#it looks so sick and mysterious based off whats been shown

[5hrignold]

glep being like thousands of years old has me wondering if that’s a critter thing like they either can be immortal or live to an absurd amount of time like that or it’s just a glep thing like it would be the case for him regardless of species

[averywiseanimatedcat]

I’ve yet to see anyone talk about this:

The verse on the matchbox being highlighted so obviously stuck out to me. Neil is clever. He did this for some reason. I looked into this a while ago but only just got round to writing it out because I’ve been sick and had the time to hyper fixate on researching something I didn’t need to…

So buckle up because Job 41 is a parallel of the minisode scene when God is talking to Job. But I think the whole of Job 41 relates heavily to Crowleys character and his storyline because it’s about a sea snake.

Full warning this post is long, but it’s all important I promise.

Disclaimer you have to read if you’re gonna comment about me being wrong in my interpretation of Job 41: I am someone who doesn’t believe it’s possible to perfectly understand the bible. I’m not presenting anything as fact because there’s looottts of different interpretations of literally everything in the bible. This is my interpretation of the chapter. I don’t care if you think I’m wrong cause you have a double degree in know it all religious studies. Disclaimer over.

So where does the verse come from?

Job 41:19

‘Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out’

This verse is part of Gods description of a leviathan that takes up most of the second part of chapter 41 in the book of Job. If you want to read the entire chapter before reading this I’ll paste it at the bottom of the post. It’s from the King James version. You can also just google it.

But what’s a leviathan? Glad you asked. I spent to long looking it up.

Leviathans. The general consensus is that the creature referred to in Job 41 is some kind of sea monster. The Hebrew word that translates to Leviathan (Livyatan) appears six times in the Old Testament. One of them is in Job 41. The word is derived from the root Iwy or ‘ twist, coil’ and means ‘the sinuous one.’ So I think we can establish that this creature is at least indicated to be snake-like. It could be a crocodile, a whale, a dragon, a snake, or just an indescribable monster. But we have no modern reference because this creature doesn’t exist in modern times if it ever existed at all. So for the purpose of relating it to the show, I think its important to note that one of the interpretations is that the leviathan is a snake like creature or a sea serpent Iike what’s shown in this beautiful piece of art.

The Destruction of Leviathan by Gustave Doré (1865)

Now, these two verses from the first part of Job 41 are important,

Job 41:10

None is so fierce that dare stir him up: who then is able to stand before me?

Job 41:4

Will he make a covenant with thee? Will thou take him for a servent forever?

Prior to chapter 41 Job, has been questioning God about the mysteries of creation. God responds by chastising Job for questioning him and describing how Job would not be able to subdue the great leviathan and make him his servant, so why does he think he has a right to question god?

And in our minisode Job comes back from talking to god and says:

“I think the point was, if you want answers, come back when you can make a whale.”

What’s happening when Azirpahale and Crowley come across God talking to Job is exactly what’s happening in Job 41. I also noted that in the minisode Job said God talked alot about whales. Which is funny, because it seemed random at the time, but one interpretation of the ‘leviathan’ is that it’s some kind of whale.

So that scene in the minsode is based off of Job 41! Amazing. But I don’t think the connections end there…

The more obvious potential reference to Crowley in Job 41 is how God describes the leviathan being able to spit fire. The verse on the matchbox comes from this part of the chapter.

Job 41:19

Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out

Job 41:20

Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or caldron

Job 41:21

His breath kindleth coals, and flames goeth out of his mouth

We know Crowley has the ability to summon fire. He summoned that giant sun thing that shoots fireballs to smite goats at the start of the minisode, then he sets fire to the house before saving Job’s children. So leviathan/sea serpent spits fire, our fav snake from Eden can summon fire. Fire is also just quite central to his storyline with the bookshop fire, the road/his Bentley setting fire, Heaven trying to burn Aziraphale with fire and the bombing of the church when he saves Aziraphales books.

But there’s some less obvious connections in Job 41 to Crowley. There’sa few interesting verses here that seem to relate to Crowley

Job 41:4

Will he make a covenant with thee? wilt thou take him for a servant for ever?

God isn’t talking about killing the leviathan, he’s talking about enslaving it

Job 41:24

His heart is firm as a stone: yea, as hard as a piece of nether millstone

Nether millstones, according to my googling, are millstones obviously, but it’s also a phrase that indicates something that is tough and unyielding, unlikely to submit. It’s describing the leviathan being unyielding to negotiations. God also says this about the leviathan,

Job 41:29

Darts are counted as stubble: he laughter at the shaking of a spear

I couldn’t help but think all these verses are very Crowley sounding. He is stubborn and willfull, unable to be controlled and won’t submit to servitude. He (both actually and metaphorically) laughed in hell's face when he and Aziraphale were body doubling and the holy water didn’t destroy him.

Crowleys wilfulness and refusal to be subjugated is the reason he fell in the first place. It’s the reason he fell out with Hell as well, he refuses to fully go along with either side. He believes in autonomy and freedom. He said no to Aziraphale because he cannot return to a life he perceives as slavery, especially as Aziraphales ‘second in command’. He doesn’t want to be under anyones command or to command anyone. It’s so against his very nature to return that the suggestion was ridiculous to him. And this chapter of Job is a parallel in that God uses the leviathan as an example because it’s ridiculous to imagine a giant sea monster being enslaved by a human to do his bidding. Just like in the minisode how it’s ridiculous to tell Job to make whales before he can ask God anything.

But that’s the point. That’s the whole conflict of the show, Gods ridiculous answer to everything is that it’s ‘ineffable’ and therefore you can’t ask questions.

I also think it’s also fitting that the leviathan is perceived to be a monster that must be slain or enslaved.

And it makes me think of how Crowley has always been labelled as evil because he fell. I think of how, at heart, he is truly gentle and kind, he’s a starmaker. But his fall, his appearance, his desire to be autonomous and his grey moral campus make him feared and a target. He’s a boat rocker, he keeps asking questions even when he gets told ridiculous answers and that’s the problem for those in power. It makes me think of this quote

“Draw a monster. Why is it a monster?”

-Daughter by Janice Lee.

So in conclusion, not only is Job 41 the chapter that would’ve inspired the scene where Job is talking to god, I think Crowley represents the leviathan being discussed in Job 41.

So do I think this has any meaning/hint to season 3?

I don’t think there’s a direct hint. But it reminded me that Crowleys character is truly unrelenting. He’s a nether millstone. And he won’t give up that easily. He absolutely won’t submit to anyone, and he’s shown time and time again that his blustering about running away disappears as soon as someone or something he cares about is in danger (ie Aziraphale). And the second coming will also threaten his creation (the universe) so I’m really hoping we will see so much more of Crowleys power and history in S3.

I’m really happy I looked into this, because I could be completely off the deep end with this analysis but it actually wouldn’t even matter because this universe Terry and Neil’s created is built around it being transposable. You can put any lens you want on it. And I had fun deep diving into Job 41. I never thought I’d ever say I had fun reading the bible but Neil you did it. Sneaky buggar.

Full chapter of Job 41:

41 Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down?

2 Canst thou put an hook into his nose? or bore his jaw through with a thorn?

3 Will he make many supplications unto thee? will he speak soft words unto thee?

4 Will he make a covenant with thee? wilt thou take him for a servant for ever?

5 Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens?

6 Shall the companions make a banquet of him? shall they part him among the merchants?

7 Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? or his head with fish spears?

8 Lay thine hand upon him, remember the battle, do no more.

9 Behold, the hope of him is in vain: shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him?

10 None is so fierce that dare stir him up: who then is able to stand before me?

11 Who hath prevented me, that I should repay him? whatsoever is under the whole heaven is mine.

12 I will not conceal his parts, nor his power, nor his comely proportion.

13 Who can discover the face of his garment? or who can come to him with his double bridle?

14 Who can open the doors of his face? his teeth are terrible round about.

15 His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal.

16 One is so near to another, that no air can come between them.

17 They are joined one to another, they stick together, that they cannot be sundered.

18 By his neesings a light doth shine, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning.

19 Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out.

20 Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or caldron.

21 His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth.

22 In his neck remaineth strength, and sorrow is turned into joy before him.

23 The flakes of his flesh are joined together: they are firm in themselves; they cannot be moved.

24 His heart is as firm as a stone; yea, as hard as a piece of the nether millstone.

25 When he raiseth up himself, the mighty are afraid: by reason of breakings they purify themselves.

26 The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold: the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon.

27 He esteemeth iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood.

28 The arrow cannot make him flee: slingstones are turned with him into stubble.

29 Darts are counted as stubble: he laugheth at the shaking of a spear.

30 Sharp stones are under him: he spreadeth sharp pointed things upon the mire.

31 He maketh the deep to boil like a pot: he maketh the sea like a pot of ointment.

32 He maketh a path to shine after him; one would think the deep to be hoary.

33 Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear.

34 He beholdeth all high things: he is a king over all the children of pride.

[valya-kingoftherats]

Bills would've been better

Mia brings Jane the letters. All from the fanclub you've somehow amalgamated. The one that you wish didn't exist.

And being the idiot that you are, you read them.

You're lying on the floor in your base, cold concrete doing wonders for your migraine. Sprawled out on your back with a little stack of loose papers beside you. One held up above your face.

They're more or less all the same. Glorified thank you notes. But reading them doesn't fill you with any sense or pride. They just make you feel hollow. More than before.

You are a pathetic excuse of a villain for one. What exactly have you done so far? Had a temper tantrum about an exhibit about your past at a museum. Stood at some protests and fought the LDPD to keep them back and put them in their place. Harassed government officials to improve the living standards in low-income communities. Picked away at removing corrupt politicians from power. Which will never work. There will always be another to replace. An endless cycle you are ultimately powerless against.

Worthless.

Why did you ever think you could stand a chance against the farm? It's completely unobtainable. Out of your league. Pathetic. What's one stupid telepathic regene with power armour versus an entire establishment? You are a fool if you ever really thought you stood a chance.

The next letter is from a kid. Pink glittery pen scrawl that hurts your eyes in the low light. You don't want to move so straining your eyes to read it is.

Another thank you note. For how Entropy mysteriously got the construction company to leave his neighbourhood alone. The project terminated and the houses and families that live in them safe and undisplaced. The CEO paid off everyone's mortgage as consolation for the stress and an apology for thinking them so easy to toss aside. Entropy is his hero.

Hero. That's not what you are. Aren't supposed to be. Never was.

None of them know what they're idolizing. You are nobody's hero. You're done with that. Ended horribly. But no matter what you try, you seem to be bound to fail time and time again at playing the villain. All you've done is hurt Julia.

Maybe that's enough to make you the bad guy. It feels like it.

The next five letters are from employees from a local grocery store. They're unionized now. Thanks to Entropy.

Fucking hell, you hardly even pass for anything more then a glorified crosswalk guard. Holding people's hands and leading them from point A to point B.

They would've got there eventually, with or without you. You're sure of it.

If any of them knew the truth about what you are, they wouldn't be quick to attach themselves to you. How many would turn you in? Send you back?

The good life is only meant for real people. Which — you yank the sleeve of your hoodie back up over your wrists — you are more than well aware that you aren't.

Two more letters. More of the same. Work you don't need armour for. You could've done that with street clothing and sunglasses. Show up, adjust some minds, problem solved. Anonymous neighbourhood watchdog.

Four official letters from the charities you last hit up. Donated thousands, stolen from real villains. They're grateful. One of them wants to meet in person. Thank you. It isn't happening. You are not something to be shown off.

Too many people looking up to you. It makes you feel sick. You are the last person who deserves that. Nobody's hero. You couldn't save people you cared about when it counted.

You can't even find reason to even attempt to save yourself.

Look at you. Reading a dozen painfully heartfelt letters, and what does that make you feel? Like everyone would be better if you never came back from the dead. Were never here at all.

Maybe that makes you the villain. Because you must truly be awful to think the things you do. To do the things to yourself that you do in response. Because nobody in their right mind would want to kill themselves after hearing about how beloved they are. How many lives they've changed.

Selfish and pathetic.

A successful failed career. You switched sides only to do more good than you ever did as a hero. And none of it is even remotely useful to achieve your goals.

Not goals. Pipedream. Because there really is no way you can take down the farm. Not continuing on like this.

Right now, not continuing on sounds like the best course of action.

You let the last letter fall from your grasp. Watch it flutter down and land beside you. You don't know what it says. It doesn't matter. More false admiration for someone who doesn't deserve it. Someone who only tangentially exists.

Jane needs to get rid of the letters next time Mia hands them to you. And Entropy needs to toughen up and be the fucking bad guy. And Valya needs to take down that stupid fanclub website.

But none of that will get done. Because it's so much easier to construct new and creative ways to hurt yourself. Even just mentally. Remind you of what you are. Of how you will never be one of them. Never fit in. Never be truly deserving of being the hero everyone writes letters to thank.

You're more likely to actually take down the farm than to become a person deserving of that.

[redhairedlesbians]

you took away the mystery of knowing you.

pieces of your being that are meant to be inferred, not demanded

you brazenly shown of your personality

because you are not sure of it yourself.

you don’t know who you are, and so you must convince everyone who you are, desperate for them to believe the show, because if they can believe it, you can believe it too.

some part of me feels like you sucked a piece of my being out when you were around. you look at me, searching for some piece of my soul that you can devour and feed off of. another trait you can dust off, try on, and then take off as you please.

you care about pleasure, want, ego. you care about your own selfish persona without mind to those around you. they’re used to it. your soul sucking tendencies have less of an affect to those you’ve been nursing on for years.

you’re an energetic mind-fuck. you came into my life and stole from me like some little fantasy creature that movies swiftly through their thievery and scurries away with a quickness.

(and fuck you, and your fantasy creatures, by the way. i really don’t understand how you have the capacity to be the way you are and have such. BORING INTERESTS. and don’t get me wrong, i love fantasy. but god, i never have to hear you mansplain another fantasy game to me again. i get to learn without your demanding)

and god, i know you intend no harm. i think that’s what makes it worse of all: you cannot fix someone who doesn’t believe that their actions are their own when intention is to play. the most insufferable type of human. because the reality is, most people are not horrible people by heart. many people try their best and abide by their own set of morals that can change based on circumstance. people do not want to be the bad guy ever, because it feels terrible, and so they avoid it at all costs.

because, see for you, your ego is built on such a fragile foundation that an ounce of self reflection is simply too daunting of a task. you feel so deeply insecure that anything that slightly threatens your amazing person facade must. be. terminated. because if that threat makes it’s way through your fragile walls, your entire esteem comes crashing down. so when you don’t do something to hurt someone intentionally, because god why would you, you don’t feel the need to address your actions and how to fix them. to accept responsibility is to acknowledge defeat, and if you accept defeat then this entire facade is exposed. the walls you so rapidly built around the gaping wound in your soul will come crashing down and everyone will know you for what you are: a fraud. weak.

and i know that this is not your fault, but it does highlight a flaw in your being: resistance to change. you have a hard time changing because the shallow pit you grew up in has seeped so far into your bones that it seems more comfortable in the toxic wasteland than in the world i tried to show you. i tried to pull you out. i couldn’t. i wanted you to grow with me, alongside me. but as i grew larger you stayed stagnant, feet stuck in the gunk of the world you grew up in. i wanted to save you. i wish i could have. sometimes i wonder how you’re doing and for a split second i wish you well. i feel sad for you and sometimes i wish to pray on your behalf, share even more of me and send more of my energy in your direction. this urge is fleeting. i’m sick of giving to you. maybe one day this will change. but right now i am feeling much too angry to care. i stayed for so long because i felt bad for you. i loved you. you were part of my life for so long and i wish you had stayed alongside with me. but unfortunately, my friend. you’re going to be stuck in that gunk for a really long time. i wish i could take you with me. however i needed to let you go before you sunk me in with you. sometimes i hope you’re doing well. i felt bad for you. and i punished myself for so long knowing i should leave but understanding why i didn’t.

understanding you didn’t mean i deserved to be subjected to you. you’re a black hole, a energy sucking monster who made me feel horrible.

you took away my confidence and then returned it in increments. you drove me away from resources so that when you replenished them sparsely i would worship the ground you walk on. and it worked. i did. but i also hated you for how you made me feel, and i could never put a finger on it before.

i love who i am without you. i feel so free. i feel… happy on most days. i feel a joy in your absence and that’s so freeing. i fight so hard for myself and myself only.

thank you, but i’d like to be done now

[plush-rabbit]

I Want To Hear You Say It

Chapter 4: Missed Comfort

Word Count: 3.8K

A/N: I just realized that this is my story and I can choose what happens

Prev.

Memories are fragmented, pieces of glass that has broken and shards that escape him and hide elsewhere, leaving his past broken, blurry and incomplete, painful to pick at and there has to be a reason why, there has to be a reason why whenever he thinks about who he was before he was found by All For One, that he scratches at his skin, tearing the flesh off from body, dirty blood that covers his hands and leaves him gasping for air, making him fear that he’ll suffocate before the memory grows clear. He can remember kind words, he can remember breakfast and playing, he can remember something soft under his chin, he can remember love for a moment, a moment that leaves him sick and broken, clasping his hands around his neck and hoping that he’ll die. He can remember the harsh stare, eyes that belong to a monster, eyes that are unforgiving with a hand that is merciless, the harsh feeling of the ground and the eyes that can only look away until he’s forced to face the monster in front of him, the monster that strikes over and over again and it fills him with hatred, it fills him clarity, the one moment where he can breathe and he stares into his reflection, covered in his own blood with red rimmed eyes, and he’s home.

Tomura Shigaraki stands in a room with few possessions, his body cold as he lays above the worn out bed, springs that dig into his back and a pillow that is far too flat to bring any sort of comfort. 

He grew up in the care of All For One, molded and cared for, the embrace clear in his head and there are flashes of memories that are clear, ripe for the picking and allowing him to view who he is now. But he brushes past them. He brushes past the dust on the floor and the tantrums, past the cold wooden floorboards under his feet, the weight of the hands on him are lighter and heavier all at once, lifting him into the air with the promise of love. The hands pinch around his body and threaten to drag him into the depths of hell, moaning out to him, his name broken and unsure, calling him something too different and too similar that leaves him retching and covering his mouth with his hand.

Tomura Shigaraki can remember Kurogiri. He can remember the wisp of a man, purple and black mixing, shades light in certain areas, mixing and swirling with the darker colors, creating a beautiful shade that disappears and is never shown, a shade that was never meant to be seen hides deep within the man. He can remember the apprehension, the choked up feeling, like something small was lodged in the base of his throat, uncomfortable and manageable. He can remember the soft words, the hands that touched him, defying physics and the vapor having actual feeling to it, actual touch that moves the hair across his face. He can remember the shared meals, proper and simple, the hatred in his eyes that soon turned into acceptance and silent compliance with every meal. 

People come into his life and they leave. So far, the League of Villains has remained whole. Kurogiri separated but for the good of the mission. For the good of the plan. For the good of him- Tomura Shigaraki. People separate and they come together. 

He doesn’t want to admit it, but he’s developed a kinship with the team. He’s developed genuine emotions towards them. He doesn’t want to call them friends. It feels odd- heavy and foregin, the word unspoken of, even when he was just a child, he never spoke the word, flinching when he thought of it because he knew that he was alone. All For One was his sensei, his master, a father-like figure to him but never a friend. Kurogiri was … something. Kurogiri was something else, heavy and comforting, wanted and pushed away. The team right now, they are his comrades. They are the people that he cares about- their wishes and likes, their desires and wants- that’s what he cares for. He’ll spit at the idea of caring, deny it with a wave of his hand, but he cares.

He’s lived a lonely life. And in the blink of an eye, it became filled with people. And he was accepting of that, he can handle people following his bidding, he can handle people if they’re there to serve his cause. But then you come along.

You aren’t there to serve anything. You are nothing to him. And yet, you still fill his mind. He lets it wander and you come into view, the way you brushed his hair and dried it for him, offering to pick something that he’d like to eat. You called him a friend. You were lying. You told a lie to save your skin from a prying neighbor. It’s easy for him to believe that you told a lie. You did. You lied only to protect yourself. But then he can feel your hands again and the touch has faded, it’s nothing more than a ghost that caresses his skin when he’s falling asleep, his own hands crawling to hold the place where you held and his sleep ruined when his hands are not like yours. They don’t hold the same delicacy, the gentleness that made him feel at ease- they aren’t your hands. Your touch is fading and he hates it. He hates that he misses the way you cared for him, the way you let him into your home and cared for him. He is a wounded man, alone in a world with only a few companions, and it’s been so long since he’s felt a touch that wasn’t filled with malice, that wasn’t a rough, teasing punch or a reassuring squeeze of a shoulder, but one where it was focused on him and being gentle, treating him like he were glass. 

He doesn’t want to admit it to himself but he wants to see you. He needs to feel your touch again. He needs a moment where your hands are on him and then he can be satisfied, he can be fine without your touch that haunts him.

-

Learning your schedule is relatively easy. People don’t want to admit that they’re predictable, they want to remain a mystery, they want to be hidden from view and open up when they feel like it and you are no different. You stick to yourself. You don’t talk to people in your apartment complex- minus a few people who stop to chat, a forced smile that takes place on your face. Even at work, you give polite smiles, you eat alone in your car, watching a video on your phone and always peering outside the window, like you’re scared that someone is watching your every movement. You’re polite and you stick to a routine, you treat yourself to the bakery and leave with a white bag curled in your hand and you pass by the alleyway where you first met. And there’s a leap in his heart when you pause, and he can see your hand tighten around the paper bag and then you move on. You continue to walk, faster, a pace that catches the eyes of a few pedestrians and before you can reach the stairs, your keys are in your hands, and you’re inside your home and you’re out of view. 

It has to be a sickness that he has.  He has to be sick with the way that he always finds himself wandering into the alleyway, crouched where you found him and he hates that he can’t remember your scent, hates that he was too disorientated to focus on the important details that you had. He hates that he only realized that he wanted- that he craved and desired your touch when you were gone. He doesn’t bother lying to himself, he’s not in the area to clean any loose ends, the blood that had fallen from him has long since dried, fallen into the crevices of the ground, weeds that have bloomed and raised where he had squashed them. He’s here filled with hope, hope that diminishes whenever you don’t arrive at the same time that you once did. And he hates himself when he feels disappointment, the feeling coursing through his body and leaving him empty, leaving him with acid in his mouth and blood on his neck. 

