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hintsofhoney · 4 years

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alright, *cracks fingers*. so. I’ve written up a transcript just to lay it all out for myself and get the most important parts. listen, everyone. for all intents and purposes and legal reasons, THIS WAS A DREAM. alright? I dreamt this. and he is literally the nicest human being ever so I don’t want to just like... put our whole convo out there like that, but I think he said some stuff that was important for people to hear so... here we go

my *dreamt* zoom call with thee crowley below the cut

The first five minutes (of my dream) was just a bunch of introduction stuff and talking about my favorite Supernatural seasons which eventually led to him telling me how they filmed the Season 8 finale (which they did over the span of three days, and in between takes the crew members were like dead silent, as to keep the moment going, which Mark thought was really cool. Said it was one of his favorite things they did on Supernatural.) Anyways, he eventually asked me if I had any questions, so, I’ll start there.

MARK: So, do you have any questions you want to ask me about aaaaaannyyyythingggg?

ME: Um, I guess the number one thing I wanna know… um, so, I know you can’t speak for Dean and I don’t want to talk about Dean because you’re not Jensen, but, there’s like a lot of questions I guess or subtext or whatever concerning Dean’s sexuality and what not, but I want to know about demon Dean and Crowley’s relationship and if there was, I don’t know, anything like, any implied –

MARK: Well I think – I think you’re talking about… there’s a massive difference between sex and love. There’s a massive difference between, um, well, they can intertwine perfectly, that’s not the issue, but I mean you would believe with all the things that Crowley did for the Winchesters, that he was – that he very much loved Sam and Dean or loved who they are or what they are. To reduce it to, you know, a crush, or to something that – I mean, I don’t know, I think Crowley is very probably pansexual more than anything else; I don’t think anything phased him. I think, that’s why the whole stuff with Lucifer and licking the floor was kind of really stupidly boring for me because Crowley did weirder and crazier things on his own. I mean, it became this joke of trying to humiliate somebody who can’t be humiliated. There’s nothing you can humiliate Crowley with. So, that never sort of made sense, that was just a sort of writer’s glitch of thinking, “oooh, this would be funny to knock him down into subservience” and that’s what he does on a Wednesday, I mean it’s like the most un-inspiring thing. I think so much is projected onto the relationship between, certainly the four main characters, um, and, you know, look, getting comfortable with one’s sexuality and one’s identity is a massively complicated things, and if you want to live vicariously through what you believe people’s identity is and you can relate to that, great! Who cares? I mean, can I be absolutely honest? Apart from – what I do care about, you know, don’t ever take this and piece me or misquote it, because it’s very, very specific – um, somebody stopping somebody being able to express their own identity or whatever is an issue for me. That will always be an issue for me. Um, we should all be treated equally, and we all have the rights to believe and follow those things that we wish to follow, but to project relationships onto characters is an odd thing to do. I mean, it’s wishful thinking in a lot of ways, I mean, actually it’s quite… it’s quite reasonable because in the past if you think about it, if you ask your parents or anyone else, the only way sexuality was used was to, uh, literally demonize somebody. It was only ever used to say somebody was bad because this who they’re in love with. You know, that’s, that’s the thing. And it’s a massive change in the world that we’re moving towards, I should say, uh – a lack of consequence for who one loves, apart from the obvious consequences of human nature. You know, political consequences for who one loves – I’ve just watched Pete Butteigieg being, you know, sitting in congress with his husband there with him; that’s the first time that’s ever happened in United States congress and I’m so proud of that. Not just because the man is gay and happily married – that’s not even the issue for me, it’s because he’s the best man for the job and one of the smartest people on the planet. You know, it’s like using sexual templates, as they were, or gender templates as they are, or orientation templates as they are, we always use to disclude people from things. They were always used to discriminate. You know, labeling somebody was a way of discrimination. And where as labels are very important, to ones self, and they’re very important politically and they’re very important socio-economically and they’re very important in all those aspects, I yearn for a time when nobody gives a damn. I really do. But I mean, we have to go through so much to get there. I mean, let’s be honest, you can’t, you know, right the wrongs of hundreds of years of oppression in 20 minutes by saying, “let’s all move forward”. It just doesn’t work that way, it never has. But there’s a responsibility there, that if you’re going to represent, that you represent all. That you don’t just represent you. So, one has to be careful with a television program or, or, you know, Misha or myself, or, not speaking for the boys, but just generally, um, you have to be careful that what you advocate is inclusive, not disinclusive. Not excluding people... and it’s so hard to frame these conversations, that they’re equitable, it’s so hard to do that. And so, you know, we spend years pointing out the inequity and the injustice and the unfairness of the whole situation, and… I don’t know if the trick is to rise above, or, uh, maybe it’s as simple as love and coming together as a human race and make it very difficult for people to discriminate and exclude based on gender, race, color, religion, any of the subsets of humanity that we’ve decided we have. So, I think personal responsibility is the most important thing, but if one is in a position of power on a TV show, you got to remember what you’re representing, that you have a, you know, you have to cover all or cover none. So, you know, but if you stick to a story and you have a story about a person or two people and their journey, that’s shining light on things. If you try to advocate for all, I think it becomes a little more complicated. Does that make sense?

so, i just feel like he said some important things there, but like I also don’t really understand what he’s getting at really, y’know? oh! also, he didn’t watch the finale lmao

also! there’s this:

MARK: Because if you come down on one side or another, you’re admitting the sides, and that has its own political ramifications. If you push the ball up in the air and say, “you decide”, I don’t think that’s copping out. I think that’s, maybe not fulfilling everybody’s expectations, or not fulfilling everybody’s hopes, but at least you’re getting the question asked. You know, at least you’re getting the question asked. At least people are relating to it and going, “well, what if?”. Because it’s all “what if”, I mean, it’s a TV show, so it’s “what if”, you know? It’s not Misha being in love with Jensen, I mean as much as he loves Jensen, I don’t think that’s his thing – I mean you never know – but I’m saying yet again, I don’t exclude anything from anybody (I LITERALLY CAN’T BELIEVE HE SAID THIS LMAO). But to force my opinion or my identity belief upon a situation has a cost. It may be right, it may be absolutely right, and it may be necessary in many, many cases. But, in that circumstance, I think… there are a lot of people in the world that say that Jesus, for example, was anti-homosexual and that he was – and none of that is true, and none of that is provable in the New Testament, and I’m not talking about Leviticus and I’m not talking about early Bible and I’m not talking about the fact that more than 25,000 words have been changed in the King James edition and all of this stuff, but these things that people hold so sacred, the confusion that arises from that is being told that a man loving a man or a woman loving a woman or a man loving a man and a woman or whatever combination being there is either right or wrong because you’re being told by a pastor or the leaders of your church, is a very difficult thing to break down. I think what you have to do is at least put it out there so it’s visible, and so it becomes less and less deniable. And you know, people change over years, that’s the trouble with youth, is shit doesn’t move fast enough. “I need a decision now!”, and unfortunately, when you’re dealing with centuries of prejudice and centuries of un-enlightenment, I think that sometimes the best thing to do is reach as many people as possible and pose the question. And sometimes it’s essential to make a statement, absolutely, no question. It is essential to make a stand, in some circumstances. But to polarize a TV show, can be very disingenuous to those who need to go ask their own questions, who need to go say, “well, where does Jesus say this is wrong?” you know, if that’s your beliefs.

he also said, when we went off on a tangent about doom patrol:

MARK: There are issues that are being addressed here [on Doom Patrol] that are not being addressed on other shows, and yet again, we have the format, and I don’t know that Supernatural ever had the format because it was on the CW.

anywho, in conclusion, fuck the cw.

also, again, for all intents and purposes this was a dream I had :)))))))

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mnemehoshiko · 5 years

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STAR WARS INTO DARKNESS

A (Salt) Review of Star Wars Episode 9: The Rise of Skywalker.

Warning 1: All opinions are mine and no one (sadly) paid me for them.

Warning 2: I’m going to strive to be charitable as possible. Keyword, STRIVE.

It finally came. The conclusion to the Skywalker Saga, a nine film series starting with Shmi Skywalker and her lineage.

When we left the The Last Jedi; Finn was tenderly checking up on Rose who endangered her life to save him. Steadily finding his place in the Resistance and deciding that it was a cause worth fighting for. Ben Solo, also known to the galaxy as Kylo Ren, has just killed his life long abuser but failed to relinquish himself from the ties of the past. Rey was dealing with detaching herself from the idea that she needed to Be Someone in Order to Do Something only to realise that she, a nobody, was good enough. As Leia Organa said, we have all we need.

Cool right?

Yeah, just forget that movie. Actually, just forget like any development that occurred over the last two movies. Furthermore, turn your brain off. No, really please remove any kind of higher cognitive function and any knowledge of Star Wars beyond “pew, pew, pew” and “wOOO”. That’s literally the only way to truly enjoy this film.

This movie is a quest. A long big-budget multi-step fetch quest. Fetch quests are a common part of RPGs and can be enjoyable! Add to the narrative! Interactive. A movie that is nothing but fetch quest after fetch quest to the point that honestly, the first two thirds of the movie could have been dropped because it was so distressingly nonsensical.

Loose summary;

Ben Solo is on a planet. Being very very lorge and murking people left and right. Why? Because reasons. That this planet happens to be Mustafar and that he’s killing Vader Cultists evidently is not considered relevant. Even though Ben Solo introduction in TFA, which JJ wrote (with the assistance of Kasdan and Arndt), is basically as Vader’s #1 fanboy. But who cares about narrative information when you have sweet sweet red lighting and like a flight scene.

Anyway, Ben heads to Exegol because evidently that’s where the fancy schmancy totally Not A Holocron is directing him towards. In which he approaches some goth-esque temple with vats of Snokes. Yes, You Heard Correctly, Vats of Snokes. And Palpatine. Who’s just hanging on a crane. Just chillin’ and gleefully tells Ben Solo that he’s been every voice in his head since birth. So learning your abuser is still alive is totally dope. But hey, PALPATINE IS BACK! REMEMBER PALPATINE? ISN’T THAT COOL, yells JJ Terrio desperately trying to like Hype You Up And Remind You Of The Star Wars of Their Childhood.

Finn and Poe “I Have Literally No Purpose To Any of This Narrative and JJ Terrio is About to Fuck Over My Backstory” Dameron are getting data from a contact. For some reason a glorified dick-shaped Alien is there. Consequently, this is the same alien that replaced Rose Tico on merchandise. A reasonable person with minimal brain function would assume it’s because he plays a critical role in the plot. Remember what I said about thinking? Stop it. Klaud is there primarily for you to admire that JJ’s tentacle kink is Alive and Well and Thus Everything Is True (tm) Star Wars Again.

Rey is floating surrounded by rocks because That’s What Cool Jedi Do. Then she does a training course because after two films we have absolutely no proof that she has any fight training, according to Reddit and like JJ Terrio is trying to get Reddit to go to the Star Wars Prom with them. So, we need a training montage and Rey going to robo-Leia and saying that she will “earn [Leia’s] brother’s saber”. Why would she want to earn a grumpy curmudgeon who fucked over his only nephew and hid from his twin sister for years? Well, JJ Terrio dreamed of earning Luke’s saber and like what is the purpose of writing other than Wish Fulfillment.

Palpatine is back! Why? We don’t know and we don’t even know what he said because evidently it was decided that it belonged in Fortnite...instead of the film. Why? Here’s a lollipop and a pew pew to stop thinking sweetie. Either way he’s on Exegol and Rey saw notes scribbled in the margins that you need a Sith Holocro-- I mean ~Sith Wayfinder~ --because JJ has never seen Star Wars since he saw it in the theaters in 1983-- to get there. Which is on Pasaana.

WHICH IS HAVING SPACE BURNING MAN RIGHT NOW! (which happens every forty two years. Which is how long ago Star Wars Episode 4 Premiered. Remember fans! Isn’t that a Cool Thing To Drop? says JJ Terrio deftly skimming Reddit in order to gain fanbros love and affection and nostalgia boners.) LOOK AT ALL THE ALIENS DOING THE SPACE MACARENA! Because WOO DON’T YOU LOVE PARTY SCENES?

The force bond shows up and you can some how transfer stuff between the bond? Which like in the hands of another writer would be fascinating and engaging. Sadly, this is a JJ Terrio production and nuanced storytelling and dialogue is Fake and Not Star Wars.

Either way, Ben knows that they’re there and they are running from stormtroopers RIGHT INTO LANDO CALRISSIAN,-- remember him? goes JJ Terrio. You remember Lando right?. I do, I go. I’ve seen the movies and you’ve given no reason why Finn and Rey would know who the fuck he is seeing how he’s evidently been living as a hermit In The Same Outfit for over a decade. (BUT REMEMBER HIM, whines J.J. Terrio. Yes, I do. I SAW THE FUCKING OT JJ).

Anyway, more exposition occurs because JJ Terrio has no understanding how visual language works and it detracts from Real Star Wars Things Like - Space Chases - Pew Pew - Witty quips! because Witty quips! Are Important for A Star Wars, says JJ Terrio.

Nevermind that stormtroopers could fly since the Clone Wars and there’s literally no reason as to why Finn would not know this but like that would require you to give him

- a character arc - character growth - dialogue beyond “WOOOOO” and “REYYYYYY” (also side notes; it was depressing as fuck seeing Finn’s growth in TLJ to going beyond being Rey-centric to only spend the entire movie yelling a White Lady’s Name. I GO TO THE THEATRE TO NOT SEE REALITY, JJ.)

JJ Terrio: BUT HE’S FORCE SENSITIVE?? me, who’s been on the Finn is Force Sensitive Train since TFA: AND YOU DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WITH IT AND IMPLIED THAT IT WAS ONLY REASON HE WAS ABLE TO FIGHT THE STORMTROOPER PROGRAMMING??? (i.e. this is really fucking gross eugenics shit pls stop JJ Terrio and like just stop)

*deep breath*

ANYWAY, where was I? Oh yeah, Star Wars Into Darkness.

Either way, they find the Subtle Knife a Sith dagger? Along with force healing foreshadowing. But they have a dagger! Which They Can’t Read! But Threepio can! But He Can’t Say It Out Loud Because His Programming Forbids It.

And then the KoR, the galatic boy band, and Ben show up because of course. And they capture Chewie and put him on a transport.

Rey, of course, reaches out to Stop The Transport.

Ben, tries to stop her.

They to a back and forth that is similar to TLJ without any of the emotional build up of TLJ but that’s because JJ Terrio believes Emotions Are Not Star Wars.

And she lets loose LIGHTNING and makes the transport blow up and she believes Chewie is dead. Problem: Chewie isn’t dead. Which means she would be able to sense him in the Force. “But Mneme”, you say, “the Force isn’t like a GPS where you just Sense People.” That’s fair! Except....then...she does...when she’s on the Snow Planet. So like???

Either way, we have a Dagger that We Need to Read That Threepio Can’t Say Out Loud.

A Solution That Uses Braincells: well we know that the Millenium Falcon has three droid brains! So like we could just hook up Threepio to like the Falcon and transmit the codes and get some really great Easter eggs re: the Falcon and like the setup of the ship!

....

JJ Terrio: OR WE COULD GO TO THIS SNOW PLANET me: wha-- JJ Terrio: SNOW PLANET WHERE POE DAMERON RAN SPICE me: did you just make....your Only Latino Character Into A---Drug Runner JJ Terrio: REMEMBER HAN SOLO?? HE’S JUST LIKE HIM!!! me: pls stawp pls, I’m begging you stawp JJ Terrio: ALSO LOOK AT HIM FLIRTING WITH A GIRL SO HE’S LIKE OBVIOUSLY STRAIGHT me: bi....people.....exist...like...that is...a thing JJ TERRIO: ALSO WE’LL SHOW U HER EYES TO SHOW THAT SHE’S HUMAN AND NOT A WEIRD ALIEN BECAUSE POE DAMERON IS A RED BLOODED AMERICAN LIKE REDDIT me: pls....stop...why....

anyway, he needs a memory wipe in order for it. Which is a really touching scene....or would have been if it wasn’t immediately retconned because like R2 has backups. So like whoo.

So that’s like *two* instances of fakeout death because like Nothing Is Of Consequence Because Star Wars.

Except Leia dying because fuck moms, say JJ Terrio. Moms are Not Star Wars. The Reddit bros have now started to return their text messages.

More busy stuff happens. Hux dies. I wasn’t able to thoroughly enjoy it because by this point I had A Headache from all the Pew Pew and Wooooo~~.

Ben tells Rey that like ~her power is Palpatines power because like How Else Can Rey Be Powerful.” Does this make any sense? Not at all but like Don’t Think Too Hard.

He also finally takes off his stupid helmet that was glued together by ~Sith Alchemy~ that they bought from Space!Michaels.

Rey is vaguely disraught but like She Finally Has A Purpose and the Reddit Bros are Appeased.

More shit happens. Does it matter? Not really.

They meet Jannah! She’s cool and has the exact same backstory as Finn. Because in Star Wars There Are Only (2) Backstories for black characters. They line up the dagger that is old as fuck with the death star wreckage. Which lines up exactly. Evidently erosion is Not A Thing.

Finn and Jannah and basically go, Wow Isn’t It Rad That Because We Have The Force We [Finn, Jannah and her crew] Were Able To Reject Brainwashing and Bounce Because We Have The Force.

Rey runs off and Finn yells “REY!!” at some point but at least he knows his best angles while he does it.

Rey meets Dark!Rey who’s a vision....for five seconds. Because Remember if Girls Go Dark They Have Sinned In The Eyes of The Force. Ben shows up and crushes the Holocron because I refuse to call it that stupid-ass name-- dear fucking lord his hand is big--and WELP I GUESS I HAVE THE ONLY ONE.

They fight because We Need A Light Saber Fight Except This One is So Lackluster.

Then Leia reaches out to do something that will use up all her strength says Maz. How does Maz know this? Idk but she’s played by Lupita N’yongo so at least it sounds Deep And Wise because That’s Why You Cast Black People...to sound deep and wise. =_= **deeper breathe**

Anyway, she reaches out to her son! Her son hears her? I think? Either way it distracts him which lets Rey impale him. Except then she heals him?? And is like, I wanted to take your hand, Ben’s hand. which like I’d be fine with if like the movie had like worked for it. But like That Would Involve Actual Conversations Between Characters and We Are Going At 34243242432 pps (parsecs per second) and thus DO NOT HAVE TIme For That.

