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crepesuzette2023 · 6 months

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I know this is a broad question, but if you had to pick, what is the most angsty Mclennon fic you’ve read so far ? You have some amazing recommendations and I’m looking to hurt my own feelings lol

Hi st-john!

Thank you for the ask! This made me think about some of my angsty forever-faves in general, sorted from subtle to savage. (Under the cut.)

If you want to skip straight (do we use this word around here?!) to the fics I personally find the most angsty: they're at the bottom of this post. I also included some dark/angsty stories here, but I didn't want to repeat any recommendations.

Your ask helped me understand what it is I find the most angst-filled in mclennon, so thank you for that. I was surprised to see so many canon-adjacent stories on my list, and I think it shows that, to me, the most potent angst doesn't come from outside threat but from their minds, as evidenced by events that actually happened. The two of them being scared of (and turned on by) the big fat x they mark on their shared psychosexual map is one of the most attractive aspects of mclennon for me—followed by the two of them taking x for granted, and being permanently damaged once they realize they lost it forever. I also like stories that show their mutual resentment, even as they're into each other (sometimes literally). Anyway, under the cut are some of my favorite angsty fics in three handy categories:

1.) Carry That Weight/Love is Strange: Their relationship is deep and doomed and addictive. These stories are all set during the Beatle-years. I'M GONNA HAUNT YOU (sexysadie): 1968. John and Paul talk about women, but really, they talk about each other. A brief story about longing in the absence of hope. WALKING CLOSE AT HAND (harmonising): John and Paul as pair of broken mirrors, haunted by death in all things. Their love as beautiful magic-turned-curse. LET ME ROLL IT (@downtothe-lastdrop): The 1968 NYC Apple Launch Divorcemoon from Paul's POV. Lively and detailed, and drenched in what it must feel like to drown in unspoken words. I THINK OF THINGS WE DID (J_deandra_j): 1965. John and Paul fuck in Austria during the filming of Help! There is something intangibly upsetting about this story: anger and frustration; lust and sex with little room for softness—but it's so good and real and raw while it lasts. This one is impossible to forget! John POV. HOW YOU WERE DIVERTED (candle_beck): Paul handles John. This is about sex as one of the things that is "just them"—an urgent and rough emergency intervention. 2.) Tributes to the Canonical Breakup. To me, the break-up is an angst-filled nightmare. Not to mention the looming day of John's murder. I love stories that explore the break-up and its aftermath with compassion. And, as painful as it is, I especially love stories that make me feel that the love was there, always (even though it wasn't enough). THROW THE WINE (@savageandwise). This one is such a classic I imagine everyone must have read it, but I can't not mention it. It was one of the first fics I read—arrow through me, and such. The more painful it gets, the more it slows down. That takes courage. YOU'RE A DREAM LOVER (@dailyhowl). John and Paul share dreams and love each other in their dreams—gloriously so—but in the end, the dream is over. The most brutal aspect of this one is seeing Paul in the end, alone. I STILL MISS SOMEONE & CLOSE THE DOOR LIGHTLY WHEN YOU GO (RosalindBeatrice). Paul and John become lovers in the 70's, but their encounters are few and far between—and in the end, darkness falls. But there's also the mercy of honesty, tears, and, yes: sex. Beautifully melancholy story about the vast distance between bright stars. ONE NIGHT IN BANGKOK (@backbenttulips). Apologies to the writer in case my "angsty" reading of this one misses the mark! Above all, this is a hot hot hot story about John and Paul hooking up in Bangkok and fucking every which way, remembering the past and seizing the present. But it's also a story about a relationship that no longer exists: their musical partnership. They destroyed the one place where their love had a home. Now, faraway hotel rooms will have to do—and there are no goodbyes or plans for a next time. (I must repeat how hot this is though.)

3.) "A day may come when the courage of Men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day."—Except it's exactly this day. Deep pain and sadness: the break-up is final; no one was saved. [Writers mentioned here: this is meant as a compliment. All of these stories are so good. It's not for nothing that I was never able to forget some lines from these stories, even though I read them very early on.]

HEAR ME, MY LOVER by @savageandwise. (Unfinished, but feels finished.) At the time the Beatles break up, Paul attempts to kill himself. He lives, but much else is destroyed. No one is wrong or right—their love and fracturing cut all possible ways. I read this as a literal translation of what the loss of the band (and John) meant for Paul, for a while.

FOUR LAST SONGS by @celebratorypenguin. This AU (four parts) explores what would have happened to the Beatles if John hadn't been the one to die first. Sentences from this one still live in my brain. The story is both sweeping and deep, and covers the POV of all four Beatles. Its truly an alternate history of the band, and it's very sad. But so, so beautiful, too.

Bonus Materials: John and Paul never became John&Paul. Everyone comes at this differently, but to me, the idea of them meeting, and falling in love, and turning away from it, is as angst-filled as the worst of the the break-up. That's why I think these two are among the best, most courageous, but also most angst-filled, of all mclennon fics: ALL THE BOYS ARE SINGING LOVE SONGS. (@dailyhowl): Paul settles down with Dot and they start a family. He and John meet again, and the spark is still there, but after a night together, the fear of starting over is greater. This magnificently written story fucked me up, and I've yet to pick up the courage to read it a second time. To quote the writer: this is a story about "the angst of living in the prison of society-approved masculinity." Yes. "Happy ending seekers need not apply." That is fair. As a happy ending seeker, I comfort my tender shipper's heart with the exhilarating fact that the real John and Paul did, in fact, become lovers become famous with the Beatles and formed a close musical partnership. THERE ARE ALWAYS FLOWERS (tarenas). This is a story I mentioned in my overall favorites post, and it's not, strictly speaking, all angst (to quote the writer: "this is about being sad and middle-aged, but it's also about being so happy and middle-aged!") It's not even J/P: it's mostly Paul/George, and their relationship is beautiful and real. Still, as a reader I was aching for the other life that could have been, and that is woven through the events of this story with incredible artistry: the Beatles, which everyone misses without knowing why. The great love between John and Paul that ended when John chose someone else. This is the magic of RPF: reality is the shadow event included for free. (Unfinished, with have all four n on-Beatles POV's. So far: George and Ringo.)

#fic rec #fic recs #mclennon #mclennon fanfiction #asks #the beatles fanfiction #angst fic recs

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shallowseeker · 9 months

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Shal, I hope you are feeling better! I wanted to add something to your Silvia-Amara meta if you don't mind me putting something into the mix as a long shot. Carmen from the djinn dream in What is and Should Never Be looks a lot like both of them. That seems like something!

Thank you. I'm feeling some better, but veeery sore and sleepless for the pain. (On the flipside, I can breathe better and already have more energy.)

This is so iiiiiiiinteresting, thank you!

I'll be honest...I had to go back to remind myself what Carmen even looked like. But yes! Carmen from the El Sol ad! Carmen the nurse! (I always thought she was a nod to one of Dean's psychosexual fixations, too; that is, films with hot men who dance like Swayze (Carmen 1983). I mean, hello Antonio Gades.

Plus, you know his thing for Spanish soap operas... ("Mi amor! Mi amor! Por favor despierta!" Poor Ricardo.)

And Dean's love for soaps from 7x03 The Girl Next-door. (Yes, the "My love, my love, please wake up!" one.)

Ahem. Anyway. Back to our Carmen. *points* Oh, my God. Yeah, it's El Sol, but it's also the specter of the beach. I am choking on my own spit here.

There's definitely something analogous in Sylvia (from season 15's Gimme Shelter) being an idealized something that Connor maybe thought he wanted, felt comfort going after, or tried to make himself want.

For that matter, I think there's something parallel here in how Amara views her love for Dean, too. Amara's view of Dean is idealized, draped in always-or-never statements, and impersonal. Meanwhile, the Dean of season 11 has grown immensely since the djinn dream in season 2. His conceptualization of love has become less romanticized:

DEAN: I can’t explain it, but to call it desire or love…it’s not that.

Carmen was an ideal, and Amara was perhaps the network's ideal, but Sylvia is actually not quite as one-to-one to either of them here. Sylvia was a real relationship with Connor, even if was perhaps a tragic childhood misstep for Connor while he was trying to figure himself out.

Of course, Carmen Porter's own words come back to haunt the Dean & Amara and Dean & Carmen relationships. Even our idealized romantic relationships falter, and they too become as baggage-ridden as our family, and our family is imperfect.

CARMEN: Well, you don't really spend a lot of time together. I mean, I just think you don't know each other all that well.

In early days, Dean's conceptualization of Carmen is adorably immature, like a teenager's dream: someone who accepts my eating habits n' idiosyncrasies, listens to me, and loves me. Someone who is "respectable" and stable. (In season 2, Dean is still, like Amara, dealing with the core wound of his nursery.)

Sylvia and Connor seemed to know each other quite well and were "a couple." He genuinely loved her, in his own way. Their connection just wasn't exactly what Sylvia thought it was, or wanted it to be. She became angry with Connor and called him a LIAR, and then she murdered him.

Dean has carried healthy relationships with dark-eyed beauties as well, like Lisa Braeden and "I-thought-we-had-a-connection" Risa from season 5's The End.

