#it's interesting because it's 1) a pretty bad mistake and 2) not the end of the world. and in the past when i have done something

[coquelicoq]

usually i don't have any problem not thinking about work when i'm not getting paid to do so, but i made a big mistake earlier this week and spent five hours today dealing with the fallout and still have not managed to resolve it, and when i clocked out it was actually with this vague dread about leaving it unsolved instead of relief that it's finally the weekend. like it's bad that it's the weekend because it means i have to stop working on it?? wow. gross.

[gothwineaunts]

Wow, hello!

So, I was actually feeling pretty motivated to write this post yesterday. But things have gotten exponentially worse, and I admit the pressure is getting to me. There seem to be a ton of expectations surrounding what I should be saying here, in order to… I guess, absolve myself? As if there’s a checklist people want me to go through to perform the “perfect” creator apology. But, I don’t see the point. I care a lot about this community and I think you deserve something a lot more sincere than some hollow chat-gpt apology. I understand that that’s foolish, on my part. Things are done that way so often because they work. But what you’ll find throughout this post, is that I’m kind of an idiot about some things. I’m stubborn and hard-headed and a little bit pretentious. And so, what I’m planning to do here is to simply tell you the truth about what happened. No cherry picking. All my mistakes, but also the context that goes with them. And at the end, my formal apology. This is a long and winding tale with a lot of characters. I’m going to be sharing some usernames as we go, in the interest of clarity and transparency. You’ll understand why with the context. But please do not seek these people out. Don’t pick fights with them. It will only make everything worse, for all involved.

Cool? Cool. But first I need to address the elephant in the room. This will probably seem like irrelevant drama at first, but this is the nuance and background that I wasn’t adequately able to articulate the night before last. In more ways than one, this is a story told in twos. The first set of twos is you, the readers. Who you are, and what you’re hoping to find out in this post.

1.      The overwhelming majority of you, are earnestly wanting to understand what has happened in the Nevermore Discord. You are concerned that I am not who you hoped I was. You are disappointed, and I understand why. To you, I am so sorry. I want to say that things are not as bad as they seem, but that is not for me to decide. You will need to draw your own conclusions from the words I write. And I understand, whatever you choose to do next.

2.      And there is a small, but incredibly vocal minority of people who are absolutely living for this. They are spreading complete fabrications with no screenshots to speak of. Horrible, horrible accusations. People who are more excited about watching a dumpsterfire than they are about the series that brought them here in the first place. I’m not going to attempt to cater to those people in this post. Because nothing will ever be good enough. Everything that can be taken in bad faith will be taken in bad faith. It would be pointless. But you’ll see them in the comments and reblogs. This is a known group to not only myself, but many others. I will share some of their names in a later section so you know who to watch for. They will make a lot of noise around this post because they’ve been trying to make something like this happen for actual years. And now that I had a genuinely concerning response that good people reasonably want me to explain, they’re lunging at the chance to throw absolutely anything at the wall. It’s parasocial levels of hatred. This is some deep and horrible lore.

The next set of twos is how two things can be true at the same time. And that is exactly what is going on here, in this situation. Let me be really clear, because I don’t want either truth to be lost in my explanation as they are intrinsically linked to one another.

1.      I did a downright terrible job explaining myself in the Discord when people started asking about crimson. I can give you all kinds of contributing factors for this, and I might later. But none of them really matter. It was incredibly careless of me to use “egging them on” and “cried wolf”  to describe what I understood. At the time I was really laser-focused on expressing what happened as simply and quickly as possible because the channel replies were paused and I felt like everyone was just waiting for me to be finished with my message. But after stepping back, I immediately understood how badly I messed up, because of course these idioms are routinely weaponized against survivors of SA and CSA. That is not how I intended to use them. It was an unfortunate case of one thing looking and sounding like another thing. Incredibly ham-fisted and irresponsible on my part. To the survivors who read my words and felt that it echoed their past experiences, I’m heartbroken that I did that to you. That lapse of judgement was a betrayal to both you and me. I don’t know where my head went, and I’m just blown away by my own lack of awareness in that message. So for that I am and will continue to be sorry.

2.      The second thing that can be true is that, while you are all absolutely owed an explanation and an apology, there are also some people amongst you who are using this fuck-up on my part as a springboard to take me down.  These people have been trying to get a call out post to pop off about me for at least a year, and they have been very quick to jump into the reblogs and comments about this very serious topic with complete lies and slander. Just, anything that might stick to the wall. We’ll address this later on as well. But please understand that me discussing the harassment I’ve faced from these groups is not at the expense of me also owning up to my faults and taking the proper accountability.

And the last set of twos is one I’ve alluded to in the first sets, concerning a pair of toxic side-servers that ran adjacent to the main Nevermore Discord. Completely unofficial cliques. And invisible to myself and Flynn and our mod team. We were eventually made aware that both of them were breaking laws and Discord ToS in ways that leaked into our server and affected our members negatively. As such, both groups were mass-banned. And the cliques are the ones running a majority of the discourse you’ve been seeing here, because while they are formally banned from the discord, we have absolutely no say in their participation on Tumblr. Now, keep in mind. Both of these groups were uncovered after crimson was banned the first time. That’s important later.

Clique #1

My understanding of the first group is that it started as a gaming server for people who met one another through the Nevermore Discord. I don’t know when or why it started being used to talk shit about other readers, but I do know that it got really vicious. And it was sort of an open secret for long before I knew anything about it. I found out after that there were a lot of people passively in this server, just observing. It was that much of a spectacle.

Now, this clique had been pretty rude. Like they’d try to start fights with me in the discord fairly often, both in the Patreon and free spaces. But it wasn’t grounds for dismissal until we found out about the baiting and the alts.  These people had a lot of grievances, but one really united them: they were extremely upset about anyone who would ship Prospero.

Many of you know, that Prospero is an aromantic character, canonically. And you may notice that canonically, he has no apparent love interest. But this group wanted to make sure other readers were not thinking about Prospero in relationships, or creating ship content of him for any reason on the grounds that it would be considered a “proship.” I told them (and I stand on this) that it’s not up to them to police the thoughts of other readers, and that aromantic people have widely varying lifestyles and experiences and do not need to be infantilized that way.

This turned out to be a bad move on my part, because it brought with it an onslaught of alt accounts coming in and "innocently" kicking up what I now refer to as the “prosp-aro” debate every time they had the chance. But because of this and what a common occurrence it was, we started being able to pick out the alts. And we realized that this group of people had been using the same alt accounts with different names to antagonize certain readers they’d decided they hated, and it had gone on for a long time.

I did a lot of investigative work in dms trying to figure out who all was responsible for the harassment, and settled on a list that was vetted by three different people who knew about the clique. And all three of these people insisted that, while Laci was in the group and in a lot of the screencaps saying pretty dubious things, that she was good people. So I believe them, and let Laci stay. This group was banned on April 3, 2024, and contained the following users:

-          lilnatx (nat)

-          suitino (sushi)

-          jj_the_jet_plane (layden)

-          rivsticks (jasper)

-          atheimee (athena)

-          jinxs.com (lanx/jinx)

-          smartestginger (nico)

-          thereallandofbugs (bugs)

-          rosienemui (rosie)

These were the names they were known by on the Discord. I don’t have the Tumblr accounts tied to these identities. But some might be the same. I know a lot of them are here.  It should be noted that jinx was later unbanned due to pressure from Laci that they had been banned in error, after the fact. We allowed them back in after a few days as a favor to Laci since the situation seemed like it was very stressful for her. This would prove to be yet another a mistake since, as you have probably seen in the screenshots from the night before last, jinx rapidly escalated things to another level while I was trying to figure out how to handle crimson’s unbanning and subsequent rebanning an hour later.

Clique #2

Phew. Still with me? Great. The second group we needed to ban was one that actually started long before the first one, but was a lot smaller and comparatively more subtle. This group, to my knowledge, cropped up around the time that ep. 39 of Nevermore was released. (11/10/22) We knew about this group but not who all was involved in it or in what capacity for a very long time. They would consistently post things on Tumblr trying to start a scandal. I recall posts alleging that we were racists, or SA apologists, or that we were sending death threats to a random confessions account.

To be clear, these allegations are completely false. This clique will say anything. Like a recent post one of them put up during this discourse said that hiwi (our mod) is both a r*pe apologist and a childhood friend of mine and that’s the only reason she hasn’t been banned. Hiwi is absolutely nothing of the sort, and I have never met her in person. In fact, she lives on the other side of the continent.

Now, this clique is a little different than the first. The first, to my knowledge, was a group of friends that got toxic and felt morally superior about their opinions and it all kind of got away from them. The vibe was a little catty, I guess. Gossipy. But this clique has more of a stalker vibe. It’s dark.

They’ve had it out specifically for me for as long as I can remember. And some of them (at least one, at all times) would subscribe to our patreon, both to sow dissent in our stream chats and also to leak literally all the content back to the others, including me talking about random shit like what I ate for lunch. Just so they could like. Laugh about it, I guess. I’ll never understand why. [Editing note: because in the final moments of proofreading this post I see one of these people has made some master post about what a terrible person I am? A lot of those screenshots are from Patreon channels and the guy STILL has them laying around. I’m telling you, they stole everything that wasn’t nailed down.] 

The biggest grievance this clique had is that any ship with Montresor is an “SA fetish ship” because to them he is a r*pist because of how he made Ada bark (?) and since Montrada is canon, that means we are supporters of SA, and that Morella and Ada should be together instead. Listen, I’ll level with you, this one baffles me. I don’t even know how to begin to untangle it. But if you see a lot of vitriol about us being SA apologists from these users, it’s because Montresor exists. That’s pretty much it.

You can ask them for screencaps ‘til you’re blue in the face, but unless they build fake ones from the ground up, they’re never going to be able to back up their wild claims. Simply put, they’re provocateurs, and they use the scariest words they can to whip people up into a panic.

We became aware that they were leaking patreon content when one of them was caught publicly referring to things that were being said behind a paywall when we knew they weren’t a patron. It unraveled from there.  People who knew about their antics shared screenshots and information with us, and we finally realized the scope of the clique’s hatred and banned whoever was even left in the Nevermore Discord. But they continue to be active in the community on tumblr. You’ll have seen them around. They were banned on 5/11/2024 and the names involved are as follows (again, a mishmash of discord names, nicknames, and tumblr accounts):

- percy (gremlinguy145 on tumblr)

- queenmorningrose (annabel-lee-nevermore on tumblr)

- spoopycactus630 (spoopy-nevermore-dump on tumblr)

- grif/horrorshow (conscience-grim on tumblr)

- unreqiknizd

- duke aralt (westofthestyx)

- eden (sapphic-mad-scientist on tumblr)

- priemium

Again I’d like to reiterate. The point in sharing these names is not to incite any sort of response against these people. But they are folding themselves into the fray and doing what they can to whip everyone else up into a mob, and all as we’re talking about a discord server that they have been banned from for months now. The above context is also relevant for the next section, which is why you’re all here in the first place.

What the hell happened with Crimson?

I hope it’s not confusing, but now we’re going back to 3/14/2024, before anything I just outlined above had come to light. The cliques were quietly doing their harassment and baiting and raiding and whatever-the-hell behind the scenes, but Flynn and I and the mods were blissfully unaware of how bad it was getting. We get a dm from Laci. The same Laci who was part of Clique #1 and was rescued from being banned with the others by her friends outside the group. Jinx’s friend, who managed to get them unbanned as well. You have probably seen these screencaps already, but I will show them to you again, just in case.

Sufficed to say, we were immediately alarmed by the information Laci shared in her DM with us. Now, I want to be very clear about this because it’s been lost in the game of telephone. What Laci outlines in her dm to me, were the events that occurred between six users (including crimson) in a group chat with minors. Everyone in the evidence was censored (pfp and username), as was the image that crimson showed them. When I asked, Laci agreed to give me one name of one of the minors in the dm. I’ll call them Alice, but that is not their real name. I asked if I could talk to Alice about this, I was told by Laci, no. Alice doesn’t want to talk. I was like, ok I understand, that’s fine. 

I hope it makes sense when I say that it is not feasible for us to moderate the things that happen in peoples’ dms. As you’ve seen above, the mod team doesn’t usually get involved with drama unless whatever is happening is directly affecting the experience people are having in the Nevermore Discord because that is all we can see and the only place we have any real authority.  But this was obviously a special case. We banned crimson very quickly without asking any follow-up questions, because of course we did!? I’ve seen people say I’m harboring or defending crimson or that we’re buddies but we barely spoke, ever. They were a stranger to me then, and they still are now.

But something about the entire situation wasn’t adding up to me. And I want to be clear that none of this is in any way meant to discredit csa survivors, I’m really just trying to put you in my headspace and walk you through my thought process. But I found that the evidence was just, sort of strange. Laci started her dm explaining that she found this information out because she and a group of people were investigating crimson for ‘art tracing’ which felt, to me, like a bizarre non-sequitur and totally irrelevant next to the evidence of them showing nsfw content to minors. Petty, kind of. Like I wanted to ask – why were you doing that in the first place? People trace Flynn’s art all the time. As long as they’re not selling it, it’s not a big deal.

Most of the crops are from a PC but the windows are oddly small, and only contain a couple messages at a time. Some have American formatted time and some have European formatted time. So different users, I assume? The names were blotted out, which I would understand for a public call-out but not for a private report to the mod team. Laci was not in this gc at any point in time, despite being the one to report. 

One of the users was apparently 12, to which I ask – what is a 12-year-old doing on discord at all? If we knew who they were, we would have reported the account. Discord is not a safe place for a child that age, let alone a small group chat. Along with 18-year-old Crimson, there was also a 22- and 17-year-old in the chat, which left us wondering – why hadn’t anything been done?

I had no evidence that anyone ever told crimson they were minors, and I feel if it existed, it would have been in the screencap dump (I find that sometimes a noticeable lack of key evidence is evidence in itself). No one seems to have tried to kick crimson from the group chat or report their account for inappropriate behavior. Then there’s the fact that this is a group chat. Anyone in it can leave at any time. 

Then I came across the messages that started this whole gc, and it only got stranger when I realized Alice started it, called it “Women Lovers” and created it “so we can talk about Nevermore women without having to filter ourselves” after they all reacted to a sultry but sfw drawing of Lenore that crimson had made and posted in our hideout channel. And all that made me wonder why Alice didn’t just kick crimson, if she had admin power?  Do you see what I mean? It’s just all a bit head tilty. I noticed it at the time. But I said nothing. Because it didn’t matter. Crimson, no matter what happened, exposed minors to nsfw content. And that’s on them. And I’ve never in my life defended it. We banned them.

Crimson was beside herself. She came off humiliated and apologetic, and insisted she had no idea and begged to come back to a community she said she loved. But we told her no, there’s no coming back from doing what she did.

Time passes and we uncover Clique #1. And while we figured out who the main players were, I dmed with Laci. And it was Laci herself, who tells me that it was Alice who made most of Clique #1’s alt accounts, and that it was Alice who used those alt accounts to harass people and try to get them to start fights or say something that might get them in trouble. 

And I’ll be honest with you, the mod team still didn’t think much of it, outside of – we need to figure out which accounts were the alts. So we did. We had several confirmed to us.  And those accounts were zeroing in on certain users that the clique didn’t like. At the time we noticed two notable targets in addition to the mod team. I won’t name them, it’s their business if they want to weigh in about all that. But in screencaps, they’ll be labeled Target #1 and Target #2.

More time passes and Clique #2 comes to light. As you can imagine, by now we’re feeling disillusioned, and very tired of trying to moderate shit we cannot see for ourselves. And that’s when crimson comes back to very hesitantly ask if they might be able to appeal their ban. It wasn’t until then that it occurred to us that Laci (on behalf of Alice) was the only one who ever reported anything to us about Crimson. 

And I want to just say that again. Because it’s gotten lost too. Laci was the only person who ever reported Crimson. There was not one single other person who ever sent a modmail or a dm or even a ping to anybody on the mod team. I have since (only yesterday) seen some screencaps that are rather skin crawly, but even those happened in yet another side server. Thinking on this, the mods went back through the known alt accounts Alice had used. And they found that Alice harassed crimson both on her main account and on the same alt accounts that she used to harass the other targets.