Ben then has a rehash of the scene from TFA because JJ Terrio is a fucking hack and is unable to create original material and this would have been meaningful if like Any of the Emotions Had Been Earn in The Fucking Film. But hey, I felt .75 of an emotion when Han Solo cradled his cheek so I will accept this. Then he yeets his saber into the ocean. Because. Yeet. Sadly, this movie is Not Over and My Suffering Will Not End

Poe and Finn head back to base with Jannah because I guess that’s what we’re doing? They find out that Leia is dead etc etc etc. The Resistance has a Circle Planning Session for the Final Battle that JJ Terrio lifted straight from ROTJ and the Reddit Bros brought them a corsage for Fanbro Prom. I am reminded that ROTJ was better than this garbage that I Paid Actual Money To Watch. Rey heads to Fish Nun island and decides to pull a Luke Skywalker move even we learned from the Last Movie (TLJ) why that was a Bad Idea but you know WE GET TO SEE LUKE AGAIN IS A GARBAGE WIG BECAUSE REDDIT BROS AMIRITE? We get the most hamfisted performance out of Mark Hamill and I’m just like damn The Last Jedi as a fucking gift and a _Jedi’s weapon is important_ platitude like his dad wasn’t yeeting his saber left and right. But Who Cares About Canon When We Have Pew Pew Pew Pew.

Luke tells her that Yes He And Leia Always Knew She Was A Palpatine which like means - Leia literally did not learn from the Last Time She Obscured Someone’s Parentage and the Fall Out - Actively lied to Rey - Luke actively lied to Rey - jfc this poor girl has been aggressively lied by most of the authority adults in her life??? - HER PARENTS SOLD HER TO PROTECT HER which is such a fucking damning think along with the fact that her parents are idiots and like didn’t think to take her to the new republic and like THERE ARE 23432432 things wrong with this set up but that is a Whole ‘Nother Rant

Also evidently? Leia ended her Jedi Journey (which abbreviated as JJ, coincidence? I THINK NOT.) because she saw her sons demised but evidently....couldn’t sense her son being groomed by Snoke, creation of Palpatine and like this entire movie makes Leia look like an ineffectual idiot?? Like I was really hoping that Leia was going to be able to escape the “Fuck Mom’s” curse of Star Wars BUT I GUESS THAT BECAUSE THAT’S NOT ~true star wars~

Anyway, evidently Leia gave him her saber which I guess she made but no one decided to show that but instead some freakish CGI (that they swore they wouldn’t do) fight scene because like Leia Obviously Isn’t A Real Force User Unless You Use A Lightsaber. The Reddit Bros Nod Sagely. So Rey decides to go to Exegol.....using the Luke’s X-Wing. The Reddit Bros are weeping tears of joy at this point. The Resistance starts their FINAL ASSAULT! THEY HAVE SPACE HORSES RIDING ON A SHIP BECAUSE DOESN’T THAT LOOK COOL! FINN KIND OF USES THE FORCE. THEY DECIDE TO BLOW UP THE STAR DESTROYERS BECAUSE FUCK CHILD SOLDIERS AMIRITE (rip Finn’s Stormtrooper backstory that JJ constructed that He Couldn’t Even Be Arse To Complete or like Think Of Because Like That Would Be Nuanced Shit but like He Gets to - Jump Over Things! - Run! - Know His Angles - Yell desperately After A White Lady because ahahahahha fuck WOC when there’s white p*ssy on the line AMIRITE?)

Either way they’re in trouble and Poe is dismayed and is like yo i’m sorry we’re doomed. Because...that’s.....what generals do. Give The Fuck Up. BUT DON’T WORRY LANDO IS HERE TO SAVE THE DAY BECAUSE EVIDENTLY WHILE THE GALAXY IGNORED LEIA ORGANA’S PLEAS, THEY LISTENED TO LANDO

(Crack theory: He hit up all his exes.)

Rey flies to Exegol to confront Grandpalps. Who never wanted her dead but to become Empress after spending 2.5 movies wanting her dead via puppet!Snoke. Also kudos to JJ Terrio to making a Sith Temple be so fucking boring and lackluster. That Took Skill.\

ANYWAY SHE SEES HER FRIENDS IN TROUBLE MUCH LIKE IN TLJ and in ROTJ but JJ Terrio really really loves his nostalgia and ROTJ was very very very formative evidently. She’s about to Strike Him Down In Anger And Absorb Grandpapa’s essence in order to save her friends but WAIT WHO IS THIS IDIOT RUNNING IN WITH NO FUCKING PLAN Yes, it is Ben Solo channeling his father. As carrying the blaster that Lando gifted to him in Aftermath but like we can only suppose that because who Needs Convos When You Have Pew Pew Pew~ His former Knights show up (who have also never spoken because hahahahah dialogue? Sounds fake. Also moment of Silence of Rian who kept them alive and used Praetorian guards in TLJ instead because he assumed that JJ made them for a meaningful reason because he was Unaware That JJ Was A Fucking Hack)

Anyway, Rey senses him! They do a super cool force bond moment that actually Pays Off and Rey hands off her saber to Ben. Through the force. It’s dope.

#BenSoloChallenge happens.

[In spite of like No Speaking At All, Adam Driver successfully channels the aura of Han Solo in spite of JJ Terrio desperately Insisting That Poe Dameron is Obviously Han Look He Even Ran Spice!!! Look!!]

Eventually they both stand before Palpatine Ready To Throw Down except in stand Palps leeches the lifeforce from them and then yeets Ben into a pit and Rey collapses.

THEN ALL THE JEDI FROM THE MOVIES AND CLONE WARS INCLUDE AHSOKA WHICH MAKES NO SENSE GIVEN CLONE WARS BUT WHAT EVER DON’T YOU FEEL VALIDATED!!! FANS!!! SCREAMS JJ TERRIO

me: no.

Rey pulls a Wonder Woman move because all you need to do to redirect Force Lightning is cross your light sabers. Anyway, that effort kills her (or like maybe not? Says Terrio in multiple interviews because men from Harvard Literally Never Shut Up.)

Ben somehow?? Climbs?? Out of the pit?? Under his own power because The Jedi Still Haven’t Forgiven the Skywalker Line for Anakin. Even though Anakin also reached out to Rey? I’m just assuming the soul of St. Maul of the Pit was yelling angry motivational speeches to get him out of the pit while St. Ventress adding sarcasm commentary comparing Ben and his namesake.

EITHER WAY HE’S OUT OF THE PIT! And is like in agony because Rey is uh in limp ragdoll mode so probably dead? We’re gonna go with dead.

He limps over to her because uh evidently getting yeeted into a pit is Not Good For Ones Health or Limbs.

Ben cradles her in his arms and at that moment I had to Apologize For Everyone I Dragged for Size Kink because Adam Driver is Fucking Large and His Hand is Fucking Huge and I, Mneme, Was Wrong You Are Valid.

*cough* where was I? Ah yes, he’s cradling her in his arms realizing she’s dead and I guess? Channeling the force to heal her. Which it does.

He’s happy! She’s happy!

She says “Ben” breathlessly.

AND THEN SHE SNOGS HIM LIKE THE AWKWARD VIRGINS THAT THEY ARE.

The Force realizes that a Male Skywalker is Getting A Boner and Goes Nope. And he just collapses and fades away at the same time that Leia fades away because ~symmetry~. Was a war going on? Uh maybe but like LETS NOT WORRY ABOUT LOGISTICS BUT INSTEAD CUT TO EWOKS!! WE ALL LOVE EWOKS RIGHT!! Rey flies back to Ajan Kloss. Poe, Finn, and Rey hug because this movie is almost over and they can stop trying to sell a non-existent trio created because JJ didn’t have the balls to let Poe stay dead in TFA.

Commander D’Arcy kisses her wife in the background but no one really notices and it was cut in Singapore but like JJ Terrio are Woke AF Y’ALL but not too woke because else they’ll get dumped by Reddit Bros.

No, we are Sadly Not Done.

LETS GO TO A SAND PLANET. No, it’s not Jakku it’s Tatooine~ DON’T YOU GUYS REMEMBER TATOOINE!! go JJ Terrio.

You mean the planet where Anakin Skywalker was a slave, Luke Skywalker desperately wanted to leave, and Leia Organa was put into that humiliated outfit? Yes. I remember.

REY’S HERE TO BURY LUKE AND LEIA’S SABERS HERE!! At the Lars homestead that is somehow intact....in spite of Jawas.

What wha-- why??, you may ask.

Well Luke never got to show Leia his home planet, goes JJ Terrio. Literally anyone who saw ROTJ.....they were on it in then?? JJ Terrio: i can’t see mariah carey dot gif

Rey also shows off her new lightsaber that was evidently crafted from her staff but we were not shown that on screen because like It Was Considered To Emotional for this Film.

Then finally some old woman passes by and is like Who are you? Rey: Rey Old Nosy Lady: Rey who? *Rey stares at the Force Ghosts of Luke and Leia looking like her parents* Rey: Rey Skywalker JJ TERRIO: SEEEEE WE DID REY SKYWALKER!!! AREN’T WE COOL me: she took the name of a grumpy old man who rejected her and whom she bounced off with his shit because he was being a dick....OKAY JAN

(ffs they could have let her take the name Organa but like Fuck Women amirite? *DRINKS*)

and yeah that’s it. Kid that was brainwashed as a child was reduced to going WHOOOOO every 5 seconds with no thought regarding his fellow stormtroopers who are still brainwashed.

Kid that was abandoned under the guise of ~love~ and sold to an abusive guardian and struggled and starved for years returns to a planet of sand and yes I know that she is probably going else where but that was a choice they made to have the last shot of her Alone with a Droid staring at the twin suns because JJ Terrio have been doing nothing but spraying nostalgia in my face for just under 2 and a half hours.

Kid who was actively groomed since childhood and only just now released from said clutches but lol can’t atone because he dead now.

Kid who lost her sister to the machine of war is pushed aside because she dared to exist.

and Poe.

The End of the Skywalker Saga y’all.

Bonus: “Uh, Mneme what about Rose?” She got exactly a 76 seconds that she acted her heart out in but evidently seeing a non-submissive Asian woman in Star Wars was too much for people last film so that uh Essentially Cut Her Out. Don’t worry they made sure to give her a quarter of a page in the visual dictionary and the Merry the Hobbit two page spread. So like Don’t Worry The Asian Girl Will Not Hurt You. “Mneme, what as the point of Poe?” Fuck, if I fucking know.

“Uh Mneme, the Only Reason Finn Didn’t Have An Arc Is Because of KYLE RON!!!!”

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Exhibit C

trust me, it really wasn’t.

#tros spoilers #mneme watches: TROS #Star Wars Into Darkness

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marybeatriceofmodena · 5 years

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TFW when you try to do Anastasia but you also suck at your job: A Master Class by The Rise of Skywalker

Okay. So, I promised you guys a TROS review, and it’s coming, I promise… except I’ll be making two “spin-off posts” about specific issues just in order to clear up some stuff, mainly because in my mind, those issues are important.

First post is going to be, of course, about Rey’s parentage.

So. After TFA, it would have been possible for Rey to have been the kid of “someone”. However, TLJ made it impossible to do so, unless you’d have some serious, bullshit retconning going on – which is exactly what happened.

I know this is a VERY controversial thing to say at this point, but post-TFA, Rey Palpatine “could” have been possible. Okay, maybe not have her be Palpatine’s granddaughter, but more of a descendant of his.

This said, I “tried” making an origin story for Rey Palpatine that “works” for the purposes of this meta, on a hypothetical basis, while making it consistent with canon (something JJ Abrams and Chris Terrio clearly couldn’t be bothered to do, LMAO). I had plotholes no matter what. I do think I could have eventually found something with a little bit of brainstorming, but truth is, IT’S HARD, and a lot of exposition would have been for novels/comics only.

From a thematic perspective, though? It wouldn’t have been a bad idea. For this to work, though, you would have needed to go on full-blown Romeo and Juliet mode with sprinkles of Anastasia, though. I mean, The Lion King 2 did something similar, so why the fuck not. Because, yeah, Ben Solo, the grandson of Darth Vader, son of Han Solo and Leia Organa, the last prince of Alderaan, who falls in love with the last Imperial princess Rey Palpatine while they’re on opposite sides of the war but not the ones you’d think of is the stuff of fairy tales and star-crossed romances, except this one would have a happy ending and brought peace to the galaxy.

Truth be told, I still really enjoy fanfics who go for that story and find a way to make it work in canonverse or in AUs – because it’s genuinely fun. But in canon itself, as I point out earlier… it’s not easy.

So, we have Rian Johnson who said he made a list of potential origins for Rey while he was working on TLJ’s script. You bet Rey Palpatine was on that list. However, he came to the conclusion that Rey Nobody was the best way to go, and whatdyaknow, he made the right call.

Why? Rey Nobody requires minimal exposition. Storytelling-wise, you don’t have a lot of brainstorming to do, and it’s easy to have Ben revealing it, and easy to present it as a repressed memory of Rey’s. On a thematic level, that puts Rey on the same level as Jane Eyre or the main character from Rebecca: she’s a nobody from nowhere who is thrown into a family drama, and since she’s the glitch in the matrix, she must stop the story from becoming a tragedy.

See? Simple. You got your easy exposition, you got your thematic coherence, and you got the literary call-backs.

So, JJ and Terrio decided to retcon this shit because, as they said, they thought it was boring. I think Colin Trevorrow probably thought it was boring too, because I have my reasons to think a lot of TROS is from him (but more on that in my main review). But thing is, it’s not it’s “boring”, it’s literally that they didn’t know what the fuck to do with Rey. No, more than that, they don’t understand her, and frankly, they can’t be bothered to do so. She’s an empty vessel they can toy with at their ease, and in the process, turn her in a Mary-Sue. Because yes, TROS!Rey was a Mary-Sue, whereas TFA/TLJ!Rey was not. So, what I say above regarding Rey might be a bomb for some, considering how people are (understandably) defensive when it comes to that statement. I promise I will elaborate more about it in the main review, once again.

So, with the lineage aspect addressed, it’s time to talk about Rey’s parents themselves.

It’s hilarious how HARD JJ and Terrio tried to make Kylo’s explanation work – because as much as they butchered the shit out of him, they said: “Well he’s a bad liar, right? Gotta keep that in mind.”

Although, I don’t think it was a case of them being concerned with Kylo’s characterization – they’re not that graceful. They had to figure out QUICK why the hell Kylo wouldn’t have known Rey was a Palpatine from the get-go, because the Force is a great DNA test and shit, and I guess that’s how Palps located Ben’s Mighty Skywalker Blood™. Except that still doesn’t work because Palps couldn’t even locate his own goddamn granddaughter, but I digress.

Seriously, why would Kylo lie to Rey about her being a nobody instead of her being a Palpatine? It makes no sense, because if you’re going to roll with the theory Kylo just wants UNLIMITED POWAH, the Palpatine princess is not only a great asset (since marrying her legitimizes your claim to the throne in the eyes of the Imperial Remnants, I mean, that’s literally why Henry VII married Elizabeth of York), it’s also the one argument she needs to hear in order to sway her to your side. So I guess JJ and Terrio’s one shared brain cell kinda flicked a bit at that moment.

This said, getting the Palpatine princess on his side is clearly Kylo’s intention in TROS (which, again, makes no sense with what was set up in TLJ but that’s something I’m keeping for another post), except they trip all over themselves by having Kylo say he didn’t lie to Rey in TLJ. Except…

So, what Ben said in TLJ was the following:

Her parents sold her for drinking money.

They’re dead and buried in a pauper’s grave somewhere on Jakku.

Rey is related to no one.

Here’s what Ben reveals to Rey in TROS:

Her parents sold her for her protection.

They died on another planet, while being hunted down by a guy working for Palpatine and instructed to bring Rey back to them.

Rey’s dad is a Palpatine and Rey’s mom is Villanelle (nah, for real: the actress who plays Rey’s mom is Jodie Comer).

So, um, yeah, it’s the EXACT opposite of what Ben said in TLJ. Just say Palps was fucking with Ben’s mind-reading or Rey’s memories instead, JJ. Not that “Oh Ben was telling the truth, but he didn’t have the whole story”, because that’s not it.

For the latter, once again, it would have been feasible: the one thing, for me, that was possible to be added was that Rey had killed her parents accidentally, by having their ship to leave Jakku crash down with the Force: that’s what made her Force powers go dormant for all those years and provoked her trauma. It would also make sense that Ben would willfully not bring that back to her memories, because she’d understandably not be able to cope with the truth, which is often what happens to a lot of trauma victims. THAT was the theory I had pre-TROS, because that’s the only answer I could come up with when it came to JJ saying that there was more to Rey’s past. I guess I expected JJ to be, like, actually able to write, lmao.

I even wonder if that was actually in the cards, considering we see Rey in TROS bringing down a transport that supposedly has Chewie in it… but I guess they deemed that to be “too dark” for their heroine. Except the bullshit that comes instead is actually… much worse.

To make things simple, I’ll just take the above points and develop them.

Rey’s parents sold her for her protection.

Okay, so, Rey’s parents need to hide her to make sure Palps doesn’t get his hands on her. Fair enough. This said, why did it have to be Jakku and not, like, ANYWHERE ELSE? Especially that Palpatine had interest in Jakku at some point and that maybe having Rey anywhere close to that place would not be a good idea?

But let’s play the game and say that Jakku is the only place they can hide her because… I don’t know, it’s hard to find someone there with the Force. Whatever. Even then, why the fuck would they think Unkar Plutt is a proper guardian for a tiny little girl? You know they could have walked a few miles more and found a nice old man who likes the Light Side of the Force and the Jedi and all that shit called Lor San Tekka? Hey, why not even try to find a guy like Luke Skywalker who’s like, a Jedi and shit, and have him take care of their little girl and protect her?