It was fate then. You worked a late shift and you came to him. You had saved him because he was meant to continue on. You pushed him to live another day. He wonders if you know who he is. How would you react? Would you accept his views? Do you believe that society is damned? That everything within hero society is corrupted and needs to be changed? Would you accept him? 

He laughs to himself. It’s a short burst of laughter, bubbling past his lips and it’s short until he presses himself further into the brick. Of course, you’d accept him. Of course you would accept him. You did it once. You let a stranger into your home, welcomed him and brushed his hair, held him in your hands and let him live in your life for a moment- you’d accept him with open arms. 

-

It was a miscalculated risk. Heroes that were unaccounted for due to how close they were. He’s injured, face trickling with blood that mixes with his sweat and he’s unsure of where the wound is. His clothes are singed at the end, fabric crumbling and fingers painted in soot as he runs through the night, gasping for air. It’s cold and sharp, entering his lungs and chilling his throat, every breath painful and heavier, as he runs. Red ruins his vision and he swipes it away with the back of his hand, blood flickering onto the pavement, seeping into the cracks and leaving nothing but dark spots. He runs and he runs. His legs hurt, aching at the joints, muscles pulled taut, and he knows that if he stumbles, he’ll collapse. Father is held tight against his face, piercing at his skull, hands pulled taut around him, pulling him back and the hands on his neck choke him.

He knows where he’s going. He’ll deny it to himself, lie and say that it was his own moving on it’s own accord, leading him past the convenience store, hands ripped from his body and shoved into pockets, bulging and pale gray fingertips that peek beneath the pockets, stiff fingers intertwined with each other and he’s lying to himself, telling weak lies that even he can’t believe. He runs towards you, running and gasping, a burst of adrenaline spiking through his body and sirens are ringing through the air, colors flashing and you’re so close. He runs, sweat mixing with blood, a heavy red color that reminds him he is only human, he’s covered in his blood, he’s covered in people’s blood and ash, weighing him down and clinging to his ankles, dragging him to hell as the devils rush behind him. His steps are heavy, slapping against the stairs and he’s knocking at your door, pounding and there’s a moment of fear where he thinks someone else will awaken before you do and he’s begging, calling your name in a whisper that cracks and cuts through his alreadys scarred lips and he’s begging for you to open the door, a silent prayer that is echoed into the night and there’s nothing more than he wants to do than to touch you.  He’s close to touching the doorknob, desperate to find safety inside until the light turns on underneath he’s cursing you in his mind for being so careless, for letting the person outside- letting him know that you are home- and he steps away and the door opens and you stand him front of him with heavy eyes, a disheveled appearance with an annoyed expression that only lasts for a second, a moment where he has you entire attention and then you break and you call his name and he stumbles inside and he’s safe.

The door is closed behind him and the ringing stops. He’s inside your home, leaning against the wall, and he’s filthy, coated in grime and sweat, blood that runs down his face from an unknown wound, legs heavy and he slides down the wall and he can see you, standing away from him, a horrified look on your face and maybe this was a mistake. That you didn’t feel whatever he felt. That you were just trying to be nice. A hand reaches, fingers outstretched and he can imagine how soft you’d be, the look of horror frozen on your face as he’s the last thing you see and then you kneel down, and you’re shaking and your words are stuck in your throat.

Your hands are soft. Softer than he remembered, cusping his face and he’s grateful for it, leans into your touch until you grab at something foreign on his face, and Father is removed and held so tenderly in your hand. His eyes widen. He forgot to remove Father. Sirens grow closer and you look out the door and he’s weak and unable to stand as you lift and walk towards the door and there’s a shake of your hands, you clasp around the door knob and you seem to struggle with yourself internally before you latch on the locks and turn back to him. You call his name and he calls yours and he wants to lean in but he’s bloody and you are clean, and he sits against your wall as you hold Father and walk away. 

He sits on the floor and closes his eyes for a second and when he opens them, you’re crouched in front of him, Father beside him and he watches as you bring up a wet rag and whisper to him. “I’m just going to clean you up, okay?” Your voice is shaky, hands matching as they dab against his forehead, your other hand pushing his pale blue hair upwards. “Tomura?” He grunts in response. You pause, your lip is bitten and he wants to know what you’re thinking. “Why are you here?” You dab and the pale blue cloth in your hand turns into a horrible shade, sweat, blood and dirt standing the ruined piece of fabric. Realization has set into your eyes, the fear leaking off of you and yet your hands are nothing but gentle. 

“I wanted you to touch me,” he mutters and your hands still. “I needed it.” He lets his words hang in the air. He can feel the press of your palm against him, and you don’t respond. You clean him, cleaning the sin from him. “Do you know who I am?” 

“I think I can take a guess.” Your hands leave him and you turn from him, pulling out a pack of wipes, the white bright against your palm and then you’re cleaning at him again, discarding the wipe after wipe, the pack becoming thin as you clean him. “Are you going to-” you swallow nervously and you meet his eyes, unsteady and glistening with unshed tears- “you know.” Your eyes dart to his hands and then back to his eyes.

He laughs. It’s rich and filled with something indescribable and he leans towards you, peeling himself away from the wall and you stiffen when his forehead rests against your shoulder. Father has slipped and is on the floor. You’re still, faltering against him and he wants nothing more than to touch you. His lips brush against your neck and he can hear a sharp intake of breath, hands that react and grip the sides of his shirt, pulling him closer to you, and he wonders if you’re crying as he’s pressed against you. 

“I could never hurt you,” he whispers against your neck, nuzzling closer, feeling your pulse quicken. “You were so nice to me-” his hands are unsteady as they brush up your shirt and he hears you whine, and his fingers are pressed against the soft side of you, and he smiles, hidden from you- “I will never hurt you.” It’s the truth- a wholehearted truth that he will never use his quirk against you, he’ll protect you, watch over you and dig his nails into you. He won't ever hurt you, he won’t have you bleed because of him, he’ll keep you with him and protect you, have his hands wrap around you in the loving way that his do, remind you that he’s letting you live and giving you all his love- whole and innocent, twisted and pure. “I love you,” he murmurs and there’s a swell in his chest when you twist his shirt in your hands and your pulse beats against him. “Perhaps it’s too quick to tell each other that-” he hums into you, smelling the sweet scent of vanilla on you- “but I love you. And I’ll protect you.” His nails dig into your skin, red appearing, a pale shade that stings and doesn’t stain his fingertips.

Perhaps it was too quick to give each other your love. But when he pulls away and he sees you crying, hands still gripped against his shirt, a rise and fall of your chest and he smiles. His hands leave you and your shirt flutters and it’s covered in grime, sticking to your chest and it’s wrinkled. Tears fall from your eyes, tracing down the curve of your face, polling and dripping off your chin and you can only look at him with wide eyes and you’re doubling over, gasping for breath, your hands wrapped around you, trying so desperately to control your breathing and you look over, watching the door with hope that vanishes in a second. It’s quiet outside. There are no heroes around. You look back at him and he smiles at you.

“Shigaraki?” You ask him, and there’s a frown on his lips. You need to check if it’s really him, praying that this is a sick joke, exchanging your life for a moment of false reality, to be laughed at because this is some cruel, sick joke that doesn’t exist and isn’t happening before your eyes. “Tomura Shigaraki?”

“You can call me Tomura,” he coos, his hands bringing your face up, held so tenderly, so carefully, with poised and raised fingers, trying not to touch you and you’re crying and he’s shushing you. “You don’t have to cry,” he murmurs. “I mean it-” he leans in closer and your eyes shine with fear, colors mixing together to create a lovely shade of color that he has never seen before and when you cry, it glosses over and he tilts his head, smile stretching past his lips- “I would never hurt you.”

“Be-” your voice cracks and there's a soft pink that licks at your lips and he leans in. “Because I was nice to you?” You’re so hesitant and so scared, trembling under his palm and your tears pool onto him.

“Because you cared for me, yes.” He could never hurt you, never bring himself to cause you to cry. He’s so careful to pull away, hands fisted once he’s moved and he looks around and grabs at a wipe, brings it under your eyes and he shushes you when you flinch from him, his hand gripping at the side of your face, string and firm. “I hate seeing you cry,” he murmurs. You’re scared and new to these feelings. He won’t push you. He’ll stay by your side, faithful and patient, wait for you to come to him and profess your love, and he’ll wipe away your tears. “I love you,” he repeats.

He rises and pulls you up and you stand in the entrance, you stumbling into his chest, and his arms holding you up and he’s nuzzling into the crown of your head, and when you start to sob, shaking into his chest and clinging to the back of his coat, hands threatening to spill from the pockets, he pats your back carefully, run the side of his hand down your back in a comforting motion, slowly turning until his palm is against you and your sobs are muffled into his chest, with your tears staining his shirt. Your name is whispered into the room and you cry until you pull away and he stares at you patiently and you can hardly meet his eyes when you tell him he can use the shower and he stands alone, as you walk into your room, letting the door remain open.

He showers and he lets the water fall from him, dries himself with the same towel he had used from the other day. He washes himself free from grime and wears the same clothes, filthy and hanging from his body, sticking uncomfortably and he wears clothes that are his and he smells like you. His hair is wet and tangled and he brushes at the knots, and makes himself look presentable. He won’t have the first night that he sleeps here cognitive sullied by the outside world. He sits on the chair in your room, watches as you pull the blankets up to your chin and have your back turned to him. He comes to sit at the edge, his hand slowly coming down until he’s holding onto your neck, stroking it, feeling the way that you jerk and go painfully still, and he whispers your name. It's a gentle call, feeling you brush against his fingertips, calling out to you because he knows you’re still awake. 

“Yes, Tomura?” You respond and there’s a level of politeness that sticks to your words and makes him frown. 

“I’ll be back to see you soon, okay?” He has to leave for now. He needs to go before he can give in to his wants and touch you, to let himself bury into your chest and hold you, and sleep beside you. “But I’ll be back, okay?” He pulls away and the bed creaks as the weight shifts. He’s closing your door, and his eyes are on your body and he’s smiling to himself. “Don’t try anything dumb, okay?” He doesn’t wait for an answer- you’re smart, you know who he is. It isn’t a threat, it’s just a phrase that he knows will keep you in line from trying anything reckless- he’s viewed you, watched you and he knows that an empty threat will keep you in check. “I love you.” He whispers your name and it’s filled with love, enough to make him sigh and close the door, lean against it for a moment and let his imagination wander on how you’d welcome him into bed and hold him. The door to your apartment clicks shut and he’s walking out, Father holding tight against his face, and a strange calmness flooding throughout his body.

taglist:

@dillybuggg @gladiatorandroid @mrgorewhore @justanotherlifeff

[ninnodesu]

His Biggest Fan || Modern!YouTuber!Thomas

AN: I was reading some of @nightmarewritings headcanons about slashers as YouTubers and uh. Sup. This happened today.

Genre: Slice of life? TW’s: Slight mentions of cannibalism. Tags: Modern au, modern!thomas, gender neutral reader.

You could never fully remember how you found his channel. Probably from the odd late night browsing that happened when sleep wasn't working for you. But you did find it, and you ended up watching the majority of his videos in one go, curled up under your comforter. It was… calming. 

He was always so gentle while working, his big hands skillfully working the needle through whatever material he had decided to work on.

It didn’t bother you that he never talked. You kinda found it impressive that he went through his videos to put instructive texts when he deemed it necessary to do so. Sometimes he had some mellow music running either over the video, or quietly in the background. Or the only vocal thing was him chuckling at comments the few times he'd chosen to go live while working with his projects. 

One time; he'd accidentally showed a glimpse of a heavily tattooed arm picturing a chainsaw, and the rumors began. Apparently, a highly skilled doctor of some sort had found his channel, and started a silly rumor of the YouTuber known as "Tewitt". The person posted on several social media sites that they "know human skin when they see it". 

You just laughed at everything. 

The rumor usually consisted of this person talking about how he theorized how Tewitt had gotten his hand on this - supposedly - human skin. All this based on the fact that he had accidentally shown his chainsaw tattoo, and suddenly he’s a cannibal? Ridiculous. Tewitt, of course, never responded to the allocation of him.

He… never really interacted much at all. Sometimes he'd go into details if questions about his projects or work came up in comments, but that was it. 

But you wanted more than that. So, here you are. An old live stream running in one tab, and the "Send message" option open in another. Your fingers hovered over the keys before just writing what was on your heart.

How he'd made you interested in leatherworking, that you even wanted to buy some of the things he made, if he took specific orders and so on. Your thoughts trailed off at the end of the mail, however. Fingers writing out how lovely it would be to meet him, that you supported him and that you didn't believe the silly rumors circulating the internet about being a cannibal. 

Ending the message with;

"Sincerely, 

Your biggest fan."

Instantly regretting the last part as you hit "Send", knowing it was too cliché and that probably everyone calls themselves "his biggest fan". 

You groaned as you got up from your desk to go to the store, it was still warm out and you hummed in appreciation as the evening sun hit your skin, a slight breeze running over your skin and through your hair. You readjust your bag hanging over your shoulder and start slowly walking towards the small general store not far from your apartment. 

The doorbell chimes as you walk in, the old lady working behind the counter smiling at you. “Welcome, dear! I wondered where ya ran off to.”, she leans on the counter and follows you as you walk around grabbing what you need. “Haven’t seen ya in a while!” You laugh lightly, walking up to the counter. “Yeah, I’ve been holed up at home being sick.”, you smile and point over your shoulder towards an empty shelf. “Are you completely out of those crackers?” The old lady hums a bit before shaking her head.  “Hmm… No, I don’ think we are.”, she turns and walks over to the back door. “Hey, Tommy!”.

A thud, and a few heavy footsteps comes from the back, and through the door comes a giant man, a man so big he takes up the doorway. You have to actually force your eyes away from him as he leans against the doorframe, looking down at the old lady. “Do you know if we got anymore of them crackers in the back?”, she nods towards the empty shelf and you can’t help but to blush slightly as you for a brief second meet a pair of bright blue eyes as he looks over to it. He hums as one arm reaches behind his neck to scratch it, seemingly thinking. 

And that’s when you notice it. A tattoo. A really familiar tattoo. Your heart rate picks up, and before you can stop the word from escaping you hear yourself mumble; “You’re Tewitt.”, the man stops dead in his tracks as he’s on his way back to where he came from and looks directly at you. He looks shocked, and some kind of silent conversation takes place between the two of you before he nods. 

He jolts slightly as the old lady nudges his side with her elbow and looks up at him. “It seems like ya got yourself a fan in town, Tommy.” His eyes widen, and you can’t help but smile as you see a slight tint of red creep along the neckline of his shirt.

Finally leaving the store, you couldn’t help but feel a bit smug with the knowledge that you lived in the same town as the mysterious leatherworker known as Tewitt. 

And suddenly, leaving to get groceries wasn't as bad anymore.

[bluerosesburnblue]

I hope you don't mind this ask, but... Any theories / speculations about the most recent story update for KHUX?

Oh, I don’t mind at all! I’m glad you asked, actually, because I’ve had some thoughts, though not many new theories of my own, unfortunately. That being said, I can definitely go over how some of my old theories and some of the fandom’s hold up and my thoughts on a few of the new theories I’ve seen floating around

One thing that I’m consistently proud of is how my old guesses about Darkness’s true nature just keep ending up almost right barring some slight details. I made the claim back when Re:Mind first came out that Darkness could be a hive mind of entities that plant bits of themselves in others, and then refined that back in July of 2020 by likening it to a parasite that worms its way into people’s hearts and incorporates itself into them to control them. This past update confirmed that the Darkness we’re fighting is one part of the hive mind that wormed its way into Ven to force him to act out, and that by doing so it detached itself from that hive mind and became incorporated into Ven’s being (which Ven can then shape). So I gotta say I’m pretty pleased about that part

All that’s left to be seen from the July post is if Darkness has a connection to Verum Rex/Quadratum, but I doubt that that will be touched on by the KHUx finale. Though I will say that it’s pretty interesting that the Master of Masters tells Darkness about “a world [he] can’t even conceive,” which seems like it could easily be referring to Quadratum, which also means that Darkness knows about it

That’s pretty much all I have to say on the Ventus/Darkness/Vanitas connection, but there’s still more to cover in this update

One thing that I’ve been trying to figure out is who the cloaked figure right at the start of the update is, Luxu or the MoM. Measuring the sizes and my old guess based on the KH3 Secret Reports both say Luxu, but this brings into question “when,” exactly, the True Dandelion scene takes place as it doesn’t have the dark haze around the edges that they give flashbacks, but is clearly the real-world set of pods as they’re not destroyed AND it’s missing the pod that Maleficent already used. The True Dandelion scene has a lot to unpack, but this scene at the start does make me wonder if Luxu and/or the Master have a way in and out of the datascape that doesn’t involve the pods, otherwise the numbers don’t add up

Also related to the post of mine I just linked is the idea that the Black Box is the datascape. I believe that this might still hold true. It’s interesting to note that they show the scene from Back Cover where Luxu is given the box in the first place just prior to the reveal that using the lifeboats to escape starts the process to seal it off and have the real Daybreak Town fall to darkness, and the Master’s “hint” to Luxu involves this very process. Why would Luxu be forbidden to open the box? Quite possibly because it contains the infected datascape meant to seal off the vast majority of the Darkness hive mind. And several Dandelions. It is both the “hope” mentioned in KH3 through those Dandelions, as well as a trap to keep Darkness out of being able to interfere for quite a long time

Now, the questions that I’m sure are on everyone’s minds are “who is the True Dandelion,” and “who are the ones who use the lifeboats?” Let’s start with the True Dandelion, as there’s far less moving pieces involved in that one

I won’t take credit for coming up with any of these options, I’m just going to discuss the logistics of them. So the candidates for the True Dandelion in, what is in my opinion, the least likely option to the most likely option, are:

Kairi: I’ve seen this one floating around and... honestly don’t believe it at all due to the sheer amount of logical contortions that you have to do to make it work. To wit:

Where the hell would she even come from if it was Kairi? As can be clearly seen with Ven, is stated to be true with Subject X, and is implied to be true of Lauriam/Elrena, those who travel to the future using the pods will regenerate their bodies at the age they were when they used the pods. Which would make Kairi at the oldest a four-year-old. Four years prior to KHUx was when Brain was told that he was a Union Leader. So she either would have been just born immediately prior to the war and was just... stolen or something? And we never saw? Or just after the war, where she would probably have to be the child of a Dandelion that got teen pregnant because they’re supposed to be both kids and the only survivors? Or Luxu and Ava’s kid somehow? Like, what? The timeline is just insane with that

If she was born before the war... you would assume that the True Dandelion would be, you know, a Dandelion. Which would mean that Ava handed a Keyblade to and recruited a literal toddler. This would also retcon Aqua being the one to accidentally pass the ability to wield a Keyblade down to Kairi and I refuse to make theories predicated on “the author will retcon this.” You just open up a huge can of worms doing that

The body wrapped in white looked a hell of a lot bigger than a four-year-old to me

I am sick to death of “this character was secretly from the Age of Fairytales~” being employed by the narrative. It’s happened at least three times already (four if you count Luxu). Enough already

Ventus: Ven has some hints, though some notable contradictions to it being him

On the one had, the sheet that the True Dandelion is wrapped in is extremely similar to the one that Xehanort wrapped him in when planning to leave him on Destiny Islands in BBS and there’s a possibility that Xehanort may have found him in that very sheet if he regenerated wearing it

On the other hand: Ventus might not have even been a Dandelion in the first place (he definitely wasn’t a Union Leader, but I don’t know if it was ever said whether he was selected as a regular Dandelion or not), and there’s the timing of the scene that I mentioned above. It’s definitely after Maleficent used her lifeboat but before anyone else used theirs (when you would expect Ven to remain with his friends) and, since the scene doesn’t have the flashback effect, it’s implied to be happening concurrently with everything else, so Ven should still be fighting Darkness in the datascape while it’s happening and eliminating him from being this particular person

Strelitzia: Oh, boy, have we got some nice old hints to Strelitzia, but still a few logical contortions, just like Ven

The white sheet is coming back up again. Namely, the fact that we still have an unexplained scene where Strelitzia appears to Lauriam in a dream wrapped in a white cloak, though it’s of a different style than the one that the True Dandelion is in. That scene also featured flower petals being blown into the wind, much like a dandelion seed (though, notably, the petals that are blown aren’t Dandelion seeds)

The question is, yet again, one of timing. How would Luxu get her body? While she was only introduced in KHUx, her scenes are all flashbacks to before the war, so we know that she was struck down in the real world, not the datascape. We see her body dissolve into light and her heart be released. Now, technically you only need a heart to time travel (actually, a heart is the only thing that can time travel), but Luxu is clearly seen putting a body into the machine. A machine that only allows for time travel because it destroys the body. If he had her heart, he wouldn’t need to use the lifeboat because she’s already in a state to time-travel on her own and this eliminates the possibility of him putting her Nobody into the machine, because without a heart it would just evaporate her body leaving... absolutely no heart to go to the future with

Now, Luxu theoretically could have grabbed her heart. We know that he was hanging around Daybreak Town at the time while observing thanks to his fight with Ava, but Strelitzia is struck down just after the fight with Ava starts so it’s very likely that Luxu was too preoccupied to retrieve her heart before it was gone. Speaking of Luxu’s fight with Ava...