Hmmm. Okay, yes. I think your point is a good point. And it has branching points, too. There's a lot tangled up in here! Season 15's Sylvia Jones has some uncomfortable similarities to season 5's Risa, especially.

(REF: Here's the recent stuff about Sylvia and Amara-Silvia stuff and more Amara failing to recognize romantic love and Chuck setting Amara up for disappointment.)

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blueiight · 1 year

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You're so right. the sex industry is lucrative and fast money. Since the Du Lacs were months from bankruptcy an honest business was not going to cut it. He even says that his little corner grocery stores weren't making enough. And I'll bet getting that kind of big money that fast while also being the token/pet black was addictive.

he needed to get rich fast cuz his family was also unaware of how close to bankruptcy they were. i wouldnt say he liked being the token black person more than he liked the power n psychosexual performance of controlling what these rich white men have sexual access to. “the product was desire” his modern self says. and he was the plug. re: his fixation on acquiring the fairplay salloon in ep1-2 is motivated by that & etc etc etc. ep1 when lestat is like “u made me buy a townhouse in the quarter” louis is like “i know men of my race look the same to u ppl but i aint sell u no house” & as soon as he becomes a vampire in ep2 he kills the assessor (?) for calling him a “good negro”. lestat is a french white man he knows little about here other than this guy has more things than me & hes feeling up on lily while staring at me. i wanna be him , kill him, and REDACTED by him. it unnerved him bc lestat was likening him to lily in that moment of sexual tension. translating lestat’s sentence, snarking at him off the jump, then being mesmerized by him not to put my ship goggles on [for a canon ship ik lol] is a rly gr8 way to set up the lxl dynamic n how louis operates. show louis is someone with sum i deem interpersonal racial pride. he interacts with his particular black classed community of his era n shows a perfectly respectable face in the eyes of the black church, his baby sister w the tickets up the garvey line, but everybody know where that money come from& r perfectly fine eating off its benefits. louis strategizing to get ahead at the expense of the black ‘collective’ outside of his immediate network. claudia would be someone outside of that as a poor black girl. shes the type of girl louis couldve .. well. lets just say, the fact that louis saved claudia in the midst of the race riot n losing his family , their shared tie of being made immortal by lestat & decades of living with lestat brought this temporary show of solidarity in the murder plot btwn lou+clauds that otherwise may have not have been there had claudia & louis met in a diff situation n show potential to go a lot of places in parts of s2 when lestat is out the picture. anyways. louis is not a self loathing black man n he hates being the token, but he was hardly a paragon of racial solidarity in s1. n he was always aware that his privileges were extremely conditional & dependent on how much of himself he was able to comparmentalize in situations where he did not have the upper hand and had to put aside his pride. what better to set up a certain kind of person whod favor eternal life, than a suicidal bougie boule opportunist of a black gay man whos aspects of himself all existed on different bookshelves.. who had to lie about his family’s financial condition to them, who tries to maintain this double life even with newly bestowed immortality. hes not grovelling at tom or fenwick’s feet, he plays the game to stay afloat but despises having to smile in their face. thats why when hes a vampire & the laws r discriminating against him hes so much more transparent in showing how he feels about them. all that pentup aggression he felt as the only black man in those rooms is the fuel for why he gored fenwick& ripped up toms jaw. i think 1x01 louis was actually at a breaking point but 1x02-beginning of 1x03 b4 the vampire starvation shit louis was rly feeling himself when the dough was rolling in. he has the fairplay salloon, he has lestat, he can ‘control’ what white people have sexual access to. but all that crumbles…

#yn.#yn answers #iwtv #louis de pointe du lac #Hes not a buy back the block type nigga hes the ‘i can fuck & kill a honkey out ws’ type guy. jacob anderson saying lou can kill a racist #but cant kill Racism.

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orphanedsource · 1 year

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wait, different anon here (who also has not played elden ring): what is the deal with varré's psychosexual obsession with the player?

it's kind of odd? like on its face it seems like it's meant to be a manipulation tactic, like he's lovebombing your character in order to like. make swearing into his cult more appealing?

but the thing is that he doesn't actually want to trick your guy into joining. He gives them MULTIPLE outs where they can go "nah I love the mainstream dogma actually" and he will accept that as an answer there's no consequences he doesn't punish them he's just no longer interested unless your guy is Enthusiastically participating with full informed consent of what they're agreeing to (invading people's worlds for murder and loving mohg) which honestly is even weirder behavior from a guy who is delighted by your characters expressions of pain than the lovebombing?

so his real level of investment with your character is really up to personal interpretation. like people don't even know with complete agreement what he's trying to demonstrate with the whole "my lambkin" thing. basically he MAY genuinely be really desperate for your little guy to be part of his in-group and he wants some kind of mutual?? possession?? and he DOES see himself bonded to them. There's also the cut content where sellen says he's like..just watching your character through the blood link thing... but his true motivations beyond getting more tarnished turned into bloody fingers really is without a clear answer

he's just a very odd person

#its worth noting a lot of people don't get that far with his quest bc he calls you maidenless on intro #which just means you arent being guided spiritually by a trained mentor #but it has caused many people to aggro him and he will never forgive you for it

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watching-pictures-move · 2 months

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Viddying the Nasties | Bloody Moon (Franco, 1981)

I last saw this almost ten years ago and remember practically hating it. This was before I’d seen much, if any, of Jess Franco’s work, and revisiting it now, I think I was a bit harsh. The psychosexual dimensions of some of the characterizations give this a bit of giallo flavour, but really this is Franco getting in on the slasher craze, and on that level it delivers. There are stabbings, titties, a stabbing through some titties, other assorted violent and sexy happenings, basically everything you want from a movie like this. The Spanish milieu, with its palm trees and Moorish-influenced architecture, give this a nice visual character. The opening scene has a murderer in a Mickey Mouse mask, which you can now depict freely without fear of legal repercussions as the Mouse has now entered the public domain, where there are no boundaries to one’s depravity. There’s a cat scare, as well as a decapitation which looks like somebody lopped the head off a department store mannequin. (There is also unfortunately the real killing of a snake, which I could have done without.)

And by Franco’s standards, it looks and feels like a real movie. There are zooms, but of the kind you find in regular movies, not the zooming in and out with total disregard for whether the shot is in focus you usually get with his movies. If anything, it’s polished to a fault. Obviously Halloween and some of the other classics are well made movies, but I think a lot of slashers benefit from some degree of creakiness, letting their dead air and rough texture contribute to the atmosphere. Even Pieces, which this earns some comparisons to, plays like pure id poured out onscreen, its flimsy construction unable to contain its most unhinged images. The transfer on Tubi, in which the more explicit footage is in worse shape (likely because it was more frequently cut and had to be pulled from less pristine sources for this version), helps imbue a bit of this quality to the proceedings and, there’s a pulsating soundtrack which gives a hint of kookiness to the killings, but they’re not enough.

This one has some of the perversity we associate with Franco, but this time it doesn’t feel like his heart is really in it. I do think it comes down to the cast, which features none of Franco’s regulars nor any recognizable faces. One of the joys of Franco’s work is seeing him work with the same few collaborators over and over again, each of them finding variations in how they channel his ideas. Imagine if Lina Romay had played the perverted sister in this movie. Imagine if she’d played the heroine. Imagine if she’d played the killer. Imagine if she’d played every character, just wall to wall Lina Romay, awkwardly edited together. The point is, she would have brought a certain secret sauce to any of these characters, helping you understand why Franco might be getting off on the material. Or sometimes you get actors like Helmut Berger and Brigitte Lahaie in Faceless or Dyanne Thorne in Greta, the Mad Butcher, who are able to get on his level while retaining what makes them memorable screen presences.

This one suffers because most of the cast are a bunch of anonymous blondes who look very similar and have few distinguishing qualities. Actually, one of them sorta stands out. In my old review on my blog (which I will not link to, as I think I was too harsh and am now a kinder and wiser viewer with substantially shittier standards), I noted that she proves to be a master of foreshadowing (“A capital offense ending in ‘R’.” “Murder!” “Yeah, of course, murder!”) and innuendo (“I only tell murder stories, it’s the others who commit them, if you know what I mean.”), and at one point bounces on a bed while moaning and tearing up a perfectly good piece of clothing. I left out that she also wears an amazing sweater with a woman next to a leopard. Anyway, she rocks, but nobody else stands out. To be honest, I think part of the problem, aside from casting less than memorable actors, is that Franco has many perversions but a fixation on blondes is not one of them, so this casting doesn’t work in his favour. Imagine if Hitchcock made this during his Frenzy era and you can see what someone more engaged might have done with this.

Anyway, I just spent a lot of words saying this isn’t perverted enough, which is something of a recurring theme in my reviews, so it’s a good thing this is a judgement-free zone.

#film #movie review #bloody moon #jess franco #viddying the nasties

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eclecticopposition · 1 year

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its your guys so idk if it counts as headcanons but tell me about the au where veto is light yagami and blitz is misa. it's up to you who is L. my first thought was casey but if someone else would fit better then by all means

hey anon you have a bigger brain than the entire sun

(This got long. into the readmore it goes.)

