#like 5 of them could've been written by the same person

[safyresky]

CS got two more guest reviews last night both saying plz update soon and such, and I want to SCREAM THROUGH THE COMPUTER TO THE GUESTS LIKE "THE LAST CHAPTER WILL COME I SWEAR" BC IT WILL! I AM SIMPLY!!! HAVING A BUSY TIME!!

[danihow]

Love hurts

Han Seojun x producer!Reader True Beauty

Summary: Falling in love with someone who doesn´'t loves you suck, but it sucks more watching them hurt.

Word count: 1.7k

Warnings: unrequited love, han seojun is in love with jukyung, bad written, not proofread, angst.

A/N: i needed to do this to get this man out of my mind, my god why is he so perfect and so unreal.

You never thought love could hurt, not when it was such a beautiful feeling.

Working as a producer has been your dream all high school, being scouted by a Move Entertainment agent as a freshly graduated person was probably the biggest blessing you've ever received in the last 5 years.

You still remember your first day at the company as an apprentice of the bigger producers, sitting at the back of their studio in the couch and watching them come up with ideas, lead the idols and modifying simple sound onto a whole ass song.

Your heart felt so full of emotions that day you swore you could've cried from happiness even thought you were mistreated by other staff, you remember vividly how your face hurt from smiling on the way home.

Your shoes clacking against the tiled floor echoed through the empty halls of the huge building, it still amuses you to this day the was the floor never seemed to get dirty, always reflecting as if it was a mirror.

However, even if you could spot everything on the floor you still missed the person you were walking into, your head colliding against his tall back, startling out of your mind.

"Yah!" A man's voice flooded your ears before your eyes looked up to who you have crashed into, locking with brown foxlike eyes. "How do you manage to bump into the only other person in the floor?" He says, looking into you intently.

He was the prettiest man you've ever met, and even that was an understatement. The way his eyes complemented the rest of his face, his dark hair in a mullet giving him a mysterious and cool vibe that was just highlighted by his all-black outfit. It was probably the most memorable thing about that day.

"I'm sorry." You mutter, bowing a bit and smiling apologetically.

"It's okay, just look where you're going." He tells you in something between a reprimand and some advice, between polite and cocky. "You're a producer?" He asks, more for him than for you as he spots your producer badge hanging from your neck.

"Oh, yeah, I started today. I'm L/N Y/N." You smile politely at him, who nodded and gave you a weird smile back.

"Nice to meet you L/N Y/N, name's Han Seojun." He said before he continued walking, a small greeting bow before looking away. "Have a good night."

As the weeks rolled by you learnt from your superior that Han Seojun has a new trainee and was already relatively famous as it was too. Your encounter with the boy becoming more and more frequent the more he started practicing and the more you advanced as a producer. The two of you becoming close work friends rather quickly.

As the months turned into years and the level of comfort grew between the two of you the more your feeling for him surpassed the limit of friends, his laugh enticing a newfound warmth in your chest anytime you heard it, his eyes appearing in your daydreaming more and more often. Everything about him changing in your eyes to something else. Nonetheless, as your feeling for him grew with your friendship so did the secrets you knew from each other.

Even though you like him a lot you knew very well how much he liked Lim Jukyung, and you couldn't get mad at it, she has been in his live for far longer than you and is just and angel to be around; if anything you would've fallen in love with her too if you were Seojun.

"Y/Nie, you have done more than enough with those tracks, go home." Your superior mentioned as he walked in the studio, passing you a bottle of water and sitting by your side.

"Something is missing..." you mutter, your back aching from sitting in the same chair for so many consecutive hours, mouse scrolling through the track in the monitor for the nth time in the past half hour.

"You can review it tomorrow, go and rest." He said once again, pulling you away from the computer, your hands stretching as far as they could to keep on working until you were out of reach. His hand grabbing the mouse and saving the track. "Go." His voice was stern but with a hint of fondness, a soft smile on his face as you oblige.

Grabbing you bag and saying your goodbyes you walked out of the studio, opting for using the stairs as your exercise for the day. Eight flight of stairs you were kind of regretting your choice, but you were no quitter, so you kept going. "God my back's killing me." You whisper for yourself as your rub your neck tiredly, putting your coat on until a sound picked up your attention.

Instantly your mind went back to that one-time Jukyung playfully told you she heard from her sister that there was a ghost around the building, seemingly having been haunted herself a few times. "Aigoo..." You mutter, freezing in place as your ears try to pick up the sound again; a few seconds pass and you hear it again, however it seemed to be a sob.

Concerned and a bit less scared you kept on walking down, careful to not disturb whoever it was that cried silently. A few floors down you were met with the figure of a man, sat down in the stairs as his body shook painfully as he cried, his soft sobs flooding your ears and you wished to all the heavens above you were mistaking the silhouette with someone else.

Please, don't be him.

You took a few steps down, the closer you got the clearer he became before your tired eyes. "Seojun?" You asked in a whisper, close enough to crouch down and place your hand on his shoulder.

It shouldn't hurt so much to see the way he flinched at both your voice and your touch, his hand flying to push yours off as his face refused to turn towards you.

With a sigh you sat down beside him, not a word leaving your mouth as you looked ahead of you, giving him the time to do whatever he wanted with his appearance before you looked at him, letting him know you are not forcing anything out of him but instead offering him your company.

A few seconds passed by, maybe a whole minute before he kept on crying, hand trying so hard to muffle his voice as his tears never stopped flowing down his cheeks. Slowly you turned to look at him, taking the time to take in his appearance before sighing again. It hurt a lot to see him so broken.

"It's okay to cry it out, don't silence yourself." You whispered softly, hand slowly reaching for his and taking it off his mouth, a sob immediately following after. "I can leave if you want me to." You said, giving him a few seconds to react, taking his silence and lack of eye contact as a sign and stood up.

"Wait.... don't go," he said in a choked voice, hand flying to grab your wrist, eyes finally looking up at you between his tears. "Please."

"You don't have to ask me twice." You say, a soft and sad smile on your face as your crouched down in front of him between his knees, hands resting now on top of his cheeks and brushing away his tears. "You wanna talk about it or just exist for a while?"

Your tone was so sweet and full of patience he just felt like crying again, sniffing he kept silent, eyes roaming through your face and not once finding your company insincere. "I let her go." He whispers back, his eyes appearing as an open book for you to read, his mouth pouting and his eyes tearing again. "It hurts."

"I know it hurts, and it hurt to love her too, didn't it?" You ask, brushing a few stray hairs off his face and behind his ears, a mannerism you took upon on as his hair grew between haircuts. "I'm so sorry."

"Why does it hurt so much?" He said while desperately looking into your eyes for an explanation, his own hand clutching his chest as if trying to take his heart out. "Why do I had to love her out of everyone?"

He sounded so broken, so exhausted of his feelings it made you teary too, a burning sensation starting at your throat threatening to choke your upcoming words.

"You don't choose who to love, just how she didn't choose not to love you." You mutter, blinking away the stinging in your eyes. "It's part of life as much as it sucks." You whisper, shuffling in your feet that hurt from crouching for so long. "Love hurts, it's dumb how much loving can hurt when it's such a beautiful feeling, huh?" You can't help but chuckle at your own words, how ironic.

"I'm sorry." He mumbles after a while, his hands brushing off the last of his tears as he has now calmed down a lot more, you still crouching in front of him, never once taking your attention away.

"Don't apologize for being human." With a smile your hands sneak up to grab his and stand up, pulling him with you. "Come on, let's go and get some air. away from this creepy stairway." With one of your hands you clean his face of, not wanting anyone to see he was crying as your other hand never loosens around his.

As you walked down the stairs with him trailing behind you Seojun couldn't help but notice how secure your hand held his and how your presence soothes him, a small grateful smile on his face.

"Thank you, Y/N." He mutters as you drag him along, not once yapping or complaining of this ruining his tough image as he would've done every other day.

"That's what friends are for." You smile at him over your shoulder, because even if Han Seojun doesn't love you back, love hurts and it's part of life.

[romanticatheartt]

I have a hot take and it might piss some people off specially the ones who believe Nesta didn't need a redemption arc (???) so please don't read this if you have this mindset

You saving your sister at death bed doesn't have redeeming quality. Because anyone in that room, specially Rhysand, would've jumped to help her without hesitation if they had the power. Nesta herself would've helped even if she hadn't finished her healing journey and was still distancing herself from everyone.

I'm not talking about how in those 12 days she didn't help the IC to find a solution, I'm talking about her seeing her baby sister at death bed. Because she didn't helped Feyre for 5 years and let her put herself in danger because Nesta knew she would survive. But the moment Tam/in took her, Nesta goes after her and searches for her. And this is exactly what happened, Nesta thinking IC would find a solution so she didn't even bother to offer a little help. Or even think about it...

In both situations the moment Nesta sees Feyre in absolute danger and is sure there's a huge chance that she might not make it alive, she makes a move to help/save her. I don't want one single person to come here and tell me it's not her job or responsibility- just shut it... don't embarrass yourself

You know what would've been redeeming?

The moment she realized Feyre might die during the labor, she should've started searching alongside the IC, she was literally working in a library at the time.

She should've talked to them and convinced them to let Feyre know of the danger.

She, talking with her sister, properly apologizing and try to bond with her and mend the bridge that's been broken between them.

Not sucking your trainer's d*ck the moment you find out. Not climbing down 10000 steps because you were so "angry" of the injustice you were facing and tell your sister she's about to die and made it about yourself. Because you wanted to show her that IC doesn't "respect" her as much as they don't respect you. And put her in danger in the process because you knew how the stress might hurt the baby but again you were thinking about your own hurts and pains.

I love Nesta and her book helped me to understand her so much better and realizing how similar we are and how much I share trauma with her. Not my trauma response tho.

I just hate the way sjm wrote her healing journey because she made it about herself lol. She projected her trauma and her experience during her process of healing and wrote it into Nesta's story and never cared how it might look at the end. Now Nesta saving Feyre, her blood sister, sounds more like a favor she gave and give *some* people the opportunity to make what Feyre did for her sisters a chore, a responsibility, something she enjoyed to do because she wanted to hurt herself. (and that's definitely not true) Don't even try to deny I've seen it many many times and I have proof.

And that's my problem with her book. I love that she made friends along the process and had her own found family, it led us to meet two beautiful characters. Her book gave us context of the reason behind some of her actions. We get to read how ashamed and hateful she is toward herself for neglecting Feyre. But the rest? No.

Sjm could've give us Nesta, fixing her relationship with the people around her and making new friendship with her found family at the same time but instead she wrote so many smut scene that has no purpose and doesn't help the plot moving. I'm throwing hot takes after hot takes jeez

In conclusion acosf didn't help people to forgive Nesta. Understand her? Yes. But forgiving her and give them the opportunity to considee her as their favorite character? No. I'm not talking about all but the majority, because as you see even now people can't seem to forgive her even tho they understand her much better.

To be honest acosf is one of the weakest book sjm has ever written and she hasn't wrote one single good book ever since... I wanted to make all these takes in different posts but fuck it, we ball<3

[thatdeadaquarius]

after scrolling through your posts i felt complelled to send an ask (i wonder why)

This kinda? relates to all the languages posts you've been making (was giggling and kicking my feet while reading them, and got inspired) but because I only speak English, I wanted to put a twist on it.

Creator who has audio processing issues and doesn't realise that Teyvat DOES actually speak the same language as them for a good while.

Because as a person with very good hearing, i sure don't fucking understand what people are saying most of the time, especially in big crowds. (its like listening to the sims sometimes man, i'm fighting for my life trying to understand😭)

So imagine a Creator getting dropped into Teyvat and getting found by a group of hunters or treasure horders, who instantly start panicking and talking all at once because 'omg our god is here' and all that.

And the Creator is still confused and diorientated, so all they're hearing is ✨words✨and they just assume that no one in Teyvat will understand them.

And then when they arrive in one of the nations and get to meet the vision bearers for the first time, the Creator makes a thirsty comment about one of them (probably would be Diluc in my case) and the entire crowd just goes SILENT.

So silent that the Creator can perfectlly understand what that vision bearer said in response.

Anyway, i love your blog :) not sure when you're going to get this, time zones are funny, but I hope you like it

Giggling and kicking?? Over my stuff??? 🥺🥺🥺💘💘💘 You sneaky little charmer ✨️

ALSO

AUDIO PROCESSING DISORDER ASK!!!!?????!!!!