Ava is my current top pick for the True Dandelion candidate due to the sheer number of questions it answers and how few it raises

Ever since KH3 came out, the question of “where the heck is Ava?” has been buzzing around as a major mystery. Her last chronological point of appearance is the same as the other Foretellers: the Keyblade War itself, where she’s shown leading her Union to battle. Notably, she seems resigned to her part in this, and this is the first and only time we see her after her battle with Luxu where he reveals to her the Master’s true plans. Melody of Memory seems to imply that the other Foretellers managed to skip to the future by going to another world, Quadratum (or at least this is the most likely explanation as there’s not enough pods to send all four of the other Foretellers AND the characters that we know end up in the future to their destination). However, Ava isn’t with them and Luxu knows what happened to her

It would be easy to write this off as them trying to drop Ava from the narrative or her not being important, but her chess piece is included in the “Eraqus and Xehanort foreshadow the next saga” chess game on the far right of the board and Nomura confirms that they represent the Master’s six apprentices, i.e. the five Foretellers + Luxu. So, Ava is necessary in the upcoming saga and yet, she didn’t get to the future the same way as any of the Master’s other apprentices leaving her open to get there via a lifeboat

Ava is the very founder of the Dandelions, who all of the others look up to and defer to and was spoken of heavily in the scene just prior to the True Dandelion reveal. That’s grounds for being called the True Dandelion if I’ve ever seen one

Luxu would very easily be able to ensure that Ava would be able to make it to the future. Just like with the Master of Masters, he already has the memories necessary for her to use to regenerate a body, and either her Keyblade or her mask would make for effective mediums that wouldn’t be too difficult for Luxu to take. If he put her in the white cloth, he probably took her mask off already

Ava hasn’t been around for the events of KHUx, so there’s no timeline discrepancies if it’s her

So, now that we have an idea of who the True Dandelion could be, let’s talk about the rest of the lifeboats and how they might fit together. For the purposes of this discussion, let’s assume that the True Dandelion can’t be one of the Union Leaders and that their battle with Darkness is taking place at the same time as Luxu is sending off the True Dandelion. I’ll be referencing an old theory of mine, while making additions now that it’s clear that there’s two sets of lifeboats: the Data Set and the Real Set

Right now, there’s an equal number of Real Pods and Data Pods: 5 each. For the Data Pods, of the seven that we started with, one was used by Maleficent and one was damaged in the battle between Maleficent and Lauriam. As for the Real Pods, one has been used by Maleficent, and one has been used by the True Dandelion. This leaves us with five each.

We can narrow this down further by eliminating people that we know end up in the future. These are:

Ventus

Subject X, who is most likely Skuld based on her description

Lauriam

Elrena* (of note with Elrena is that we actually have no idea where the hell she is at the moment or how she’s going to get into the pods. Furthermore, while every other lifeboat user sans Maleficent has been shown to have amnesia upon waking and Lauriam/Marluxia directly indicates as such applies to him, too, in KH3, Elrena/Larxene’s KH3 scene and character file short story both indicate that she recalls Lauriam and possibly Strelitzia, though she also seems surprised at the idea that she’s part of an ancient Keyblade legacy. I won’t deny that there’s a possibility that she doesn’t use a lifeboat and ends up in the future by other means based on the discrepancies)

So with three confirmed cases, we’re left with one ambiguous case in Elrena and three more possible candidates: Ephemer, Brain, and Player. Four people, and two pods

I want to make it clear that despite what I brought up against Elrena, I do think that she’ll be using one of the lifeboats if only so that KHUx has narrative consistency. They introduced Elrena, they made her part of the investigation on Strelitzia’s whereabouts, so it only makes sense that they need to show us where she ended up for a satisfying conclusion. So let’s slot Elrena in for one of the lifeboats. That leaves one between Player, Ephemer, and Brain

My best guess is that Player won’t be using a lifeboat at all. Not only are they a create-a-character that would be a HUGE pain to try and incorporate into future entries in the series without making a “canon” version and thus ruining their appeal as an avatar, but we haven’t seen or heard mention of them at all in the games set in the present-day. There’s zero indication that they made it, which makes them the most easily eliminated as a lifeboat user

That leaves Ephemer and Brain, and I still believe that Ephemer will be the final lifeboat user, and for the same reasons as stated in the theory I linked at the start of this section. Not only does Brain have the same facial sprite as Eraqus, but he wields the Master’s Defender which will be later passed down to Eraqus and I believe that this eliminates him as a time traveler, despite the fandom’s popular opinion that it confirms it

Because I don’t believe that Brain is Eraqus’s grandfather, but rather his distant ancestor who inherited the No Name and passed down both Keyblades through the ages

So let’s resolve some plot threads taking everything I’ve stated and linked to above into account

My Big Guess for the KHUx Finale

Ventus will use the fact that Darkness is tied to his heart now to give it a physical, but still mostly amorphous form that he, the Union Leaders, and Player can finally take down. Darkness will be sealed inside Ven’s heart, where it will lie dormant until he reaches the future. Eventually, Xehanort will extract it in the form of Vanitas and it will follow Vanitas’s life cycle, ending in him being reabsorbed into Ven at the end of BBS. Darkness, now back in Ven’s heart, will make brief contact with Sora during the events of Re:Mind

Lauriam, upon learning that the world will be sealed with the use of the lifeboats, will attempt to rescue his partner, Elrena. Both will take lifeboats out of the datascape and into the future, whereupon they will be recruited into Organization XIII by Luxu’s current incarnation, Xigbar, likely to keep an eye on them. I believe there might be a squabble among Ephemer, Skuld, Brain, and Player among who will use the final lifeboats (each person nominating others besides themselves), but ultimately they will settle on Ephemer and Skuld

Skuld will wind up amnesiac in the future Radiant Garden and is discovered by Ansem the Wise and his apprentices and dubbed Subject X. She becomes Xehanort’s favorite test subject due to the similarities in their amnesia and possibly some lingering memories that he has that don’t quite belong to him (KHDR Xehanort certainly seems to want to meet his “old friends” very badly)

Ephemer’s heart will wind up in the Keyblade Graveyard as I mentioned in an old theory, unable to manifest a body due to the lack of a medium present. Through this state of being just a heart (and possibly related to those old talks about him being “unchained”), he will be able to enact the Light of the Past moment from KH3, and may very well be revived for future events in the series

This leaves Brain and Player behind in the datascape. However, you may remember one detail that I brought up, but neglected to fully expand on until now. There is a difference between the Data Pods and the Real Pods. While all of the Real Pods have been used up at the time of my proposed sequence of events, the Data Pods have not been. One was never used, only damaged. This leaves open the possibility that it can also be repaired (Also, I’m just gonna say it. Player’s met someone recently who has a magic hammer that can repair anything... might not come back but also totally could). Brain and Player could then repair the final pod and, in a callback to when Player was sent to Game Central Station, have them both agree once again that Player is the more expendable person in the scenario. Brain will take the repaired pod, leaving no way out of the datascape for anyone else, while Player stays behind to be sealed away for the time being (this could also be a callback to the original KHx, where Player also stayed behind to take part in the war instead of fleeing with the Dandelions, as they refused to leave their party behind)

When Brain escapes, however, he will be met with a Daybreak Town with no Real Pods left, as Luxu used one on the True Dandelion. Now that the seven pods have all been used up and the real Daybreak Town is falling to darkness, Luxu will take a corridor out as the Master instructed, but bring the newly appeared Brain along with him (either that or Brain emerges after Daybreak Town falls, either is possible) and bequeaths the No Name onto him. Brain, stranded in the past while all of his friends have been sent to the future, will be Luxu’s new apprentice and rebuild the fallen Daybreak Town as Scala ad Caelum, then pass down both of his Keyblades: Master’s Defender to his biological descendants, and No Name to his apprentices

As for the Master of Masters? I think he’s already taken an eighth lifeboat (you’ll note that there’s space right in the center of the cluster where one more could theoretically fit) and had done so before the start of the original KHx. He’ll be revived at some point in Xehanort’s young adult life to goad him into his insane plans as seen in Re:Mind, then duck into Quadratum to hang out until the next arc in the franchise, as hinted at with his appearance in the KH3 Secret Movie

(He is most definitely not Sora. He’s clearly bound to the same rules of time travel as everyone else which means that Sora couldn’t go back in time to become him as that would be long before the point in time where Sora was born and that breaks KH time travel rules. Not to mention that the Master talks about Quadratum in this update like he’s never seen it before until it came up in the No Name’s range of vision. Sora is literally in Quadratum right now, he’d definitely know what it was already if he was the Master)

And I do believe that should cover everyone’s whereabouts by the end of the game and into the next arc of Kingdom Hearts with minimal plot holes

This is just my best guess, putting together details that I’ve been accumulating for the past year and a half or so into what sounds like a coherent sequence of events that bridge the gap between KHUx and KH3 and beyond. There may be some details I get wrong, obviously. Nomura has been known to be... unpredictable. But I think, based on the evidence we have at hand, that this is the most logical series of events to end the game on and I’m really interested to see how close this gets to the actual finale we see

[shnowbilicat]

Why Overwatch 2 will be just fine

Before we begin I wanna say that all of this are my own perspectives and thoughts, so take it with a grain of salt ... but tbh yall should sit down and chill until the game drops, kay? Kay.

Soo, there was another OW2 livestream not so long ago and people started freaking out and boycotting the devs. Why? 5v5 and there will be only one tank now.

I'm hearing left and right how much of a problem this will be and I can't stop getting annoyed about the fact that people really are SO upset that there will be no 'off tank' in their games and how the devs 'refuse to balance their game' instead and how there will be smurfing and- you get the point.

Maybe it's just me, maybe I'm not into the 'meta' cuz my competitive rank is a 'metal' one, OR MAYBE I'm just this guy who says 'it just game, why u have to be mad??'.

I personally really look forward to OW2, mostly for the PvE part of the game as it sounds so massive and seeing how much they've done with the very first mission they've shown us and the fact that we can level up our heroes and equip unique abilities just makes me giggle and excited about the final release and future events and updates!

So many cutscenes, so many new animations and skins, so many new maps to play X33

And 5v5?? I'm looking forward to that too!

No, for real, one tank does not make or break anything for me, mostly for one single tiny reason alone.

A Tank is still a Tank.

I dunno if you ever played other games where there are Tank, DPS and Healing roles, like LoL, Dota, heck even Pokémon and Fire Emblem.

Tank roles have one single purpose; be the literal meat shield for their team.

I dunno about you, but I've never played a Tank in my life that wasn't completely about taking the attention from my squishies and jump in to protect them. And according to my ranking I'm a Tank main, sure my highest Rank is Platinium, but just because I don't grind my way up like any other madmen.

Tanks are SUPPOSED to be in the front lines taking the damage, making a way through the crowd, mess up the other team's formation. I also believe I'm not the end all be all for my squishies, I trust in them that they can protect themselves when I go in for a kill, which they can with their several abilities like a sleeping dart, climbing walls or building up a wall to hide behind.

Here we have Pro Tank players freaking out and complaining that 'they lack a tank' that there won't be any strategy involved cuz they are missing another meat shield that has their back etc. etc.

Again, I'm just a noob playing my Quickplay and Arcade games for lootboxes ... but god am I sick and tired of hearing these excuses from one trick pro players who have been stuck in their metas and comps.

SURE they are up there for a reason, but the fact of the matter is that I don't care if you do not want a 'dive comp' if I wanna play D.Va to get myself a 6 stack Ult kill, kay??

I don't care if we have a Zarya and Roady, they gonna wreck our enemy team and I'm gonna pump up their asses with as much healing as they want, kay???

The standarts OW pro players have been setting time and time again has muddied the waters of normal play. Because of them Symmetra and Bastion have been thrown into the corner of the back room and will never be seen in normal play because 'they ain't meta'.

Bro, I've been a Bastion main since Comp Season 3 and I've been wrecking my games left and right whenever I play him. I do not need your meta to succed, I don't need a Mercy pocket or a Rein shield because people like the pros set the standart that Bastion is ONLY useful when these criteria are met.

Not only that, BECAUSE of their standarts I forced myself into being able to switch to any roles with heroes that do just as much good as my Bastion. And that was actually a very good thing! Now I'm a solid Gold-Plat rank player that can play pretty much every hero in Mystery Heroes.

... and then I see our current pros. Who are scared shitless that their off tank players gonna play ... DPS?? Or Healing?? Like, weren't you guys moaning about one tricks? About people not being able to switch?

You ... you do know how OW started, right? OW was a game the devs SPECIFICALLY made to be open gameplay, they WANTED people to switch to heroes and experiment with new combos.

But lately we had buffs, nerfs, change in ques and all you can do is complain about it.

YOU put the standart 2-2-2 because people started to go tank-healers only, or Genji-healing only, or some shit because that was OP.

YOU were the ones forcing in a role que system because other people could not or refused to switch their roles.

YOU forced the devs to rework ALL HEROES to your standarts. Granted, here you got the devs to make Symmetra interesting to play, Bastion and Torb more viable and Brig to be more fair ... for you, because I cannot play Brig to safe my life, she's such a squishy and I die the second the round starts.

If you cannot handle what pro players dished out years ago, then please do me the favor and stay with your Rein-Zayra combo for the rest of eternity thxx

And we haven't talked about the OW2 hero reworks and new maps with more things to hide behind yet! Making each Tank more viable and more enjoyable to play. And guess what? THEY AIN'T DONE YET! I've seen alot of players moarn that the game will be SO unfair ... but we haven't seen anything yet. Espacially since they haven't told us any DPS or Healing ability changes either.

'But BUT 3 years of development!!!' so?? 3 years could mean anything. Not to mention that the EXACT SAME DEVS are working on OW2 are ALSO STILL working on OW 1 at the same time. And it's a pandemic. Sure they are a huge team, but they have a huge goal; aka THE STORY MODE WITH HUNDRETS OF HOURS OF PLAYTIME AND ANIMATED CUTSCENES.

They still have a long ass way to go, so chill out and give em some time. There are over 30 heroes they have to rework, remodel, give a part in the Story. Multiple new Maps to work, maybe even rework, test and make sure everything is as polished as possible for the general player base; which ain't the pros btw.

So, with pretty much mostly everything said, what's my final stand?

I would say to everybody worrying that the game won't be good; trust me, it'll be just fine.

If you don't enjoy the 5v5, there will still be Arcade and Story to keep ya company, like, I've been playing Quickplay and Arcade 99% of the time, you gonna be fine fam.

And if you're a pro player who JUST CANNOT handle 5v5 without their off tank puppy jumping after them then here's a tip:

Don't play Overwatch 2.

Nobody will force you to it, Overwatch will still exist with it's 6v6 2 tanks, 2 DPS, 2 healing boringness and it's frozen metas and comps and the same ass people in the Top 100 you play against each and every day with tiny buffs and nerfs every other day.

Meanwhile me and my squad will enjoy more shenanigans in OW2.

I'll gladly play momma Orisa and keep my friends save and sound, while also hooking every evil doer who dares come close to em ewe

Overwatch 2 is for us, the players who play the game like the devs intended; play the heroes you want, no matter if you lose or fail and have to pick yourself up again to grow and become stronger.

Overwatch 2 will be just fine.

[translations-by-aiimee]

Dig a Grave to Dig Out a Ghost - Chapter 31

Original Title: 挖坟挖出鬼

Genres: Drama, Horror, Mystery, Supernatural, Yaoi

This translation is based on multiple MTLs and my own limited knowledge of Chinese characters. If I have made any egregious mistakes, please let me know.

Chapter Index

Chapter 31

"Stop staring. It's not like I can run away." Lin Yan couldn't help muttering.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" He grabbed Xiao Yu's wrist. Hadn't they buried the hatchet?

"I said I wouldn't drive you away."

Xiao Yu turned his head and looked out the window like he couldn't hear him. For some reason, Lin Yan felt that his demeanour made him look sad, like the shadow standing alone under a street lamp on a rainy night, waiting for him quietly outside the car window for the day that he opened the door.

However, there had been some strange developments during this period. Lin Yan found that when he was concentrating, he could close his eyes and perceive a greenish-black shadow in Xiao Yu's direction. The butterfly orchid on the windowsill had a warm, pale yellow glow floating around it, but it was much fainter than the one he had seen around the little Daoist priest on the mountain. Lin Yan found an explanation for this in a journal devoted to Daoism. All living creatures in the world have yang energy. When ghosts pretend to be human, looking at their aura of yin-yang energy can usually break the illusion.

In ancient times, this ability was called "Opening the Third Eye." It usually took a long time to practice and it was extremely rare to acquire it accidentally like Lin Yan had. He sighed as he stared at the dream-repellent talisman on the paper and thought that this was a good thing. The next time he came across a strange person, he'd be able to tell whether they were alive or dead, meaning he wouldn't get tricked by the little girl again.

Since the little girl had shown up Lin Yan and Xiao Yu were basically inseparable, which really made him feel embarrassed. He wasn't sure why but Xiao Yu’s presence seemed to have completely aroused his hidden desires. Lin Yan couldn't remember ever having these kinds of urges before. Now, he was taunted by the slender figure in front of him, and he had to rush to the washroom for the third time to relieve his uncomfortable situation.

After a steamy dream, the habits he had abandoned during his adolescence suddenly made a resurgence. Lin Yan locked the bathroom door, pressing himself against the door and wrapped his fingers around his shaft. He slowly reached moved to the tip, pressing it, rubbing it; the whole thing feeling like it was on fire. Lin Yan bit his fist and muffled a groan, impatiently adding more pressure. When he stroked the underside, the top pulsed painfully. When he stroked the topside, the emptiness underneath him made it so uncomfortable he could cry. Nothing he did was enough to satisfy him. He held onto the sink to catch his breath and roughly splashed his face with cold water to extinguish the heat in his belly. "You pervert," Lin Yan scolded himself, staring at his reflection in the mirror.

Fortunately, Xiao Yu didn't stick to him like he did before. He even took the initiative to stay by his side a few times and he never moved to avoid him. Lin Yan wiped his hands with a towel and suddenly remembered what time it was, making him slightly aggravated.

Professor File Folder's secretary had called him a few days later than planned while Lin Yan was in the middle of being constantly tortured. When he heard the sweet female voice on the phone, a shock of fear ran through him. Since the girl in red had appeared, he was instinctively wary of any female stranger. The female secretary said somewhat apologetically that the team had just returned from a business trip with the feng shui master, and was finishing the roster of the Ming tomb archaeology artifacts.

"It's a bit late today. Are you free tomorrow or the day after tomorrow? You can come directly to the institute to see the materials you need."

"Let's do it tomorrow." Lin Yan casually drew a talisman on the paper, a charm meant for deception. "I can come at 10 o'clock if that works for you."

"That works." The female secretary paused: "Umm. . . can you not tell the professor that I'm just calling you now? I've only been here for a short while, it'd be embarrassing if he found out."

Lin Yan hung up the phone and saved the secretary's number on his phone. When he looked up again, Xiao Yu was still sitting in the same posture, as if he didn't care about that discussion at all. He threw the pen into the sofa and rubbed his forehead against Xiao Yu's shoulder. He murmured: "I found something that might explain your situation. Come with me tomorrow?"

Xiao Yu's eyes went cold. Lin Yan guessed that he would react that way. He sighed and said: "I know you don't like it, but I think this whole thing started when I entered your tomb. The two of us are connected, and now even Second Immortal Gu's spirit is being dragged into it. As the saying goes, it is better to take the initiative than wait around for death to show up. Maybe the person who brought me to your tomb will know something."

"It's dangerous." Xiao Yu frowned.

"I know." Lin Yan dragged his pillow into his arms. He thought for a second: "I still have you. Really, you make me feel much safer."

Xiao Yu didn't deny it. He gently touched Lin Yan's hair, with something he couldn't read hidden in his deep eyes. Lin Yan grew anxious and subconsciously grabbed Xiao Yu's wrist. He asked: "You'll come with me, right?"

Xiao Yu remained silent for a while and then nodded.

---------

When he brought A-Yan some dinner, Lin Yan mentioned how he was being forced by Xiao Yu to learn Daoism at home. The little Daoist priest was so excited that he didn't even touch his dinner, instead pestering him to share more details. The books made Daoism out to be much simpler than it truly was. Each spell required a focused mindset in order for it to work. The most talented people only tracing out the symbol might get a measly tenth of the intended effect, but most would only get a scrap of useless paper.

"I-I'll teach you when I get out of the hospital." The little Daoist's pale face flushed with excitement and his eyes were gleamed brightly: "It won't be as good as my master's lessons, but it should be fine for a beginner."

Lin Yan didn't know how to react. He lay down on the next hospital bed with his head resting on his arms, staring at the ceiling of the room in a daze. He said that he was unlucky enough. Not long ago, he was sitting in his classroom and talking about his archaeological experience with the shy girls in the class, freaking them out whenever he mentioned the corpse. The youngest man in the dormitory pointed to the little Daoist sitting in the corner and told Lin Yan to glance over at him and that he should be careful. There were rumours that people who offended him in their freshman year said they saw ghosts. He squinted his eyes and made faces, making everyone laugh.

But now he was being targeted by a ghost. He was worried about things that he didn't know how to fix. He had even bought a can of cinnabar to learn how to exorcise ghosts from the little Daoist priest. Lin Yan sighed and lamented: "I want to learn, but I don't want to be forced to do it."

"He's been weird recently. He has a lot on his mind, but he won't tell me what he's thinking." Lin Yan rubbed his face. "A-Yan, what do you think ghosts think about all day long?"

The little Daoist was silent for a while, and answered the wrong question: "You care about him very much."

Lin Yan turned to face A-Yan, subconsciously playing with the sheets with his fingers. He helplessly said: "Obviously I care. We're stuck together 24/7. Even my girlfriend wouldn't get this kind of treatment." He glanced at the phone and frowned, pushing himself up on the bed: "I have to go. It's Weiwei's birthday. I promised I'd be there and I shouldn't be late."

"Weiwei?"

"The one who upgraded our tickets for us during the lecture." Lin Yan glanced sheepishly at Xiao Yu.

A-Yan tore off a loose thread from the blanket. The little Daoist priest twisted the cotton thread around his fingers loosely. He gestured his sharp chin towards Xiao Yu, and inquired: "He's letting you go?"

Lin Yan was going to just nod his head but suddenly clued into what the Daoist had said. He threw the pillow towards the little Daoist priest, and said happily, "There's nothing to let go of. Even people being stalked by ghosts have basic human rights, don't they?"

The little Daoist put his chin on the pillow. He shook his head: "I-I can see that he likes you."

Lin Yan stiffened. His tone was somewhat unnatural: "Stop talking nonsense. What does it matter who he likes." Lin Yan packed the dinner containers and hurriedly changed the subject: "What do you want to eat tomorrow? I have ribs at home. I could make soup for you?"

A-Yan stared at him for a long time. His skin was very pale but his eyes were very dark. His pupils were more dilated than usual. In addition, he was covered with a sheen of sweat. At first glance, he looked a bit like a reptile. After staring at Lin Yan, his whole body was covered in a cold sweat. A-Yan's mouth twitched. A trace of coldness flashed in his eyes and he said softly: "Ghosts are very possessive about what they want. Don't mess with them."