By now, Alice is banned for completely unrelated reasons. Not because of what happened with Crimson. I’ve seen that one flying around and I’m sorry it’s just not true. It’s because she was relentlessly harassing and cyberbullying people in the discord we moderate. Laci is still there, but had lost my trust, for being involved with both the drama I’ve mentioned here and more that I don’t care to dip into. It’s ultimately irrelevant. But what am I going to say to Laci? “Hey, did you and Alice, by any chance, coordinate some kind of bizarre trap together to get crimson banned from the discord because you suspected them of tracing their art?” And once again. Because I want to keep this top of mind. Even if that were the case, it doesn’t make what Crimson did alright, and it never will. Sharing nsfw content in front of minors is a disgusting thing to do. And one that we frankly are really irritating about in the moderation of the discord. I’ve heard people say that we over-moderate when it comes to art. 

But all this stuff about a “known pedophile?” If it was known, then we were on the outs. And to even this minute right now, I don’t have any conclusive evidence that Crimson is a pedophile. The evidence I have is that Crimson shared nsfw with a group of people whose ages they did not know. Which is fucking gross. It’s an adult’s responsibility to make sure they’re speaking with other adults before posting things of that nature. 

But at the time, the way I read the situation is that Crimson had only just stopped being a minor and was egregiously negligent in how they were speaking and what they were posting, likely in part due to them not being aware enough of their adult responsibilities.  And hey. I know some of you are chomping at the bit. You can call me naïve for this! This is what I’m referring to when I say that I can be a real idiot. But I feel everyone has been very quick to call Crimson a pedophile. I know this is pedantic to say, but the prerequisite for being a pedophile is “being attracted to minors.” Based on the information I had at my fingertips, I did not think Crimson sought out these minors. Crimson was invited to the gc, they did not ask to join. 

I have seen discussions about all the things crimson did to their victims since we unbanned them but I have not seen screencaps to support that whole ‘marriage proposal’ thing, and again I think it sounds a bit odd coming as a pedophilia accusation from someone only one year younger than crimson.  

But you know what? I don’t know crimson. Maybe we were wrong. But even if we weren’t, I realize in hindsight that it was a stupid decision for the mod team to give them a second chance. We didn’t have anyone to consult about what happened because all the other people in the chat had been obscured from me and I didn’t feel like Laci would give me a straight answer. 

The mods and I felt at the time that crimson, like the other targets of Clique #1, had been singled out and that they deserved another very closely monitored chance in the discord, which they said they still missed dearly. I’m a bleeding heart, alright? A total sap. I know that. But being honest with you, I felt bad. It feels horrible to be singled out and targeted. And I was probably too close to that feeling at the time, seeing as we were on the tail end of finding out the Clique #2 had pursued me so relentlessly for so long. 

So for my part, I’m sorry. I made a rash decision that was influenced by some very personal circumstances. And we should have left it alone. Based on the evidence I've seen, I don’t know if I personally would call crimson a pedophile and certainly I wouldn't call them a known pedophile, but I am regretful that we risked it either way.

When I was trying to explain all of this in the west common room channel two nights back, things had boiled over and were already getting out of hand very quickly. A lot of brand new accounts were joining the discord with one word intros just to start conflicts in the public server with crimson. Alts. Either from banned users or burner accounts. And I got panicky. One of the mods paused the messages in west common room but no one besides me was available to handle the situation at that moment. Reacts about being silenced were pouring in and I felt pressured to quickly take over and try to explain. 

In my rush, I stupidly didn’t backread more than a quick skim. And I ate shit, y’all. You saw. One thing I want to state outright. I’m talking a lot about my thoughts and my feelings and it’s because I don’t wanna speak for Flynn or for the mods. But I didn’t make this decision alone. In fact, I was dragging my feet and being really lazy about okaying the whole thing. Just because I was busy, not because I was fretting over it or anything. But I had to be pinged and then literally tapped on the shoulder by Flynn, asking me to respond to mod chat when this was being discussed earlier that day. That doesn’t change the fact that I was part of the decision. I agreed to unban crimson. Foolishly. I understand that, now. 

I hope that now it makes some more sense though, how it came to happen. I never meant to hurt anyone. My own past and present feelings got in the way, and I own that. But in the moment, my personal intention was to give crimson a second chance because I felt that they’d been targeted by Clique #1. Not to ignore anyone’s concerns or make them feel unsafe, even if those were the ultimate outcome.  

So, completely underprepared and defensive, I jumped into west common room and I just. Blew it. Totally fucking blew it. I knew it instantly but it’s hard to stay logical when people are telling you you’re vile and evil and they’re sick that they ever thought you were a good person and that they’ll never see you the same way again. My mind went blank and I don’t really remember much of what happened next. But I said what I said, and I should have done better. 

I wish there was a word bigger than sorry. I’m beside myself. I know there was probably a way to make everyone happy. To make everything okay. But I wasn't clever enough to figure it out in the moment, and it eats at me. So it’s like I’m sorry for my poor judgment and my terrible choice of words, but there’s another layer where I’m also sorry for not matching how wonderful this community is with how wonderful (or well, unwonderful) I was two nights ago. I promise I am going to work harder to be better for you all.

Again, to every victim of SA and CSA, my heart is with you, more personally than you might realize. I don’t think I could have handled my explanation in a worse way. And I’m so so sorry.

Moving forward, I am also going to take an enormous step back from moderating and participating in the discord in general. I feel like a lot of this happened because I was still treating it like it belonged to a smaller fandom, like Shiloh’s. But realistically, I don’t have time to both moderate and make the series itself, and I really dragged my feet on being honest with myself about that. And for that too, I apologize. We’re going to get more mods, they’re going to have full control of the moderation, and Flynn and I are going to do what we love more than anything in the world and just make Nevermore.

I understand if you won’t be there for it. This is not a flattering picture I’ve painted for you. And you’d be well within your rights, to decide not to give us another chance. But it's been a pleasure to lurk here in this wildly talented corner of tumblr. And I’ll never forget it. <3 Yours truly, -Kit Trace

[txttletale]

Ok so, let's assume there are 2 steps on how to deal with AI, which are:

give up on luddite dead end pursuits of turning back the clock to more indivualized production

put energy into productive working class organizing

Could you please elaborate who is even trying to do that thing you mention in step 1? Those in denial? I have yet to see anyone, all I see is people being upset and thus hating it, which is a natural reaction to having your art be stolen. Give it time, people need time to process this change.

And regarding your step 2, that's gonna happen either way? I mean, what choice do artists have? Same as all tech that those in power want to push, ai is gonna persist, it's inevitable, as is artists trying to adapt.

I genuinely see no sense in posts advocating for ai, like, it doesn't need that, it's doing good without you guys, it has a pr team working tirelessly trying to integrate it daily. What are tumblr users who advocate for it trying to accomplish here? Make artists hate it less? As an artist whose art got stolen, even if I do manage to successfully adapt, I will not stop hating ai and those behind it? Like, what's the purpose here 😭 Sorry this got kind of long

i mean i don't consider myself an 'advocate' for 'ai art'. generative visual art is an artform i personally have little interest in making. i think if openai went bankrupt tomorrow it would be awesome and very funny. you are making a classic mistake, which is to assume that every issue is like a splatoon splatfest with two clearly defined teams. i point out that the things that people frothed up into anti-AI hysteria say are at best untrue and at worst deeply reactionary, pushing right-wing social views about art or right-wing economic views about copyright because i think those things are bad.

i don't bother making posts pointing out that, like, @ApeHODL69Doge on twitter who thinks every movie will be ai generated by 2026 is moron because, very simply, i don't exist in a social environment where i run into that kind of guy or anyone who doesn't think that kind of guy is a moron, and also because liberals can and have done a pretty great job comprehensively debunking that type of guy's nonsense arguments and empty tech hype.

this does not apply to me but many users on tumblr who "advocate for AI art" are literally just defending themselves against vicious ableist harassment mobs who think it's okay to tell a disabled person their disablity isn't real or they should draw with their mouth or they're just whiny because they used the funny picture machine, so i think what those people might be trying to accomplish is to stop getting harassed, and i think that's a pretty admirable goal

my personal goal is to encourage people to think more critically about new technologies and understand that where these new technologies immiserate them it is because of the social structures and economic system under which that technology is deployed, not because of an evil devil curse lurking in the technology itself. hopefully this answers some of your confusion.

[tigersharktheautisticseawing]

WAIT GUYS FUCK I GOTTA TALK ABOUT THIS OR I'LL FUCKING DIE

(spoiler alert: this somehow grew from five talking point to almost 2000 words of Bad Trip symbolism, so buckle up, buttercup, cuz we goin' for a wild ride)

So, I'm rewatching Truth Seekers with a friend, and Moxie's Bad Trip and Blitzø's Bad Trip, and I just noticed some things (this is gonna be heavily Blitzø centered, so prepare for that)

Moxie's Bad Trip

In this, I specifically want to point to four things

So Blitz is very accurate throughout Moxxie's whole segment (read his pegging comments and "Because you my precious little bitchboy are tripping balls!"), but I want to point to one moment specifically

At 10:09 Moxie says

"Cause you're thoughtless and cruel and you'll end up alone!"

And at that point, at exactly 10:11, Blitz makes this face

Up until this point and from this point onward his eye on the mask part of his face is glowing red and undetailed, pupil not visible

This singular frame shows exactly how deep Moxxie hit Blitz with that comment, and foreshadows the fact that he has a massive phobia/obsession on the whole "dying alone" thing. Like, I want to scream, this is so beautifully done. Whoever thought of this frame in this context has my fullest respect

The second thing is what Moxxie says just before the first part of Blitzø's Bad Trip

At 9:02 Moxxie says

"Cause if you're here causing frustration, I'm torturing you in your hallucination!"

Now let's take a look "causing frustration" and "torturing you", because that's exactly what's happening here

In Moxxie's Bad Trip, the worst Blitzø does is call him a bitch/bitchboy and making some comments about the whole M&M pegging thing, but that's about it. It's mostly Moxxie screaming at Blitz and singing with him about becoming better

In Blitzø's Bad Trip, Moxxie brings up Blitz's worst insecurities, calls him basically stupid once, and kinda just rants what Blitz thinks about him

So the words "frustration" and "torturing" definitely fit the respective songs

The third thing is that the mask replaces Blitzø's scar

Under that mask Blitz has a completely normal and unscarred face

Meaning that Moxxie's subconscious straight up erased the physical embodiment of Blitzø's most major trauma and replaced it with a mask, of all things

I saw a theory on here, concerning the people at the Blitzø hate party, that the fact that the Blitzø cake is unscarred means that Blitz hid the vulnerable side of his and showed it off as "tough guy scars", so they stripped him of it as a "fuq u ur not tough", when meanwhile it's exactly what Blitzø would want happening, his scars just straight up disappearing one day.

Well, I think the same happened to Moxxie

I think he doesn't see the scar as a sign of vulnerability and/or physical embodiment of his worst mistake that caused his trauma, but as a tough-guy mask, designed to make him not have to talk about his feelings

(If you think something else's going on here, do tell! I just realised that last one while writing this and I find it very interesting)

And, lastly, Blitz's short line just before the one I talked about in point 1

Aka:

"I don't know, eventually everyone goes"

It feels really self aware of Blitz, but this isn't Blitz, this is Moxxie

So Moxxie, consciously or not, realised that Blitz pushes people away with his behaviour and that it's a genuine problem, but didn't realise the whole scar thing

So I wonder what exactly is Moxxie's image of Blitz. Like, considering what we know that Moxxie knows, he seems to have some elements of the puzzle but not the whole picture, and assumed incorrectly what the full picture is

2.Blitzø's bad trip

Now, here we begin the absolute fucking masterpiece that is the symbolism in this one

For one, let's talk about the spectre's voices

Moxxie and Stolas's voices are pretty on-point, at least to me, and we'll later touch on why I think that's the case, but let's talk about Bad Trip!Verosika, Striker and Fizz first

All three of them don't sound like normal

Instead, they sound like Blitz trying to make their voices

Striker's has an obvious tinge of Brandon Rogers in it, honestly it sound more like Blitz than Striker, as if Blitz hadn't really memorised his voice that well

Fizz's is, in my opinion, more well-balanced. I can hear a bit of Alex Brightman in it but also quite a lot of Blitz

Lastly, we have Verosika. She sound a lot like Blitz, but her manner of speaking is purely Verosika, which imo makes this the most accurate one.

Now, what does the Blitzø-voice mean?

Well, it all has a very specific motif

It's things that Blitz would say as a form of self-hatred

Think about it

"I don't need you, I can do this shit on my own so easily!" "But you don't want to do things alone Blitzo!"

"You tried the solo act, but it didn't work out so well!"

"Yet you still shove away anyone who gets too close until they resent you for being a selfish, shit spittin' snob!"

(the bold parts are the hallucinations, the red is Blitz)

Now, the things they said are very much the stuff Blitz would hate in himself. The fact that he wants someone to care for him, the fact that he can't do what he wants alone even though he tried, and, of course, his inability to get vulnerable with anyone causing him to push people he cares about away until they hate him.

So, I think that these are the thoughts that plague Blitz's brain daily, his self hatred, but it chose to talk through the mouths of the people most affected by said flaw

Striker was literally invited to join IMP. That proves that Blitz didn't want to do this stuff alone

Fizzarolli was his duo act for a while, and his robo version saw him trying the solo act, so it makes sense for him to say, that, on top of the circus vocabulary

Verosika is pretty self-explanatory. He shoved her away when she tried to be vulnerable with him, and she now resents him

So, now that we have that outta the way, let's talk about Moxxie and Stolas

Moxxie does a lot of rambling, but he also roasts him pretty bad

"I simply follow your orders! It's not my fault that your orders are as nonsensical as a suntanning bed left out on the cold rainy porch of a fresh April shower"

"Perhaps you should crack open a dictionary sometimes"

"Admit it, my dear boss. You don't know what you're doing half the time, and you depend on me and the missus to manage your foolish flights of fancy"

"I believe your subconscious is trying to tell you that you simply cannot fathom proper intimacy, but also crave it as well. It’s rather unfortunate sir, considering it’s often how you treat those who stand by you, such as myself"

"Are you worried I might have enough of it one day as well?"

But he also says some rather self-deprecating stuff that he wouldn't say in real life

"And then maybe you can understand half of the frivolous things I carry on and on about on my many rants about upbringings"

So, I think that this is Blitz's opinion of Moxxie. Now, why do he and Stolas keep their normal voices?

Well, I think that it's because, in Truthseekers, they both didn't hate him yet

That wasn't his self-hatred speaking

That wasn't him speaking

Well, at least in Stolas's case

In my opinion Moxxie's voice is altered for one of two reasons

• Moxxie is literally right next to him and high with him, so his voice is fresh in his mind

Not fun, kinda boring, but reasonable

• He hasn't fucked up with Moxxie yet, so his subconscious hasn't created lines that would be repeated so much in his mind that his voice slowly seeps into them

Very fun, also very reasonable

And that second reason is what I think happened in Stolas's case too. His voice is kinda flirty/condescending because that's the Stolas Truthseekers!Blitzø knows. He doesn't know his personality yet. For now he's just a rich, blue-blooded asshole he fucks once a month.

Now, another thing, Blitzø's outfit

He's dressed like a clown here, specifically he looks kinda like in the Loo Loo Land flashback

And his outfit changes when he gets dragged around in chains by Stolas

So this (I think), symbolizes one of three things:

• He fucked up relationships with people in the past

This is his past outfit, so it obviously has something to do with his past, and this is a pretty sound theory, but Striker kinda makes it fall apart

• The people he fucked up relationships with see the past version of him

A bit better, and pretty good overall

• This is himself at the worst point in his life in that outfit he wore in the past

Yeah, his self hatred would *absolutely* exploit him like that, plus he kinda hated himself at that time, so bonus points!!!