:D

IM IN THE MIDDLE OF TRYING TO GET ADHD DIAGNOSIS AND GOT AN APD TEST NOT TOO LONG AGO BC THOUGHT I HAD IT!!

FRIENDO!! THIS IS INCREDIBLE!!! ✨️✨️✨️🌸🌸🌸

Have a cookie!! 🤲🍪 tysm for the ask im very very happy to see it!! :D!!

(subliminalmessagingyouwillgoclicktheaskbuttonandsendmeanasksubliminalmessaging)

AHFJDLLAHFAAJSK!! LOSING IT OVER THIS!!

(Me from the future editing: Sorry i wrote an entire sloppy written scenario over this its diluc focused, jfc sorry and i hope u get smth outta it 💀)

Oh good lord you being some kind of Creator god after getting sucked into the goddmn video game world is absolute HELL for your APD

Aint nobody tellin u nothing bc i can totally see that scenario happening bc everyone is like blabbering at you constantly, they all wanna get close to you to talk so its just [insert that general cafe crowd noises here]

Like u wish u had lofi to go with it bc u sure as hell cant get a word in edgewise

I know i keep writing abt Mondstadt, mostly bc first city -> intro to game -> therefore you land there

But i promise ill branch out guys but i got an excuse this time u mentioned Diluc 🔥

Honestly bc u probably arent trying to talk back to them (which they dont rlly know why? Bc they totally have heard ur voice while u were in ur world, when they were ur vessels)

They kinda assumed either A. You lost your voice B. You're overwhelmed, ppl r getting WAY too close to you, back off Npcs C. Or you don't speak THEIR language

So ofc Mondstadt brings you into the city and their planning a big ol festival, u came right in time for Windblume anyway, and by the time your done shaking hands and just waving and smiling (bc what else can u do u cant hear these fuckers, maybe u caught a "the" or a "hello" but you could've definitely been imagining it)

And finally you are free of the general crowd, but most of the Vision bearers (Allogenes) who were ur vessels wanna stick around, so u all end up in Angel's Share somehow

It's hella packed, and it's a bar.

So yeah u still can't hear shit, and now it just sounds like one of those fantasy medieval bar audios ambience videos

Ur just kinda kicking ur feetsies on a bar stool while like,, 4 or 5 differrent special character dishes are sitting in front of you

Diluc's behind the bar, and has been so sweetly attentive to you all evening, no matter how many tipsy patrons come up yelling for refills or drinks (or at least thats what u assume, bc u kinda end up just,, jumping and hitching ur shoulders up and trying to be lowkey about covering ur ears...)

He always comes and refills ur glass when it gets to even half-full, swiping away plates that have gone cold, and if you still want smth off of it, he's so perceptive no language needed bc he just sees your face and starts heating up the plate again with his vision with his hand :)

He's actually been the best thruout all this bc he already isn't super talkative, so ur pretty sure you've only seen his mouth open a few times, but otherwise u just communicated with him via actions/expressions

So ur chilling, well sorta, ur starting to kinda get overstimulated by the day and now this loud ass bar, and the fact that ur convinced no one speaks English here...

But hey!

Diluc's cool, u got food, and maybe u can charade to him u wanna find somewhere to retire to now for the night,,

You try and do that but he's pretty busy running around still,

"Damn, at least I get to see his ass though."

.

..

...

Diluc freezes.

You freeze.

Jean, Lisa, Venti, Amber, Kaeya, Rosaria freezes.

The whole bar goes silent.

Their god of gods finally spoke.

Oh they can understand you alright. (Also u were looking right at Diluc when you said it so, kinda obvious who u mean, somebody points to you behind Diluc)

Diluc just kinda,, sputters, like jerkily turns around and everything like a fried robot

"I- ahem- I- um- y-your Grace- I-"

Poor guy.

He doesn't even know what to say 🤷‍♂️

He has been progressively getting closer and closer to his hair color, his cheeks, his neck, his ears its a full white boy flush he cant escape its so obvious (should he say thank you? How do u even begin to thank a god for complimenting ur ass??!!)

He's caught between facing you and turning around and ducking back into the kitchen and never coming out again (unless it's just you two)

...Was it always this hot in here? Or did Diluc do this to you? 😵‍💫

(Well at least it's a lot quieter now)

You take the next logical step in this situation, and gently let your head thud into the bar.

...

It's a tie between Venti and Kaeya who busts out laughing first.

CHRIST ALMIGHTY IM SO SORRY THIS IS SO LONG I HOPE TUMBLR MAKES IT "READ MORE" BC I CANT FIND THAT OPTION ON MOBILE

IF U KNOW WHERE THAT BUTTON IS PLS LET A BITCH KNO 😭😩

UPDATE I FIGURED IT OUT FUCK YEAH

Cheers,

🌒🌊🌧Aquarius♒️🌌🌘

[punkeropercyjackson]

Ben 10 rewrite-fix-selfship thangs by me and my little sister @mayameanderings we did agesssss ago but am only posting now since my friend @franollie is re-entering the fandom!

My s/i's name is Solana Cristalina!!!He's half Petrosapien,half (afro-dominican) human,transmasc genderfluid and bigender,audhd,super bubbly,chaotic,physically incapable of not running his mouth,a pastel punk femme,a mom friend and has a mean streak that's mostly funny but sometimes angsty or played for coolness against villains!His design is meant to look like a half white black person because that's what i am but since he's made of crystals,his colors reflect the primary light of whatever scene he's in(Hobie Brown moment).His eyes glow in the dark and he's strange looking but not enough to not pass as human!

His dad,Diarius,raised him on Petropia for the first 5 years of his life but decided Earth was safer for him and so he started being raised by his mom,Mariana.He had his own special debut episode in Classic called 'Crystal up,Sunshine' and Mariana is a Bruja who mentored Lucky Girl!Gwen on her and her son and daughter's summer jewel collection travels after Solana had his adventure with Ben and Gwen and became basically like siblings with them even though he was only in a few episodes for that run.Him and Kevin met the same year but at their school where Solana was a Special ED kid and Kevin was in a club/support group for troubled kids.He sat in front of Kevin and he was like 'This shiny kid is gonna blind me' which led to them talking and Solana was like 'His edge is going to cut me' /irony.They befriended eachother nonetheless before Kevin dropped out as he's implied to be homeless in canon and Solana was upset since he was his only friend but they reunite in the show itself with the exact quote 'Holy shit,edgy kid!!!' and 'Holy smokes,shiny kid!!!' but it dosen't end well just yet since Kevin was an antagonist at the time

Kevin is black monoracial but mixed etchnicity-His mom is mexican and Devin's american.He was taught to seperate his blackness from his latinohood and he grew up disconnected to his blackness due to almost no other black people around and becoming best friends with Solana was the start of healing journey og embracing his afrolatino identity.He participates in both black latino and black american culture since he's half both!!He used to feel guilty about falling under stereotypes but now sticks it to racists by being way better than them and loves himself for who he is!He has fang grills by Omniverse and his redemption arc in Alien Force isn't relient on romance despite Kelana being a big part of it

The Tennysons are white latinos with Abuelo Max being an argentinian inmigrant based purely on vibes and Verdona was latina too(poc swag transcends solar systems.Next question‼️).Gwen is a lesbian and dating Kai,Julie,Ester and Charmcaster and the last one was her first love and there was so much unnecessary gay drama that could've easily been avoided if Gwen wasn't such a loser when it comes to romance and her and Ben's character development sticks instead of keeping them static characters for the sake of unfunny comedy.Ben and Rook's obviously a thing as a plot that's not really a plot twist since their dynamic is the same as in canon but intentionally romantic

They're also all trans and autistic

Kai is recurring in Alien Force and respectfully written as navajo instead of only existing for Ben and having a fucking feather in her hair and is an official member of Team 10,as is Julie who's also not a Ben love interest but a girlgeek that has a sibling-like relathionship with him and has Ship pre-debut as she gets her own special like Solana that dives into her backstory.Ester's way more prominent too and yet another member and has quiet bpd due to childhood trauma but is helped with it by her friends and girlfriends

The last additions to complete Team 10 to make it fit it's namesake are Charmcaster,Albedo and Alan.Hope is still technically a villain but a dear friend to everyone on the gang who regularly spends time with them and helps on missions,Albedo got a fullon redemption arc and Alan was pretty much adopted/taken in by everyone since he dosen't have parents

Solana and Ben are a 'i'm mean to you because i love you' typa beat,Solana and Gwen are soul sisters who bond over everything and on the same level to eachother as him and Kevin are and Kelana in Classic was Kevin actively trying to make Solana worse but Solana is such a nice person that it dosen't work,in Alien Force they get to be proper longterm friends with crushes undertones and in Omniverse they basically act like they're dating already but are still complete oblivious.They develop all throught the franchise and don't get together until the final series:Ben 10 Forever

Ben 10 Forever takes place in Ben's young adult years and is a darker,more complex story to reflect it.This includes Solana dying when he saved Diarus' life in a battle in episode 1 but being ressurected with Petrosapien resources and having trauma from it and Diarus has survivor's guilt.He was always afraid something would happen because he just dosen't trust most human's and blames himself moreso because he feels he should've been there full time,even though he wasn't neglectful and visited all the time with him and Mariana just being long distance

Kevin having mimic powers and Solana being crystalline=They're a reflection of eachother

Mr Smoothie is Team 10's hangout and Solana has a job at a thrift store and convinced Ben to be hired alongside him

[neverevan]

This has been on my mind (obviously with everything that's been happening) and I'm curious if I'm alone in it. Do you sometimes think maybe they missed the window with buddie? That it should have happened in season 4 and maybe now they're trying to tell us it's too late? They keep digging the hole deeper for eddie, with shannon being the "the love of his life" he'll never get over and I just wonder if it'll ever make sense again in a way that's not a "consolation" because that would be unfair

so much to unpack here and I doubt you'll like my answer but I'm behind on asks anyway so why the hell not.

so here's the thing.

I am so SO happy that they didn't do buddie in season 4. a rushed season affected by covid with literally one episode lead-up? if we lean into the idea that the shooting/will arc was supposed to be that, that is.

(but mind you that has never been said or confirmed, they floated a bi Buck storyline that got shut down, at which stage we don't even know, could possibly have been before even having a script written for it and way before they even came up with the shooting arc itself.)

but if we lean into that then I would've found it lackluster, personally. I know not everyone holds the same opinions and that's totally fine.

but having two characters who have previously only ever dated and talked about women* suddenly kiss and start dating, without coming out, self-realisation, any other preamble aside from "you almost died/I almost died" which isn't exactly a new predicament for either of these characters...

(*in Buck's case the bi crumbs were huge and I always felt that it could've been a pretty natural progression if they just let us know that actually, Buck was out this whole time it just didn't come up on screen lmao but in all seriousness from a general audience standpoint? having both of them suddenly be together? even though, we had a lot of subtext, I just doubt it would've worked as well as it could work now.)

I mean sure, it might've been just the start and then they could've done a bit more background work for it in season 5, but even if Fox didn't shut it down (again, just a simple bi Buck storyline, not even two main characters on the show suddenly being in a queer relationship or leading up to it at the very least) the risk of not getting renewed for season 5 would've been higher than ever, so for them to leave it hanging at the end of the season would've been unlikely imo.

just to reiterate before moving on: all of the above is based on speculation and what ifs.

and about buddie in this current climate, well... I talked about this extensively so just to keep it short; though I'm more than content if not, I still believe that buddie will become canon eventually.

and ngl I find it kinda frustrating how little faith some of you have in the writing of the show when this season proved more than anything that they are finally back on focusing on the characters and actually have ideas about where to take them instead of having every single one of them running around in circles.

sure, some of the storylines are more than bonkers, but this is 911 and that trend started in season 1, so if you don't like that, then maybe this isn't the show for you. because this season with all the insanity and heartbreak was and is so far, quintessential 911.

both Buck and Eddie are well established, complex characters and they deserve to be taken on a narrative journey separately and together if buddie should happen. yeah, clearly neither character is in a place right now, but what's the rush?

we have at least one more full season ahead of us, that could be more than enough time to take them there.

and I know that anytime I say this there are at least ten people in the notes saying that we had 6 years of lead-up, so it wouldn't be rushed, but I can't help but disagree.

Eddie still has no idea how to be in a relationship and actually be in it. yeah, sure, he and Buck have been playing house for years, but the fact that neither of them seem to recognise that is a big issue on its own. and Buck, for the first time since Abby, is in a good place romantically. like the ship or not, it's canon that he's more content and happy than ever and everyone around him thinks so too.

now, we don't know how long this relationship will last and if/when it'll end and why. but if Buck got the chance to discover this part of himself without trauma and significant pain, with the people around him being supportive and patient, then I don't want Eddie thrown in there with a halfhearted realisation-to-kiss-or-confession within one episode either.

