#mastermind if you will (somebody has probably done this before)

[ssparksflyy]

HE WAS A SKATER BOY ౨ৎ ⋆ ｡˚

skater!percy x ice skater!reader ☆

━ SHE SAID SEE YOU LATER, BOY

[ladyamanda123]

Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus - My Analysis

Your hologram stumbled into my apartment

Hands in the hair of somebody in darkness named Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus

And I just watched it happen

This line SCREAMS Kaylor! Karlie lived with her. She had a Karlie room in her apartment. I can absolutely picture a scenario where before they are “together” Karlie is bringing people home to Taylor’s apartment and Taylor is lying in bed just dying inside listening to it happen. It calls back to Hits Different with “I hear your key turn in the door” and Cornelia Street with “But then you called, showed your hand” line where there has clearly been an argument. That argument could have been Taylor losing it about Karlie bringing people home and then Karlie calling Taylor and confessing her feelings for her and the rest is Kaylor history!

As the decade would play us for fools

And you saw my bones out with somebody new

Who seemed like he would've bullied you in school

And you just watched it happen

Its quite literally been 10 years since the start of Kaylor. They officially met in 2013 and this album drops on 2024. Now Karlie is stuck watching Taylor beard with 🏈….the perfect representation of the dickwad football bro that would bully kids in school.

If you want to break my cold, cold heart

Just say, 'I loved you the way that you were'

If you want to tear my world apart

Just say you've always wondered

Years of bearding, distance, lies, etc HAS to have taken a massive toll. If they’ve been together this whole time there’s no way to that hasn’t been hard AF. If they split and then eventually came back together this will have still been all hard AF. Either way, whatever you think the reality might be, this decade has sucked! The idea of them looking back and who they were before this all blew up and saying….what could our life had been like if we hadn’t made these decisions. If we had been brave. If we had had control. If we had done this different. The hindsight must sting something horrible!

You said some things that I can't unabsorb

You turned me into an idea of sorts

If so much of this was out of their control but they decided to try and make it work, the buildup of being together someday….the fact Covid probably played a huge roll in delaying it….over time that distance will absolutely lead to this concept…. “You turned me into an idea of sorts”. Anyone who has been in any sort of long distance or forbidden relationship knows exactly what this is saying. When we don’t have the object of our desire and it builds up over time in our heads to be something it’s not. The pressure that puts on the relationship and the person to meet those unreasonably high expectations that have been swirling in your head all that time. If you’re not careful, if you don’t pivot those expectations, that shit can be insanely toxic to the relationship.

You needed me but you needed drugs more

And I couldn't watch it happen

I think this is a red herring line to make us think Matty, but I also think this could be a line from Karlie’s perspective and the drugs needed is Taylor and her fame and her mastermind plans. It could explain some of the anger at the fans she’s showing now. You wouldn’t accept us. You wouldn’t accept me. I chose you over the person I love and over myself. I played this part for you and now I’m wondering what if I had chosen the other path. What if I had picked her and picked us and picked myself over the drug of being who you wanted me to be for you. This brings to mind the line in Miss Americana where she talks about the addiction to the applause. It also ties in to the 🎃 anon message…. “You’re a selfish asshole….but you’re finally choosing her”

I changed into goddesses, villains and fools

Changed plans and lovers and outfits and rules

All to outrun my desertion of you

And you just watched it

More of the same theme….I made myself into this thing that everyone wanted…the fans, the labels, the media, my dad, etc. All in an effort to justify pushing us back in the closet and you just had to take it and now I think I chose wrong. I should have picked us over them.

If you want to break my cold, cold heart

Just say, 'I loved you the way that you were'

If you want to tear my world apart

Just say you've always wondered

If the glint in my eye traced the depths of your sigh

Down that passage in time

Back to the moment I crashed into you

Like so many wrecks do

Too impaired by my youth

To know what to do

Again, hindsight…looking back and realizing you made a choice and that choice had major consequences on your life and on the life of the person you love and you can’t go backwards and that breaks your heart now.

So if I sell my apartment

And you have some kids with an internet starlet

Will that make your memory fade from this scarlet maroon

like it never happened

We aren’t those roommates from Cornelia Street and Maroon anymore. Everything has changed now. You’re stuck in this marriage/life and that apartment life we shared is gone now…did our choices back that lead us to a place where your feelings have changed? Have you forgotten who we were? Have you moved on? Is that version of us gone now because we’ve come to far from it?

Could it be enough to just float in your orbit

Down Bad reference…also could be asking if it could be enough to glass closet like before. Can we do the friend thing our whole lives and be okay with that? Or do we need to actually “come out” and be openly together for real?

Can we watch our phantoms like watching wild horses

“Dancing phantoms on the terrace” Very clear reference to Kissgate. Can we go back to that? Being “friends” and having the world openly speculate etc etc. I feel like this song is them finally coming back together and going “Okay, this is another cross roads for us. We fucked up last time. How do we fix this? Do we break up and let each other go? Do we go back to how it was…together but technically still closeted? Or do we do what we should/could have done back then and just be who we are and be together openly? Can we rewrite this ending? The prophesy ties in here too as well as the Manuscript. Looking back and wishing you had made different choices and examining if it’s possible to get your life back on track.

Cooler in theory but not if you force it

To be, it just didn't happen

The idea of us that we have been clinging to for 10 years, the expectations, the mastermind plans…are we holding on still to just a dream or an idea that no longer exists? It’s been 10 years and it hasn’t happened like we planned. So now what? Again this screams of a cross roads. They’re looking at each other saying we can’t keep doing this. We need to make a new decision or we will destroy ourselves.

So if you want to break my cold, cold heart

Say you loved me

And if you want to tear my world apart

Say you'll always wonder

Cause I wonder

Will I always

Will I always wonder?

The song ends with the desperate and vulnerable question. In Lover Taylor was exploring those vulnerable early questions in a relationship…..can I go where you go? Can we always be this close? Can this relationship go the distance? Are you my person?

Now they’ve arrived at the vulnerable possible end questions. Stop. You’re losing me. Is this the part where you break my heart? Are you going to tell me I fucked it up to bad and you’re leaving? Are you about to confirm what I fear? That I chose the wrong road and now I’ve lost you?

Ending on the question that way shows the decision wasn’t made yet at this point. The song leaves us in that desperate silence between the question and the answer.

This also calls back for me to Mine. When she runs out and braces herself for the goodbye. That’s what history has shown her. That’s what she expects in these moments. But this person is different. This person called and showed their hand. This person took you by surprise and said I’m not leaving you alone. Are they still that person? Or have you finally fucked it up enough that even they are about to leave you?

I think given the shit that’s dropping now, the TTPD lyrics, the massive cracks in the facade, we can figure out what choice was made…..”You finally chose her” ❤️

Hopefully, now at the end of this part, they can have their do over (Come one come all) and regain what was lost. Hopefully they can change The Prophecy moving forward.

[totaleditorial]

TRANSCRIPT:

So, today’s episode, I am focusing on the number one most important thing when it comes to a book, as well as the number one thing that most people ignore. And that is that you need an audience, if you’re going to launch a book.

Take it from somebody who did six books without ever thinking about an audience. One, a novel based on my recovery, one a fictionalized version of a details magazine story I wrote about prostitution, one on reality shows, why not, one on less. There was no consistency, there was no thinking about, I did a book on reality TV without bothering to think, oh, hey, reality TV fans want to watch reality TV and not read books about it. And you know what, people who don’t watch reality to TV probably don’t want to read a book about something they don’t care about.

So, I cannot explain the importance of this, and if you’re familiar with Bernie, my cat, he certainly agrees because he’s crawling all around. He wants you to have readers. I often say without readers, you’ve written a journal. So, the delusion that we all suffer from in previous episode about rose colored glasses, I talked about how we all secretly think we’re going to be the exception, even though we hear, oh the average book sells 300 copies, we kind of just go well, but you know what, you know what? I’ve always kind of thought I was like going to do well, you know what I mean? And you know, she’s very fabulous. And Guido meets with Kamala Harris and sells millions of copies without someone to do it. I could do that, too. No, no.

You know, the very first agent I ever talked to who was a complete douchebag, and really, frankly, quite creepy, said something to me that has always stuck with me, which is... I said, I want to do a book of essays, because Sex in the City was both a very big book and big show at the time. And I said it could be like Sex in the City. And he said, never compare yourself to the exception. Compare yourself to the rule. You can always be pleasantly surprised if you are that lotto ticket that happens to win. But it’s probably not going to happen. So certainly go into it expecting that.

So how on earth do you find readers?

The bad news is that it’s all that stuff that you’re probably not comfortable doing, which is audience building. The good news is that you’re not alone. We all hate it at first...

So, it requires a lot of work at first to get anyone to care. And it’s very easy to compare and despair and say, oh, this person has 10,000 followers and I don’t have any. Well, everybody started with the same amount, which is one. So just start and the fewer people there are, the more you can experiment and take risks and not worry. So this whole concept of the riches are in the niches, is that you want a group of people who will feel like the book that you’ve created is just for them.

When I was writing, Make Your Mess Your Memoir, which is the last book I wrote before the one I’m currently writing, I thought about two people as I wrote. They’re married to each other. And I apologize if you’ve heard me talk about this on the show before, but they are my surrogate parents. Not really, they’re not old enough. And they haven’t totally agreed to this, but I know them from Genius Network, this Mastermind I’m a part of, and they’re just lovely. I’ve just always loved them. And years and years ago, they said, you know we need to, they’ve done a book, but we need to do another book. You know, maybe we’ll hire your company to do it. And I said that would be great. And then nothing happened. And then, you know, we were working with other clients, I forgot about it. But then when I sat down to write Make Your Mess Your Memoir, I thought about them. And I thought about them not once, not twice, but pretty much every page. I said, would that speak to them? Would that speak to Michael and Ros? Would they be offended by that? Would they understand that? And I thought about them on every page.

And when the book came out, you know, I was lucky enough to get on Good Morning America. And lots of people read the book and lots of people hired my company. Now when I say lots of people, I don’t mean hundreds, I mean that we have this very high-ticket expensive offer. So just 10 people hiring us as a result of reading that book, is a year’s worth of business.

Michael and Ros, they didn’t read it. They didn’t even know about it. Maybe two years later, no, I know exactly when it was, it was from the time I’m recording, a year ago, I run into them, at a Genius Network thing. And I say, oh my God, I have the funniest thing to tell you. I wrote a book for you guys. And they just go, what? And I said, I know, it’s crazy, but whenever I write a book, I try to think of one person or two people, and I just thought of you guys on every page. And they said, what is this book? And I said, oh, it’s over in the gifting suite. And they went and got a copy. And guess what, they hired us, we’re now working on their book. That’s really like a cute story and they’re adorable people.

But the point is, it’s so much easier to write for one person or a very small group of people. Because if there’s one of them, there’s many. I’ve also said before, I would rather have 100 people read my book and be completely moved by it, and hire my company than 10,000, who don’t really care. So, if you have 100 people, and they feel like it’s written for them, you know what happens when you feel like something, think of something that was the, you know, creative work that you liked so much, that you kind of felt like it was made just for you. I know, I felt that way about the show Girls, and the show White Lotus, and many books that I’ve read.

If you can write something that’s so specifically for a certain group of people, they will then become your salespeople. They will go out and start doing your work for you by telling everyone else they have to read it.

So, if you’re worried that the niche you’re writing to is too small, the example I like to use is there is a Facebook group that is called, A Group Where We All Pretend to Be Ants in an Ant Colony. And that has, as of this recording over 1.8 million members. So, your group is not too small. And think about your own experiences.

I think a lot of us are scarred a little bit by these English teachers who taught us these very rote ways to write papers. And we learned along the way that like we needed to sound smart. Sounding smart is great, but sounding “smart” can lead you to speaking writing cliches, and right in this very professorial language that doesn’t endear you to anybody, and is usually quite boring.

So, my favorite writers are the ones who have a voice. Lean into your voice and think about your own experiences. My favorite compliment I ever get from anyone who reads one of my books is, if it’s someone I know, I felt like I was hanging out with you for a week, it was like going on vacation with you. And I love that. And keep in mind that controversy. You can’t be too you, you know. Think of Mark Manson, the author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, who sold 12 million copies by telling people they shouldn’t give a fuck. So the advantage of being you in front of this audience that you’re building is that you’re finding out what they like. You’re finding out what they respond to.

And by building I’m talking about being on social media, I’m talking about creating a newsletter list and gathering people to it. I’m talking about joining groups, you know, whether that’s on Facebook or Reddit or Discord or frickin Mastodon, which I’ve never been on, don’t even know how to spell, but apparently, it’s a thing. Get out there. And you’ll find that some things people respond to, some things people don’t respond to at all, and some things people go crazy for. When you hit on that, you know, you’re finding your audience. Double down on that.

And I look at it as a creative thing rather than going, oh my God, what do you mean, I have to toast about building authority through a book if I want to establish my authority around it. How about it’s a creative exercise, I’m a creative person, I wouldn’t be writing books if I wasn’t. So why don’t I use some of my creativity in order to build my audience.

Now an example that I give in my book that’s On Good Authority, which you can sign up for a front row seat by going to www.annadbook.com. I talk about my friend Jennifer Keishin Armstrong. Now she’s a New York Times bestselling author of many books that are about entertainment. She worked at Entertainment Weekly. And her first book was about the Mickey Mouse Club. So, she writes this book, and she goes, and she tries to find like Boomer websites on Facebook, and she can’t summon up interest. Then she goes home to Chicago, and her dad takes her to one of his veteran organization meetings. And she finds her audience and they’re like, oh my God, Darlene tell me, I don’t know who any of these people are. I love it when I can say this, but Mickey Mouse Club was before my time. But so, she finally found her readers, and only realized the importance of finding her readers when the book was out.

So, Dave Chesson, previous podcast guest, all around the amazing person. When I had him on this podcast, he talked about how, go to the Amazon search box, type in your topic. The example he told me about is a woman he was helping with her book, and she was selling art. And she was writing a book about that. That was what she knew about. That’s where she was building her authority. So she goes to Amazon, she types in, how to sell art. What pops up is how to sell art online. She’s like that people care about, I didn’t know that. So, she not only adds a whole bunch to her book about how to sell art online, but she creates a lead magnet, about how to set up your accounts on online art sales platforms.