Now, the fucking marks on his face

For one, his usual tattoo that looks kinda like an imp/succubus got replaced by a broken heart both in Blitzø and Moxxie's Bad Trips, but in Blitzø's bad Trip at one point the heart (and his outfit) get replaced by his normal self

When does this happen?

When he's near Stolas

I think this symbolizes how Stolas heals his heart and fixes it, as well as how he sees him for his present instead of his past, which is very sad considering *couch cough* the last two episodes *cough cough*

Now, the tear

The fucking tear

If it was on both sides of his face, this would be maybe about how sad he is

But, it's only on the white side

Only on the scar

So I think this is sort of an opposite to what happened with the scar in Moxxie's Bad Trip

Moxxie's subconscious got rid of the scar and replaced it with a mask, since Moxxie thinks of it as a sort of Tough Guy Personality™ thing

Meanwhile Blitzø's subconscious recognized the scar as a physical reminder of his emotional pain and added a tear, a single tear, that can mean that the scar is something left of a time of sadness and grief, a time of tears

Another thing is that the imps fanning Stolas with those big-ass fans are actually Blitzø's but completely black

So that's Blitz's subconscious telling him that he will end up serving Stolas/is already doing that/is under him, while also trying to tell him that he loves the bird

Also, how the mud on the golden stairs disappears after feathers touch it Again, just like with the heart thing, I believe it's another part of the whole "Stolas heals you" symbolism thingy

Also, notice how he turns from Past!Blitzø to normal Blitzø gradually, and the closer to Stolas he gets the more normal he gets

So I actually just realised that and I'm pretty sure it's part of the whole thing I mention in the (hopefully) las paragraph of this post

And, lastly, how he gets covered up in golden feathers at the end there? I think it's some part of him trying to say "You're gonna end up trapped, tied down, unable to escape, so escape NOW"

So yeah, now I'm interpreting Blitzø's Bad Trip as two parts of his subconscious fighting, with the dead dog of the matter being "Should we trust Stolas?"

(Yes, it did turn really Stolitz in the end there huh? Now I gotta add the tags!)

[classypauli]

She’s the Man

Pairing: Jenna Ortega x fem Reader A/N: I don’t even have words, I definitely wasn’t expecting this feedback, you guys made my day. Thank you for all the likes, rebloggs and comments!! You are the best!! Warning: alcohol, drunk people, grammar mistakes, bad punctuation in complex sentences, spelling errors Word count: 4.8k

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Y/N was walking down the hallway with Mason, they didn´t share many classes except literature. It was one of her favorite classes. Y/N becomes a little nerd if someone asks her about history, paintings, architecture, or literature. When she was a kid, she wasn´t into this kind of things. She used to do a lot of sports and her grades weren´t great but also not worse.

When she started to go to a high school she stopped. Her grades became better and soon she was topping most of her classes. Her classmates saw her as someone intelligent, she wasn´t just book smart, she had good opinions and when she started talking people listened to her, she didn´t know why, maybe because she didn´t talk much so they became interested in her talking.

But she never talked about herself. She was always trying to avoid any questions about her. Y/N didn´t know why she did that. She felt more secure that way, less on target. She likes to keep things like this together.  When she used to tell someone about her problems she didn´t feel relief, it was the opposite, she was scared that it wouldn´t end with that person or that they actually didn´t care and just listened to her cause they didn´t want to be impolite. So she found peace in her silence.

When she struggled she picked up a pen and notebook. She kept writing and writing until she forgot why she started. She never read it. Felt ashamed of her words and her feelings. She wasn’t alone after all, she had her family and brother, so why did she still feel so lonely? Y/N knew she wasn´t good with words but she wanted to be better.

When she became older she found herself in poems. Sometimes she was writing about her feelings, other times she was writing about things she likes, saw during the day, or just about her day. In some way they made her realize that being focused on bad things won´t bring her good feelings. And she felt stupid, of course, it was like this but talking about it and behaving according to it were two different things.

„How was your weekend?“ Mason asked as they walked side by side to their class, passing by some of their football teammates, shooting them nods.

„It was pretty good, got some sleep, how about you?“ she shot him a glance. Y/N still can´t believe that someone like him exists, he is so kind and helpful. Today after school they are having practice, she was kind of on the edge of her toes because on saturday they have the game but Mason supported her and calmed her nerves.

„Me too, there was a party going on, it was quite good but it would be even better if you were there.“

They walked into a class and took a seat, chatting about some festival going on this week when suddenly Percy came into a class. He saw her shot her a quick nod and started to make his way to them.

„Hey, Charlie! I didn´t see you almost all weekend!“ Yeah, they were always avoiding each other but not on purpose, Y/N was always somewhere and when she came to the dorm Percy wasn´t there yet, he was sleeping or it was the other way around.

He turned to Mason but didn´t say anything. It was weird, like some tension between them. They just kept looking at each other till Percy asked her about her Friday night.

„How was your hang out with your teammates?“

Mason shot her a questionable look but Percy didn´t seem to notice that. Y/N got stuck. Now there was no way she could keep lying because clearly, Mason was sitting beside her, she could say that she felt sick so she canceled the plans or-

„It was great.“ Mason said from beside her. „Why are you interested? You wanted to join us?“ he asked and kept looking at him for an answer. Y/N knew he didn´t mean the question that way but silently thanked him for saving her. Percy looked at him, stunned, as he wasn´t expecting his statement.

„No, of course not.“ After that, he walked away somewhere behind them to find a free chair to sit on. Mason looked at “Charlie” again with a slightly raised eyebrow.

„I´m not going to ask, if you want to tell me you can, just so you know, I don´t want to force you.“ He said softly. Mason can see the way his teammate is. How she only talks when someone asks her something. He sees how she acts and holds herself. He also can see that something is off but can´t really say what. But still, he has this urge to hold a protective wing above his new friend.

„Thank you, Mason.“ Y/N shot a small smile his way and he gave it back to her. Class began and she can only hope that Percy will forget about their small but tense interaction.

Soon the mentioned festival came. Y/N was walking around by herself not really sure where to head to. There were all the students from her school running around. She saw Georgie on the bench, he was holding big candy floss in his hand looking excited at it. The girl wanted to laugh at him, he looked really funny. Slowly she came to him with a small teasing smile on her face.

„Aren´t you a little too old for this?“ Y/N asked him looking at his change of face at her question.

„There is not something like an age barrier in eating cotton candy!“ Georgie shouted and turned his face around, acting angry at her. Of course, he was right, she liked it too, she just saw the opportunity and took it.

„Yeah, believe whatever you want“ Y/N smiled „Where is the rest?“ she was hitting on Hunter, the two boys were always together, they truly were like brothers, always bickering but supportive of each other. Percy was also a lot of time by their side but Hunter and Georgie were glued by the hip.

„I don´t know I´m waiting for him.“ He said as Y/N slowly took a seat by him. „And what brings you here? Shouldn´t you train for your upcoming match?“ he looked her way.

„Today we have a free day, coach was talking about him having some show at the festival.“ Y/N was looking forward to her match and wanted to be ready, hoping he would let her play for at least a couple of minutes. She wanted to find out how her body would react. She was a little nervous but this stress was healthy. It kept her going.

„Me and Hunter will come to watch you.“ The girl looked at him shocked. He was eating his candy floss with his fingers all sticky.

„You like something else besides eating and taking photography?“ she teased him and he looked at her with lowered eyebrows.

„I didn´t say I enjoy watching it, I just want to see how you lose your first game.“ Georgie laughed then Y/N punched his shoulder. „Ouch! I was only joking you know!“

She stopped and looked around her, feeling like someone was watching her and she was right. There was a girl not so far, looking at her with folded arms and a smirk on her face. She had long brown hair and was short. She started to make her way to the two of them. Y/N straightened her back and waited for what this girl had to say.

„Hey, I don´t think we know each other but my roommate talks a lot about you.“

Now that made the girl sitting on the bench stop. Roommate? She had never seen this girl and Y/N wasn´t sure where she should know her roommate from. The only girl she talks to is Jenna but she´s almost sure that she has no reason to talk about her.

„She is working in the photo booth, I´m sure she would be on top of the roof if you came to see her.“ She still has that teasing smile on her face.

„Uhm... yeah, sure“ Y/N lets out looking at Georgie who´s trying to hold his laugh. The girl left and he lets it out.

„Shut your mouth and keep eating.“ She hissed at him but he only continued with his laugh.

Soon she found Mason and some of her other teammates, they talked about the game how excited are they and how they would smash their opponent. Her brother called her again, saying how his tour was going and he wished her luck. Their parents luckily aren´t suspicious so everything is going according to plan. She takes her walk around the festival, looking at all kinds of booths and how people are enjoying themselves. She stopped by one and just stared, she saw Jenna, and she sat in one of the booths on her face her significant smile. Suddenly the brown eyed girl looked up and saw Y/N. She smiles wider and she indicates with her eyes at the side of the booth. Y/N slowly walks there are is greeted with Jenna´s hug. This was the first time they hugged and Y/N couldn´t focus on anything. She was shocked by the girl´s body language but also glad cause this meant their friendship became stronger.

„Hey, I was looking forward to seeing you today.“ Jenna backed her way out of their hug and looked up at her, still with their bodies close to one another. Y/N looked where they were and she saw that Jenna was working in a... photo booth.

„Uhm... yeah? Why? Do you need something?“ the other girl asked looking down at her again.

„No, I just wanted to see you.“ There goes her dimples again. They are so cute. Her whole face is too pretty. Y/N wanted to say something but was cut off by another voice.

„Hey football player glad you finally decided to come.“ She turned to Jenna „I found her when I went to the toilet, couldn´t hold myself from inviting her to our booth.“ She shot her teasing smile. Jenna face palmed herself, she could already imagine how she approached you and what she said. Gideon was like that, she is a big matchmaker but also really attentive and sweet when it's convenient.

„Charlie this is Gideon, Gideon Charlie.“ She pointed her hand from one to another.

„Hey Charlie, I heard a lot of things about you.“ She smirked and Jenna pushed her away, awkwardly looking around as she stood in front of Y/N.

„Ehm...so, I heard you have an upcoming game this Saturday, are you excited yet?“ the shorter girl asked as she looked at her feet, arms folded. Y/N found her cute right now, how she couldn´t look at her like she did before her roommate interrupted them.

„I pretty am, even though I don´t even know if I will play, I´ve been training only two weeks, and I’m not sure if the coach will let me play.“ She shook her shoulders.

„Oh I´m sure you will be playing, you are one of the best on your team.“ Jenna winked at Y/N and smiled at her. „I saw you a couple of times.“

Now, Jenna was acting as if she had seen her just a couple of times but the truth is, she saw her every practice. She doesn´t know why, at first she just went there cause she didn´t feel like going straight to her dorm, but when she saw you she knew that she wanted to see you again. You were so good. You acted like a totally different person on the field, you were confident and energetic, and your every move was calculated. You could easily catch someone´s attention. You caught Jenna´s attention.

Y/N felt a lot more confident because of Jenna´s words. She wasn´t the first person who said this to her.

„Will you come to see us?“

„Are you inviting me to watch you on your game?“ Jenna teased her.

„Well, if you already have some plans you don´t have to, I mean you probably have better things to do than to watch some stinky players running around the field chasing the ba-“ Y/N didn´t even finish her sentence and the other girls cut her off.

„I will come“ Jenna wouldn´t miss your first game, she was excited to see you being competitive. There was something about you that was always bringing her thoughts to you. You were such a good listener, a soft speaker, and intelligent. She doesn´t think she has ever met someone like you in her life. You were like a fresh air to her stereotypical life. She wanted to be with you cause every time you are together, you give her something new.

Jenna watched Y/N. She couldn’t tear her eyes off her. You were like someone else like they switched you. In-person, you were sweet, quiet, caring, and soft. On the field, you were almost aggressive but not in a bad way, you knew what you were doing. This was definitely your alter ego and Jenna was here for every second of it, you put on quite a show. Running back and forth in your jersey, defending than attacking, the ball moved exactly where you wanted it to move. You were fast, probably the fastest one on the field.

Jenna enjoyed it so much. She used to play football when she was a kid with her family when they spent time together and also in school. But that was a long time ago, she may not play it anymore but she still likes to watch it.

The girl moved her eyes as you got the ball on your foot and started to run trying to get near the opponent's net. Players trying to stop you, running after you, trying to slide their way to you, nothing works. When you got near the goal area you tried your luck and shot the ball into the net. The opponent's goalkeeper couldn’t see the ball because of his teammates standing in front of him, making the ball straight to the top corner. Whistle. Goal.

Jenna stood up clapping her hands big smile on her face as she watched you running to your teammates to celebrate your success. The whole tribune of the students from your school is clapping, yelling supportive words, happy that they are winning against a different university. Your coach is standing near the field with his arms folded and a proud smile on his face. It was definitely a good idea to put you in the first lineup.

“Charlie! That was so good!” Mason tapped your back, he had the biggest smile, and he was so happy for you. You were a big talent.

The game went on and it was almost the end, Y/N became calmer because they were leading. She shot her gaze a couple of times at the tribune and every time she could see Jenna looking at her, she hoped she was enjoying this. Y/N also saw Georgie and Hunter, both boys beside each other smiling widely at her with their thumbs up, Georgie with a hot dog in another hand.

Soon the game ended, and they won 3:0. Y/N was glad that her first match was successful and hopefully, she impressed others. In the changing room, her teammates were chanting, happy about their first match. After that, she walked out of the changing room, bag on her shoulder, still in her football jersey, she’s planning to take a shower in her dorm. She knew that they were a bit suspicious about her cause every time after practice she just took her bag and left, unchanged. But they thought maybe “Charlie” was just shy which was okay not everyone liked showing off skin, even if it was in front of the same gender. Y/N was near the entrance looking into her phone, texting her brother about her game.

„Hey football player.” She looked up from her phone and saw Jenna leaning on her side into the doors looking at her.

„Oh hi, wasn‘t expecting you, did you enjoy the game?” the girl asked as she got closer to her. Now they were looking at each other holding gaze, Jenna looked up biting her lip. You look good right now. Still being in jersey, sweaty forehead, hooded eyes from the energy you gave on the field. If this was someone else she was sure she wouldn’t find them as attractive as you right now.

Jenna nodded her head „Congratulations on your first successful game, pretty cool goal if I have to say.” She says softly still looking at the other girl.

„Pretty cool? It was awesome! Didn’t you see how I ran through half of their players and still shot it?” Y/N started defending herself „I was unstoppable.”

Jenna threw her head back letting out a laugh. She grabbed Y/N by the arm and started to pull her outside of the building.

„Come, we need to celebrate your first win”

„Wait, but I’m still in these clothes, I can’t go anywhere like this.”

Jenna shot her a look „There isn’t any problem if you ask me, but we can stop by your dorm?”

They walked out, still holding each other's hands, Y/N didn’t want to be rude and tear up their hands, she liked this feeling, Jenna’s hand was so soft and warm. Y/N felt good with Jenna, like she has finally someone just for herself.

But her thoughts went to her words, what if her roommate was there and saw them together? He would beat her up. But it was afternoon and he used to be at this time somewhere in the amphitheater.

Y/N agreed as they started making their way towards the dorm rooms. They chatted about some party going on tonight. Jenna’s friend Gideon invited her. Jenna was about to decline but her roommate said there would be also a football team probably celebrating their win. That made Jenna say yes to her offer which Gideon only laughed at.

To Jenna “Charlie” was special, she didn’t know what caught her attention, something inside of her wanted to be with you, by your side.

Luckily for Y/N, Percy was nowhere to be found. She invited Jenna to their room she took her new clothes and went to get a shower. Jenna was sitting on Y/N’s bed, looking around trying to find something which would only make her closer to her friend. Your bed smelled like you, she loved your scent it was like citrus with cedar or something like green tea, she couldn’t describe it in one word. On your desk were books and a notebook, you had it perfectly organized, and everything had its own place. Yeah, you are definitely a perfectionist. When she looked at the other side of the room she could exactly say who was the owner.

The paintings and papers spread around the desk and floor, different types of art. She found them a couple of times in her locker, at the table where she sat, or in her mailbox. Paintings of her. At first, she found it cute but it kept graduating as she got them almost every day. And it was always herself.