I have trust that if buddie is about to happen, it'll be handled well and in no way, shape or form would it be a consolation prize — especially because Tim is no longer bending over for the bullying of the fans and just goes by his own rules and only gives as much as he wants to. as he should.

honestly, this whole "gimme and gimme now" attitude is so stupid. and frankly, the notion that a popular queer ship would actually have a real chance to go canon has just relatively recently became a thing and now so many people almost feel entitled to it, which then spoils their experience with what's actually going on as a whole.

if your enjoyment of the show is solely dependent on a ship becoming canon? then maybe watch something else, because you're just setting yourself up for heartache, one way or another.

[fruitwaterz]

What's Up With Jack? - A JFK Clone High Character Analysis Written By a Mentally Unwell Highschool Student

I'm gonna start this essay off with 5 words: JFK is an iconic character. He's not as iconic as…Spongebob, sure, but he is the glue that holds together Clone High as a whole because of his character. I've written an essay on him once, and since then I've always loved him and he was so interesting to analyze. Though, I felt as if I had gotten a few things wrong in that one analysis. So, I'm remaking it. In addition, I'm adding some more stuff and correcting what I've gotten wrong.

We know who JFK is. Not the former US president, the cartoon character. The brute, dumb womanizing jock. The one that's used for comedic relief from time to time. The silly himbo that people have grown to love since 2020.

While Clone High is a very satire show that makes fun of various teen tropes, we get ourselves some very interesting characters like Joan, the shadowy board, etc. So in a way, making this analysis is very silly of me but I'm a Clone High obsessed nerd who relates to some of the characters. Most of all, JFK. I want to highlight some elements that most of the fandom doesn't really dig into that much. Good news for JoanFK and Jfabe fans, I can't infodump without mentioning both of these ships.

This is a JFK Clone High essay, and why I care so fucking much. Contains season 2 spoilers.

LGBTQ: THE SEXUAL MINORITY

To state the obvious, JFK has gay foster dads. Something that you don't see in many other 2000s cartoons. Most people would expect the last thing is for a jock to have same sex foster parents. Jack seeks advice from them. He loves them. However, we do get moments where JFK gets confused about his own sexual orientation at times. For instance, he messes up his words and gets flustered around "John Dark", who is actually Joan. In the end, however, he becomes relieved at the thought of not being attracted to the same sex.

This could either mean that he was "intimidated" by his own sexual orientation, or the fact that he's bisexual in a country that many sexual minorities struggle through– even today. Even if this might be a stretch, this is the 2000s, I must remind you. It was a VERY different time for people who identified with their orientations. Since JFK is so popular in the school, he could've become afraid of ruining his own reputation because he was simply bisexual. So what does he do? He goes to his foster parents for advice.

A lot of people in the world aren't very accepting of people who are queer (hell, people shunned Abe for kissing his friend Gandhi. And while Abe isn't attracted to Gandhi in any way, I feel like this could be a good example).

Let's put ourselves in JFK's shoes for a moment. You'd happen to be a kid growing up in the 80s-90s. You have gay foster parents. You'd get made fun of for having gay parents. I think that at some point during Jack's childhood, he was probably ridiculed for having parents of the same sex. It's possible.

His Personality, His Reputation, And His Feelings

JFK loves receiving praise. He pulls constantly, he's the captain of the football team, and he likes making himself look nice. But it's very obvious that he hides his feelings, he wants to make himself look tough SO much that he's almost forgotten the one thing: It's okay to feel human emotions. JFK has mentioned before that the only girl who ever gave him feelings (before Joan came in) was Cleo– and even if she did, the two were in a toxic relationship. They argued with each other constantly, they put each other down.

This could suggest that he's only ever felt way too empty when he was around with other girls, so Cleo coming into his life brought a little color into his world. Just…not for long. He has a deep fear of breaking up with Joan and losing her, because he has abandonment issues. Yes, JFK, the asshole jock, has abandonment issues, and it's been right in front of our eyes. He himself demonstrates a genuine fear of losing someone close to us.

Now to talk about one of my favorite episodes where JFK gets some character development. Litter Kills: Litterally. If you don't know the premise of this episode, JFK loses his best friend, Ponce, due to him being killed by litter. And. That's pretty much it, everyone go home

Seriously though, while the episode itself is pretty stupid and hilarious, it also remains one of the emotional Clone High episodes. When Ponce dies, JFK is devastated, clearly. He lost one of his only best friends, and as the funeral for Ponce went on, JFK didn't care about his reputation, he didn't care how insane he looked to everyone, he only wanted to be with his friend. But even in the current situation he was in, JFK first refused to be comforted by Abe. This is also the moment of one of the first ever times he ever felt a warm embrace. And by his enemy, of all people.

Towards the end of the episode, we can see that JFK is at least starting to move on.

Now, on to season 2 JFK, I do believe that he had some sort of character growth ever since Joan came into his life, which brings me to number 3:

Loneliness And Insecurities

JFK is noticeably happier when he's with Joan, correct. She's the only person he's ever felt comfortable being with compared to Cleo, whereas the two were in a completely toxic relationship back in season 1.

I want to remind you all that Joan is genuinely the only woman JFK has ever loved, so the thought of breaking up with her makes him…anxious. He has an irrational fear of losing her, same as he lost Cleo (though, the two remained friends). In Anxious Times At Clone High, JFK avoids Joan so she wouldn't break up with him. He runs away from his problems in this episode, to be exact. When he's not with Joan, he is prone to overthinking.

Joan and JFK do share something in common, they both struggle in actually making friends. But in season 2 episode 2, Joan makes friends faster than JFK does. He's spent most of his highschool years being a womanizing stud, that he came to the realization that he actually doesn't have any friends. His only friend was his girlfriend.

So, he resorts to crying in the boys restroom. Which is where we see him become friends with Confucius, as he invites him over to his mansion for a boys night. A very convenient thing that caught my eye was: Confucius also struggles in making friends. So he and JFK also share a thing in common. This is one of the first friends he ever made, mind you.

JFK admits to the fact that he's a "loser with zero friends", after getting absolutely demolished in an internet argument against Topher Bus.

So, JFK is a very insecure person, got it. He insults himself over having no friends. He's afraid of losing someone close to him because he fears he's not good enough for her. He's so scared about the thought of her breaking up with him that it pushes him out of his comfort zone. Though, as the episodes progressed, we do see JFK gaining many other friendships, even becoming friends with his former rival, Abe.

JoanFK (And Why It Didn't Work Out)

I will start off with this section by saying that I do not dislike JoanFK, I personally think they are very cute. They have a great ship dynamic. Goth girl x dumb jock. But, and this is a very lukewarm take: I feel like their break up was fair.

Saved By The Knoll was the breaking point, where in one of the scenes, JFK…cheats on Joan by making out with Harriet. And while they both apologized and admitted it to her, it's still treated as cheating by Joan (however forgives them both in the end).

I believe that JFK letting Joan break up with him in Spring Broken was a very responsible thing to do of him, and he goes on about how Joan needs someone with her that's not just sexually. And JFK…makes a lot of sex jokes. He's not a perfect person. He has flaws in relationships, this includes Joan. Even though it was a pretty emotional scene, and Joan was saddened by JFK's suggestion, they are able to work things out in episode 8, Sexy Ed.

You get where I'm going with this. I personally think that JFK and Joan are better off as friends, they have an excellent platonic duo dynamic that could work out so well. The whole entire relationship thing was doomed to fail, and couldn't last long as a result. And while they both look out for each other and care for each other, I don't think I'm the only one who thought that the relationship was quickly gonna sink like the titanic.

Jfabe (And Why It Does Work Out)

I'm not saying JFK and Abe have to be a romantic couple, like JoanFK, they could also form a cool duo dynamic that we pretty much have little to see so far. I can only hope that in season 3, we could have more moments between them where they're just a powerful brotp.

I'd like to point out that these two are complete opposites; Abe is tall and lanky while JFK is short and buff. I like the thought of the tall loser boyfriend x short jock boyfriend ship dynamic. They both influenced each other's goals, Abe was determined to get Cleo to be with him because JFK was competing against him to also get the girl, and JFK wanted to win the presidential election because Abe was getting himself into danger (as said by Joan). In season 2 episode 10 however, they both agreed to the fact that, "Hey, we actually do great as a team!"

I believe that JFK and Abe could work out things if they were to be in a relationship together, such as JFK learning from his previous break up that he needs to improve. I figured that Abe could be his emotional support. The one who's always there for him, willing to help JFK out whenever he needs it. Just wanted to share my thoughts.

Conclusion

For a satirical highschool comedy, JFK is an interesting antagonist to supporting character despite being the stereotypical highschool bully, and that's probably part of why people like him so much. While they have watered him down a bit in season 2 I couldn't be more grateful that we at least got some more JFK content to work with. He has been rotting my brain asides from the show itself i think i need help . Thanks for sticking around

[lil-tachyon]

You mentioned Clark Ashton Smith. Which of his stories would you recommend? So far I've been underwhelmed.

Context for anyone who doesn't know: Clark Ashton Smith was one of the "Big Three" of Weird Tales (the other two being Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard) and is certainly the least famous. Even if you don't know who Lovecraft or Howard are, you've probably heard of Cthulu and Conan the Barbarian. Smith is also certainly the weirdest of them all by a good margin and the most inconsistent in his writing. You pick up a Lovecraft story and 90% of the time it's going to be at least competently written and you know the broad strokes of what the content will be (unnameable cosmic horrors, nervous breakdowns, and often very explicit racism). A Smith story is just as likely to feel like it was written by an accomplished poet as it is to feel like a teenager's drivel. And it could be about wizards at the end of time, or spacewrecked astronauts, or medieval French bishops. The only consistent thing about his work is that you'll need a dictionary by your side while you read it. Get ready for words like "mephitic," "hippocephalic," and "cyclopean" to be abused in ways that even Lovecraft probably found egregious. (Emperor of Dreams? More like Emperor of Purple Prose! Haha, good joke Logan.) The bizzarity and unevenness of his output are probably the qualities that I find so engaging about it and also the things that have kept him from being as beloved as his peers into the present day.

Anyway, I haven't done a deep-dive on Smith since I read his complete works all the way through. Some of his stories are pretty fresh in my mind, but most of them I haven't read in 5-6 years. Keep all that in mind and I'll put my recommendations below the break:

"The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis": Definitely my personal favorite Smith story and probably one of his best. If you don't like this one, it's unlikely you'll be a fan. On its own a very good "ancient cosmic horror" story, what really makes it stand out is it's setting: a near-future (relative to the 1932 publication date) Mars that has been colonized (in a very 19th century sense of the word) by humans. The Martian city of Ignarh is apparently a hub for interplanetary commerce and the subaltern Martian indigenous population provide local guides for human archaeologists to study (and no doubt exploit) the ruins of ancient civilizations that abound on the planet. Smith wrote two other stories in the same setting, "The Dweller in the Gulf" and "Vulthoom" that re-tread the same plot beats but lend a little more color to the Martians themselves. A writer capable of viewing the Martians as sympathetic peoples rather than as "native savages" could've spun this setting into something truly great. Richard Corben also does a fantastic comic adaptation.

"The Abominations of Yondo": Didn't like the first recommendation? I'll take one more shot at making you a fan. "Abominations" is a very short read that manages to contain all the hallmarks of a classic Smith story. Nobody else does it like him and if you don't like it then you just don't like it.

"City of the Singing Flame": A story of inter-dimensional exploration that manages to weave together Smith's obvious love for his home state of California with his penchant for imaginary places beyond time and space. It has a sequel that I thought was okay but most people dislike. If you like this story, it's probably better to treat it as a standalone.

"A Night in Malnéant": A somber, dreary horror tale that I don't think gets enough love or at least isn't anthologized particularly often. Tones down the weirdness a bit, but in a good way.

"Isle of the Torturers": Far-future horror-fantasy that really sticks the ending. Also does the same thing as "Yoh-Vombis" where it has a setting that's only briefly introduced but could easily be spun into a full-on novel. Great Halloween read.