Now, Jay Abraham, who was both on the podcast and is quoted in the book, and is a genius, like the father of marketing, wrote an amazing book called Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got. What he recommends, is go to your competitors’ books, go to the books that are on topics like yours. Look at the five-star reviews. What did they say? Then go to the one-star reviews, the two star reviews. I actually find like a three, a two- or three-star review more useful because a one-star review, like I’m sorry, those are dicks, those are people who need to get out of basements or deal with whatever resentment it is that it’s making them take out their power on an author who’s put their work out there.

But look what people respond to very passionately, whether they’re very happy or unhappy with something. They use language, that as Jay Abraham says, penetrates right past the conscious mind. And you know how I was talking about people feeling like a book was written specifically for them? You’re using their language; they are going to feel that it’s really easy when you know a lot about something and you’re writing a book about it. We let expert blindness literally blind us. We know how something works. So, we assume that the people, the readers know our language, speak about it the same way. We assume they understand something they don’t, because it’s really hard, if not impossible to remember to break it down and remember when you learned something, and when you didn’t know it.

An example from publishing is in traditional publishing, people when they say blurbs, they’re talking about endorsements. A blurb is a recommendation from a luminary about your book. I noticed when I got more invested in the self and indie publishing world, that when people said the word blurb, they actually were using what they were calling book descriptions blurbs. I don’t know how it happened, but it started to happen. So rather than me sticking to what I know is “right,” I’m going to be better off using the language that my audience uses. And it’s really hard to break things down.

I’m always reminded of one of my favorite movies, Reality Bites. If you haven’t seen it, well, if you’re a Gen Xer, you know what I’m talking about, if you’re not a Gen Xer, it’s a frickin amazing movie. And if you ever want to understand the Gen Xer in your life, just go see that movie. But there’s a scene where Winona Ryder gets in the elevator with Anne Meara and she’s just interviewing for an internship, or a job and Anne Meara says define ironic. She’s like, oh, you know, it’s like when something’s ironic, you know. And then of course Ethan Hawke who plays Troy Dyer, this sanctimonious dick, who she’s in love with, he can of course, define it perfectly.

But the point is, it can be really, really hard, if not impossible to describe things that you’re so familiar with, that you don’t need to describe them. So that is what you can learn about from your audience. And from those one- and five-star reviews and from all the audience building that you’re doing.

So that is that. That is all about the importance of readers. I hope you got a lot out of this episode. Find out, you know, like I said, more about this book that this is from, get a front row seat, find out all the tips, tricks and techniques that I am using to launch this book and you can use for your own at www.annadbook.com and I will talk to you next week.

Find more at: https://www.legacylaunchpadpub.com/podcast

Follow me on IG: @AnnaBDavid

Get my free elevator book pitch template: https://www.legacylaunchpadpub.com/elevator-pitch

[whenyourunlabeledbutlabeled]

Self insert

Don't read this it's just me being a hoe for shuichi

Or do idc that much

WE DO GOT SPOILERS THOUGH!!

M!ghost x Shuichi

It was the first trial that something seems slightly off, two extra stands. Something even more unnerving was the fact that there was a portrait on it, identity unknown.

Shuichi was lucky enough to be seated right next to the portrait, deciding to look at it a little more, he found there was a smug smile on it, along with it having a cracked and seeming painted on bleeding effect. A second and third one too, Rantaro Amami and two unknown people, One seemingly waving slightly, cracked and bleeding still, another with a line across their neck and a fan symbol, and Amami, with a X across his face.

The second incident occured when Shuichi found a note asking him to meet them in the library next to a bookshelf, a map attached to it.

"Don't make the same mistake I did."

He whipped his head around, that voice.. strange. He must be hearing things. Deciding to go to the bathroom to splash water on his face, he did so and when he looked up, there was another face behind him in the mirror.

"W-What the-?!" He turned around then back to the mirror.

"Oh finally! I've been waiting for you to notice me!"

"Who.. Who are you..?"

"I'm that portrait you saw. Cracked. Bleeding. My execution hurt.."

"Y-Your what-?!"

"Shut up dude shut up! People are gonna think your crazy!"

He chose to look at them some more.

Bright neon red hair, wild eyes and black mascara, Wearing jeans and a hoodie.

"Are you done-?"

"Ah yes, sorry."

"Nah your fine emo boy." He snickered.

"Your so much like Kokichi.."

" Oh him? I tried to get him to look in the mirror, did not work.."

"Why did you tell me not to go?"

"Obviously I'm not gonna let my connection to the living die!"

"Wha.. Wait hold on! Your dead-?!"

"Bingo! Well probably. Also I follow you around, so good luck trying to get that Angie girl to be your freind."

Third incident.

"Oh dear! Atua senses a disturbing force! I must calm him! Bye-onara!"

*Huh.. that.. mirror thing was right.. Apparently Angie hates me now.. Great..*

°I am not a thing asshat! I am Aoi Kagehara!°

*So that's your name.. Let's go before people get suspicious..*

The fourth incident was when a "reward" was being loaded out.

"Alrighty kids, let's see what happened on September 9th 2022 at another killing game!" Monokuma stated, before turning a video on.

The video shows a boy about to be executed or something similar, kicking his legs while sitting on a table, before looking up and smiling before being crushed, or something it seems.

It cuts to a video recording.

"Hiya! Its me again, Aoi Kagehara! Ultimate Theorist and Strategist! You can't get rid of me! I just got crushed after all! Now I'll let you in on a secret, I'm even better in person behind the scenes, I control everything aside from somebodys actions. I am The Ultimate Mastermind. Aoi Kagehara."

It cuts again to another recording.

"Oh my god, Aishi-san, you'll be okay! Just stick with the plan! You not the Ultimate Serial Killer for nothing!"

"This is extremely risky. I would prefer it if-"

A knife is drawn, the sharp sound ringing through thw air.

"Who has your family Ayano. Who controls everything? Me."

"Kagehara-kun, you wouldn't."

"I would, just stick to exactly what I said to do."

"Well give me another run-over so I can do it exactly."

"You'll dress up as Momikano-kun and go into the gym, from there you'll take that big weight thing like 50 pounds, and drop it before running away with it to the rooftop. You'll then hide it behind the air vents and run. Make sure to blame it on him. You'll then put the note in Ponzu Komeda's locker, telling him to meet you in the Plaza. You'll drop the weight on him and crush him. Make up an alibi or something."

"..As you wish."

It then cuts to the execution again, this time showing him reaching up to the sky before getting disnembered and crushed.

It ends with a close up to his face, That iconic smug smile before he opens his eyes and his face briefly goes white, his eyes widen and tear up before he almost immediately dies.

To be continued because I am tired asf and I'm bored also asf

[giorno-plays-piano]

Vicious

Part VII

Pairing: Steve x reader, Bucky x reader, Thor x reader, Loki x reader, Peter x reader

Warnings: yandere, obsession, stalking, possessiveness, theft, mention of blackmail, all characters are adults.

Words: 1864.

Summary: Transferring to Stark Academy that has only allowed to take in female students last semester, you realize you are just one of three young women among hundreds of students. Your things are constantly being stolen, and soon you begin fearing for your safety.

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Part VI

________

You wanted to slap yourself. What the hell was wrong with you today? Why did you tell Peter that?!

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean...” Completely baffled with you behavior, you were deeply ashamed, unable to look the guy in the eyes and wanting nothing but fall into the earth.

“Ah, I got it. It’s Steve, isn’t it?” All of a sudden, Peter let out an irritated sigh, rolling his eyes skywards and rubbing his neck. “Of course, who else would say such nonsense. Blackmail, really? Funny he didn’t call me a stalker or anything.”

“Listen, I didn’t mean it, I’m really-”

“It’s ok.” He closed the locker, slamming its door loudly and making you jump. “It’s not your fault. If I heard that from somebody, I’d be scared too.”

He spent a couple of seconds staring into the wall until he rubbed his neck again tiredly and huffed. It took him less than a minute to regain his composure, and you heard him murmuring, “What a freak.”

He didn't return to the corridor, heading to the sports hall for his PE class, instead moving to the bench in the locker room and motioning you to sit. Feeling terribly awkward, you hoped he wasn't going to do anything out of anger, even though he had every right to be upset at your stupid behavior.

"About what he said," Peter took a deep breath, "it's nothing like that. I don't dig up some nasty stuff in the web to blackmail people. I've never done it. The reason why Mr. I-am-better-than-you said that is because I've made him take me into his little bodyguard group when I heard him talking to Loki. You're nice, and I wanted to help. Of course, Steve started acting like I was some creep, so he refused, and I had to remind him that, technically, he had to report your issue to the administration, not play a hero. I said that if I go and tell the whole story to the dean, Steve's gonna be in trouble because he knew who thieves were and didn't report them."

It was a loud off your mind. Goodness. Rogers called this a blackmail? Really? Just because Peter pushed Steve into taking him into their group?

You were less and less sure Rogers was sane. You definitely had to be careful around him.

"I can't believe he called it a blackmail." You admitted quietly, and the guy sent you a tired smile. "Peter, I'm so, so sorry. It was so stupid of me."

"Nah, don't worry. I'd freak out too if I didn't know the whole story."

You knew your apologies weren't enough, but you hoped Peter didn't take it to heart - if you can take such an accusation easily, that is. Shit, shit, shit, why did you believe everything these guys were saying? You didn't even know them in the first place! Why on Earth did you go asking them their opinions on others if all of them were biased, and every guy could twist the truth the way he liked? You shouldn't have let their words affect you that much.

"Whatever. At least now you know what Rogers is like." Peter sent you a grim smile and got up, picking his bright yellow sackpack from the floor. "Shit, I gotta go if I don't wanna be late. Let's meet in a library later, alright?"

"O-of course." You hurriedly stood up and left the lockers room after him, turning to the library: your Lit class was cancelled, so you decided to go study right away. At this time, the library was usually full, and you felt safe there.

Your thoughts were all about the guys again even when you were staring at your laptop, trying to focus on Excel numbers. Why did you feel like the atmosphere between them was so dense? If they were at such terms with each other, why did they group together to help you? What, because all of them loved you so much? It was ridiculous. There was something else to it, and you didn't know. You had a feeling no one was going to tell you the truth until you figured it all out by yourself.

Weird. It was all so weird. Steve's plan, their behavior, the relationships between them, and your nagging feeling they all were hiding something. Was it them who were actually following you?

The thought scared you to the point you started shivering. Oh shit.

"Hi there," the guy appeared behind your back so suddenly you almost jumped, looking at him wide-eyed, "sorry, did I startle you?"

"H-hi Jake! No, it's ok, I was just... studying." Both of you were talking in hushed voices, knowing the librarian would kick you out immediately if she heard some noise. "How are you?"

"I'm great, how're you?" You could hear concern in his voice: he was one of Thor's friends you met yesterday, and although you spoke briefly, Thor definitely told him more about you. "You look a bit worried."

"Oh, it's Math, I didn't really understand the topic, and we're having an exam on Monday... guess I'll be studying the whole weekend." You gave him your best smile to reassure you were totally ok, and the guy relaxed a little, smiling at you, too.

"I'm sure you'll pass. Thor said you're very smart."

What, he said that to all of them? Was he simply boasting about his girlfriend to his friends or was there something more to it?

"You're too kind. Thank you."

His smile grew wider, and he landed on the next seat to yours, resting his hands on the table. Apparently, there was something he wanted to talk to you about, and you grew uneasy.

"Listen, about these incidents... Thor told us all about it, so if you see any freaks following you around, you can message any of us, and we'll come right away." Looking at his serious expression, his bushy brows furrowed, you hoped he eas being sincere with you: you had enough with people you could no longer trust. "And also... that kid, if he's giving you troubles or anything, just let me know, and I'll tell him to keep his hands to himself"

Oh, he was talking about Peter, wasn't he? He had probably seen that silly photo. Wow, you though, Peter was totally right about Instagram: it was the best news source in the academy.

Thanking him for his concern, you laughed a little, convincing him there was nothing serious except for the theft and promising to tell him if anything weird would be going on. While it should have made you feel safer, in fact, you only grew more frustrated with this situation. You wanted to forget about these freaks and just spend you day like any normal student would, but everywhere you went people were staring at you as if you had a horn; one boyfriend or the other was always close to protect you from some unknown danger, and although you believed they tried to help, you hated the feeling they were hiding something from you. Why did you have to be going through all this? Wasn't it really better to drop off school, spend a year working and then apply to a better place?

Thinking of the faces your parents would make once you returned home, you realized it wasn't. This school with all those creeps wasn't worse than home that never felt like a safe place you wanted to come back to. Besides, all money you saved up until now were only good for buying food and things like that: you'd never afford to rent a decent place unless you found a well-paid job. It meant staying with your parents, and it wouldn't be much better than here, just different. If you wanted to drop off, you had to find a good place to stay.

Well, you could at least try, right?

When Peter met you in the library, the two of you no longer talked about anything important, simply studying together to prepare for the exams next week. It didn't feel off: from time to time you met his gaze, and the both of you smiled. You were thankful he didn’t talk about Steve or other guys or that weirdo in the lockers room.

Once you returned home, you went straight to bed, completely exhausted. Luckily, you did much more than yesterday, so you could rest now, but then you thought of Thor kissing you and bit down the pillow, angry at yourself. Why did you keep thinking of him right now?

______________

When you woke up the next morning, you felt like something was off: your body ached, your throat hurt, and your headache was only making it worse. Dammit, you caught a cold, probably. And that’s when it was finally the day to meet Steve, the guy you thought was a mastermind behind all these manipulations that were making you sick to the core. 

Anyway, it’s not like a mere cold would prevent you from doing everything you had planned. You left your bed and went to the bathroom, moving the dresser before again. 