But maybe she would be glad, if it ended just with this.

She was in a room where lived two people. One that makes her most pleasant in their presence and the other one she feels most uncomfortable with.

„So what´s your plan for today?“

They were eating in some corner restaurant, Jenna got herself some vegan food, and Y/N sat in front of her with a plate of big burger and some fries. It felt good seeing them like this, both out of student uniforms in their civilian clothes, enjoying each other´s company.

Jenna wanted to know, inconspicuously, if her friend in going to the local party that night. If she said yes then Jenna would also have some plans, that´s for sure. Even though she doesn´t like parties, not anymore.

„Well, some of my teammates are going to some party, I don´t know where, they asked me if I´ll join them.“ She said as she kept eating her fries. „I haven´t decided yet, I´m not really into parties, too loud for me.“ That really didn´t answer her question.

„What about you? Any plans?“

„Gideon was saying something about today´s night but I´m not sure yet.“

„Oh, cool.“ And just like that they continued eating their meals, both hoping, at some point they´ll see each other today. Jenna looked up from the table to Y/N, the girl looked flawless right now, with her invincible walls down, silently eating a burger. Jenna pushed her hand up and stole some fries from her plate. Her friend looked at her with her head not moving from her meat, unimpressed. Softly shook her head from side to side.

„You are lucky it´s you, if it was someone else they wouldn´t have a hand by now.“ She said. She didn’t mind sharing food, sometimes, and she definitely didn´t mind sharing food with the brown-eyed girl.

Y/N was thinking. About Percy to be exact, about their deal or more like his, because he isn´t doing anything to repay. But she promised him she would at least try. And she also tried. When she and Jenna had classes together, like when they were lab partners, she could feel Percy´s stare. His eyes were boring into her skull so hard that sometimes she could even feel a headache. When she looked up at him he moved his eyes to the other girl and back to her. Signalizing what he wants from her.

So she asked. She asked Jenna if she was dating anyone or if she ever thought about going out with Percy. Jenna only laughed at her and shook her head, trying to avoid any questions about him. Y/N could feel something was off, the brown-eyed girl knew the boy and still didn´t even look at him or say hi to him. But Y/N doesn´t know why is she like that. Something happened between them and she wasn´t sure if she wanted to know. It wasn´t her business after all.

After Y/N´s questions, Jenna felt conflicted. She was used to guys asking her out, trying something with her but not you, you were different. You are the only guy who hasn´t tried to get with her. And she liked that. But when you asked her about Percy and said that she would be perfect for him, she almost wasn´t sure if she heard you right.

Perfect for him. But would he be perfect for her? Jenna knew the answer to that question. She disliked him. For what he made her feel. Jenna didn´t want to be perfect for him, she wanted to be perfect for you. And it took her quite a long time to realize that she liked you more than a friend. She talked to Gideon and Emma about it, they told her the same thing.

But did you feel the same?

Jenna was now standing in someone´s living room. Loud music and drunk students were escorting her thoughts. She was looking for her friends, they agreed that they would meet there. She saw Gideon sitting on the sofa, cup in her hand. She was talking to someone Jenna recognized from school. She sat beside her and her roommate looked her way.

„Hey, glad you could make it.“

„What are you drinking?“ Jenna grabbed Gideon´s cup and smelled it.

„Vodka, I got it from the kitchen, down the hallway to the right, you want me to go with you?“ Gideon was sweet, she knew Jenna didn´t enjoy such a thing as a party.

„No it´s okay, I´ll get it, maybe I´ll see Emma or Joy somewhere.“

So with that, she picked herself up from a sofa and started to go into the kitchen. There were a bunch of teens, she barely could make it through them. Some were really drunk and the scent of strong alcohol could be smelled from them. Some guys who saw her shot her flirtatious smirk. She brushed them off and was trying not to make any eye contact on her way. When she saw football players she immediately started looking around if you weren´t somewhere over there. No, you weren’t. She was looking forward to meeting you today but still with no luck. She hoped you would decide to go there.

She made it to the kitchen took a cup in her hand and started looking for some juice. She didn´t feel like drinking, maybe if she was at home with some close friends or you, she would drink but she was at a party, by herself in a stranger´s kitchen.

„Hey.“

Jenna heard a voice from the back. The girl turned around and saw someone she was trying to avoid at all costs. She hoped he wouldn´t be there today but of course he would, they are in the same school after all.

Percy was standing by the kitchen entrance, eyes low, looking at her. They were alone there and loud music could be heard from the other room. Suddenly she didn´t feel safe. The last time they met they were in a room full of people and it still didn´t stop him. Now they were alone and she felt even more scared cause there was nothing that could stop him from doing whatever he wanted.

„H-Hey.“ She shot him nodding with her head and continued with whatever she was doing, with her shaking hands, acting like he wasn´t even there in the first place. But she could feel his cold presence closer behind her. She turned around and was met with his face. He smelled like he just drunk a whole bottle of alcohol. She took a step back from him.

„Is there something you want?“ Jenna asked him. He never broke the eye contact, slowly smirking.

„Yeah, actually, you could help me with something.“ He went to grab her hand but she pushed him.

„Stop, you know what happened last time-“ he cut her off.

„I don´t care! Why can´t you just give me a chance? We could be so good together. You like that, right? You like it when guys are chasing you, it makes you like you are in charge, well Jenna, now it´s different, now I´m in charge here.“

„Please get away from me you are scaring me.“ She felt like crying like she got stones in her throat. Still walking away from him, praying that someone will show up and save her. She felt so small in front of him, no one had ever made her felf like this, like she was some prey.

„What are you doing?“

She turned her head to the new voice that was heard in the kitchen. And she was so glad, felt like she could breathe again. There was you looking at him, no emotion in your face, then you walked up to them and looked right into Percy´s eyes.

She had never seen you like this, you were so serious and didn´t show any emotion. You continue your stare down without blinking. Even though you were shorter than him, not much, you still had a bigger and stronger aura than him.

„Is there a problem?“ Y/N could smell the alcohol from his mouth and could see that he didn´t know what he was doing. So that´s why she knew she couldn´t show that she was scared. It would make him even more confident.

His eyes changed when he realized you were here to get him away from Jenna.

„Charlie, what are you doing? We had a deal! You promised!“ he shouted at his roommate. He knew he shouldn´t trust you. He is sure that you like her. You want to take her away from him!

He started to breathe harder and his eyes became more dangerous. You weren´t scared of him, you were calm and waiting for his next move.

„Leave.“ Y/N said with a low voice, face unimpressed. But before he could say anything else Mason and a couple of others of your teammates came into the kitchen.

Mason walked up to the three of you and stood even taller than Percy. Percy was now in a corner and had nothing to do. So he smiled dryly and walked away.

When he left Y/N turned her gaze to Mason and silently thanked him for standing beside her, he smiled at her with his soft eyes and left with their teammates. You turned down to Jenna and saw her already looking at you. She was hugging herself and looked so gentle and small.

„Hi, you good?“ Y/N asked, almost whispering, waiting for the other girl's answer.

„Yeah.“ She softly let out. She then threw her arms around the taller girl. Head buried in her chest. Y/N hugged Jenna strongly, letting her know that she was there with her.

Yeah, Jenna was sure that you were perfect for her.

next chapter

[darkness-follows]

hey! i love your writing! there’s so little for Boyd x reader out there, so if you’re up for it could you maybe write something for him? maybe a little hurt/comfort and smutty?? he’s such a weirdo and i love him sm

thank you! and have a nice day :)

Thank you, thank you !!!! And of course!!! I hope the changes I made and the idea it turned into still all work for this !

Boyd x Female Reader

I'm still not over the end of City Primeval because it was so perfect and makes up for how in my opinion the other 7 episodes were a bit of a tough chew. Not bad! But not fantastic either.. but still, consider giving it a watch especially for the end of episode 8 for this mini multi part fic might spoil some things!!!!

It hurts so good aka a Justified: City Primeval sequal to the OG show with older Boyd and a Prison Guard reader who falls madly in love with him.

TW: Blood. Wounds. Prison stuff. Smut (cavity/strip search). Gross other prisoners.

Enjoy PART 1:

First day on the Job. A Female prison Guard in a men only Penitentiary, it takes a lot to stomach everything, the comments, the looks, the disgusting things prisoners say to you. But you prepared for this, you got trained for this and hell you will make the best of it! You get to meet the non violent prisoners first, the ones who aren't arrested for rape or torture or anything of that kind. It's also the first time you meet Boyd Crowder. Your family being from Harlan Kentucky you heard some stories..

You know of him, but not a whole lot about him.

Though mistakes happen in prison especially on a first day. Your partner accidentally left you alone with Boyd and another prisoner in the back of the kitchen. And men who were locked up for a long time...don't exactly behave the best towards a young, pretty attractive new Guard. "Didn't know they hire models" the prisoner says, it's a mild start but it gets worse and worse. Until he makes a move towards you, he grabs your wrist and tries to pull your hand towards his crotch "let go! Let go of me!!" You try to pull away but he's twice your size.

You hear a loud bang and all of a sudden the prisoner has his eyes snapped on Crowder.

"Jerry! That ain't how we treat women now is it? You better confess what you've done if you wish to sleep in peace tonight" Boyd turns to take the man's shoulder, guiding him slowly out of the kitchen. "You don't want any suprise visits tonight do you Jerry?" He whispers before he shoves him out of the kitchen.

Shaking his head "I'm sorry about that, some of em really don't know how to behave. You okay?" He asks and when your eyes meet his it's almost..magnetic. "hm? Oh! Yeah! Yes thank you, I was ready to get that taser out" You huff.

"Oh please there is no need to thank me, I'm sorry your first day went like that, I sincerely hope one bad Apple doesn't spoil the whole bunch for you now. There are some good men in this place." He points out. The way he speaks and the methaphor.. you heard he has a certain charm to him but seeing it in real life, hearing his buttery accent and the way he carries himself despite the orange prison attire? He's a bit Interesting..

"I'm known to hand out a few chances" You smile and open up the knife drawer with your keys. Your duty is to observe their cooking and Crowder was listed as green when it comes to kitchen supplies such as knives.

"Gotta admit I might be the same way, Lord knows I've been giving away chances like free candy" He takes one of the bigger kitchen knives to start cutting the vegetables Jerry was supposed to take care of. The way he keeps looking over his shoulder at you to talk makes you feel a certain kind of warmth. He's really making sure to adress you respectfully, keeping eye contact and not looking you up and down like the rest of em in this place.

"Well, thanks again Crowder." You nod. Keeping it professional.

🕐

2 weeks into a new job and it's safe to say that you adjusted well, you know who to trust and who to get along with, which prisoners are the nice kind and which ones are the bad. This place works like a perfectly oiled machine, everything is time based and the system of the prison works. You shouldn't have a favorite prisoner but this Crowder guy doesn't seem too bad. You've been through his file a little, it's a hefty record for a man who seems so nice and collected. You also stumbled across some pictures of an injury he got inside.

Graphic pictures of a mean looking burn on his upper arm, investigation showed second degree burns to apparently scorch a hateful Tattoo off of his skin. Ouch. Yet no agressor is listed, apparently, he wouldn't say who did it to him. It was his first week of kitchen duty too.

You see Crowder again in the kitchen, it's easy for New Guards to be posted at Lunch and dinner. Observe everything.

"You've got to try this! For prison chow it really is somethin' " Crowder points out, stirring a pot.

You hesitate at first but you are pretty sure he wouldn't try and poison you. Not like this anyways. "I don't know If..- I'm allowed to" You frown but with a smile. Though no other guards are around so maybe it's fine. The smile on his face when you step closer is almost sweet, he takes a spoon and puts some of the food onto it, holding it out to you. You don't even really think about it when you open your mouth and your lips move around the spoon that he's holding. Too distracted by the taste.

"Wow!" You huff suprised, chewing slowly. "That really is good" How on earth does prison food taste better than the food at your own table at home?

"You like it? It's a old Crowder family recipe. It's easy to make but got quite the kick to it!" He throws you another rather off putting smile, why is he so nice? You read his file you know he's not violent for no reason but it's still a bit unusual.

"Yeah I do like it! You gotta give me that recipe" You take a few steps back again, licking your lips softly. That was really tasty.

"Is that an order, Guard?" He asks, wiping his hands on a kitchen towel and turning to face you. The tension in the room is suddenly different, heated, you don't know what he's getting at but it's best to put a cork in it, now.

"No?" You question. "Now get back to work" .

"That was an order" You tease.

His chuckle rings in your ears for a moment, you really do have a strange relationship with him.

🕒

Its not unusual to play favorites in a place like this but you and Crowder became..close. It's been a month now for you in Kentucky's Tramble Penitentiary. Everytime you interact with Boyd you laugh, you smile, he smiles, it really feels like you starting to develop a crush. Which is bad. Biggest rule in the game. Don't fuck the inmates. Ever. Cooking duty for him means you can always watch him fix up something nice for the other inmates. He really always takes his time, he always makes it great.

Up until today.

"God! Fuckin' damn it!" You hear Boyd curse loudly and when you rush to the kitchen to take a look you can see blood. Your hand moves to your taser.

"Easy! Didn't stab nobody, just cut myself, the fucking cucumber slipped off the board." He holds his fingers and you can see blood slowly running down his hand and arm. Luckily you have some mild medical training.

You radio in the incident and your current Boss gives the clear, your allowed to take care of the injury and put someone else on cooking duty.

You swap out inmates and a coworker takes over the Observation while you take Crowder to the small medicial room at the end of the hallway. A own room for minor things so they don't all end up clogging up the only Hospital wing in the entire prison.

But you've never been in this area or this room before and suddenly it dawns on you, you are new and your alone here with a prisoner known for Manipulation tactics. The fear becomes reality when you finally take a closer look at his injury. No way in hell was that an accidental cut, the placement is way off.

"What's the plan Boyd? Jump me. Take my keycard, my taser, make your way out the back?" You huff.

You hope you are wrong but when he starts to chuckle you can feel your stomach turn.

"No darlin' not quite." He points out.

"God and here I was thinking you weren't like the other's" your hand reaches for your Radio again to call it in when he's suddenly a few steps too close.

"It ain't like that" Boyd takes another step closer.

"Come one now, you need me to spell it out for you?" His voice...his smile.. he's...- is he trying to seduce you?!

"What? Yes. I think you do" your hand leaves off the radio.

"We have been dancin' around reach other for a month now, as nice of a dance as it was, you wanna leap off that stage now don't you? See the Real Deal." He suggests.

You can't help but to burst into a soft laughter "You think I want to sleep with you???" You shake your head and turn away from him, grabbing some rubbing alcohol and a Band aid for his self inflicted dumb cut.

"I don't just think so, I know so" He points out. Stepping behind you while you gather the supplies.

"Your crazy. I really underestimated your Level of crazy. Now give me that hand and then I'll take you back to your cell" You chuckle again. Staring at him when you turn around and he holds up the cut in his hand. Your hands tremble while you pour the alcohol onto a cottonball. Taking his hand into yours, cleaning the cut and then the rest of the blood from his hand and arm. His fingers, his breathing.. He takes another step forward and you take one back. Feeling the wall against your back, shaky hands trying to hold still while you slap the band aid onto his wound. Once that's done his hand closes around yours.

"You mean it? I've been imagining things... you don't want me?" He tries to confirm that he actually might have been wrong about you.

But you can't help it, you let his hand take yours.

Your hesitation speaks volumes.

Your hand presses against his chest, but he leans in to kiss you anyways. His lips are so gentle, so careful, he's not aggressive or demanding. It's almost sweet if you don't think about the fact that this could get you fired and that having a crush or fling with him won't work. Because at the end of the day he's in here and you are out there.

You break the soft kiss with a sigh.

"No..- I don't want to sleep with you, now take a step back Crowder" You raise your shoulders, making yourself a bit taller.

He nods. And he does.

"Apparently im off my game, it's been a while" He frowns. "I deeply apologize." He keeps his head down for a moment.

He genuinely seems sad. As if he can't believe he made such a mistake.