Veto as Light is interesting because Veto definitely likes L more. Is not the type to just start killing people out of nowhere, but would still for sure pick up the death note and be like "I could totally get some CEOs with this." Thinks about it for like a week and then commits.

Has a code. Uses the power sparingly. Starts out very much as an "only when necessary" guy. Cooler head than Light Yagami. To them, this is pure pragmatism. They are a fine instrument.

Catch this guy using it to make this AUs equivalent of Jeff Bezos liquify all his assets, spend it all on climate change funding and police abolitionist groups, make a surprise public statement and dab on stage, and then die instantly.

The very picture of low key.

People lose their minds about this. Some people love it. Some people hate it. Veto is doing the finger steeple in front of the computer watching the internet discourse and going "yes..... all according to keikaku. (translator's note: keikaku means plan)."

Veto also continues posting online like usual and alternates arguing about this and about cartoons. Posts a long argument on why killing billionaires is fine but Kira's a dumbass and should have spent the money on something else.

Who L is here is really really interesting. Because out of the main cast, it probably *would* be Casey, but we don't know which Casey. This one might be more of a Worstcase than canon Casey is. Kind of colder, legitimately more analytical and able to keep their cool, much less in doubt about whether criminals are bad or not. Old enough to have established themself as some sort of prodigy and risen to prominence in law enforcement. Is NOT having some sort of psychosexual duel with Veto. Do not even suggest it.

If it's not Casey, though, then it is absolutely the Witness. Like, come on. She's right there. Is she? No, she's behind a number of proxies that she's lying to you about and a paranoid personality disorder.

The Witness is basically just L already, if L was a legendary whistleblower in the style of Anonymous. Also she's fucking terrifying.

The Witness is L. In canon L used to be around, and she got killed (?) by skeletons. That's just the way it is.

Yeah it's her.

Blitz being Misa is also very interesting, because it means they aren't Ryuk. The dynamic between them and Veto will be pretty different to Light and Misa (if anyone could pull her off, it's probably Nickle). Blitz and Veto absolutely strike up some sort of deal to cover for both of them.

They both already go by fake names of some sort. Blitz because they changed it both when joining and leaving Tesserate's cult, and Veto because they're a bit of an influencer who doesn't want their past dug up (or their ex to find them), so they go by something more in line with their public persona.

Veto asks what Blitz's actual name is. Blitz laughs at them.

Blitz would not have a Death Note, but does know about them. Might have some fucked up Shinigami ability.

Very possible that Tesserate both grants their followers some sick powers and keeps them physically dependent on them. Blitz was trapped there until they saw Veto pick up a new Death Note.

They immediately take the opportunity to get out, switching to being physically dependent on Veto instead.

Veto says they're not really into this fucked up dependency thing. They both know Blitz can't snitch because they need Veto, so if they want to just get like a high five every week or so, that's cool. No forced labor in their house.

Blitz says that is why they don't mind.

Veto is like, so what, you're just gonna help me get away with murder?

Blitz says they certainly seem to need it.

Veto flips them off. So what, they think Veto is like a mildly infuriating video and is just a little bit bad at murder so they want to do it themself?

Blitz says that they're more than happy to let them carry on as they are. They'll go along with what they ask, even. They mostly just want to see what they do.

Murderous Jeeves has joined the party!

Blitz also knows a lot of the other characters from a previous era, including the Witness. A vital source of information and physical/magical protection. Also very good at sharpshooting, of course. You never know when you'll need that.

Tesserate is still doing some sort of thing and wants to hunt Blitz down. Also is trying to hunt down the Witness. This guy is the one with no qualms about just offing everyone in their way. Also has a Death Note.

Mav is a Shinigami and is still the worst.

Casey's actual role in the story is probably a more mundane detective. Like L, but with less information to work with.

This version of Death Note would have a lot more major players and more prominent minor ones. It's a mess.

Casey is at a loss for a lot of things, but has a strong moral code, and is smart enough to put a lot of things together. Legitimately torn about what to do about any of this. Still thinks murder is bad.

Nickle is often seen hanging around Casey! They're the funny little guy. The Maya. A comedy duo doing investigations together. More clever than they seem, but not really one for all the machinations. They don't have the head for it, they say! They just have some ideas sometimes.

Casey absolutely hates magic, and thinks it's absurd. Refuses to acknowledge the supernatural as being proven to be real. Still very good at speculating about it and following logic to make it internally consistent.

Nickle thinks this is very funny and will throw in absurd-but-plausible ideas to trip them up. It's how they talk to each other.

The Witness doesn't show up in person. Casey and Nickle, however, do. At Veto's house. With some questions.

Veto and Nickle still meet at a Tidalform event and do the full rendition of a classic Checkmark/Lockdown confrontation. This is before they both realize that murder investigation brain duels are involved.

Blitz asks if Veto wants them to arrange an accident. Veto is like "nah. I mean, keep it on standby, but I don't really wanna kill these guys. It'll raise suspicion. Plus it's fun to have a challenge" and agrees to let them both into their house.

Most of the murder investigation brain duels are between these four. Casey is the major player here, checking everything for consistency. Nickle is carefree and less informed but scary observant, and will pick up on even tiny discrepancies in people's reactions. They are a very good team.

Veto realizes this immediately. They put on an act of a second, DIY L-figure who is investigating independently to cover their tracks.

Still has many intense conversations in classic death note style.

Blitz is just off to the side bringing people tea. Pleasantly smiling. Also silently scheming.

Casey gets aggravated and gestures a lot, but still thanks Blitz every time they get a cup.

Octave is missing. Nickle hasn't seen them in years.

Octave was actually also doing a Kira thing about five years ago, more clumsily and a lot more aggressively. It went badly enough that they were found out and went on the run. Made a pretty big splash, enough that people remember them as the first Kira, and the public assumes that they're back when Veto starts.

Veto knows the basic details about who Octave is (they were a minor, so it isn't public knowledge, but the forums Veto frequents were one of many places that dug it up anyways). Does know about the first Kira, and once they got one, put together that they must have used a Death Note.

With some digging, they realize that the reason Nickle is allowed to help with this is because they were friends with Octave in the past. Casey might have been involved in it too. Files this away for later and then brings it up to see how much Nickle knows.

It seems like a sore spot, but Nickle doesn't know much. Treats Veto pretty coldly. Insists that Octave isn't really the first Kira. They wouldn't do that.

Casey's opinion of Octave is far lower. They are also cagey about the details, but they are darkly confident that Octave was dangerous, and not up to any good.

Veto presses them and learns that Casey was involved in that investigation. In fact, they were the one who realized it was Octave. That's how they got this position in the first place.

Veto asks them how Nickle took that whole thing. Losing their best friend must have been hard. Were they mad at Casey?

Casey says that it's reasonable to experience intense emotions in that situation. Nickle was erratic for a long while. They don't hold it against them.

"Fucked up to think they were just doing that right under their nose," Veto says. "They didn't notice anything?"

"Nickle didn't have anything to do with it," they snap, immediately.

"Sure, of course," Veto says. "It's just weird that they didn't see it. Like, they're pretty good at picking things up."

Casey looks away a little. "It's hard to admit it when it's someone close to you," they say. "You end up looking for anything else."

Nickle and Veto became friends immediately. Little weirdo attached to their rival. Inviting them over frequently was a handy way to keep an eye on Casey and feed them information to direct their movements. It helps that Nickle is also funny and likes the same cartoon. Veto continued doing their mastermind thing, and Nickle continued being Nickle, but they legitimately did the same fun stuff that they and Nickle usually do.

This was derailed by Nickle cheerfully telling Veto out of nowhere that "You barely even act like a mass murderer!"

ohfuck.png

Veto goes through the many stages of "oh god what the fuck" grief. "oh god oh shit I'm fucked what the fuck" to "I've gotta kill this fucking guy" to "this guy is gonna fucking kill me" to "how the fuck did they figure it out???" to "wait what if they didn't. don't self incriminate this is basic stuff" to "yeah okay this is probably a test be COOL" to "why are they admitting they know to my face??" to "they must have told casey, otherwise they'd never take the risk. what's their insurance" to "oh god this guy is making a play and I don't even know what it is. I am so fucked" to "wait but they didn't just arrest me. what do they want?? are they going to try and blackmail me??" to "oh man this guy is making a PLAY. good for you little man I didn't know you had it in you"

Running through the options as they recover and hit the "Aw, I bet you say that to all the pretty girls."

"Wow, do pretty girls get Death Notes by default? That actually explains a lot."

ohFuck.png

Nickle explains to a very thrown Veto that they haven't told Casey! And if they can be cool about this, they won't. All they want is to make sure that Veto doesn't do anything dumb, like write Casey's name in that notebook or something! Maybe be a little more thoughtful before deciding somebody deserves to die! There's no reason they can't come to some sort of deal here. Everyone wins! What do you say?

Veto doesn't say anything. Just holds a hand out.

Nickle stops. Doesn't seem to know what to so. This caught them off guard. Veto just raises their eyebrows, doesn't say anything, gestures with their chin and makes a "give it here" motion. That makes it click, and Nickle actually looks a little nervous, like they've been caught at something. They start to laugh and speak. Veto just gives them another look. This one is a lot more pointed.