Lin Yan's hands stopped moving. After A-Yan spoke, he suddenly felt that the room had grown too quiet and he panicked. His eyes fell from Xiao Yu's back and moved all the way down to his black boots standing on a small section of floor tile. Lin Yan barely squeezed out a smile: "Don't worry, I know. We're just strangers, really. I want to live a normal life again."

Lin Yan had always tried to avoid going to the same events as Weiwei, but he couldn't really avoid it this time. On one hand, he promised he'd go. On the other hand, he was getting sick of staying looked up in his apartment recently and was bored. Just looking at the talismans and spells plastered all over his house, the thread-bound books on the table, sofa, and his bed, Lin Yan felt like he had become an old witch in a fairy tale. All he was missing was a broomstick to fly out of his twelfth-floor apartment. He just wanted to hear another human voice. Lin Yan sighed. Any human voice other than Xiao Yu, A-Yan or Yin Zhou.

But, in the end, once Lin Yan showed up at the address, he was regretting it. Weiwei always loved to have a good time. He didn't make it in time for dinner and was dragged directly to Houhai for the second stop of the night when he showed up at the restaurant he was supposed to meet them at. The summer night was warm and humid, with bars lining the lake's shoreline. The evening breeze was filled with the light scent of lotus flowers. The atmosphere reminded Lin Yan about the old days. After dinner, he and Weiwei would walk along the lake with a street lamp casting their shadows on the ground. When the jazz musician took off his hat and whistled at the two of them, Weiwei unceremoniously blew kisses back, and Lin Yan smiled warmly at her side.

In all fairness, his past with Weiwei was pretty good. It wasn't perfect, but it was simple and heartfelt.

At that time, he also seriously thought about proposing to Weiwei. He had thought out a future that he could see her being a part of.

So what happened?

The background music of the bar was wild, the strong drum beats hitting his eardrums, and even his heartbeat synced with the rhythm of the music. Lin Yan was bored out of his mind. He sat in the corner with a cup of Chivas whiskey infused with black tea. Men and women embraced in the dark, twisting their bodies between the small gaps between the tables, like a frenzy of madness. The amount of tea in his cup was slowly going down and the whiskey burned his throat. When he drank it all, Lin Yan felt that the world was spinning. He dizzily lay across the table, whispering a name over and over again.

. . . Xiao Yu, Xiao Yu.

His brain was muddled from the alcohol and it didn't have a filter anymore. It took Lin Yan a long time to understand what he was saying. "You're a fucking pervert." He smacked himself.

[moonlit-jeno]

love sick

epilogue

pairing: nct dream ‘00 line + reader

chapter warnings: fluff

words: 1.2k

notes: this is basically just to wrap up the loose ends and provide a little bit of clarity/ closure, but i actually can’t believe that this is the last part!! i finally finished it after an insane amount of time, and i just wanted to thank everyone who stayed on this rollercoaster with me. i hope you enjoy it💕💕💕

masterlist | prev | next (links to be added later on)

Jeno’s hands feel like heaven as they run through your hair, massaging shampoo into your scalp. You mirror the motions, performing them on the boy in front of you. There’s a smile on your face as Donghyuck practically purrs at your touch. He squeaks and dances out of your reach when you playfully pinch his butt.

“I close my eyes for 30 seconds and this is what I get.” Donghyuck whines, clutching his side and doubling over in pain. “The ultimate betrayal.”

“That’s literally not even where I pinched you.” You giggle, flicking some water at him before ducking under the spray of the shower, letting Jeno wash the shampoo out of your hair. Donghyuck seems to get over the betrayal pretty quickly, molding himself to your back and combing conditioner through your hair. Jeno ducks down to let you massage the shampoo into his hair. You giggle and nudge Donghyuck.

Jeno frowns at the other man's loud laugh. “What are you laughing at?” You just shake your head, grinning. Jeno narrows his eyes at you.

“You look like Mickey Mouse.” Hyuck snickers, pointing out the two spikes you had styled Jeno’s hair into. The older man groans.

“Time for payback.” Jeno sings, pulling you close to his chest with one arm. The other hand goes to your sides and you squeal as he starts tickling you. Donghyuck doesn’t waste a moment before joining in, the three of you squealing and laughing under the spray of warm water. Soap gets in your mouth and your stomach cramps up but honestly, it’s okay. It’s the happiest you’ve been in a while.

A loud knock interrupts your shower, and someone- you think it’s Johnny- interrupts your shower with a loud “Jaemin is requesting that the three of you actually help him for once”. You rush to get dressed amidst the chaos of Donghyuck’s attempt to strangle Jeno as payback for the latter whipping him with his towel. There’s a smile on your face as you drag the two of them out of the bathroom and down to the kitchen, sneaking up behind a pouting Jaemin to wrap your arms around his waist and press a kiss to his neck.  

“You abandoned me to shower.” Jaemin whines, leaning into your touch as he throws ingredients into a pan.

“You abandoned us to do your job.” You whine back, giggling at the huff Jaemin lets out.

“Our job.” He corrects, turning his face to land a kiss to the tip of your nose. “But I’ll forgive you because you’re so cute. Can you go grab some plates, princess?”

You navigate the place like it’s your home, although that’s pretty much what it is. Kun, the owner of the house and the one who’s basically responsible for you survival, had let the five of you into the house after deciding that none of you were going to go feral and infect everyone. You’re forever thankful for stumbling upon the house, and even more grateful that they allowed you to stay with them.

It isn’t completely for free, though. Everyone in the house does their fair share to keep things running smoothly. Some cook, some clean. Some tend to the crops or care for the farm animals. You were supposed to help with the agriculture but you nearly broke down at the sight of the greenhouse. It reminded you so much of Renjun that you couldn’t stomach stepping inside, being reminded of the man that should still be here with you today.

You, Jaemin, and Donghyuck are in charge of cooking. The role is easy enough and you swear you’ve never been happier to see fresh food than you are now after months of eating out of cans. Jeno and Chenle are set to be training for guard duty. Lucas and Winwin, the two that had greeted you when you first arrived, are in charge of that and they seem to be doing a good job of training them. Or at least, Chenle seems to think they’re doing a good job based off of how he never shuts up about it.

It’s a good thing, that they seem to care so much about protecting you. Because there’s a lot to protect. This time, it isn’t the five of you.

You’re not too good with names yet, but there’s Kun, the one in charge of everything. There’s one woman who has the cutest baby you’ve ever seen, though you can’t tell who the father is. Everyone pretty much helps to raise the baby, though you notice that the two scariest looking men step in the most. Johnny, the man built like a tree, and Yuta, who looks like he can and will kill you if you annoy him, both absolutely melt at the sight of that child. It’s adorable.

The only one who doesn’t help with the child is Jungwoo, who was banned from being anywhere around him because he had pretended to throw him at Mark one day. It was meant to be a joke, but her mother had definitely not found it funny in the slightest.

There’s a few more occupants that you don’t know at all, but there’s one girl that stands out to you as a complete mystery. She’d shown up a few days before you had, apparently, covered in blood and tears and grime. Not strange in itself, but what is strange is that she showed up alone. You shudder at the thought of trying to survive all those months without anyone else, what you would have done if the boys hadn’t broken into your house when they did. She scares the shit out of you, and yet you can’t help but admire her.

No one seems to find your unusual dating situation strange, which is nice. It’s probably more that they don’t care, but it’s something. One of the girls brings it up to you one day, but it’s not judgemental.

“You got all three?” You’re in the middle of preparing chicken when she asks you, and it takes a moment for her words to process. She nods over at where your boyfriends are chatting. Jaemin pinches Jeno’s cheeks and Hyuck tries to kiss the panicking boy.

“Hmm? Oh, yeah.” You watch them for a moment, smiling fondly to yourself. She smiles too, though hers seem a little sadder.

“I wish that my situation had turned out like that.” A sigh leaves her and she frowns, walking away before you can ask her to elaborate. It’s weird, but everything’s weird at this point. 

You watch as Jeno wrestles Jaemin onto the floor, sitting on his chest to pin him down. Donghyuck digs his fingers into Jeno’s sides and then it’s chaos, the three of them rolling across the marble and screaming. “You’re so weird.” Chenle comments, laughing loudly at the sight. And yeah, you can’t disagree. They are weird.

But with everything that’s happened, it’s almost normal. And if this is the new norm, you decide that you don’t want the old one back.

[breath-of-the-hobbies]

A Return to Darkness Ch. 2

(Chapter 2 of the fan-fic idea I’m playing with. Zelda awakens underground and attempts to find a way out, and Link has a bad day. Chapter 1 here.)

The smell was the first thing to break through Zelda’s unconsciousness. Judging from the acidic yet musty reek and the burning sensation all over her body, she had a bed of malice to thank for cushioning her fall. The darkness was so complete that she had to blink furiously to even be sure that her eyes were open.

She took stock, fumbling at her hip until she found the Sheikah Slate. It lit a soft circle of light at her touch, but the screen fizzed and crackled, displaying only glitched swirls of color. Broken ribs, concussion, sprained knee, she estimated as she maneuvered dizzily to her feet and retrieved her sword from where it lay nearly engulfed in malice some feet away.

“Link?” She whispered, acutely aware of the monsters they had encountered in the past months and unwilling to alert them to her present vulnerability. She swung the slate’s light across the rubble-filled ground, but her companion was nowhere to be seen. Ganon’s corpse was also absent, presumably still lying in the cavern above her.

Recalling her last sight of Link sent a stab of pain through her chest to join the throb of her ribs. The image of his anguished eyes and furrowed brow as he put aside everything to lunge towards her was imprinted indelibly in her mind. Was he still up above? Had the malice— she forced her mind away before she could complete the fatalistic thought. She had watched Link die once already, and the idea of losing him again was enough to make her breath shorten into panicked gasps. Come on Zelda, you held your own against Ganon for one hundred years. You can crawl out of a damn cave. She retrieved and lit her torch, then limped around the perimeter of the hole, leaning heavily on her sword.

It didn’t take long before she was certain that the floor above had collapsed into a nearly exact copy of the one holding Ganon’s body. The geometric carvings on the walls were the same as what she had seen in the moments before everything went wrong, and a single exit led to a path descending away and down. With no clear way up into the abyssal darkness, and no ability to teleport thanks to the malfunctioning slate, she had no choice but to venture into the tunnel, unaware of the eyes observing her retreating form from the darkness beyond her torch’s light.

It was impossible to know exactly how long she spent wandering, but Zelda came to time her rests with the regular shaking of the earth around her. Despite her newfound mistrust of the tunnels’ structural integrity, the walls and ceiling held strong around her. She fell asleep each rumbling with the spirals of the wall etchings spinning behind her eyelids.

After one such rest, she awoke with a sudden revelation dredged from the free association of her dreams. It was a memory, something Impa’s grandmother had told them when they were children. She had spoken of an ancient civilization, the Zonai, that had disappeared mysteriously long ago, leaving only ruins and secrets. Link had already mentioned that the carvings appeared Zonai in origin, resembling places he had seen in his travels, but now Zelda remembered Gran’s words. “The Zonai were not simply to be feared for their fierce prowess in arms. They were also brilliant magicians with technical advances rivaling even our best Sheikah technology. Had they not disappeared, our world would be much changed from how it appears today.” Then Gran had pulled a carved stone out of her sleeve and shown it to the children. She ran her finger along its swirls in a series of swoops, and when she finished, the entire thing began to glow an eye-searing turquoise. The young and bright-eyed Zelda had oohed and aahed, but the rather more battered young woman in the present bared her teeth in a wolfish grin and heaved herself stiffly to her feet, sweeping the light from the sad remains of her torch across the patterns that had haunted her for months.

There! she spotted a central swirl, one that all the others in the area seemed to radiate from. It took a few tries to emulate the pattern she had seen over a century ago, and she began to question herself, her mind inevitably returning to familiar paths of self-doubt. When she was almost ready to give up, the spiral lit. With a flash and a smell of ozone, radiance spread outwards, spilling into every line of the carvings until Zelda was blinded.

The earth began to shake more strongly than ever, knocking her to the ground. She curled into a protective ball as chunks of wall and ceiling crumbled around her, her stomach lurching in equal parts fear and motion sickness. After what felt like an eternity, the world calmed. The bedraggled princess pushed herself to a seated position with a groan, blinking purple afterimages from her sight. The lit carvings had settled into a calmer glow, and because of this it took her a moment to realize that a pinprick of natural light now shone at the far end of the tunnel.

Heart leaping, paying no mind to her shrieking knee, Zelda set off at a run towards freedom, her excited thoughts jumbling with ideas of newly collapsed walls forming impromptu exits. She was so quick that only reflexive bracing of her feet and scraping of her hands on the tunnel walls were able to bring her to a gut-wrenching stop as dislodged stones ricocheted over the edge of an impossible precipice.

Wind whipped her hair as she stared in utter disbelief down, down to the familiar landscape of Hyrule far below. She was in the sky.

***

Link had eaten some pretty terrible food in the past year, but after a week of clumsily cleaned mushrooms boiled with rice, he almost preferred his more dubious gastronomical experiments. At least those had some zest to them.

Although his arm was slowly regaining strength, his dexterity was lagging far behind. Stringing a bow was still out of the question, and the one time he encountered a boar in the woods, he had been mown down in humiliating fashion before he could even swing his blade. The mushrooms and occasional carrot were a far less likely source of embarrassment.

The entire loss of his right arm would almost have been easier to cope with than his present state; the energy pouring into the ancient tech and the rot constantly trying to push onwards through his body made even the shortest climb, swim, or even run into an exhausting task. Swinging a blade with his left hand was one thing: getting knocked out after falling out of a tree was another.

Besides the draining tech and the gnawing corruption, there was a third issue with his arm that Link couldn’t quite piece together yet. He had absolute faith in Purah—despite her eccentricities—and when she told him that she had added the Stasis Rune to his arm, he had no reason to doubt her. However, when he activated the rune to halt the fleeing boar in a last-ditch attempt at meat for dinner, it failed to stop it at all. In fact, the animal actually began running backwards, nearly pummeling a dumbfounded Link a second time.

He wasn’t sure how Purah could have made such a glaring mistake, and he honestly couldn’t picture a time when making his opponent move backwards would help him do more than get a second to breathe. Once he had found Zelda, he would have to go back and ask the scientist about it. Full but not happy about it, Link rolled up in a horse blanket and fell into a fitful sleep.

He was awoken by an agonizing buzzing sensation in his right arm, as though it was being continuously electrocuted. The entire limb, from fingertip to shoulder, was shining turquoise like his own personal monster beacon. His horse whinnied and pranced in distress as Link shook his arm like a man possessed. If he hadn’t been so preoccupied, he would have noticed the ground vibrating beneath him, but by the time the glowing light and electric tingling subsided, everything was calm again.

Now thoroughly awake, the perplexed hero broke camp and led his mount back to the trail in the false dawn. It wasn’t much further to the edge of the Great Plateau, the only thing keeping Link from reaching it the night before being his newly abysmal stamina. But as he trudged up the last rise, he was sure he had gotten turned around in the half-light. Nothing looked right. The ground was churned up and littered with boulders the size of houses, and whole landmarks had shifted and changed.

The sun broke over the horizon as Link crested the hill. He was overlooking the very same vista he had first seen without comprehension or recognition after the healing sleep, yet the view could not have been more different. The plains and forests in front of Hyrule Castle were simply...gone. The ground was carved out as though miners had been hollowing the earth for centuries. After taking in this sight, ice water freezing his heart, Link’s eyes followed the progression of destruction to the foot of the castle itself. At first, the reappearance of malice clouds encircling the base obscured the truly bizarre unreality of the situation.

The entire castle was floating several hundred feet above the ground.

Slowly, unbelievingly, almost unwillingly as though fearing what he would see, Link lifted his gaze to the sky. Far above, higher even than Vah Medoh had flown, floated hulking islands of earth.

He sat down hard, gulping back the frustration that closed his throat. His princess was further out of reach than she had ever been.

[jngles]

Thoughts You Definitely All Asked For on ‘The Mandalorian’ Season 2 Finale!!

These are in chronological order for the show.

One of my biggest fears about them reintroducing Boba Fett was that by removing some of his mystery, they would make him less cool. Thank god that has not been the case. He’s still an aloof and nasty piece of work but with dimensions added.

We all know the Empire is most often a metaphor for America right? At least when it’s not being Nazi Germany? The Imperial pilot talking about destroying an entire planet (of peaceful weaponless civilians no less) to stop terrorism hits a little too close to home of the nuclear bombs the US has dropped and the endless destruction of the Middle East in the “war against terror.” And of course we frame all our wars in similar language like “our troops died to keep our country safe,” which hasn’t really been true since WWII.

I do think it’s worth noting that this is the first time SW has had someone acknowledge the human losses of the Death Star blasts. Usually it’s framed as a loss in construction time, strategical advantage, and power. The Empire proved time and time again that the lives of its soldiers were utterly expendable, which always made me question why people remained loyal outside of fear. Through this pilot’s phrasing, you can see the propaganda Imperial superiors used to twist the truth to their followers, always blaming those deaths on Rebel aggression instead of prideful Imperial neglect (I.e. not abandoning ship when there was still time) or even direct Imperial aggression like Operation Cinder where they fired on thousands of their own (discussed in S2E7.)

You can’t tell me Din wasn’t into it when Cara shot that asshole pilot. That cold faced revenge shot? 100% Mandalorian style, and also very very hot.

I appreciate that it was a pretty equal match between Boba and Koska Reeves. So much of Boba’s advantage comes from his suit, but since she also has one, it’s a battle of wits on how to use it, and they even out. This both maintains his legendary badassery and also that of highly trained Mandalorian warriors, and hopefully avoids asshole chauvinist SW fans on the internet complaining abujt “pandering to feminism” (fuck off @ all of them, especially since Mercedes Vernado who plays Reeves is a WWE champ and could kick all of your asses.)

Din point blank asked how many Death Troopers there are and Dr. Pershing never answered, and that annoys me.

Why is no one suspicious why Dr. Pershing is being so helpful and revealing so much information? He totally did not have to tell them about the Dark Troopers or any of the specifics of locations on the ship. He’s still with the empire post-fall, implying he’s a loyalist, so... wtf on his part (since no tricks come of it), and “be smarter” on the part of everyone else. Unless he’s been captive as a clone engineer all this time. But couldn’t he have made his escape back in Season 1 when Din killed everyone at that lab to get the kid back?

Bo Katan really could’ve just told them how the retrieval of the dark saber needs to work in the flight before the mission instead of being vague about “he belongs to me.”

Boba Fett’s usage of “Princess” and “don’t worry about me” are a good throwback to Han Solo and the culture they both grew up in. You can never quite tell if it’s based in misogyny or resentment for upper classes, but both of them seem to use it as a shield for begrudging respect they hold for a woman they think is brave but following a fool’s errand (the Rebellion and retaking Mandalore).

The Comms Officer (Katy O’Brian) assisting Moff Gideon will forever and always look like Ilana Glazer to me, and then I get swept up imagining what would happen if the Broad City cast accidentally got transported to Star Wars.

The launch tube sequence has some amazing cinematography.

The second I saw Boba was cut off from the pack, I really thought they were going to kill him again and make his return bittersweet. Glad they didn’t.

God this team of Bo Katan, Koska Reeves, Fennec Shand, and Cara Dune is SO BADASS. I’m just obsessed with all these characters and their various motivations to get shit done. I honestly didn’t even think about the fact it’s all women until my re-watch, showing that the writers made it feel natural, the way women deserve to have their representation done. You can bet I am SO EXCITED for my future daughter and the wealth of possibilities she’s going to have of characters to play pretend as, action figures she can relate to, Halloween costumes to wear, etc. It’s so validating that we’ve gone from only Princess Leia as a female main character to all these women + Rey, Jyn Erso, Ahsoka, etc. etc.

Can’t wait for the trap remix of the Dark Trooper activation noises. (And the transition from that to the minimalist flute theme is perfect.)

The spy movie version of the main theme music is sick.

The Dark Trooper droid faces have a lot of similarity to Darth Vader’s mask. That callback is especially apparent when the one is literally lit from the inside with fire. He was already a martyr/legend to the Imperial remnants, Kylo Ren didn’t start the trend of ignoring his redemption.

Cara’s “excuse me” right before shooting up Stormtroopers is hilarious. Literally “can’t talk rn, doing hot girl shit and murdering space Nazis.”

Finally an Imperial ship got some frickin security cameras. Truly- the amount of times people just wander down hallways they’re not supposed to be in with no one being able to find them throughout the course of Star Wars is ridiculous when you think about the degree of surveillance our real life society carries out. I also love that this means The Mandalorian characters have also seen The Mandalorian.

The storytelling does such a service to Pedro Pascal and his already heroic efforts to portray emotion through a helmet. For example: Din easily could’ve killed the one stormtrooper outside Grogu’s cell much more efficiently, but instead, to show his absolute rage, they wrote in Din choking him out with a spear.

Moff Gideon would have been the BIGGEST pain in the ass in philosophy class. “Assume I know everything” my ass. I want to hear about his backstory (he would’ve been “coming of age” at the time of the Clone Wars) mostly just to hear about him getting bullied at school.

Smart move honestly, to try to tempt Din with the Mandalorian throne, given the Mandalorian power struggles of the past. Proud of our boy for keeping his priorities straight.

So has the blood from Grogu been transferred out of the ship and back to the remnant empire already, or do they have to find a new “donor” to help with building Snoke and Palpatine’s clones? Will they continue to go after him with Luke?

Lmao Din being so annoyed by Bo Katan being stringent about the tradition of winning the Dark Saber through combat is HILARIOUS, coming from a man who up until like a day ago hadn’t shown his face to a living being in decades.

The dark troopers can punch in blast doors but NOT Din’s helmet?? That’s a wild testament to beskar. Somehow that’s the comparison that sticks out to me, more even than its resistance to lightsabers.