Even then, why the hell doesn’t Rey’s mom stay with her daughter? Her husband is the Palpatine, not her. All Rey’s mom has to do is find a nicer hiding place for her and Rey somewhere on Jakku, like, not Niima Outpost (again, Tuanul is just a few miles away), and just let Dad hide somewhere else. He’s a grownass man, he can take care of himself and he just has to hide on Nar Shaadaa or some shit. Fuck, why don’t all three of them hide on Nar Shaadaa? Or in the Coruscant undercity? ANYWHERE ELSE?

Also, wouldn’t Plutt clearly see two desperate parents as a business opportunity? Like, if you want to do a Les Misérables comparison here, he wouldn’t “buy” Rey from them, he’d try to get money for them à la Thénardier with Fantine. Except Rey’s parents make Fantine look like frigging Einstein because at least she had the excuse of thinking Madame Thénardier would take good care of Cosette since Éponine and Azelma seemed well-cared for.

Again, a creepy-looking alien who exploits the outpost’s inhabitants for portions in exchange for junk, who asks you to pay him to take care of your kid should be a big fucking red flag – unless you want to involve blackmail, but that’s a whole other can of worms.

Seriously, why the hell would Rey’s parents even ACCEPT money that comes from selling their own child? Were they really that desperate? Fuck, even if I had no other way of getting off Jakku, I wouldn’t even THINK of using money that comes from selling my own child. Any parent who’d even CONSIDER doing that is automatically a godawful parent in my book. Shame on you. And shame on JJ for trying to make me buy them as saints, because THEY’RE NOT, JUST BY THAT SINGLE ACTION.

They died on another planet, while being hunted down by a guy working for Palpatine and instructed to bring Rey back to them.

I didn’t notice it until Jenny Nicholson pointed it out in her TROS review, because it SOMEHOW completely escaped my notice, but… Rey’s mom saying Rey is DEFINITELY NOT on Jakku is like the worst fucking lie I’ve ever seen in a film because it’s so hilariously bad. Congratulations, Space Villanelle, may you be forever remembered for this line.

Also, it’s stupid af that Oshi (that’s his name, right? Can’t be bothered to Google it, might just call him Barney the Bounty Hunter from now on) just kills Rey’s parents, because HE’S EVUL MUAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA, because he literally creates a dead end for himself. He still has no fucking clue where Rey is, and he just killed off his only leads. CONGRATULATIONS BARNEY THE BOUNTY HUNTER, YOU SUCK AT YOUR JOB.

Rey’s dad is a Palpatine and Rey’s mom is Villanelle.

So, Rey’s dad looks like he’s in his early thirties at most, right? Maybe a little younger than Luke and Leia, then. So, unless he got frozen in carbonite at some point, that means Palpatine fucked at some point while looking like this:

Anyway, I sure hope Sly Moore was Grandma Palpatine because she’s pretty much the only person who’d be game to smash raisin ass. Which leaves me with extremely disturbing pictures of Palps and Sly having sex, so I’ll spare you the more graphic details of my twisted mind that’s screaming for an end to this misery.

I sure hope having Rey’s mom as Jodie Comer isn’t a clue that we’ll get spin-offs with those two (GOD PLEASE NO), but while I crack jokes about how Rey’s mom is Villanelle and Palpadad kinda looks like Ramsay Bolton… I find it fucking hilarious they dressed Rey’s mom in BLUE. LIKE, SEE? SEE? SHE’S IN BLUE, LIKE THE VIRGIN MARY, BECAUSE REY IS SPACE JESUS!!!! GET IT??? GETIT???? PLEASE TELL ME YA GET IT, OKAY???? *gross sobbing* I knew we should have had Rey born in a manger, that would have made the artistic intentions clear *wipes tear*

All right. There’s a lot more that could be said about Rey’s lineage, but I’m keeping that for my main review because what’s left to say ties up to the bigger picture. What I tried to point out with this preliminary post is that while Rey Palpatine *could* have worked, in different circumstances, it couldn’t have had post-TLJ… and we’re left to see a mutilated horse who was dead on arrival. And that’s tragic.

#star wars #tros spoilers #the rise of skywalker spoilers #rants and reviews #anti tros #rey #reylo #my meta #reylo meta #rey meta

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dukeofriven · 5 years

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Good In The World

I meant what I said with that extended LOTR quote being what the Epilogues are about - about there being good in the world, and it being worth fighting for. Given that I’ve been up to my neck reading Hussie commentary lately I feel like I’ve gotten a pretty strong grasp on what makes him tick - and who boy does this guy love stories about friendship, teamwork, and love, loves them so much he sometimes sounds like Téa Gardner about to lay down a friendship speech on Yu-Gi-Oh. So - while noting that the extent to which the epilogues are and are not Hussie’s work are even more muddled that usual in regards Homestuck - the take-away is this: everything went wrong, in both Meat and Candy, because everyone forgot that - that friendship, teamwork, and love is the only reason any of them survived. The Sburb survivors came to Earth-C as literal gods, beings of inordinate celebrity and power, and then didn’t work as hard as they should have to still be friends and family. We point to John as some kind of recluse but it quickly becomes clear that everyone stopped working at staying together. Karkat and Dave are as much shut-ins as John, stewing together in their own incapacity. Katkat’s self-loathing, so often a hilarious joke in Homestuck is - free of the immediate pressures of Sburb - shown to be intensely debilitating. It undermines him repeatedly in Meat, and requires incipit genocide in Candy to be set aside, costing him everything that mattered on a personal level. Dave made the mistake of many in his position before him, leaning too much on the first epiphany about trauma and not taking the care to continue down the path to further healing and reconciliation with the past. It leaves him desperately reaching for intimacies he too scared of to actually experience. Coupled with an abused kid’s terror of perpetuating harm he lies to Karkat and Jade both time and time again to try and save their feelings. Jade, so utterly fucked up by years of isolation and loneliness, and so endearingly, crushingly full of love makes all the wrong decisions in trying to build a triad (that is - the triad could have worked, but she went about it all wrong) and makes two separate instantiations of Dave and Karkat miserable. Rose and Kanaya have no malice in their actions, but they do what married people always do: pull away from everyone else, and focus on themselves and their new lives. Harmless, normally - or, at least, not seriously harmful - but those lives took them underground and away from everyone else, The two most insightful and level-headed members of the party simply weren’t around when everyone needed them most. Unaware how bad things were getting they missed so many of the warning sides that would have clued them in earlier that everyone was going off the rails - and being as isolated as she was in Meat this left Rose vulnerable to the manipulation most likely to succeed: just like with Doc Scratch she was preyed upon by someone who could flatter her sense of grievance, knowledge, and uniqueness. Terezi wouldn’t have stood by and let things go to shit - but she was doomed the moment she tied her heart to ego personified, and so was absent too. As for the Alphas, well - their problems were never resolved in the first place, their 'conflict arcs’ interrupted by the arrival of the betas. Only Roxy, element of void, utterly self-contained, a refugee from a dead reality, walked onto Earth-C able to withstand the horror that awaited them: celebrity. Skaia is benevolent, but it is not wise: Sburb seems to have a cherub’s worldview, full of bright colours and heightened stories, but not much maturity. When the victors of Sburb escaped to Earth-C the last thing they needed was celebrity, praise, and positions of note. The issues are all laid out in the prologue: John retired before he ever started working, every one of them richer than any mortal could conceive of. These kids didn’t need parades, they needed to go school. Jane didn’t need honorary degrees from every business school on the planet, Jake didn’t need a TV show centred entirely around his ass: what everyone needed was to be aggressively ordinary. Mundane and unregarded. They needed to put everyone in a group home with four on-staff counselors and take a chunk of years doing nothing but heal. Because everyone was damaged. Other than Calliope - a special case - everybody walked out of Sburb having witnessed at least one apocalypse. Put aside any of the individual traumas and deaths and abuses and sins and just focus on that alone: the death of entire worlds and the burden of saving seven sentient species. Rather than the ultimate Reward being a sit-down with kindly professionals who could help a bunch of kids cope with that, these literal children entered a new world and built new lives on a foundation of dust. The beta kids never finished seventh grade. Jane Crocker never finished high school. Jade Harley, Jake English, Roxy Lalonde, and Dirk Strider never went to school at all. Not one of those four had ever been around more than four humans in their lives until the day they won the game. They couldn’t have. Jade and Jake grew up alone on islands. Roxy and Dirk grew up in the apocalypse. Dirk grew up in a literal box. As Cascade hit Dave and John were the only living humans Jade had ever met who wasn’t her grandpa: and she spent three years alone on a ship with only the Nannasprites and consorts for company. (And Jaspers to chase.) For those four especially, think about they went through within 24-hours: BAM here’s a group of people including your alt-relatives and literal aliens BAM here’s a crazy fucking battle against technicolour chess people, killer dogs, and fish queens BAM here’s a pristine new-ish world better BAM produce thousands of species to populate a new world /TABLE SCRATCH/ Welcome to Earth-C in the year 5000 Celebrity Gods. Here’s your debit cards full of riches. Seriously - this all happens in about a day. And yet people are shocked that things didn’t work out? They were sixteen years old. Four of them had no formal education of any kind, nor had ever been around enough to people to form a softball team. And that’s not even starting on the trolls, who had multiple culture-shocks and traumas of their own the sort through. And yet people are shocked that things didn’t work out? There is, absolutely, a way all of this could have been addressed and become a happy ending. If you don’t like the Epilogues because you’re just sick and fucking tired of tragedy stories - boy do I feel you. Man, don’t get me started on shit like Westword we will be here all week. If you just wanted there to be a fucking happy ending because god-damnit people deserve to be happy - I feel that too. Had that been what we got I can’t say that I’d have been displeased. But if you’re angry because what happened in the Epilogues seems “unreasonable” all I can do is wave my arms at all the shit everybody went through and ask you why going from that to retired celebrity godhood was good for anyone. What happened on Earth-C was nobody’s fault - not even Dirk’s. Of course he lost it. Of course he took his godhood to its logical conclusions - what possible grounding in real human beings had he ever seriously had, and what in his life was there to make him see people as people? Dude grew up alone in a box with SBAHJ and rapping robots for company - the only voice in his head his own, magnified in the echo chamber of ego and his own blindness to his inadequacies. Why wouldn’t Jane cling to status quo of her dead world? Really, what did Sburb ever bring her but heartbreak, an excessively baroque Bad Relationship Simulator that took away her home and her position as a corporate heiress for a six month romp through a bunch of dead planets and inter-friend squabbling (We don’t talk about how fucking boring the alpha session was: nothing but undead and emptiness.) She reaches a new world, gets told how smart she is, gets a bunch of degrees - but as Dave himself notes, when you’re rich as can be and have everyone on the planet lining up to do business with you, it’s pretty easy to think you’re actually skilled at running things, especially if YOU STOPPED YOUR EDUCATION AT SIXTEEN AND GOT TOLD THAT YOUR SIXTEEN YEAR OLD SELF WAS THE APEX OF YOUR BEING. Take a moment to remember yourself at sixteen. Try to put sixteen year old you in charge of something meaningfully important - like, mmh, let’s say a regional bank. Uh - oh. Oh dear. Oh it’s on fire, is it? And the fire is spreading? Yeah, that’ll happen. [One glaring issue I’ll note in these epilogues is that nobody knows what the fuck to do about Dad Crocker, so they do... nothing, until Candy reminds you he exists in order to kill him to motivate Jane to do something she probably could have been easily prompted to do anyways by another means. I guess Dad Crocker just... happily let Jane not finish school or exert any kind of parental control at all after that point? On her or anybody else? You want to talk about OOC: what the fuck happened with Dad Crocker, of whom I expected better? And where did Tavrosprite and the Nannasprites go?] My point in all this is that Homestuck is a story about how important love, teamwork, and friendship is, and after the Earth-C victory everybody got lost. Everybody reacted to being Celebrity Gods in their own way, and it created little cracks that widened over time, and when everyone should have been coming closer together - group therapy sessions, even - they got further and farther apart. These emotionally-stunted mentally-teenaged kids with buckets of trauma, the power of gods, and the celebrity to match broke. One by one. All in their own unique ways. The Epilogues are in some sense a musing on the absurdity of adulthood - how its mantel is placed upon you regardless of whether you are ready or not, for reasons as arbitrary as ‘turning a certain age’ or ‘winning a video game.’ In some cases it takes our heroes DECADES of life before adulthood - before real maturity - begins to make something of an appearance, and even then it’s a crapshoot. Love, friendship, and teamwork are what matter in Homestuck: in the epilogues it takes years of monumentally boneheaded decisions for our heroes to remember this, and some of them never do.

Is there still a happy ending at the end of Homestuck? One that lies ahead? I think so. Hussies loves his characters dearly - and yes, he does. Of course he does. He didn’t spend ten years of his life telling the story of one dimensional Brechtian Archetypes to make some otiose point about the nature of narrative: if he had none of you would be feeling as you are now. The difference between you and Andrew Hussie is that you see his characters like family: you leap to their defence whenever they are hurt, and when they are cut you bleed: “How?” you ask, “Could anyone be so cruel to do this thing?” But Hussie sees his characters as characters, in a story of which he is author, and in which pain and hurt and tragedy can be the vehicles through which good stories can be told: that the light is made all the brighter because of the quantity and quality of darkness that was banished. Candy and Meat are the story of a boy who can only destroy love because he thinks he understands it, and lashes-out when things don’t go as planned. Dirk is just as much the villain in Candy as in Meat, as Calliope makes very clear: the Candyverse is in some sense defined, or at least made more distinct, by his absence. He is a tragic figure on the macro scale - if only he and all the walking wounded of Sburb had been given help when they needed it - but his death in Candy is not a tragedy of ‘what ifs,’ it’s an act of petulance and cruelty by a kid who’ll take his ball and go home if he’s not allowed to play the winning game. His death destabilizes the Candyverse far more than John’s choice to stay, its just that its corrosive effects take longer to be obvious - and the gears he’d already set in motion didn’t cease to turn, though they may have slowed. Dirk destroys love, his effect on both timelines is to push people apart because division suits him, and to push his own view of what ‘love’ is on people who experience it far more expansively than he could ever imagine. He’s a sad little boy who grew up in alone in a box and entered a world that told him he was a literal god with the powers to match - by the end of Meat it’s clear that love, friendship, and teamwork mean nothing to him, only the perfect order of his own fevered imagination. What will bring him down in the end is the reclamation of that feeling at the end of Act 7 - the joy of victory, of having worked together, of the love of family both found and familial, and of the realization that they were none of them better apart. And then some therapists. Some actual therapists. For a good long time. (Also I hope that they find Doc Scratch and beat his sorry ass from here to eternity because that smug fuck has his puppety fingertips all over this thing, and if Dirk really is merging with his ultimate self that includes (as @geekycalligrapher noted) aspects that wound up in Lord English, including a not insignificant portion of one Doctor Vanilla Milkshake, Esq.) (Edit: I did, in fact, do a few edits when I noticed the opening sentences were missing things like ‘the subject.’)

#homestuck #The Homestuck Epilogues #beta kids #alpha kids #doc scratch #dirk strider #andrew hussie #homestuck analysis

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serendipitous-posts · 4 years

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Wayfarer Au - Spinel

The background was more focused on Pink Pearl than Spinel. This was because not much happened; we know Pink Diamond abondende Spinel, and nothing happened in the time of isolation. But I want to fix that so; some information about Spinel in the Wayfarer Au!

Spinel is the only one of her kind, specifically made just for Pink Diamond. She’s quite a bit younger than Pink Pearl and Crystal Pearl, since she was specifically made to replace Pink Pearl.

Her cut is perfect, her cultivation was perfect, and her powers were perfect for a toy

Because, at the end of the day, that’s what Spinel was, a toy. She realises this soon after she arrives on Earth: Pink had never thought of her as a friend, as a living thing. To her, she had been a fun plaything to throw away when she got bored

(She’s a little bitter, sue her)

She and Crystal Gem Pearl never really interacted all that much, despite sharing the same owner for some time, and both acting as a replacement for Pink Pearl, but since Spinel is the only one of her kind, she’s extremely memorable

(Hence why, despite not knowing her personally, being thousands of years and her looking different, in the movie Pearl was able to immediately realise who Spinel was and who she belonged to)

Spinel’s existence was really confusing to the Gem Hierarchy. The Pearls were the lowest of the ranks, as slaves.

But Pearl’s had jobs. They brought you things, took things down for you, stored things. They were, loathe as they were to admit it, useful. Spinel was just a toy really. Did that mean she was lower on the social ladder than the Pearls? After all, Pearls could entertain as well, singing and dancing if you so required.

Spinel, though intelligent, could often be insensitive and sometimes even clumsy. But Spinel was a Diamond’s, and, due to her questionable position on Homeworld’s Social Ladder, nobody really punished her for it

Spinel is very, very clever. She was the one who had the idea for getting the Gem’s memories back in the Movie, and she managed to put together a plan to destroy Earth that came closer than anyone else, including the Diamonds

In this verse, Spinel was made to be the best of the best, and, as such, has an intelligence a lot higher than the average gem. She’s not logically intelligent like Crystal Gem Pearl, she’s spatially intelligent, making her an imaginative gem capable of spatial reasoning, of thinking of things in three dimensions and is very good at drawing conclusions from limited data

Ironically enough, for a gem literally made to be someones friend, Spinel is extremely emotionally stupid. She makes jokes at inopportune times, doesn’t seem to understand when Pink wants to be left alone and comes across as naive and gullible

That last one comes back to bite her, hard

Upon finding out that Pink Diamond tricked her, the stress of it all causes her to poof and reform, into the outfit we see in the movie

Spinel’s faith in Pink Diamond is broken, as she realises that she never had any plans to come back for her, and immediately starts voicing her betrayal and hurt at being betrayed

She wakes up to find that Pink Pearl took her gem and fled to Earth, which she is not happy about

It was originally because she didn’t want to be on the planet that reminded her of Pink; because she was grieving, but it swapped to all consuming rage real quick once she realises what Pink Diamond did to her

Spinel doesn’t have anything against Pink Pearl, but, like in the movie, she’s hurt and so lashes out at her, while also not wanting her to be out of sight

Pink Pearl is also going through some shit right now, just waking up from years of brainwashing. She’s normally a very laid back gem, from what we see of her, and as a Pearl she is taught not to talk back to her superiors. But she would see Spinel as her equal here, and she is not going to let some upstart lecture her when she could of have just left Spinel in the Garden

They argue. A lot. Pink Pearl’s habit of excusing Pink Diamond’s abuse does not mesh well with Spinel’s hatred of her former owner

They wander for a bit, and settle in with some North American tribes, but, after realising Humans aren’t immortal like they are, they start travelling.