Nickle slowly pulls their phone out of their pocket and hands it over. Veto stops the recording. Deletes it. Quickly checks the most recent calls, emails, and text messages. Finds something that's cued to send in an hour; deletes that. Then tosses it back to Nickle.

"Alright," Veto says. "Let's talk."

They do talk. Veto learns that Nickle was actually involved with Octave's little stint with a Death Note. Knows how they work, knows what to look for. Admits that they agreed to what Octave was doing and helped cover their tracks.

"Aren't you one of those killing is wrong types?" Veto asks.

"Well, yeah," Nickle says.

"So what, you're just fine with letting someone else do it?"

"We didn't just go around killing people," Nickle says. "We talked it over every time. It wasn't a punishment thing, even. I don't think anybody really deserves it."

"You still did it," Veto says.

Nickle shrugs, and doesn't deny it. "We had reasons."

"Sure you did," Veto says. "Does Casey know?"

They just smile, oddly melancholy. "Couldn't tell you if I wanted to! But I do know one thing, and it's that you've got a lot to lose if you tell them."

Octave took the fall for it on purpose and has been missing for several years. Nickle doesn't know where they went. Had to go along with their sudden "betrayal" and act like they didn't know anything about it, or the whole thing would have been for nothing. It was a really tough time.

Nickle is actually the one who received the Death Note. They shared it. Octave took half of it with them, and was the one who used it to kill, but at the end of the day it isn't theirs.

They do not mention this.

Veto and Nickle agree to a truce, at least until they can deal with some of the more dangerous people out there. Tesserate is a threat to everyone, and the Witness is merciless. She's going to take down Tesserate no matter the cost, and she's not going to show mercy to Blitz, Veto, or Octave, either.

Casey thinks she's the good guy in all of this but still has some misgivings about the way she does things. Trusts her, but is starting to hesitate with some of the orders they're being given.

Nickle knows that Octave can't come out of hiding with her around, and while they don't want to kill her over it, they sure are open to helping Veto figure out who she is.

Veto asks what they plan to do about Casey, who is still hunting for anyone involved with Kira. Nickle smiles and reminds Veto that if Casey dies, they're next. Veto smirks and says they would expect nothing less.

The brain duels continue. They're both really into it.

Sometimes they pretend to be having a brain duel and they're actually just quoting Tidalform at each other. Casey hates it.

Octave, when they show up, starts doing their codependent thing with Nickle again. They snap back into having a single agenda and reveal themselves to be a second, more idealistically driven Kira duo. Nickle is thrilled.

Octave states in no uncertain terms that they don't care who dies and that they'd do anything for Nickle. Nickle is taking a break from all that though! They're nonfatal only!

Nickle turns out to have been the actual inspiration behind the first round of killings. They were the one with big dreams about changing the world. They were still unsure about using it when they got the Death Note. Octave was the one who was fully in favor of direct action.

Nickle was hesitant. Octave said that they're the one who knows how the world is supposed to be. They promised they'd love Nickle no matter what they did. They said they could do it together. They knew Nickle was right.

They planned the murders together. Both of them unconsciously let Octave take responsibility for the violence, with Nickle bearing none of the blame. They just kept it working. They just came up with the ideas. They aren't the kind of person who is okay with killing people. They were always the one reasoning in favor of mercy. It's why they made a good team.

Once they left, Nickle was left holding a lot of complicated emotions. They knew Octave was innocent – or just an accomplice – and that they couldn't prove it without condemning themself. They felt guilty about letting this happen, guilty about being the real culprit (although they still don't think of themself as A Murderer. Just because Octave has taken the role of innocence in their mind doesn't mean Nickle then takes on the violence that was done. It's just sort of floating, out there.), guilty about lying to Casey.

They do feel betrayed by Octave going behind their back to take the fall and stuff this way down. The fury in this borders on actual hatred. They blame Octave for leaving them, and it terrifies them.

They are deeply sad and scared of how far this has gone. This was never supposed to happen.

The cut throat mental duels are tense and heart pounding. The life and death nature of it means that if you really beat someone, that's it. They are worried that they are a bad person because they actually enjoy it.

At least Octave will always love them.

Casey is not happy about any of this. They suspect things are going on with Veto, with Nickle, and probably with the Witness too. They don't like Octave and they still don't know if selling them out was right.

They start investigating on their own. Their growing paranoia means they stop talking to anyone about anything, including Nickle.

Nickle tries to reach out and get them to talk. They shouldn't have to do this by themself! Why are they pushing them away?

Casey snaps at them. If they want to know so badly, maybe they should both just tell each other everything.

Nickle, caught, looks away and doesn't answer. They cover it with a nervous laugh, but their discomfort is obvious.

Casey tells them to drop it and walks away.

Tesserate's goons have been coming for various people this whole time. Villain of the week style almost. Everyone gets to look badass kicking their asses.

Vye is around. We don't know what she's doing. She is smarter and more ambitious than Tesserate. Also being weird about it.

Out of all the goons, she's the one who regularly defeats major characters. She's the type of person who could make this be two seasons instead of one.

Killing her is a major turning point in the series, although no one knows it. When you lose this common enemy, you don't lose the things that got you there. You have all the same tools and the same energy, and there's no one to use it on but each other.

Blitz has exactly one poignant moment, and it's sitting with her as she dies.

There is eventually a confrontation between Nickle and Casey. Casey says that they know what is going on (which alarms Nickle very much, who has been trying to work behind their back) and demand both answers and some sort of justification. Nickle tries to calm them down. It doesn't work.

The whole reason Nickle and Casey could work together is that they both wanted to do the right thing. No Killing is very much on that list. Nickle and Casey agreed to hunt down people like Kira! They were good at it! It was one of the reasons people let the suspicions about them slide!

Casey even didn't ask questions about the thing with Octave, even though they knew something was up. They trusted Nickle. It was selfish, and they were guilty about it the whole time, but they didn't want to lose them.

But it's Casey. They can't think one thing and do another for long.

Casey puts their foot down and demands that Nickle either commit to what they agreed to, and to bring in whoever they know is an actual murderer, or let Casey take them into custody. It's the thing they would agree to do, if doing the right thing as they agreed is actually what matters to them.

It will also mean selling out Veto and Blitz, which Casey doesn't know but suspects, and Octave, which Casey knows for sure. They make it clear that if they do, Nickle probably will be punished by the authorities, but Casey will still argue their case.

The alternative, of course, is to just say no. They can run. Octave is still out there. But that will mean Nickle is solidly picking a side.

Nickle is stricken. Casey is emotional but not wavering. Which friend you will lose, likely forever, is a painful thing to have to decide.

Nickle leaves. They don't hurt Casey, but they don't let themself get caught, either. They go back to Octave and cry their eyes out.

Casey tries to stop them. It's possible that they actually succeed. If they do, Octave kicks their ass a little and gets Nickle out before the cops get there. It's a firm statement of where everyone stands.

If Octave kicks their ass, Casey gets a cool scar.

It's about fifty-fifty on the odds that someone kills Casey before the night is out.

It could be many people. Veto could see this confrontation and do it. Blitz is the same thing. Octave could comfort Nickle and then go do it later that night. Tesserate could absolutely do it. Would also try to kill Nickle while they are in the same place, and only Octave would save their life.

Mav is a surprisingly likely candidate. It is probably not the Witness. Nickle is the only one it definitely isn't.

If Tesserate does it, Nickle comes out of it with a cool scar.

If they live, Casey and Nickle split off from each other, and Casey becomes a solo operator from now on. They will become increasingly erratic and focused on the task at hand, trying not to let losing Nickle bother them. Their plans become more extreme and reckless, and their pursuit of answers more intense. They are no longer playing around but are still in over their head.

When they begin actually uncovering the truth behind the situation, and their investigation leads to things not even the people with Death Notes know, the Witness kills them.

Casey dies. The end of the second act. They leave behind little evidence for their own murder, and a massive, very detailed tangle of journal entries and encrypted investigation notes for everything else.

When Casey dies, Nickle's primary motivation changes to finding and killing the one who did it. They have no intention of showing mercy. Not only will they die, but Nickle will make sure they lose everything before they do it.

If Octave is the one who killed them, they don't swear revenge, but it does drive a wedge between them that will never go away.

If Veto is the one who killed them, Nickle does not know for sure and is determined to get proof. Veto, knowing their life is on the line, is determined to hide it. If Blitz did it, Nickle already knows, but won't reveal this until they can kill them.

If Tesserate did it, Nickle swears revenge. A plot is hatched. Will kill them like it is nothing.

If the Witness did it, Nickle swears revenge, and is furious that it was the person Casey trusted. A plot is hatched. She is the most difficult person to bring down and Nickle is determined to make her suffer.

Octave is quietly watching. They don't try to talk them out of it. They just say that they'll make it happen.

Nickle shakes their head. They need to do this one themself.

Octave kisses their knuckles and promises that they'll bring them right to the doorstep.

Meanwhile, Veto's watched this whole thing spiral out of control and has doubled down on their own mastermind thing. No more games. They're in it to win it now. They've gotten into the groove of it, and are making some ruthless calls that are on the same level as Tesserate or the Witness. Light Yagami has arrived and been outclassed.

Blitz is watching them quietly, too.