"Your not off your game." You finally say. "Imma have to get a uh, a transfer I think, to another ward, having feelings for an inmate is unacceptable."

His head lifts up slowly.

"Here I was thinkin' all these little things were signs you wanted my flesh. But it aint just that huh?" The smile on his face makes you roll your eyes. "You like me" He grins. "Shut up" You groan.

"As in, a little crush! Or a big crush? Good Lord! Are you in love with me?!" Now he's just being mean.

"I said shut up!" You chuckle.

And then he hugs you.

You expected everything but that...

His arms around you feel so strangely comforting, you know this is wrong, you read his charges, you know very well why he's in here and yet here you are, in his damn arms. Your hands are hesitant, but slowly you stroke your palm over his back and your other holds onto his upper arm, where you feel the scar tissue underneath your finger tips.

"Why did you never tell who did this to you?" You ask, hand soothing over the uneven skin. It's a really bad burn scar, thick and leathery almost in it's texture.

He slowly lets go of your frame, placing his palm onto your face. "Cause I did that myself." He tugs a piece of your hair behind your ear before his lips place a kiss onto your head. "They woulda thrown me into isolation for it, marked me up as a danger to myself, couldn't risk that...-" He adds. Taking a step back then.

"Why did you do it? Apart from the obvious.." your skin feels on fire, you want more, your lips are dying for a kiss that takes your breath away and your hands are aching for a body to cling to.

"Form of self punishment, I guess." Incredible how sane and yet insane such a Statement sounds, you kind of understand. Pointing to his hand "And you did that to sleep with me?" You huff. It's a strange way to go about things, that's for sure.

"Well, had to get you alone somehow didn't I?" His face changes when he looks at you a little while longer, taking a deep breath. "But I gotta admit, this was quite the suprise, might be even been better than a simple, fleeting, lustful exchange. I deeply honor that you.. care about a man such as myself." He likes it, he wouldn't have it any other way actually.

"Doesn't matter much does it? Not like there is anything to be build here" The alarm starts blasting which means Lunch is over and it's back to the cells.

He missed Lunch for you.

You take a hold of his shoulder to walk him back to his cell, his cellmate not being there yet you step inside for a second.

"Don't request a transfer.." He whispers. "Seeing your face every day for the last month while cooking has been the happiest I have been in a while, don't take that from me, please." He seems really sincere.

You nod "Okay." Then you leave his cell.

Fuck, you can't believe you have a crush and that he kissed you, and that he hugged you, hell he even knicked himself with that knife to get to be alone with you and then also asked to not stop seeing you everyday.

Falling for an inmate was not on your list, especially not THE Boyd Crowder.

🕔

Fights happen very very often in tight spaces like these with a bunch of criminals. Unfortunately Crowder was in the room where it happend, which means by the damn book, strip search. Someone could be hiding a self made knive, razorblade glued to a toothbrush..hide drugs.. anything.

"Crowder. Room 3." The guard yells, FUCK. You were hoping he'd be called to a different room, you change your gloves from the last inmates search, leaning against the medical shelf when he steps inside. The instant smirk on his face makes you flush Red.

"Well ain't that somethin' , guess it's your lucky day" He closes the door and takes off his shoes. Not his first strip and not your first search but.. this is pretty damn intimate. Even if you try to not treat it that way, you like him, and he knows you like him, and now you get to do a body search on him? It might really be your lucky damn day.

"Hey now! Im a pro" You wiggle your gloved fingers.

"I bet you are darlin' " He steps closer, opening the buttons on his orange prison jumper. The reveal of his chest and his shoulders is already pretty nice to see but when he drops it lower and you get to see his abs and his hips and his V line it's starting to get steamy in the room. He Strips the jumper and stands in his white boxershorts.

"Don't you worry now, I think I'd be quite alright with a bit of touching" He clicks his tongue, taking off his boxers. And Jesus christ. Seems like Boyd Crowder isn't just all talk, he really got the package to back it up. Good for him!

"You are staring" He comments.

"No! What? Im not! Turn around" You huff, watching him turn around and place his hands against the wall. Fuck, this shouldn't be so damn hot.

"Bend uh, bend over...you know how this goes come on Boyd" You sigh.

His chuckle makes your head spin, you really didn't think this would happen today. But you got a job to do, it's not like you don't trust him but .. you have to do this right?

You take a deep breath before you step behind him, patting down his hair first, armpits, his hips, people get creative. Some even hide blades in their own damn skin. When your hands move to his pretty nice butt you hesitate.

"Oh come on now sweetheart. Ain't my first rodeo. Let's go" He huffs. You nod. Taking the lube from the medical cabinet, you hands spread his buttcheeks apart, when you don't see or feel anything it's time for the uncomfortable finger. You apply enough lube and with a soothing hand on his hip you gently push a finger inside of him.

You don't take him for the type to shove drugs up his damn ass but this is simply part of the job. Of course you don't feel anything so you move to take your finger away again but then he..moans.

A long deep right out of his lungs kind of moan.

You move your finger slowly again in the same motion and his body tightens. "You uh, you okay?" You ask.

He nods. Which is not a yes and not no to you.

"Bit sensitive are we Crowder?" You ask and you could swear to god that he pushes back against your hand. "I think I have to be really thorough here." You slowly push a second finger inside of him.

"Fuck...-" He moans deeply.

"I'm so sorry!" You panic a bit.

"No your fine..- just god please don't stop".

"Don't stop what? That?" You move your fingers the way you did before again and again..- getting a bit deeper each time. His head is resting on the arm that's holding him against the wall, you can tell he's breathing faster, his skin is flush. Someone likes a bit of a prostate massage.. Interesting.

Boyd's breathing sounds so insanely erotic, you never heard a man make these noises before.

His other hand spreads him open a bit, watching your fingers move in and out of him. You never thought you'd be into that but? The way he sounds so broken by how good it feels? The fact that it makes him feel so good makes you feel good in return. That's all that matters right?

You step closer to him, placing a gentle kiss onto his back while your free hand reaches around him. Stroking over his Rock hard cock.

"Good lord, Ain't that some kind of abuse of Power?" He comments but he likes it, he could easily make you stop if he wanted to. Looking at you with big desperate beautiful eyes.

"You wanna file a complaint?" You kiss his shoulder and his back again. His hips starting to meet your pace is incredible.

"Phew aren't you all wound up, how long has it been Boyd? Since you felt a womans touch? Soft lips against your skin, delicate hand around your cock?" You whisper and it feels as if he's crumbling at your words. All desperate and defeated. That certainly is a new look for Boyd Crowder.

"Too long way too long" He breathes out.

"Am I doing a good job?" You ask hopeful.

"The best..." his voice is dripping with something sweet, he sounds so thankful.

When you push your fingers into him harder you can feel his hips shiver. He likes it a little rough too apparently.

You keep the stronger pace of your fingers, hand stroking his cock in the same motion.

The orgasm you get to witness is stunning, breathtaking. He tries to swallow his moans but his body clenches around your fingers and his cock throbs in your hand while rows of cum spray the wall in front of him. It's easy to tell without a vocal Orchestra that he really enjoyed himself. Carefully letting go of him and taking your gloves off.

"God damn Baby." He chuckles when he turns around.

He picks up his clothes and gets dressed again fairly quickly, closing the buttons on his prison jumper. He even has the damn courtesy of taking some paper towels and cleaning up the mess he made, tossing them and washing his hands before he looks at you.

"You really have me question what we are here..." He tilts his head and you can still see the remains of a blush on his skin.

"I've never done this before, all these other guys they are so...uptight, uncomfortable, and then you come along moaning around" You huff.

"Which I never done before either!! No other guard has ever gotten me like this, I think it's more of the person, the person being a woman I rather fancy" He smirks a bit. "I bet any touch of yours would make me sing such tunes darlin' " God the charisma of this man is teeth rotting sweet.

"Your ridiculous" You comment, but you should move on now, you don't want people to question why this is taking so long.

"Ridiculousy smitten, correct." He nods.

"Go now, smitten or not this is still a crime" You nod towards the door but instead of him going both of his hands take your face. Kissing you slow and sweet before he has to let go. "Might get myself into some more trouble if that means I get to be seein' you" he winks before he opens the door.

He's such an idiot but...god you too are pretty damn smitten.

💞🕒💞🕒💞🕒💞

To be continued...

Hey thank you for reading. I hope you liked it. And I hope you are excited for more !

Tags:

@justme12200 @cat-shepard @megangovier

@ivyinthesun @catclaw12

If I wrongly tagged someone or forgot someone im super sorry !!! I gotta start making a damn list hahaha.

[doubleddenden]

The topic of Palworld is pretty charged, but often times I see people be shamed for liking it because the CEO tweeted stuff about NFTs and the company using AI art in a separate game. Acting as if that's the most damning thing ever for a gaming company in an industry filled with similar people.

Make no mistake, I dislike both AI art and nfts, but do you realize how many gaming companies have involvement with that?

To begin with, Pokémon used AI art in a promotional piece for Pokémon Go in September, and nobody gave a shit because uwu Pikachu. The Pokémon Company also put a job listing some months back seeking an expert in NFTs. That's not quite damning evidence, but if I were a betting man, no "NFT expert" will willingly say "yeah nfts suck are bad for the environment, man, I'll take my paycheck and fuck off now." There's also a strong argument to be made that Pokémon has stolen ideas from fakemon artists (Finizen and Palafin, Scovillain, Dipplin, etc) and other franchises (kaiju movies, Dragon Quest, Megaman, final fantasy, western cartoons and food mascots, etc), a dubious legal statement that claims they own all fan art from the remixes and fakemon made on youtube to the pikachu your kid drew at breakfast; they have yet to apologize for the state of Scarlet and Violet while charging full price to millions of paying customers for a clearly unfinished and barely functioning game (which i did enjoy, but you can't tell me it was finished baking when it struggles not to shit itself just to run), and a bunch of other things people shit on Palworld for, but A. It's Pokémon so people don't care and think it's fine, and B. That's not the point of this post.

You know who else does NFTs and AI art? (Yes I heard Muscle Man from Regular Show in my head just now, too, moving along)

Square Enix sold several of their IPs for NFTs and claims to have used AI art "a minimum amount" in Foam Stars, yet I see nobody yelling for boycotts of Final Fantasy 14, 16, Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest, Life is Strange, etc etc etc.

Sony has invested in both, they want to implement AI into gaming, and has a patent for nfts to be used in games and consoles, yet there's no movement to throw out your playstations.

Bandai Namco- you know, that company with a hand in pretty much most anime games on the market and popular games such as the Dark Souls games? They have a game called RYU that's essentially a virtual pet game that uses the blockchain, and its AI driven, among other projects. Yet there's no outcry to stop playing the many, MANY games they brand with. This also includes quite a few Nintendo games (btw they just partnered together to form a special studio quite recently) like Smash Wii U/3ds and New Pokémon Snap. Nobody gives a shit though.

Android, Microsoft, Google, Apple- I don't even need to explain those, they have whole teams dedicated to both. Even popular VPN companies accept crypto.

I'm just saying an awful lot of you guys that scream and shit bloody murder about Palworld's company being involved with that shit are either the biggest "It's okay when my favs do it" type of hypocrites, or you're sorely ignorant to just how evil and greedy most corporations are. You'll be hard pressed to find a game company with popular AND fun games that DOESN'T have some interest in either, let alone movie and show studios. That's the awful reality we live in.

You have 2 options

1. You basically stop doing anything involving most modern tech, including throwing out your pc and smart phone. You could probably live a comfortable life with tech circa 2010, but you have to be aware that any thing you buy may go towards a cause you don't like.

2. You accept that people can enjoy a product while not necessarily agreeing with the CEO of said product. Most CEOs tend to be jackasses anyway, that's kind of the shared trait they all have. You can also discourage companies from using them while understanding it is everywhere.

Palworld at the end of the day is just a toy, that's it. From the looks of it, it's not even actually hurting anyone, and it seems like the company at least treats their employees pretty decently- at least according to a few things I've seen here and there that seems rather progressive for a Japanese studio (with room for doubt obviously, it's a company after all and as we've established, they're all evil). At the least its not like when people supported Hogwarts Legacy and directly put money into JKR's wallet so she can openly hurt more Trans women. In fact, the only people seemingly hurt in all of this Palworld drama are obsessed Pokémon stans that can't accept a parody, or the Pokémon Company themselves, who rightly deserve some punching up tbh.

You can just say you dislike the game, that's fine, I totally get that. Even though I personally think The Pokémon Company deserves a few nut shots after the way they've treated fans these last few years with the state of their games (and you know, stealing ideas from fans without credit), I can see why someone would be turned away from a parody that's literally meant to be Pokémon with guns. I can totally understand all of that, personally I'd prefer if the game was MORE like Pokémon with turn based combat.

But if you're going to defend Pokémon because you think its perfectly innocent because of Wooloo or something like that, just be sure you're aware you're defending the World's Richest Franchise and their own attempts at AI and NFTs while calling out an indie company (a real one thats learning as they go, not the fake "We're totally indie" franchise that hasn't been indie since gen 3) for having a ceo that also seems interested in the same stuff. And remember, you don't become number 1 without hurting people somehow (we could dig up receipts about certain partners Pokémon has teamed up with, such as Tencent with Unite, but I'd rather not right now.)

Just saying. I don't think you're an irredeemable person for still liking Pikachu, cuz I do too believe it or not. I've been a life long fan and still have fun with the games despite the clear scummy business practices towards their paying customers. Just maybe extend that courtesy to the millions of players just trying to have fun in this awful, putrid, shithole planet that just keeps getting worse and worse with each passing day.

Plus... you know, think about it. Do you think Pokémon would ever get around to making a gunless Palworld? Probably not. Do you think Palworld would exist if The Pokémon Company and Nintendo were the slightest bit chill about Pokémon fan projects like SEGA is with Sonic? Also probably not. From what I've read, the devs just wanted to make a fun game that happens to mostly be ARK with Pokémon adjacent monsters. That's not really a bad thing, all things considered, and it seems like the worst they've done is reference official Pokémon when making their own models.

Palworld being successful is actually beneficial to Pokémon fans, as well. It'll never really truly compete, but it has outsold Legends Arceus in terms of units sold (not as much financially because Palworld was only $30 plus a sale recently, but still impressive), and it is enough that Game Freak is aware of its existence. Let Palworld light a fire under their ass, and maybe GF will actually finish their next game before releasing it for full price (and no, we're not bringing up the tired imaginary ball and chain game devs, game freak owns 1/3rd lf the franchise and can easily take methods to get more dev time, they just haven't because money). Just saying, at least the Paldevs were honest enough to sell it in early access for half the price.

[orionsangel86]

I was once again flicking through the Sandman comics and thinking about the changes made to the show (as I am pretty much always doing) and something that struck me as interesting is why they chose to swap out Tales in the Sand for Men of Good Fortune.

In the comics, The Sound of Her Wings is the last story in Preludes and Nocturns. Dream’s meeting with his sister Death closes out the first of the overarching storylines within the Sandman saga, and it ends with Dream finding some measure of peace after speaking with her, and finding joy in hearing the sound of wings.

This can be interpreted as the first bit of real foreshadowing of Dream’s desire to die. Anyone who has read the Kindly Ones knows how important The Sound Of Her Wings is as it is called back to heavily at the end.

In the comics, the next issue can be seen as a one off, but is included in The Doll’s House book. This issue is Tales in the Sand - the tragic love story of Dream and Nada.

Right after Tales in the Sand, we get to the Doll’s House, which begins the exact same way that episode 6 of The Sandman Netflix show ends - with Desire calling on Despair to begin their scheming over the existance of the vortex.

I found it very interesting how the show swapped out Tales in the Sand for Men of Good Fortune - a story which in the comics comes much later within The Doll’s House storyline.

On the one hand, it makes sense to move Men of Good Fortune outside of the Doll’s House story for pacing reasons. But by putting it where they did they have drastically changed the tone of the story in a few ways.