Off the top of my head, those are some of my personal favorites. "Return of the Sorcerer" gets anthologized a lot. It's not weird enough for me but I think it's considered one of his better stories. Similarly I'm not a big fan of his Averoigne cycle of stories (set in medieval France), but if you want some dark ages sword and sorcery, "Mother of Toads" and "The Colossus of Ylourgne" are the ones I liked best.

I'd also like to mention "The Great God Awto" which is a truly bad short story but notable for being one of the earliest pieces of anti-car fiction of which I'm aware. Predates Bradbury's "The Pedestrian" by more than a decade.

Also if you can't find any of Smith's work at your local library, check out eldritchdark.org. I believe all his fiction is available for free here as well as his visual art and other resources.

[iamnmbr3]

❤️🧡💛

If you had to remove one major character from the series, who would you choose? What is a popular (serious) theory you disagree with? What is a popular ship you just can't get behind, and why?

1)

Oooh! Not sure! I think if Ron didn't come back or died in book 7 it could've been really interesting and would make for fodder for a nice AU. I also felt like Ginny's characterization changed a lot in book 6. I liked how she was written much better in book 5. So I wish book 5 Ginny could've been in book 6 and 7 lol. But yeah for real in general I think the characters in the series are overall interesting and dynamic and I like them and the narrative potential they have, even if I feel JKR doesn't always allow them to live up to that potential so there aren't really characters that I'd want to excise, even if there are definitely writing decisions I'd like to remove.

2)

I personally hate the theory that Regulus was forced into becoming a death eater. He literally had a little Voldemort mood board in his room. And he joined up when Voldemort was active and being pretty clear about what he stood for. Plus he seems to have liked his family - he painstakingly hand painted the Black family crest in his room. And we know from Kreacher that he very excitedly and enthusiastically talked about how wizards were going to rule over all the Muggles etc. Which isn't surprising given the family he grew up in. Acting like he was a soft uwu baby who never made any bad decisions and was forced into everything robs the character of agency and makes him far more shallow and less nuanced than he is. Which is such a shame. Because Regulus is fascinating. Let characters make mistakes and suffer the consequences. Let characters be flawed. Let characters be hypocritical and complex and interesting!

Something else that I don't feel as strongly about but am a bit iffy on is the idea that Harry literally became the Master of Death in the end of the series. Look, I've read some great and compelling meta on Master of Death Harry and I've also seen some fics that do it well. But generally speaking, it's not an interpretation I enjoy. I tend to prefer the idea of the Hallows as very powerful magical objects with a lot of mythology around them. (And possibly some connection to the Veil in the Death Chamber which may be what the "bridge" between life and death in the story is based on).

In general though I'm not thrilled with like the idea of them actually being three things that if united literally give the user power over life and death. To me that feels just a bit op to the point of being underwhelming (yes I understand I am saying this about the series with a magic luck potion and time turners). It's just narratively kind of uninteresting and unsatisfying to me and it feels way too abrupt to introduce it so late in the series since it fundamentally changes the world building, feel of the story and style of magic we see in the series. And it's just...usually not that cool to me. Plus, I don't think it's even really especially supported by the cannon. I think JKR's intent was to leave it ambiguous or even to hint that there is no such thing as a true Master of Death, and in this case I think she did a decent job of executing on that intent. That's just my read though.

3)

This is hard for me to answer because I'm very much of a ship and let ship mindset even when I don't personally back something. One ship that I haven't yet found content for that I enjoy is dramione. I've nothing against it, but I feel like a lot of dramione fic tends to reduce Hermione to a Mary Sue and get rid of all her complexity and flaws and rough edges, which is a shame. I feel the same about a lot of tomione fics too, which is also a shame because Hermione has a bit of a ruthless streak that could be very interesting to explore in that context if done right. Maybe I just haven't found the right fics tho. Also in canon, Lupin/Tonks. Just what? It always felt like it came out of nowhere to me and didn't feel like it had enough buildup to make sense. It always felt very weird and random and jarring to me.

[jr2pa]

hello… sorry if this is a lame thing to post in the tag, but if anyone would be willing to help me in some way with umineko's mystery, i would greatly appreciate it.

i recently finished chapter 5, and… message received, i guess, that they expect me to "solve it" at this point, but i'm very lost. i've been taking notes this whole time and i've written down pretty much every red truth that's ever been spoken ever since the gimmick was first introduced, so it's not from lack of trying. i also watched the anime after finishing ch5, as it seemed like the most condensed way to get a refresher on the questions arc, and then skimmed through ch5 again and revisited a few key moments in prior chapters. so… what am i missing??

here are all my notes on all the deaths/mysteries so far (warning: very long, sorry):

CHAPTER 1 aside from the murders, the only supposedly supernatural thing we see in this chapter is the letter on the table in kinzo's room. natsuhi's theory that it was nanjo, genji, kumasawa or maria checks out, seeing as all four of them are suspicious for various reasons i'll be going over further below.

-rudolf, kyrie, shannon, krauss, rosa, gohda were found in the shed this one is a non-issue and just about anyone could've done it, but if i try to analyze this through the lens of my current strongest theory (which… isn't saying much!) that all the non-ushiromiyas are co-conspirators, the culprit behind these murders in particular could only be kanon. shannon and gohda are dead, which leaves genji, kumasawa and nanjo, but in chapter 4, lambdadelta tells us in red when talking about the first game that those three specifically are not killers, which leaves us with kanon alone.

-eva & hideyoshi were in their room, chained shut. eva on the bed, hideyoshi in the bath. both stabbed in the head as far as the red symbols appearing suddenly when they weren't there moments ago, kanon could be an unreliable pov?? here's what beato says about it: "both were killed by another person! it is not the case that, after the construction of the closed room, one of them committed suicide after committing murder! furthermore, the murder was carried out with both the victim and the perpetrator in the same room! no method exists for the perpetrator to commit murder from outside the room!" battler's theory here is that one of the dead people in the shed was actually a body double so one of the six victims was still alive and killed them, but beato later says "no body double tricks exist!" and to my understanding this would violate knox's 10th too, so this doesn't work. idk, i GUESS if we're going to the EXTREME of the unreliable narrator theory, kumasawa, kanon and genji could've just… lied about the chain?? meaning, the murderer cut the chain and THEN killed them both, or something like that. by the time battler arrives, the chain's already been cut, so we can't say for sure when that was done. i WILL say i DON'T like that at all. kinda feels like… what was the point of any of these scenes, then, if you can't guarantee that ANY of them were even real? who can say that the heartwarming, private conversation between eva and hideyoshi before they died was real, while we're at it?? plus, this story is a murder mystery, and the mystery posed by their deaths is "how were they killed if the door was chained shut?". this theory doesn't actually offer an explanation to that mystery, it simply means there was no mystery to begin with, which i find very disappointing. buuut it technically checks out so i'm writing it down here, i guess.

-kinzo in the basement as of the end of chapter 5 we have not been told where kinzo's corpse is being hidden, but you could probably narrow down the potential murderers to the people who know he's dead…? as in, i'm assuming they'd have the good sense to hide him Pretty Well, so i'm working under the assumption that whoever baked him already knew where his corpse was. so the people who know he's dead are natsuhi, krauss, nanjo, genji, shannon, kanon and kumasawa, and we don't really know when he was stabbed and baked, so as far as i'm concerned this could have been someone who's already dead at this point.

-kanon was by himself in the basement "all of the survivors have alibis! let us include the dead as well! in short, no kind of human or dead person on the island could have killed kanon", he did not commit suicide and he did not die in an accident. at times like these i just want to fall back on my "maybe it was scorpions or something" theory. "ohh but it violates the knox commandments, where were the clues that there were scorpions on the island?" to this i say people are always talking about how dangerous the forest is. perhaps because of… scorpions???? oh wait also the uhhhh… the scorpions everywhere, i guess. like, maria's pendants that "ward off magic", or kinzo's doorknob. i don't know. all of that was scorpion foreshadowing all along. actually, if i'm going to pursue this stupid animal theory, spiders might be a better bet. they much more clearly don't violate the knox commandments because of that scene in ch2 where shannon goes to the boiler room to find spiderwebs, confirming that there are spiders not only on the island, but even in the boiler room specifically. to be clear, this is 99% a joke, but i can't rule it out, because my "maybe the kinzo natsuhi talked to in episode 1 was an illusion" theory was also a joke, and look where we are now. upon further thought, another goofy theory that i guess doesn't contradict the red truths we were given, is that he didn't even actually die. to my knowledge, we didn't see his corpse (we definitely didn't in the anime, for what little that's worth lol), and were simply told by nanjo that he died. battler also says jessica was probably taking care of him until his death. because of other stuff that has happened and will happen in future games, nanjo's very suspicious, and jessica is… somewhat suspicious (mainly because she… doesn't really comment on the fact that she hasn't seen her grandpa, who lives in the same house as her, for well over a year. this really sticks out to me because she's NEVER been shown as one of the people who are "in on it". it's like whoever's telling you this story wants you to think she's not in on it, but if you think about it for just a second, how could she not be??), so it wouldn't surprise me too much if they both just… lied about his death. of course, nanjo could've lied to jessica as well, and she'd believe him, i'm sure, since she's not a doctor and he's a trusted friend of the family. i don't think this theory is nearly as damning of her as it is of nanjo. i'm way more satisfied with this explanation than with my 2nd twilight one, because the mystery posed here is "if everyone had alibis, who stabbed kanon?", and the solution remains the same regardless of whether or not nanjo was lying about his death, which is that he stabbed himself.

-kumasawa, genji, nanjo in the parlor while maria sang facing a wall it was confirmed in red by lambdadelta that kumasawa, genji and nanjo are not killers (which is… huge, by the way. she just gave us that for free? i'm not entirely sure what to make of it, though. does it only apply to the first game, or is it true of every game? for now i'm taking the conservative approach, because there have been times when something Big like this has been said in red and then whoever said it explicitly goes on to say "this applies to all games, not just the current one", but lambdadelta didn't bother doing this). beato said maria didn't kill them. everybody was confused about the phone working, but in subsequent games, we pretty much take for granted that internal phone lines are working fine, it's just the external line that won't work. so, obviously, genji, who said they weren't working, is extremely suspicious. anyway, i guess if you continue from the theory that kanon survived, he could've killed them… that's the only thing i can think of. of course, as for the door being locked, nobody ever even confirmed that there were only 5 master keys in game 1 or that all 5 were accounted for. that's not an issue.

-natsuhi died after this, from a gunshot wound on her head natsuhi was killed by another person, and the bullet is not from the gun she was holding. lambdadelta comments on this one later, and her exact wording is "the thing that shot natsuhi wasn't a trap, it was a real shooting murder with a gun raised and trigger pulled!" once again, i have to assume the kanon theory is correct, because i can't think of anything else. i really want to know what was in that letter, though.

CHAPTER 2 should i assume that the detective in chapter 2 isn't battler?? he sees kinzo (AND beatrice AND several magical things) at the end, so just like in ch5, he can't be our objective viewpoint, but then… who the hell is?? it can't be rosa, she saw beatrice turn golden butterflies into candy. and these two are the main people who play the detective role in this chapter… what's going on here lol anyway, this chapter also has a letter that showed up out of nowhere, but this one's a lot more confusing to me. all i can think of is that either rosa or maria put it on the table, or it was, like… glued to battler's shoe somehow and it just happened to come off when he rested his feet on the table, or rosa was… lying about all the windows being locked…… i don't know, mannnn, i think the winner out of all these weak theories is that maria put it there. kyrie says that the beatrice she saw was without a doubt the subject of the painting in the hall. that almost certainly can't be true, though. we know of everybody who's on the island and none of them look like beatrice. so… i'm assuming she's lying here. of course, i don't know what to make of rosa in this chapter. she seems really suspicious near the start, especially because she also claims to have met beatrice, but… i can't really fit her into my equation around the second half, and that's not even getting into what her motive could possibly be for teaming up with the servants. and you could say that's way too many people simultaneously keeping up the same lie, but… to my knowledge, chapter 4 was the same thing (even worse, actually), and battler explicitly tells us, it doesn't matter how many people say they saw something, that won't make what they saw real. the main thing i'm wondering about in this chapter is if any of these deaths could've been faked. they sure all looked dead to me, but there are quite a few deaths that weren't confirmed in red at any point.