Veto knows. Blitz is not interested in being chained down to anyone and if Veto goes too far, or gets to be too similar to Tesserate, they'll likely just kill them and take the Death Note for themself. It's something they need to keep an eye on.

Blitz knows that Veto knows that if they can figure out their actual name, they can kill them. Veto knows that if Blitz can figure out for sure if they can live without Veto, they can kill them. Neither of them has explicitly betrayed the other yet, and if they do, there's no going back.

Neither of them do anything. They keep being a weird guy and their butler. They still really only have each other.

Nickle shows up with an unreadable look on their face. They tell Veto that they'll help them. It is not an act of friendship. The undertone of impending betrayal from both parties is very much there.

Veto, now fully filling the role of Light Yagami, agrees. They begin working together to take both Tesserate and the Witness down. It's a beautiful sight. They are both also doing a silent, calculating mind duel about who is going to kill the other once it's over. This one is less exuberant than usual.

It becomes clear that they need to untangle the information Casey left behind. It's a confusing, encrypted mess.

There's a chess game visual. They're doing stuff like smiling and giving each other staplers and then it cuts back to the chess board and they're staring each other down across the table and monologuing about what it all means. Cut back to them saying thank you for the stapler. Cut back to the chess board as one of them puts down their rook.

If Casey hunted down the Witness and then was killed by her, there is a real race against time, because she is also trying to destroy the evidence. And she's very good at it. This is why Casey was killed in the first place.

Casey's growing paranoia is a saving grace. It means that they were also obsessively covering their tracks, following in the footsteps of the person who would kill them. Everything is scattered, hidden and encoded, duplicated who knows how many times. They were trying to make sure that if they were killed, someone could still pick up the investigation.

Casey journaled everything. Half of what they find are personal entries, with little bearing on the case. The only thing that isn't recorded is the thing they never had the chance to write down, which is the final revelation that would eventually kill them.

Nickle knows Casey very well. They and Veto untangle this web together, learning things that Casey never said outright and that people would rather keep hidden. The Witness is much better at this than either of them, but there are some things that only a very old friend would know to check.

Some of the messages were explicitly intended for Nickle. At least one was written in that style, even after they separated. Habits don't go that easily.

The final confrontation draws near. If they can crack this final thing, the person they're after will have no escape. Veto and Nickle are in complete sync as they set up the trap.

It's possible that they won't immediately turn on each other once they kill them. Not likely, though.

They crack it. Casey's mystery is solved.

The trap is armed.

It works. Casey's murderer is not dead yet, but the final piece is put in place. They might as well be. The chess game reaches its final tense moments. They're

Blitz shoots Nickle in the head.

Veto, to their credit, looks genuinely distressed about it.

Of course, this is assuming Octave isn't also on their bullshit, which they absolutely are. Unless they also died previously which is not likely. So Blitz just *tries* to shoot Nickle in the head out of nowhere, and Octave shuts that right down. And then there's a fight to the death.

You thought this was anime? You haven't seen anything yet. Octave and Blitz are going for it.

The fight to the death happens at the same time as another fight to the death, which is just Veto and Nickle huddling behind cover with their Death Notes and trying to figure out the other's true name. Nickle, after all, was the one who gave all three of the trio their nicknames.

Nickle is trying to figure out Blitz's to end the fight, Blitz is trying to figure out Octave's for the same reason, and Veto is trying to figure out everyone's because they are pretty sure they're done for no matter who wins.

We have no idea who gets who. It could go a lot of ways. Maybe they all die and it's terrible. It's Death Note.

We also don't know what Vye has been up to this whole time, but she's *asbolutely* on some bullshit. You know the psychosexual brain duels? She's the one doing them. She's doing a weird thing with Blitz *and* Veto *and* Octave *and* the Witness and she's also waiting for her chance to kill Tesserate. Nickle hates her. She makes overtures of bullshit towards Casey, who does not reciprocate and hates this whole thing.

She doesn't have a Death Note, but she does figure out Blitz's real name, which is massive leverage. Thinks she's hot shit. Is correct, to be fair.

Hubble is also around. Hates Tesserate, hates Blitz, likes Octave and won't admit it, and deeply respects the Witness. The Witness sees them as a valuable ally and would absolutely still kill them if necessary. Hubble knows this and approves of this attitude.

Knight has a very sad subplot where he's the only guy the Witness is willing to confide in. He's her man on the outside. The Witness is deeply suspicious of him because of this. She goes back and forth on trusting him and eventually sends him to his death, convinced he'll reveal his betrayal. He dies having been loyal the whole time. She dies soon after.

TL;DR:

Veto is Light. Blitz is kind of like Misa.

The Witness is L.

Casey is kind of also L, narratively speaking. They're an investigator and a main rival but don't have the same "two steps ahead" thing that L has happening.

Nickle is like if L had a Maya.

Actually Casey is just like if regular fucking Miles Edgeworth got into Death Note and Nickle is like if Kay went with him. This is the Investigations games to them.

Octave tried some Kira shit with Nickle years in the past. When it went bad, they took the fall for it, and Nickle was left behind. Casey was the one who told the authorities that Octave was behind the murders and the one who insisted that Nickle knew nothing about it.

It's uncommon knowledge that Octave was the first Kira. No one knows that Nickle is the original recipient of the Death Note.

Tesserate is running some sort of Shinigami cult. Blitz ditched it. Anyone in the cult can be given sickass Shinigami abilities, but is physically dependent on Tesserate to live. When Veto got the Death Note, Blitz ran and switched to being dependent on Veto to live instead.

The factions here are nuts. People are backstabbing each other and teaming up. The Witness, Veto and Tesserate are in some weird three way duel. Blitz works for Veto, used to work for Tesserate, and now has to deal with a jealous ex. Casey works for the Witness (kind of) and Nickle works for Casey. Nickle also teams up with Veto behind Casey's back and has been on Octave's team the whole time. Octave's team is actually just Nickle's team and Casey is NOT on that team.

Summing up the people with Death Notes: Veto, Tesserate, Octave/Nickle. Blitz and other cult members don't have one but do have weird Shinigami powers.

Octave knows about Death Notes and took Nickle's with them when they fled. They may or may not also have a Shinigami power.

The Witness doesn't know about Death Notes, but has enough information to know that something like them is out there. Her guesses are not always correct, but they are always dangerously brilliant.

Casey doesn't know about Death Notes, but is familiar with the rules of them. They solved the first Kira case and knew something unnatural was behind it. They just assumed Octave was haunted.

Mav is the actual worst.

#variance #death note #Veto #blitz #asks #long post #seriously it is a long one

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madtomedgar · 1 year

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umm genderbend 3zun (obviously) and yanli? (maybe lan qiren?)

unfortunately sometimes my genderbend thoughts on a particular character are "no." And to me, Nie Mingjue's character is so intrinsically wrapped up in toxic hyper-masculinity that I just can't make it work. Like. Part of my philosophy of gender-bends is that a character's relationship to gender should be mirrored. So a very gender-conforming character should stay gender conforming. A character that is perceived as effeminate should in a genderbend be seen as kind of manly or unladylike or like. crude/harsh/rough in that particular "failing at woman" way. And with Nie Mingjue and characters like him, they just can't fill the same role in the story as a devotee and enforcer of the worst aspects of femininity. I know a lot of people love "butch" f!Nie Mingjue, by they mean "big muscly woman with an undercut," and like. I hate that. To me it's reminiscent of a particular type of butch fetishization where we are seen as like. Big, hypermasculine canvases to project fantasies onto, and also a collection of negative stereotypes where we're angry, violent, kind of dumb, gruff, pushy, negging, dominant, with no real feelings or desires beyond the erotic fantasy and the psychosexual repulsion etc. So. Those are my feelings on r63 3zun. Lan Xichen and Jin Guangyao as women is the best, but he just... he can only be a guy. I could get behind a trans guy Nie Mingjue who has bought into the worst parts of masculinity and thinks by going as hard as he can in that direction he can completely rid himself of any lingering trans-ness, but that is definitely not my story to tell or explore, yknow.

In terms of Yanli. I also don't love taking the one or two women in a cast of men and... making them men also. What, were there not enough men here already? But, ok. Madam Yu's firstborn, and he's... ah. He's ill. He's weak. He's sweet and sensitive, and he wants... oh no. He wants to be a Scholar. Where did those genes even come from what the fuck. I think a lot about how this goes though depends on whether or not Jiang Cheng is also gender-bent, and if Jin Zixuan is gender-bent, and what's going on with Wei Wuxian. Because sickly nerd m!Yanli and f!Jiang Cheng who is... Jiang Cheng and canon Wei Wuxian is basically Madam Yu's personal nightmare and that'll be a Whole Fun Thing. But if Jiang Cheng is still himself, and Wei Wuxian is still himself... I think Wei Wuxian might be more annoying to her but less threatening. I don't think m!Jiang Yanli would be a Mei Changsu mastermind type, he's just a fucking nerd in a family of jocks. He's writing poetry to praise Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian's exploits and doing really interesting things with it that you only get if you know a lot of literary theory. He is like. Mr. Older Brother but has no interest or ability to be the heir. Idk Jiang Yanli is also hard because so much of her character is just... feminine domesticity and passivity. And like. You could keep that but that's just a bodyswap OR it's a very different character because then they have Gender Issues bigtime, as opposed to having issues of like... conforming too well. Idk if that makes sense.