Honestly, it felt terrible. It was definitely because of that flimsy dress you wore to school yesterday when the weather was becoming chilly. Argh. Watching your puffy eyes and swollen nose, you sneezed. Today you had to apply way more makeup to look decently.

Steve showed up earlier than either Thor or Peter: you had to skip your breakfast, hoping to buy something cheap in the cafeteria.

“Good morning.” He said with his everyday polite expression that soon shifted into a concerned one. “Are you alright?”

What, was it that bad? You did your absolute best to apply enough makeup and do your hair. Did you still look so sick?

“Good morning. Yes, I’m ok, just feeling a little sleepy.” You yawned on purpose, covering your mouth with your hand, and Steve’s face softened.

“Did you study all night?”

“Yep, exams are driving me a little crazy.”

“I understand. I also stayed late last night.”

Of course, the student council president studying all days long to be number one student in the academy. If you didn’t know of his twisted nature, you’d think he was the most typical nerd.

You spent most of the time either in silence or talking about studies, the academy, and everything related to it. Steve acted like a gentleman and a scholar, albeit a little too demonstratively. Walking with you as if he were a king of the place, he constantly replied to greetings of others, waved to his acquaintances and smiled. You felt so off you wanted to find Loki and walk with him: unlike Steve, he was considered unpleasant by the prevailing majority of students.

“Are you sure you’re going to be alright?” America golden boy asked you for the last time, and you forced yourself to smile.

“Of course. Thanks for coming, see you later, Steve.”

As he finally left you in peace, you almost fell down into your chair, your fever only getting worse despite the fact you took some painkillers. It was going to be a long day.

_________

Tags: @finleyjayne @alexakeyloveloki   ​@helenaeisenhower @villanellevi @hurricanerin ​@inlovewiththefictionalcharacters @chris-evans-indian-fanfic @navegandoaciegas @rosalynshields @brattycherub @sllooney @angrythingstarlight @lookiamtrying @buckysbunny @stargazingfangirl18 @dillybuggg @literate-lamb @cosicas-cuquis @sarge-barnes-sir @buckybarnesplumwhore @jaysayey @megzdoodle @gotnofucks @lux-ravenwolf @ximebebx @jeremyrennerfanxxxx123 @sourpatchspinster @biiskuitx @stupendouslovegardener @iheartsebandchris @lovelydarkdaydream @soleil-dor @illyrianprincess @vampirestrawberries @goodgodimaweirdperson @frontmanash @freya-heya @yandematic @mariatietacapitu @d3monslust @maybesandohnos @ibeatuptwinks @mangobangi @nectav @whatever-happened-to-the-ducks

[elyvorg]

So… I was talking about aspec V3 headcanons? Well then, let me lay down the facts.

Maki Harukawa is on the aromantic spectrum. Yes, even though she explicitly develops a crush on Kaito, and no, I’m not trying to dispute that part.

This is basically canon. Let me tell you why.

Maki is aro

For this, we need to consider the conversation Maki has with Shuichi in the first training session in chapter 4, while Kaito has temporarily disappeared to the bathroom. On one level, this conversation exists to be the only actual meaningful indication* that Maki has romantic feelings for Kaito until she goes and confesses them. Someone like Maki wouldn’t care about asking Shuichi if he “liked” Kaede (in that annoying loaded meaning of the word “like” that specifically refers to romantic attraction) unless she was trying to come to terms with the idea that she also “likes” someone else in the same way, and the only plausible candidate for that is Kaito.

But even more striking about this conversation, far more so than the general implication that Maki would only bother asking this if she happened to be crushing on a certain spiky-haired space dork, is the way Maki approaches and thinks about this whole topic in general. Take a look:

Maki:  “Well… I assumed you didn’t, because that would be weird. […] Liking someone you just met… especially in a situation like this…”

Shuichi:  “… Then tell me… under what circumstances is liking someone *not* weird?”

Maki:  “…Huh? I… don’t know. I don’t… really understand what that is.”

I, as an aromantic person myself, fully agree with Maki that it just seems weird to start romantically liking someone you’ve only just met, especially in a life-or-death situation where surely there’s way more important things to be focusing on. But apparently, most people do not find this thought weird at all – love at first sight is supposedly a real thing that can happen, and something something dangerous situations can bring out more hormones and passion???? sounds fake but okay – and so opinions like mine and Maki’s here are very much outliers.

And not only that, not only does the thought of crushing on near-strangers bewilder Maki to the point of disbelief, but she also can’t even come up with an answer to when crushing on someone would ever not be strange and bizarre. Like the whole concept is just alien to her. She can barely even wrap her head around how “liking” someone in that way even works. The very reason she’s even asking Shuichi about this is because she doesn’t understand why she’s feeling this way about Kaito.

This is how an aromantic person would view this kind of thing. It doesn’t sound even slightly like something an alloromantic person would say in this situation. That’s not up for interpretation – that’s just the truth about these views that Maki is expressing. Again: I’m aromantic. I would know.

Even from a character who then does turn out to nonetheless have a crush on someone, these statements are pretty much as canonically confirmed arospec as you can get short of them straight up using the word "aromantic" or a variant.** And, well, obviously Maki isn't about to go calling herself that. From the way she’s questioning this, she clearly doesn’t realise that her perspective is the outlier, so she’s probably never even heard of the term. Besides, she most definitely has way bigger hurdles to be getting over first in terms of her self-acceptance before she's ever going to particularly care about figuring out labels for her orientation of all things.

Aros with trauma are still aros

Now, granted, I severely doubt that Maki being arospec is what the writers intended to convey. Haha, deliberate aro representation in mainstream Japanese media, especially something more complex than vanilla aro, that's a funny joke. What the writers probably meant by writing this conversation I just discussed is to suggest that Maki is viewing things this way a result of her trauma.

But hey, guess what? Even if it is because of her trauma - and I'm not denying that it probably is - that doesn't make Maki any less aro. Some people are arospec because of trauma, and that's equally as valid a reason to be arospec as without. Maybe Maki would have grown up alloromantic if she hadn't been scouted as an assassin, but that's irrelevant, because that's not the Maki who exists now.

In writing this conversation, the writers were presumably attempting to communicate that Maki is so messed up by having been manipulated and abused and moulded into a soulless killing machine that she can no longer comprehend the idea of how or why anybody (especially not herself) would fall in love with someone when they'd only just met, or even really in any circumstances at all. …And in doing that, the writers unintentionally wrote a character who, as a result of her trauma, is aro(-spec). This is an objective fact about the canon story that does not change just because the writers probably weren’t aware enough about aromanticism to actually realise this.

Aros who feel romantic attraction are still aros

So, of course, Maki does in fact come to romantically love Kaito despite this. That fact becomes very important to her, and me lengthily explaining here that she’s actually arospec is not remotely trying to diminish that. But it’s also very important to me that people realise that Maki’s romantic love for Kaito comes from an aromantic perspective. She eventually chooses to embrace those feelings not remotely because it just feels to her like the natural way things should go, but despite every single conscious part of her insisting that this is weird and illogical and doesn’t make any goddamn sense to even be happening at all. She is not going to suddenly fall into all the boring romantic cliches and stereotypical alloromantic approaches to love just because she does in fact happen to be experiencing romantic attraction. There’s nothing alloromantic about Maki’s crush on Kaito.***

As for the specific flavour of arospec that allowed Maki to fall in love with Kaito anyway? This part is somewhat more up for interpretation because there’s no real explicit indication of this in particular, but I personally like to go with the idea that Maki is demiromantic. It feels appropriate for Maki’s character and trauma to imagine that she can only begin to potentially feel romantic things towards a person when she has an emotional connection with them – when she trusts them and knows that they trust her. It doesn’t necessarily have to take very long – she’d only been friends with Kaito for a handful of days before that telling conversation with Shuichi – and she may not even have to have consciously admitted to herself that she trusts them, but she needs to have that bond. She’s normally so guarded and has such strong automatic barriers up during her interpersonal interactions that seeing most people in a romantic light literally isn’t even an option in her brain.

Maki’s confession of her feelings for Kaito does read as rather strongly demiromantic, I think. She makes a point that this is about who Kaito is and what he’s done for her, before even getting to the part where she admits to having fallen for him. And she says she “fell for” him, not that she was always in love with him or anything to that effect. This happened somewhere along the way during their friendship, because of their friendship, and because of Kaito being his incredible trusting supportive self towards her when she needed it most.

Maki Harukawa is demiromantic, and she’s wonderful.

  ---

[some grumpy Amatonormativity and Aro Erasure 101 footnotes, can you tell I am bitter about this kind of thing]

(* When I say “actual meaningful indication” of romantic feelings, I mean something that isn't just the narrative infuriatingly pointing at things that are actually perfectly platonic in nature and going “ooh look how romantic~!”. Newsflash: worrying about somebody and wanting to rescue them when they're sick and injured and have been kidnapped by someone you think is an evil sadistic mastermind is not somehow proof of romantic feelings. That is a thing that friends do. And on the same note, teaching somebody how to build a crossbow is not some kind of deep metaphor for romance; it is literally just a lesson in how to build a goddamn crossbow. Maki would have done both of these things in exactly the same way if her crush on Kaito didn’t exist.)

(** It's exactly like how characters can be considered canonically confirmed same-gender-attracted when all they've done is show attraction to the same gender****, without them actually needing to explicitly refer to themselves with the word “gay”, or “lesbian”, or “bi” or whatever else. Anyone who tried to insist that was necessary in order for it to “count” would instantly be written off as homophobic. So if that’s the case, then a character explicitly saying something such as “I don’t understand what it means to like someone that way” equally constitutes them being confirmed aro, and trying to argue that it doesn’t “count” without outright hearing the word itself is, guess what…?)

(*** This also inherently means that there’s nothing straight about Maki’s crush on Kaito either, since societally-expected “straight” attraction is allo as well as hetero. I gather that some people in this fandom like to devalue and erase Maki’s crush (and potentially also Maki herself) because they feel that it’s an Obligatory Forced Straight Romance and don’t like that, or something along those lines. Well, good news! It’s literally not that, actually, because Maki isn’t straight.)

(**** …This only applies so long as it actually is very clearly romantic or sexual attraction and not just people deciding platonic affection is totally romantic thanks to the disease that is amatonormativity. Because, you know. That happens. Literally all the time. (Even from V3’s narrative itself; see footnote 1.))

[schnozzbun-art]

I just dont get it, everyone's quick to judge lisa and brad, but buzzo and marty have done far worse by comparison. I know it's been said but goddamn, it feels like it needs repeating because this shit's getting ridiculous. I just messaging this to you and other. (1/4)

Starting off with the absolute worst vermin there could be, marty because he kick started this whole fiasco. Never has there been such a weasel, that people use the dead wife excuse to abuse sexually abuse his own children, which is a grand difference between lisa trying to escape her hell hole lifestyle. Marty has been shown to have an off and on switch, which is to say the tea scene in the first. He could've been doing the same thing to buddy before Brad showed up. (2/4) Buzzo is another culprit to this shindig. Using lisa as an excuse to kickstart a drug empire to span Olathe to mutate its residents, with his buddy Yado, was probably not part of lisa's idea and though he could blame it on her all he wants it was his idea to do so. (3/4) I guess that's about it you could respond to it if you want, I just needed to get that garbage off my chest. Been lurking into your work, keep up the good work, may marty and buzzo, and yado's fictional asses burn in hell with no hope. (4/4)

Dearest anon,

It seems that you may be, as the kids call it, ‘going through it’ a little. And when it comes to discussion on LISA meta, I can relate to this immensely. To put it bluntly, there’s some extremely bizarre, unsympathetic, and frankly disgusting takes online about the LISA characters. Buddy being selfish, Lisa being an evil mastermind, Marty being a misunderstood hero. (What??? 🤢 Barf.) 

I think an issue in some parts of LISA fandom is people not realising, yes, while there are shades of grey in every situation, some shades are clearly, so obviously, darker than others. There comes a point where trying to find the humanity in characters who are so inhumane in their actions feels like completely misunderstanding one of the the points of the franchise: Trauma is an explanation for people’s actions, not an excuse. 

And again, as mind boggling as it is to see people with their whole chests say that ‘Brad was no better than Marty’ [C’mon, there’s a large difference between an incest-rapist-pedophile versus a controlling father with piss-poor communication skills—both are abusive, yes, but tell me you wouldn’t take one over the other in heartbeat] or ‘Lisa ruined Buzzo’ [was Lisa a shitty kid and a bad friend? For sure. But when you put the blame on Lisa for things we have no evidence she wanted (i.e. attacking Dusty and making Brad suffer), it feels like people are too eager to exonerate Buzzo due to his tragic relationship with Lisa, rather than acknowledging his choice of acting in pure vengeance] or ‘I just think Buddy would have settled down with somebody and willingly had a child’ [did we even play the same game???] I think a lot of it can be pinned on Joyful tripping over itself by being really confusing and regressive in its final message to the player. It’s annoying that in order to fully ‘get’ LISA you have to actively reject the meaning behind its canonical endings, or at least I believe so. (Again! Buddy can’t break-the-cycle-of-abuse her way out of people not trying to capture her!! She doesn’t act out of vengeance, she acts out of pragmatism to destroy a system because she knows it will never accept her.)

I understand it can be super frustrating and upsetting to see this stuff floating around. You weren’t really asking for advice, but I think what helps me is knowing you’re not alone in looking at some of these insane takes and going ‘Wow, y’all are crazy. Anyway.’  

I sense that the tides will be turning though, at least a little bit. While I don’t see ASAL making huge waves in the fandom (and I’m not sure I necessarily want it to, lol), I feel like once its sister project Growing Pains is completed, the game might turn a few heads and maybe, possibly spark more progressive, fandom-wide conversations around LISA’s characters. That’s wishful thinking though. Only time will tell.

Happy lurking.

[notebooknebula]

Top 3 Aha Moments in Real Estate with Jay Conner & Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

https://www.jayconner.com/top-3-aha-moments-in-real-estate-with-jay-conner-chaffee-thanh-nguyen/

Real Estate Investing With Jay Conner

Jay Conner was joined by his good friend Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen. They talked about some of the “Aha! Moments” in the real estate business.