-krauss, natsuhi, eva, hideyoshi, rudolf, kyrie all found in the chapel, which was locked this one is… completely baffling. there's so much weird stuff surrounding it, like the letter rosa got and was asked to read when all the siblings were present but we never find out the contents of, or the fact that we don't really see any of the actual family conference, but we get that weird scene of everybody in the chapel acknowledging beatrice's existence?? obviously since battler didn't see any of this firsthand, it could all be lies, but then… what's the point of any of it? why bother showing us any of that? in chapter 4, lambdadelta says "when the six were killed in the chapel, the culprit was inside the chapel!" and beato says "from the time maria received her key to the instant rosa unsealed the envelope the next day, the key passed through no one's hands!!" i think it's weird and suspicious that she didn't say this in chapter 2, but i can't think of an explanation as to why. anyway, we did get confirmation that they died in the chapel, rather than being carried there after being killed, which begs the question, What The Hell Were They Doing There? who knows?? if you want to be REALLY pedantic about the red, which… i always do, you could say this doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't used. like, what if they were wearing gloves or something when they held the key, i don't know. alternatively, "the next day" is pretty vague, so if rosa opened the envelope at, say, 1 am, at that point the key could pass through anybody else's hands (as long as they sealed the envelope again) without contradicting beato's red truths.

-jessica & kanon. jessica was found in her locked room with a knife in her back and kanon was never found beato confirmed that kanon died in jessica's room. as battler mentioned, this one's not a big deal. anyone with a master key could've done it and hidden kanon's corpse. shannon and genji's alibis were already shaky even back when i still thought kinzo was alive, but now that i know he's dead, i mean… they're at the top of the suspect list. i would lean towards shannon being behind this one, because they seemed to be pretty close friends, so the "stabbed in the back" aspect makes a little more sense than if it were genji. i also had the thought when first reading this chapter that, because nanjo was investigating jessica's corpse and he was asked to look for a key on her, he could've planted it there, but i don't know that this actually… helps me solve anything. ALSO i took note during my first reading that when rosa mentions protecting all the kids before finding jessica's corpse, she doesn't include jessica in her list of people she needs to protect, which is very odd, and something i can only make sense of if she already knew jessica was dead.

-nanjo & kumasawa had that whole thing where "kanon" killed them then they disappeared from the locked servants room what battler settles on here is that, like with kinzo, somebody inherited kanon's name, but thankfully, lambdadelta disproved this in red. that would've been too goofy, even for me. especially since his theory doesn't explain the actual… locked room?? the keys were all accounted for, man. anyway, as far as kanon showing up despite being confirmed as dead, i'm once again falling back on the unreliable narrator argument. maybe genji, shannon and gohda were just lying, no kanon-looking guy ever showed up in the first place. genji and shannon are pretty consistently suspicious, but gohda only occasionally seems to be in on it, most of the time he really looks like he's completely lost and doesn't really know anything. i don't know what his deal is. while we're accusing them of lying, let's go ahead and agree with rosa's theory. neither kumasawa nor nanjo were actually killed at this point, so they just… left the room, let one of the other three lock the door with their master keys, hid elsewhere, and were killed later and then found by genji. of course, they could've been killed and hidden elsewhere by the other three, too. whether they were dead or alive doesn't really change my theory that the other three are lying about the whole thing. i find it very funny how appalled battler is by rosa's heartless theories and how untrusting she is towards the non-ushiromiyas only for me to realize when revisiting this chapter that… most of her theories actually do check out…… i feel pretty stupid about this now, but when i'd just finished chapter 5, i thought the "it" in "without love, it cannot be seen" referred to "the true answer to the mysteries", but now i'm almost certain "it" is actually magic instead. so maybe this phrase really means that in order to reach the truth behind the magic, i need to completely disregard how much i like or care about the characters, and look at the real verifiable facts, regardless of how upsetting the conclusions i come to are. i guess the ocean WAS objectively gray on that cloudy day, huh… this does align with what happens in chapter 5, because if you think about the story objectively, it's easy to realize kinzo didn't actually tell natsuhi she's worthy of the family emblem, but i, personally, just kinda… ignored that fact and shrugged it off because i felt too bad for her. does this mean that it's just as cruel to solve these murders as it was for bernkastel to tell natsuhi that kinzo never liked her, then??

-gohda, george, shannon found in natsuhi's room. the door was locked george had natsuhi's key, and rosa had all servant keys. lambdadelta says "after the master keys came into rosa's control, never did any of them leave her hands! except for the time when she lent it to battler to unlock natsuhi's room." i didn't see anything that would deny a three-way murder in which all three of them sort of killed each other at the same time, or a double murder followed by a suicide, or something like that. it's not great, but it's all i have.

CHAPTER 3 the first thing that sticks out to me in this chapter is, of course, beatrice from 20 years ago speaking to kinzo (proven to be a real conversation by ronove) and rosa's story about meeting her and witnessing her death (the fact that she's dead is also said in red). unfortunately, i don't know what to do with this. the only people who would know about beatrice are the people who know about kuwadorian. of those, according to the boat guy from chapter 4, the ones that are alive in rokkenjima during these two days are genji, kumasawa and nanjo.

-genji, shannon, kanon, kumasawa, gohda and kinzo in the 6 locked rooms with keys linking them all six of them were confirmed dead by beatrice as soon as their discussion started. we know "the six people died instantly", they "were not killed by traps" and "none of the six people committed suicide". beato refused to say that all 6 deaths were murders, and later tried to say in red that none of them died in an accident, but ronove stopped her for strategic reasons. additionally, in chapter 4, beato says "all of them had wounds resembling gunshot wounds which became fatal!" so… before this was revisited in chapter 4, i was able to reach the conclusion that at the very least, if one of the 6 was the killer, it couldn't be kinzo (didn't have a master key, therefore couldn't have closed the loop) or kanon (had a master key, but was in the chapel, which can only be opened by the chapel key, therefore couldn't have closed the loop). from there, i figured if none of the deaths were accidents or suicides, all that's left is… natural causes, so either kumasawa or genji could've been the culprits and then just… died of old age while locked in one of the rooms. this WAS mostly a joke theory, but to my understanding, it's not that far from the ACTUAL truth, that she couldn't say all 6 were murders because kinzo died of old age over a year ago. …but this begs the question, what do i make of her saying "all of them had wounds resembling gunshot wounds which became fatal"?? is the implication here that kinzo actually WAS murdered, and the scene we're shown in ch5 right after he dies was a lie?? this raises so many more questions than it answers so i don't want it to be true, and of course, if it IS true, shouldn't beato have been able to say all 6 deaths were murders? uhh anyway though, battler ended up settling on one of the people who were alive planting one of the letters on the corpses, which i think is fair. eva hasn't found the gold yet, so she has no motive to kill anyone, much less the servants. therefore, nanjo is the most suspicious out of all the survivors at this point, not only because of how heavily involved he seems to be with other chapters' mysteries, but also because he's one of the few survivors who would know where to find kinzo's corpse, AND, like with jessica in chapter 2, planting a master key would be easiest for him, since he's in charge of checking if the victims are all dead. by the way it's extremely funny that it took me this long but i JUST noticed he's the only character aside from battler who's never died on the first twilight… what could this mean……

-rosa & maria found in the rose garden it is confirmed in red that both of them were dead. this murder's culprit was all but flat-out confirmed. eva snuck out the window to kill the only other person who knew about the gold and got hideyoshi to cover for her. ronove confused me by not saying that hideyoshi was in the guest room the whole time because it would lose him too many pieces…? i don't know what pieces he would lose by saying this, but whatever. we know who killed them.

-rudolf, kyrie & hideyoshi in the mansion ronove refused to say they were dead. yeah sure he makes some excuse about asking battler to accept beato as his opponent again instead of going up against ronove himself, but he can't fool me. if he didn't say it, he didn't say it. anyway, my current guess is that kyrie and rudolf confronted hideyoshi, they got into a big fight and ended up killing each other (this sort of mutual killing keeps popping up but i can't help it. it's all i have). i guess eva could've killed the three of them too. again, i have to approach all these murders as cold-heartedly as possible, so even though it would make me very sad if she killed her husband of all people, i have to consider the possibility, at least. if we take what we were shown at face value, it seems like he witnessed her killing rudolf and kyrie and got upset so she had to kill him. i will say, though, this doesn't entirely make sense to me, because he covered for her when she went out to kill rosa and a 9-year-old baby, so i don't know why these two murders would be any more objectionable to him than the first two??

-natsuhi & krauss found outside i don't think there's anything wrong with the assumption that eva killed them while everybody else was upstairs and carried their bodies outside.

-george also dies at some point in the mansion beatrice explicitly said he didn't go down the stairs of the guesthouse, so battler's theory that he left through a window and somebody locked it afterwards is all i have. because nanjo is the most suspicious currently living character and eva doesn't seem to bother making her kills look supernatural, i want to say he was the one who locked it…? eva could've been behind this one, too, but, like… why lol. she hates all her siblings and wants all the gold for herself so these other murders make sense, but she has nothing to gain from killing george, does she? he probably just killed himself after seeing his girlfriend's corpse.

-nanjo died while taking care of jessica oof, we got so much red text for this one… the tl;dr is that eva, battler and jessica are neither the culprits nor involved in his murder and everyone else is dead, but he was murdered directly by a human. battler's theory that one of the victims was actually still alive, killed nanjo, then somehow died themselves checks out. the deaths we got immediate confirmation of were genji, shannon, kanon, kumasawa, gohda, rosa and maria, so this culprit could have been natsuhi, krauss, rudolf, kyrie, hideyoshi or george, i'm pretty sure. gonna leap to conclusions here because it's all i can do, but because of the bank number on the wall that was in the letter sent to nanjo, kumasawa and ange, i'm going with rudolf or kyrie being behind nanjo's death. before dying, he mentions that he has a sick grandkid, which… may be connected to his motive somehow, i guess?

-eva killed battler like, we saw it. on screen.

CHAPTER 4 battler's very first line in the tea party… "i don't have a clue what to make of all this." man, join the club. at this point, i don't think it's a stretch to assume maria is somehow involved with the murders. i don't know what ange means when she says she gets the feeling that if she hadn't made fun of maria's magic, maybe this whole tragedy could've been avoided, and i get that she's like… a teen, and teens tend to be overly dramatic and blame themselves for everything, but there's also the handwriting in her journal written by "beatrice" that matches the handwriting in the message bottles. the thing about the bottled messages is, though, that battler most likely isn't aware of them, since they were only found way later, outside the time period of the game. i'm assuming this means i don't need to figure out what their deal is, since battler most likely didn't either (same thing with the letters sent on october 4th, while i'm at it). stuff outside of the game board aside, in this game, maria says kinzo gave her the umbrella, not beato. this is interesting to me mainly because in this very chapter beato tells us that "no person would mistake ushiromiya kinzo by sight", which most likely means… maria is straight up lying, on purpose. "ohh but what about battler's theory for the 1st twilight, that somebody inherited kinzo's position as family head and his name along with that" bro she's 9. how the hell are you going to logically prove in a meaningful way to a 9-year-old that you're kinzo now when you're not literally kinzo. not to mention how conveniently specific her phrasing is ("grandfather came and handed me an umbrella"), almost like… somebody asked her to say exactly that, imo. to be clear, i think it'd be really silly if maria were the one killing all these people. i'm just suggesting that she's allied with the culprits, who ask small favors of her, like "tell everybody beatrice (/kinzo) gave you this letter" or "put this letter on the table when nobody's looking". little stuff like that. one thing that stands out to me that i'm not sure i should be paying any mind to is that while in the dungeon, kanon and shannon talk about themselves as if they know they're pieces on a game board. i don't know what to make of this. at the end of the game, piece-battler finally actually meets piece-beato, but she's speaking to him from pretty far away, so she could reasonably be any of the women who are on the island in a convincing disguise, i guess. again, i can't narrow this down, because i can't say for sure that ANYONE except maybe kumasawa and gohda is dead when this happens. i also have no idea what battler's sin could be, nor do i know how he would've caused all these murders, or where to look for clues about any of this. as for the stuff about battler not being asumu's son, my current silly theory is a good old Baby Swap. he's actually kyrie's child, and asumu's child was the stillborn, but rudolf wanted to marry asumu, so he swapped the babies or something. and THEN there's beato's final riddle, "you are all alone on this island. and of course, i am not you. yet i am here, now, and will kill you. who am i?" and to that i say, i don't knooowwwwwww :( that's one of the main things i've been wondering since chapter 1! everybody dies by the end, even after the ritual ends!! i'm gonna use my Spiders card again, and also throw in a uhh Natural Disasters Can Kill People card. maybe the typhoon gets even worse, and that's why they can't even find the bodies, because they're blown away or something. i don't know dude finally, lambdadelta and bernkastel talk and lambda says beato's acting again, and noted that at the end only her right hand fell down. again, noooo idea whatsoever!!!!