This show works because of the cynicism of so many characters adding contrast to the moments of heart. Cara Dune is not a “fan” the way Rey was (for the record I love Rey, don’t come at her, it’s just different). Cara doesn’t see an X-Wing and go OMG THE REBELLION I LOVE THEM. She’s been through too much to believe in the magic saviourism of the “good guys,” and is instead thinking strategically when she, the one Rebel present, brushes off the usefulness of “one X-Wing.” The only positive things she seems to feel in battle situations are moments of relief and brief satisfaction in hurting the empire, with a dark knowledge that it will never make up for the hurt they did to her.

How do you keep a cloak hood on while fighting? Both from a technical standpoint (my hats fall off without me even having to move- is he expending force energy just to keep it on and look cool lol?) and also because idk, maybe it’s just me, but peripheral vision is helpful when surrounded by killer robots on a thin bridge above oblivion. I know his first lesson was to “see” through the force, but every resource helps, right?

Now that she has the ship, I wonder if Bo Katan can reprogram any salvageable Dark Troopers to help with retaking Mandalore?

There is nothing like seeing Luke’s fighting style, with its efficient choppiness and twinge of darkness. I always wonder how much is natural and how much is influenced by his first fights with Vader (that Skywalker diva flair). I love how they’ve advanced his technique but also kept him extremely “grey” here- like to straight up COMBUST a Dark Trooper takes some violent energy lol.

How tf is Moff Gideon alive after threatening Grogu’s life twice directly? That’s a wild testament to Din’s regard for Cara.

I love how seeing Luke slice through a bunch of murder droids like butter probably was a huge point in his favor for Din actually letting Grogu go with him. Like he will only send his child to boarding preschool if he knows the teacher will be a certified killing machine.

Oh my god they finally brought in some OG Star Wars theme music for Luke to take his hood off to 😭 It felt weird seeing him fight to different music, so the emotional payoff is huge when his themes come back for the face reveal.

Whoever added the digital young Mark Hamill face NAILED those classic shining Luke eyes and the earnest eyebrow lift.

Whoever shines the glass of Baby Yoda’s lil puppet eyeballs each day deserves a raise. The light caught in those babies is devastating.

Din is shaking as he takes off his helmet. This is the most enormous show of love he could give him, and possibly the last he’ll be able to for a long time. He only just got Grogu back and is desperate for a moment of real connection before letting him go once again.

This is the first time anyone has touched Din’s face since... likely his parents as a child.

Whoever wrote this scene clearly actually has kids. Anyone who’s ever had to leave a young child even just to go out for a bit or to drop them off somewhere knows that heartbreak of seeing them look in your eyes and hold on to your leg, trying to keep you with them. Especially when they can sense your mutual separation anxiety. The one thing that starts to make them feel better is something fun like a new toy or friend who can be their guide in the new environment, and R2’s friendly introduction is exactly that (since digital Luke isn’t being particularly emotive or child friendly... I hope that’s just because he’s reaching into Grogu’s mind while also keeping an eye on the multiple people with guns trained on him, not because he’s going to be totally unfeeling raising this kid.)

I love that Grogu and R2 are immediately buddies in contrast to Episode 5 when R2 was like “fuck this guy” @ Yoda stealing food and hitting him with a walking stick lol. I would imagine Luke must be reminded of that first introduction too and entertained by this display of playfulness in a *positive* light between R2 and mini-Yoda.

I need to know if Luke and Ahsoka have met- it is KILLING ME.

Does this mean Grogu will get killed by Kylo Ren when he fucks up Luke’s academy??? I will reincarnate Ben just to kill him again if that’s the case.

How does Luke not even fully SMILE at Grogu?? An adorable little baby version of his beloved master Yoda, and you’re telling me he doesn’t have the same heart stopping gasp we all did when we first saw him?? Maybe he did when they first connected through the force. He has a bit of bemusement on his face, and also wonder in his eyes, but I want a grin of recognition and welcome, dammit.

I really wish Luke had somehow acknowledged Cara Dune. Everyone else seems to see the tear drop Rebel sign and know it means Alderaan. He could’ve been like yo I have a badass warrior sister from your planet that you should meet. Or just “thank you for your service.” (I know this actually wouldn’t have been cinematically good but my heart wants it.)

Luke didn’t tell Din his name?? Or ask for any details about the kid and his care?? I could literally never let my kid go with someone, regardless of how worthy, and not be like, “Excuse me sir who are you and where tf are you taking my tiny beloved green goblin in case I need to find him? Here is my contact info. He likes to eat frogs and eggs, and he can have macarons as a treat. He’s 50 years old and his favorite toy is still a ball. Bedtime is 8pm and he’s allergic to dairy.”

Another reason I wish Luke had identified himself would be to see the mishmash of reactions that would ensue. Cara would be like DAMN IT’S THAT GUY WHO BLEW UP THE DEATH STAR AND KILLED THE EMPEROR, ACT COOL (and she would indeed act cool). Fennec would be like ugh it’s that guy who helped kill my best paying client Jabba the Hutt and then fucked over my boss Boba, I helped save the kid for THIS? And I would LOVE to know how Bo Katan feels about him, assuming she’s heard of him, and especially if she knows he’s Anakin Skywalker’s son. That confusion is probably the reason WHY the writers didn’t have him reveal himself- they didn’t want to break the emotion of the scene.

Let‘s all be real I’m just being needy about wanting things from Luke because of what he meant to me as a kid and my resulting innate need to have more canon of him, whatever it is, whenever I can get it. Especially in this form that’s so similar to ROTJ, a movie I watched on endless repeat. Even getting this was incredible though. Who else could we trust this lil heart-stealing green bean with so fully? Yet who would be so arrogant as to try to train a baby yodling (see: Ahsoka’s wise refusal)?

R2 is reckless as hell lmao. Not that we don’t already know that, but for him to just head on in, effectively abandoning Luke’s ship (how can they know if there are more troopers or not who might blow it up?) and also putting himself in the path of the ridiculously deadly Dark Troopers is NUTS. I’m usually on his side but he absolutely deserves a scolding by C3PO for this one.

I wonder if Grogu has any memories of R2 or vice versa since they did occupy the Jedi Temple at the same time. Can Grogu understand droids? They could swap stories about mutual acquaintances.

Does Din pretty much have to go with Bo Katan now since a) he’s shown his face and may not be able to go back to the Watch, and b) because he has the darksaber and has to figure out how to get it back to her without dying?

How in the hell did Bib Fortuna (whose chins age was not kind to) go from being butler to being boss? Were all the henchmen just like, “Fuck yeah, no Hutt parents no rules, let’s do what we want!!” And then they’ve spent the last ten years living off of whatever money they could salvage from Jabba’s non-banked wealth? Why has no one challenged them for that prime real estate and loot? I would love to hear that story.

Fennec Shand says “respect sex workers” so you better fuckin’ do it.

Idk dude Bib Fortuna really was a good butler, and he seemed pretty willing to comply with whoever’s in power. Did he screw Boba over in his attempt to return from the dead and earn that killing shot somehow? Or was this to make sure there was no one left who would have a claim to loyalty? Or maybe Boba just really wanted to sit in that chair.

Does “The Book of Boba Fett” mean we’re not on Din Djarin’s story anymore? Or is it a new show? I would much prefer the latter. I want to see Din help retake Mandalore or at least get a hug.

[mentalhealthandgames]

‘OMORI’ analysis:

OMORI’ is an Indie psychological horror RPG that was released December 2020, 6 years after its Kickstarter became fully funded in 2014. It was developed by OMOCAT, LLC and published by OMOCAT, LLC and Playism. It is a long game, the average play time of the main story is calculated to be 21 hours and 9 minutes by ‘HowLongToBeat’ (HowLongToBeat, 2021), a website which polls players with different play styles to calculate the average lengths of games. It personally took me 49 hours to complete. This is to say that, as a long and complex story based game, Omori’s plot will be difficult to summarise in a neat and short format but I will try.

The game has two main routes and multiple endings. I played the normal route and got the good ending so that will be the story I summarise, which also seems to be the one most players also got during their first playthrough. 

The game starts with a short cutscene and then text appears on screen stating: “welcome to White Space. You have been living here for as long as you can remember.” The game then properly starts, revealing the main character in a large white space with a room in the centre. The room contains a laptop, a sketchbook and tissues. Around the room are a cat, a black lightbulb and a white door. If the player goes to the door it says: “a white door casts a faint shadow. What would you like to do?” The only choice is to do nothing. The sketchbook is filled with sinister drawings in red, white and black. The cat says “meow (waiting for something to happen?)”. The laptop allows you to either stare at the screen, look at the journal or log off. The journal (titled ‘Omori’s journal’) is filled with entries for days that are all listed as: “day ???” rather than with a date and each entry either consists of: “today, I spent time in White Space. Everything was okay” or “today I visited my friends. Everything was okay.” The tissue box is stated as “for wiping your sorrows away”. There is a sound and shake and then a text box appears telling the player “something fell nearby”. The player can then find a “shiny knife” by wandering around white space. After discovering the knife, if the player approaches the door they are now given the option to open it.

Once the door is opened it takes the player to Neighbor’s Room, a bright colourful room in sharp contrast to White Space. Neighbor’s Room is a part of a large area called Headspace which is only accessible through the white door in White Space. Most of the game takes place in Headspace, although not all of it, so assume the areas I discuss are in Headspace unless I tell you they are otherwise (White Space is not a part of Headspace). In Neighbor’s Room three of Omori’s friends are playing cards. They are Aubrey, Kel and Kel’s brother Hero. They are happy to see Omori, and after some bickering between Kel and Aubrey, decide to visit their friends Mari and Basil who have invited them for a picnic at the Playground. Saying yes to the invitation causes the friends to join the party and follow Omori. They leave Neighbor’s Room through a tree stump. There are four areas branching from the tree stump. One is blocked off by spiderwebs which Omori refuses to pass because he is scared of spiders, one is blocked of by the sea which Omori refuses to go into because he is scared of drowning and one is blocked off by a ladder which Omori refuses to climb because he is scared of heights. The only other option is to go to the Playground where they meet Basil and Mari who are waiting on a picnic blanket with Mari’s basket and some food. Mari’s picnic blanket, her basket and the food pop up throughout the game with the basket as a save point, the food as a way to replenish health or juice (which is basically mana, it powers skills and can be drained during fights) and the picnic blanket often allowing Omori and friends to have a picnic and take a break from whichever adventure they are on. During their friendly reunion and discussion, Basil shows them his photo album which is filled with pictures documenting their friendship. They then decide to visit Basil’s house except for Mari who opts to stay behind.

Before going to Basil’s house Omori and friends play hide and seek with other characters in the Playground where Omori finds everyone except Basil. Basil has been kidnapped by a character named Boss who is a childish character upset at being banned from the playground by the others who had deemed him too violent. After a fun short battle with Boss they then make their way to Basil’s house. I mentioned the fight with Boss as although it has no relevance to the plot it seemed to set the tone of exploring ‘Headspace’ for me. Colourful fun battles with Omori’s friends against characters who ultimately weren’t bad people. It felt hopeful and exciting even though I knew it couldn’t be the full story because Omori is a psychological horror game. Although I knew something would probably go wrong at some point, it still lulled me into a false sense of security. When Omori and his friends arrive at Basil’s house, Kel and Aubrey have another fight before they go inside which leads to them knocking over Basil and the photos falling out of his photo album. They go inside for Omori to put the photos back in place. After that seems done a photo falls out of the album and Basil picks it up. Basil seems not to recognise the photo, looking scared. A twisting shadow appears beneath him and then he says “n-no.. that can’t be… Mari” his eyes turning red. Then there is a flash of a greyscale photo and Omori is back in White Space, except this time the white door is missing. There is some new dialogue with Mewo the cat and a new drawing in the journal of a strange shape with one eye. However, without the door, the player is stuck, until they open the pocket menu. The pocket menu is where the player can access the party’s inventory, their skills and charms and the options menu. Previously there was a space only listed as ??? but at that moment it is replaced by red text saying “Stab”. Clicking on Stab it gives you the option to stab a member of the party, which, in White Space only consists of Omori himself. The player has no other way of progressing the game and has to click that option, which makes Omori to stab himself. This sudden dark turn shocked me. Although I had expected the game to turn dark eventually I didn’t think it would happen so early on and it felt wrong to have him stab himself.

After Omori has stabbed himself there is another short cutscene and then the player is shown a boy sleeping in his room and asked to choose his name. His default name is Sunny, so that is how I will refer to him. He looks almost exactly like Omori except he is in colour. He is the real version of Omori who lives in the real world and it turns out that Headspace and White Space are all in his head, a world he escapes to avoid a traumatic event in his past. Although they are the same person I will continue to refer to them as Omori and Sunny to separate when Sunny is in Headspace (or White Space) as Omori and when he is in the real world as Sunny. It turns out that in the real world Sunny is home alone as his mother is in the city, preparing their new home for them to move into in three days. It is also revealed that Omori’s friends in Headspace all exist in the real world as well. In the real world you can explore the top level of the house where Sunny’s bedroom is located, but if the player tries to go downstairs to the rest of the house Sunny will shake his head and not allow it. The only choice is to go back to bed where Sunny goes to sleep but then wakes up again hungry. A red light shines through the window making the area more sinister. This time trying to go down the stairs is allowed but the stairs seem to be infinitely long and some hands climb up the sides while others surround him and one photorealistic one chases him. When it catches up, the player is taken to a fight with a monstrous creature referred to as Something. The fight seems hopeless, Sunny’s attacks doing nothing to Something until a mysterious voice speaks to Sunny saying: “take a deep breath… don’t be afraid. It’s not as scary as you think.” The textbox then states: “you steady yourself… and remember how to Calm Down. Calm Down is then available as a skill (fights are won by using attacks and skills). Using the Calm Down skill shows an animation of Sunny breathing in and out and ends the fight, depositing Sunny at the bottom of the stairs. The player can then explore the rest of the house, two areas Sunny still refusing to go to, a room and an area outside, presumably the garden. The player can then take Sunny to the kitchen to pick up the Steak Knife and heat up and eat a steak. Then Sunny seems sick, the rooms wobbling as he walks around. After he goes to the upstairs bathroom and throws up, the rooms stop wobbling. Then there is a knock at the door and when Sunny approaches the door it shows Mari on the other side, still in the bright purple colours of Headspace. She tells Sunny she forgot her keys and asks him to open the door. If the player chooses to open the door there is a quick jumpscare of a ghost. If the player visits the bathroom to look in the mirror they will see the ghost behind Sunny. There is nothing else to do but to make Sunny go to bed and go to sleep. This time when he wakes up there is another cutscene saying “welcome to White Space. You have been living here for as long as you can remember” and Sunny is once again Omori, back in White Space. This time the white door is back but will not open and the Stab option is once again not available. Going to the laptop will open the Hangman menu which shows a list of computer keyboard keys along with vague descriptions of where to find them (they are all somewhere in Headspace). Out of all 26 keys there are 12 keys that are necessary to collected to unlock later parts of the game. It is impossible to collect all 26 in the normal route of the game. To be able to open the door the player has to find the map to Headspace in White Space, then it will allow the door to open when interacted with, once again taking Omori to Neighbor’s Room. Aubrey, Kel and Hero are relieved to see Omori and reveal that Basil is missing. Around this time Mari is also revealed to be Omori’s (and therefore also Sunny’s) sister. The main objective is to find Basil and this drives most of the story that takes part in Headspace. This involves a lot of exploring different areas of Headspace including an area accessed via the ladder that Sunny had previously been too afraid to use. Omori is encouraged by his friends to go up the ladder as they believe it may lead to Basil and this is clearly linked to Sunny defeating the Something on the stairs in the real world. This area is called Otherworld. After going on quests in the hopes that they will lead to Basil and fighting in a battle against the first proper boss, Space Boyfriend, some bloody footsteps will lead to a shadowy figure of Basil. Following shadow Basil takes Omori to a dark sinister space with some hints about Sunny’s dark past and his reason for creating and escaping to Headspace. He is chased by the version of Something the player will see the most, a version already depicted in Omori’s sketchbook in White Space, a strange shape with one eye. When caught by Something Omori wakes up once again in White Space where he once again has to stab himself to wake up in the Real World. This is the End of the Prologue and the start of the first chapter: Three Days Left. Each chapter counts down the days until Sunny is supposed to move out.

Every time Omori turns up at White Space and the white door is not present, the player has to make him stab himself in order to wake up as Sunny in the real world. That is the only way to access the real world. During each real world segments there is a battle with a different creature called Something related to each of Sunny’s fears. First heights, then spiders and finally drowning. Defeating these creatures in the real world always gives Sunny a new skill (these are: Calm Down, then Focus, then Persist) and allows Omori to later overcome, after his friends offer him support, the related fear in Headspace, allowing him to explore new areas that were previously blocked off (Otherworld, then Pyrefly Forest and finally Last Resort and Underwater Highway are only accessible by Omori and Mari swimming across the beach). I found this very interesting as it showed that Omori’s fears were limiting him and that he was able to overcome them, both for his friend (Basil) and with the support of his other friends (Aubrey, Kel and Hero). It implies that you should reach for help or support if you can and it reminded me a lot of my own anxiety which has limited me a lot in my past by making me scared to go to social events for example. Friendship is an important theme throughout Omori (in fact it is an important theme in all three games I chose to assess).

The first chapter opens in the real world with someone claiming to be Kel knocks on the door and the player has to choose whether to open it or not. This choice determines which route of the game the player goes down. The normal route starts when the player chooses to open the door. It is revealed to actually be Kel and not a jumpscare like Mari was and he wants to spend time with Sunny before he moves out. When Sunny explores the town with Kel he finds out that Aubrey has changed a lot, having dyed her hair pink and become the leader of what appears to be a group of bullies who often bully Basil, who is even more timid and scared than the version of him the player saw in Headspace (before he disappeared of course). Sunny and Kel rescue Basil by fighting against Aubrey who Sunny wins against by slashing her with his Steak Knife. Kel is shocked that Omori used a knife against Aubrey and takes it from him. This part made me realise how real the real world is meant to be and how Sunny had become incredibly detached from it by spending all his time in Headspace as Omori and becoming used to having to fight creatures and bosses with his Shiny Knife. Kel and Sunny then decide to retrieve Basil’s photo album which he says Aubrey stole from him. They find her in a church where she reveals to the player that Mari died four years prior, which is presumably the traumatic event that caused Sunny to retreat into Headspace, and is the reason the friend group drifted apart. Kel and Sunny then fight Aubrey again, drawing attention to Aubrey from the other churchgoers who criticise her, causing her to flee. Kel and Sunny then spot her throwing the photo album into the trash and take it to bring back to Basil. This photo album contains different pictures to the one in Headspace but is still filled with pictures showing their friendship, although all pictures containing Mari are missing, presumably taken by Aubrey. When they take the photo album back to Basil, who lives with his caretaker Polly they are invited to have dinner with them. Over dinner Kel mentions that Sunny is moving away and Basil runs to the bathroom. Following him to the bathroom shows him also seeing Something, which he says is behind Sunny. He clearly is also traumatised, his trauma most likely linked to Sunny’s trauma. Basil seems genuinely scared to be left alone but the only option for Sunny is to leave him alone. Then when Sunny goes home he faces the spider Something and goes to bed waking up in White Space.

I will not go into detail into the areas of Headspace that the party explore while looking for Basil as that would take a long time and doesn’t need to be discussed to explain the plot. The reason I went into so much detail for the Prologue is that it sets up the game. Most of the story in Headspace involves the friends looking for Basil, discovering new areas, skills, items and Bosses and always ending in Omori seeing bloody footprints leading to shadow Basil which usually leads to White Space, Omori stabbing himself and waking in the real world.

In the second chapter, Sunny starts off in the real world again. To briefly summarise, he and Kel find Basil being bullied by Aubrey and her current friends ending up with Aubrey accidentally pushing Basil into the water. Sunny has to face his fear of drowning to save Basil and faces up against another Something. Sunny and Basil are then saved by Hero who has returned from college for a short visit. They go to Kel and Hero’s house and look through the photo album and then Kel and Hero ask their parents if they can go to Sunny’s house for a sleepover. In the house Hero goes to the piano room – the room Sunny previously refused to enter. Sunny and Kel then join him there where the player finds out Mari used to play piano, and that her death was a suicide. The player knows from the photo album by now that Sunny also used to play the violin and that he and Mari were meant to play a concert together before she died. Kel, Hero and Sunny then set up a fort in Sunny’s room.

Then Omori wakes up completely alone in Neighbor’s Room in Headspace. Leaving Neighbor’s Room all the paths are blocked off by fog except for the one to the Playground. The Playground is entirely empty but if the player interacts with the mirror they can play hide and seek alone. This is a clear tonal shift as usually Headspace is very cheerful and full of life but with only Omori it becomes eerie. Then the path to the beach is accessible. At the end of the dock stands Mari. She encourages Omori to swim cross the ocean and get past his fear of drowning by promising to stay with him and saying, “steady your heartbeat… don’t be afraid. It’s not as scary as you think.” Crossing the ocean with Mari takes them across to some wooden dock paths. When they reach the end of the long wooden paths there are some curtains floating atop them. Mari turns to face Omori and says: “… Omori… it seems you have forgotten something important. Are you okay with that? I’m not too sure… you’ve seen this curtain once before. The last time we went to the lake. This is my stop though. I know I shouldn’t have come… It just gets a little lonely without everyone. It’s not my place to say anymore, but… I hope you’re still there… Sunny… I really miss you” Mari then says “goodbye, little brother.” Then Sunny enters a new area of Headspace which leads to a hotel called the Last Resort where he has to collect Kel, Aubrey and Hero who were all trapped in contracts to a boss named Mr Jawsum who they have to battle against. This is more like the previous areas of Headspace with lots of puns and colourful new characters. Then the friends travel down the Underwater Highway eventually following a recurring side character Sweetheart to an area of Headspace called The Abyss, during which they start to forget what Basil looks like. In The Abyss there are a lot of hints towards Sunny’s past and trauma. Eventually the friends end up meeting a whale called Humphrey who invites them to enter into his stomach. He is both a new area to explore and, after this exploration, a boss who threatens to actually eat them. Then, once Humphrey is defeated the friends go to find the last of the 12 keys which spells out “Welcome to Black Space” and then shows them Basils house. On the way to Basil’s house the trees and plants look dead. Entering the house there is a pit and entering the pit leads to a dark place which eventually leads to a black door which Omori opens. This introduces the player to Black Space, essentially the inverse of White Space which is surrounded by black doors.