In addition, they also conversed about “Private Money”. What is Private Money? How and where you can get private money to fund your deals.

All these and more in this episode of Real Estate Investing with Jay Conner.

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen is an International Speaker, #1 Best Selling Author, and Business and Success Coach.

He holds a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

After college, he worked in Corporate America for over 11 years as an Engineer and Senior IT Business Analyst.

He was a Certified Project Management Professional with the internationally recognized Project Management Institute for 6 years.

Using his corporate experience, he went on to start multiple businesses starting in 2002, including Real Estate Investing where he has invested in multiple states across the nation.

His passion, helping others achieve their highest potential in both business and in life.

As a refugee himself, Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen is committed to helping others and giving back. He is very active within his community serving within the Jaycees as a 10th Degree Jaycee, US Jaycee Senator #70583, and a JCI Certified National Trainer.

Timestamps:

0:01 – Get Ready To Be Plugged Into The Money

0:39 – Today’s guest: Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

1:34 – Jay’s New Book: “Where To Get The Money Now” –https://www.JayConner.com/Book

2:13 – Chaffee, one of the editors of Jay’s new book talks about why you need to get this book now!

3:19 – Aha! Moments in Real Estate – Private Money Academy Conference

4:43 – Who is Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen?

8:42 – 1st Aha! Moment: Substituting the collateral allows the lender to continue earning interest on a loan for a longer period of time, should the original property sell in less than 6 months.

10:19 – What is Private Money? Who is a Private Lender?

15:43 – 2nd Aha! Moment: Sellers do not know what they will accept until you make the offer.

23:10 – How can you buy a property using Subject-to existing note strategy?

26:04 – Final Aha moment for today: You can make big money in the real estate business in a very small market.

31:49 – Chaffee’s parting comments: Go out there, do not be afraid to make offers!

Private Money Academy Conference:

https://jaysliveevent.com/live/?oprid=&ref=42135

Have you read Jay’s new book: Where to Get The Money Now? It is available FREE (all you pay is the shipping and handling) at https://www.JayConner.com/Book

Free Webinar: http://bit.ly/jaymoneypodcast

Jay Conner is a proven real estate investment leader. Without using his own money or credit, Jay maximizes creative methods to buy and sell properties with profits averaging $64,000 per deal.

What is Real Estate Investing? Live Private Money Academy Conference

https://youtu.be/QyeBbDOF4wo

YouTube Channel

https://www.youtube.com/c/RealEstateInvestingWithJayConner

iTunes:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/private-money-academy-real-estate-investing-jay-conner/id1377723034

Listen to our Podcast:

https://realestateinvestingdeals.mypodcastworld.com/11201/top-3-aha-moments-in-real-estate-with-jay-conner-chaffee-thanh-nguyen

Top 3 Aha Moments in Real Estate with Jay Conner & Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

Jay Conner

00:03:06

Well, Chaffee, you’re the one that came up with the idea for the show today, and that is we can talk about the live event a little bit and we had 74, what we call “A-ha moments.” So, tell everybody what “A-ha moment” is at the live event, Chaffee.

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:03:34

So, first of all, let me say that this was one of the best live events that we had a long time in forever. And so to have everyone there, it was a full crowd, full room. Everyone was up in mixing and mingling and having the time and most importantly learning what to do in their business, following Jay’s processes and systems. And as you can see, it’s multiple pages before an “A-ha moment,” which is a moment where Jay talks and trains and teaches about what to do and how to do it.

And the little light bulb comes on and it’s like, “A-ha! I’ve got it! It makes sense!”  

Jay Conner

00:04:14

And the attendees are writing these down and they’re turning them in. So we give away prizes and such as well for people to share their A-ha moments. We don’t have near the time to review all 74 of them, but review just a few of the comments that the live event attendees wrote down and turned in as light bulb moments, from learning at the event. But, Chaffee, lets you take a moment and tell folks about your background and how it is we work together.

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:04:47

Sure. So when I was growing up, I was told you gotta go to school, get good grades and get a good job or J-O-B as we call it, right? And so that’s what it is. I did. I went to school, I got great grades.

I’m Asian, of course. So I get straight A’s and good stuff.  

Jay Conner

00:05:06

You’re really good at math, right?

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:05:07

That’s right. I was good at Math. So like a lot of Asians during my time, we were either doctors or engineers and I became an engineer, went to college, got big grades again and got a job as an engineer. So I’m working as an engineer in the corporate world at a multi-billion dollar company. And it was always nagging at me, Jay, that I needed to do more. I needed to do something else because I wasn’t made to be an engineer. I was made to do a lot more than go to a job, 8:00 in the morning and come home at 8:00 at night, 10, 12 hours a day working for somebody else, doing something that I might be good at, only I don’t really enjoy, or I don’t have really have a passion about. So during that time I decided to start something on the side and that was my real estate business. Started investing in 2002 and lost a ton of money on my first deal day.

Jay Conner

00:06:09

Uh-oh. There’s one big lesson right there.

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:06:09

That’s a book that I need to write, right? Of what not to do. And one thing that I didn’t have, just to share with everybody, one thing that I did now was a coach or a mentor to call up and say, “What’s going on? What am I doing wrong? Or what am I not doing? What should I be doing that I’m not doing?” And that’s really what got me in trouble, Jay, was really some of the things that I should have done that I wasn’t doing. So it wasn’t necessarily that I was doing something wrong. It was, I was missing some steps. I’m missing some things that I should’ve been doing. And so I lost a ton of money in that first deal. Learned, I went through the school of hard knocks and, and you know, lost a ton of money.

And then I got smart and I said, I need help. And so I got a mentor, I got a coach and started doing some more deals. And then I realized how powerful a coach and a mentor can be for somebody’s business and success. And that led me to personal development, which led me to fall in love with coaching. And so I started transitioning from real estate into coaching. And then while I was coaching at a real estate event, I met this guy right here, Mr. Jay Conner. And it was like a spark right away. It was like, I like this guy. He would resonate. And I like what he’s doing. And at that time you were just starting your Where To Get The Money Now course. And you’re like, I’m going to be a speaker and a trainer.

I’m like, “Me, too. I’m doing the same thing, I’m a speaker and a trainer, too.”

And so we’ve gotten in touch over the years. And then, Jay, you started blowing up. I mean, you started teaching and training a whole ton of people. And along the way, he said, “Hey, Chafee, come join the party.” And I was just like, “I’m there.” Like, where am I at? And let’s join the party and-

Jay Conner

00:07:55

You’ve probably been coming to all of our live events. It’s probably been 7 years or more, 7, 8 years, something like that. But yeah, Chaffee helps me run my mastermind group, as well. So, wow! Mastermind group is starting to blow up big time. Because we had 22 of us in the room, thereabouts, 20, 22 of us in the room, the week before last at the mastermind. And we almost doubled that now, but yeah, Chaffee’s a very, very important part of my team when it comes to working with our students and et cetera.

So anyway, as I mentioned, we just have gone through these A-ha moments. So let’s just go back and forth, Chaffee. This first one here. So I’m gonna read the A-ha moment, but then I’m gonna ask you to expand or to really talk about what it means in a very easy, simple to understand way. So George at the live event wrote down, his A-ha moment was, “Substituting the collateral while I was a lender to continue earning interest on a loan for a longer period of time, should the original property sell in less than six months.” So,how about unpacking that. First of all, a good place to start is, make sure everybody knows what we mean when we say, “collateral.” What’s collateral?

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:09:24

So collateral is what you get in place of the money that you’re lending.

And in our case, Jay, or your case, the collateral is the property. And so they get the property. If something happens and you’re unable to make that payment back to them, then they can go and get the property. And a lot of times they’ll end up with a lot more money when they get the property because you’re only buying those properties that are certain after-repair value, 75% of the ARV, as we say. And so they’re better off getting a property only, obviously you’ve always paid everybody back. And so they’ve never had to use that collateral.

Jay Conner

00:10:10

Yeah, these A-ha moments. So the name of the event that we just said is called The Private Money Academy Conference. So the emphasis of the event is on how to quickly and easily get a lot of private money. So let’s be clear, first of all, Chaffee, and make sure everybody understands what we mean by “private money.” What are we not talking about and who is a private lender or what is a private lender?

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:10:37

So just to be clear, private money typically comes from somebody that doesn’t really do real estate. They don’t want to get involved in real estate. They’re busy or they have other things that they want to do in their life. And they want a greater return on their money. Sometimes people confuse private lenders with hard money lenders and these are professional money lenders. And so they charge points and they charge high interest rates. And that’s what most people are familiar with. That’s what most people use, are hard money lenders. They’re not banks, they’re not institutions. They’re just people. Most of these people are retired or they’re professionals with high incomes and they have money sitting in a bank or in a retirement account, earning them less than 1% typically. And they’re looking to earn a lot more.

Jay Conner

00:11:33

So private lenders are human beings, right? As Chaffee just said, you’re not borrowing money from any kind of bank or mortgage company or broker of money. These are individuals. In fact, Carol Joy and I right now have 47 individuals that are loaning us money, investing with us to do deals. We pay them a higher rate of return, safe and secure, but nowhere near a hard money lender’s rates. One thing that’s very different about this world of private money is we make the rules as the real estate investor. We set the program, like resetting the interest rate. We determine how long the notes are. In Kentucky, they call it a 360. It’s actually a 180. So it’s the opposite direction of how it works when you’re borrowing money from a bank. When I was borrowing money from the banks up until 2009, my first 6 years, that’s where I thought, that’s what you had to do.

You had to go to the bank and borrow the money to fund your deals. Well, 2003 to 2009, that’s what I did. But since that time, and then this world of private money, we have created our own program. And like we said, the interest rate, how much interest rate would you pay, the frequency of payments, and et cetera. So back to this coming here on this A-ha moment, George says substituting collateral allows the lender to continue earning interest. So what I taught in the section was that when you have borrowed money for your real estate deal, and it sounded like I borrow a lot of what we call “seconds” or junior lien position, smaller amounts of private money, not a lot of money that I used to buy a house, but for rehab and say, for example, so I may have like a $30,000 note that I’ve borrowed to rehab a house.

Now let’s say I sell that house and the note has not expired. So if I have another property, another collate piece of collateral that I have, then I keep that note open so that the lender can keep earning their interest. And I don’t have to pay off that $30,000 note, in this example, I can just substitute or change the collateral that’s backing that note. Does that make sense, Chaffee?

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:14:07

Yeah. What you’re saying is that you don’t have to pay back that private lender and pay them on the interest because you still have time left on that note. So instead of them only getting interest on four months of payments because you sold the property within 4 months, you know, it’s a 12-month note, you got eight months left. You just take that and put it on another property and they continue to get paid on those 8 months.

Something that goes along with that is a lot of times when I have a new private lender that is doing business with us, if I cash out, I’m going to pay them off or whatever. One of the first things they say is, “Well, Jay, can’t you just keep the money? I don’t want the money back.” And the answer is, you got to either substitute- If you’re doing the business my way cause we can’t borrow any unsecured money. It’s all backed by real estate. Can I do that legally? Sure. But I want to protect and give the security to the private lenders. So they’ll ask, “Well, can’t you just keep the money, Jay?” And the answer is I can, if I’ve got another property that I can collateralize that note. And the worst, I can’t, I’m just not going to keep the money.

If you pay off and you’re also shooting the collateral, then the real estate attorney can’t keep it in their escrow account, what we call “unassigned” and I mean that they’re not a savings account, right? So either got to pay them back or settle through the collateral. We gotta do our next one, Chaffee. What we’ve got here on the sheet?

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:15:42

I like this one that Felicia had which is, “Sellers do not know what they will accept until you make the offer.”

Jay Conner

00:15:55

Yes. That’s always an A-ha moment. So the A-ha moment is that sellers do not know what they will accept until you make an offer. But now I’ve heard you say this a hundred times, Chaffee, “I’ve never bought a house that I didn’t make an offer on.” Right? So the reason this is such an important point is I just know from experience, it happens all the time and Carol Joy and I, and my team, we do 2 to 3 deals a month, right?

Not a lot of deals, but 420 rehabs since we started this back in 2003. What I’ve learned over all these years is that regardless of what the seller says is the least they will accept. Now, this is particularly if they’re talking to someone else on your team, like the acquisitions. So I have a full-time acquisitionist that does the initial negotiating with the sellers. So regardless of what they tell Kim, our acquisitionist, then I’ll run the numbers. I may not be able to offer that amount of money that he said was the least they would take. So a lot of times I’ll get back to Kim and I’ll offer much, much less. For example, we’ve got a house over in Beaufort right now, that lead came in from one of our bird dogs, a.k.a. Field Agent, a.k.a. Ant Farmer. Anyway, they sent me a picture of this FSBO sign.

And we got up into the seller, Chaffee, and the seller told Kim, in fact it was an inherited property, told him they weren’t going to take one penny less than $300,000. We ran the numbers. I couldn’t offer $300,000 to make it work. The most I could offer was 250,000. So I went back to Kim. I said, “Give them the offer,” and I’m just not offering 250,000, it’s how this offer is framed and presented. I said, “All cash,” i.e. private money, private in there to buy it. And then I could close in 7 days. I knew the house was vacant. I knew it was imperative. There’s no emotional attachment to this property. And these 2 sisters just want to cash out. And so I said, “We close in 7 days, all cash. Don’t have to go get approved for a mortgage or get approved for a loan.”

And that was $50,000 less than just what they said, the least they’d take is 300, and Chaffee, they accepted it. Boom, no conversation. They accepted it, $50,000 less. So as is written down here. They really don’t know. I think they may have really thought that in their head, they may not have been playing any games, but when you’ve got an all-cash offer offered to you and you can have all that cash in 7 days. I mean, that will affect the way you think. Right, Chaffee?

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:18:57

Absolutely. I mean that’s a $50,000 lesson right there, right?

Jay Conner

00:19:00

Exactly. Exactly. So the takeaway from that for me is, if you want the property, make the offer, period.