Spinel takes the longest to be won around to Earth’s side, due to the bad memories of Pink abandoning her for it, but she loves the children who trip over themselves to play games with her

Spinel and Pink Pearl’s relationship is something I wanna go deeper into in a different post, but they finally start to get along when Pink Pearl finally admits what Pink Diamond did to her

They move a lot, and it is usually Spinel’s fault- her bright pink skin is very hard to hide, and she feels a lot of guilt over that, though Pink assures her that it’s okay, that it’s good that they moved, they would of have had to eventually

Over the centuries, Spinel and Pink Pearl have been poofed many, many times, though they are always super careful to make sure the other isn’t cracked - thankfully humans discover a way to heal cracks in gems, and the outfits change, usually to fit the era they’re in

The 1930′s was great, it was there that they finally figured out how to fuse at will instead of awkwardly stumbling into it every now and then

Currently, Spinel favours wearing hoodies or jumpers, loose and baggy, covering her gem because she’s not going to have that out for all to see and possibly crack. The hoodies hide her face, so bonus

Spinel’s personality was never as bad as it was in the movie; she continues to have extreme mood swings to this day, but since she wasn’t in isolation as long as Canon!Spinel, it didn’t affect her as bad

“As bad”

One day Spinel will probably have to see a therapist after a run in with the earth’s government (awkward) and she will probably be diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder or something along those lines

Spine’s personality is extremely bitter most of the time; she is deeply cynical, contrasting Pink Pearl’s optimism, and is a pragmatist and an opportunist. Self deprecating humour is her strong suit, though she does like shitty puns and knock knock jumps

They did run into gem monsters at first, and are always really confused as to what that’s about, but they have no problem bubbling or shattering them when they have to

As they move away from the area the corruption song hit, they see less and less of them, and they kind of sort assumed that they were dinosaurs or something

Spinel and Pearl have found themselves in the middle of wars or revolutions, and, after a while, they start joining in, being extra super careful to make sure nobody realises they’re there and what they are (it doesn’t work)

Spinel’s weapon is still a scythe, but it’s design is different. She named it Peekaboo, which Pink finds hilarious

Spinel is more aggressive than Pink Pearl. She never aims it at Pearl- the closest she gets is the very start of their partnership when they first arrived on Earth.

Instead, it’s more aimed at everyone else. She knows that the humans will all eventually die, and leave her, so she shuts them out- though she absolutely adores kids. She’s the main muscle between her and Pearl, and is by far the better fighter

Due to how weak Pearl’s naturally are, even a well made one like Pink Pearl, she is naturally protective of her other half

Of course, Pink Pearl will cut a bitch if you make her friend/girlfriend/wife cry

Spinel loves, loves, LOVES theatre, it’s something she and Pink bond over a lot. They both loved to visit William Shakespeare when he was around, though Spinel suggested that he could make some of his poems a lot less angsty, please?

When the circus was invented, she was over the moon, and kept dragging Pink off to go and see it (she may or may not have inspired the idea for clowns)

Over the years, Spinel tries branching out, to try and discover what she likes to do outside of making others laugh. It takes a while, and almost drives her to a nervous breakdown because oh stars what if all she can do is make others feel good, what if she can’t break outside her programming what if-

She discovers that she likes photography, and, after cultivating that skill for hundreds of years, she is quite good at it. She likes the idea of having pictures of everywhere they’ve been, and in her spare time creates scrapbooks to gift to Pearl

She has all kinds of nicknames for Pink Pearl; Raspberry, Loveheart, Sweetheart, Doll, Valentine, etc

Pearl admitted to her that she hates her name, of being “a” pearl, so, after going back and forth, they decide that she can be called Peach

(Because I refuse to call her Volleyball in this au)

#steven universe #steven universe au #wayfarer au #spinel #pink pearl #pearl steven universe #spinearl

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bluewaverider05 · 6 years

Text

As a Shinfriend with an opinion, I feel like I'm doing myself a disservice keeping quiet about this. It's just such a polarising topic, I worried for my reputation if I said anything. I'm sick of everyone being so calm about this though.

Please be aware that this isn't aimed at anyone who might still be hurting. It's not easy to for some to move on after hearing a thing like "that". It's not their fault and it never will be. This is about the assholes that are making a mockery and taking advantage of a real issue for the sake of slandering an idol out of petty spite.

I don't think there's a single person on this planet now that doesn't know what Shindong said. It doesn't need to be repeated here. I am by no means looking to absolve him of that. I was personally hurt when I read about it, yes I was sad, yes I cried. By the end of the article, I'd come to the conclusion that his opinion didn't matter to me any more than anyone else's, because it can't be changed, and so I resolved to meet him and punch him one (1) time for having said it. After seeing the standard for how people act towards him, I honestly don't have it in me to be upset at him anymore. I was angry, briefly, but never thought of leaving him or the music that I've come to depend on.

It took a couple of weeks for it to sink in that this happened almost nine years ago. Think about the backlash that he would have faced immediately after it happened. A week after. A month. A year. Five years. Nearly ten years to think about what he said. I don't care how horrible a person you think he is, he would have been reconsidering his opinion from the minute he said it, and after this many years it'd be pretty strange if he didn't think differently by now. Even if he hadn't said what he said and been torn apart for it, considering how much the public's view has changed in all that time, his opinions would probably be different by now as well.

Realistically, he's probably a complete dick, most people are, even though I have a feeling that he isn't. That's just my own stupid fault for assuming the best of people. That doesn't matter to me, because no matter what he's like as a person, he's doing the best he can to make up for his past actions. What more do you want him to do?

And do you really think that bringing it up over and over and over again is actually helping anything? By all means talk about it, dicuss it. Just stop barging into unrelated conversations and demanding that a person that we clearly think the world of should be "cancelled" or whatever. Remember to use past tense; call him out for what he thought rather than what he thinks, for what he said, not what he says. It's over, stop pretending that it's an ongoing thing when it isn't. He hasn't said anything else like that since it happened, he's even completely changed his public stance to be completely supportive.

All that he's said since then has been positive. But you're trying to erase all of that, because you're petty and just want him to suffer for what he did. You're trying to bury all of the positive words that he's directed at people that he might have hurt, just for the sake of hurting him. Do you realise what that means? People might actually need to hear these things from someone that's important to them, but instead, you're throwing around all this shit about him being a terrible human being and perpetuating this horrible thing that happened once, years ago, as though it were repeated behaviour that he hasn't been spending the rest of his career trying to atone for.

And he apologised as soon as the public called him out for it initially. The apology was messy and confusing. It wasn't forced and nicely formatted like a regular artist apology would be, because his company didn't demand that he apologise and then throw a template at him to fill out and show off to the media. He listened to the public, saw that people were hurt, and apologised himself.

He was stating an opinion. It was a pretty shitty opinion, sure, but he wasn't being intentionally malicious or threatening anyone's life. He didn't seem to have any idea that what he was saying could hurt the people that heard it. That doesn't mean it was okay to say it. We know. We get it. Everyone gets it, I hope. But what he said is nowhere near the level of the rot that you "antis" are coming up with. I hate that we're normalising this kind of behaviour and chalking it up to just being "what the antis do". If it was any normal person being talked about like this, people would be all over the malicious comments, but because Shindong's famous that makes it okay. Antis can use the most disgusting slurs, harass the man directly, publicly fantasise over the specifics of what they'd do to him with a knife. But it just slides by because he's a celebrity and it's to be expected. Even though it's damaging to both the people that care about him and innocent bystanders that have nothing to do with it, and just happen upon it by accident.

You realise that there's collateral damage happening here, right? People that really don't need to hear any of this are hearing it. You know exactly what I'm talking about without me having to say it. You're arguing like a bunch of children and people are getting hurt because of it. The only ones throwing around fatphobic insults here are this bunch of hypocrites telling Shindong to die for something that he's actually making an effort to fix. And don't you dare try and tell me that people aren't using this as an excuse to fatshame him. If they actually cared about what he said rather than how he looks, then they wouldn't even be mentioning his weight in the first place; instead, they're going on like a bunch of bitchy primary schoolers. Considering that, it's probably understandable that they think he'll never change, because they never do. But if you don't believe that people can change, that's your own issue to deal with, there's no need to go around harassing others because of that.

All that they're achieving is dredging up bad memories that nobody wants to think about, trying to stir people up. It's bad enough that this happened at all, but now they're making an effort to shove it under our noses at every possible opportunity. I hate that it happened. And I hate all of you for making it worse. I've finally found my happy trigger, something that I can just look at and magically feel alright. But all of this nonsense is starting to ruin it.

Another thing that I've been keeping to myself... Some of you ELF have such an overinflated superiority complex that it makes me feel sick to be one of you sometimes. If you weren't such a bunch of snobs, you might stop bragging about how your faves are the best and the first and all that, and maybe you could appreciate music for music, rather than the people that figurehead the production team that creates it. That goes for everyone. You don't have to love every song from every artist, but if you have so much trouble playing well with others, just don't. It shouldn't be that hard not to provoke each other. I really honestly do not understand why that seems to be impossible.

tl;dr: I am not a blinded, all forgiving fan. I was hurt by what he said. But you hypocrites are acting like he's the Anti-Christ or some shit. You're benefitting literally no one. If you absolutely have to talk smack about others to feel better about yourself, just remember that private messaging apps exist for a reason. If that's too complicated for you, there's nothing more I can do. Please just get your heads out of your arses and learn to let each other live already.

#shindong #super junior #people suck #the internet sucks #i'm leaving #i seriously thought i'd found a safe place to chill #pretty dumb idea in retrospect #this could have been fun #if people weren't such awful creatures #i'm so sorry i couldn't support you better shindong #this is what happens when i try and interact with people

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infinitydoublevenus · 6 years

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like fern is just finn if he was bumped out of his own life and corrupted by a demon. it shows us different aspects of finn’s soul and personality, and how he would deal with all that - basically showing us his dark side, without fucking up main finn.

i had a whole long ass shpiel about why i disagree written out and then my computer decided not to listen to my mouse and it basically got destroyed

but in summary,

- MAJOR SPOILER WARNING IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE FINALE YET-

i dont think everything that made fern the way he is was the demons fault. like… imagine if you will, waking up one day in a body you’re unfamiliar with, but not realizing it until someone looking just like you claims they are you, your brother defends them and claims you’re not who you really are, calls you a demon, your “son” (BMO) is terrified of you for what you can only assume is no reason, you realize you cant do the things you loved anymore because this body isn’t capable of it, and since you’re unfamiliar with it, you keep fucking up to the point where you feel like you can’t do anything right. then you finally, FINALLY get a chance to prove yourself and you’re incapable of doing what you were supposed to. which makes you feel less than your doppelganger because they seem so much more successful and better at what you did then you were. imagine that you realize “hey, these memories i have of my entire life aren’t mine anymore” that would surely cause someone to question whether they really were that person or not. and as we see in Do No Harm, Fern clearly is on the side of “i’m someone else now. i have these memories that you share with me, but our personalities and circumstances are different. therefore i am not you. maybe i used to be, but i’m not anymore.” by his own admission, and i quote: “Whatever I am, I’m… not you.” and then you get another chance to at least prove you’re not worthless at least to one person, and you fuck it up. at this point you’re so frustrated you snap. some might even resort to self harm (see: Fern tearing his “ears” off. Clearly they’re a part of his body or they wouldn’t have regenerated like they did.) the person who says they’re you tries to comfort you all the time but it’s not enough, they never get to the root of the issue. you want to tell them. you want them to understand. but they’ve never been through something like this, so they don’t. imagine that no one else IN THE WORLD that you know of has the same problem that you do. imagine how lonely that must have felt for him. he literally felt like he was completely alone. the only person going through this hell that he was trapped in. and imagine that, in your head, this voice (the demon) is whispering to you, and urging you to do harmful things to others. you dont want to, but you want it to shut up. thus he suggests “sever his tendons?” when talking about how to deal with Sweet P. on top of all of this, the worst part is you feel like you’ve been replaced. like you were nothing. like you didn’t matter enough for people to care that you were replaced. you try to form your own identity around who you are now and not what you used to be, but you don’t know what or who you are or are supposed to be. you don’t know what you want, since the role you most wanted to fill, this person has taken now. it gets so frustrating you’re convinced the only solution is if they died. you’ve sunk so far into this depressing narrative that you’ve convinced yourself of that you don’t see any other way out. but you don’t WANT them to die. so you hide them away and give them food and an item for comfort (meatloaf being finn’s favorite food & Fern giving him a pan of dirt because he didn’t know how to make meatloaf even though he already gave him garbage he could sift through so he at least wouldn’t starve). your plan is that everything would go back to normal so you wouldnt have to deal with this shit anymore. but suddenly the person escapes and attacks you. they start interrogating your motivations like they don’t already know about the shit you’ve gone through. so you start fighting with each other, and then because of the violence thats broken out, the demons power grows stronger than it should be and increases your willingness to fight and kill. you have your sword at your enemy’s throat and they start pleading that “it doesn’t have to be like this. we can just go home and talk things out! nobody has to die!” but before you can get a word in - and also, there’s no way Fern could have known it was an accident - their razorblade weapon slashes through your stomach. everyone thinks you’re dead. someone you don’t know and have never seen before, but looks similar to someone you know, finds you and revives you. they live with a nice old lady and their nephew. your real parents abandoned you, your father figure only wanted to use you (the grassy wizard “This is great for me, personally! You have to do my bidding!”) and your mother was forced to quarantine herself because of an epidemic and can only interact with you through a screen, and now here you are, being offered family! family you genuinely believe wont abandon you! friends! people who might be willing to try and understand you! including a father figure, a thing that was missing from your life since you were a little kid! not only that, but they’ve given you the ability to be more capable in fighting, and killing, the thing you were trying to do to your doppelganger. they gave you armor and weapons and a place to stay! their only condition is to fight in war against someone you barely even remember. its not like they need YOU to be their knight anymore anyway, the doppelganger does that now. HE’S the one loyal to them. so you go along with it,. you finally have a chance to get rid of said doppelganger when the father figure tells you “not yet”. since you appreciate what they’ve done for you, you obey. the next time you see the person who’s replaced you he wants to negotiate with “your boss” as he calls them. they’re not just a boss to you, they’re a father. not only that but he came here with your brother. who might i add, attacks you. imagine being called a demon by your brother, still having hope he might not hate you, and then a few months later being attacked by him like you’re his enemy, when you two were best friends throughout your childhood. ithe old lady comes out of the building and tells you both to stop fighting. your “twin” compares her to your mother. “She’s kinda like mom, yeah?” this person, this person who replaced you, is referring to the mother that would have, should have raised you as their own mother. so you feel compelled to justify that you’re her son too. “She was my mom too!” and then the doppelganger says you’re like family, so why are you fighting like this? you know he’s right, but you don’t want to admit it, because it HURTS to admit it. so you pull your helmet over your head and leave.

the next time you see them, they’re trying to negotiate to stop the war from happening. you don’t know what to think. they use a potion to put all of you in a shared dream, where your father figure orders you to kill the opposing side because maybe they’ll die in real life. you WOULD have, but then he straight up abandons you, just like your real father did. you’ve developed abandonment issues before because of that and they come to the surface now. you’re so upset you can’t move. the doppelganger tries to snap you out of it but he;’s the last person you want to see right now. so you try to get away from him, but he follows you. you get into another fistfight but before you can finish your brother reminds you that you have all the same traumas. but that your situations are still DIFFERENT, even though you share the same pain. your doppelganger and you have to face the music and he kills the demon, you’re finally free of it. “I’m me again.” this line can be interpreted in two different ways: literally, or figuratively. if we take it literally, he’s turned into finn again BUT like jake says, “it’s just a dream”. sure, it still causes you to die later on, but not everything in that dream became reality. and you only died because the demon was the only thing keeping your unfamiliar body from falling apart. if its interpretated differently however he could be seen as saying “finally, i’m back in my old body again, in a familiar body that i know how to operate in, and i am free of the demon’s curse and the impulses that were driving me to fight so violently.” they didnt say all that of course because it would be tedious, this isnt Hamlet where they can go on and on about how much they hate the planet for several hours. when you wake up from the shared dream, a strange entity is attacking everyone. you’re willing to defend your homeland “down to your last blade” as he puts it, but your body is starting to fall apart and isn’t suited for battle right now. you do your best, even fending off a giant monster, but you become so weak and frail you fall over (see: Huntress Wizard helping him during Time Adventure). you can barely move, but then the solution to defeating the entity comes to light. (singing) it’s something you can do without as much effort as battle would take, so you take part in it as well. but you’re almost completely broken apart by now. you can barely stand up. your doppelganger has escaped the entity that was trying to eat him. you’ve finally realized that he cared more about you than you wanted to admit. you know you’ll feel guilty if you die leaving him without a conclusion. so you get his attention. he’s distraught by the sight of you: weak, falling apart, literally dying in front of him. you try to lighten the mood, he offers to take you to your home so you can die in peace, but you see the expression on your brother’s face that says “that place was destroyed by the monsters”. you know he’d be distraught even more if you told him that now, so you comfort him with your last words. “It’s okay, just promise to plant me there.”

in conclusion, this post was longer than i intended for it to be, but not all of Fern’s bitterness and aloof, somewhat-empathy-lacking personality stems from the Emissary’s corruption. it was also from feelings of being replaced, estrangement from his brother, and abandonment issues. as well as a feeling of worthlessness which could be interpreted as clinical depression once it got to a certain point.

i don’t think Fern is just “Finn 2.0, we added misery in the latest update!” I think he’s a lot more complex than that. he realized they had the same traumatic memories, but they still had different situations: his doppelganger wasn’t being held captive by the Emissary like he was. they’ve gone through similar - even the same - shit, but he also has his own unique trauma finn’s never gone through. not the one we see after the episode where they revive Prismo, anyway.

he also sided with Gumbaldia not only because they offered him family and a home, “There’s nothing I have that you don’t!” but also because being equipped better for revenge gave him a purpose, something that his struggles with his identity partially stemmed from a lack of.

so yeah i don’t mean to be rude or anything, i am 100% NOT here for discourse, i just wanted to elaborate on my opinion and why i made that post about Finn and Fern earlier.

sorry if that was too long of a post to read haha… i just have a lot of nuanced opinions on a lot of different things.

tl;dr: fern’s issues, i believe, were caused by more than just a demon screaming in his ear at his every turn. i dont wanna be an asshole i just felt like elaborating

#adventure time #fern #fin #elaboration #text post #long post #opinions #headcanons #spoilers #major spoilers #adventure time spoilers #at #at spoilers

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keyofjetwolf · 7 years

Text

Jet Wolf Summarizes Act 48

The manga and I kind of hate each other. This is unfortunate, but still, I’m determined to come out of this with something. Rather than spend energy on a liveblog that’s increasingly negative, I’m reading each manga act (mostly) silently, and then writing up summaries at the end. I won’t pull my punches. There’s going to be criticism and snark about the manga, either wholesale or in details. If that isn’t a thing you feel like reading, please skip this post!

