flaws we possess. That there's only something better to be found in allowing our collective damage to coalesce. And all we confess of ourselves forever is that we will make it through this. We're gonna make it through this, like a big-ass jug of kool-aid with legs and arms busting through a brick wall to quench the thirst of our loneliness and say "fuck yeah." Yes, I miss you. When I'm not looking, the softest parts of me will issue restraining orders. Not the kind that define borders or boundaries; these are the kind that will keep me in place when I ask "please, call me when you get there." Because every somewhere I go to, is just another place that reminds me I miss you. And my broken heart is where I keep the scar-tissue that I used to dry my eyes when a tear tries to make a break for it. I've built my eyelids into an Alcatraz, where every prisoner has a parole board meeting scheduled for yesterday. And they played dominoes until time comes full circle, like a sunrise, and today tries to set them free because they'll be locked up here until I let them go, until it's safe to let you know you're my best friend. And that some things end so that other things can begin. Sometimes an ending can be an origin. That history is a resin that can keep two people stuck together, that change can be a tether if you let it. I'll always want to kiss you. Or touch you. Or do that thing that drives you crazy. And by that, I mean you literally go crazy when I call you "cranky pants." Sorry, but it makes me laugh. And that's important to someone who's given more than half of their life to tragedy. I keep your side of the bed empty with a just-in-case mentality of that hope's middle name is maybe and maybe you miss me too. One day, you and I are going to make it through this. And we'll look back and we'll realize that we have, and we did, promise. PROMISE--shane koyczan** ~~~~~ go ahead and take a minute take all the time you need because i needed fucking 20 minutes and i am pretty sure i stopped breathing we sat there in dead silence at almost 4 am on a dark as mountain road and she just held my hand while silent tears fell out of my stupid fucking face. because, like she knew she would be... she was not wrong. she was so very very not wrong. i got back to chicago on monday i have spent the last few days (still not writing) debating like...what to do with this. do i post it on Other Social Media? do i text a youtube link? do i tag everyone who crossed my mind as i listened to it the first time? (for the record, it is probably exactly who you expect, AND...other people you wouldnt so, there's been some unpacking too like "why them, though") do i sit in the corner of my shower and just cry about it for a while until it shifts from "pathetic" to "cathardic" and do i even remember where that line IS anymore? and like...sure i could direct send it but would they even read it? would they get it? would they understand? ...does it fucking matter what they think? and in all of the debating and unpacking i realized one thing: not really, no. things that resonate with ME, wont always register with Person X--certainly not always in the same way--and like...that is kind of okay, actually they dont have to get it its not for them its my thing other people will think its pretty cool, though and i can show them and those people will get excited...it only becomes problematic when Person X disregards that it resonates at all that is a dick move and like...if i, as a person. as a fucking force with which to be reckoned...resonate with so many people WHY should i keep trying to share that resonance with people who just kind of "meh" about it when i could just show it to the other people who think its pretty cool. so fuck it i will put it here and people can see it and they can think that its pretty cool or "meh" and thats ok but i should probably stop being my own Problematic Person X...

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