... Actually I could get behind trans woman Jiang Yanli. That would be AMAZING. Like. oh man. ok. Her brothers are both like "yes this is our sister duh. do you need glasses are you stupid do you want to die." Jiang Fengmian is like... well he can either have a failson or he can have a daughter who is... fine. So sure, let the kid be happy. Yeah ok it burns out the golden core a bit to make their body conform to their spirit like that but whatever, this kid was never going to be a great cultivator, this way she's happy. Jin Zixuan is like. A mega dickhead about it and the Yunmeng brothers are Going To Murder Him in this life and the next :D. (Jiang Yanli wishes they would stop because all it does is draw more attention to this and she just... she just wants to be a normal girl.) Jin Zixuan comes around post-sunshot and realizes he was a mega-dickhead and that Jiang Yanli is the best woman alive, actually. And Madam Yu. Oof. The thing is she would be much cooler, proud and happy even, if Jiang Yanli took after her. But from her perspective, Jiang Fengmian let one of her sons become weak and useless on purpose to insult her specifically, and now her daughter is setting herself up to be a defenseless laughingstock and doormat, and everyone will blame her for it. So she is awful about it. And like... Jiang Yanli was just never going to be a warrior, or a hero, or a strong assertive person, because that's just not who she is. She just wants to love people and have her family close, and make food, and take care of kids, and it's... not about gender but it kind of is, but not like her mother thinks. She gets exactly what she wants in the end, and nothing bad ever happens to her or Jin Zixuan or Jin Ling (Wei Wuxian created a method to have magic babies just for shijie). Yeah. This, I love.

#untamed stuff #rule 63 #every day i lose more respect for nie mingjue #i like. rarely do stuff with making characters trans #mostly because like. it's not my story to tell and #i worry about fucking it up yknow #so if i have indeed fucked it up i am very sorry #and if you feel up to it please let me know so i don't do it again #yeah

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cator99 · 1 year

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Weren't u in a band? What did u do in it & u got any yt vids of u guys floating around?

I don't think I've ever shared that information on here, but yes, I was in a few, and we sucked, so no. We only ever performed at open mic nights, dive bars, and charity events. I was frontman. Actually there was one band I was in that was veering fast into not-sucking territory and we got positive feedback but things fell apart pretty quick after our bassist and guitarist got into a physical altercation over whether or not their home was indeed a punk house, which would determine if the bassist would be required to do the dishes more than once a month. The guitarist was an ex suburbanite. He pretended to be cool with the way the rest of us lived because he was a self proclaimed radical marxist tankie and trying to be in touch with the working poor while hiding the fact that his dad owned a business. But hey, he was the only one of us who had been put in any sort of real musical lessons (whatever my retarded guitarist dad tried to do to me didn't count), which drastically improved our sound. The guitarist called the cops on the bassist, thus spurring accusations of transphobic murder attempt via cop... which is kinda hard to come back from..... I tried to bring the ftm I was dating at the time into the fold as a replacement, (honestly he was way more musically knowledgeable than any of us, we would have been lucky) but then our drummer was like going through a transition-induced divorce and moved away..... which, if you have any idea how drummers work, caused half of the city's bands to fall apart. Transgenderism ruins the party again. So, to try and once again fill in the gaps, my friend who sometimes acted as my co-writer asked their partner- a solo electronic musician who performed at festivals who I had never been introduced to due to this person's antisocial reputation- to come jam with us.... but seeing as that individual and the bassist were ex-fuckbuddies, and- as should go without saying considering all prior information about them that I've given- both mentally unstable transwomen... I'm sure you can imagine why that wasn't the right move... they tried to grin and bear it and be mature adults about the whole thing..... however, this person turned out to be really just beyond obnoxious, agressively trampling any input from anyone, it was just going nowhere and I felt exhausted even trying because, where I used to be the one who had a cohesive plan- and artistic vision, dare I say- that could be followed through on very directly, and my bandmates trusted me enough to stay on it, suddenly we were all trying to do something different, all fighting for control, on top of the fucked up evil psychosexual energy between the co-writer, the synth freak, and the bassist, and then myself and my boyfriend who were on the verge of ending things... and all of our ideas clashed and whenever one of us was satisfied with something another would feel the exact opposite. We were running in circles. The one thing we all seemed to agree on was how irreconcilable our creative differences were. I only flirt with making music for personal reasons anymore because I think being a musician nowadays is quite frankly very embarassing. I wouldn't want to get involved in that shit even as a joke. I know this answers more questions than you asked but this is a blog I'm not here to just be like "yes, and no." Actually, you know what, we had in fact recorded some stuff with that shitty electronic artist, but I disliked that person so fucking much that I never bothered to ask for the files.

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abnerkrill · 1 year

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for the fandom thing: hannibal and killing eve (i don't think i've seen u talk about them??? if u have seen them then soz lol...)

oh these are fantastic ones for me thank you!! i have seen 2 episodes of hannibal (but it was probably a decade ago) and 1 episode of killing eve (but it was like... 4 years ago) just fyi jkdfjkdfkjdfs i do know that hannibal was created by bryan fuller (and obviously is a silence of the lambs prequel) and there’s a ton of artsy inspirations and every episode is named after a dish/part of a meal? and that killing eve was a phoebe waller-bridge joint but emerald fennell of promising young woman showran it.

so hannibal. he’s a cannibal, obviously. also will’s therapist. will graham is a professor with like 20 rescue dogs, he also moonlights as a consultant for murder cases because of his spooky sensing powers. (a woman’s intuition!) i wanna say abigail’s dad (something something hobbs?) is one of the first murder victims he comes across and abigail is orphaned but she’s also secretly a killer but later she dies. RIP girlbosses. i do remember, vividly, the episode with the mushroom corpses. i think that was the episode where i quit the show actually. i don’t do great with body horror (though admittedly i was like 15 then so maybe as a whole 25 year old i could deal with it better and even find it cool??????? time will tell. maybe.)

so will and hannibal have this insane psychosexual relationship going on and i’m pretty sure each is seducing the other, but like, slowly. gillian anderson is in it. very cool. the Japanese actress who played Mercy Graves in Batman vs Superman is in it. (this fun fact thanks to my encyclopediac knowledge of DCEU casting.......) will tackles hannibal and leaps off a cliff at the end. there are definitely fics where they’re recovering together in some remote island and fucking, like, a lot.

killing eve: sandra oh my WIFE is... i want to say cia/fbi or something like that?? some sort of agency?? is she married to a lame man in the show too and she has a lesbian awakening?? i’m sorry i’ve definitely forgotten the entire pilot episode ljdsfjldfslk. villanelle is an assassin with 0 social skills but she kills a lot of people. sandra oh (whose character’s name i cannot remember WAIT A SECOND. IS SHE EVE? SHE’S GOT TO BE EVE RIGHT?) anyway sandra oh and villanelle are also engaged in an intense psychosexual relationship, so like, lesbian hannibal but less cannibalism and more assassinations.

i read a review of the finale and im pretty sure one or both of them dies. i think i also heard that the show gets worse throughout the seasons but still ends okay? i feel like the pilot didn’t hook me in but i do like sandra oh, jodie comer and phoebe waller-bridge a lot so maybe someday i’ll get back to it!!

#dangerliesbeforeyou

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badass-queer-couples-battle · 8 months

Text

Gay wrongs tournament, quarterfinals of the major bracket

Propaganda:

For House and Wilson:

Literally the most insane couple of all time from medical malpractice the show. They’re best friends, they live together, they’ve drugged eachother, they make stupid bets together, they manipulate each other, they ride off into the sunset together. They’re Sherlock and Watson, they’re the best doctors in their fields and you’d never want them anywhere near your medical care.

Medical malpractice <3

For Will and Hannibal:

Ive previously only heard the term "murder husbands" refer to hannigram so it feels flitting. The whole series culminated with a murder they did together bathing in blood.

The show and ship that coined murder husbands. It’s in the text in s3 from a journalist side character. They do Many murders either together or as a message to each other. Usually this involves turning the dead body into an art piece. The show ends with them killing a guy together in a slo mo scene backed by porno music.

They're both batshit and manipulative.

ALRIGHT so they're not canonically together but it is HEAVILY implied and they have some sort of fucked up psychosexual obsession with each other. in the later parts of the show they start committing murder and cannibalism together and they're soooo unhinged but it's awesome

kill people for each other. maim each other. kill people together. most batshit insane metaphors. send each other to jail. ruin everyone’s lives. someone can probably say this better than me but these gay people are insane

Literally THE murder husbands. They kill for each other. They've tried to kill each other. They're canon in all but name, like the homoeroticism between these two is the driving force of the show.

one time hannibal folded a guy into an origami human heart

They are in love and they kill and eat people. They are called Murder Husbands in canon.