I had some measure of hope for the Dream arc. I’d heard a lot of passing thoughts about the manga during my years working on this project, and near universally among them was “The Dream arc is fantastic.” Alongside being told how it was unlike the SuperS season, and yeah, I’d sort of nurtured it in my heart a little, sheltered it, held it close. I didn’t talk about it. It seemed too complicated, too personal, almost. Even when I did finally begin the manga, and came to realize that it was never going to be more than an excruciating test of stubbornness, I still clutched my tiny hope to me. Maybe something good could yet grow from all this.

I am, sometimes, an idiot.

We open with Nehellenia, and what must surely be one of the clunkiest fucking introduction speeches in history. Nehellenia tries to spin the reincarnation of the Senshi as something Queen Serenity specifically did to try and fuck with her. That makes about as much sense as you’d expect of a universe-shifting plot point conceived, at best, two issues before its reveal. Still, is it meant to be taken as gospel, or is it meant to reflect on Nehellenia’s entirely self-centered state of mind? We see in flashback that Nehellenia shows up and literally nobody knows who the fuck she is, and then Serenity imprisons her about six seconds later, not to be seen again for a thousand years or so. Would Serenity have legitimately worried that much about someone who was functionally a magazine salesman who never even got out a pitch before getting the door slammed in her face? On the day of the birth of her first and only child?

BUT THEN WE COME BACK TO HOW THIS IS TAKEUCHI SO IS IT REALISTIC TO EVEN CONSIDER IT’S WORKING ON MULTIPLE LAYERS AND NOT MEANT TO BE TAKEN PRECISELY AT FACE VALUE

PROBABLY NOT (*)

(*) But I do want to take a second to acknowledge how this ABSOLUTELY fits my take on Nehellenia at the end of SuperS, and I’m considering shifting my conclusion on the creators on this from “lucky accident” to “trying to build something worthwhile from the steaming pile of shit we were given”.

Anyway, there’s a lot about child soldiers that’s super fucked up and then Seanan made it even more fucked up because Seanan.

BUT THEY’RE CUTE SO WHO CARES ABOUT CRITICAL THINKING OR MORAL IMPLICATIONS

The Senshi then argue about whether it was a curse that everything went to shit in the SilMil or if it was destiny. I’m really not sure what difference it makes. They don’t seem to either. That philosophical discussion we nearly considered having was enlightening guys, thanks for bringing it up!

Nehellenia kills Usagi, I guess, but only a little. Not to worry! You know those Senshi who have devoted themselves since childhoods past to fighting for their Princess no matter what? THEY’RE ON THIS

OH GOD DAMMIT

The girls scream and cry and do nothing. With his superior penis will, Mamoru fights through his cursed illness. YOU KNOW THE SAME ONE USAGI IS SUCCUMBING TO DESPITE HAVING HAD IT FOR MAYBE A FIFTH AS LONG AS MAMORU. Using the power of his penis love, Mamoru gives Usagi a good dicking the strength and will to also fight back.

Usagi then says what is quite possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard her say.

WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF LOGICAL FALLACY BULLSHIT IS THIS

YOU CAN’T JUST SAY THE WORD “POWER” EIGHTY-SEVEN TIMES IN A SPEECH AND HOPE IT MAKES SENSE USAGI

(Want to enjoy this a thousand percent more? Continue my trend! Replace every instance of “power” in that speech with “penis”. YOU’RE WELCOME.)

Then Usagi powers everyone else up, I think kind of? SHE TAKES THEM DRESS SHOPPING ANYWAY. The manga Senshi have never been more accurately represented as the paper dolls they so clearly are. The cats are also teleported in for no reason other than to be morphed into the human form they all so clearly needed to possess, immediately followed by my doubled over retching. Then tiny Senshi versions appear! They’re “Sailor Power Guardians”! Because reasons! All the Senshi get a power up courtesy of their vacation home timeshares!

WE INTERRUPT THIS MANGA SUMMARY TO REMIND YOU OF THE DREAM ARC SENSHI POWER-UP ORDER OF OPERATIONS:

Mamoru alone powers through a debilitating cursed illness that has been weakening him approximately five times longer than anyone else.

Mamoru gives Usagi the strength and will to fight against Nehellenia’s curse.

Usagi is filled with the penis power of love.

Usagi gives her friends prom dresses.

The Senshi have a group hallucination that involves miniature floating versions of themselves.

These mini-thems tell them they have to beg HOUSES ON OTHER PLANETS for permission to temporarily not suck.

Power which they then must immediately give to Usagi.

IF I EVER HARNESS THE ABILITY TO TRAVEL THROUGH TIME THE VERY FIRST THING I WILL DO IS GO FIND THE JET WOLF WHO DARED HOLD OUT HOPE FOR THIS MANGA ARC AND PUNCH HER

WE NOW RETURN YOU TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED MANGA SUMMARY

Usagi becomes Eternal Sailor Moon, and I discover that, regrettably, once again I am neither dead nor done.

#JW reads Sailor Moon #sm manga dream #sm manga act 48 #jet wolf versus the manga #jet wolf summarizes the manga #a novel by jet wolf

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homeiswherethestuckis · 7 years

Text

A Day At The Beach

I wrote this one for @amarandomperson, who requested davekat and the Mayor, which was something I was totally happy to do! :D It’s a post canon beach day. I hope you like it!

The Mayor’s been...busy ever since Can Town was founded on Earth C. Not that you haven’t been busy yourself, but being a god and being a mayor are two entirely different things. You feel like you haven’t seen the Mayor in forever. But today he finally has a day off! A day he said he wanted to spend with you and Karkat! Hell yeah, it’ll be just like old times again! Except this time you’re not on a meteor hurtling through the void towards a massive boss fight anymore.

So like old times, but without all the shit weighing down on your mind all the time. Old times but a fuck ton better.

You got out of bed the moment the sun came up, no point in wasting time sleeping right now. You crawled out of bed and got dressed quickly before heading downstairs. The strong smell of coffee hit you the moment you wandered into the kitchen. Karkat’s standing by the counter, holding his face close to the steam. He looks up at you as you enter and smiles.

“Morning.” He yawns.

“You’re up early.” You pour yourself a cup of coffee. “And you’re not grumbling my fucking ear off about how you’re days already ruined to shit by just the act of waking up and having your poor, fragile eyes immediately assaulted by the rays of this planet’s big scorch orb or whatever longwinded alien terminology you wanted to use for the morning’s rant.”

“Fuck you, dick ferret.” Karkat hands you the sugar. “I’m in a good mood today.”

“That’s rare.”

He snorts. “You don’t think I know that?”

You pour a ton of creamer and sugar into your coffee and stir until it goes from dark brown to a light tan. Honestly, you don’t even like coffee that much, but it does wake you up so at least it gets the job done. You take a drink and swallow half of it in one gulp. It burns your mouth a little, but you don’t mind. You have things to do today, you can’t wait for your coffee to cool.

“When are we going to see the Mayor?” Karkat asks.

“Damn, you’re not beating around the bush today.” You take another sip of your coffee.

“I was never that into attacking shrubbery, Dave.” He shrugs. “I’m more interested in knowing when we’re going to leave. Don’t tell me I wrenched myself from the grips of sleep for nothing.”

“There’s the morning hater I know and love.”

“Don’t sweet talk me and answer the question.”

“I don’t know. Soon, I guess.” You shrug. “As soon as possible. Probably right after this. And after you get dressed, obviously.”

You point out his pajamas. Technically they’re not pajamas, they’re just the clothes he fell asleep in last night. That’s usually the case with Karkat.

He puts his empty cup in the sink. “So if I change clothes, we can go? Right now?”

“Yeah, right now. I mean as long as the Mayor’s cool with it.” There’s no way he wouldn’t be, but you whip out your phone and start texting anyway just to make sure.

Karkat runs upstairs to get ready while you finish off your coffee. You get a text back in the meantime. The Mayor’s more than okay with you both coming over right now, and he’s just as excited to spend the day with you and Karkat.

He comes back downstairs in shorts and a t-shirt. “Okay, let’s go.”

Before you can even say anything in reply he grabs you by the wrist and starts dragging you out the door. You barely have time to put your coffee cup down and get your shoes before your socks are wet with dew from the grass. Karkat stops a few feet away from your house and turns around. He’s still got your wrist in a steel grip. “I don’t know where we’re going.”

“Yeah, I know.” You roll your eyes. “I got it. I figured we would just fly there. I know you hate doing it but it’ll be easier and a helluva lot faster than trying to hoof it from here.”

Karkat huffs but doesn’t protest. Today is a day of firsts.

You put an arm around him. “We can stop on the ground again whenever if the height freaks you out.”

“Heights don’t freak me out.” He says quickly. His arms are around you in a death grip the moment his feet leave the ground. Yeah, he’s not freaked out by heights. And you’re a fucking horse.

It doesn’t take very long to get to the Mayor’s place like this (though it definitely would have been a shorter amount of time if Karkat wasn’t weighing you down, not that you really mind), you’re in the air for less than ten minutes before you land back on solid ground in Can Town, just a few feet away from his door.

Karkat lets go of you and you both take a moment to appreciate the beauty that is Can Town at this scale. You’d both known that the Mayor had planned to build an actual town modeled after the one you’d both helped with on the meteor, but actually experiencing the town itself is always a treat. One of these days you’re really going to have to take some time off and really explore the place.

You wish you’d thought of that ahead of time, but that’s alright. The plans you made for today should be just as fun. You both walk over to the giant can the Mayor calls a house and knock on the door.

You don’t have to wait very long for the door to be flung open, and it’s only a split second later that the three of you are in the tightest group hug imaginable. Seriously, if you were any closer to these two people right now, you’d be merging into the same organism.

You’re not sure who initiated the hug and who’s breaking it apart, but you’re a little sad it’s already ending. It’s okay though because you’re still holding hands once the hug’s over with.

The Mayor asks where you’re all planning on going, and Karkat turns to you, also curious about today’s destination. It only occurs to you just now that even though you spent the past few days discussing this together you forgot to tell him what you’d finally decided on doing.

“I was thinking we could go to the beach.” You say. “You know, walk around, watch the waves, soak up that sun, all that cliche crap. It’ll be fun.”

You shrug as if you didn’t waste literal hours of your life coming up with this plan. Karkat and the Mayor exchange a look that you can’t really read.

Karkat’s the first to speak. “I’ve never been to the beach.” He admits, shrugging. “It’s probably awful and I’ll hate it, but I’d like having another experience to complain about.”

The Mayor agrees, but is more enthusiastic about it than Karkat is.

“Cool.” You nod. “I don’t think it’s too far a walk from here. Karkat, you should be happy about that.”

“I told you, heights don’t freak me out!” He snaps.

“You’ve made your opinion about flying pretty vocally clear during multiple bitch fits in the past, I was just trying to be nice.” You reply. “Besides, I never said anything about heights.”

“Fuck you, ass mucus, it was implied.”

“No, not even a little.”

The three of you start walking as you and Karkat continue to bicker about whether or not you implied that Karkat was afraid of heights, a fact which he continues to claim he isn’t even though nobody believes him or even cares if he is. The argument eventually peters to a close without reaching a real conclusion and you both turn your attention to chatting with the Mayor instead like you really should have been doing all along.

The Mayor’s been up to a lot lately. Right now he’s working on a big project, some sort of monument to people he knew before. Other than that, things have been pretty normal for him. The citizens all love him, and he participates in decision making with the leaders of the carapacian kingdom often (which makes sense because Rose and Kanaya know him personally and Roxy seems like she’d be open to that). He’s busy, but he’s happy. Everything’s been good for him so far.

The same can be said for you and Karkat, and you take turns telling the Mayor everything you’ve done since you saw him last. Karkat does a lot of the talking, and you occasionally interrupt with a comment or something Karkat forgot to mention. You like listening to them talk, you’ve never heard Karkat speak so softly to anyone else before. It’s kind of endearing.

There’s salt on the breeze that you’ve never tasted before. If you were being honest with yourself, one of the reasons you wanted to come here was because you’ve never seen the ocean in person. You’d be lying if you said you weren’t relieved to find out that Karkat hasn’t seen it, either.

The three of you reach your destination, and you all stand here motionlessly and take it all in. It’s bluer than you imagined, and surprisingly vast. It looks endless from here, and you feel small and a little insignificant in comparison. The feeling passes once you remember that this shit only exists because you helped create it in the first place. Suck it, ocean.

You tear your eyes away from the water and glance over at the other two. They both look just as entranced with the waves as you are. You could probably waste a good chunk of time just holding hands and staring, mesmerized by the fucking current like a bunch of asshats.

“Wow.” Karkat says, looking shocked at his own comment. “It’s...really pretty.”

“I want to throw a rock at it.”

Both of their heads snap over to you. “Dave, what the fuck?”

“I have no other explanation besides this.” You let go of the Mayor’s hand so you can give the most exaggerated shrug you can manage.

“Well, moment’s ruined. What the hell are we supposed to do now, Dave?” He asks, raising an eyebrow at you. “Or was staring at a giant salt puddle all that was on the itinerary today?”

“That’s a pretty biting tone for someone who was way more than okay with doing that all day a second ago.” You reply. “But no, there’s more. Like I said, there’s so much cliche shit we could do. We did the staring at the waves part, so that’s a big check mark in the done square. We could get closer and walk around in the sand, Karkat you strike me as the whole ‘I like long walks along the beach’ kind of guy, if I’m being honest here. Or if that’s not really something you feel like doing because your poor toes are too sore to appreciate the sand right now since we walked all the way over here, then we could do something else. Try to skip rocks or some shit. Sand castles. You know the drill.”

“No, I really don’t.” He shakes his head. “None of what you said made any fucking sense. Are you having a stroke?”

“No, Karkat, I am not having a stroke, but thank you for your concern, I really appreciate it, dude.” You start taking off your shoes and socks. “If none of the things I suggested made any sense to you, then clearly that means we gotta do all that shit. Right fucking now. Don’t you think so, Mayor?”

He nods, and that’s all the confirmation you need before running off towards the water. You reach the sand, and it’s warm under your feet. Karkat and the Mayor follow behind you.

“Why’d you take off your shoes?” Karkat asks, staring at your already sand coated feet.

You wiggle your toes at him. “It’s part of the beach experience. Come on, take yours off.”

He takes his shoes off reluctantly and holds them in one hand as he puts his feet carefully on the ground.

“So, sand?” You pry. “Yea or nay?”

“I could take it or leave it.” He replies, looking down at his feet as he moves the sand around. “I still prefer shoes and solid ground, but if I have to be barefoot on ground up rocks to get the full cliche experience, then fuck it, sure. I’ll do it.”

He throws his shoes so they land near yours. “So,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest, “what are we doing first?”

“I don’t know about you,” you stoop down and start digging through the sand, “but I still want to throw a rock at it.”

You manage to find a smooth, good sized rock deep in the sand. “I figured skipping rocks would be a good start.”

You fling your rock at the ocean as a demonstration. You don’t actually know how to skip a rock, so it just plunks right into the water.

“Dave, that didn’t skip.” Karkat points out.

“How the fuck would you know? You didn’t even think skipping rocks was a thing until a couple seconds ago.”

“Yeah, but even I know that’s not what a skipped rock looks like.”

“Well why don’t you do it, then, if you’re such an expert at rock skipping?” You goad.

Karkat takes the bait without hesitation. “Okay, give me a rock and I’ll do it.” He holds out his hand to you.

You push his hand away. “I can’t do that. Finding your own rocks is an integral part of this practice, man. You gotta do it yourself. It wouldn’t count if I did it for you.”

“Fine.” His hands are on his hips. “Just you wait, I’m going to find a great rock and I’m going to skip the fuck out of it while you stand there, shamefaced and completely owned by me, a total rock skipping noob. Get ready to grovel at my feet, Dave.”

“Grovel?” You smirk. “Now that sounds like a challenge, Karkat. Are you sure you want to go through with that?”

“Fuck yeah, I do.” He nods. “Based on your severe lack of skill, I think I stand a good chance of winning.”

“Oh, is that so? In that case, you’re on! Mayor, do you want in on this, or are you cool with judging?”

The Mayor picks up a rock. He’s in.

“Okay, cool.” You nod. “So here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re going to take four minutes to split up and scour the beach for rocks to throw, and when those four minutes are up we’ll meet back here with our rocks and start throwing them. The first person whose rock actually skips will be declared the winner, and Karkat will have to lick all the sand off of my feet.”

“That’s only if you win, right?”

“Nope. You have to bathe my nasty, sand covered feet clean with your tongue regardless of who wins. Sorry, bro, I don’t make the rules.”

“Yes, you do! You just made that rule just now!”

“Wow, what the fuck, Karkat, I can’t believe you’re accusing me of making up rules. I’ll have you know that that’s always been a rule in rock skipping competitions. You have to lick my feet, that’s just how this game is.”