-natsuhi, rudolf, eva, hideyoshi, rosa, genji died during the family conference man what happened here… chapter 4 is frustrating because we get very little red text related to the murders throughout and most of battler's information is received from 3rd parties over the phone. beatrice says "all of those who met at the family conference recognized the existence of kinzo!" and what we got from the discussion around this first twilight is that maybe somebody inherited kinzo's name, which… does not help me personally solve any of these mysteries. also seeing the way these people act in all the other chapters makes it very hard to believe EVERYBODY there would UNANIMOUSLY acknowledge anyone as the next head, so i'm pretty skeptical of this explanation. chapter 5 proves that krauss and natsuhi won't acknowledge anybody but themselves, and the other siblings are ok with anybody but those two. what's weird though is that when lambdadelta lists all the ways in which battler was wrong, she doesn't say anything about this. puzzling. or, like… maybe they just hauled out his corpse. yes, this also seems out of character, but everybody there could've recognized the existence of kinzo, as a corpse, who was dead. if there's anything supernatural to disprove here, it's the portals that transported the survivors, i guess, because as far as the murders go, those could've been anyone, and they could've taken place at any time before battler went around investigating. i don't know what to make of the "trap door" theory, but i think trap doors would count as secret passageways so i'm denying their existence. thanks, knox. so all that remains is that, once again, everybody who survived just… lied about all that, i guess. kuwadorian is pretty far, and the cousins had very recently gone back to the guest house, so these five characters having been headed towards kuwadorian earlier in order to make it there by around 10:10 seems unrealistic. nanjo's part of this group so they COULD'VE gotten there, but there's no guarantee or need or anything. all i can do at this point is assume those 5 called the cousins from the main house, i guess. among the 5 survivors, nanjo, shannon and kanon are pretty suspicious, and kyrie's slightly suspicious because of the letter with the bank information, but krauss…… krauss just seems like a man stumbling through life to me, so even though he knows kinzo's dead he's pretty low on my suspect list. if we're going back to rosa's wolf & sheep puzzle, there would be more wolves than sheep here, so i guess they just threatened him and forced him to say what they wanted him to say…??

-jessica in her room after calling battler and george outside so… we got exactly zero red text pertaining to these murders, which is very frustrating, and battler's only theory for them was to just blame person x, who we know doesn't exist. while investigating, battler mentions that it's weird that jessica knew george was dead, but i don't see how this is an issue. we don't have a clear timeline of events here at all and most of our information comes from people who aren't battler, who are all unreliable narrators, but my most reasonable guess (i have stupider ones) is that somebody killed george, brought some kind of proof with them to jessica's room, beat her up, made her call battler and then killed her. also, jessica going through all the trouble of calling battler just to insist that magic is Totally Real Bro, Trust Me is pretty suspicious, but she did actually die. i don't know, man. and, of course, because i'm positing that everybody who was trapped in the dungeon was lying about that, and we don't know when anybody died, this could've been just about anyone. should i assume it's genji, because ronove was the one who administered the test?

-kanon finally some red text! beatrice confirmed while battler was investigating that kanon was the first person in that group of 5 to die, and the 9th person in general to die! hooray! she did this because battler didn't find his corpse and wanted to pin the blame on him. that is a very helpful hint (as far as hints about chapter 4 go, i mean), but we don't have a reliable timeframe for any of this, plus we're not told explicitly which 8 people died before him. we're led to believe it was the 6 in the parlor + jessica & george, but it could've been the first 6 + kumasawa & gohda, or 4 people from the parlor + jessica & george + kumasawa & gohda, or whatever else. anyway, there's nothing potentially supernatural about it to disprove. it could've been just about anyone.

-shannon, nanjo, krauss they supposedly die soon after. obviously, since kyrie supposedly survived the longest and made a really weird phone call to battler about the culprits Definitely Being Witches, So Please Don't Even Think There's Anything Else Going On Here, she's my number one suspect for these.

-kyrie she dies by the phone, presumably the one she called battler from. we didn't really get any death confirmations until way at the end of the chapter, so this could've been anybody who was presumed dead. i'm having a really hard time narrowing these ch4 deaths down… again, this was a very frustrating chapter.

-kumasawa and gohda they were found in the locked shed. they were both shot in the head and hanged so that their feet still touched the ground. gohda had the only key to the shed in his pocket. i feel like the LEAST battler could've done was talk about their deaths at ALL with beato. blaming it on a culprit x doesn't explain anything at all. i'm kinda mad that he didn't, AND that beato let him get away with that. so here are my stupid theories regarding these two murders: -gohda handed the key to the murderer (for reasons unknown), who then killed them both and arranged their corpses. the culprit then locked the shed and placed the key back in gohda's pocket from the window, using, like, a fishing rod or something. we don't know when they died, so they could have been let out of the shed, killed some people, gone back in, then gotten killed; -same as the above, but the culprit made a copy of the key after receiving it, then put the original back in gohda's pocket before locking it again with the copy; -the killer forced them to tie their own nooses then shot them both through the window; -this is my wildest and wackiest one, but maybe it was kanon, and he'd been hiding in the shed until battler opened it, and died somehow before beato confirmed his death. battler found everybody but kanon before opening the shed, so if anyone WERE hiding in the shed, it'd have to be kanon. also, we only get confirmation that kanon died AFTER battler finds all the other corpses, including kumasawa and gohda. because kanon was the 9th to die, he either died while hidden in the shed, or several of the bodies battler found were just playing dead.

-kinzo's baked again zero information. he could've been baked at any point.

-maria dies at the end obviously my best guess is suicide, even though battler says crossing the arms of the dead is something the living usually do for the dead, not something you would do yourself before dying. she's a little kid so i want to say… alcohol poisoning? we do know there's a lot of alcohol in the house. she finds her mom dead, ingests a ton of alcohol and lies next to her to die. no clue what happened at the chapel.

CHAPTER 5 a complete outlier!! it's not written by beato OR told from battler's pov!! they were EXTREMELY generous with hints here, but unfortunately, it still wasn't enough. i'm guessing we're supposed to look for differences in what battler's seeing in this game compared to the ones where he's the objective viewpoint, but i… could not find any haha… erika's introduction really highlights how suspicious it is that nobody was willing to say "there are EXACTLY 17 people on the island" last game, or exactly 18 in this one, but i don't know what to make of this. "no more than 18" back when we didn't know kinzo was dead made sense, battler never saw the guy (except that one time in ch2, but again, i don't know what to make of that), but he's… seen the remaining 17 people…… what with all the chess talk, it would make sense for there to be only 16 pieces on the board, but… how?? it's pretty clear to me that battler being the baby natsuhi killed who's back for revenge doesn't… actually… make any sense. we are told in this very game that although the pieces are controlled by the players, they can't take actions that those pieces realistically wouldn't take themselves, and because battler clearly didn't even know that he wasn't asumu's son, there's no way he could realistically know about any of that stuff with the baby. unfortunately, knowing this doesn't help me solve this game at all, though. as for weird supernatural things with no clear explanation, there's the knock on the door during the family conference. we got a lot of extremely restrictive red text about it, but… at no point do they say that there really was a knock. is this an unreliable narrator puzzle again… erika wasn't there, so did they simply lie to me about there being a knock on the door…… i'm gonna be SO mad if this is the answer. i would also like to mention that natsuhi says shannon is the only person who knows her favorite season. while i do find shannon suspicious, i don't think this is 100% damning of her. if i were the guy on the phone and had somebody on the inside who could secretly put stuff in natsuhi's room, my strategy would be to hide four cards, each with a different season, in different corners of her room. then once she says it's autumn i check my notes and see that autumn should be under the clock so i'd be like "yeah, i knew all along ;) check… under your CLOCK ;)". it's a very simple magic trick, and magic's what umineko's all about lol… they even went through the trouble of showing us jessica talking to battler on the phone, like, moments before, and even though nobody in-game acknowledges it, they're… literally voiced by the same guy. of course, because erika isn't in any of these scenes, i don't even know if the phone guy is real in the first place. maybe there was never a card that said autumn in her room, man. who knows. anyway,

-jessica, george, maria and rosa were killed in the cousins' room. they disappeared from there soon after battler discovered them we got in red that neither natsuhi nor krauss are the culprits, and the seven sisters tell us in red that their bodies were not moved after their deaths. if that's the case, i really can't think of a theory aside from battler's, that they were still alive and they sneaked out themselves after everybody left. so… first off, beatrice said in red way back in chapter 2 that she would keep her promise, referring to calling off the ritual if somebody solved the riddle. essentially, beato promises that whoever sent the letters and was behind everything will stop killing, but the question remains if this promise is still in play now that she's no longer the game master. without knowing the answer to this question, it's very difficult to say who the culprit is in chapter 5. on a related topic, is it in any way relevant that the only game in which the cousins die on the first twilight is the one that's not written by beato? is that, like, an unwritten rule she has for her games for some reason that lambdadelta didn't pick up on? of course, it could just be that they all slept in the same room as battler in previous games so they would've been harder to kill. anyway, the witnesses who supposedly saw the bodies were battler, rudolf, kyrie, eva, hideyoshi and nanjo. i guess battler's theory would require all of them to be in on it, which is… a really weird group.

-genji died in his room. the door was sealed they spend, like… zero time thinking about this one. poor genji (i say before accusing him of murder). all we get in red is that after his death, his body was never moved. anyway, i'm assuming we're meant to follow the same logic here, meaning that he was never dead in the first place, and that because erika didn't see the intact seal be broken herself, we should assume kanon and kumasawa are lying? also, though, to my understanding, erika only sealed the guest house, not the main mansion, and i don't remember anybody checking genji's windows.

-krauss also died nobody found his corpse, but we do know that he died soon after natsuhi heard his voice on the phone, and that his body was also never moved after his death. once again, there's nothing supernatural to disprove about this one. however, because he had to be somewhere with a phone, and erika thoroughly investigated the mansion when she proved kinzo couldn't have been anywhere but in natsuhi's bed, i'm assuming he called from kuwadorian, so whoever kidnapped him has to be one of the few people that we know are aware of the hidden mansion…?? it's kind of a leap of logic, but i want to narrow it down. anyway, like i've said before, the people who know and are alive on the island are genji, nanjo and kumasawa. if we keep going with this and consider the fact that the secret mansion is fairly far away, it's most realistic for genji to be behind this, because the other two are accounted for most of the time.

-hideyoshi died in a guest room he had chained shut. natsuhi was in the room when this happened again, we do have in red that natsuhi is not the culprit, so this is the most supernatural one. how about this: erika tried to open the closet in the room but was stopped by battler, so we don't actually know if natsuhi was really in there in the first place. this is something that yet again took me way too long to notice, but this is the most literal 1:1 metaphor you could get for schrodinger's cat, which is kinda fun. as in, natsuhi MIGHT be in there, but until erika opens the closet, you'll never know for sure. so maybe somebody else was hiding in the closet, and they killed hideyoshi instead. namely, one of the victims, who had no alibi. let's go ahead and accuse genji and keep his killing streak going. it IS ridiculous, but to my knowledge, it works?? what's kinda weird about his death is that he's listed in the credits as having died on the first twilight, along with the other 6. how come though……

FINAL THOUGHTS

-even though the non-ushiromiyas are by far the most suspicious, i have no clue who THE mastermind could be, plus i don't really have any concrete motives for any of them, much less ones that align with the cryptic stuff they've been hinting at that these murders are a message meant for battler because of his "sin". basically, even though i have whodunnit and howdunnit theories for a couple of specific murders, most of them could've been multiple different people, and i don't have any real whydunnits. -i do see how the pov's credibility could be a powerful weapon, but it's kind of a double-edged sword, because… if you can only believe what the detective directly saw, that leaves you with very little. viewing this story through this very strict lens really gets in the way of how multi-faceted and complex these characters have been shown to be, because the only "persona" of theirs i can trust is how they act around battler. this especially sticks out to me in regards to eva. i really like her relationship with hideyoshi as it's been presented in its entirety, but because she's only affectionate in private, i'm essentially being told not to believe she cares about him all that much, which makes me really sad lol… hell, not even flashbacks can be taken as truth, so how am i supposed to realistically guess the motives behind these murders?? -i have noooo ideaaaaa about all the stuff virgilia said about beato having nothing to gain from somebody solving the epitaph, or that there's only meaning in the epitaph alongside the murders, or battler completely changing how he thinks of her after reaching the truth. again, what sorts of clues am i looking for?? -anyway, it's probably obvious to anyone who reads all this but i don't usually try to solve murder mysteries haha, i'm always just along for the ride, but i've never been asked this directly by the author to solve it myself, so i wanted to try my best. i'm stuck though, and i've been thinking so much about it i'm pretty sure it's ruining my brain. sometimes someone in real life will tell me something about themselves and my first thought is "unreliable narrator, i didn't see it happen so i can't be sure it did" lmao… i'll take whatever help i can get

[calamari-inari]

Playing this game (without the likes) 🫶

1. enemies to lovers, best friends to lovers, lord and their knight ❤️

2. Not sure if these are tropes, but yandere lover (just not a very big fan of yandere), obsessive love (treating their partner as a possession), misogynistic attitudes or abusive power in a relationship (basically a partner defining what their partner, whether it be a woman or man, should do or behave, and the victimized partner finds it hot???)