The original murder husbands (literally, that's not just their ship name, they get called that in canon)

The show begins with Will working for the FBI and trying to catch Hannibal, but because Hannibal is so intrigued by the way Will is able to see the world and the motives behind the killings so easily, it becomes a game of Hannibal isolating Will even more from the people around and seducing him to try and kill. By the time Will starts embracing the side of him that Hannibal sees, he starts oulling back and trying to distance himself so that when the time comes for Will to fully embrace himself and Hannibal, no one really suspects what they have planned.

hannibal literally does murder as courtship and it works bc will is also a fucked up little guy

I'm actually quite offended they aren't included by default (joke). They are THE murder husbands!!!!!! (mod note: they should have been, but I wanted to see how many submissions they'd get. They got 19, making them a little more than 6% of total submission count).

do i have to say it. they literally get called murder husbands IN THE SHOW

There are 3201 works for Hannibal on ao3 tagged Murder Husbands. They are the ogs, they are the pioneers we owe it all to them.

THEE murder couple. You know it. I know it. They commit crimes at each other as courting and then commit crimes together and then fall off a cliff to wash up somewhere and live on to serve cunt. Get referred to as 'murder husbands' in canon. What more do you need

Hannigram were literally called Murder Husbands in canon, they are the og, they are THE blueprint. They were gay as hell and comitted so much murder so many crimes. THEY RAN OFF TO EUROPE TOGETHER.

#gay wrongs tournament quarterfinals #hanningram #hilson #hannibal nbc #house md #hannibal lecter #will graham #gregory house #james wilson

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llycaons · 9 months

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ep37: a-qing just can't catch a break

the way his face just lights up when he has the opportunity to do something helpful...I mean I kind of get it but also. kid. get a hobby besides being a teacher's pet PLEASE

ohh neat. wwx talked a lot in the book about commoner's solutions to problems without cultivator involvement. it would have been nice to see a more pointed critique of the highly specialized and often impractical and elitist education the rich sect kids get

I love this shot. so mysterious and eerie! and he is so handsome <3

it makes me so mad that wwx is joking about a-qing's looks, not so much because I care about him being a dick and scaring the kids on purpose, but because it's a shitty and narrow-minded way to view a young person who is clearly suffering some kind of horrible...death? every single junior includes some comment on her beauty or looks and it's so annoying. she's more than that! she deserves more!

wwx scolding jl for emulating jc and sounding like a brat (or maybe more accurately to wwx's complaints, a little bitch) is weirdly satisfying to me. no he thinks the way jc raised jl sucks, actually, and he's trying to fix jl's attitude. here jl goes along with wwx's prank and then yells at him afterwards, even though he himself played along. a bit different from the jc situation sin he's a child, but I imagine wwx got irritated when he was younger a lot when jc would go along with his schemes and them turn around and complain about him as if he didn't particupate

STOP WEARING HIS FACE! YOU SICK FUCK. it's so bizarre to see xxc in black that I didn't even recognize him this time around. with the eyes hidden, it's a bit harder to tell

when I was reading swbts this weekend, she mentions that nobody actually follows all the precepts, because it's impractical and absurd. but there were some really obvious ones like 'don't murder' and it's nice to see that the lan precepts include some good things in there besides the well-criticized 'don't laugh without a cause' and such. also, lwj is the only person following every single one anyway and that doesn't have anything to do with whether he's a good person or whether he thinks wwx is a good person, either. they're really not connected and his character development is realizing that

aww, they're all offering their blood up. this little scene where wwx asked if anyone has blank talismans and commenting on their cultivation level was also explained further in the books - strong cultivators can write their own, but still-learning kids need to bring talismans that have already been written

wwx's face here is so sad. he admired sl and xxc so much and wanted to emulate them, and to see them come to an end like this...must be devastating. as if he hadn't already lost so much

ALSO the idea that would-be lovers turned on each other and tried to kill each other. I imagine that would be very difficult for wwx given his own history with lwj

spooky!

ssc's actor did so well. that smile is all xy

WEI WUXIAN CALLING XY A DRAMA QUEEN

help why did he say it like that

oh damn that's jgy

xy interacting with wwx is so funny to me honestly. like a huge fanboy. his greatest psychosexual obsession is with xxc but he definitely has a thing for wwx too I know he wants to be topped or something

classic line. we love not dehumanizing our autistic undead friend 👍

STOP CARESSING HIS SWORD YOU CREEPY FUCK

oh and this is also funny. wwx like 'are you bullying me since I'm still recovering?' (implying he IS recovering and could still rebuild a core 👀 and xy being like 'yep! as you recall I am a delinquent and I am acting like it!' and wwx being like 'no fair. MAN'

omg and as soon as lwj appears and xy is like 'hehe we meet again' and lwj just refuses to answer, summons xxc's sword, and delivers THIS devastating line. love it. no bullshit. no tolerance

I feel like xy recognizes lwj as objectively handsome but he's not really into him

his two-bladed sword is so sick too bad he's evil

I don't really think about villains in terms of whether they're 'redeemable' or not and I don't like to think of people as ontologically evil but man I don't think xy was ever going to be anything besides what he was. it did suck that he was mutilated as a child, and it must have been difficult growing up on the streets, but the glee with which he talks about mass murder makes me think he would have kind of taken any excuse to go wild and murder a ton of people. 'oh he just needed love and understand' well he got it! and he used it to trick the person who loved him into murdering more people and then he tortured and murdered their teenage ward/friend. I can appreciate a reading where he's more harmless and just funny in his destructiveness, but I will never be able to swallow AUs where he's genuinely a good person. loving murder is just too much a part of him!

there's also a line where the juniors make wwx say that lwj is good at stuff and he seems very taken aback to be asked, which is weird bc aren't they at least traveling companions? maybe he was confused at being asked to give an account with authority since he knows the kids still think he's a random jin exile who's known lwj for like. a few weeks max. man I don't like that moment, it seems really forced and awkward even if wwx is still in his 'I don't quite understand why lwj is doing this or how long it'll last' era. which also seems weird given them moments they've already shared and the comfort wwx has in stating with lwj? man, maybe it's easier if he doesn't have to think about it or explain it to other people. I GUESS

god this sucks....that's his last connection to his mama

A QING!!!!!!!!

wwx comforting her is so. he's been such a dick to the kids this episode so it's nice to remember what a kind person he is when it really counts. and a-qing hasn't felt human touch in a very long time

and when he says he'll do empathy, it's jl who objects! one of those 'aw, he really does care' moments

personal highlights:

while this wasn't as horribly dull and poorly done as the last third-party character focused plot (I seriously spent a lot of 34 thinking 'oh god, cql is bad after all), it didn't offer a lot in terms of special moments or humor. a solid 5/10. mediocre. let's see

wwx talking about folk remedies

the kids offering their blood. because they love him

wwx calling xy a drama queen

wwx seeing sl and xxc's bodies and realizing what state they're in. that shit hurted

"you don't deserve this sword' TELL HIM HANGUANG-JUN

#cql re-rewatch

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batmanisagatewaydrug · 2 years

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top five things that happened in gotham

oh god fuck I don't REMEMBER anything that happened in Gotham I didn't even watch it all

when Fish Mooney was auditioning girls to ??? psychosexually torture an old mob boss by reminding him of his mom or something?? and part of the audition was making out with Fish lmao what??? girl you can't do that that has to be illegal. I know you spend every day killing people and giving Oswald Cobblepot swirlies but there has to be a line. this is a hostile workplace. there's a special place in hell for women who make other women tongue them down to get a job.

the gay social event of the YEAR ie Oswald and Ed breaking up without ever even dating because Oswald killed the kinky librarian who was a doppelganger of Ed's ex girlfriend that he murdered and then Ed told him he was terminally unfuckable. I'm 99% sure that's how it happened. and then Oswald turned him into a fucking conversation piece in his nightclub??? MESSY. all future gay brunches RUINED. the DRAMA the PANACHE the way every annoying homosexual rogue's messenger apps must have been on literal fire that day??? exquisite. that was camp.

uuuuh god fuck did Victor Zsasz ever show hole. that sounds like something he would do. he should have. I would have kept watching the show specifically for that. but in the absence of that I will count literally every time Anthony Carrigan was onscreen being a certified little freak because that was really sincerely hot. I have problems.

do you guys remember when some guy who was like ??? running for mayor maybe and probably fucking his sister decided to honeytrap Bruce Wayne for some reason but Bruce was like 10 so it was just him and a pre-pubescent girl awkwardly existing in the same vicinity as each other? and also that girl's name was SILVER ST. CLOUD??? which is insane for sure but like. listen. she is REAL she's an actual existing DC Comics character who I think was one of Bruce Wayne's very first disposable fake girlfriends way back in like 1939 so having her be one of Bruce's first love interests in the show is kind of a clever nod to that but. uh. her name is SILVER ST. CLOUD which raises more questions about this world than the serial killer who offed people by tying them to extra-strong helium balloons as if he was inspired by that Senan Byrne vine.

also that episode where they got tired of beating around the bush and not using regular degular batman villains and broke out the Scarecrow but he turned out to be a shitty proto Scarecrow who was the mainline Scarecrow's FATHER and Jonathan Crane ie the future Scarecrow was just this gawky pale teenager. I have to assume that when he Scarecrows up in like 10 years the GCPD's first stop will be the son of the guy who was doing this last time, which seems like it's really going to take a lot of mystery out of the whole affair. this one is actually a shitty #5 it wasn't even funny. I'm sorry.