“If you put your vile sand frond anywhere near my face I’ll skip my rocks off your shades.”

“Oh, is that a threat?”

“Yes, obviously it’s a threat, you dense piece of moldy grubloaf.”

The Mayor intervenes before this can escalate into a contest to see who can throw the best insult at the other’s face and gets you back on track to what it actually is, a contest to see who can throw the best rock.

“How will we know the four minutes are over?” Karkat asks, tilting his head.

That’s a good question. “Don’t worry about it, I’ll keep track of the time and yell for you guys when time’s up.”

“And we’re supposed to meet up right back here?”

“That’s the plan, yeah.” You nod.

“How the fuck are we supposed to find right here? I mean, look around for a second, Dave, this all looks the fucking same. How am I supposed to differentiate this exact spot from all of the other identical spots on this sand strip?”

Before you can come up with an answer, the Mayor draws a big 'X’ in the sand between you and Karkat with his foot.

“Like that.” You point at the 'X’. “That should help you find your way back easier, as long as you keep looking at the ground.”

Karkat studies the 'X’ carefully and nods. “Yeah, that should help. Thanks, Mayor.”

“Okay, so we’re meeting back here in four.” They both nod. “Ready....go!”

You all split up, and you start searching frantically along the beach for some good rocks. You find a good amount closer to the water where the sand is damp and grab as many as you can before the four minutes are up. When the time’s run out, you make your way back with an entire pile of rocks in your arms.

Karkat and the Mayor have both also found a good amount of rocks, and their’s are already lain down on the ground before you get there.

“Well, Karkat, why don’t you start?” You say as you promptly dump your rocks next to you. “Show me up at skipping rocks. Right here, right now.”

“Oh, you bet I’ll show you.” He picks up a rock. From the very limited knowledge you have about skipping rocks, you know his isn’t going to work very well. He winds up like he’s about to throw a baseball, which is also not what you’re supposed to do, and tosses it into the water.

It makes a fair amount of distance before it hits the water, you’ll give him that much. You knew this was going to be the end result, but you can’t help but laugh anyway. “That was awful.”

He bristles. “Shut up! You didn’t do any better.”

“Yeah, I know, but I’m definitely closer to skipping a rock than you are.” You toss one of yours, and even though it doesn’t skip it still looks like a better throw than Karkat’s was. That’s really all that matters.

Karkat picks up another rock and holds it in his hands. “I’m going to put you in your place, Dave. Mark my words, I’m going to kick your ass by getting this rock to skip before you even know what hit you.”

He throws it underhand this time, and it splashed unceremoniously into the water. Karkat growls in frustration, already pissed off at his inability to throw a god damn rock the way he wants to.

“My guess is it’s going to be a rock.” You reply as you toss one of your rocks. It falls in with a thunk. “You’ll have a better chance at hitting me than you would getting any of those misshapen petrified shits to skip.”

He yells and throws another one. It goes right in the water again.

You throw another one, and it plops right into the water just like the rest of them. It’s not much longer before you’re both shouting and throwing rocks into the water without any intention of even trying to get them to skip across. Your supply of rocks is depleted sooner than expected.

You both stand there, breathing hard and watching the waves crashing against the shore.

“So who the fuck won?” You wonder out loud.

“It’s a tie.” Karkat says, kicking the sand. “We’re out of rocks and we both suck.”

“That’s true. Fine, a tie it is.” You turn on your heel and are about ready to suggest something else when you notice that the Mayor still has his rocks piled by his feet. “Mayor, how come you didn’t throw any of yours?”

He shrugs. You and Karkat looked like you were having fun, he didn’t want to interrupt.

You feel bad for accidentally leaving him out. That’s the opposite of what this day’s supposed to be about. “Before we do anything else, you should at least throw one. You were a part of this competition, too.”

“Didn’t he already win, since we both tied for last?”

“Well yeah, but you can’t be a real winner without throwing at least one rock.”

The Mayor takes a rock off of his pile. You and Karkat both watch as he approaches the water slowly before throwing it.

It skips.

It skips five fucking times.

“Holy shit.”

“Is that what we were supposed to be doing?” Karkat asks incredulously. “I don’t think I’m physically capable of doing that.”

“Yeah, me neither.” You admit. “Fuck, he made it look so easy. Mayor, how the hell did you do that?”

He doesn’t answer you and throws another rock. This one also skips. He picks up another one and tosses it. That one skips, too. Damn, all this time you spent with the Mayor and you didn’t even know he was a rock skipping champion. You think you know a guy.

“Could you show us how to do that?” Karkat asks after the Mayor’s fourth rock skips three times across the water.

The Mayor nods and places a rock in both Karkat’s and your hands. You watch carefully as he gives a slow demonstration of what he’s doing. You both try to copy him as best you can. Yours still falls right in. Karkat somehow manages to get his to skip once. Just the once.

Once is enough, though.

“I did it!” Karkat yells excitedly, pumping his fist in the air. “Fucking finally! Dave, did you see that? Mine skipped! I beat you!”

“Yeah, I saw.” You sigh in defeat. As much as you would have loved to beat him, you don’t really mind losing. Karkat’s so fucking ecstatic about winning a dumb rock throwing game, it’s actually adorable. “I guess I just can’t skip rocks.”

“You’re damn right, you can’t!” Karkat grins. “And now you have to french my sand foot!”

“Whoa, wait, I never agreed to that.”

“Yes, you did! Don’t lie to me, Dave. Loser has to kiss my feet, sorry them’s the rules. I don’t make them, I just enforce them. Now get down and do it, asshole.”

“No, that’s gross.”

“Of course it’s gross, but you have to do it because you lost.”

“I’m not doing it.”

“Do it.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Do it or I’ll rub my foot on your face.”

“Fine,” you start inching backwards, “do it.”

“I will,” he moves closer to you, “just stop moving first.”

“No,” you shake your head and take another step backwards, “if you really want to shove your foot all up in my beautiful grill, you’re going to have to catch me first.”

You bolt, kicking up sand as you run away. Karkat and the Mayor start chasing you all along the beach. You run as fast as you can, only a couple steps ahead of the other two the whole time. Karkat gets close to catching you a few times, you can feel his fingers brush against you every once in awhile.

You come to a stop without warning when you start to feel like you can’t run anymore. Karkat and the Mayor both run into you, and you all topple over into a heap in the sand. You roll over so your face isn’t pressed into the sand anymore.

“Do you give up yet?” Karkat asks, he’s breathing directly into your face. His breath smells like coffee and toothpaste.

You wrinkle your nose. “I got sand in my mouth, does that count?”

“Yeah, that can count, if you want to be a grub about it.” Karkat replies, snorting.

“I do want to be a grub about it.” You say. “That’s what I am, a big ol’ baby bug. Are you happy now?”

“As long as you can live with yourself being a big grub, then yeah, I am.” He shrugs, flopping off of you and onto the sand.

You start making a sand angel. “What do you guys want to do next?”

“I don’t know.” Karkat says, throwing his hands over his head. “We skipped rocks, we did the whole long walk along the beach thing, what else is there?”

“We could try building a sand castle, maybe splash around in the waves a little. Lunch would eventually be a good idea, too. Mayor, what do you want to do?”

The Mayor’s still sprawled halfway on you. He taps his fingers on your stomach while he thinks about his options. He settles on building a sand castle. That should be fun.

You didn’t bring anything to try and build a sand castle, so you all try your best to pile sand into something resembling a structure with just your hands. It doesn’t go very well and you just end up with a sand dome that keeps crumbling every time you try to add more to it.

You pack on too much at once, and your sand tower falls over from too much weight and half covers the Mayor with sand.

“Well, shit.” Karkat sighs, dropping the handfuls of sand he’d carried over onto the ground. “There goes all our hard work for nothing.”

“Hold up, there’s another thing we could do.” You say. “We could bury the Mayor. You know, if he’s okay with that.”

“But we like him, why the fuck would we do that?”

“Because it’s a weird fun human thing that weird fun humans do.” You explain. “And we’re not actually going to bury him, his head will still be uncovered still. Mayor, you cool with getting buried? You’re already half covered.”

He nods. You and Karkat start covering him with the sand from your failed castle until you can’t see anything except his head anymore.

“Okay,” Karkat pats another clump of wet sand over the Mayor’s feet, “this was fun, what do we do now?”

You shrug. “I don’t know. Dig him out?”

“But we just finished burying him.”

You lay back down in the sand. “Bury me?”

“No, fuck that.” Karkat stands up. “There’s too much of you to bury, it’ll take forever and I don’t want to. I have better things to do.”

“Do you?” You sit up. “Like what?”

“This.” He marches straight over to the water and jumps in ankle deep before running right back out again. “Fuck, never mind, that was terrible and I regret so much.”

He shoves his feet right back into the sand. “What else should we do?”

You give it a long thought. “We could break for lunch? I got picnic stuff in my sylladex.”

Karkat and the Mayor exchange yet another one of those looks. The Mayor thinks lunch sounds like a good idea.

“Yeah.” Karkat agrees. “I could eat.”

The Mayor gets himself unburied, and the three of you head back up to the grass. You lay a blanket down and all your lunch stuff, and you all sit down and watch the water while you eat.

After you finish with lunch, you go right back to the water’s edge. You chase each other and splash around and play in the sand for hours, right up until it gets colder and the sun starts to set. The three of you head back up to the Mayor’s house and drop him off. You’re both sad to leave him, but he still has things he has to do tomorrow, and technically so do you. You’re already all making plans for next time, when you want to get a full tour of Can Town. The Mayor is more than happy with this arrangement and is already thinking up which destinations to go to first when you leave him.

“Okay,” you wrap an arm around Karkat, “are you ready to go?”

“Can’t we just walk for a little bit?” Karkat grumbles, dragging his feet. “It’s such a nice night, and I don’t want to go home yet.”

“Please, you just don’t want to fly.”

“That, too.” He agrees, shrugging. “I’m not ashamed to admit it, I’d rather go on a long walk with you than a short trip being carried like a bunch of god damned luggage.”

“You’re not luggage.” You ruffle his hair. “But we can walk around for a little bit longer if you want.”

“Yeah,” he nods, nuzzling into your chest a bit. Karkat’s still sweaty and hot from all the running around you both did. You feel sticky, but it’s alright. “that’d be good.”

Karkat made a good point, it’s nice out tonight, and it’s even nicer having him here with you. You walk around together with Karkat’s head on your shoulder while the moon rises and the stars blink to life above you to light your path back home.

#long post #fic request #davekat #dave strider #karkat vantas #the mayor #fanfic #I went a little overboard with this one #sorry if it's not exactly what you wanted #I hope you like it #it's pretty much every cliché beach episode of an anime ever #at least that's what it felt like while I was writing it #yo it's a fic and I wrote it

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daughterofdescartes · 6 years

Text

Why my first ‘situationship’ was doomed from the beginning: a personal Romeo & Juliet story

LONG BUT NECESSARY INTRODUCTION

Ah, failed ‘relationships’. It happens to the best of us. It always ends with hurt feelings, you know, because life is programmed to make us all suffer, since nobody knows why we’re here on this planet anyway! I’m turning 20 in December, and am getting over my very first “special someone” *sighs and looks into the distance*... I’m just kidding he wasn’t that special, just happened to be the first dude I had a “thing” with, that’s all. Even though he’s not that special, the experience I went through involving this guy is what changed my life. Yup, I just said that. Sounds hella dramatic, but i’m literally a changed woman. It was a spiritual journey from beginning to end. 90% of the people who know me don’t even know this happened to me. So, if you’re reading this, consider yourself very lucky! Or not, this is going to be really long and I don’t know how interesting I can make this, but stay with me, you guys...

If you want to know what happened, I can tell you this story very shortly without any of the details, and it will just seem like a very dumb story between two youngsters who both didn’t know what they were doing, like my own modern twist on Romeo and Juliet lol.

TLDR: I met an emotionally unavailable American guy on a dating app, we talked for a week and then we told each other that we liked one another. After another week, I got very overwhelmed and said that we need to take a break. A month had passed and we started talking again. I got immensely insecure because at this period i was the only one texting first. Confronted him with my insecurities many many times. We still talked for a time span of around 3 months. Right now we haven’t spoken in over 3 weeks and I have honestly accepted that this whole situation was doomed to fail from the beginning and am reborn as a new person.

Honestly? I don’t think I’m very heartbroken at all. But this whole experience did tamper with me psychologically, so it’s not like I have no healing to do or anything. I went through a lot of emotional suffering, never truly understanding where it was coming from, but during my evening walk with my dog, a light bulb lit up above my head... (a sockhop beneath my bed, press like if u get the ref xd)

Just so you guys know, this McGuy still haunts my mind everyday. Not all the time, but the thought of him or what has happened, will cross me at least once a day. With this experience being very ‘spiritual’ and all, I have been thinking, a lot. I know, very deep of me. I’ve been thinking a lot about who I am as a person and why I am the way I am and suddenly... it all clicked.

I was always thinking about him and his actions, but when I started seeing the bigger picture, aka including myself in the story, it suddenly made a whole lot more sense. It was never really about him, it was about Me. So here’s kind of a prologue talking about my history after this long ass introduction.

PROLOGUE

In my 19 years of existence I had never before messed with anyone romantically. I always just crushed on people, not knowing if any feelings were reciprocated, not knowing if there were any secret admirers (doubt it). I’m not ignorant of the reasons why i’ve been celibate my whole life. I know that i’m kind of shy, pretty insecure, look unapproachable as fuck, not a 10 out of 10 according to society’s standards, etc.

I used to have a harder time coping with the fact that I had never once experienced mutual ‘romantic love’, but when years and years pass by, you just realize that being a celibate teenager is okay. Although I was okay with it, I still had my moments of frustrations. “What’s wrong with me? Why hasn’t anything happened yet?” But always got myself back on my feet again, telling myself I’m fine and just need to be patient. You’re young, you’ve got lots of time! What’s the rush? Even if majority of your friends already had their first kiss in 9th grade; it’s no big deal, right? You just gotta keep yourself busy with other teenager things like, procrastinating school work, being angsty and rebelling against your parents, spending time on the interwebs and whatever else the teenz do.

So, I kept myself busy throughout middle school and high school, had at least one crush every year, because ya girl gets bored sometimes. Most of them weren’t that meaningful, since I kind of suck at talking to guys in general, because I think they’re aliens. So, I never really got to know most of my crushes as people. It was still a fun time regardless, because who cares about rejection, if you just keep it a secret forever? Except for this one dude I obsessively crushed on for 6 years (while simultaneously crushing on other people, wow multitasking Queen), and Young 14 Year Ol’ Me thought it was a very good idea to tell All my Friends in 8th-9th grade, because 14-15 year olds are so trustworthy and won’t tell anyone, right? I’m pretty sure that guy knows how much I liked him and is kind of creeped out, but 14 year old me was just very excited and infatuated.

Anyways, I graduated high school with ok results and 0 romantic experience! Now this is where life Really Begins!!!!! Time for UNIVERSITY!!! *crowd cheering*

I’ve always been a creative, artistic soul, though I think that quality is diminishing more and more every year, or maybe I’m just imagining it. Nonetheless, I didn’t Really know what I wanted to study, but have always considered architecture an option because of its creative side.

Boy.

Most tiring semester of my life. You only understand once you experience the archilife. I once pooped and when I was done, I stood up and looked back, I literally was astonished at the sight of my own feces, because I had literally forgotten that I had pooped, that was how tired I was. If you are grossed out right now, grow up. We all poop.

This major is extremely grueling and taxing on both your physical and mental health. If you’re a procrastinator, oh boy, now that’s adding fuel to the fire. I kept procrastinating finishing/starting my preparation for the final big presentation and ultimately had a big mental breakdown, and decided that I wanted to quit architecture. It was never my passion anyway, and this is one of the majors you must be passionate about, or else you won’t make it out alive unless you’re a masochist.

What comes next after architecture? Sinology aka Chinese studies. I only grew up speaking Shanghainese, so mastering the Mandarin language is something that I have literally always wanted. I was always insecure about my Mandarin skills, so let’s just do that lol.

No matter how awful architecture school might’ve been, I still met some cool people that I really clicked with. (I’m talking like people you can count on one hand, I’m not that social, okay) Which I was really happy about, because I was scared I wasn’t going to have any friends, because I kind of suck at making them.

Changing majors was a big shift, suddenly I was all by myself again and had to go through the whole making friends progress again, schucks.

The architecture campus is in Brussels, while the campus for linguistics is in Leuven. Brussels is a lot more diverse, I would say, so there are less white Belgians.

Let me tell you something about white Belgians, they are horrible at socializing. Especially the province I live in. They’re horrible. I’m also horrible. Conclusion? Making friends in a predominantly Belgian white class, was freaking hard! BECAUSE NO ONE EVEN CARES ABOUT GETTING TO KNOW YOU!!! THEY JUST LOOKING AT THEIR PHONE BITCH!!!! OR TALKING TO THEIR OWN CLIQUE BEING BORING STAYING IN THEIR COMFORT ZONE!!!! Why do new kids in American movies get so much attention, but the two times I’ve been the new kid literally no one cares. That’s the sad reality of life. I mean Hello? If y’all are not gonna make effort to become friends with me? Are you trying to say? That I have to do the work? Bitch?

So a month had passed, and I still had no friends, it was pretty darn lonely, but I was getting there slowly. But here’s a funny thing! On one of these lonely nights, I was watching a youtube video and it was sponsored by GUESS WHAT? a dating app! WOW... Now here’s where The Story beginz..

CHAPTER 1: INCOMING

So ya bitch was entertaining herself on YewChewb, I was watching some video from some Chinese American guy, and in this glorious video, he is advertising this dating app called EastMeetEast... Yeah, it’s a dating app where Asian people meet each other. Me, a bored lonely dumbass bitch, was like okay, let’s see what this is about. This should be Funny!!! So I made a profile, with some catfishy pictures of myself, you know, take her swimming on the first date and all that shit. So, I match with a few guys okay fun, (you could only match with, only girls or only guys) And this dodgy app requires men to pay for the app so that they can message with girls, because if you use it for free, they can’t see girls’ messages or something weird? Mind you, girls can see and send messages for free. We love this reverse sexism!