If White Space is where Sunny locks himself away to forget all of his trauma, Black Space seems to be where he hides all of his repressed memories, fears and mental health problems. There is a key in the centre of the room. The key will open whichever of the doors the player chooses to enter first. Each room behind a black door is disturbing and broken looking, with bloody footprints leading to a key and then a red hand appearing and taking Omori back to Black Space. One Black Space room is a small room with a Butler who has the face of a cat while the cat Mewo (who the player knows by now was Mari’s cat) is strapped down to a table with knives next to her. Once Omori has entered the room, the door he used to enter disappears. When Omori interacts with the Butler he says “Mewo has been very, very bad” and then gives Omori a key. As there is no door to use the key on it seems the only choice is to approach Mewo. When Omori interacts with Mewo the text box asks: “do you want to cut open Mewo?” with the options yes and no. As there seemed to be no other option I reluctantly clicked yes, not wanting to see Mewo cut open even though I had become a bit used to the violence of the game after seeing Basil die in several of the other Black Space rooms. However, when the I clicked yes it lead to more text. “Mewo stares at you. She tilts her head out of curiosity.” And then the game asks again: “Do you want to cut open Mewo?” I clicked yes again. More text. “Mewo stares at you. Her eyes widen. She wants to go now.” And then, “do you want to cut open Mewo?” I clicked yes again, feeling more and more uncomfortable. “Mewo stares at you. She struggles to break free.” Again the choice, “do you want to cut open Mewo?” And once again I clicked yes. “Mewo stares at you. Her  eyes are filled with desperation.” I was asked again, “Do you want to cut open Mewo?” I clicked yes. “Mewo stares at you. She tries to scream, but there is no sound.” And again, “do you want to cut open Mewo?” I clicked yes again hoping it would eventually give me a different option but knowing it probably wouldn’t. “Mewo stares at you. She does not know what is happening.” Again the question, “do you want to cut open Mewo?” And finally she was dead, her red blood bright in the dark room and the text box “you cut open Mewo.” I thought finally, the red hand would appear and take Omori back to Black Space, but it didn’t. I waited a couple more seconds and then walked Omori around the small room. Nothing happened. I went to the Butler to see if he would help me leave after having committed such a terrible act but all he said was, “waiting for something to happen?” and I realised with growing dread that there had been no reason for cutting open Mewo. It had done nothing to help Omori leave the room. I opened the pocket menu and saw that the Stab option was back. I selected it and Omori stabbed himself and returned to Black Space. That was the moment for me where the game felt like an actual psychological horror. It had set out rules for Black Space. Open the door to a room, find the key for the next room and then the red hand would take Omori back to Black Space. I didn’t like the rules and the rooms unsettled me with how they took elements of the game I had grown accustomed to or invested in and then twisted them (like Watermelons hiding items, or Basil needing to be rescued) but I knew I had to follow them to progress. Except in that case, the rules weren’t the same and trying to follow them killed Mewo making me feel like a horrible person. When I watched a video titled “OMORI and Dissociative Amnesia”, part of a series of videos titled “Psych of Play” on YouTube by ‘Daryl Talks Games’ I saw the other side of that scenario. Daryl mentions how he “checked everything I could think to check to find a way not to kill this cat. Until I stumbled upon my menu and realised the Stab option was there and in that moment I was relieved. Finally something other than playing what feels like an actual nightmare I thought. And after I stabbed Omori and respawned in Black Space it sort of hit me like a truck that this game had just made killing myself seem like the best option. It seriously made me think that suicide was the easiest thing to do… given my circumstances. It took that unnatural feeling I had experienced so early in the game, and made me welcome it. Which I think paints a shockingly real picture of how suicide may seem to someone who is dealing with these astonishingly dark and sinister levels of anxiety” (Daryl Talks Games, 2021, 27:19). He had a moment where he felt that the game really revealed what it was like to be in Sunny’s shoes and made him emphasise with what Sunny’s suicidal thoughts probably felt like. And Sunny does seem to be suicidal as a result of his trauma and guilt. The bad ending leads to him killing himself by jumping off a building. This implies that part of the purpose of the game may be to show people who do not have mental health conditions what it is like to experience them. I think this would make sense since, as the disclaimer included in the game warns, ‘OMORI’ should not be played by people who are too close to the themes depicted and will find the game triggering. Much of the online community around Omori however talk about how it resonated with them or was important to them because of its mental health themes. The game has seemed to help a lot of people feel less alone with its exploration of mental health, although much of the community also emphasise that you have to be in a good state of mind when playing the game and recommend not playing it on bad days. I myself made sure I only played it on days I felt comfortable playing it and would alternate between playing the game for hours and then taking days off to decompress.

After finally escaping Black Space by killing Basil one more time (a lot of the Black Space rooms involve killing Basil by accident, but this last time seems to be on purpose) Sunny wakes up hearing music. Following the music takes the player to the piano room where Mari is sat playing the theme tune of the game. Mari talks about playing the piano and how she felt maybe she pushed Sunny to hard. She says: “We never did get to play at that last recital. Did you want to play it with me now?” Before Sunny can respond Hero bursts into the room. He tells Sunny to go back to sleep.

In the last part of the game the truth is revealed. Before their recital Sunny had thrown his violin down the stairs where it broke and had an argument with Mari, presumably over the pressure he felt to play the violin perfectly. He pushed her and she fell down the stairs and died. Basil found him and the two of them disguise her death as a suicide.

After this is revealed the player has the option to visit Basil who is convinced Sunny is possessed by Something and will start a fight between Sunny and Basil. Both Sunny and Basil will faint at the end of the fight. Sunny then finds his broken violin and is taken through memories that were shown in Basil’s photo album. After each new memory the violin will start to fix itself until it is complete. Then Sunny will appear at the recital where he is encouraged by his friends. He will put up his sheet music, start to play and then break down sobbing. Then Omori appears and the final battle is between Omori and Sunny. During this battle Omori speaks to Sunny telling him all the reasons he is a bad person and should be guilty. The phrases he used struck home and I become incredibly invested in the battle and trying to win as what he said sounded a lot like what the voices in my episodes of psychosis had told me. However Omori will ‘not succumb’ and eventually Sunny will be defeated and a game over page appears. It gave me the opportunity to continue so I took it. This time Sunny has the option to play. Choosing it will make Sunny take out his violin and he and Mari play their duet they practiced for their recital. This cutscene made me incredible emotional as it showed how much Sunny and Mari loved each other. The whole fight really showcases how Sunny felt, as Omori the representation of all his guilt and repressed memories, that his friends would be better off without him, but playing the violin gave him hope again and defeats Omori. They then hug in White Space and a white door appears. Going through it causes Sunny to wake up in the hospital with a bandage over one eye, injured in his fight against Basil. Leaving the hospital room will show shadow Basil and following him takes Sunny to Basil’s hospital room where Kel, Aubrey and Hero sit around Basil. Entering the room starts the Good Ending cutscene where Sunny decides to tell them about killing Mari, but the game cuts off before the player can see his friends reactions.

I know I have gone into a lot of depth explaining the plot and it might not have all been entirely necessary, the mental health aspects are central to the plot and discussing them felt like it would make no sense unless I described the plot first.

The game has a disclaimer both at the beginning of the game as well as on the game’s Steam page warning players that the game “contains depictions of depression, anxiety and suicide” which I think is very important and needed in the case of this game. The game is a (psychological) horror game, and horror games are quite well known in mental health gaming communities as misrepresenting mental health, mostly as portraying people with mental health conditions as violent and out of control, and mental health institutions as creepy and places to be feared and avoided. However, although the game uses Sunny’s mental health as a basis for the horror aspects it is not done in a way that belittles his struggles but rather just emphasises how difficult it is for him to cope with them. Although the cause of Sunny and Basil’s trauma is revealed to be a situation that players will most likely be unable to relate to, the way their depression and Sunny’s anxiety are portrayed still resonate with a lot of players as is evidenced in many Steam reviews. Omori and Basil are both quite sympathetic characters. They both seem to have depression but it is expressed in different ways – Omori completely withdrew into an imaginary world to avoid his trauma whereas Basil tried to put on a cheery façade but was actually deeply affected.

OMOCAT, the creator of Omori seems to be quite private and has not revealed much about the process or inspiration behind Omori and has not done any interviews, unlike the creators of the other games I have discussed, so it is difficult to tell whether she did any research on mental health when making the game or whether she experiences mental health conditions herself that may have assisted in making an accurate representation of mental health. However she did state in a blog post from the time of the Kickstarter that: “OMORI started out as a very personal project. He was a character that I created to help me cope with my problems during a confusing part of my life” (OMOCAT, 2014).

One of its main themes, one which features strongly in all three games, is the importance of friendship. I think this is an important message to have, for friends to support each other. Early on in the game if you buy good advice from the wise rock in the Vast Forest it tells Omori: “pain doesn’t last forever.” This is a major theme of the game and I think it is an important one. Although the Good Ending is ambiguous as the player will not know how Sunny’s friends will react, it gives hope that Sunny is no longer trapped by his trauma and he can finally try to move forward from it, and by telling them it seems he is also freeing Basil from his guilt as well. Overall I think it was a game that told a story that, although the ending reveal made Sunny’s actual situation less relatable and the game leaned to stereotypes at times, his experience of mental health still felt very real and resonated with a lot of players.

References:

OMOCAT (2014) OMORI Kickstarter Update. Available at:

https://www.omocat-blog.com/post/85490697570/from-illustration-to-video-game-omori-kickstarter (accessed at: 23 February 2021)

https://youtu.be/rUDGlEWa4sE (accessed at: 11 April 2021)

[canonloveinterest]

Hi, I was fucking around in AI D/ungeon in the Ghost-based world/scenarios I had on there from a while back. Don't mind me.

These got angsty at some points and it shouldn't have made me as (crying cat.jpg) as it did. #long post

> You say "Who?"

"Papa Emeritus II," he says.

You scrunch your face up, and roll your eyes. You rest your elbows on the desk across from Miach, and put your chin on your hands.

> You say "I heard he's an asshole."

"He's a great leader," Amadeus says. "And pretty friendly when you get to know him."

> You say "Is he friendly with you?"

"Yes." Amadeus smiles, before nodding.

"Alright," you say. You stand, and nod to Amadeus. He smiles, and reaches out to shake your hand. You shake Amadeus's hand. His grip is too tight and it hurts a little bit.

"Bye, Amadeus," you say.

"Bye," he replies. You walk over to the door, opening it.

You stick your head out, looking up and down the hallways.

> You go to meet with Papa Emeritus II.

You walk along the hallway, trying to remember the way to the Papa Emeritus II's office. Eventually, you reach the large doors leading to it. You reach up, and knock on the door. There is no answer. You knock again.

"Hello?" you say.

You wait, but there is no reply. You shrug, and walk into the office, looking around. You're not seeing anything out of place.

There is no reply.

You sigh, and continue looking around. You spot Papa Emeritus II's coat on a chair by the desk, and smile. The sight of the coat is comforting. You feel a fondness in your chest. You and Papa Emeritus II have had a number of pleasant conversations at this point, but you still don't know him very well. He is intimidating.

> You sit on the couch and wait for Papa Emeritus II to return.

You sit on the couch, and wait patiently. Papa Emeritus II still hasn't returned. You begin to worry.

> You check the papers on his desk.

There is a large amount of papers on the desk, all of which you've read before. They're Papa Emeritus II's way of keeping up with events in the church.

> You text Zaffre the ghoul and ask if they have seen Papa Emeritus II anywhere in the cathedral.

You stand from the couch, and begin to open up your phone. You type out a message to Zaf, quickly tapping out the message.

> You wait for a reply.

A minute passes. Still no reply. Frustrated, you slam your fist on the desk. The papers flutter down, and your hand tightens around the phone. You wait for a reply from him. After an hour, your patience wears thin. You get frustrated and throw the cell phone across the room.

> You leave the office and go to Papa Emeritus II's personal living quarters.

You enter Papa Emeritus II's bedroom, and look around. You spot his coat on the chair he usually sits on, and smile. You walk over to the coat, and pick it up, hanging it in the closet.

> You look at the clothes in his closet.

You walk over to Papa Emeritus II's closet, and run your hand along the back of his suits. You wonder where he is.

> You call Papa Emeritus II's cell phone.

Papa Emeritus II's calm voice comes in on the other line.

"Yes?" He answers.

You pause for a long second.

"Hi," you say.

He doesn't respond.

"I...um...just wanted to see how you are."

"I'm fine, Cirice."

You pause again.

"Are...are you at the office?"

"Yes."

> You say "No you aren't. I was just there."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"I see..." Papa Emeritus II says slowly.

"Are you mad at me?" You ask.

"No."

"Are you sad?"

Papa Emeritus II doesn't answer.

"Well, okay," you say. "Well I was just calling to make sure you were okay."

"I'm fine, Cirice."

> You say "Can you come see me? I'm in your room. "

"No."

"Please?"

"Can you come see me?"

Papa Emeritus II continues to remain silent.

"Please?"

> You cry.

Papa Emeritus II laughs.

"I'm hanging up now, Cirice."

You wait for Papa Emeritus II to hang up, but he doesn't.

> You say "Okay. That's fine. I'll be at my apartment when you're ready to talk to me, then. "

"See you later, little one," Papa Emeritus II says.

"Bye Papa."

You hang up the phone, and sit on the bed in Papa Emeritus II's room.

Papa Emeritus II's bedroom is a large, luxurious room. The wall in front of you is covered in photographs taken over the years. Most of the pictures feature Papa Emeritus II with various people. You punch the wall, and some frames shake and tilt crookedly. A few photos flutter off the wall. You do not feel better. Papa Emeritus II's bedroom is dimly lit, but the sun sets behind the office tower, so the room is cast in shadows. You sit slumped on Papa Emeritus II's bed, starring at the wall of photographs.

> You go back to your apartment.

You stand up from Papa Emeritus II's bed, and pick up your coat from the chair in the corner by the door. You slip into your coat, and walk outside. On your way out, you run into Papa Emeritus II coming home. You accidentally make eye contact and desperately try to make it seem like you weren't just crying in Papa Emeritus II's bedroom.

"Cirice, are you okay?" he asks.

"Yes, Papa."

"Do you need something?"

You look down at your feet, avoiding his gaze.

"I was just leaving," you say.

After a brief pause you look back up at Papa Emeritus II and remember what he said on the phone.

"Why were you acting like that?" You ask him.

"Like what?"

"You know, sad."

"I wasn't acting sad. I was just thinking, is all."

"About?" "Things."

> You say "If there's anything wrong, I want you to know you can tell me. Or not, if you don't want to. Whatever."

"There's nothing wrong, Cirice. Go on, now."

You stand awkwardly for a few moments longer, looking him hard in his eyes. You furrow your brow and look at his mismatched green and white eyes.

"I'm sorry you're... occupied, with your thoughts," you say. "But I don't appreciate you being so dismissive. It hurts, you know? And I love you." You say.

Papa Emeritus II looks at you. You can't tell what he's thinking behind the green and white eyes.

"We'll talk later tonight, okay?" he says.

> You say "Right. Call me when you're ready to talk, then. I'm going to my apartment. "

"Very well, Cirice. I love you."

> You take your leave.

On your way out of the office building, you walk quickly through the offices.

> You go home to your apartment.

You go home to your apartment, wondering what Papa Emeritus II's problem is. You go home to your empty apartment and turn on the TV, only to continue thinking about his harsh words on the phone and then your terse meeting in the hallway outside his living quarters. Papa Emeritus II is a single man who has shown no interest in love or romance. He has no wife and has no children of his own. He seems to only pursue people who he finds sexually appealing, but they never remain for long. He only keeps them around long enough to be satisfied in the bedroom, and then they break up. So why has he been showing you this amount of romantic interest? Surely he would have given up or gotten bored after a while, pursuing you, a nervous wreck of an office worker. You've denied him at every attempt to become sexually intimate.

Maybe it's because you remind him of a dead lover or ex-flame.

But you can't know for sure.

The man never opens up, and when he does he's just as quick to shut you out. Maybe you should give up trying to figure him out. Now that he's not interested in you, why bother? Those thoughts make you cry a little more. But if he wasn't interested, why would he kiss you? Why would he say that he loves you as often as he does, when he does that with no one else but you?

> What does it mean?

You've been trying to figure out the hidden meanings in Papa Emeritus II's words and actions ever since he first showed them to you. Papa Emeritus II is mysterious and no one ever knows what his intentions are. Surely, he has no ill will toward you. He said he loved you when you spoke outside his office. He kissed you, even though he was harsh over the phone earlier. You decide to continue waiting for him to either visit your apartment or call you to explain himself.

> You turn off the TV and go to bed.

The next day, you enter your office as usual. All is normal, nothing is wrong. Papa Emeritus II did not speak to you that night. His exact words were "I'll speak to you later".

Perhaps he meant in the morning, at the office. You wait for him, thinking about him the entire time you're at work. He didn't know that you waited up for him. You watch as night after night passes by without any interaction from him.

> You return to his office and knock at the door.

You knock at the door, and after a few moments it opens, with Papa Emeritus II looking down upon you. He's in the same outfit as yesterday, and holds a small box in his hand.

> You look at him suspiciously.

"You're back," he says.

> "Of course I am," you reply.

"I have a gift for you," he says, handing you the box.

You take the chocolates gingerly from his hand. You give him a soft "thank you" before looking back up at him.

> "How are you feeling today?" You ask him.

His eye twitches and his lips press into a thin line.

"You were awfully short with me yesterday, you know. I hope everything is still... okay. Between you and me, I mean." You say.

"Yes, of course," he replies.

He looks down for a moment, and his eye twitches. After a brief pause, you begin to leave. "Wait!"

> You say "Yes?"

Papa Emeritus II hesitates, as if he didn't mean to call out.

"I..." he begins to say, before pausing. "I'll see you later, okay?"

Your hand clenches into a fist, crumpling the box slightly.

"You said that yesterday! And nothing! You didn't even call me back." You say, your voice becoming slightly louder than needed. Tears prickle at the corners of your eyes again.

For a split second, Papa Emeritus II looks absolutely furious at someone raising their voice to him. He is the Unholy Excellency. He is the leader of this church. Nobody raises their voice at Papa Emeritus II.

"Please just tell me what's wrong," you whisper.

The look of hurt and confusion on your face seems to strike a chord in him. He sighs, defeated.

"I'm sorry. I'm tired. I'm sick. I'm overwhelmed. I'm sad. Please, just leave me alone." He says, his voice breaking.

> You say "Alright. If that's what you want. I'm sorry that I disturbed you. "

> You say "Thanks for the candy. "

You turn around and return to your desk in the office. The candy in its crumpled box sits untouched at your desk. You can't think of anything else but the sorrowful expression on Papa Emeritus II's face. You hide your face with your hand. You're confused, and hurt, and don't know where to go from here. You feel something wet dripping down the side of your face. It takes you a moment to realize that it's your own tears. You didn't notice that you started crying again. You don't cry that easily.

The next day, you wait to see if Papa Emeritus II acknowledges you. You see him at the bottom of the staircase. He is looking up, staring off into the distance. You wave to catch his attention, but he does not wave back. You approach slowly, with your head down.

"Hullo, Papa." You say.

"Cirice." He says to you, nodding his head. "Did you need something?" He asks.

"No, I was just coming to see if you needed any help."

"No, I'm fine. I wanted to speak with you though."

"Of course. Anything you need." You say.

> You wince internally at the desperation in your voice.

"I need you." He says. Your face turns bright red and feels warm under your skin. You wince and cross your arms, looking away.

"I don't know what to do with you." You say.

Papa Emeritus II has the self awareness to look ashamed. Not many people have seen Papa Emeritus II in this state; forlorn, remorseful, and entirely human.

"You can do what you like," he says. "You can do anything you like."

You turn to look at him and uncross your arms. You close the distance and put a gentle hand on his chest and on his arm.

"I want to help you." You say.

"You already do." Papa Emeritus II says. And there it is. The faintest ghost of a smile. You touch his cheek and turn him to face you.

> You say "Can I kiss you?"

He stares at you with wide eyes, before smiling faintly.

"Yes." You kiss him.

You kiss him again. And you keep kissing him until you're both breathless. You remember that you're standing in the stairwell of the office building. You hold him with your hands on the sides of his face, stroking his cheek. Papa Emeritus II looks at you with shining eyes.

"Thank you." He says, before leaning in for another kiss.

[starlightsearches]

Office Romance: Ch. 21 Subterfuge

General Hux and Kylo Ren have found themselves competing for the affection of a lieutenant aboard the Finalizer.

Series Warnings: Language, some violence, near-death experiences.

Masterlist

AN: Remember how I said this series was on hiatus? Turns out I’m a huge liar! This came to me a couple days ago and I have no self-control so here it is; hope you enjoy to everybody still following!

Chapter Warnings: Hopefully without giving away too much, there’s some drugging and some kidnapping in this chapter! Read with caution!

The rumors going around the Finalizer said that the Annual First Order Anniversary Gala would be a party unlike any other, and standing here in the middle of it all, you're sure they must be right. Everyone is here: all of the Finalizer's officers, plus the crews of all the other ships—some of them people you hadn't seen since the Academy—the entirety of the Directorate, and a handful of celebrities, all sympathetic to the cause: politicians, holo-stars, stage performers. It's a massive, swirling body of people, an electric meeting of heartbeats and minds under the glittering lights.

And certainly many of them are eager to meet you. Your reputation precedes you, it seems, the young, brave Lieutenant General—you're the talk of the party, your name on the lips of many of the guests. The hushed voices follow you like trails of ribbon flittering on a breeze; they talk of the assassination attempt, the mysterious death of Antibree Soar.

The conversations always grow quieter, here, delicate whispers laced with smiles. I heard, they say, that she's become involved with the force user, Kylo Ren. The rest of the party will gasp, the speaker's lips turning upwards with triumph, with the power that comes from sharing a secret. The smile falls though when another guest interrupts. No, no, you've heard all wrong, they say, it's the general who's caught her attention. I heard . . .

And so it goes. You have to admit you look the part—mysterious, powerful. The gown you're wearing is unlike any other: the silver material flows over you like a waterfall, shimmering in the light. The cut of the neck is low, daringly so, the skin of your chest exposed all the way to the waist of the gown, and the cape, secured around the neck, falls over your shoulders, fluttering in your wake as the crowd parts around you. You've never looked more beautiful. And you've never felt more miserable.