1. It changes the end of The Sound of Her Wings. Show!Dream doesn’t leave his sister to sit and find peace in the thought of death, instead he does the opposite, he immediately goes and seeks out the one person he knows who is quite literally the antithesis of death - someone who finds joy in living. It still ends the Preludes and Nocturns story with Dream finding some manner of peace and happiness, but not in the sound of wings. Instead, it’s in the reunion with his friend who loves life so much he refuses to die.

2. It takes the place of the only love story we are given for Dream at that point in the comics. The Sandman comics have a tendency to avoid revealling too much information about Dream too soon and up until this point in the comics, all we know about his love life is that he condemned a lover to hell 10,000 years ago, based on a very brief conversation in A Hope In Hell. Tales in the Sand is the expansion of that brief conversation, giving us at least one perspective of how the tragedy played out.

I am really curious about why they decided to leave it out of the show completely. Partly I think its because it isn’t exactly a flattering look at Dream as a character. Probably didn’t seem like good business sense to the people who wanted The Sandman to perform well to basically destroy your main characters likeability half way through the first season (imagine all the Twitter puriteens and anti types who would get on their high horses attacking Sandman fans and Neil Gaiman alike for daring to like a main character who comes across a little bit rapey in this particular story - among other horrific character flaws).

Also, Tales in the Sand generally fits better with the Season of Mists story arc overall, and I think we will get a much kinder and more forgiving version of this story in the show.

So instead of being introduced to the first of Dream’s lovers, we are introduced to Hob Gadling. Make of that what you will.

3. It makes the immediate cut to Desire at the start of The Doll’s House story all the more eyebrow raising. Part of the reason why I think Desire’s scenes follow on from Tales in the Sand is because Desire had a lot to do with Dream’s bad behaviour in that story, and what ultimately happened is partly their fault. It is brought up both in comic and show when Desire tells Despair that “Nada was a mistake” but in the show, this comment remains a mystery, whereas in the comic, it goes some way into explaining the horrific story we have just read.

In the show, instead it makes for absolutely beautiful subtext as they cut to Desire’s realm and the song Desire as Desire says “Attend sweet Sibling” whilst we have just watched Dream reunite with Hob and smile the first real smile he has had all season so far. For a split second on my first watch I legit thought Desire was talking to Dream at that point and encouraging him to hook up with Hob. It was a very confusing few seconds!

At the end of the day, I think the change to the order of these stories was a very good idea, even without the added level of shipping fodder it gives us Dreamling shippers. In changing the end to The Sound of Her Wings in the show, it removes the foreshadowing of Dream’s desire to die, which I’ll be honest, so far I can’t see at all in the show version of the story. Instead, we get a Dream who is happy for the first time after reuniting with his friend - who apparently waited an additional 33 years for him and built/refurbished a pub in that time.

I have a bazzillion more thoughts on the changes from comic to show on the Men of Good Fortune issue in particular, but that’s for another post. I just had to get my thoughts down as the more I read and re-read the comics, the more I feel like the show is considering a different direction, a more hopeful happy direction. But I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

[karuuhnia]

I've been a Pokémon fan since the very beginning and recently a friend asked me who my favourite character was. I couldn't answer with just one character. So instead I gave her my top 3 favourites from each generation - and then turned it into this. lol

A little bit more info under the cut if you're interested.

_______

Please do not alter, repost/reupload or redistribute my artwork anywhere! (Reblogging is perfectly fine, of course.)

Gen 1:

Blue: The original rival, you loved to hate him. :D

Erika: I loved her design as a kid, even though I had no idea what a kimono was back then lol

Bill: No idea tbh lol. I like his hair and that he's a nerd, I guess? Honestly, Gen 1 did not have that many memorable and fleshed out characters, so I kinda struggled here.

Gen 2:

Lance: Honestly, he was my fave in Gen 1 already. I love his strength, his design, his virtuousness, his bravery, his code of honour, his everything. To me he's like a knight in shiny armour from old fairytales. lol I could spend a whole day describing all the things I love about him, but I don't wanna bore you.

Eusine: Probably a weird pick for many because he is kinda obnoxious in the game lol I've always had a soft spot for him though and I really wanted him to get Suicune in the end, after he'd changed.

Morty: I love his design and colours and that he's Eusine's bff and voice of reason.

Gen 3:

Steven: He is classy, wears a really awesome suit, has very cool Pokémon and is still a huge nerd. I love it!

Archie: (I see you, @chipsncookies) Big hunk with a big smile and a cool outfit. Beard. Not a bad guy, actually. Learns that he was wrong and does everything to make things right again. Frienemies with Maxie.

Maxie: Scrawny beanpole with a silly (but very cozy looking) outfit. Secretly a dork. Not a bad guy either. Learns from his mistakes and wants to make them right again. Frienemies with Archie.

Gen 4:

Riley: I was a huge fan of Sir Aaron in the movie and Riley is just as awesome. I love his hat too. His personality is also similar to Lance's, so that's a huge plus.

Cynthia: I really, really like her. She is so cool and strong and her theme is amazing. Just like Charizard she's become too popular and that gets a bit tiresome sometimes.

Looker: Okay, I admit, it took me a while to get used to Looker. But now I like his quirky, funny Inspector Gadget shenanigans. What changed my mind was the aftergame of XY. ;__;

Gen 5:

Ingo & Emmet: I couldn't do it. I couldn't choose who of them I like more. So they share the first place.They're a duo anyway. And absolutely inseparable. R-Right?

Elesa: I like her mainly because of the fanon that she's bffs with the subway twins. But she's also not the bitchy supermodel that I first thought she was. She's actually kind and supportive.

Alder: Funny grandpa with awful hair, but a big heart and a great theme song.

Gen 6:

Lysandre: His design always gave me Ganondorf-vibes. That's pretty much it. His goal is stupid.

Emma: Her storyline in the post-game was by far the best thing in XY. And her theme is so beautiful!

Sycamore: I still wish he had actually turned out to be evil. I still like him.

Gen 7:

Kukui: What is not to love about him? He's a hunk, he loves his wife, he takes in Lillie, he punches Pokémon with his bare hands.

Lillie: Sweet little girl who deserves all the love from her friends and her adoptive parents instead of all the shit her psycho bio mother put her through.

Burnet: She's sweet and smart and kind and I wish she had a much bigger role in the game. Her anime part was great though <3

Gen 8:

Piers, Sonia and Raihan: Honestly... These are pretty much the only characters that I remember lol Gen 8 was very underwhelming for me.

Gen 9:

Arven: Just a poor neglected boy who wants to save his sick dog. In contrast to his shitty parents he's got a big heart, is caring, nurturing and supportive.

Clavell: The twist about this character was that there was no twist. He is just a very kind grandpa who genuinely cares for the well-being of his students. I also LOVE his battle theme.

Hassel: This game really is full of wholesome boomers. Hassel's got a huge heart for art and his students and Pokémon. He's also not afraid of showing his emotions.

[raayllum]

Been thinking recently about the idea in fandom that boils down to, usually, "the Character that Changes the most being deemed 'the most complex'" and that character development (i.e. character change) being held up as The Golden Standard of a Good Character and...

I fundamentally disagree, but first, a little bit more explanation about what I mean

Very often shows and movies, when being recommended on tumblr, are sold on the basis of having enjoyable/in-depth characters. Often times this also means conflating enjoyable with likeable, but that's a discussion post for another day. And even more often, it means there are characters who are seen as Deep because of how radically they change over the course of a story.

Lots of times, this falls into two camps:

Characters change radically, but early on in the story, and remain largely the same past that point of change (think anytime in a first season) until the end of the story

People recommending shows based on characters having traditional redemption arcs (enemy or bully to friend / good guy / love interest)

Now, I'm not saying that 1) character change can't be deep or 2) that character growth is bad. Neither of those things are true, even subjectively. What I am saying is that 1) character change / a character changing is not the same as automatically being a good, interesting, or well written character and 2) character growth is not the be-all-end-all of character writing. Yes, there can be problems with characters be overly stagnant, but typically that's only an issue if 1) a work is serialized and concerned with character development and they don't change at all, 2) a character never adjusts (rightly or wrongly) according to their mistakes, or 3) all of the above but they're a main character.

However, assuming that Character A has to be radically different at the beginning of a story in terms of their personality/values/etc. as they are at the end of the story is just... not how it works, necessarily. This is, I think, one of the reasons why antagonists who get redemption arcs tend to be more popular than heroes who had good values the whole time, because there's more opportunity to point and go "look, they've changed! they act on and have basic compassion now!" Which, fair enough, but again: other types of characters are fine too.

Particularly for characters fandom tends to have the hardest time with: paragons.

Paragons are characters who are usually the central hero, pretty morally if not entirely moral upstanding, and because they already start out in a place of "always doing the right thing," they rarely radically change by the end of the story. Instead, paragons are used to progress theme/messaging and inspire other characters around them to change (a good example might be Buddy from the Christmas movie Elf and to a lesser extent - as he's more transformative as a character - Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender, who's there to return childhood to his friends as an ideal and carry on Air Nomad values).

And for TDP, that's Ezran.

He's the youngest in the main cast and by far the most measured. While Callum and Rayla are off fighting, he keeps a level head. He assumes responsiblity largely without guilt, holds other people accountable most often without being cruel, he's kind and deeply compassionate, he shows regular empathy for his enemies even when he has to treat them like enemies, he loves his father but does not idealize him, he is king without craving power, he's trusting and honest and while he has his flaws (overly optimistic, his passivity, sometimes struggles to consider other people's emotions, naivety, etc), they - as of yet - are not overly connected to his sense of morality (which is a distinct difference compared to the rest of the main cast).

Now, TDP is less concerned with the theme of Childhood compared to something like ATLA, but Ezran being a child (again, in a way the rest of the cast is not) is also very important. Ezran, and Callum to a lesser extent, is the embodiment of the concept that children aren't born with hatred in their hearts; it's learned, or earned, through experience, society, and suffering. And as Ezran spells out for us in 4x03, he has suffered and been hurt - and he believes in breaking the cycle and believing in hope for a better future anyway.

Ezran's steadfast reflection of the series' core theme of "true strength - to break the cycle - is found in vulnerability, in forgiveness, in love" in both word and action does make him the closest thing to a paragon in the series. He's the one who finds the egg; he's the one who forgives Rayla and Soren; he's the one who still tries to help Claudia; he's the peacemaker, the literal bridge between peoples and species in spite of witnessing so many of their worst crimes/actions.

In both arcs, there tended to be a trio of characters who rapidly change, and a trio of characters who are more, comparatively, stagnated. Early S1 Rayla, Callum, and Soren are radically different in a ton of ways than they are even at the beginning of S3, but especially by the end. On the other hand, Viren - post 1x03 at least - Claudia and Ezran are far more consistent in arc 1; their circumstances change, but their viewpoints and realities and choices are largely the same from season to season - they just keep doubling down. This doesn't mean they don't change at all, but they don't radically transform - they just become more of what they already are.

I'd say that in arc 2, things have switched up, with Callum, Rayla, and Viren being the three who are radically transformed (thus far) with Soren, Claudia, and Ezran still being in the more stagnated corner. (For more notes on Claudia and Ezran's shared passivity, check out this pre-S4 meta.)

Ezran starts out the series as a good hearted, slightly mischevious little boy who loves his family and believes that people can be good. The point of the series is not to change these parts of him. It's to demonstrate the difficulties - losing both his parents, taking on the kingship, struggling to make the right choices, keeping his friends together, caring about peace and sentiment in a world that increasingly does not - of maintaining those positive traits, again, in a world that is determined to test those ideals and attributes.

Ezran is not here to be transformed by the storm, the same way his friends and some of his companions are. He is here to demonstrate the strength and necessity in weathering the storm so that the world cannot make you cold, or uncaring, or violent, even when those paths and emotions would be much easier to go down.

Good character development isn't about changing your character; it's about changing your audience's understanding and perspective of your character. Sometimes that means the character is also changing simultaneously, but that's far from a requirement for a character to be interesting. Like most things in writing, what it really boils down to is execution.

And I could go on about why I think people gravitate towards characters who start off evil (often part of imperialist empires or older, institutionally backed systems) and learn that the evil was wrong actually (and sometimes not even that) but that's a meta for another day, and this one is long enough.

TLDR; Ezran, like a few other characters in the show - antagonists and protagonists alike - is not meant to be a radically transformative, even though he very much has grown and changed. Instead, he's meant to exemplify the importance of not losing your sense of self in an increasingly cruel or difficult world, and what parts we should arguably try our best to hold onto as well.

[milkytakethenamealready]

Ace markey | Survivor likelihood

I would like to ramble about Ace's survivor likelihood. Keep in mind that all of this is just a subjective interpretation of how the story might go for the Ultimate Jockey, so feel free to disagree!

I really like Ace. He's my all time favourite character in Danganronpa Despair Time, mainly because I actually tend to prefer characters with good writing rather than nice characters.

Ace is definitely a pretty bad person for now, as he's being extremely aggressive and antagonistic towards the others due to his anxiety and paranoia. I'm not saying that his character doesn't have more layers to him, because he definitely does, but as a person, he would be so hard to put up with. Even Levi, the only person who kinda seemed to care for his wellbeing, completely gave up on helping him after episode 6.

A question I often ask myself is this: will Ace change later on down the line?

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A lot of people think that he might calm down or learn how to deal with his anxieties and all that, but I'm not sure if that's the case.

Ace is definitely smarter and much more self aware than what his classmates think. He's not the sharpest tool in the shed, far from it, but he's not dumb either. I'd argue he's got pretty good intuition, seeing as how he got mad at the others for thinking that "he's damaged in the head" and that "they can say whatever they want to his face". He's very aware of what others think of him. (I'm not saying that this is what everyone necessarily think of him, but it's clear that his classmates don't really care about him that much)

Normally, the bully character would just kinda shout insults left and right without ever acknowledging how others feel about it or what they think about them. But Ace seems extremely aware. Probably because, deep down, he's not happy with himself.

"You think I act like this for fun, go to bed, and then sleep soundly at night[...]"

He very much targets Nico because Ace sees them as what he despises more: a coward with no backbone. And that's what Ace was prior to chapter 2. And in the QnA for chapter 2 part 1, it was indeed confirmed that Ace doesn't like himself. So it's more likely that he was projecting onto Nico, but also felt annoyed at their behaviour.

Which turned out to be a MASSIVE mistake, as Nico dropped the kind act and quite literally tried to kill Ace: they only failed because Eden and Teruko caught them. He refused help, even telling Levi that he'd much rather die alone than accept his help, and then ends it with this interesting line:

"It's inevitable anyway, so why should I take your pity on top of everything else I have to suffer through?! Don't talk to me ever again!"

This is very interesting to me. He knows that he could die, he knows that his behaviour is wrong, and he KNOWS that he's gonna suffer every single second of it.

So in his eyes, why even bother?

Personally, while I really like the interpretation of Ace's character as "someone who will change" I think the problem is that Ace lacks motivation.

Motivation to change.

Again, he's aware of all of his flaws, and knows that he's just basically killing himself by being so antagonistic, but he quite simply doesn't care anymore. But then again, I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm just saying that it would need to be quite the huge change for Ace.

Remember, he dislikes himself, and he outright stated that his life sucks. If he were to find a reason to live outside of his talent, maybe he could make it.

Ace can definitely undergo development, but for now, I think he lacks the requirements to do so. (the "for now" is extremely important).

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Now then, I would like to address the elephant in the room: his secret quote.

"I don't know what to do with myself anymore."

Yes, it has already been talked about a lot from what I've seen. And for good reasons: who would ever expect such a vulnerable line coming from someone like Ace Markey?

And that's the adjective I would like to focus on: vulnerability.

How could the Ace Markey we all know express such vulnerability? Why, after all he went through, and after all of his efforts to completely detach himself from the group, would he open up about something so important to himself to those people?

I'll try to predict Ace's fate by keeping this in mind: WHEN could Ace open up? When will Ace reveal this side of himself?

Will it happen in Chapter 2?

Yeah, no, I don't see him die here. No way.

Keep in mind that I'm not biased towards Ace, and I would be 100% fine with him dying if it served the narrative... but now, of all times? I don't think it's his time to go yet.