3. Gradual mutual understanding for one another! I also learn more about the characters' personalities this way!

4. One or both partners experience withdrawal when they're being separated from each other lol. True feelings often emerge from such situations and it's adorable...

5. Multiship! So far, the only ships I really think about now are from FE3H and a few from Engage and TGAA. Here's a list of several multiships I enjoy!

FE3H (Apparently Dimitri is very shippable to me LOL)

Hubert x Ferdinand

Hubert x Edelgard

Sylvain x Felix

Sylvain x Ferdinand

Dimitri x Ferdinand

Dimitri x Felix

Dimitri x Dedue

Dimitri x Claude

Byleth x any lord

Engage

Alear x Alfred

Alear x Diamant

Diamant x Ivy

TGAA

Kazuma x Ryuunosuke

Barok x Kazuma

Barok x Herlock

6. I like both rarepairs and mainstream! Most of the rarepairs I like don't have any canon interaction, so I like to explore the "what could've been" situations.

7. Monogamy. Not much to explain here. It's just my preference lol

8. Using my favorite pair ferdibert, they are reversible, but I have a really strong preference for dom Hubert and sub Ferdinand. However!! I'm not a big fan of where Ferdinand is written or drawn very femininely. This applies to any MxM pair. I'm not against the concept of femininity in males, but when used in a stereotypical fashion, it rubs me the wrong way. Just a subtle depiction of their relationship dynamic is perfect to me! I'm alright with seeing SFW artwork of the reverse and reading said fics, but NSFW is where I draw the line

9. Thinking about the games I've played, I can think of at least one pair I like to see romantically, so yes 😂

10. Not at all important! After all, my favorite is romantic fluff 🥺 Depending on the intensity of my liking for a ship, the NSFW aspect becomes more bareable since I'm still personally embarrassed consuming such content lol. I am vanilla. Ferdibert is highkey the only one I consume NSFW for

11. A lot of my MxF and FxF pairs are platonic to me! This is likely due to my aegosexuality, which is the closest explanation I can identify with. Not everything needs to be romantic. I find close friendships very heartwarming too 🥺

12. My top favorites right now are ferdibert 🖤🧡, sylvix ❤️💙, and diminand 💙🧡!

13. My favorite pairs from fandoms that I'm not really engaging in now are:

Madeleine Cookie x Espresso Cookie (Cookie Run Kingdom)

Victor x Yuuri (Yuri on Ice)

Link x Zelda (Skyward Sword version)

Reyn x Shulk (Xenoblade Chronicles 1)

Chrom x M!Robin (Fire Emblem Awakening)

14. Domestic fluff is really cute, but the official legal bonding of two partners isn't on my "must have" list for any romantic pairing. I really love seeing creations of my favorite pairs marrying though! Gives me the tingles every time and I just feel so happy 😍

15. As someone that made OC fan kids in the past, yes that is totally fine and I love seeing other people's interpretations for the same pair (if they don't have canon children). I've even made some for ferdibert before but I never fully flushed them out lol

[itzy0megaverse]

I guess you did (A!Ryujin+O!Reader)

Requested : ✔️

Reader : Gn

Tw : angst to fluff, talks of a cheating & emotionally abusive ex, extreme self-hatred, adult language, self-destructive mindsets and tendencies

For context this is a fanfic swap between me and @writers-gf!! She found a list of prompts and the rules are that we pick a prompt and a member for the other person and we have to write a fanfic based on that. We agreed to post them at the same time so go over to Hannie's blog to see what she wrote for me!!

Han chose a jealousy prompt for me : “Can you stop talking about them for one second? Because frankly, I don’t give a fuck about them or what they do to your poor little heart.” 

This is the first time I've really written anything angsty so this was a good experience!!

It's the same. Every night is the same. Always the damn same.

You, the sad little omega who'd just been broken up with and Ryujin, the defiant strong alpha who'd just want to take care of you.

It's the same. Always the same. A knock at her door just the same.

Ryujin heard a knock on her front door at 10pm and knew exactly who it would be. You. She begrudgingly opened the door and let you in just like every other night this week. You slumped onto the sofa sobbing while she stood over you unmoving. She wanted to care. She really did. And in fact Ryujin did used to really care about you but that was almost the issue.

Ever since you'd met in class, Ryujin immediately found you interesting. Your voice sweet, your scent enticing and your smile adorable. Those feelings back then were a mere innocent classmate crush but the closer and closer you grew meant the feelings just got worse and worse.

However, since the beginning, she knew you were off limits. You'd spoken to her about how cute your then girlfriend was multiple times even during your first meeting. It was endearing at first but when the feelings started taking over that endearment transformed into jealousy. Ryujin didn't like to think like that though. She didn't like letting her alpha side win out and make her want to compete with the other alpha who clearly made you happy.

But that wasn't the case anymore....

Your supposedly sweet girlfriend had cheated on you and was very open about it, telling everyone that you bored her and annoyed her and wanted so much attention. Ryujin could've slapped the bitch. She was there when the alpha broke up with you publicly right after class and was there to pull you away into a quieter place for you to cry. It was either she pulled you away or beat the alpha up but she knew that would've upset you further.

So now for the past 5 (and now 6) nights you'd been showing up at her uni dorms crying your eyes out, saying how much you loved her then how much she ruined your social circle then back to how sweet she could be. Ryujin was sick of it. She wanted to scream at you for being so blind. Scream at you for letting your ex win. Scream at you just to let out all her pent up emotions.

But she didn't want that either... Because then she'd be the one upsetting you. She'd be the one hurting you further. She'd be the on-

"I loved her so much Ryu and she turned me into this mess!! If the one I loved the most hurt me this bad I'm never going to be lov-"

“Can you stop talking about her for one second!?" Your voice was depressing and overflowing with self-deprecation while Ryujin's was deafening and seething with venom. She didn't want this. She didn't want this. "Because frankly, I don’t give a fuck about her or what she did to your poor little heart.” She didn't want this.

But she's done it...

She watched your eyes just stare up at her for a second. Stare up as they filled with tears. Close as you ran out the door. Overflow as you sobbed out. "No one even likes me anymore!!"

With that you were gone.

The door left ajar.

Ryujin left alone.

Without really thinking, she slammed the door shut and forced her fists into it. Three. Four. Five... Ten. Eleven... Fifteen... Twenty times. The last was the weakest. The weakest as she felt her punishment was fulfilled. The weakest as the guilt coursed through her. The weakest as her tears streamed onto the floor.

She was weak. She let her emotions take over. She's an alpha. That shouldn't happen. Then why is she still crying? 'You're still letting them win, Ryujin. Be an alpha, stop the stupid crying and go find her.'

With that, Ryujin forced the tears to stop. It was obvious she'd been crying but, by sheer will-power, her eyes remained dry. Her bloodied knuckles opened the door once more as she pounced through it. Ryujin wanted to find you as fast as she could. Wanted to find you before the worst possibility on her mind could happen.

'Where could she be? Where could she be?' You liked to be alone when you were crying so she doubted you'd gone back to your dorm and risked being seen by other students. She doubted you'd go to a store or a pub for the same reason. So where could you be?

Somewhere private. Somewhere private and covered. You liked to feel sheltered when you were depressed so Ryujin imagined you semi-nesting somewhere. With that in mind, she began running to the first place she thought she'd find you.

There were some massive trees surrounded by bushes planted near the back entrance of your dorm flats. It's close to somewhere you know and are comfortable but hidden away enough that no one would find you.

Reaching the area, Ryujin hopped over the hedges and brushed through the leaves to find you. You were weeping and shivering but Ryujin didn't know if it was because of your tears or the cold. It was about 10:30 at night in the middle of winter by this point.

With no words Ryujin scooped you up into her arms. You yelled, protested and fought back but Ryujin was equally relentless. She just kept walking. Her only goal at this point was to get you back home and back into the warmth.

She knew exactly which room was yours and so shut the door behind herself before putting you down. Finally, you were able to push her. Ryujin didn't stop herself from falling anymore. She let you do it. So upset with herself that she felt she deserved it.

As she sat there, fallen against the door, everything came back. All the visions of her yelling at you and being the cause of all this. You'd dropped to the floor in front of her still waling. Ryujin couldn't hold it back anymore. She shouldn't. She knew she shouldn't. But she just couldn't

She began crying with you.

Sobbing in fact.

Something she'd never EVER done in front of others before past the age of 4.

You looked up, severely confused. Your voice croaked out for her attention. "Ryujin..?" A simple call of her name snapped her out of her daze but all she could manage was one glance at you before she broke into even harsher tears. She'd brought her hands up to her face and that's when you noticed her cut stained hands for the first time.

Even though you were crying yourself, you were instantly worried about Ryujin and crawled over into her lap. Pulling her hands away from her face so you could wrap them around you and pull her face into your shoulder. Now both crying in each other's arms, you're somehow able to ask.

"Why are you crying?" Ryujin sniffles into you before her muffled but hoarse voice answers. "Because I did this...." You were about to speak again but your question seems to have turned on the tap to Ryujin's mouth. Instead of her clamping up like you expected, she started spilling absolutely everything.

"I want to see you happy and I want you to smile and I want you to feel loved because you deserve it and I fucked it all up!!" Her arms wrapped tighter around you on the last phrase before she continued. "I never wanted to yell. I never wanted my emotions to take over. I never EVER wanted to hurt you but just look at what I've done. I've fucked everything up and I want to fix it but I don't know how and-"

"Ryujin. Ryujin.. Ryujin...." You calmly cut her off as your tears both collectively softened up now you're getting everything out. "Both of us have issues with emotions... I'm over-sensitive and you never let them out...." You lean back slightly with a sad smile and encourage Ryujin to pull away from your shoulder too. As she pulls back, two simple words fall over Ryujin's lips that mean the world to you in that moment.

"I'm sorry..."

Your weak smile grows as you apologise too. "I'm sorry for worrying you and annoying you the past few nights." Both of you let out downcast laughs as the tension eases and you fall back into a hug where the last few tears are shed.

"Can I do something you won't expect?" Ryujin's question from over your shoulder took you off guard as you, once again, pull away from the hug with an intrigued expression. Ryujin said no more, her eyes glued to yours and her lip glued between her teeth.

The next thing you knew, her lips were on yours. It's not warm, soft and sweet like the fairytales. It's cold from the weather outside, it's rough from her chapped lips and it's sour from the tears of not-so-long-ago. Once your brain had processed what was truly happening, you realised you were enjoying it... but then it was over.

"I'm so sorry. I made it weird. I shouldn't have don-" Ryujin had pulled away embarrassed and began rambling as she tried pushing you away. You didn't let her. You pushed your lips onto her this time and didn't stop until you felt her kiss back too. Soon you were being held so gently as Ryujin and you softly make out, your arms wrapped around her shoulders.

Somehow you both naturally and silently find the right place to stop and slowly pull away from one another. Ryujin's head falls back into your shoulder as she admits something you, once again, weren't expecting. "I've wanted to do that since we met." "Wait!! Really!?" You couldn't help the shock in your voice and your heart melted at the way Ryujin genuinely giggled at your adorableness as she nodded (yes).

"That's why I yelled at you really." Her hand came up to lovingly comb through your hair. "I was never annoyed at you, I was just... jealous...." The sincerity in her words made you swoon but you couldn't help but tease. "I made THE Shin Ryujin jealous??" Leaning back in for another kiss with a smile, Ryujin mumbles once more.

"I guess you did."