You bid farewell to your latest dance partner whose name you've already forgotten, making your way to the edge of the crowd again. You had hoped that the determination in your gait would discourage any more invitations to dance, but you still have to tug your arm away from a few of the more persistent men, telling them that you'd love to join them, in just a moment. You needed to get some air. Alone.

It’s quiet on the balcony, private, and there’s no other guests taking advantage of the darkness that would be afforded to them out here. The night air is cool on your flushed skin, the twilight a blessing to your eyes after the bright and colorful chaos of the ballroom. It's quiet out here on the balcony, and when you look up, you can see the tiny pinpricks of stars flooding the night sky.

You had talked to the general, the night after Pryde's visit. It had been a stilted conversation, full of long, awkward pauses, your eyes traveling the walls of his quarters, your throat stinging as you tried to hold back the tears that kept threatening to spill onto your cheeks. You don't remember everything that was said, and it's probably for the best. You had left in tears.

As bad as that was, your conversation with Ren had been worse. He hadn't even taken off his helmet, standing there with his arms across his chest, solid as a wall and just as responsive.

You hadn't been lying before. You wanted to make a choice, but wanting and doing, you had quickly come to realize, were two very different things. And despite everything that had happened, you were still unsure.

You weighed the options in your mind again, as you had done a thousand times. The General. Ren. And just as before, a sick feeling of dread poured into your stomach. It was no use, and now you'd be lucky if either of them would have you. Once again you had lost your chance to do something that actually mattered.

The door to the balcony opens behind you, but you don't turn around just yet, still wishing to be alone. The sound of the music swells and then lulls as the door is once again closed, the soft footsteps of the new visitor approaching.

"I'm alright, Doe," you say, eyes still straight ahead. Mitaka had been very understanding after you told him about what had happened. He must have seen your flight from the ballroom and come to check on you, but you couldn't look at him now. Seeing his face full of concern would certainly make you cry, and you were already blinking faster to quell the tears.

It's quiet still, and you're about to turn to face him when the warm arm wraps around your waist, and for a fleeting moment, you think it might be Ren, or Hux before there's a hand covering your mouth, and you don't have time to fight before you're sinking, darkness clouding the corners of your vision and a voice in your ear, low and mean, saying," guess again." You recognize the voice now, but it's too late. The sky fills your vision, melting into a swirling mess of stars, and then everything fades to darkness.

_______________________________________________________

Based on the dull headache growing between his eyes, and the way the words of the conversation he was pretending to listen to were slurring together with the blush of wine, Hux estimated that this ridiculous party had been going on for about an eternity. Although it certainly didn't help that he had wanted to leave before the party had even begun.

He had shown remarkable self-restraint, hardly looking at you all evening—or at least hardly looking at you compared to a normal amount. He'd see how long he could stretch that self-restraint once he was alone, how long it would take before he was driving himself mad thinking of you again, how long before he was waking with a pounding headache, an acrid taste in his mouth, and the distinct feeling of guilt in his stomach that came from wanting you so deeply and refusing you so harshly at the same time.

Hux takes a long sip from his glass, using the action as an excuse to close his eyes for a moment against the grating lights. He sees your face, as he expected, maybe hoped for. It's still there, playing on the back of his eyelids—the way you leaned into him, your words echoing over in his mind. Maybe I wouldn't have stopped you either. Suddenly the cool feeling of the glass against his lips is all wrong, too hard and unyielding. He pulls the glass away.

There's a new face in his line of sight when he opens his eyes, and it's not one he had expected. As if Hux’s evening could somehow get worse.

"The lieutenant," Ren says, in the closest approximation to a whisper he can manage with the ridiculous mask, "she's missing."

________________________________________________________

Ren watches the general carefully, waiting to see if the mask of indifference will slip. Hux immediately guards himself the moment he sees Ren, but he can't hide his surprise quickly enough. Ren sees it. And for a moment, he lets himself be glad.

"What should that matter to me, Ren?" Hux turns away from Ren rather stiffly, staring towards the dance floor with a falsely blank gaze. He’s looking for you. Ren knows he won't find you there.

"I thought you might know where she'd gone." Ren almost wants to laugh. This stilted, whispered conversation is a far cry from the one they had only a few days ago in the training room. It's driving him insane that he knows so little about what happened after.

The rage had left him feeling emptier after the confrontation in the training room, as it often did, but there was nothing to fill the aching cavern in his chest once it was gone. He was well and truly hollowed by your rejection. Left with nothing. And so with nothing left, he had simply watched, waiting to see if his fears had come to fruition.

But nothing had happened between you and the general, as far as he could tell. There was no weight to your interactions with him. He couldn't sense a spark, no smoldering glances or subtle smiles. He could discern the truth if he really wanted to, of course—he would have no trouble pulling the information from your mind or the general's. But he couldn't. Maybe he didn't want to know.

"I don't know where she is." Hux is as close to snapping as he could get in public, leaning in for a moment to utter a harsh whisper, before he remembers himself, "she probably stepped outside for a moment."

Hux excuses himself from the conversation, not that anyone notices his departure, but Ren refuses to be brushed aside so easily. Hux could try to fool him, to convince him that he didn't care, but Ren knows better. And more importantly, he knows something isn’t right. He can sense that you’re in danger—he feels it in his very core.

"I already checked," Ren says, loud enough to disturb the other guests, and Hux pauses, turning to face him again. There's conflict in his eyes, his mouth set in a hard line of frustration, but he doesn't walk away.

"I've looked for her everywhere. She's gone," Ren steps closer, and Hux turns to face him again. There's hatred, pure and arrant and clear in every facet of Hux’s face, and for Ren the feeling is mutual. But he hasn't even gotten to the worst part yet.

"There's something else," Ren lowers his voice again, and Hux leans closer to hear, "Pryde, he's gone too."

____________________________________________________

You open your eyes to the darkness, conscious, but not awake—like your mind is submerged in deep and turbulent waters—and you wait for the feeling to pass. The relief doesn’t come, and your stomach rolls, and for a moment you think you might die here, alone in this hellish darkness. Or maybe you’re already dead. It’s hard to tell without a frame of reference. You’re lost without your senses—no sight, no feeling or movement in any of your limbs, and, maybe the most frightening of them all, no connection to the force. You reach out for it, stretching yourself to the limits, and your stomach gives another heave, threatening to spill its contents. The tears that track down your cheeks in response to the feeling burn as they go, and you let out a single, pitiful sob.

    You hear something, just barely, at the same time the little animal noises first start to make their way out of your mouth, and you clamp your lips tighter, hoping to muffle them enough so that you can hear. There’s someone else here with you . . . wherever you are. They shift again, and the soft rustle of their clothing seems deafening in this small space. 

    “Please . . .” you try to form the word, but your lips feel enormous and unwieldy, and you’re still trying to choke back the sobs. “Please, let me go.”

    They get to their feet, stepping around into your line of sight. Your vision is blurry, and you squint, trying to get a better look.

    “You’re awake,” there’s the voice again, you recognize it instantly, and with the recognition comes a new wave of fear, “that’s a pity. The dosage I used could have killed you. Such a shame he wants you alive.”

    He peers closer, and your vision finally focuses in the low light. The edges of his face still blur, but you can see his eyes with poignant clarity, harsh and full of cutting animosity.

    “Allecul,” his name comes out jumbled, but he recognizes the sound all the same, “you’re the spy, working with . . . with Pryde.” He tenses in response, bringing his hand to your face again, and you feel another rush of darkness coming swiftly towards you. There’s no use fighting, but you struggle against it regardless, your mind desperately thrashing, urgently working to keep a hold of the sliver of consciousness you’ve gained. It’s no use. You sink back into the restless darkness. And you stay there.

Tags (lemme know if you want to be added or removed!): @acunningstargazer, @itsa-pseudonym, @ddaeing, @dark-night-sky-99, @i-jus-wanna-writehappy, @fresa-luna, @leiadelreyy, @averillian, @sunbanna​, @foggyturtleknightangel​, @liceforlunch​ 

[untitledtallgeesepodcast]

[TRANCRIPT] EPISODE 14: ROAD TRIP (NO APOLOGIES)

Cathy  00:03

Hello and welcome back to Untitled Tallgeese Podcast, a podcast where four old friends rewatch and discuss Gundam Wing. I am Cathy, your moderator for this episode, and I am joined as always, by Kat, Mallory, and Caitlin. If you have been following along, you know that this week's episode — Episode 27, Locus of Victory and Defeat and Episode 28, Passing Destinies — are recap episodes, following the unofficial Season Finale from last time. As mentioned previously, we will be spending the bulk of this episode discussing a topic near and dear to all of our hearts, Gundam Wing fanfic from the early 2000ish through the lens of one very special fic, Road Trip by Sunhawk.  But first, there isn't a lot to talk about that's new in episodes 27 and 28, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention two bits of new information we got. First, that Relena has switched wardrobes, and is now in a Sanc Kingdom school uniform. And she no longer is informing Heero that he needs to come over here and kill her but rather to return to her, echoing Quatre's telepathic insight into Heero's Golden Aura from the end of Episode 26. And second, Treize is now being placed under house arrest by the Romefeller Foundation for his speech in front of Duke Dermail. At the end of Episode 28 we see that he's not alone in house arrest, but rather joined by a ghostly Lady Une still in her peaceful ambassador outfit, who joins Treize, as he looks at blueprints of yet another mysterious Gundam-like mobile suit on his laptop, which spoiler alert, is Epyon. I think, you know, these are interesting episodes. And Caitlin, I know you had something to say about the way the recaps are done in 27 and 28.

Caitlin  01:45

Yeah, I think that it's really interesting how they, I mean, that new information comes to us via these framing narratives, where you have Relena, and a little bit Heero, and then Treize narrating everything that's happened to them. So we get a Relena narration where she's much more strongly identifying herself as the ruler of the Sanc Kingdom. And then we get a Treize narration that links together a lot of his dubious political thought, in the midst of his defeat.

Kat  02:18

It felt like the first time we really understood like, exactly what Lady Une thought his politics were, or his plans were and how he changed those plans, like explicitly.

Cathy  02:29

Yes, there was this moment where he reflects on the beauty of where he is trapped, which I believe is the Luxembourg base, but I don't know if they ever say that. And he articulates it as if to say, "this is what I wanted to preserve. This is what I joined OZ thinking it was to preserve," and then traces his change in thought, which I don't remember that ever coming through necessarily. What he thought he was doing originally before he became the Treize that we know.

Kat  02:56

Cathy, I did want to say that it felt like Treize was really reciting from your theory of anime from last episode when he talks about these "warriors with rebellious wings," and how their like purity of spirit completely changed his life.

Cathy  03:12

Yes, I love it. I felt like [laughter]--

Mallory  03:15

Yeah, I wrote, "Cathy! strong wills, what purity! theory of anime!" in my notes. So there you go. 

Caitlin  03:22

Now we have to address the possibility that Cathy is Treize. Treize was God, he was Hannibal, and now he's Cathy. 

Cathy  03:28

It does, I think, speak to why I've always found Treize a really fascinating character, even if I think he is a huge asshole, and none of his ideas make any sense. But you know, I am always drawn to this idea of people who, and I think I phrased it as "get sucked into other people's deranged orbits?" and Treize is both a person who creates a deranged orbit around himself [laughter] and also gets sucked into the orbit of the Gundam pilots, so I do love that about him.

Caitlin  03:56

Interesting. That explains a lot about you, but also makes me understand Treize a little bit better framing him that way.

Kat  04:03

I know you're sick of her but I did like that Une finally figured out the soul of OZ, that the purpose of battles isn't limited to making ideals into reality.

Mallory  04:11

Since you brought it up... why does Treize refer to her as like, my love? Or beloved? He says, "Lady Une, my love, rest in peace." So is the show trying to make me believe that Treize has feelings for Lady Une? 

Kat  04:26

Is it just awkward writing?

Caitlin  04:28

I think it's just awkward writing but also kind of that. I think the dub at least -- and I only listened to the dub this time -- decided that Treize was in love with her and is going with that.

Kat  04:39

Both of these episodes felt very much like, "Hey, remember this heterosexual pairing?"

Cathy  04:44

Yes! And I remember one time we talked about whether or not this show actually ships heterosexual pairings or just, they thought they were but they're just so horrible at writing heterosexual romances [laughter] that everything comes off really strange and this is definitely an example of that. Like, I could see both sides of this, that we are supposed to believe that Treize had romantic feelings for Lady Une and then it just was written so poorly because nobody on the show has met a real woman before. [laughter] Or, and I guess this would be my interpretation, it isn't that he is like romantically interested in her or was in love with her. But she was very important to him and represented, you know, one of the people that I think he wielded the biggest influences on and that touches him deeply. And her quote unquote, fate being that she is, quote unquote, dead at the end of Episode 26 weighs heavily on him.

Caitlin  05:40

But she's not dead. [laughing] Why does he say it? I know that in the episode, it's meant to be a fake out like, Oh, we know, we saw Lady Une die. And then Treize is talking to her as though she's dead so it's really not until the very end of episode 28 that we get the reveal that she's alive. It doesn't make a lot of sense.

Cathy  05:59

So let's address fake outs because there are characters talking in episodes 27 and 28, and I'm not sure if we are supposed to believe that they're talking at the time of the flashback footage being shown to us, or afterwards, right now, in the world of Episode 28.

Kat  06:16

I think Relena's was the only narration that actually seems like 100% anchored to what we were looking at. So... like Treize definitely we hear his earlier thoughts at the beginning and then he explains how they've changed, but with Heero it's just sort of like A, and then B. 

Mallory  06:34

Right, when Heero in Episode 27 says, "I don't consider the other Gundam pilots my comrades, I've never had comrades from the start," I have no idea if this narration is trying to tell me that Heero at this point in time currently, after Episode 26, does not believe the Gundam pilots are his friends. Or if he's referring to how he felt back then.

Caitlin  07:00

I under-understood that as definitely he's talking about that point in the flashback.

Cathy  07:05

It is kind of thrown out there. And it seems like by now he would have had so much interaction with these guys, especially at least with Trowa, that it would be kind of wild for him to say that [laughing]

Caitlin  07:18

He considers Trowa his comrade boyfriend, y'know? [cat meows in background]

Mallory  07:20

It was making me laugh because we've been reading this fic, this road trip arc. And it's kind of incredible how much this arc -- and we'll talk about this -- how much this arc and formed my idea of what the Gundam pilots' relationships were or like, their, their relationship dynamics or that they /had/ relationships with each other. So when I read all these fic, I was thinking like, "Wow, I didn't see any of this coordination in the show. Like there are no safe houses in the episodes that I watched. Oh, that like, it's okay, that must have come later." And now I'm later in the series, [laughing] and I'm finding out that actually, they interact very tangentially for the most part, where I was imagining a lot more camaraderie as the episodes progressed.

Kat  08:11

I know in Episode Zero, you were really distraught to learn that it's not like, "let's all five meet up and team up!" ... 

Mallory  08:19

Yeah!

Kat  08:19

...kind of anime

Mallory  08:21

I mean, I'm really enjoying where it's going now. And I enjoy the sort of bits of relationships that we're getting and the ways that their personalities bounce off each other. And that's what makes, that's what makes Gundam Wing such a rich field to mine for fic, because you get all of these like, glimpses of what these characters could be to each other, within the canon of the show. And it's really easy for writers like Sunhawk to kind of just like, take them and run.

Cathy  08:52

Yes, so let's talk about Road Trip by Sunhawk. Road Trip is part of a larger, 17 part series called the Road Trip Arc by its fans. We are going to be talking mostly about just the first installment -- which is actually barely shippy. Like there are hints of the relationship that will come to be especially the 1x2 part of it. And the rest of the series is very staunchly 1x2 with background 3x4, question mark with Wufei, which I'd really love to talk about later. But at least in the first part, it's kind of more of a, I don't know if action story is the right word...  You know, it starts at some unspecified time in the canon. Heero and Duo are escaping a mission that is kind of going south. They land on earth, on a beach. Heero is badly injured, Duo is you know, kind of beat up but is still mostly functional. You know, he's not internally bleeding and concussed, which is what Heero is. So he's forced to drive them to safety, and eventually to a rendezvous point where the idea is that Quatre and the others will pick them up. But when they get there OZ is basically hot on their heels. So Duo is able to leave Heero, basically in secluded cover, but he has to redirect OZ's attention, which gets him into more trouble. And he almost essentially drowns. So exhausted, pummeled within an inch of his life, he limps his way back to a safe house, again, unspecified location, or why he knows that that thing is there, but whatever, where all the rest of the pilots are staying at. So that's Quatre, Trowa, and Wufei. Heero's already in the hospital, you know, Duo basically passes out. He's given immediate medical attention, including drugs that cause him to lash out and nearly kill everybody around him. But finally, Heero, near death himself, manages to sneak out of his hotel--hospital room to sit by Duo's side, which calms Duo down and the fic ends with them having this really cute exchange about Duo's IVs.  So I did want to talk about the landscape of fanfic reading at this time, before we really dive deep into Road Trip itself. Do you guys have any memories, you know, or impressions of what it was like at the time when you first started reading Gundam Wing fanfic?

Caitlin  11:12

I remember that... I'm pretty sure I read this fic on a site that had either an all black background with white text; a sepia tinted background, that was like, you know, like a light, brownish, and then like a sort of off gray text. Because back in 2000, the only HTML any of us knew was how to change background color and how to change font color. You could put one image... They had gifs back then. And I don't, that's probably why my eyes are bad now. [laughter]

Kat  11:45

Yeah, it was either like very weirdly colored websites or really, really intensely over-styled websites, where it like, it's a little pop up and it's butterfly-shaped.

Mallory  11:58

Yeah. And there's like glitter and sparkles when you move your mouse and stuff. I didn't have fast like, I didn't get DSL until really late, like I was a senior in high school. So all of these websites just like crashed our internet constantly. [laughing] It was, it was hard for me to read those kinds of archives and stuff. 

Caitlin  12:22

The point here is that these fics were hosted on like, a bunch of different sites. And it was just small, privately run, I guess you could say archives, like it's like it's one person who wants to save all the Gundam Wing fic in the world. Which is actually why we have Road Trip preserved on AO3, Archive of Our Own, which is that it's part of the Open Doors Project where a archivist by the name of Dacia used to run a site called A Little Piece of Gundam Wing, she was really into Duo. She read pretty much every Duo pairing if I recall correctly, like she was really into like all Duo pairings and she started collecting fic from various places where like, she-she wanted to curate like the best fic in her mind. So she would like ask authors, "Oh, can I host this on my site too?" after finding the fic other places and so she collected a bunch of, a bunch of fic. And as probably a lot of us know, Archive of Our Own, which is run by the Organization for Transformative Works, has a program called Open Doors where they will import archives that are closing, fanfiction archives that are closing, or that the maintainers just don't want to maintain anymore. So they maintain, they import them wholesale from the original archive and put them on Archive of Our Own.

Kat  13:49

It's pretty great because there are tons of fic from that time period that I wish I could remember or find or go back and to be able to like even search stuff on AO3 that was on those is great.

Cathy  14:02

So we've talked about this before, but that's where Gundam Wing Addiction is actually pretty funny because they did rescue some of these sites. You know, we talked about the Izumi Fountain District with Alexe Cinz stuff last time, but they also rescued, I want to say it's Lev or Levwolf or something like that? 

Kat  14:23

Leviathan's Lair. 

Cathy  14:25

The-the Leviathan's Lair. There we go. 

Kat  14:26

Ooh, I remember this site. Wow--

Mallory  14:28

Yeah

Kat  14:28

Looking at this site is like getting slapped in the face. 

Cathy  14:31

Yeah, I definitely read a lot of fic on A Little Piece of Gundam Wing, which I remember had a lot of text that was like accent text in orange [laughter]. And one of my favorite authors. well, they were an author pair, TB and Marsh, they were hosted on A Little Piece of Gundam Wing, that's where I first discovered them. But same thing with Sunhawk, who wrote two really famous series you know, Road Trip is the first one -- and in my memory, the more famous one although I think some people might say it's the Ion Arc, which I really don't remember anymore. 

Kat  15:06

No, like reading Road Trip -- it's sort of like if I didn't read Road Trip, I read a bunch of fics like it, but the Ion Arc doesn't really ring a bell. 

Cathy  15:15

Ok, yeah. So it was also the one that was easiest to talk about because the first part of Ion isn't really meaty enough, I think to talk about whereas Road Trip, the first installment is almost perfectly self-encompassing of a lot of stuff. In terms of dates, you know, I cannot find a definitive date of when Sunhawk first wrote and posted Road Trip, the first archive I could find that was still crawled by Web Archive, thank you Web Archive, was from November 2001 on Steelsong, who was another moderator of a large network of websites, a lot of which were Gundam Wing websites and specifically had their own Gundam Wing fanfic archive. By the time that Steelsong had put Sunhawk on their site, which was some time around November 2001, Sunhawk had already written much of Road Trip, she had already written the first six installments, which is a lot of fic. And at that time, at least in 2001, 2002, Sunhawk was writing Road Trip concurrently with Ion.  My suspicion is that Sunhawk probably first wrote this on a mailing list, you know, the 1x2 mailing list was a really popular one at the time, and so maybe it was that she first started there and then later got into the archives. But this would mean that Sunhawk probably started writing Gundam Wing fic right after Gundam Wing's run on Toonami in 2000.  So another thing I did want to point out is that we are really lucky now that Gundam Wing is available on streaming on Hulu, that there's all these wiki sites that we could basically find all the information we would want. It's possible that Sunhawk did not actually have a way to fact check anything that she was writing at the time. And so you know, one thing I did want to talk about with the fic was this indeterminate canon timeline issue, I don't know when in the series, this was supposed to happen. You know, Deathscythe is called Deathscythe. Much later in the series, Wufei's Gundam is referred to as Altron, which is his second Gundam. But we don't ever get this kidnapping phase that happens in the fic. So I don't know. But then again, I realized when I was Sunawk in 2001, how was she supposed to have checked that? Right?