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monstrousgourmandizingcats · 3 years

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For the character ask meme, Harrow and/or Jessica Atreides

Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit Jessica Technicallynotatreides:

favorite thing about them

Jessica stands out in the canon of SFF Moms for being a unique, memorable, immediately recognizable character with clear motivations and desires of her own, even though those motivations and desires still mostly pertain to Frank Herbert's weird gender assumptions in general and the Bene Gesserit's sacramentalized pickmeism in particular. Can you name a single personality trait of anybody's mother in an Asimov or Heinlein novel? I can't, even though Heinlein (much as I hate him for many, many other reasons) was also relatively good at writing women for a male sci-fi author of the period. I also just love the idea, on a conceptual/meta level, of a Spooky Ninja Space Witch who has Jessica's role in the plot. Muad'Dib's mom has got it going on!

least favorite thing about them

See above re: Jessica's motivations and goals still mostly having to do with weird gender and reproductive politics, although I suppose that's true to life for the concubine of a duke in a feudal society, in the same way that Austen's protagonists all having motivations involving marriage is true to life for daughters of England's old landed gentry.

favorite line

“Anything outside yourself, this you can see and apply your logic to it. But it’s a human trait that when we encounter personal problems, these things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan. We tend to flounder around, blaming everything but the actual, deep-seated thing that’s really chewing on us.”

(Hey, nobody ever accused Frank Herbert of believing that brevity was the soul of wit.)

random headcanon

She's bi/pan.

unpopular opinion

Leto I is great and all by the standards of his time and place, but in absolute terms Jessica still probably deserved someone better.

song i associate with them

"Witchcraft" by Frank Sinatra and "Mother" by Florence and the Machine.

favorite picture of them

Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House Harrowhark Nonagesimus:

favorite thing about them

She's the fucking worst. I have a "rancid female characters" tag for a reason. In both a feminist way and a psychosexual way I genuinely love female protagonists who are just overpoweringly messy and unpleasant people, and Harrow is a standout of the type. I also appreciate that a fervently religious lesbian is one of the main characters of a popular SFF series now.

least favorite thing about them

Harrow is one of those characters where I'm genuinely hard-pressed to come up with things I don't like about her, not because she doesn't have flaws (lmfao) but because her flaws all contribute to why I'm so invested in her. Gun to my head, I suppose I did get pretty pissed off at how long in took her in HtN to get it through her head that """""""God""""""" did not have her best interests in mind, but she can hardly be blamed for that considering the situation.

favorite line

About Harrow:

"Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus had pretty much cornered the market on wearing black and sneering. It comprised 100 percent of her personality. Gideon marveled that someone could live in the universe only seventeen years and yet wear black and sneer with such ancient self-assurance."

("comprised" here should really be "composed" but whatever, Tamsyn Muir is an award-winning author and I'm just an overeducated pedant who writes for a bunch of blogs.)

By Harrow:

"You are a murderer, a conwoman, a cheat, a liar, a slitherer, and you embody the worst flaws of your House--as do I."

random headcanon

Harrow has read some of Gideon's porn magazines. She genuinely doesn't get off on them or like them, but she has read them.

unpopular opinion

I actually think my Harrow takes are more or less orthodox, perhaps surprisingly for this type of character.

song i associate with them

Within Temptation, "The Truth beneath the Rose".

favorite picture of them

My all-time favorite Harrow art is this picture of her as a Novohispanic monja coronada, by @shigeko-nobufusa.

☆°● — character ask meme

#the locked tomb #harrowhark nonagesimus #dune #lady jessica #jessica atreides #give me love give me memes #rabook

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whetstonefires · 3 years

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Reverse Unpopular Opinion: Naruto

Hm! Only Positivity huh? I still don’t know why this is defined as Reverse Unpopular; some of my least popular opinions are already Thing Good.

Okay I actually really liked how Naruto (the manga, which I followed week to week for most of high school lol, hurrah for scanlators and rip mangafox) carried off the Big Twist about Itachi. The followthrough could have been better, as is the case with basically every element of the story, but the basic sell of Itachi’s real motives just landed really successfully, in my eyes.

There are a few reasons for that--mostly that it was the endpoint of quite a lot of direct buildup, of weird choices by Itachi that seemed just like his weird personality at a glance but which added together made foreshadowing, plus actual foreshadowing, followed by his absolutely bananas behavior during the climactic fraternal battle and the panel comp for his last words. Which really got me in the heart before I even had context.

But also that it snapped into place with a lot of the story’s strongest existing themes and tied them together in what looked at the time like the potential for a strong wicker sort of framework.

About the harm their society did its people and especially its children by molding them for war, and how seductively meaningful that shape could feel, going back to Haku. About cut-throat intra-clan bullshit going back to Neji.

About the weird emphasis placed on the concept of genius and its enforced advancement, going back to either the early Chuunin exam arc with Lee or earlier with Sasuke’s basic characterization. And about the fuckery that isolation wreaks on the psyche and how easy it is for authority figures to take advantage of vulnerable children, going back to literally the first chapter.

A lot of the time these twist-reveals that some baddie was Actually A Victim All Along are really unsatisfying, because they tend to diminish the horror of their crimes and even argue they were Justified.

With Itachi, the true story of the Uchiha Massacre was worse. Konoha’s government or a subset thereof (it was never clarified who was complicit) actively coercing a thirteen-year-old child into helping to kill his entire family and taking all the blame so they (that is Danzou) could avoid the potential repercussions of a civil war in the worst way possible while eliminating the Uchiha as internal political rivals is so much more deeply horrifying than a genius just snapping. Systemic rot is so, so much worse than individual violence.

(That’s why we as a society are encouraged to view crime as an individual thing, after all, and the prototypical criminal mind as the serial killer driven by nothing but deranged psychosexual needs.)

The fact that everything Itachi put Sasuke through was out of love and a desperate need to keep him alive, because Sasuke was who he loved most and the only thing he loved that he was allowed to save, that is so much more awful than it being out of hate. That that very love was cynically used to corral this child into leaving the corner he’d been backed into at an angle useful to others.

It’s obscene, but it pulls so many elements of the setting and characterization together.

And even though Itachi’s scheme technically went off exactly as planned, the narrative does not embrace it as in any way a good plan that reflected good judgment or even sanity. Which was nice.

The new version of What Really Happened is worse and it adds dimension to the past events being retconned rather than flattening them, which is cool and honestly difficult to pull off.

Also I love the premise of Itachi being, by nature, a very gentle person. Because that hasn’t stopped him from being a mass murdering serial killer, when the correct pressures were applied. He hates violence. He hates people being hurt.

No one ever cared what he wanted. And his family pressured him into a particularly violent and traumatic version of their murder career extra young for the prestige. And that was why, when more pressure came from different angles, he was already someone who could shut down his personal volition and kill whoever he was supposed to kill, no matter how much it hurt him.

They made him into a knife and he was turned against them. I go wild for that. It wasn’t right or fair and so many people died who weren’t directly at fault, but it is a closed circle. Which I find narratively satisfying.

Itachi also played interestingly against Gaara, the series’ previous benchmark for its recurring theme of Utterly Broken Boy, because he was walked a steady path down from Being At All Okay by the demands of the adults in his life, then took a really big hit, then just kept getting worse and worse without ever really snapping completely, but also without anybody ever even coming close to saving him.

While Gaara was betrayed by his family much harder and faster and in many ways more comprehensively, went completely insane when the big hit came, and then with Naruto’s help pulled himself together and ascended to a position of power, and began making things better and having positive sibling relationships.

Another thing that always struck me about the Real Itachi Backstory is that, because the breaking of him was conducted so much within the system--without kidnapping or sand demons talking in his head or social collapse or abandonment or even overt abuse or torture, unsanctioned wetworks divisions and insane cousins impersonating insane great-grandfathers notwithstanding--he makes it much easier to see the parallels between the way the ninja world eats its brightest stars alive very young, and the abusive expectations the real, contemporary school system tends to lay on high performers.

Fugaku’s abuse of Itachi is in some ways understated for fiction but also utterly deranged, in terms of the kind of gore and horror he pushed his genius child into confronting at such a young age. But it’s still sufficiently normalized within his society that it looks enough like a normal dad demanding outstanding academic achievement at all times to be really...the opposite of trippy. Strangely grounded for a relationship whose core element is ‘refused to let son choose not to be a child soldier.’

I’m torn about the level of intentionality there.

Of course, salt incoming lol I can’t hold it back, praising this kind of thing in Naruto just brings attention to how the resolution of the story was unsatisfying, because it ultimately disengaged from all its major themes other than self-sacrifice and friendship being A Big Deal in order to bring a big finish and a firm conclusion.

Which...man looks like an even stupider decision in hindsight considering it now has a sequel. Hah.

#ask meme #naruto #uchiha itachi #kishimoto pulled this kind of twist a lot of times #a lot a lot #and i think itachi was the most successful #although the followthrough and payoff after that point was #utter pants #because the narrative lacked the courage of its convictions #as is common in this genre lmao #reverse unpopular opinion #a nonny mouse #ask #hoc est meum

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