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:19:12

Let me add why I think that’s also very important is that before you even get to the conversation with the seller, Jay, a lot of students that I’ve talked to that have trouble or challenges finding deals always tell me, like I asked him, “How many offers did you make?”

And they’ll say like, “2 or 3.” I go, “Why haven’t you made more offers?” And they’ll say, “Well, the numbers don’t make sense.” And so that’s a wall for them, right? That’s a mental wall that says they look at the numbers from the MLS or the lead sheet or wherever they got that lead from and say, well, you know, it just doesn’t make sense. Like, they want more, it doesn’t meet the MAO, the maximum allowable offer, or it’s above that. So it’s not a lead, let me just throw it away. And regardless of what the numbers say, if you just make the offer, according to what your numbers should be, you’ll be surprised at how many people come back and counter the offer or start that negotiation process. Or as you said, Jay, just take it because they want out.

Jay Conner

00:20:17

Exactly, and there’s an art to making the offer as well.

So we’re going to make the offer, but we’re also going to justify the offer. Many times we will share my formula that I use with the seller. Now I say, the math is what makes the decision and what we can do. And we just get the white elephant out of the conversation, like right up front. In fact, the sellers that I was visiting with this past Friday, I sat down with them for two hours, I still make offers myself. I enjoy visiting people. So I’m sitting down with these people. And so I knew what their number was and we were $30,000 off. And so I had already gone through the house and looked at the repairs that they needed and etc.

And I told them right up front and I said, “Look, I think we’re going to have to work something out,” but I’ll tell you it doesn’t work out all the time. We call that the ‘takeaway,’ right? But I just get the white elephant out of the way by saying, you know what, unless this is a win for you and a win for her husband that was sitting there as well. And this is a win for both of you and a win for me then I don’t want to be a part of it. I don’t want to be involved in any transaction where everybody is not winning. And for everybody to win, all of us have got to give a little bit, too, for that to happen for a long time. So I justified the offer by actually sharing the formula and the math.  

I don’t want to come across as though I am just like pulling some figure out of thin air and just trying to make an extra $30,000 and be some greedy real estate investor. There’s an actual formula to where this comes from and I actually gave him a choice. And one I’m gonna bring up now is not on the A-ha moments, but we talked about it at lunch and that is, I gave them multiple offers. I gave them a choice. And quite frankly, I was happy with whatever choice they took, I said, “Look, I can buy this property.” Of course they never heard of the subject to the existing note, nobody’s ever heard of it. So you gotta like, dumb that conversation down, but I said I can pay you all cash, or I can give you $10,000 more if I buy it from you with what we call,

“subject to the existing note,” or “subject to,” as most real estate investors. And they immediately took the 10,000 more. That’s what they had in their- at least these people were current. I mean, they got fantastic credit. So just to make sure everybody understands, Chaffee, tell our audience and listeners and viewers here, what do we mean by buying a property, subject to the existing note?

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:23:21

So when we say “buy, subject to the existing note,” which is not something that you would actually say to the seller. You’re not going to say I’m going to buy your property subject to the existing note because that’s right over their head, right? So basically they have a mortgage on that property with the bank or with a credit union or some institution. And all you’re going to do is you’re going to make their payments for them.

So they’re not getting rid of that loan, instead, you’re just gonna pay those payments as they come on a monthly basis and they’re going to transfer the title of the property to you. So you’re going to own the property and make payments as if it was your loan, except the loan stays in their name. So that’s the only thing. You’re making their payments and you’re taking over the property and they can go on their happy way and live their life. So they don’t have to worry about those monthly payments anymore. And oftentimes Jay, with “subject to,” with the strategy that you use, if somebody is behind on payments, you’re actually helping them fix their credit because you’re making those on-time monthly payments. Now, in this case, they were on time. So you don’t have to do that. And as long as you continue to make those payments for them, that’s still helping their credit build up because that’s a loan on their property being paid on time

Jay Conner

00:24:38

Yeah. So they are actually getting in this transaction that I’m talking about, they are actually getting about $34,000 more than their payoff. So I’m buying it to the existing note, making the payments on that outstanding balance until I find a buyer and cash out. So the difference that I’m paying them, I explained to them, you’re getting the same amount of money in your pocket. Whether I pay all cash and pay off your mortgage, or if I buy it, this is what I call Option B and explained to them how “subject to” works. You’re still getting the same amount of money in your pocket. It’s just a matter of whether I’m going to be paying off your mortgage right now. And so what else am I going to do on this deal? I’m buying it, set it into the existing note, and then I’m going to borrow private money in a second position or a junior position, and use that little bit of private money to go ahead and give them their cash when we close on it.

One A-ha moment that I’ve read on here is they just made a statement that they heard me say to a lot of them all the time. And that is you can make really big money in this business in a very, very small market. So what’s the population of where you and your family live up in the Chicago area?

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:26:21

There’s about 8 million people in the city and the surrounding areas.

Jay Conner

00:26:26

Yeah. So he’s at 8 million. So me and Carol Joy are here in 40,000, so we did 2 to 3 deals a month, even when it’s become more challenging now to find deals in the market that we’re in.

But as I said, we do 2 to 3 a month, and we’re still averaging all this $70,000 profit per deal. Well, let’s fill up under contract that I’ve been telling everybody about. The after-repair value is right around 300,000 and I can put maybe $5,000 in this house. It’s already been totally rehabbed. There’s a little bit left upstairs. Well, here’s the math, I’m buying it for 160,000. It’s worth right at 300. And all I got to put in is about $5,000. So I didn’t have to take that to the committee to get the approval on that one.

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:27:35

Let me just repeat that so everyone listening understands, Jay, is that these individuals are current on their payments and the house is worth about 300 after repair. And they’re willing to sell it to you for 160 and they’re allowing you to take over their payments.

And is that a real deal, Jay? Do those kinds of deals exist?

Jay Conner

00:27:59

Well, I’ll be able to show you the contract. I’d be able to show you the deed this coming Monday. But this is not an out of ordinary deal by any imagination. One question someone may be thinking right now is, well, why would somebody trust me to make their payments and give up all that equity? Couldn’t they put the house in the multiple listing service? They could, even though it still needs some repair upstairs. But I always ask people, “How did you know where to find us?” And we did marketing consistently everyday. We do Facebook ads. We do Google ads. We do direct mail to people that are behind and in foreclosure, et cetera. So I asked this lady, I said, “How did you find me?”

She says, “We’ve been living here for 28 years and we know what you do.” I mean, if you live around here, you’re going to see my face and you’re going to see my marketing on Facebook. And so she’s “All I did was I just went to Google and I Googled ‘Jay buys houses.’ ” There it was. But back to the question, why would someone be willing to do what we’re doing? Well, people do things for their own reasons. Sometimes you’re not even actually sure, but since I sat down with these people for two hours, I know why. The husband is not in good health and it’s like a hundred degrees here. He’s been working on this house for over a year. And he came in from the heat last week and his wife is worried sick that something’s going to happen to him.

And she’s going to be stuck with the burden of this house. And she tells me that she tells me that multiple times. She says, “I just don’t want to have the risk of being stuck and having the burden of this.” And in fact, on this “subject to” things they never heard of, I said, “Well, you get with me giving you $10,000 more, option B way,” I said, “The only thing you have to decide is, are you going to trust me to make your payments?” And I said, “Why wouldn’t I make your payments? I can’t sell a house and fix it up and all that if I’m not making your payments, right? I don’t want the bank to take it away from me, particularly when I’m getting ready to put this rehab money in it.”

So the short answer to the question, “Who would be willing to sell their house this way?” And the short answer is, “A motivated seller.”

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:30:46

And that’s the key. So I hear it all the time, Jay, is that, “No, I don’t. I can’t find these deals out there. No one will ever sell me these properties.” And the reason is that you’re talking to unmotivated sellers. Most of them are For Sale By Owner because they’re too cheap to hire real estate agents. So they’re not motivated. They just want more money and those, I think For Sale By Owners, you can definitely find some deals with them. If you find the right For Sale By Owner, only is you have to filter through a whole ton, a lot of them. And I think that it’s good practice for you to learn how to speak to people and just realize you want marketing channels in place to get those motivated sellers contacting you so that you don’t have to go out there and talk to a thousand people for you to find the 1 or 2 motivated sellers from those FSBOs out there.

Jay Conner

00:31:40

Exactly. Well, Chaffee, we are about out of time. So I’m going to let you wrap it up with parting comments and final thoughts.

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:31:48

Parting comments is – Go out there. Don’t be afraid to make offers. Find somebody who you can resonate with, who you like, who has a system and a process that can help hold your hand to do this business and show you how to do the things that you need to do. Unlike me, when I first started, right? Find somebody that’s going to teach you this business so that you can do this business and it can allow you to change your life and live life with the passion that you want or do the things that you’re passionate about. Because, you know, I hear a lot of people all the time, Jay. I’ve watched 30 hours of YouTube videos every single week on how to do real estate.

And I hadn’t done a deal, right? Well that’s because you don’t have somebody like Mr. Jay Conner telling you, guiding you, teaching you step-by-step, what to do and how to do it. You’re watching a thousand different videos that tell you all different things. So you’re either going to pay through the school of hard knocks and learn through mistakes, or you’re going to find somebody and go through and hire a good mentor or coach that’s going to show you how to do this business and do it successfully. And it’s going to be a lot less headaches. So you can do this business, just find the right people to work with and it will change your life.

[heathers-wig]

come & find me - heathney hanahaki au part one

synopsis:

“Who’re the flowers for?” Eva interjects.

The question dances around in Heather’s head and leaks out of the others’ imploring glances, but Heather finds herself faltering as she struggles to answer.

“I don’t…” Heather frowns, thinking of the flowers welling up in her lungs that she’s sure will snuff out her life. Her frown melts into a scowl when she thinks of whoever her enamored was, and how they doubled as her soon-to-be inevitable murderer, along with how she didn’t even get the privilege to know their identity. “I don’t know.”

❁

Or: Heather contracts the Hanahaki Disease. Other than the fact that she’s quite literally slowly but surely dying due to flowers rooted to her lungs, she has a problem; she doesn’t know who exactly her unrequited love is for, or how to prevent the disease from worsening. Can she figure out who her “beloved” is and snuff out the floral illness before it claims her for once and for all?

pairings: heathney (heather x courtney), BG gweoff (gwen x geoff), BG izva (izzy x eva)

word count: 15,226

warnings: suicidal thoughts implications + descriptions of coughing/vomiting

A/N: there are two endings, happy and sad! feel free to choose which you deem as the true ending :) thank you for reading!

READ IT ON AO3 HERE!

i. daffodils & gardenias; unrequited and secret love

It starts with a petal. Well, if Heather were to be honest, it had started far beyond the first initial petal, but all the pieces fell into place when the very first petal fluttered from her lips.

Her science teacher was going on and on about the instructions for their next lab — something about carefully dissecting a pufferfish that had long since died, but Heather paid no mind to it.

Instead, she observes.

One of her favorite things to do was observe those around her. It was like dissecting them, similar to how her science teacher was now demonstrating on one of the pufferfish, and their internal thoughts and behaviors. Who they unconsciously drifted to, who they repelled and fought with — or, to be more precise, where the weak links in her class were located. With this frequent and diligent studying, she knew exactly how to break certain students and their allegedly tight-knit friend groups.

Take Bridgette, Geoff, and Alejandro, for instance; all Heather had done was slightly insinuate to the gullible, blonde girl that Alejandro liked her, and she was putty in her hands. Of course, Heather noticed Bridgette stare and stare at Alejandro nearly around the clock, but Geoff, Bridgette's actual boyfriend, hadn’t. She did him a favor, really — all it took was her to mastermind him walking in on Bridgette and Alejandro during a Halloween party, and Heather was satisfied.

Currently, Geoff and Bridgette were sitting awkwardly and stiffly next to one another — a huge mistake on their parts, in Heather’s opinion, to choose to sit next to one another after only beginning to date during the summer, but Heather had never had the patience for high school romances. Bridgette had tried to slide apology notes to Geoff’s direction, but for once, his eyes were glued to the board and the notes went unnoticed.

Heather noticed them, though, and she had to stifle a laugh.

The rest of the class is more or less the same. Some were pointedly looking away from the experiment their teacher was performing, and some were sketching in their notebooks, like Gwen.

There had to be three people genuinely paying attention — Geoff, for obvious reasons, Beth, because she currently had a B in the course and thought it was the end of her small-minded world, and Courtney, because she was, well, Courtney.

It’s when Heather’s eyes stay on Courtney’s head of hair that didn’t have a single strand out of place that it happens.

A scratch in the back of her throat digs into her, but Heather swallows it down instead of clearing her throat. If she did it too loudly over something so mediocre and unimportant, her classmates would just assume she was trying to stir something seeing as how it was the end of the last period of the day and, while Heather loved the occasional entertainment at the spite of her peers, she wasn’t in the mood that day.

And so, Heather waits and makes stray sketches in her notebook — repeatedly writing her name in cursive, drawing hideous illustrations of her peers, anything to pass the time until the bell rings. When the bell finally sounded off, punctuating the end of the day, students unceremoniously gathered their lump of notebooks and textbooks and scoop them in their arms, leaving the classroom in a cluttered, chatty, and hurried mess.

The first one out the door is Geoff, followed by Bridgette on his heels, Heather notes, but she can’t bring herself to follow and eavesdrop and what would possibly be one of the most interesting breakups Wawanakwa High had seen since Courtney and Duncan’s infamous split. She’d probably overhear the details of the split from somebody else, anyway.

The devil seemed to have spawned at the initial thought, as a prickly voice accompanied with a light tap on Heather’s shoulder made with the eraser end of a pencil is what tears Heather’s eyes away from the door. She has half the mind to berate whoever it was for pestering her at the end of the day, but falters when her eyes meet the other’s.

Courtney’s narrowed dark brown eyes are unamused. When Heather rises from her seat, Courtney tilts her head up to meet her gaze — Heather was taller than Courtney, even with the pair of wedges the brunette had on that day.