[moonmoonthecrabking]

okay so as i have learnt from @undescribed1mage in this post uranium city is a real town, and now i'm wondering how many people live in the town in the musical's canon. long post under the cut!!!

i either interpret the show as being set in 2009 (closest monday 14th of september to the show's creation) or the present day, kind of simultaneously. according to wikipedia, there are no statistics on the population in exactly 2009 or 2022, but it had a population of 105 in 2011 and 91 in 2021. according to the uranium suite in the citadel theatre version, "the town was broke by '99", so we can assume the same population between 2009 and 2011. so i'll average it to 98. before going further, i want to clarify that i'm not viewing the real life uranium city as the same place as the musical uranium city, more that the statistics are a structural basis that can form my opinions and interpretations about their society in the musical!!!

the ben mcintyre school is the only one in the town, and it only runs for kindergarten to ninth grade (which doesn't exactly comply with 'algebra 12 kiss my ass' but the writers were taking creative liberties and it was more about uranium being a ghost town and an element representative of decay etc etc), which as of 2005 had *10 students*. as a result, it is entirely possible that the aforementioned "algebra 12" line was more a case of all the high school students really being given the same content level regardless of age or ability. the 2016 data is a little confusing, but again it suggests there are ~15 people between the ages of 5-19. so, if we adapt st cassian's as loosely based on the ben mcintyre school, but k-12, we can make it so there are 14-15 people in school, about 5 of high school age (plus penny, who moved there right before kiwani's).

it makes parts of canon more heartbreaking, or heartwarming. ocean was school president, and i doubt she would've won without the choir's votes. she may have been expecting to come back to life because, well, she's gotten a unanimous vote as a leader before. constance's yearbook pages, however, "you seemed nice", "you seemed friendly". i like to think that those were written by little kids who didn't get to talk to her, thanks to ocean dragging her to every online extracurricular between cafe shifts. but it could've been from the choir, before it was formed. i also now assume that ocean created the choir in sophmore/junior year (before mischa came) with noel and constance joining, and because i like to think the best of her, she invited ricky so all the senior half of the school was included. "mischa was there for a punishment" oR he wanted to get caught but didn't know how to start talking to these nerds. perhaps??

from people who we know live in town from canon, we have everyone's family and father markus. that's 18 people, since constance and penny are the only people we know to have siblings, one younger brother each. there are probably a couple more staff members at the school, one of them possibly also serving as the priest for the town (since there's a catholic school, but no public school). again according to the census data, there are only 10 people above the age of 65, with the biggest age group being 45-49 years (with 10 people) and 15 people between 20-34 years.

personally, my biggest model of a variety of ages to this size is church, so i just imagine the choir having intergenerational friends!!! noel talking to an older woman who never dated in the town despite living there her whole life, ocean getting guidance from someone who was better adjusted than her parents, a gentleman who once shared ricky's dreams of a place like zolar.

everyone would attend their funerals. keep their memory alive. tell constance's little brother stories of the girl who had so much wonder for the world when her parents got too choked up. grieve with the young ukrainian woman who thought she would be the one bearing bad news. and welcoming penny, the one teenager who survived the accident. the week the carnival used to visit became a memorial, a time to watch french films, pet the potts' cats, visit the blackwood cafe, look at the badegg youtube channel, and plan for the future. homemade tattoos of "democracy rocks" in cursive. french pastries. dolls with paintings of space.

they thought no one knew them, no one saw them. but they were seen. they were loved. they just didn't see each other.

[railingsofsorrow]

𝙾𝙲𝚃. 25𝚝𝚑; 𝖑𝖔𝖛𝖊, 𝖎𝖗𝖎𝖘.

summary: iris's letter.

pairing: spencer reid x oc!iris valentia

w.c: 706

warnings/content: mentions of food poisoning, vomit and fainting; mentions of self medicating; mentions of Alzheimer's disease; angst (not much); fluff; “ODU” is the acronym for “Old Dominion University”.

A/N: LAST LETTER!! we are done with act 1, now we'll proceed with act 2. next chapters are going to be in narrative style.

navi

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whoever wants to be tagged for this fic, fill this out or dm me.

[letter 1] [letter 2] [letter 3] [letter 4] [letter 5] [letter 6] [letter 7] [letter 8] [letter 9]

October 25th.

Dear, Spencer.

My whole department fell in sick yesterday — including my students, barely anyone was spared. Some kind of food poisoning? I don't know, people started throwing up, passing out and whatnot. We didn't know what to do!

(Yes, this is how I start my letter. I had to vent to someone how weird this is!)

I immediately called 911 and the cafeteria became swarmed with EMT's. My first supposition was that something was wrong with the cafeteria food. I never eat there because I either bring my own food or... I just don't remember eating until I'm off to go home. So, I tested it, the cafeteria food. But no. Nothing was wrong. I still find it weird that this happened out of nowhere, but my colleagues think it wasn't anything serious.

ODU was on the news today. Same thing happened. I can't shake this off, it can't be a coincidence, can it?

Sorry, I needed to ramble to somebody.

Ah, Spencer. It's too late for that, I already care enough to worry. What other resources are you trying? I hope you are not self-medicating yourself, it's not good. You're not doing that, right?

I have a friend that I could recommend you. She's a neurologist so she could be more helpful — you've probably been to a lot of those, but she's really good.

Her name is Clare Thompson, her office is in Washington, DC at Georgetown. If you want, I can make an appointment for you, we're close friends. If not, then just ignore this. I'm not trying to push you into anything, I'm just concerned.

What you said reminded me of the concept “Athazagoraphobia”. I researched about it to include it in my MD thesis about Alzheimer's disease. It means exactly what you said: fear of forgetting something or someone, or being forgotten.

I relate to you on that. But I'm more afraid of being forgotten. Sometimes I think that if I don't put my mark in the world, then how will people remember me? Do you feel like that too?

I absolutely know what you mean about the dolls... They're creepy. I had a few when I was a child, I don't know where they disappeared to though, I think my mother donated them. Either way, I'm happy not knowing their whereabouts.

I am happy that your friends are threatening you to to go out more.

Yes, maybe he is sick. It's an option I've considered. But he usually sends an email letting me know he will miss class. Fabian is not the kind of student that misses class without a plausible reason. He's very dedicated and one of my top students.

Of course you'd take is as a challenge, Doctor Reid. I could tell you were the competitive type from the moment you told me you were a rebel as a kid (no, I'll never forget that, you book thief).

Oh, did you really like the book? I'm so glad. Yes! I have like 5 recommendations to you but I'll spare you two: After Dark and Sputnik Sweetheart. Tell me what you think afterwards.

Something reminded me of you today. I was grabbing my coffee and I guess I picked up the wrong order. Do you know why I think that? Because it was the sweetest beverage I've ever had. I could've dropped dead right there if I had taken another sip. Disgusting, really. My blood vessels were almost clogged up. The person left in a hurry and left their coffee right beside mine on the balcony. Oh! And guess what: it was written “Reid” in their cup. I know it is a common name, but it reminded me of you.

Don't forget to drink water and eat, Spencer. As always, be careful. Looking forward to hear from you soon! <3

Love,

Iris.

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taglist: @lilyviolets ; @chayceschultz; @cultish-corner

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[fraudulent-cheese]

So i watched the first half of ROTI! i don't have many thoughts honestly?

I don't care for Staci, i'll be honest. Her gimmick is repetitive and im glad she got booted first if this was the only thing the writters were gonna do with her. It would be funny if there was a grain of truth to her claims tho.

Dakota's pretty fun and i like the added focus on the interns this season, because let's be honest outside of one "haha the interns keep dying" joke in both TDI and TDWT there isn't much i belive? So yeah

also samkota's cute, idk what to say? God i wish the writters explored Dakota's character before the whole mutation thing.

Honestly all the ROTI girls are great, wish they got more than arcs about which boy they wanted to kiss because MAN ANNE MARIA AND JO ARE GREAT, Jo especially, she's currently my fav of the season. I wish they did more with both of them man!!! I don't like the jabs made about her appearence but i find them fine from Anne Maria specifically? Like yeah she would do that! I wish the girls were fighting for longer!

Dawn's one of the better characters but i wish her conflict with Scott lasted longer than one episode. Same with her friendship with B! What is it with Total Drama and throwing away interesting rivalries the episode they start at?!

B's fine i'll be real. I like how they don't actually make him speak! Other contestants do make jabs about it but like, they're teenagers, and one of them is from Scott and he's kinda shitty so it works lol

SPEAKING OF! Scott's pretty fun! He's not the best antagonist ever but he's fun to watch and that's enough for me rn. He's pathetic and shitty it's great

Team man is also fun, i like Brick especially. Don't like the frequency of the pissing himself jokes tho. Like, i get it! he's a military boy who likes fashion and pisses himself! Do something else!

I don't care for Cameron i'll be real. Neither for Zoey, i wish her flaws were explored more because dang she's judgy in episode 5!

I guess i'll talk about Mike here too? I think he's ok, but man i wish his alters were treated more like people. I don't mean the other contestants, i mean by the show. Svetlana's great for the small amount she's on screen for, and I like Chester and Vito more than i thought i would! Please show explore them a little more! (and, well, to state the obvious, don't call it mpd why did it call it mpd it wasn't even the actual term for it when the show was being written)

My least favorite part is the love triangle tho. It's suffering from a critical case of "Warrior's miscommunication": a miscommunication plotline that could be solved in a single conversation, but the characters involved don't tell anyone because we need to stretch this book to 300 pages! or in this case, the plotline to last the whole season!

I get Mike not wanting to tell Zoey because his whole thing is not wanting to tell people, and Vito not telling Anne Maria because he's fucking dumb and considering his relationship with Anne Maria wasn't in a position where he needed to disclose it, but LIKE!!! COME ON MAN!!! this could be solved so easily and they just,,, didn't. Also why can't Vito still date Anne Maria at the end he's his own person!

i'll be real i think i like the idea that Anne Maria and Vito are still friends they just make-out too, mostly because that's all they really do in the show (and also i like Jomaria more)

OK ENOUGH ABOUT THE SYSTEM MORE ABOUT THE LAST CONTESTANT

I don't care for Lightning oops. He's funny sometimes. The "Jo is a guy" jokes get old quick tho.

THAT'S IT ON CONTESTANT THOUGHTS SO FAR!

The challenges are fine? I think a couple are pretty good (the treasure hunt for instance) but a couple are less good? (the Obstacle Course is eh, i don't really care about the mine one) but honestly i wish they just executed a couple better. Like the Embarrasing questions, climbing the mountain, hell even the relay-race could've honestly been wayyy better than they actually were! At least they're camp related!

But yeah so far ROTI's pretty good, 6/10 with 8/10 characters.

[red-sand-beach]

light-hearted ranting about the secret life tasks below the cut. just needed to write it all out on digital paper

i feel like some of this session's secrets were a bit lacking :-( especially the deja vu task. it had all of the beginnings of a fun secret, but i don't think its practicality was thought through. it's just not that fun to watch the guys try to get the other player to say "deja vu" specifically. maybe it's just the way bigb and joel approached this task, but i was more interested in whatever else they were doing in their episodes. and while the secret repetition is funny in theory, it just became annoying to watch it twice

then mumbo's "keeping scar safe" task was hilarious to watch, but very much unfair, i feel like it should've been more hearts. scar did very well too, losing only 3.5 (! just .5 over the threshold!) hearts, less than almost anyone else this session. side note, it's really funny how there were both a "get scar to talk star wars" and a "save scar from damage" tasks. really drives it home that it was probably grian himself who wrote most or all of them. i also think that these might have been the only two tasks written with a specific target player in mind

another one was tango's task, mostly because of the "yellow detective" introduction this very session. he had a task that made him act a very strange and specific way in front of other players the very same episode a bunch of guys were suddenly supposed to guess other people's tasks. he could've made it look like something else, of course, but i honestly can't think of anything plausible he could've passed it off as

some other minor gripes of mine are bdubs' task, specifically the way he didn't complete all of the words, but it's mostly on him & he should've written them down or something; then i think etho's secret should've been introduced the next session, after the other players and etho himself became aware of the fact that tasks could be repeated, or given to a different person (someone more conniving, scar, maybe?); gem's could've been potentially bad for another player, but i really liked it in her episode and am really glad she was the one to receive it

on a positive note, i really liked cleo's secret and what we got from it, lizzie's was nice and simple, joel had a fun & appropriate for him hard task, scar's execution of his de-lightment was perfect, scott's secret was given to the right person and became really funny/wholesome after we saw who did and didn't say "love you" back to him; and i really liked gem's and bdubs' executions of their secrets despite the minor problems i have with them