A lot of people already analysed the themes of Chapter 2 way, WAY better than I ever could, so I would recommend searching for those posts because they're a fantastic read.

The part I'm gonna be focusing on (briefly) is the hidden title: "A good person". A lot of characters, such as Eden and Levi, were directly called a good person this chapter. And all of these characters ended up having a larger role than the others because of their direct connection to the chapter. That doesn't mean that characters such as Veronika, Rose, J, Arturo, Hu or Nico were irrelevant, because they very clearly weren't: it just means that the characters more tied to the themes of this chapter had more to do, and will likely do more.

Ace doesn't really fit into this chapter's themes. Sure, you can define him as a pretty bad person, but it's not outright stated by the other participants, therefore he's not fully acknowledged.

Plus, I doubt he'd care about any labels at this point, unlike other characters. So I don't think it's his turn to die.

Now, something else I'd like to discuss is the impact: I'm not talking about the murder or the shock factor of Ace being the culprit, I'm taking about the impact on the group.

So far, Ace has done nothing but antagonize everyone to appear stronger and in control. It's safe to say that literally no one cares about him.

Sure, they would mind it if he died because at the end of the day, he's still just a vulnerable person, and death is a very serious deal, no one deserves it, but they would probably be more bothered by the trial itself: I'd wager that none of them would really bother to remember him after chapter 2. He wasn't close to anyone at all.

Heck, I bet they would feel sadder if Nico, Ace's murderer, died via execution.

(I'm not implying that Nico is a bad person, I just think that people would naturally pity the victim more than the culprit, which wouldn't happen if Nico successfully killed Ace. I think.)

So yeah, Ace being the culprit would only prove that even """"dumb"""" people can commit smart crimes. I don't think it's enough to suddenly connect him to the themes of the chapter, but I guess it's something. Teruko also said that Ace would die very quickly, so while it is true that her beliefs would be proven correct, this wouldn't affect her that much: she would just move on immediately after the trial.

Why would she care about someone like Ace? If the narrative wants to prove Teruko's beliefs correct while STILL affecting her, I think we also need a culprit who would affect the entire group: someone like Hu or Eden, for example.

Ace's departure wouldn't really shake the group that much.

So yeah, all in all, he's probably making it past chapter 2.

Will it happen in Chapter 3?

(From now on, it's pure speculation, so I'm up for critiques or debates)

Eeeh I'm not sure. I still don't think it's time. But I could totally see it happen this chapter too.

So, assuming that he makes it past chapter 2, we'll obviously get more time with him. Therefore, more opportunity for his character to be expanded upon. I don't think he's changing just yet, not after he was almost killed by one of his classmates. In fact, he will probably get worse this chapter.

Now, I don't expect him to remain a jerk for the entire series, even if he does die. That would drag on a little too much. I do think he'll remain antagonistic as heck, but we won't focus on him too much this time.

I think it's because a lot of characters gained a lot of depth in the most recent episodes.

-J voiced her hatred for attention and entertainment, most likely Hinting at something big going on with her family.

-Arturo, a character who I didn't really take seriously at first, turned out to have one of the most shocking secrets ever, and he even threatened one of the participants. I'm genuinely curious to know more about him now.

-Hu literally said that she wants to be the one to give everyone guidance, because otherwise she's not useful and has no reason to be there (it implies something very dark).

-Veronika is Veronika just being Veronika doing Veronika things. (Jokes aside, I'm really curious to see what will happen to her next chapter)

-Rose is quite literally losing it (breakdown predictions, everyone?)

-and then there's David... I don't think I need to explain myself any further.

I believe these characters will be the main focus of chapter 3. They gained A LOT of development and revealed sides to them we didn't really see before. So I don't think they'll appear only occasionally.

This also applies to Arei: she was directly tied to the themes of chapter 2, and she turned out to be the victim of said chapter.

I'm not great at explaining, but what I mean is that these characters are more likely to die in chapter 3 because of the depth they just gained.

I know that this doesn't imply that Ace will be irrelevant, I doubt anyone will be, or that he won't die, but he will probably take the backseat this time around. Maybe he'll take Hu's role, where he appears every once in a while.

Plus, I doubt this will be the chapter where he'll suddenly drop his facade and share his vulnerability. He was almost killed by Nico, and he clearly hates everyone who defended them now: why would a single chapter change his view that easily?

Keep in mind that we still have no idea what chapter 3 will be about, let alone its themes, so take this with a massive grain of salt.

Will it happen in Chapter 4?

Yep, I believe this is where Ace could potentially kick the bucket. I'm not sure if he would be a victim or a killer, but I could see him die here.

After two long chapters of pain and suffering, alongside the deaths that happened beforehand, I could see him lose it.

Now, I don't know how it'll happen, because Ace very clearly doesn't want to open up, but I believe it might be an unintentional type of breakdown. Where he just loses it and is unable to contain it.

Maybe he could feel overwhelmed. His life is a mess, he's a mess himself actually, as he doesn't even want to be a jockey, and this entire situation is just showing him what he truly is: a coward unable to deal with his problems and pain.

(I mean I don't think that's what he is because he has a lot of problems, but uh, dramatic effect)

-he would realise that being nice would just make him an easy target (Teruko's trust was used against her);

-being mean would just cause self destruction (Nico almost killed him because of his aggressive behaviour), and this would offer no real benefit in the long run;

-trying to trust or rely on others could backfire massively, as the entirety of Chapter 1 proved exactly that (plus, Levi threatened him in the first trial. I think it's safe to assume that Ace wasn't expecting that from Levi, of all people.)

-acting by himself could make him an easy target to frame (Charles was a loner in chapter 1, and was framed by Xander because he had no one to back him up);

-and that trying to change was pointless (Arei died after letting her guard down, to try and be a good person) so there was no point in turning back now. Not after everything he did. It's inevitable anyway.

Simply put,

"I don't know what to do with myself anymore."

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Well, there we go!

I'll stop rambling about this. Again, I have no idea what the future chapters will be about, so it's unfair for me to make such stretches.

But what's true is that Ace's quote showcases a lot of vulnerability and weakness that I don't see him sharing anytime soon. Like, it's not an Arei situation where she had her entire world shattered in front of her, leading to a sudden shift in personality: he's much more aware of the complexity of the world, and I don't think a single conversation is enough to break him.

Chapter 2 and 3 would seem a bit too soon in my opinion, but I could totally see an argument made for Chapter 3, and Chapter 5 feels like it'd be too late, as I imagine we'll discover a lot of important info.

So Chapter 4 seems more appropriate for me, and that's why I believe he could die after his breakdown. The only evidence I have for future chapters is the phrasing of this quote, and the fact that it happens in present time, given the verbs and wording, and I silently pray it's not just a flashback.

If he makes it past the chapter where he breaks down tho, he's all good. He's probably escaping the killing game.

There are other things I would like to talk about, such as his parallels with Teruko, how he's tied to "Fate" like many other characters, and much more, but for now I'll stop here.

All in all, I'd give him a good 65% likelihood of making it. He has a lot more to offer as a character, so I could totally see him last for a pretty good while, but I also see why he could tragically die near the end.

Again, he is my favourite character, but I'm not saying this just because I like him: I'll be totally okay with his death as long as it's appropriate and well written. I don't like claiming that a character's death is badly written "just because they're my favourite".

So yeah, very long essay, probably messy too. Hope you guys liked it. It's also my first post, so I hope the paragraphs are fine and comprehensible.

[taptrial2]

Go. Speak about your dp au. You have piqued my interest and I must know more

OTAY!!!!!!!! uhh im self conscious so some disclaimers. 1. sonic blog followers do NOT tease me about this being super similar to egghogs i know i just enjoy this kind of thing 2. people who have followed me only on my main for a long time. sorry. im having a Creative Writing Moment and im not dedicated enough to make a dp sideblog sowwy.

danny is 14, so he can get away with being super unfamiliar with the outside world - adults give him some grace because he's a child, he's still learning. vlad is in his early 40s, he doesnt have a high school education, he has no job experience, no familiarity with the law, and a very skewed view of what is a Normal Social Cue. he doesn't get much slack. he ends up a recluse pretty quickly.

because of the way they grew up, they're very obedient and don't cause much ruckus to the point of confusion for others. if you ask them to do something ("hey can you put that down", "toss that over here", "go to [x place or room]", etc) they'll do it fast, mechanically, and without comment.

danny ends up in an untouchable social class in school below "bullying target". in canon, danny is not at the bottom rung of the social ladder - there are some people too uncool/gross/etc for he and his friends to talk to or associate with. this danny is so accepting and conflict avoidant that it isn't fun to tease or torment him. he ends up slotted into the "do not talk to" group - the ones who eat alone and are given a wide berth and aren't talked about because their existence feels taboo, like the one kid at the peanut allergy table. he is also traumatized, visibly disfigured, and is in special education, which is another level of social pariah in high school social dynamics.

the one time dash picked on him was a mistake - dash found danny's lasered off bald spot and pressed his thumb into the conspicuous circles there because he reacted strangely. everyone was laughing until danny siezed, the circles turning out to be an implanted valve that makes direct contact with the brain when pressed hard. danny almost gets sent to the hospital, but vlad demands that the paramedics not be brought in (he knows that he and danny's lack of records would be suspicious and they would get investigated. the teachers all think vlad is, like, an antivaxxer or something.). danny comes out of that with a concussion and dash is half-shunned for the week. also vlad doesn't know what insurance is and when lancer asks if he's insured he's like (vacant blink) and lancer's like Oh God No

danny makes friends with sam and tucker, but not right away. he has a strange, dark sense of humor that he doesn't know is dark (in an unfunny edgy teenager sort of way without the intent to shock), and sam thinks he's funny and starts hanging around him in their shared classes. danny is curious about tucker's gadgets and tucker is eager to tell him all about them, and because tuck and sam are already friends, they end up being a friendgroup. danny tries to undo sam's hair (no sense of boundaries) and she backhands him right in the nose and they both feel bad after. he leans on them, fidgets with tucker's hat, and is just wayyy too close most of the time, but they get used to it. sam even starts giving hugs because of him and tucker teases her about it

danny AND vlad ruin valerie's life as a family. it's a similar setup with her dad being on thin ice with his security job, and with danny and vlad (as ghosts) serially burglarizing their labs for advanced tech and money, her dad is fired, yadda yadda. she despises ghosts, hates them for what they did to her life, and is VERY motivated to do some ghost hunting work, so she ends up at fentonworks and begs them to let her have gear so she can kill ghosts!!! PLZ!!!!! and she grows pretty close to jazz as a result of their proximity. she has her job as a mascot, her ghost hunting job, AND school, so she's just as busy and exhausted and sad as she ever was, adjusting to being a latchkey kid dealing with food insecurity.

while danny is at school, vlad is working on the ghost portal, researching ghosts, and learning how to feed himself and a kid without help. he wears clip-on ties and velvet suits taken at a five finger discount from some small-time politician a handful of towns over and his attempts to come across as proper fail every time he needs some shared common knowledge about the real world. he's desperate to learn more about other ghosts, having never interacted with others aside from danny, and he wants some sense of real belonging with other humans. he's struggling in both departments and he is not emotionally stable.

vlad is assumed 9 times out of 10 to be the person who hurt or traumatized danny until he showcases the scars that perfectly match those his ward has. the assumptions are painful every time and he hates it. he's been called in for parent-teacher conferences multiple times because of danny's sensitive and otherwise odd behavior in line with severe parental neglect, and every time he is hurt and exhausted and he wishes someone would understand he would never hurt danny and he is dealing with much of the same troubles danny is. i think he'd grow resentful over time.

uhhh i have more but i'll just call it here arbitrarily 👍

[all-pacas]

DIAGNOSTIC OLYMPICS, SEASON 3, EPISODES 1-12

S1: part one, part two, part three

S2: part one, part two, part three

Hi! I was curious about who on House (besides House) gets the most diagnoses right. Other folks have already run a tally (it's Chase), but I was curious how other factors would influence the tally — whose ideas get run with, who manages treatment, who screws up… So I thought I'd keep score.

1 point for getting the answer. This is almost always going to be House.

.5 points for Valuable Contribution — stuff that isn't the final answer, but either is thought to be the final answer or is valuable to the solving of the case. Stuff like "noticing something on the MRI" doesn't count; things like "figuring out how to treat" does.

-.5 to -1 for Mistakes — stuff that delays or prevents diagnoses, injuring or killing patients, etc.

MEANING DIAGNOSES: Scurvy for patient one, Addison’s for patient two

+2 HOUSE: One for curing scurvy girl, and one for Addison’s guy. That said, not a lot to say about this episode; the fellows didn’t do much besides follow orders and most of the episode was just about House. Which is fine, just boring for the purposes of this project!

CANE AND ABLE DIAGNOSES: Chimerism

+1 HOUSE: Still manages to pull it out in the end, despite being off his game. +.5 CAMERON: Is the one to figure out why the patient keeps having different results on his bleeding time tests (that isn’t “Chase fucked up”). Also has the idea to tag the foreign DNA in order to target it for removal. +0 CHASE: Yet another episode where he really bonds with a child patient, and he even tells off the parents for not being supportive. He doesn’t do much in terms of diagnosing, although he does a lot to take care of the kid. CHASE DID IT: Chase is blamed for screwing up a bleeding test: this is the second time him making a mistake has been the operative assumption. This time, Foreman really jumps on the bandwagon.

INFORMED CONSENT DIAGNOSES: Amyloidosis

+0 HOUSE: Sure, he solved it. But putting the patient in a coma against his will and insisting on treatment against his will is… shady. I mean, I get that sometimes patients don’t know what is in their own best interest and it’s a gray area, but we can all agree that this dude knew what he wanted and House utterly ignored it. -.5 CAMERON: She loses points for refusing to work on the case at all, which does count as “bad medical practice;” not to mention hypocrisy. She doesn’t want him to die, but refuses to treat him when House doesn’t kill him? She doesn’t lose points for the actual euthanasia: the patient was terminal and begging for it even before it was clear he was terminal, and that means she doesn’t get demerits for killing someone. +5 NURSE BRENDA: Watching her give everyone the stink eye this episode made me remember how great she is.

LINES IN THE SAND DIAGNOSES: Eye worms

+1 HOUSE: As per usual, figures it out. +.5 FOREMAN: His bedside manner is not winning him any points this episode. I don’t think it harmed anything, but his impatience and general rudeness wasn’t helpful, either. That said, his tricking Wilson into doing a biopsy for him was pretty great, and he gets his points for deciding a brain tumor is most likely, deciding he’ll biopsy and proceed under the assumption, and challenging House to come up with a better idea. House doesn’t have one, and so Foreman gets a merit for Leadership. +0 CAMERON: Did she do anything related to the case this episode? +5 NURSE BRENDA: Did they write her off the show because she went to jail for trying to murder House? I love her

FOOLS FOR LOVE DIAGNOSES: Genetic disease. And incest!

+1 HOUSE: Comes up with the genetic explanation after an episode of foundering. +.5 CHASE: Comes up with a diagnoses of salmonella based on pot use, which is a stretch but House likes it and they run with it; it’s wrong but it’s the only idea they have for a while. +.5 FOREMAN: Because they’re not thinking genetic, they really struggle to come up with a diagnosis. Foreman insists it must be two different diseases, and gets his way on a biopsy when House doesn't have a better idea. +50 UHHH: Foreman comes out really strongly pro-incest in this episode, and like, I understand his basic point (they didn’t know they were siblings and even though they are genetically family they don’t have a familial relationship), but what a wild take from our guy.

QUE SERA SERA DIAGNOSES: Lung Cancer

+1 HOUSE: Finally realizes the dude has cancer after noticing clubbing on his hands. +.0 CAMERON: Manages to break the MRI and get away with it, which should honestly be worth more points. But loses those points for drugging the patient because she didn’t think he could make his own decisions about his care, causing him to crash through a window. -.5 CHASE: Exiting the entire episode when House tells him to “keep sitting on his ass” is honestly super funny of him. However, it’s also putting his whiny fatphobia ahead of helping the patient, sooo…

SON OF COMA GUY DIAGNOSES: Genetic disease, but mostly heart failure.