“I expect you were paying attention,” Courtney’s tone is sickeningly sweet and mocking, the specific one she uses around people she thinks are below her in terms of intelligence, or just in general. She has seen Courtney use it around the young kids she tutors, Duncan, jocks, Heather herself, and practically any student in their school who has managed to sour her mood, which was mostly everyone. “We are partnered for the lab, after all —”

“We are?” Heather questions dryly. She had expected Courtney to pick up on her sarcasm — Courtney had made it her job to scribble Lab with Courtney on every available space in her planner on the days leading up to the experiment, after all — but judging by the brunette’s eyes narrowing further, she either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care.

“Yes,” She hisses through clenched teeth, before frowning. “Whatever, I actually paid attention —”

“And I thank you for your service,” Heather remarks just as dryly as before, sauntering out the door.

“Wha — hey, where are you going?”

Heather snorted softly. “Come and find me,” she chastised sardonically. She had figured the answer to be obvious, but Courtney never failed to surprise her in one way or another.

Courtney scoffs and follows her, falling into place next to Heather. She fixed the headband on her head that matched her clothes as she rolled her eyes so far back Heather couldn’t help but wonder if they saw the back of her head.

“Haha, very funny,” The brunette doesn’t laugh, which makes Heather crack a smile in satisfaction. Winning with Courtney was always exhilarating and thrilling. “See you tomorrow, Heather,”

Heather hummed, waving a lazy and half-hearted hand over her shoulder, already bolting in the direction of the student parking lot. “See you,”

When Heather is finally in the solitude of her sleek, black car — her parents wasted no expense when it came to spoiling her, despite neither being the affectionate or loving type — the thing building up in the back of her throat is finally released into the palm of her hand, and all Heather can do is stare at it.

She’s coughed up bile and phlegm before, and she’s heard of blood being coughed up as well, but the tiny, dainty and crumpled thing laying in her hands was unheard of and felt unreal as it rested in her palms. She was suddenly aware of how dry her hands were as she felt the thinness of the soaked object, given that it had been resting in her throat.

Rifling it in her hands, Heather scoffs when she realizes just how ridiculous it was to believe she had just coughed up a flower in the school parking lot. However, she blinks harshly and firmly, and when she opens her eyes, the yellow petal is still there.

A foreign feeling of confusion and uneasiness settles over her like a blanket, but she instead scoffs once more and crumpled the petal, wrapping a tissue around it to keep it from dirtying her leather seats, and rolls out of the parking lot, avoiding any acknowledgment of the flower petal she’s convinced she imagined coughing up.

(On the ride home, she coughs up two more additional petals, too — one white and curved to perfection, looking much too angelic and innocent for having just been lodged up in her throat just moments prior, and the other the same shade of yellow as the first. Heather ignores both, and tosses them out the window to sink further in denial, similar to how she felt her stomach sink as she watched the petals flutter aimlessly to the ground, destined to be run over or stepped on.)

❀

That night, after finishing both her math homework and leftovers for dinner, Heather switched off the lights and settled into her bed before impulsively flicking open her laptop. It was for school purposes, her parents insisted, and was to never be used at night when she should be asleep, but quite frankly, Heather hadn’t cared much for her parents’ opinion of her considering their clear distaste for her.

Her fingers mindlessly fly across the keyboard, the same feeling of dread from when she was stunned upon the initial discovery of the petals resurfacing.

why am i coughing up weird shit

Healthline - Signs of Lung Illness

If any of the following symptoms apply to you, be sure to contact your health agent and schedule an appointment to discuss your symptoms and possible diagnosis. If you experience a burning, aching, or squeezing sensation in your chest, illnesses such as Lung Cancer, Pleuritis, etc. may be at play.

why am i coughing up petals and how do i stop it

Derrit - r/AskDerrit, in an old manga I read today, the Hanahaki disease was a plotline. Is it real? I can’t find any research indicating an answer.

BlaineleysBitch: no. the entire premise of the disease doesn’t even make sense. it’s not real.

Mr.CocoNutty: tbfh i haven’t heard anything about it? i’m sure if it were real there would be some coverage abt it considering how unbelievable it sounds

KittyKat16: yea, i don’t think it’s real, but it would be really cool if it was!!

what’s the hanahaki disease

Wikiresource - List of fictional diseases

Hanahaki Disease (花吐き病 (Japanese); 하나하키병 (Korean); 花吐病 (Chinese)) is a fictional disease where the victim of unrequited or one-sided love begins to vomit or cough up the petals and flowers of a flowering plant growing in their lungs, which will eventually grow large enough to render breathing impossible if left untreated. The flowers in particular symbolize the specific love and relationship the patient has for the enamored, as told through flower language. Hanahaki can be cured through the confession of the victim's feelings. The response of the enamored is unimportant. The victim may also develop Hanahaki Disease if they believe the love to be one-sided but once the enamored returns the feelings, they will be cured.

how to get rid of hanahaki disease without having to confess shit

Making sure to groan inaudibly — her parents were under the impression she was asleep, after all — Heather pressed her finger down on the backspace key with a familiar scowl on her face, her finger remaining in place atop the key long after the words had been removed. The feeling of resentment and annoyance was familiar, but the overwhelming confusion and petals she felt building up in her throat were not.

Sighing, Heather rubbed her eyes gently yet urgently. Mindlessly, she resorted back to her idle habit: observing.

Assuming she had the disease that was supposed to be fictional, somebody had swooped Heather off of her heeled feet without her even realizing it. That had to be impossible, as Heather wasn’t dense enough to not realize something as obvious as feelings for another. After all, she read people and their infatuation with others as easily as one read magazines — who was to say she couldn’t do the same for herself?

Recalling the wiki page, Heather sighed as she began to re-type. The article had said that the flowers she had coughed up symbolized her love for whoever her crush was in flower language, and seeing as how it was her only lead on whoever her supposed enamored was, Heather wanted to crack down who it was exactly and quickly exterminate any and all contact with them to execute any possible feelings.

how do you identify a flower

PlantCapture - What Flower Is This? How to Instantly Identify Flowers

If you already have a photo of a flower saved on your phone, you can also instantly identify it by uploading the photo to PlantCapture. Once you've instantly identified a flower, PlantCapture stores it in your library. You can easily go back to see how many flowers you've identified.

Heather whipped out her phone with another sigh as she begrudgingly began downloading the app. Watching the small icon load, she scowled even deeper. Even the smallest inconvenience in the entire situation was enough to dampen her mood even further, despite the fact her own alleged feelings brought this on herself.

Remembering she had tossed out her only petals, Heather just barely resisted another groan before a familiar scratchiness formed at the back of her throat. Being sure to cough quietly, Heather slipped the petal out of her mouth as she winced at the taste of copper rolling down her tongue. The article hadn’t mentioned anything about blood, Heather bitterly notes, before shaking her head at her own stupidity. Of course there wasn’t a full list of symptoms for a disease that was believed to be fictional.

Switching flash on, Heather got the results of her flowers instantaneously as promised: the yellow and white flowers she had been hacking up all day were daffodils and gardenias, respectively.

Heather’s fingers flew to her keyboard once more automatically. With bated breath, she hoped that the results would be specific enough that she could put an end to the investigation that night and stomp out whatever ties she had with her “enamored”.

But, as noted from Heather’s luck that day, things rarely went her way.

what do daffodils mean

FlowerDictionary - Flower Meanings: Flowers A-K

Daffodil symbolizes regard and chivalry. It is indicative of rebirth, new beginnings and eternal life. It also symbolizes unrequited love.

what do gardenias mean

Flower Dictionary - Flower Meanings: Flowers A-K

The gardenia is a flower that symbolizes purity and gentleness. However, this symbolism often depends on the color of the gardenia. ... Another symbol of the gardenia is secret love between two people and also joy.

Upon quickly searching them up, the results did little to ease the dread pooling in her. The test was definitely correct, as it seemed, but was entirely unhelpful when it came to figuring out the identity of whoever it was that Heather had unknowingly developed an unreturned love for.

Slamming her laptop closed — a bit too loud for her liking, but beats pass and she doesn’t hear the annoying patter of her mother’s footsteps reach her room, so she assumes she’s in the clear — Heather grunts one final time, unceremoniously moving her laptop back on her desk. Raising the petal to her line of vision, Heather has to squint to make out some of the details. This one was white, identifiable even in the dark. It was a bit crumpled from having been clutched so tightly, and still wet from her own coppery blood.

A gardenia, Heather recalls with another scowl that was deeper and more ferocious than the last were. Meant to symbolize a “secret love”... so much for a clue.

She wonders, her last coherent thought before succumbing to sleep, how big of a secret her love must be for it to have left Heather herself in the dark on who her loved one was.

At the thought, Heather wrapped her blankets tighter around herself, lulling herself to an uneasy sleep of blood, thorns, beautiful but deadly flowers, and a figure in the distance who looks so comforting and familiar whose name is on the tip of Heather’s tongue, but can’t be reached.

❀

ii. amaryllises & white chrysanthemums; pride & loyalty

Despite Heather’s praying to a God she didn’t believe in, the flowers didn’t disappear overnight. Instead, they bloomed rapidly in her lungs, and at times when she felt the familiar tickle in the back of her throat, flowers in full-bloom were coughed up.

They would be beautiful, if not for her own blood staining them, a grim reminder of what would become of her if she did not find a fix, and soon.

Still, Heather was nothing if not quick on her feet. She managed to keep her illness under the wraps — of course, her second in command was Lindsay, so it wasn’t difficult to conceal her bloody bundles of flowers as just “feeling under the weather”; any other person would be suspicious of the foreign scratchiness and hoarseness her voice now had, the way she would breathe shakily as if her lungs were rattling and about to give out, or the way she barely restrained the flowers from being coughed up after a gym class, but since it’s Lindsay, Heather can get away with her lie.

When Lindsay sweetly wishes for her to feel better, even dropping off a bowl of badly homemade chicken noodle soup, Heather couldn’t help but scoff as she shook her head at the feeling of guilt lingering in the back of her head, and the feeling of bloody flowers in the back of her throat.

❀

With every fistful of the flowers beginning to stain her clothes, Heather took responsibility for her own laundry, for the first time in her life. Her parents put on a spectacle of overexaggerated joy and relief when she announced it, saying that, oh, thank goodness their darling was beginning to take responsibility instead of pooching off of them; Heather had just forcefully smiled and nodded, as she always did now, and excused herself to hurriedly put in the first load.

Her clothes were stained red in her own blood. Some petals began to stick onto her clothes, as well, and the last thing Heather wanted was the intrusion of her parents and their nosiness as she deciphered just who she was coughing flowers for.

Interestingly, the flowers she was now coughing up were different. Amaryllises and chrysanthemums, as she had identified — the red flower was the former of the two and symbolized pride. The white chrysanthemums, wide with many intricate petals, symbolized loyalty and the truth. Thankfully, they were more of a clue than the daffodils and gardenias with their meanings of unrequited and secret love.

That still didn’t mean that Heather had any clue of who they were for, though — she just knew that they had to be high-maintenance, and part of her refused to believe she would unconsciously fall for someone who had to be so pretentious, but seeing as how the thought sent her into another bout of coughing sloppily disguised, it had to have been the truth.

Heather was beginning to hate the sensation that arose when she felt a coughing spur coming on. She hated how she could feel a crumpled lump form in the back of her throat, squirming its way up her throat and nearly out her mouth. It feels hot, sticky, and suffocating, and when the flowers come up, Heather hates them too, and especially whoever her beloved is. However, the disease doesn’t cease even just a little, and so Heather finds herself heaving, coughing, and puking chrysanthemums and amaryllises in the middle of the night as she ponders on who it is she’s supposed to be loving.

Still, she manages to keep herself from hacking during class in front of her peers, and that’s all that matters to her, even when the flowers she chokes on splinter into her like thorns in her side.

❀

It’s here that Heather messes up. Well, to be fair, she messed up as soon as she began feeling things for whoever it was that had captured her sight unknowingly, in Heather’s opinion, but that was irrefutable and couldn’t be helped.

This, however, could have been helped.

Like many things, it started at school. Like the first petal that had been coughed up weeks ago, it started during science class, when she felt the feeling of hot bile, blood, and petals rising in her throat as Courtney bent over their lab report. She didn’t notice Heather’s discomfort, as her eyes were fixed on the report, her brows scrunched together in concentration.

At least, that’s what Heather thought, until Courtney suddenly looked up from the report and eyed her curiously. “Are you feeling alright?”

Heather barely contained her surprise at the sudden inquiry. The only person to ask that was Lindsay, not even her own parents, let alone her (unofficial) rival and (official) lab partner.

Upon seeing her confusion — had she done that bad at a job of hiding it? — Courtney sighed and looked back to their work. “To be honest, you’re quieter than normal and you look kind of sick — you look like you’re going to pass out at any time now.”

“Thanks,” Heather mutters coarsely, finding her voice. Despite her calm exterior, she could feel her heart racing, and the flowers itching their way up her throat.

Courtney squawked indignantly. “Hey! I’m just being honest!”

“Mhmm,” Heather hums absentmindedly as she rises from her seat. “I’m going to the bathroom.”

She barely hears Courtney’s grumpy and hesitant “Fine,” before stalking out the room, grabbing a hall pass on her way out. As soon as the door swung shut behind her, out of sight from her peers, Heather dashed as quickly as she could to the solitude of the nearest bathroom. She slams the stall door closest to her open noisily, thankful there was nobody around, and heaves into the toilet as the blood and flowers bloom from her mouth.

They hurt more than the daffodils and gardenias, now that they’re coming out as full flowers accompanied with a few stray petals rather than just petals, but Heather shoves the thought to the side in favor of pulling her hair away from her face. The toilet bowl is filled with a hideous mixture of blood and petals, and Heather feels like a decaying corpse as the energy leaves her, crumbling to the ground as she heaved from the aftermath of the coughing fit.

Picking petals from her backmost molars, Heather spits once more, the remaining drops of blood falling into the sink. Her chin is wet and sticky with her own blood, and she’s sure her teeth are stained red as well; Heather half-heartedly debates asking her parents to pick her up as she flushes the toilet, whisking away most of the evidence excluding the blood dribbling down her chin from her mouth and a few stray petals, before deciding she’d rather vomit flowers rooted to her lungs for the rest of the day than be with her family.