Kat  17:29

I think also, nobody gave a shit back then. [laughs] 

Mallory  17:32

Yeah. Like, it's also sort of like, did it really matter to your enjoyment? Like, you have all the elements of the Gundam Wing pilots and them interacting and the shipping, and like, it doesn't really matter what canon we're supposed to be in because we're already out of, outside of canon.

Kat  17:52

I feel like there were only like two timelines for fic and it was basically like pre-Endless Waltz and then post-Endless Waltz. I never really felt like, even though there's definitely a definitive plot split between, like, from all the episodes we've seen, and all the episodes we're about to see, I never really felt like fic did.

Caitlin  18:12

It's, it's sort of an interesting question in like Film Studies, where, you know, up until VHS, there was no way to really rewatch a movie that you were writing about. So a lot of film criticism and film theory was written by people who had only like, watched the movie once. So there's, it's kind of like a pathology we have nowadays that we can rewatch everything over and over again, so we can get this sort of like perfect timeline, this perfect like, sense of a film. Whereas in the past, like nobody ever watched anything like that. And there are, there are some film theorists nowadays who's still argue for that as like the true model of cinema, though obviously, that's much less prominent now. That, that gets into my whole idea of fanfic as a form of like interpretation, like fanfic is like a type of criticism of the original series. 

Kat  19:01

Yeah, absolutely. And the thing that people wanted more of in Gundam Wing was gay shit and safe houses. 

Mallory & Caitlin  19:08

Yeah. 

Caitlin  19:09

And it's and it's easy to just like put that in. Like reading Road Trip, I wasn't thinking too much about like, where does this fit in the timeline because who cares?

Cathy  19:16

This is a first person POV fic, which in my mind now is pretty rare for big fanfics to be first person POV. But you, Mallory, had noted how much this voice sounded like the dub Duo voice. 

Mallory  19:30

Yeah, she has gotten Duo's voice down. [laughs] I think it's just the slang that she kind of throws in there, the sort of casual way that Duo thinks and speaks feels very "of the show." Like I hear Scott McNeil's voice in my head [laughs] reading her fic is how good I think it is. Like there's like a cheesy earnestness in the dialogue of both the show and the fic that I think like works really well and is like really charming.

Caitlin  20:05

And I think that, so I think Duo's voice is very well established and it is at least, I only read the first two parts, but in the second part which is Heero's first person point of view, Duo's dialogue lines are also very strongly Scott McNeil-esque, I felt. I think Heero's voice is a little bit less distinct. One of my struggles with these fics was like, does this read as Heero to me? Like I really wasn't sure. And I'll say with regards to the first person point of view, maybe this gets us on to a different topic, but there are so many things about this fic where if I opened a fic like this now in 2020, I would hit I would hit the back button so hard. 

Cathy  20:48

No, I want to talk about this, this is a great topic. I love this. 

Caitlin  20:51

So I would never read something with this much violence. I'd always be like, what I don't want to read that, I don't want to read Duo getting beaten up or tortured, or whatever.

Mallory & Kat  21:00

Oh! [laughter]

Caitlin  21:02

I know! I like, I don't, I don't read that sort of fic these days. Like I don't read whump, the ancient genre of whump. [laughs]

Kat  21:10

Oh, whump I guess is like a ancient genre but an everlasting genre to me. 

Caitlin  21:15

Yes.

Kat  21:15

Cathy, when you were trying to classify this fic, I was thinking, "this is definitely whump, pre-slash."

Mallory & Caitlin & Cathy  21:21

Yes, yes. Yes. 

Mallory  21:22

At least part one is pre-slash.

Kat  21:24

Yeah

Caitlin  21:25

And I would never read something like that these days... Like if it was, it was tagged pre-slash, rated M, and I be like, "but how can it be rated M if they don't have sex?" I'd be like, "no, there's got to be some other reason for this to be rated M, I can't handle it. I need to go back." Like I would hit the back button so hard. And I'd be wrong because this fic is really good. 

Kat  21:47

It definitely feels from, from an older time~

Cathy  21:50

Yes, I agree. And I second everything Caitlin said. This fic was surprisingly readable and I know that sounds like a backhanded compliment but what I mean is, I didn't expect it to still sound as good and like something I would see someone write now, but it is. It's still really good, you know the voices are really good, the dialogue are really, is really good. But everything about it screams back button. Like I hated Quatre and Trowa even in this fic. [laughing]

Caitlin  22:19

Oh my god, oh my god [laughter]

Cathy  22:20

[laughter] Even though they do nothing, I hated them. Outside of Gundam Wing I did not ever read whump or hurt/comfort fic, you know, this was just not a genre that I was ever interested in. In Gundam Wing it was almost unavoidable? 

Kat  22:33

I was gonna say there's no way [crosstalk]

Cathy  22:34

because of the plot [crosstalk] So you kind of had to--

Kat

especially if you like Duo--

Cathy

Especially if you liked Duo! And then of course all of the little fandom tropes that kill me now about the fic might actually have not yet been as deeply entrenched in fanon at the time she was writing as they are now but--

Caitlin  22:51

True

Cathy  22:51

Certainly now when I read it, I'm like, well, there's the safe house.

Mallory  22:55

Yeah, it's like a checklist almost. Like oh, there's that mention of Duo's hair smelling like sandalwood,

Cathy  23:02

Yes!

Caitlin  23:02

Why sandalwood?

Mallory  23:03

It was always sandalwood and it was always Duo. Duo's hair always smelled like sandalwood..

Kat  23:08

I mean it might be this fic though, like this is  The the fic, the landscape of fic reading and stuff, there was just less of it and like the people who are into it are like really spending time to find it and stuff. We're talking about different archives, I read like everything on 1x2x1--

Mallory  23:10

Mmhmm

Kat  23:10

Uh wing-- Shinigami and Wing like and so I think it was like, fanon still coalesces pretty fast now but I think because there's less access to source material too it's like so much easier for it to grow like this, just sort of permeate the entire fandom, not just one pairing.

Mallory  23:48

Yeah, I mean like Kat you were saying earlier you may not have read this particular fic but you have definitely read 10 or 15 other ones that are very similar to it in terms of what you can expect from the action and the characters and the pairings.

Kat  24:04

Duo is gonna get hurt. Heero is gonna be angry over something that he doesn't need to be angry about. Trowa is gonna to be a calm head, Quatre's the kind heart. Wufei I like in this because he's like the friend, the bro, instead of the standoffish fifth guy. 

Mallory  24:19

Yeah, 

Kat  24:19

so that's nice--

Caitlin  24:20

Yeah. Wufei good in this but he has a better like,

Kat  24:25

Rapport?

Caitlin  24:25

He has more rapport with Duo than Heero does [laughter]  

Mallory  24:28

Yes. I was going to say--

Caitlin  24:31

I'm sure we were all in on this but I was side shipping Duo and Wufei a lot. Wufei gave him a bath!

Mallory & Kat  24:38

Wufei gets him! 

Cathy  24:40

Do you guys, can I spoil something about the rest of the Road Trip arc? 

Caitlin  24:43

Yes! 

Mallory & Kat  24:44

Yeah. 

Cathy  24:45

So I okay. And I will first give readers this warning, if you do want to read the rest of the installments of Road Trip, there are warnings on AO3 but I must add that there is a significant part of Duo's backstory that deals with rape and trauma and especially rape of Duo when he was very under age so--

Caitlin  25:10

This also something that would be auto back button for me.

Cathy  25:13

Yeah so I have to I have to put in that disclaimer because I don't want people wandering into the rest of the story. Road Trip the first installment is fine but the rest of the story this is, this is a big part of his character so please don't read it if it is triggering. But one thing about Wufei is you find out later he actually has a BIG honkin' crush on Duo and he is almost always--

Mallory 25:36

I must have read this.

Caitlin  25:37

Nooooo!

Cathy  25:37

 He is almost always there basically like helping like pick Duo up and like--

Caitlin  25:43

no [crosstalk] this is too sad!

Cathy  25:43

Supplements this like emotional stuff that like Heero doesn't get because Heero has a bad problem 

Caitlin  25:49

[agonized] Noooo--

Cathy  25:49

in Road Trip of like treating Duo as like too fragile which pisses Duo off  

Kat  

That was a common dynamic. 

Cathy

He comes to this like realization that he's like really in love with Duo but then he has to shelve it because he realizes that Duo and Heero are soulmates? And so he like, he says he'll be a friend forever and he gives like do this plush dragon. And then the whole thing is it's set up to be eventually a Wufei and Sally Po story? But the very last installment -- that is part 16 of the 16 part series -- is essentially a story where Duo has an anxiety freak out while Heero's away. He calls Wufei over to his apartment, they spend a night together completely platonically. Duo realizes that Wufei is like eaten up inside by something that Wufei won't tell Duo about. And it's like this crush, which all of us know because we all read the part with the Wufei point of view, but like Duo didn't get the memo. 

Mallory

Oh my god?

Kat

I picked up on this and I only read one chapter.

Caitlin

I can't handle this.

Cathy

So he's not sure what's happening. And that at the very end, you know, Wu Fei is like basically telling Duo that he doesn't want to start dating Sally Po because he's afraid of like, basically something that like, and he phrases it in a way that makes Duo think he's talking about his former dead wife, but it's actually about Duo. [crosstalk: No!] And Duo says to him, you have to let the past go. And so then Wufei does and call Sally up for a date. 

Kat

Okay, that plush dragon thing just lit up eight synapses.

Caitlin

I hate this.

Kat

I have read this fic, 100%.

Caitlin  25:57

It's possible that this is why I got into 2x5.

Cathy  27:32

So I just had to add this here because like, I truly felt the same way. Like I shipped Wufei and Duo was so hard and the more Heero like became this like, super protective like... I like this story, but I don't buy it as Heero characterization. Like I don't think Heero was very convincing. But I do find Duo and Wufei very convincing in the series. [laughs]

Caitlin  27:51

Yeaaah.

Kat  27:51

I think this is a big problem with a lot of Heero fanon characterization at the time, though, because like the logical conclusion of the fanon characterization of Heero is just a huge asshole nobody wants to date. [laughs] When the Toonami series aired, it was like a ton of 1x2. That was it. It was like 1x2, 3x4 blah, blah but I think as fanon crystallized like pairing diversity also increased.

Caitlin  28:17

Yeah, the thing is that I'm fine reading fanfic between assholes that nobody would want to date. That is, tends to be the type of fanfic that I read anyway. 

Kat  28:27

Look, I get that.

Caitlin  28:27

So Heero being terrible is fine. The problem is that this fic characterizes him as less terrible than he seems to actually be?

Mallory  28:36

Mmm.

Caitlin  28:36

Like, I don't think Heero is this, I don't think he's this protective. I don't think he's this in tune with his feelings. Part Two, really, like, as some of you might know, I never read established relationship fic, so I wasn't going to continue past Part Two anyway. Even though they have a lot of problems, I'm just like, all right, they already confessed their feelings. I'm not interested anymore. But I just found it really hard to believe that Heero would be able to confess his feelings or even like, recognize love, emotions, or romance that early on. 

Kat  29:10

It's the combined problem of he's an asshole who no one would want a date and the fic is still trying to convince me that him and Duo are like really great together in general. So I wrote a lot of Gundam Wing fic in middle school, so I consumed so much of it on [laughing] fanfiction.net and the characterization ended up getting really, really far removed even further removed than this fic from the actual show, I guess.

Cathy  29:35

So one thing I did want to point out, it's less obvious in Part One, but becomes increasingly obvious as you move through this arc is the total lack or mention of Relena Peacecraft. And, and I mean it, she is not mentioned once in this entire fic, which is odd because it goes from middle of the canon through until the post-Endless Waltz and then [laughter] seven to eight years, and seven to eight years after--

Mallory  30:05

Wow 

Cathy  30:05

the end of Endless Waltz, which, and again at by the end of this fic series, spoilers, Duo, Wufei, and Heero all work for the Preventers. So it seems very [laughter] weird that none of them would interact with Relena. So like I did--

Caitlin  30:14

It seems like they would run into Relena sometime [laughter]. 

Cathy  30:21

I did want to open the floor to talk about Relena Peacecraft and her place in Gundam Wing fanfic.

Kat  30:29

Well, so either you're a het shipper so you're, you're, you're doing fine, your Heero is probably very different. [laughter]

Caitlin  30:41

Wait, let's let's be clear that there were a lot of het shippers

Kat  30:44

Yes.

Caitlin  30:44

And they still are there. There was a lot of het shipping in the Japanese fandom too. I think Heero and Relena were popular. 

Kat  30:51

Duo and Hilde. 

Caitlin  30:53

And the official media that came out was like, oh Duo and Hilde. And, oh Heero and Relena.

Cathy  30:58

Yeah.

Kat  30:59

Relena and fanfiction so you're a het -- you could be a het shipper, so then she's in it a lot. 

Mallory

Or you hate her and she's a monster and she's the the thing standing between Heero and Duo falling in love or being together, which I feel like I read a lot of.

Kat  31:15

She could be shipping them but that was way more rare I thought and then like just not having her around.

Caitlin  31:22

So like, from the perspective of the contemporary moment, it looks bad to just not write Relena at all in your 300,000 word fic about characters who talk to Relena all the time. Like it seems bad 

Kat  31:38

But! 

Caitlin  31:39

but she was so controversial that I could see like I can see the logic of just not including her.

Kat  31:45

And as a reader I, I often preferred that she just kind of not be there be like very peripheral over... like I think at the beginning I really enjoyed the like Relena hating because there's just very viscerally satisfying, but later on, I was like, hmmm.

Caitlin  32:01

The other option is like, write a explainer about why your Heero in your fic doesn't love Relena, he only loves Duo. It just becomes, like, tedious to write that every single fic.

Cathy  32:15

One thing that I was digging up was a lot of Relena hate sites. And one thing we had talked about in past episodes was kind of like hating her because she was this rich girl, she had this entourage, we couldn't really relate to her. And there was a lot of that in why people expressed why they hated Relena. Like she was spoiled. She had everything. She was obsessed with Heero and so she definitely like wanted him as one of her belongings kind of thing? So I think it is one of those moments where now that I've read a lot more other types of Gundam Wing fanfic that I wasn't reading at that time that have, I think, much more interesting Relena characterization, and much more I think realistic ideas about what Heero and Relena's relationship would be like. I think, "God I was so stupid!" but I feel that same way about like everything I was into, right? [laughs] So like, it is kind of humbling and also funny. 

Mallory  33:14

Like reading this fic it's about as comforting as like finding your favorite High School sweater, you know, in the back of your closet when you're visiting home and putting it on and finding out it still fits. And it's because it sort of hits all of those familiar tropes that I remember reading, like the use of "Gods" is like--

Kat  33:32

Yes!

Mallory  33:33

punch in the face.

Caitlin  33:34

Why does everyone say gods? 

Mallory  33:36

Yes. 

Cathy

Everybody!

Mallory  33:37

Okay, and I don't remember, like I remember this being a thing in Gundam Wing fic I don't remember why--

Caitlin  33:43

[crosstalk] Duo was American and was raised in a—

Cathay

[laughing] Catholic!

Caitlin

Catholic. Why would he say Gods?

Kat  33:48

[crosstalk] Yeah Duo would never.

Cathy  33:49

I kind of get maybe the idea of why others would do it if this became like a post colony thing but certainly not Duo.

Kat  33:57

In like middle school. I was always wondering like, "oh, what kind of weird event happened in the future that made everybody until like a polytheist?" [laughter] Like, what kind of world building is this?

Mallory  34:07

Yeah, I thought that there had to be like a reason or is there a rule?

Caitlin  34:12

I kind of thought that just like the people writing fanfic at the time tended to be like pagans. Like, like, that was fine. And they and they were pushing their pagan agenda by having everybody say gods. 

Cathy  34:22

No, I, I, 100. That's 100% my theory.

Caitlin  34:25

that's what I think it is. 

Cathy  34:26

So I mean, Sunhawk was one of the older writers at the time, but I think a lot of the people who were archivists and writers at the time were older, she was probably at least I want to say in her 30s. They're usually older, some of them are Wiccan or pagan and a lot of them were very interested in like education and sort of like bringing up the younger members of the fandom. So Sunhawk specifically, like had a personality who was like very educational? I'm not saying that that's why she did particularly this "Gods" thing, but I do think that that was like part of the general dismantling of monotheistic-- 

Mallory 35:01

Christian god. 

Cathy  35:02

Yeah. So the last thing I want to talk about in terms of this fanfic is all the five pilots working together, coordinating pickup and rescue missions. 

Mallory  35:11

Rendezvous points? How are they in contact with each other? 

Cathy  35:15

And they all appear to have like similar missions? Like, it seems like Heero and Duo were on this mission together instead of what we see in the show, which is that they don't...? Again, I think I just love this idealistic view of the Gundam pilots where they're all not just friends, but also comrades in arms.

Caitlin  35:33

Yeah, I mean, this makes more sense than what the show does, which is that on the show, it's always, oh, they just happen to run into each other on the same mission. And they're like, oh, who are you? Why do you have the same Gundam as me? [laughter]

Mallory  35:47

We shouldn't be fighting. 

Caitlin  35:48

But Quatre's the only one who says that everybody else is like, let's blow each other up.

Cathy  35:53

We joke a lot about how this podcast is basically us questioning the internal logic of Gundam Wing, like why would anybody do this thing where they just sent five teenagers without any knowledge that there are four other of them and just be like, here you go.

Mallory  36:07

Complete a vague unspecified mission.

Kat  36:10

I feel like fanfiction really made them way more competent. Like there's literally that whole scene where the doctors are like, "You guys fucking suck. You're not the perfect soldiers at all." [laughter] 

Mallory 36:21

"You don't know anything." 

Kat  36:22

And then in fics it's like Heero's like, "I'm the perfect soldier. I know everything! 

Mallory  36:28

"I must be the perfect soldier." 

Caitlin  36:30

Oh, yeah. Like they all seem to be much better fighters than they are in canon. 

Kat  36:36

Yeah

Caitlin  36:36

I feel like in canon Wufei is the only one who does his job. And in fanfic, it seemed like they were all doing jobs.

Kat  36:43

Trowa's maybe just doing his own thing. 

Mallory  36:46

But he's doing A Job.

Caitlin  36:47

Yeah, clowning. Trowa's job is clowning! 

Kat  36:50

Everybody got way more trauma than Quatre did in fic even though the show is like here's Quatre's biggest trauma. 

Mallory  36:58

You know, that's very true. 

Kat  36:59

Which didn't even show up in the clip show.

Caitlin  37:02

Yeah, it also doesn't really make sense that Quatre's always this really sane one in fanfic when he's the main one we've seen in canon go apeshit. 

Kat  37:12

Reading this fic and then watching the clip show, I was like, damn, like Wufei/Treize/Zechs was like it's, a whole ass universe. And it's just like, one scene in the first 27 episodes. [laughter] But what a scene. 

Mallory  37:27

Such a good one.

Caitlin  37:29

I think that it's important to note that Sunhawk passed away last year, and so we could consider this episode our very weird tribute to her.

Cathy  37:37

Yes, in 2019 in March, there was a post on Sunhawk's LiveJournal, by her daughter, who had become in Sunhawk's words, essentially somewhat of a fandom secretary for Sunhawk, noting that if you are reading this entry, now, it means that she had passed away, she had been diagnosed with cancer, like in 2015, she said four and a half years ago from the time of the writing of the entry. So Sunhawk, beginning in 2007, did a tradition where every year for the 12 days leading up to Christmas, she would post the ficlet, or fanart inspired by her fics, usually 1x2 related usually an excerpt from or like a special scene or bonus scene from one of her stories about Duo and Heero. And she continued that tradition even up until 2019. 

Kat  38:25

Oh wow

Cathy  38:25

So prior to that she had actually queued up 12 Days of Christmas for 2019, which her daughter posted. And the very last story actually was a coda for the Ion arc, which was left unfinished and her daughter finished it for her. And if you had the chance, and of course, we'll link to this, I really highly recommend you read the goodbye post from Sunhawk.

Caitlin  38:49

It's, wait, it's really good. Can I read just a little bit of this? 

Cathy  38:51

Yes, please. 

Caitlin  38:52

Before I shuffle on off, though, I would be remiss if I didn't address the fandom that I have called home for almost two decades. To everyone, thank you, I realized that we aren't as large as we used to be that the heyday is over. But I've enjoyed being here and writing for you all. And there is one thing that I've learned through all of my years, and all of my time with the fandom that I want to share that I think applies not just to our little corner of the internet, but all fandom. Write it, draw it, sing it, create it, share it. We all start somewhere. We all start with works that are horribly out of character. We write tropes that have been written up million times before. We all stare at blank canvases unable to get the lines down in a way that we want. And we all scrap ideas that we feel just aren't good enough. But a fandom lives because of the people who produce for it. And by those who come to read and view. Yes, maybe that 500 word drabble in which two strapping young men are trapped in a remote cabin during some horrible weather event and there is only one bed, isn't your best work. But what about the work after that, or the one that follows? With each creation you learn, you polish yourself, you grow. Never stop yourself from growing. Never let others stop you from growing. Share the stories you have in you. Post your heart -- Post your art, because at the end of the day life is too damn short to spend not doing something you love to do. To all of the Gundam Wing fandom and all of my friends, I want to again say thank you, reading my work supporting me talking with me, you've made my stay here a pleasant one.

Cathy  40:21

I find it really heartwarming. And one thing that I did for this episode is I went back and I read some of Sunhawk's first LiveJournal posts in 2002, when she started her LiveJournal, and even in the comments to people who were, I don't think close friends of hers, you know, just fans, she was always extremely, you know, encouraging and welcoming, and always told her fans that they should just write, you know, even if they felt like whatever they did wasn't perfect or wasn't in their words going to match up to what she did. She always told them just write it. Coming to Sunhawk and realizing that she'd spent two decades in a fandom that I think a lot of us considered dead and she was still cranking out work there and like encouraging people and being loving in that fandom, it just is it's like everything that one hopes one span that experience will be like and how they'll be remembered when they leave. Well, I want to thank you guys for joining me on this episode where we talk about, you know, Sunhawk and fanfic and being really young and on the internet with dial up. I really, you know, appreciate all of your memories, which are also my memories. And together, we'll keep Sunhawk's spirit alive. Write it, draw it, sing it, create it and share it. Thank you very much and see you in two weeks.