+0 TEAM: IDK man. This is a good episode, but it’s also one with fake medicine and no real diagnosing because it relies on fake coma fixing medicine. The fellows work hard while the grownups have their road trip.

WHAC-A-MOLE DIAGNOSES: Genetic disease

+.5 HOUSE: House figures it out, but loses some points for keeping his team from helping Wilson, which in turn endangers Wilson’s patients. He also loses like five friendship points, but we’re not judging on that. +.0 CHASE: When House challenges the fellows to run a single test, Chase’s first guess is a virus, and he points out that the vomiting could have caused the heart attack. House’s theory is Hepatitis A, and he agrees with the heart attack/vomit idea. Chase ends up testing for bacteria and not a virus, but he was by far the closest of the three -- Foreman thought neurological, and Cameron thought a weakness in the heart. Chase doesn’t get points, because he didn’t actually figure it out, but I thought it was interesting to mention that he was by far the closest.

FINDING JUDAS DIAGNOSES: Light allergy

+1 CHASE: Honestly, part of me wants to give him more than one point for this. We’ve had a few episodes now where someone else has figured out the diagnosis moments before House, or after House, but this is the first time someone figures it out instead of House. Chase is about to go on a bit of a hot streak, though, so he’ll make up the bonus points later. CHASE DID IT: Both literally solving the case, and, when House starts to question the treatment, Chase preemptively (and angrily) suggests that maybe he screwed up, since that’s always where House ends up.

MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS DIAGNOSES: Autoimmune cancer

+.5 HOUSE: Figures it out, but steals oxy. From a dead patient, so I guess technically he didn’t do any medical harm, but… IDK, I’m counting it. +0 TEAM: Foreman comes the closest to being useful this episode: Cameron is too busy being mad at Wilson, and Chase is largely silent, I guess still smarting over being punched. But most of the episode is about House.

WORDS AND DEEDS DIAGNOSES: Meningioma

+1 HOUSE: Figures out just about every twist of the case, even while pretending to be in rehab. +.5 CHASE: Realizes the patient is hiding symptoms, which makes them realize he’s been having a whole series of heart attacks. Even Cameron and Foreman give him credit for the ‘breakthrough.’ +0 CAMERON: She correctly diagnoses broken heart syndrome, but misses the fact that the patient is delusional; that his partner and brother aren’t involved. This leads him to electroshock treatment and permanent literal brain damage. I don’t think she deserves to lose a point, since the electroshock was House’s idea and at the time it was the only solution they could think of. But it’s still a big thing to miss.

ONE DAY, ONE ROOM DIAGNOSES: N/A

RUNNING TALLY:

HOUSE: 44 (+8) TEAM: 5.5 (+0) FOREMAN: 3 (+1) CHASE: 6.5 (+1.5) CAMERON: 4 (+0)

Foreman has started to get himself into his niche of "able to successfully get his way over House," giving him such much needed points. Chase is about to go on one hell of a streak, starting of course with Finding Judas; even with a couple of demerits, he keeps having and getting credited for Good Ideas this season… which gets him fired, oh well.

[torakan]

PART TWO!! TEXT VERSION

it was so long since i posted the first one haha hope you didn’t forget 🥲🥲

again, if there’re any mistakes - please tell me ^^

part 1

part 2 art

The next 24 hours all I did was hiding in the wall even though I was quite literally starving. You can’t blame me though, I was fearful for my life, okay? After such a day anyone would have stayed in bed and questioned their life choices…

However, it was pretty much a life and death situation, so I had to get up and find something before deciding if I should stay here or find new home. It’s a decision that you can’t take on an empty stomach, every borrower knows that.

Before you ask, I wasn’t worried all that much about this guy telling other people about me as seeing small people is quite abnormal for them and in best case nobody would’ve believed him, in worst… he would’ve probably ended up in hospital, but we will never know.

So, like that, I collected my thoughts, emotions and gear and went out on another attempt to get food. To be honest, i think my stomach was at the point of acceptance, I didn’t feel any hunger until I finally got to the kitchen counter and saw some fruits. Human wasn’t there but it didn’t mean anything to me anymore, I was too traumatized by yesterday’s experience. *Sighs dramatically*.

Maybe because the day before was extremely unlucky, I was rewarded with something delicious. There were grapes which are super convenient to borrow as humans won’t see any of them missing, some raisins and nuts. I took one grape right away and my stomach growled so loudly, even a half-deaf human granny would’ve heard, I swear. I bit it and transparent juice started to run down my chin which I wiped off right away. It was such a relief to finally eat something, I can’t describe this feeling honestly. Better would probably be the feeling of relief after you endured your piss or, even worse, poo, for an indescribable long time and then you finally get to the toilet and it’s just… ahh.

Anyway, back to the story. As I said, I finally had access to food, but I couldn’t afford to fill my stomach to the fullest at that exact moment since it would’ve been too difficult to climb back home in that case. That’s why I only ate one grape and took another one home as well as a couple of raisins and some nuts. And then the idea popped in my head. What if I left some food that can be stored for a long time to that one my favourite hiding spot? I thought it was a smart decision since in the case I ran out of supplies or had to make an urgent stop I would have something edible waiting for me. So, with that I went straight to the place where human saw me not so long ago. Imagine my surprise when I saw that he left something there. On the other hand, it was quite expected… I was terrified to even look at it yet alone touch, but I couldn’t avoid the smell it had. I tried something like this only at my 10th birthday and my mom told me it was chocolate that we ate as a treat. It was some kind of desert that beans eat for pleasure. Maybe the human I lived with wanted to poison me with that? Or to somehow use it to make me become his pet? I still wonder about this at night, but even though I was really curious about that “offering”, I was more interested in surviving, so I went straight up behind the books where there was a small niche for me to hide. I placed all the things carefully and returned to the counter to pick some more. This day was pretty chill since the human showed up at his usual time and didn’t bother. He was as quiet and relaxed as ever with the only difference, that when he was in the kitchen, I could have heard the music from his phone. It wasn’t unpleasant, on the contrary, I liked it. The guy hummed along with it and his voice wasn’t so bad either to be honest, so I just lay in bed and listened till I fell asleep.

For the next few days nothing weird happened, everything seemed to go back to normal with the only difference that now the human was openly listening to music and sometimes sing very quietly along with it. I didn’t hate it, it didn’t bother me, so it was fine. Till that one day when I was, again, hiding behind the books (I swear, that spot must be cursed, but it was too dear for me to give up and abandon it) after taking a shower in human’s sink in the bathroom and being already on my way home. He showed up in the house earlier today again and I just barely had time to react and hide. When he entered the kitchen, I already sensed that something was off. The way he threw the keys on the table, how he tossed the bag on the floor and his jacket on the couch showed that he was really frustrated about something. Honestly, he was quite scary in that mood, though I didn’t see him being like that too often. Hell, I only remember that happening once in the whole year and I was in the walls, safe but watching this up close was kinda… unsettling.

However, to my surprise, that didn’t last for too long. The guy calmed himself down within like five minutes or so, trying to take deep breaths, then he sat on the chair at the table and… yeah, he started crying. He was crying very quietly, as was everything he did, holding back tears and sobs, as if he was scared someone might hear him…

wait a minute… do you think he might’ve been thinking about me? He definitely couldn’t have forgotten out encounter, right?

I sighed. This human wasn’t making my life any easier. It’s not like I was pitying him or anything, humans are monstrous creatures, evil and cruel and every borrower knew that… Nah, lying has never been one of my strengths so, frankly, I did feel bad for him. This human didn’t try to do anything nasty to me for the whole week, which was a complete opposite of what I heard about them, so I couldn’t help but hope that he wasn’t that awful. I suddenly got curious about him. If he had so many opportunities to catch me and hurt me, why didn’t he do that already? And why was he crying right now? Was he hurt or something? Is human life that difficult? Borrowers usually aren’t sentimental, we only cry on very rare special occasions such as when we’re badly hurt or it’s a deadly situation, or when we break two or more bones at once and there’s no one for us to help to escape and we’re left there to die alone. But this guy didn’t seem to be physically hurt or in any danger, so why was he sobbing?

I couldn’t help it and finally set my eyes on the “offering”. It turned out to be a small round box, which most likely was a human bottle cape with some continents: a piece of chocolate (as I already knew) and a note. Oh no, he wanted to communicate… so it could’ve been a trap in the end… even so, I was already beyond fixing and too far from following the borrower rules, so maybe it wont hurt if I read it just this once…

thank you for reading ^^

comments and suggestions are appreciated

next

@gtzel @smallsday

[nogacheloveka-blog]

The Bad Sanses somehow ended up in the Backrooms. №1

next 2

This is the translation of the first post from Russian to English. I understand English, but it is very difficult for me to write in English, so I asked chat GPT to help me. I have corrected some parts, but there still may be mistakes.

Originally, this drawing was supposed to contain an alarming image to pair with another drawing of Dream with an alarming image. I couldn't make it work, so I decided to draw Nightmare on skates. Behind him, Dast appeared, and I remembered a fanfic that interested me, and gradually, all the others were drawn too.

This is actually art for the translation of the Wayward fanfic, which I sent to the translator to try to give him the strength to continue the translation. I just read the first chapter on ficbook, and I was struck by how Nightmare and Error were not alone, but with the Night's children, wandering around Backrooms.

I know that there is a lot of horror in the text itself, but I am a supporter of cuteness, and my Backrooms with a group of Sanses will be quite toothless and cute. I don't know if my inspiration will last long, but let it be as it is. Plus, Roskomnadzor has again gone through my VPN, and before I can finish reading other chapters of the original, I will need to look for other services (not cool).

The concept is as follows:

🔪 Killer. He doesn't see anything terrifying about his current situation. Probably the calmest of all these newcomers. It's really something new in his life. It is unknown how long his enthusiasm will last.

🪓 Horror. He is currently in a wild panic. He can't stop thinking about the lack of food around him. It's pretty critical for him because of how he was changed by his own dungeon - he needs physical food. But Kill's stupid jokes distract him a little.

🦴 Dast. This guy is extremely tense. He's not all right even in normal times. He found a way to cope by sticking closer to Papa Nightmare, who is quite noticeably sucking out his emotions. He doesn't feel strong hunger yet. It's unclear whether it's due to stress or other reasons.

⛔ Error. Oh, this guy is harder for me, but let's say that together with the soft and cute Backrooms, we have a less unstable and cute Err. He's scared to wander these corridors alone because "these anomalies" can find a way out, but he can't. Fortunately, he doesn't need food. Out of a sense of contradiction, he wanders nearby. They are especially useful to him. At least Nightmare and Cross. At the insistence of the latter, he keeps the group together with threads. He already wants to strangle Killer with them.

⚔️ Cross. An anxious child. In the same degree of panic as Horror, but copes by turning on his instincts as a former guard and watching their backs. He was the first to experience the fear of wandering alone, suddenly getting lost.

🌙 Nightmare. It seems that he is the only one who has fewer and at the same time more problems in the current situation. When they first lost Cross around the corner, they were able to find him by his panic. He feeds on the negativity of those around him, even Error feels it. Feeds Cross and Killer with magic (not ship things). He considers options for what to give Horror as food (remember all those survival guides in Backrooms on a cellulose diet). It is in his interest to take care of the survival of the others in order to feed himself. He uses all his diplomacy to prevent Error from leaving the group - this glitchy devil, due to his proximity to the code, feels all these "portals" that have already separated the group more than once. He understands that the group will soon get used to the environment, and the stress of novelty will be less.

==================

Links to the materials that inspired me:

Original: https://archiveofourown.org/works/46523554/chapters/117149551

Russian translation: https://ficbook.net/readfic/018cc86e-a416-7f80-8511-6d42d3136ac4

Nightmare belongs to Jokublog Killer belongs to RahafWabas Dust belongs to Ask-DustTale Horror belongs to Sour-Apple-Studios Error belongs to CrayonQueen Cross belongs to JakeiArtwork"

[interlacrimas]

hm, i guess its time for headcanons!! (Since its been a while since ive been here or on tiktok, i thought maybe it would be fun!

Hajime is allergic to peanuts, he never tell anyone because he just assume that it was unnecessary info, till when he ate something kazuichi made to him and he fell on the ground, almost dying

Fuyuhiko HATES yakult, as lactose intorelant, he had to drink it very often, mostly as a child and he absolute hates it

Hajime hates physical touch, but he pretend to like it, Fuyuhiko loves physical touch, but he pretend to hate it

Fuyuhiko can tell if izuru is the one talking easily, sometimes people go and say things like "hajime is acting so different today", he stares and just say "probably because it isnt fucking hajime"

hajime smells just like those baby soaps, he rarely uses perfurme, fuyuhiko like those expensive perfumes, he really likes those, specially the strong ones, but he rarely uses them either, because he is embarassed to

Both have shitty families on different ways (btw, this isnt fully headcanon, most of this topic is in fact canon) fuyuhiko's family is violent, they often fight, to the point of death threats between his parents, he had to grow up in an extremely hostile enviroment. Hajime on the other hand had parents who were neglectful, they probably just didnt care about him, his urge for feeling special probably came from this, hajime's parents wanted a trophy, not a child, and they probably let hajime do a LOBOTOMY because, 1 - he would finally be useful, and 2 - his presence wont be missed

Hajime and fuyuhiko both have a hard time sleeping, they spend the night awake talking to each other, sometimes they fall asleep in the middle of the chat, other times they just spend the whole night awake

hajime loves talking about his interests, but never got the chance to do that, once fuyuhiko found out about this he made hajime talk to him about it for hours, fuyuhiko actually make good commentary about it and seem to actually care and get his excitement, which makes hajime happy

Hajime and fuyuhiko are both overworkers, and always call out for each other, even thought they do the same mistake

Fuyuhiko is totally Japanese, hajime isnt, as thought as he is Japanese descendant, he is also latin American, specifically brazillian, he was on brazil between the age of 0 to 10, he then moved to japan, even if it was pretty early on his life, hajime likes the dishes from his homeland and make fuyuhiko try them, fuyuhiko fell in love with the brigadeiro, which was sweet just like he likes, hajime makes them often for him, sometimes when fuyuhiko is alone at his Office he eats them

Just like fuyuhiko like sweet things, hajime doesnt mind food, but he like bitter and spicy food, like REALLY MUCH, fuyuhiko thinks he is insane to drink Juice without sugar or to eat so many spicy things without a cup of water, i guess hajime's favorite bitter thing is...fuyuhiko! I love this analogy, like hajime is a sweetheart and fuyuhiko like sweets, its only far for the opposite to happen!

hajime when he gets mad he often stop talking and just ignore the person he is mad about, fuyuhiko not only mock him and his angry mood, but he often treat the person equally bad, he didnt even care about the motive, he just did, fuyuhiko didnt ask why he was mad thought, he knew it was frustrating hearing this type of question, but still he says things like "just say how much of a bastard this piece of shit fucking is! I have no idea what this mother fucker done but if youre mad it must been pretty mess up"

They like to watch EVERYTHING togueter, hajime is the type to say "no...please dont do it *character* dont do it youre gonna to die dont do it" for the TV, fuyuhiko is the type to "STOP GOING THERE ASSHOLE YOURE GOING TO DIE, COME BACK. COME BACK." In the end the character die and they both stop talking, but probably thinking the Same thing, that it was the most obvious thing ever

Fuyuhiko relationship with izuru is...weird, they often dont talk, they spend their time in silence, which is often more comforting then scary, fuyuhiko sometimes Braid izuru hair, fuyuhiko is aware izuru is just a repressed version of hajime, even if people try to make them different persons

And for the final headcanon, izuru wakes up early at 9:00 to watch mikudayo show, for some reason he likes it, he watched it in the past, and had a few memories that he didnt remember, so he started to watch those episodes everyday, the first time fuyuhiko saw him doing it was like "huh, hajime what are you doing awake right now" to realize it was izuru, he then see the mikudayo program and gets confused, how could izuru like it, he just silent watched too, fuyuhiko now likes the mikudayo program, he just dont admit to anyone

I HOPE YOU ALL LIKED!