As she rinsed water from the sink in her mouth, Heather nearly spits it out in surprise when she notices a bathroom stall crack open from the mirror. Then she actually spits the stained water from her mouth, whirling around to threaten whoever it was to secrecy. When her eyes meet a head of blue hair, she falters slightly, and that’s all it takes for the other to take control.

“You too?” Is all Gwen asks, having recovered from her initial surprise. She doesn’t look grossed out by the blood, and instead joins Heather by the sinks.

Narrowing her eyes, Heather recoils to what she knows best around Gwen: defense. “Excuse me?”

Gwen laughs, sardonically and self-deprecatingly, with a hint of amusement. It’s the most Heather’s seen her laugh to her since, well, ever. Then, still in astonishment, Heather felt herself stagger back and her eyes widened when pale pink roses, white carnations, and yellow coreopsis flowers fell from Gwen’s blue-lipsticked lips, gracefully fluttering to the tiled floor.

Suddenly, Heather understands, but Gwen still unnecessarily elaborates. “The flowers. You too?”

Heather only hesitates for a split second before sighing and staring down at the sink bowl. “Yeah,”

“Didn’t expect it from you of all people,” Gwen chuckled humorlessly. “Didn’t think the Queen Bee Heather knew what emotion was, let alone be stuck in unrequited love,” she mocked bitterly. She turns to Heather, gaze softening. “So, who is it?”

Heather blinked. “What do you mean?”

Gwen snorted and gestured to the petals and trail of blood on the tiled floor. “The flowers, honors student,”

Ignoring the sarcastic remark, Heather paused before admitting, “I don’t know,”

Gwen grunted disbelievingly. “Come on, I know you don’t like or trust me, but really, who am I going to tell?”

“Hey, I’m actually being honest here!” Heather snapped, glaring at the goth. Of course, I’m told I’m lying when I’m actually being honest… she thinks with a scoff as her scowl returns.

“Whatever, have you tried…” Gwen trails off, frowning as her brows scrunch together. “I don’t know, I just knew who mine was for—”

“Who?” Heather asks curiously, having not picked up on Gwen displaying any of the usual symptoms of a horrid teenage crush. No staring, attention-seeking, stuttering, or blushing — it was the same behavior for everyone with Gwen.

The goth hesitates only for a split moment before sighing and giving one name: “Geoff,”

Heather hums, unsure what to say. Gwen narrows her eyes, seeming to just remember who she was talking to.

“Seeing as how we’re one and the same right now, if I catch you telling anyone, I will spread the news of your diagnosis, okay?”

“Don’t worry, Weird Goth Girl, your secret is safe with me,” Heather promises, the corners of her lips twitching up at the use of the old nickname. “Just help me clean up all this before someone walks in,”

Gwen nods once, before bending over the sink and coughing a few more flowers and petals in the sink, blood spilling from her mouth. Awkwardly, Heather pats her back, unsure what to do, before realizing she should probably hold her hair back.

“Thanks,” Gwen murmurs, her voice even more hoarse and tired than normal. Heather just gives her a nod before crouching down to pick up the flowers trailing the ground; Gwen hurries to grab a mop from the back closet to clean the blood.

It’s when Heather comes across the petals of the pale pink roses, white carnations, and yellow coreopsis flowers that a pang of empathy spurs in her. She turns to Gwen.

“Those type of roses specifically mean joy, the white carnations mean purity and loveliness, and the yellow coreopsis means cheerfulness.”

Gwen looks up from her work and blinks, taken aback, before smiling slowly and softly. “That fits him,”

Wordlessly, the two set off to finish the cleanup of their shared death sentence in the form of flowers and blood, when the bathroom door flies open once more. Both Heather and Gwen look up, eyes wide in surprise. Before either can communicate, a thunderous voice and a ticked-off Eva enter the area.

“Get back to class, we have to clean up —” she gets cut off from her own demand, faltering at the sight of Heather and Gwen bent over the floor, cleaning blood, flowers, and bloody flowers. Her eyes flit back to the duo who are too frozen and flabbergasted to speak. “What happened?”

Heather opens her mouth to bullshit her way into an explanation as she always did when Eva’s eyes suddenly narrow dangerously, intercepting the unsaid lie. She spits out one last order before turning on her heel, leaving the bathroom.

“Meet me in the library after school. Come alone, and hurry up and get back to class so no one else walks in on you.”

After her departure, all Heather and Gwen could do was stare at one another, wide-eyed and depleted of the fluttery itchiness of their lungs and throats, for once, before resolving to hurriedly finish garnering the crumpled flowers and washing the blood down the sink.

Heather goes back to class for the remaining minutes of the day, her mind elsewhere even as Courtney berates her for the long bathroom break. Her mind drifts to Gwen’s sardonic laugh, the goth's utter defeat after finishing hacking, and the way her eyes are avoiding Geoff’s direction, instead fixated on a pink charm bracelet Heather had noticed her fiddling with on multiple occasions before.

The image of Gwen choking on her own blood and petals momentarily and the sound of her warbled snort had been seared in Heather’s memory, and all she could do was wonder. Wonder if, in due time, her own condition would mirror Gwen’s when she inevitably lost to the disease that was slowly but surely suffocating her.

❀

When Eva had instructed her and Gwen to meet with her alone, Heather had assumed that that applied to Eva as well.

What she had not expected, however, was for her and Gwen to be seated with Eva and two of the most arbitrary (personality-wise, that was) redheads Heather ever had the pleasure (?) of meeting.

She scowled. With herself, Gwen, Eva, Izzy, and Harold, they had practically formed their own little Losers Club. Brilliant.

Harold awkwardly coughed, having declared himself the unofficial leader.

Gwen scoffed, leaning back into her seat. She leaned her chair, balancing it on two legs at a dangerous angle. “What is this, Hanahaki Club?” Gwen mockingly questioned, mirroring Heather’s thoughts.

Harold guiltily smiles. “Well, no. See, Eva here —” Eva glared at the boy, scowling. Harold faltered for the fifth time that meeting, gulping — “had Hanahaki awhile ago. Last year, I think. She confessed to Izzy, and the rest is history.”

Izzy nodded enthusiastically. She grabbed Eva’s hand, making the latter blush furiously at the unprompted gesture. “Yup! Our getting together was actually like this one Romanian film —”

“Anyway,” Harold interrupted. “I noticed Eva’s symptoms and helped her, which we intend to do with you two. Now,” he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, casting a pensive look to Heather and Gwen, who exchanged glances. “Which one of you has Hanahaki?”

Before Heather can think to lie and save her own skin, Gwen answers truthfully. “Both of us,”

“Gwen!” Heather hissed. The mentioned shrugs.

“What, you think you’ll be able to resist coughing up flowers during this?” At Gwen’s words, Heather felt her face twist as she felt an itching in her throat. Satisfied, Gwen nods and turns to the others. “Thought so.”

“I’m going to be honest,” Eva begins. Her tone is softer than before, but just as commanding. “Hanahaki… it’s hell. But just ease your suffering by confessing. I didn’t want to risk my life when a few words could save it.”

At Eva’s words, Heather can’t help but feel a surge of jealousy at her words, her sureness. At how she and Gwen just knew who their flowers were for, and how Eva had the mind and courage to confess.

If she did know who the amaryllises and chrysanthemums that were rooted in her lungs were for, would Heather confess? She wasn’t sure, and she hated the uncertainty.

“Yeah, but, he just broke up with his girlfriend,” Gwen murmured, tracing a finger on the table as she spoke in a low voice. She seemed fascinated with the intricate design of the wood, now, refusing to meet the eyes of her peers that were softened with sympathy. “And… he just sees me as a friend. ‘One of the guys', you know?”

A beat passes before Harold frowns, a hand on his chin like some wannabe Sherlock, Heather notes, face expectedly contorted in pensiveness. “Is it Geoff?”

“Bingo,” Gwen says dryly.

Izzy turns to Heather, the hyperactivity from before dulled as she looks serious for what had to be one of the few times in her life. “And you?”

“What about me?” Heather sighs, though she knows that they know she knows what’s being insinuated.

“Who’re the flowers for?” Eva interjects.

The question dances around in Heather’s head and leaks out of the others’ imploring glances, but Heather finds herself faltering as she struggles to answer.

“I don’t…” Heather frowns, thinking of the flowers welling up in her lungs that she’s sure will snuff out her life. Her frown melts into a scowl when she thinks of whoever her enamored was, and how they doubled as her soon-to-be inevitable murderer, along with how she didn’t even get the privilege to know their identity. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Eva echoes. Her face is not contorted in anger, like Heather assumed it would, but rather thoughtfulness. Neither is her voice thunderous or disbelieving — Eva seemed to seriously be contemplating the likelihood of it. She turns to Harold. “Is that even possible?”

The redhead looks just as lost in thought as Eva. He shrugs. “Maybe…” He shifts his attention back to Heather, who is beginning to feel as if she were being prodded at, dissected, and inspected by her peers. “Have you tried thinking about it?”

“Excuse me?” Heather asks, taken aback. Her scowl diminished momentarily in her surprise, before it fell back into place, more intense than before. “What do you think I’ve been doing? Analyzing the flowers and flower language like I’ve gone insane —”

“I mean,” Harold interrupts, “have you tried… I dunno, fantasizing about the people in your life? Like, placing yourself in your ideal date with them to see if the flowers spur in your throat? It worked in this one manga —”

Heather droned out the rest of his rant, frowning to herself. Why hadn’t she thought of that?

“Anyway,” Eva cut Harold off with a silencing glare. The boy in question audibly gulps, shifting in his seat and indiscreetly glancing away to the opposite direction. “What do your flowers mean?” She looked to Gwen and Heather.

“The first round were marigolds,” Gwen admits carefully. “They mean jealousy. The second had mistletoe and yellow tulips — they mean affection and longing, and the tulips meant good friendship, or something like that. Now, I have pale pink roses, which mean joy, white carnations, which mean purity and loveliness, and yellow coreopsis flowers, which mean cheerfulness.”

“My first flowers were daffodils and gardenias.” Heather found no reason to lie now. “They mean unrequited and secret love. Way to spell it out,” she chuckled dryly, and humorlessly, and pretending to not notice the varying amounts of sympathy from the group. Her throat stings. “The ones I have now — amaryllises and chrysanthemums — mean pride and loyalty.”

Eva raises her eyebrows. “High-maintenance? Wouldn’t have expected that from you,”

Heather grunted. “Shut up,” Her throat hurt too much for a better rebuttal.

“You know, it’s probably Courtney,” Izzy hums half-jokingly with a grin. Gwen barely stifles a laugh.

Feeling her face flush and a lump form in her throat, Heather opens her mouth to argue, but is silenced when Harold shoots her a look.

“So, to recap,” Harold draws their attention back in, “The flowers represent who you love and/or your dynamic with them. Heather, try finding some privacy and think of your ideal date with people you know who are prideful and loyal, okay? We’ll meet up here on Monday. Hopefully you’ll have figured it out by then.”

“Fine,” Heather agrees, clumsily gathering her things. Her throat is burning, along with her chest and she’s sure her eyes are stinging, and she desperately wants to cough, but not now, and certainly not here with this audience. “See you Monday, Hanahaki Club,” she mutters sarcastically.

Half-hearted laughs register in Heather’s ears, but she’s already out of the library and dashing to the second nearest bathroom, not wanting to be walked in on. Her focus had been shifted from her illness momentarily, but now that it had been remembered, it was all it took for her to cough up the familiar flowers to the bathroom floor, unleashing a familiar strangled and warbled choking noise, accompanied by foreign tears.

❀

At night, when Heather’s parents and siblings are fast asleep, Heather lies wide awake in bed, tossing and turning. Whoever her beloved was was causing her to be unable to sleep at night, and when she was awake, she would cough on petals and blood, and she just craved to sleep.

Part of her wondered if it was possible for her to choke on the flowers in her sleep, before concluding that it didn’t matter. She was going to die, anyway.

Her mind wanders back to the secret meeting in the library, and of Harold’s advice. She had never wanted to date any of her classmates, but seeing as how she had the disease, it was a waste of time groveling in defeat. Instead, she shuts her eyes, and thinks of her fantasy.

Intimacy is what comes to mind first. She doesn’t like intimacy with her family or friends, but maybe she’s a sucker for looking into someone’s eyes and holding hands and telling someone I love you and meaning it. It doesn’t make her a sap; it just means that her needs are impossible to fulfill.

Eyes still shut, the image of her perfect date materializes in Heather’s head. Limbs entangled around one another as she and her mysterious person cuddled on a couch while watching an arbitrary film. Sharing a cup of hot chocolate and blankets as the chilling air from outdoors was kept out from inside by the heater. Talking animatedly about their interests and such over the movie, gazing into one another’s eyes; no judgment was to be found in either. It was peaceful and isolated, and perfect to Heather. Her parents never showed affection, and couples in high school never lasted — that type of love wasn’t real, but Heather allowed herself to fantasize, still, for the sake of finding who her enamored was.

Thinking it was best to start with the girls Heather was acquainted with that fit the bill, Heather sighs before imagining the ambiguous person as her classmates.

Leshawna. She’s the most faithful person Heather knows of, and she’s certainly proud. The flowers remain still and unmoving in her lungs, and so, she decides to move on.

Gwen. Unsurprisingly, the flowers don’t itch. The goth was more of someone Heather could respect, anyway.

Eva. Still, no reaction. Part of her is grateful, as she didn’t want to face the wrath of Izzy ever.

Dakota. One of the least likely, but it was possible, Heather supposed. They had some things in common, after all.

Court—

Her dark brown eyes were the only thing that had materialized in her mind when the flowers came out roughly and swiftly. Her blood is hot and thick in her throat as she tries in a daze to not suffocate on it, but still, she chokes on it. She can feel tears springing in her eyes and the sweat piling on her back and under her armpits; she can feel her chest burning in indescribable pain that was unlike any of the other coughing fits. It’s worse than anything she’s ever endured which is, granted, not quite the resume, but nevertheless, Heather feels as if her body is tearing and ripping itself apart while simultaneously hastily stitching itself back together by the amount of pain unleashed from her floral disease.