Also, this app isn’t very popular in Belgium, mainly American people use it, so ya. I mainly matched with Asian Americans.

Turning-point, The Life-Changing Encounter of Death: I match with a 19 year old with the initial A. We’ll call him A for the rest of the story, like some fun little mystery like in Pretty Little Liars. (I’ve never watched it) He only had one picture, but he’s cute. Half Italian, half Chinese. Ok, fun. So shortly after matching he sends me this message on the app: “if you want to talk my username is @_________”. He didn’t really put anything in his bio if i remembered but one thing that was stated on his profile is the HIGH SCHOOL he was in. First red flag. HIGH SCHOOL. First of all, what the fuck. Second of all, why the fuck? But ok lonely ol’ me was feeling Adventurous and this matching with people thing was fun. Male validation did not exist to me before this historical day and chatting with a good looking guy was unheard of.

It didn’t really say what social platform the username was for, the platform always get censored because the app just wants you to pay for the app to talk with people, crayzy. But i just assumed i’d find him on instagram, because that’s where everyone’s texting nowadays. I found him and followed him. He followed me back and messaged me, bingo.

We talk for a short while. I said some cringy ass shit I would literally never say to anyone in real life, because a shishter was feeling very Bold that day. I have never said cringier shit than when i was talking to this guy. It wasn’t anything creepy I just complimented his looks and all he said was “thanks, i’ve seen your pics too. very pretty.” Uh? Who talks like this? What kind of dry ass chicken breast are we eating here? He tells me he’s a high school senior and is born in ‘99. Stayed back a year since he migrated from Cuba to Miami. OK, interesting.

So after shortly introducing ourselves to each other, he suddenly asks if he can have my number? and I was like ??????????????????????????? Why?????????? Forgetting that people actually talk on iMessage, I barely ever do that. But that’s what A meant. I was sceptical but intrigued.

We talk some more. Doesn’t seem like a bad guy, and he texts back quickly. This is entertaining. When once again, A asks me a sudden question. “Can I call you? We don’t have to if you don’t want to.” My head is full of question marks and I start getting sweaty at the thought of having to call a person I barely know. Like I guess this is American culture? Or I just don’t understand calling culture because I have no friends who enjoy calling? But I was like? Calling? That hateful thing my parents force me to do when mailing is not quick enough? Why would you want to do that?

So I’m like, “UH. I DONT KNOW MAN. I’VE NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE SO I’M KIND OF NERVOUS LOL. I DON’T THINK I’M READY FOR THIS” (not actually in caps, but this symbolizes my very nervous energy)

And he replies, “It’s okay. I don’t want to push you into doing anything you’re not comfortable with.”

We were literally talking as if he was asking me to have sex with him, when it was just about a dumbass call. It’s so funny.

Whatever, we continue talking. It’s time for me to sleep. He says “Buenanotte Bella” ..... ?????? OK.

Next day comes, we talk again. He once again asks out of the blue if he can call me??? So I say

“Are you really that curious?”

“Well, aren’t you?”

I was curious, so I caved in and let him call me. It was so nervewracking. The only men I interact with on a regular basis in my life are my dad, brother and my dog.

Boy, the moment I heard that voice say “hey”. That’s the moment I got hypnotized and became a clown for nearly 5 months. I didn’t know you could be this attracted to a voice, but okay. Unfortunately, my voice cannot compare and he did not get hypnotized in return. Wack.

The call wasn’t too bad. It’s cute looking back at it. I couldn’t believe a guy actually wanted to talk to me. That person texting me, was a real human being with a real voice. I was fucking wonderstruck over the fact that a good looking guy was talking to me so I was on cloud 9, Okay? lmao

So the time difference between A and I is 6 hours right. Most of the time we’d start talking when it was evening in Belgium, so for A it was always in the afternoon. Only he could say good night to me, and I never could to him. This created a pretty big inbalance in the attachment levels imo.

In this chapter (the first 2 weeks) he would always ask me what I was doing. Like that’s not your business sis. I don’t wanna tell you that i’m a loser that’s not doing shit even though she has shit to do??? But apparently he always wanted to see if I was busy or not so he knew he wasn’t disturbing me and so that he could, you guessed it, call me.

Everyday, we would text each other, and that was fine, until the dreaded question came. “Can I call you?” BITCH WHY DO YOU WANNA CALL SO BADGSJOGJOISGJI I SWEAR. I didn’t absolutely hate it, but there were just factors that made me not like calling very much. (nearing the end i definitely came to hate it)

1. I don’t want my parents hear me call with a guy (I literally could’ve worn my earbuds I don’t know why I never thought of it... we stan a dumbass bitch)

2. Sometimes there was literally nothing to talk about because we’re foremost still strangers and it was awkward

3. The fact that I wanted to hide this from my parents, made me highly aware of how loud I was speaking and I couldn’t fully express myself, scared that my parents would barge in on me calling.

4. 90% of his jokes flew over my head, they weren’t that funny. I’m sorry, A. I’m funnier. And that’s just tea.

5. EVEN DURING THE CALL when there was nothing to talk about he’d be like “so what’s up wyd” bitch? calling you? I couldn’t concentrate on anything else everytime because I was a nervous wreck.

6. Even if I wanted to do school work, I would push that aside to call him because, I wanted to hear his voice. Ke$ha - Your Love is My Drug

7. BECAUSE I WANTED TO HEAR HIS VOICE we would even call until 4AM TALKING ABOUT LITERALLY NOTHING IT WAS SO AWKWARD WHY KILL MY CLOWN ASS. I RUINED MY SLEEPING SCHEDULE FOR THAT DONKEY

Our text conversations were honestly, more fun, because when we were calling, a bitch couldn’t think straight. Our calls were most of the time not that fun I don’t understand why he wanted to call everyday.

Mind you, the shyer i get, the more monotone I get. So I would react very coldly and in a stiff manner during the calls just saying: “Yeah.”, “Sure.”, “Wow.”, “Ok.” BECAUSE I didn’t have time to think and didn’t know what to say 99% of the time. So a week after getting to know A, during the 64th silence in one of our calls, he says this:

“This is gonna sound really insecure but, do you even like talking to me?”

“Yea.”

So romantic...... I’m swooning...... Pick me up......

Call ends. It’s almost time for me to sleep, but I’m still thinking about what he said right there, so I text:

“Would a person really stay up until 4AM calling someone although they don’t like talking to them? Silly” JGOIJGOIDSGJOSIGJOS JUST SHOOT ME RIGHT NOW I CAN’T BELIEVE I SAID THAT

And then he said something along the lines of “I don’t know if you’re talking to me because you’re just bored, or there’s something more.Like tell me what you want from me, woman” like??? woman?????? SECOND RED FLAG DONT CALL ME WOMAN SHUT THE FUCK UP I HATED THAT SO MUCH

So i was like “idk what do YOU want from me??” And he was like “well” and i was like “i’ll say it too u go first” (lmfao) and then he said

“Honestly I’d like to be romantic with you but, you know, there’s an atlantic ocean between us” and at that moment my heart dropped when I read this text because this might as well have been the smartest point A has ever made in the 4 months of talking to him. He’s right. This humongous distance has slaughtered any budding of any kind of relationship from the very beginning.

Dude never liked me enough to actually want to initiate a meeting, I don’t blame him. The boy was bored and created an account on a dating app because his friends told him about it. I bet he wasn’t really planning to find an Asian European lover in his last year of high school.

But who was naive/delusional enough to convince herself that MAYBE these two people who aren’t even that compatible in the first place, could maybe MEET someday and FALL IN LOVE??? ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

With the word ‘romantic’ he probably means fuck, i mean do high school boys actually know what romance is uh. The biggest thing that could have developed in under a week is a small little crush. Anyways, i did not realize this properly and took his statement very seriously and thought “Wow a boy just said he likes me WoW, we will make this Love happen No Matter What” I was thrilled.

Next morning I wake up, I’m a ball of sunshine. A guy 7876768 kilometers far away from me says he likes me. That is so meaningful. Wow....

While I was talking to A, I still matched with other dudes on that stupid app out of boredom, but never talked to them because in my maiden’s ♥heart♥ A was still nr. 1, because he just said he likes me WoW. So while messing around on that app, i keep noticing there’s a green dot next to A’s name, meaning he’s active on the app. And i’m like hmm..... ......................

Me, a nosey bitch, said somethign dumb like “oh you’re active on weird hours” and he just said

“yeah, left it open and let my friends mess around with it”

.................................hmmmmmmmm investigation time even though it’s literally not my place and I am not entitled to any form of commitment at all

Let’s talk about the biggest red flag of all red flags that I decided to ignore,

A’s instagram account. Let’s talk about it.

His username does not include his name, there are NO pictures of him in his feed, only posts dank memes and likes his own posts and if you look at the people he’s following, you see something very interesting!

Half of it are instagram accounts of Asian girls... And most of them weren’t even like popular accounts like they were just really freaking random accounts most of the time, and other ones were girls he met on EastMeetEast.

Yup........ I looked at his moderate collection of Asian girls and thought. Wow this makes me uncomfortable, but he said he likes me, and I don’t think anyone else will ever like me so I should stick to him..... I guess!!!

The only redeeming factor of his instagram is that his profile picture is a kitten, I think her name was Eko or something. Don’t let him hurt you, kitty cat.

So discovering this information, I felt hurt. He said he wants to get ‘romantic’ with me??? Why is he still collecting other Asian girls when clearly, we will fall in love someday?

To confirm my already confirmed suspicions that he isn’t in love with me, I send my Indonesian best friend on a mission and let her create an account on EastMeetEast. I told her to try match with him. THEY MOTHAFUCKIN MATCHED I LITERALLY DONT KNOW WHY I WANTED THIS TO HAPPEN THAT HURT LIKE A MOTHAFUCKAR AT THE TIME. MIND YOU, I TOLD HIM MY BEST FRIEND IS INDONESIAN, AND HE SEES THAT AN INDONESIAN BELGIAN WANTS TO MATCH WITH HIM, WHEN 10 PEOPLE IN BELGIUM USE THIS APP. JGSIDOGJOSGJOISGJ MEN ARE SO STUPID

Notice the sudden spike of emotional instability and irrationality after he told me he liked me? It’s extremely important actually. At the time, I did not understand what I was going through emotionally. And I think if you’re just casually reading this, you might be wondering what was wrong with me too. Thank you for worrying about my wellbeing, you are a better person than A.

So increasingly, I get more and more nervous concerning literally everything that is not pointing towards the direction that he is in fact in love with me, after one week. That’s 7 days, if you will.

I myself was also questioning my sanity throughout this whole process, because I never thought I would go that far. I talked about other guys to see if he would get jealous. (I don’t really think he cared lmao), constantly checked his activity on instagram (he just likes dank memes about fucking girls or something, what a chad)

Week 2 chimes in, I can tell he still ‘likes’ me, talks about stuff that happens in his American high school life, boasts about literally anything possible to make himself look good, jokes around, some intellectual conversations here and there between a weirdo horny for Asian girls and the most hopeless romantic to have existed.

I was watching a very stupid Belgian reality show, reminiscent of ‘Jersey Shore’ or ‘Ex on the Beach’ that kind of stuff. And I touched on the topic that, men cheating on women is highly popularized in media, and i said that women probs cheat just as much but are better at hiding it,

and he said, “Ha, I would know about that”

And I was like aw, I’m sorry. He talked about the fact that he had many failed relationships, most of the girls breaking up with him, if I remember correctly and eventually I got curious over the amount of partners he’s had in his 18 years of being alive, so I asked about it.

And he says “I don’t know, I don’t keep track of that stuff”

??????????????????????????????????? ???????????,

My heart started racing at this point. I was like “What do you mean?”

A says, “I just don’t count that stuff” And in my mind, my inexperienced maiden’s mind could not comprehend that you could be with so many people at such a young age that you lose track of the number? Actually, you know what, anyone with a healthy mind will find this hard to comprehend, i’m not the crazy one here in this case. Like I look at his instagram, and look at what he says and it doesn’t add up LMAO. Also he kind of fucking sucks at communicating how did he manage to cop that much pussy?

I kept asking for a number and he just keeps saying “I don’t know. It shouldn’t really matter right? I don’t keep track of that stuff.” But I was just so fucking pressed like? WHAT????? HOW CAN YOU LET SO MANY RELATIONSHIPS FAIL THAT YOU CAN’T COUNT THEM. YOURE 18, IS THIS AMERICA????? IS THIS WHAT CHILDISH WAS RAPPING ABOUT??????

I was pissed because he just kept refusing to even give a rough estimate, I’m a capricorn we love em statistics (idk what i’m saying)

So I was angry and gave him short answers. Guess what he sends,

“Call?”

I say, “No”

Iconic.

But a few minutes later I give in??? I DON’T KNOW WHY???? LMAOO and we call but it was This Very Last Call that Killed Me

The Call of Death

Call starts. I’m still pissed about the whole thing and he goes,

“So... what’s the beef with my romantic past?”

And I say I just really wanted a number because I wanted to at least have an estimate to have something to grasp onto???? fuck so he’s still very irky about it, doesn’t wanna talk about it, MAYBE BECAUSE HE LIED???? BITCH?????

He says “idk maybe over 20″ ...........????? that’s a larger number than his own age and if you do the math he would have had his first serious girlfriend at 12 years old he would have to have had at least 3 to 4 girlfriends every year....??? is this Floridian culture? Is that normal? Is he talking about anime girlfriends in dating sim games????

So this whole topic just upset me like no other, it confused me, I mean what the fuck is he talking about JGOIIJGOISDJGOSDJGOISJG

It got pretty quiet. When A suddenly says

“You know, if you don’t want to talk to me, we don’t have to”

“Hm. Maybe I don’t”

“Ok.”

The whole call goes dead fucking silent for like more than 10 minutes or something. I was just lying in my bed, scrolling on my phone, trying not to breathe, so the mic can’t catch any sound and I am internally dying.

The silence felt like it lasted forever. I didn’t have the guts to end the call. But i said something dumb to break the silence because I couldn’t take it anymore. Idk what I said.

Not too long after breaking the silence, it was so fucking awkward i don’t even know what we were talking about. Clearly, I’m traumatized and my brain is protecting me from whatever happened that night, which I’m thankful for.

So, not too long after breaking the silence, A says very abruptly, something along the lines of, “I’m home now, bye.” and ends the call. ?????????????

To add to the context, he would mostly go on walks during our calls, what a fit Chad. He really spent some evening walks, just calling me, climbing trees, stealing furniture, talking about literally nothing, that’s so iconic.........

Anyways that felt absolutely terrible, and I knew I never wanted to do that again, fuck.

I woke up the next morning feeling just as horrible, not exactly sure why but the previous night had upset me severely. Throughout this whole day I was questioning my sanity, the ‘relationship’ jodsigjosgj, and also wondering, who the fuck is this dude i’m talking to?

Realizing how much each and every word and action affected me mentally, I felt that I was losing control.

My inner thoughts: This guy is a freaking weirdo. He said he likes me, but then does all these things I do not approve of. I started liking him without really getting to know him and now I face the consequences! We should stop talking for the sake of my own sanity!!!

I’ve been talking about A to two of my close friends, they both roasted him and said I need to leave him, since he’s making me feel miserable with these extreme highs and lows.

That day, I decided A and I should stop talking. This way, I won’t feel the way I feel anymore. Actually felt pretty conflicted, because at this point, I had already grown attached to A. He helped me fill my loneliness when I didn’t have any friends yet in my new major and despite all the red flags, I still wanted to see the good in him. I mean, he said he likes me??? Can’t let that pass!!!!!

I confronted A and asked if he was angry during our last call with the long silence and all.

He says, “No, I was just joking around”

????????????????? Idk how dense I really am? But that atmosphere felt heavy and both of us weren’t laughing so I don’t know where the hell he’s coming from LMFAO. But anyways, I tell him what happened last night really upset me for some reason and that maybe we should stop talking, because talking to him everyday had taken an emotional toll on me.

A says, “Ok, if cutting me off is what you really want, then do so”

A keeps typing, then stops, keeps typing, then stops.

“Can you at least tell me what I did wrong, so that I know what to do next time when I land in a situation like this again?”

I didn’t know what he did wrong either. He was just being himself, I guess.

I say, “You didn’t do anything. I just don’t think talking to you is doing any good to me. It shouldn’t interfere this strongly with my daily life, but it is.”

He said he understands, and that we should part ways, if that’s what’s best for me.

I say, “I wonder why I’m having a harder time saying goodbye than you are”

A says, “Believe me, it’s very hard for me too”

Behind my screen, I started crying? How did I get so attached to somebody I barely knew? I couldn’t understand what was going on with me.

I wanted to hold onto him for dear life. From the moment A said he liked me, my mind took off to fantasyland. I got so excited about this mutual liking, that my mind overlooked the realism of this whole situation. I was so attached to the idea of someone liking me and the embellishments of romantic love, that I completely malfunctioned when confronted with reality, when my expectations of a perfect love weren’t met.

Because I didn’t want to let go of that concept of love, I didn’t want to let go of A. Who knows when the next person will like me? It took me 19 years to get my first one? Was my logic lmfao. fuck.

I said, “Maybe I just need some time to sort myself out. We’ll talk again someday.” I could not let him go, not because I even liked him all that much, but because of the sheer reason that he said he liked me.

A said, “Do whatever you need to do to make yourself happy. If there’s anything I can do, please tell me. But please don’t cry.”

In this last conversation before the ‘break’, A was oddly enough very sweet to me, which felt horrible. This is the most vulnerable, genuine side I had ever seen of A in the 5 months of knowing him. I wanted to continue talking, but I already said we should stop talking so I was too ashamed to go back on my words GJOIDSJGOSIGJS

We wished each other the best of luck and said our goodbyes.

I said, “Talk to you later, one day”

“I know. Goodbye.” A said, thinking this was our last conversation, because he didn’t think I would actually hit him up a month later. Lol.

CHAPTER 2: ON HOLD

I still have never been in a relationship, but what I felt the next morning, is what I imagine what half of a break up must feel like. I felt empty and wanted to text him almost immediately.

Yes, ya girl listened to sad songs and she was bawling her eyes out. Jeez. Give me a break.

Lunchtime came around. I looked out the window as it was snowing. I wanted to take a picture and show him, since it doesn’t snow in Miami, fuck please what the fuck. BUT i couldn’t do any of that because I had already said we’re taking a break, wow.

I start tearing up and my mom looks worried.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” The feeling of eating and crying at the same time is horrible. My mom doesn’t ask me anything further and I just keep sulking for the rest of the day. For the rest of the freaking month.

Holding back the urge to talk to him that day was extremely difficult, but imagine how ridiculous I would have looked if sis gave up in less than a day, so that held me back LMAO.

On some days A wasn’t even on my mind and I was living just fine.

On some nights A was all I could think about.

I kept thinking about when I should contact him. After my exams? That’s too long. That’s like 2 to 3 months, he’s over me by then! But if I talk to him before my exams, how will that affect my studies? The struggle was real.

I wanted this break to calm my feelings and for me to get back on my feet. That didn’t happen. I was still obsessed with the idea of what it must be like to be with someone. And for some odd fucking reason I thought I could make that a reality with A LMAOOOOOOO STOP

I thought, the longer I wait, the bigger the chance he’d no longer be interested in me. That thought was absolutely terrifying to me. I had to talk to him by the end of the month, or else I could not salvage This True Love.

CHAPTER 3: KIKI

We’re nearing the end guys, stay with me. It’s gonna be very anticlimactic, so stay tuned!

So after a month of anguish and yearning I send him a text. I couldn’t even wait until I got home. I did it while i was on the bus with 4G, um calm down binch???

We start talking again, but for some reason things just felt different to me. I expected things to be different. I wanted to go back to the euphoric point of when we told each other we liked each other or back to him comforting me in our ‘last moments’ before I momentarily cut him off.

The next day, and the day after, and the day after that, I kept waiting for A to text me first, but he never did. I had to text him first for 4 consecutive days. Is this a bad sign? Did he not like me anymore? He hadn’t even asked if he could call me, which I didn’t really want to do anyway, but at least it meant that he liked me, right? He’d always text back, though. And our conversations were moderately fun. So I couldn’t understand what was going on. I had to know what was going on in his mind. Does he still like me the way he used to?

These 3 months I was constantly very vulnerable, emotionally unstable and very very insecure, once again finding it hard to grasp what I was going through mentally. For tackling these problems, I always went for the approach of wearing my heart on my sleeve. Now, I really don’t know if this was the best tactic, but at least I got everything off my chest and didn’t hold anything in.

“Why haven’t you been texting me first?”

“Honest to god, I’m just really busy lately. If you want to talk, just talk to me. If you’re bothered with anything, don’t deal with it by yourself. I’m here to listen.” A told me he was preparing for his finals. I once again made a clown of myself.

But how busy was he really? He still liked his dumbass memes on instagram, continued following Asian girls, why couldn’t he make time for me? Didn’t he like me?

It dawned on me that I wasn’t on his priority list. And it made sense. Seniors are pretty busy and need to worry about applying for college. Which senior in their right mind would be looking for love? Who was I in his world? Just a part of his collection of Asian girlfriends? Sure that’s kind of hurtful, but can we still make ♥~*LOVE*~♥ happen though? My delusional self thought, Yes!!!!!

As time progressed, I got more and more insecure and kept confronting him with my own problems, and A must’ve gotten more and more sick of my bullshit.

At times he’d text me first, but not make the effort to keep the conversation going at all. I always had to bring up something interesting to keep talking or else the convo would’ve just ended with him giving a one word reply like “lmao”

He asked to call 2 more times, but I said no, feeling slightly traumatized from what the last call did to me lol. Also, I knew if I heard his voice again, that everything would affect me even more. So we never called.

“Can I call you?”

“Why? Do you miss my voice that much?” LMAOOO BYE WHO DO I THINK I AMMMMJSOIGJSOG

“No, I just need my hands to be free, I’m making homework, so calling seemed easier.”

I realized him wanting to call me, wasn’t necessarily because he liked me, it was mostly out of practicality, so that he could multitask and do something else.

A was sometimes just flat out rude, and he honestly doesn’t care. He was a self-proclaimed Asshole (is that something to be proud of?) and said that he most of the time doesn’t care if he hurts people’s feelings. That’s scary. Why wouldn’t you care about being a good person? Lawful Evil.

Here are some other red flags that still didn’t stop me from backing away:

Racial slurs are a joke to him

He really enjoys WWII jokes

Is heavily annoyed by pride month

When I showed him pictures of my dog, he didn’t seem to care at all

He dislikes Ariana Grande

Despite all these things, I was still attached to A. For what? He didn’t even like me romantically anymore at this point. What kind of rose goggles was I wearing? LOL. At this point i just wanted his attention.

I kept holding onto something that was never even there to begin with. The possibility of ♥~*LOVE*~♥ ever happening. I failed to realize that everything was doomed from the beginning. I had been alone all my life and the moment I thought somebody could change that I Snapped Lmao.

1. The distance. For real, who’s actually going to pay that much money to see someone you barely know and barely care for?

2. A was never really out there looking for anything serious. He’s a high school senior for god’s sake.

3. My unrealistic fantasies of what should have been happening to achieve ♥~*LOVE*~♥ constantly clashed with my reality. I was constantly busy fantasizing of what could have been that I failed to see things for what they were. I continuously tried to mold the situation into something it wasn’t.

If you think about it for more than 10 seconds and imagine a situation where we would actually meet, I would probably find the nearest cliff to jump off of. Exactly how much embarrassing cringy shit have I said to this man?

In probably our last meaningful conversation I asked him what he thinks of me, after “knowing” me for around 4 months.

A says, “I think you’re cool, you just need a confidence booster”

He once again, called himself an Asshole and made the point that I actually have a great personality and am really funny and that I just need to realize it. At least he’s aware. I applaud him. He told me things I already knew, but it was still very thought provoking to think about my confidence because it is the root of many of my problems.

Our last conversations felt like I was beating a dead horse. I don’t think any of us care enough anymore. Our situation was dead from the beginning and that’s fine. I’m glad this story has finally come to an end. I wish A would realize being a good person is actually rewarding, but it’s his own choice to change his life for the better. I wish him the best, and I wish myself the best of luck too. He just graduated high school and might just enter a transitional phase like I did lol. Does everyone go through a rebirth in their first year of uni? Maybe it’s just me. Finally this can die. My soul feels a lot lighter. Like in Shugo Chara, how the X-egg becomes a normal egg again and says “Thank You”, that is literally how I feel right now. Wow.

CHEESY EPILOGUE

This whole thing started because I felt extremely lonely and bored lol.

And that loneliness was amplified with my insecurities + inexperience of never having had any romance in my life? I always tend to blame myself, when really, inherently, there is nothing wrong with me. Things like a first kiss, a first lover or a first date all come at a different time for everyone. I just need to stop being impatient and glorifying my own concept of what ♥~*LOVE*~♥ is and just enjoy my life for what it is as time flows.

The thing about my self-esteem is, I am definitely aware of what a great person I am, but I still find it hard to see my worth? Like, I can see it, but I can’t grasp it? I think I tend to magnify and pick at my flaws so strongly that I can no longer believe in my own capabilites... It’s important to be kind to others but we forget that we should also be nice to ourselves.

If I want to make friends and get to know people, I will, and the right people will like me for who I am.

I must realize that I am more than what I hate about myself and that I am in fact good enough. Validation from the outside world can be nice but it’s still Me who really needs to believe it. (dattebayo)

Human beings are so complicated and we need to take all the time we need to understand ourselves and understand why we feel the way we feel, why we think what we think.

If you have been reading up to this point, I would like to thank you for taking your time to read about my experience. Hopefully you learned something too!

I love you :)

#thoughts #story #long post

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keyofjetwolf · 7 years

Text

Jet Wolf Summarizes Act 26

As it turns out, the manga and I aren’t going to be great friends. Rather than spend the energy on a liveblog that’s increasingly negative, I’m reading each manga act (mostly) silently, and then writing up summaries at the end. I’ll be very candid, which means there’s likely criticism and snark a’plenty about the manga, either wholesale or in details. If that isn’t a thing you feel like reading, please skip this post!

Things included in this summary:

The final battle against Wiseman/Death Phanton/Nemesis/Ryan. Why Ryan? Why not Ryan. Presumably his parents didn’t name him Death Phantom. Now his name is Ryan.

The conclusion to all the Crystal Tokyo shit.

The arc epilogue, which is where all the character-intensive stuff should happen but in case you forgot, this is a summary of THE MANGA.

Things not included in this summary:

My multiple literal screams.

At least not in audio form.

I’ll still scream in text though, don’t worry.

Usagi aims her love rod at an entire fucking planet which is now I guess close enough to be within visual range of Earth. I have so many questions about this, but it occurs to me that it would only make this arc longer if they were to be answered, so I keep my mouth closed. There’s a burst of light. Usagi disappears. Planet Ryan disappears. Aw, she’ll have to fight the big bad on her own, but this will be test of her mettle that will prove she’s

JUST KIDDING CAN’T FORGET THE REAL STAR

Mamoru joins Usagi by, near as I can tell, thinking about it real hard. Nobody else joins Usagi. Nobody else even tries. I can tell that, somewhere, some part of me wants to cry. The tears don’t come.

Neo-Queen Serenity’s clock finally runs out of snooze times, and she decides she’d better get up. She wanders her dead and deserted palace, noting her potentially dead but certainly unwell Senshi. She considers going to them, checking on them, showing any concern about them whatsoever, but then chuckles to herself. Don’t be ridiculous, this is the manga! Only one thing matters. CAN YOU FOLKS AT HOME GUESS WHAT IT IS??

I know, right? It’s so good to see Mamoru getting the kind of attention he’s due. He’s been so neglected and forgotten. :(

King Douchedymion wakes up, Holodouchedymion disappears, and he and NQS emerge from the palace. Then we get some Family Values propaganda bullshit.

NO OKAY

NO FUCK YOU

YOU DON’T GET TO SPEND YOUR WHOLE DAMN ARC TALKING ABOUT HOW CHIBI-USA IS LONELY AND ISOLATED AND HASN’T KNOW A SHRED OF AFFECTION FROM HER MOTHER FOR NINE HUNDRED FUCKING YEARS AND THEN DRAW THIS LIKE IT RESOLVES ANY OF THAT

WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT THIS IS INTENDED TO DO BECAUSE NEITHER CHIBS NOR NQS NOR ANYONE ELSE SAYS A SINGLE WORD ABOUT THE NEGLECT AND ABUSE CHIBS HAS BEEN SUFFERING LEAVING THE ONLY CONCLUSION THAT IT’S JUST NOT A CONSIDERATION TO ANYONE ANY MORE AND WE’RE GOOD

WE ARE NOT FUCKING GOOD AT ALL

And this gets even worse as things go on. I’m obviously having to rely on my translation here, which I grant is questionably accurate at best, but it’s what’s in front of me right now, so.

NQS goes on to tell Chibs that what got her to wake up was Chibs’ transformation into a Senshi. The conversation continues with Chibs expressing all this sadness and remorse for all the people she feels her actions indirectly killed and all the people she couldn’t protect. NQS says “It’s not your fault, now let’s not talk about it any more.” NOTE THAT SHE SAYS THIS WITH PLUTO’S DEAD AND SPRAWLED BODY LIKE FIVE FEET AWAY BUT EVERYONE IS FINE WITH THAT. From here, it starts to really get to me though, because the entire exchange turns to Chibi-Usa’s power. “You have powers of your own now,” NQS says excited. “We can use our powers to protect the planet together.” When Chibs tearfully confesses she didn’t think her mother needed her, NQS starts strong with “You’re my only daughter. You’re precious to me.” but then:

And it doesn’t stop there. NQS turns to the Senshi (MY GOD YOU MEAN THEY’RE THERE???) and tells them that when she ascended, she “lost almost all of [her] powers to fight as a soldier”. And some other shit I think may be translated wrong but doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme. The important part is that she tells Chibs she has to use Pluto’s powers (WHICH I GUESS SHE CAN JUST DO NOW) to find Sailor Moon and Tux, and use her power to help them take Ryan down for good.

(A THING SHE HERSELF WAS UNWILLING TO DO HERSELF BY THE WAY I JUST WANT TO POINT OUT THAT SHE’S SENDING HER EIGHT YEAR OLD DAUGHTER TO KILL A DUDE SHE REFUSED TO TAKE CARE OF)

ALSO FOR SOME REASON THE INNERS CAN’T ALSO GO FIGHT WHY THE FUCK DO THEY KEEP LISTENING TO EVERYONE TELLING THEM WHERE THEY CAN AND CAN’T GO

I’m going to skip ahead a bit to complete my thought about NQS here, but later in the chapter she powers up the Inners with the laughable “You’ll be able to fight alongside Sailor Moon with ease” like yeah, I’ll believe that when I fucking see it. She also powers up Sailor Moon from across time and space, and gives her a new brooch and toy from Bandai, AND OKAY WE’RE COMING TO MY POINT NOW.

Which is, EVERY GODDAMN THING ABOUT NQS AS SHE RELATES TO ANYONE NOT ENDYMION IS ABOUT POWER. And this CREEPS ME THE FUCK OUT. Her entire exchange with Chibi-Usa isn’t about Chibi-Usa, it’s about how now Chibi-Usa can fight. The fact that she didn’t wake up until Chibs could transform upsets the shit out of me. There’s no part of their interaction that, in a sincere way (and no I don’t count the easily tossed out “You’re my daughter, you’re precious” platitude as none of her interactions with Chibs over their 900 year relationship demonstrate these feelings in a way recognizable to Chibs), show NQS has any interest in Chibi-Usa whatsoever UNTIL SHE HAS POWER. She LITERALLY does not wake up and hug her daughter for what last issue suggested was the first fucking time until Chibi-Usa is a Senshi.

CREEPED. THE FUCK. OUT.

God, anyway, then Usagi and Mamoru spend five pages or something telling each other that they’re the bestest and Mamoru is just as important and powerful as Usagi.

Because again, what does female empowering mean if not “reassure the male romantic lead he’s on equal footing with the titular female lead character”.

Somewhere in the 30th century, the Senshi are filling out their resumes.

Chibs shows up, and she and Usagi destroy Planet Ryan, which is sure to send debris hurtling to Earth and upsetting the delicate climate balance that hahaha no of course not, everything’s fine.

NQS then powers up the Senshi, a move she couldn’t have done a few minutes earlier and then sending them off with Chibs to have anything at all to do with the final battle, because why, honestly. Why. Just why.

Everyone returns to Earth, and Usagi angsts a bit about not getting to meet her future self, which she can’t do because all of space and time will unravel and it’ll be very bad. Neo-Queen Serenity is angsting about it herself. It’s all so sad, so very sad, so much sadder than poor dead Pluto still lying there going through various stages of rigor mortis on her first outing in about five thousand years.

THANKS FOR SHOWING ANY LINGERING REMORSE ABOUT THE DEATH OF YOUR ONLY FRIEND LITERALLY TEN MINUTES AGO

But honestly, who has time for any of that when Usagi is sad? SHE WANTED TO MEET HERSELF YOU GUYS AND IT’S HEARTBREAKING THAT SHE CAN’T IT’S TRAGIC THE MOST TRAGIC THING TO HAPPEN ALL DAY, manga!Usagi is thinking to herself as she steps over Pluto’s body still-warm body.

BUT FUCKING WAIT

BECAUSE NEO-QUEEN FUCKING SERENITY AFTER TALKING ABOUT HOW THEY COULDN’T POSSIBLY MEET RUNS THE FUCK UP AND STARTS CHATTING TO USAGI ANYWAY

I SCREAMED I SCREAMED SO GODDAMN LOUD WHAT IS THIS UTTER FUCKING BULLSHIT

JUST THIS CONVERSATION COULD ALTER HISTORY

YOU JUST LOST LITERALLY YOUR ENTIRE CITY’S POPULATION IN A WAR AGAINST FUCKS WHO WANTED TO ALTER HISTORY

SAILOR PLUTO FUCKING DIED SO YOU COULD STOP EVERYTHING UNRAVELING

AND NEO-QUEEN SERENITY SAYS FUCK ALL OF THAT BECAUSE SHE WANTS TO SAY HELLO TO HER GODDAMN FOURTEEN YEAR-OLD SELF

A DECISION USAGI NOT ONLY SUPPORTS BUT IS DELIGHTED BY

I AM A BALLOON FILLED WITH PURE RAGE AND I JUST FUCKING POPPED

THIS IS THE MOST SELFISH SHIT I HAVE EVER SEEN

“Wow, Chibs, your mum’s a bitch,” Minako says. Chibi-Usa just emphatically nods.

R A G E

Ugh, fuck, let’s get this over with. Chibs is packing up and leaving, and Usagi is all “YOU DON’T THINK ABOUT MY FEELINGS”, as though anyone else is allowed to have feelings to ever be considered. She goes to the park to travel home. Only Mamoru is there. I can’t even pretend to be anything but resigned at this point. But don’t worry, because the Senshi have a whole long panel!

Rei is comforting that fan club president she knew for a couple of hours! Makoto receives a hug from the guy who talks about Mamoru 98% of the time! Minako greets Motoki who looks terrified! Ami is just there because like I said back at the beginning of this arc, she has absolutely no other character at all to connect her to!

God, aren’t you bored with all this attention on the Senshi? TAKEUCHI SURE IS BUT DON’T WORRY HERE COMES MORE MAMORU AND USAGI. They talk about how their future is already planned out, and are somehow romantic and wistful about it. And then surprise! Chibi-Usa is back!

Neo-Queen Serenity will finally, after 900 years, get to see her daughter grow! God, how terrifying. HEY FOURTEEN-YEAR OLD ME PLEASE RAISE HER LIKE YOUR DAUGHTER I SPENT LIKE HALF AN HOUR WITH HER AND IT WAS TERRIBLE KTHX ♥

THE FUCKING END

#JW reads Sailor Moon #sm manga act 26 #jet wolf summarizes the manga #a novel by jet wolf #jet wolf versus the manga #I KNOW THERE'S NOT MUCH FUNNY HERE I APOLOGIZE

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