She scrambles to the sink of the bathroom attached to her bedroom, retching into the basin. The blood and flowers look like an artful arrangement, though Heather barely registers its appearance through both the pain and the unwavering amount of hatred coursing through her at the thought of Courtney unknowingly inflicting this upon her. Somewhere, she’s sleeping peacefully, while Heather is choking on her own blood and the flowers rooted to her lungs from just the mere thought of Courtney’s eyes.

Finally, mercifully, after a few minutes, the coughing fit ceases, but all that’s left is Heather’s heavy heaves as she attempts to retain her breath. Her vision flickers as black dances across her vision, and all she can smell is an overwhelming smell of metal and cleaning supplies. Her sink looks like the delicately painted masterpiece of an artistic sacrificial seance scene with all the blood and flowers. With a sigh, Heather strips of her bloodstained clothes, tossing them in her hamper to wash in the morning. After changing into a new acceptable and clean pair that Heather is sure will be ruined in a few hours, she brings out the cleaning supplies from under her sink and begins to clean at a feverish pace in a dazed state.

Ah, Heather thinks bitterly with a crazed and forced smile on her face, scrubbing extra hard on the sink as the thought flits in her mind, I get it now.

❀

“It’s Courtney,” Heather admitted to the group with a scowl present on her face. None had to ask her to elaborate, and none mention her scowl or her cough at the name. Heather’s scowl deepens further when she notices Gwen and Harold sighing in unison, sliding money to Izzy and Eva, who gladly accept them, with defeated sighs. “Wha —! Did you guys seriously bet on this? I’m literally dying over here!”

The words silence the group before Gwen snorts, and with that, the rest join her and laugh. Heather has half the mind to tell them that they’re in a library, but realizes she sounds freakishly like Courtney. Plus, for once, Gwen is choking on her laughter rather than flowers, so Heather allows it just for once with her own small smile and laugh.

“You know,” Harold manages to choke out, eyebrows raised in either surprise or amusement, “I didn’t take Courtney as your type.”

“Me neither,” Heather mutters. “Who did you think my type was?”

He shrugs. “Alejandro was my main suspect. I thought Justin was Eva’s crush, at first, to be honest.”

The laughter dies down momentarily as the group stares at Harold in confusion. Gwen, cracking another smile, mutters, “Harold, they’re lesbians,” before collapsing in another fit of laughter.

This time, Heather joins in more easily, and it feels like the most natural thing in the world. The flowers momentarily disappear, along with Courtney and thoughts of her love.

❀

END OF PART ONE

[whencallstheheart]

We’ll find out tonight if our predictions are correct! 

Responses to the written questions are under the cut.

Where is Ned and what is he doing?

No idea

Business trip

Dealing with some financial issues.

Doing business in UC or Hamilton. Nothing major

He stayed behind next episode and will be back in the finale.

I think planning something for Florence, maybe expansion for the mercantile?

I don't know

I have no idea, wth!?!?

Yo i have no idea. I'm gonna take a wild guess and say he's trying to contact Florence's daughter who wasnt there for the wedding

Maybe he's visiting his daughter? Or expanding the Mercantile somehow

With Mike. Oil pipeline

Hiding

It sure

I have no clue honestly, maybe planning a surprise for Florence?

Perhaps...expanding his store? Or ordering something new to begin to be shipped to his.

something related to factory

Sussing out suppliers

Maybe something to do with the Wyman guy?

visiting his daughter

Buying a new house or a surprise for Florence

Visiting Abigail

Planning something special for Florence

He is doing something with his daughter

No clue

With his daughter

Planning to expand the mercantile to include deliveries (Hope Valley Amazon) lol

Not sure

I really dont know!

Made out a Will since he now is married to Florence

Business in Union City

Business, but he’ll be back

I don’t Know

I dont know. This one threw me!

Literally have no idea

maybe he will come back with his daughter who will come to live at HP

some sweet surprise/gift for Florence

He is involved im some growth in HV.

Taking care of business.

He's making a business deal somewhere

I have no idea. I think it was a weird to put in o.O

Making purchases for the store.

Business stuff somewhere

I don't know

i don't know

ned things

He just took the long way home...

Adopting Flo's son

Hiding

He is picking up a surprise order gift for Florence, and it’s taking longer than expected.

Fighting attempt to take over mercantile

Talking to a divorce lawyer. Or putting a pillow over Abigail's mom's face so she can bury her already and come back to Hope Valley for his buddy Henry's sake.

Honestly I’m not sure but interested to find out!

Idk honestly. Probably actually doing something sweet for Florence but she doesn't know it.

What's up with the Pinkertons?

Not sure

A storyline to bring a change of pace to the show.

I really Don’t know

Not sure, but I don’t think it will be resolved this season, maybe it’s the cliffhanger?

I don't know

They’re hired thugs like they were in S1, just there to show Walden is a bad guy despite appearances

Factory related

Up to no good! Don’t trust them.

Yo i dont even know. They look totally sketch but they are probably the good guys actually. I'm predicting they are after someone who's been wanted for a long time. I think it may be too easy to link them with the guy who took Jesse and Clara's money

Not sure yet

Working for Waldon

Railroad

Sneakily buying land

I couldn't care less about them

Perhaps something is in the cabin/someone they don't want found.

No idea

Something to do with the mine disaster (even though it's been ages).

we will see in season 9

Setting up a good storyline for season 9

Not sure maybe something to do with the new factory that might be built

Maybe it has to do with Henry

I have no idea, but I do not like them!

No good

Buying all the land

They have Jesse. Someone wants to reopen the mine and seek revenge on Elizabeth for his son going to jail (Spurlock).

Looking for some kind of hidden good

Shady dealings going on

Guarding the future factory site. But something extra at the cabin connected with Spurlock.

Trouble

?

An even bigger I dont know on this one. Like, what in the world???

Holding Jesse captive

I think they kidnapped Jesse because he found out what they were up to but I have no idea what that is

stumped on this one

That is difficult. He is apparently connected to S1 Spurlock. Is he there for revenge? Or, just a heavy hand like his relative?

Revenge? They want to take over Hope Valley.

Something sketchy, probably bigger than just whatever is going on with the cabin though.

Land grab

No clue but they'll be one of the big bads next season

They are probably the goons of the Industry dude

They are working for somebody bigger.

They want to take over the town

I don't know

i'm worried about Nathan

idk they are the bad daddys of the season

they can only be there to cover up a crime, or some valuable find

No clue

They’re wanting to uproot Hope Valley for better business by destroying the town.

Keeping identity of mastermind safe from townspeople.

Maybe looking for Ned, who alternatively is a serial killer and now on the run. Possibly for the murder of Abigail's mother?

I’m so confused lol

Creating a monopoly & doing some villain nonsense (as it would seem the show is hinting).

Any other thoughts going into the finale?

No

There will be at least one surprise- not sure what

There are too many loose ends to tie up in one episode and I just want Elizabeth and Nathan together (and perhaps quickly married in this episode!)

I’m honestly really nervous, I’m rooting for Nathan but I have a feeling she’ll go for Lucas, I really don’t mind Lucas as a character but like what storylines can they do with them as a couple? The manuscript is finished, they’ve gone on every sort of date at this stage and she’s been in his office. What else can they do? With Nathan they can do the being scared because of his job again but making it different, there’s children involved now, it’s not just Elizabeth. Jack won’t understand but Allie will 100% feel worried for him. Also Allie having a mother figure, especially at this stage in her life, how could you not want it! The blended family as the main family would be so nice for this show, I know it’s been done before but they will be fairly front and centre in the show. Sorry for the rant, I love your blog so much! I don’t have tumblr so I can’t leave comments or like your gifs but I thoroughly enjoy all your theories and opinions!!

Just ready for this stupid love triangle to be over!

I’d love to actually see Henry meet up with Abigail, but doubt it. I hope they have Clara do something heroic for Jesse, but also doubt it. Henry will definitely be putting Hickam in charge at least temporarily. I think Ned will return but we won’t get a full explanation yet. And the dramatic ending won’t be the triangle choice, it’ll be Elizabeth losing the school.

Allie’s adoption finalized and reaction to Elizabeth choosing Nathan is something we should see.

Glad the triangle will be DONE!!

I hope that Elizabeth follows her heart and not pick someone who is a safe option.

I wish Faith were leaving instead of Carson. Also, I think there will be lots of set up for problems with the school board and Elizabeth. Also, I want more little Jack scenes but i don't think we'll get much since child acting laws and covid combined make that difficult

Excited for Elizabeth to move on from her past and enter a new adventure with either of the two men and really just everything else (Rosie and Lee, Fiona, Henry.)

I hope Faith doesn’t end up with whoever doesn’t get chosen by Elizabeth.

hopefully the finale will clear up the drawn out love triangle

The triangle was waaaaay drawn out. Be done and choose.

Nathan and Faith......would be great......

No matter who Elizabeth chooses I'm SOOOO READY to get this over with!

Kindness matters - no matter who she chooses. Isn't that why most of us watch the show

I am so over the love triangle and just want to know who Elizabeth picks.

Worried about the fandom more than anything

Elizabeth please pick Nathan

It's just a TV show and no matter what , it's there for our entertainment. I do think they're setting things up for the return of Abigail in some way.

The must be a Season 9!!!

I hope Fiona does not get involved with Mike.

Hopefully things get back to normal for Elizabeth and Rosemary

Interested to see the other storylines. I want Elizabeth to choose Nathan but I think JT will throw us off. From the promo pic, it looks like they will try to put Faith with Nathan.

- I just want Elizabeth to chose so that this storyline can come to an end and we can finally get to see her marriage and functioning has a wife. - Wonder what will become of Lucas once her choice is made. - I would like Lucas to have a proper storyline that doesn't involve Elizabeth or the love triangle. - I would love to see Rosemary and Lee finally become parents however that may happen. I feel like the writer just left them in limbo about it and keep teasing but never delivering on anything.

Hopefully will end with Nathan but the very last minute. I would prefer more romance before the finale

Elizabeth will have to decide on what’s important with school.

Jack might make an appearance in a dream scene?

So excited! I hope I don't wake up my kids while watching.

I hope they don’t pick Lucas

CLARA DISCOVERS SHE IS PREGNANT

?

Just excited for this to be over. I know we needed it and I think overall it was handled decent enough, but I'm glad to finally move on.

Why is everyone so scared?

The whole season has been about getting over your fear. Elizabeth doesn’t have to deal with her emotions or real life with Lucas because school is out for the summer and she is working on her book. She needs to make up with Rosemary and get over the loss of Jack and fear to be with Nathan.

this season has been totally not what I expected...I thought the hug at end of season 7 was definitive and we'd get at least some Nathan courtship, not a complete U-turn to Lucas (with hopefully a turn to Nathan at the very end). I now think Season 9 will be what I expected season 8 to be, and I am very much looking forward to that.

Something sudden will allow Elizabeth to bring her feelings to light for everyone...Nathan. I think she will have decided by the time she takes of the rings, but will not have the opportunity to share with the man until later. Until she faces the prospect of him being in danger again? Full circle from the end of S7.

I need Elizabeth to really apologize to Rosemary. Rosemary has always been there for Elizabeth.

I’m so afraid :(

Hated the triangle

I am so ready to finally move on from this triangle!

They put waaaay too many storyline in the last 2 episodes, they will never manage to conclude them all and we'll have another weird random cliffhanger which will not tie in with the Christmas episode (If we're getting one ?)

I hope the guy who loses, has a good life in later seasons

The annoying love triangle will finally end. Elizabeth/Nathan are endgame, unless Jack suddenly comes back from the dead. But, I doubt it. I hope Lee/Rosemary are pregnant, or decide to adopt children. I just want Lee/Rosemary to have children. Can't wait to see how this season ends. Hopefully, it won't be a cliffhanger.

Nervous as hell

Elizabeth and Nathan get married

i kinda hope someone dies tbh it would make everything more interesting

Elizabeth was so tiresome this season, they could have told her story of overcoming grief in a much more relatable way. Why did they not just have her talking to Rosemary about how sad or exhausted or numb or angry she feels all the time? You know, something a widow would actually go through. At the very least she could have been stoic, instead she was just kinda bitchy.

Faith and Nathan will have some sparks; Elizabeth will choose Lucas and they will kiss twice one being at bridge one being at her home inside with baby jack present.Carson will leave; Jessie will be found; Ned will come back safely.

Lucas endgame, Nathan and faith have sparks, Rosemary paper, Jessie and Clara make up.

I think Henry will take his own advice and leave to find Abigail to see if there is still any hope for them. Though I like his character, I want him to finally be happy, and if that means staying with Abigail, then that’s what it means. I don’t think TPTB will bring back Lori soooo.... that means Henry would be the one possibly leaving. I also think some scare will happen with Nathan between him and the Pinkertons. Then it may come full circle at the end where Elizabeth runs to him like she did last season, but instead of hugging him, she’ll kiss him instead.

Hallmark execs dictated ending and will cut salaries to bring back Abigail, hence Paul leaving.

My condolences to whichever guy gets to look forward to being bored by Elizabeth for the rest of his life. Are we sure Jack's death wasn't a suicide?

Ready to see how it ends and already looking forward to next season!

I will be really disappointed if she chooses Lucas but I’m afraid that’s where it’s headed. Either way I don’t understand how they’ll end in “the healthy place” they’ve said it will be with so much left for one episode.

[leverage-ot3]

notable moments from The Bank Shot Job

leverage 1.05

I decided I’m also going to start highlighting meta material in these posts for reference reasons (like for fics, headcanons, meta, etc)

I’m colorcoading by what character the meta pertains to btw

Clerk: Hello, Judge Roy.

Judge Roy: [slaps her ass] Hey, sweetheart.

Frank: Can I help you, your honor?

Judge Roy: Yes, Fred. Her phone number?

Frank: It's Frank. And she's 19, sir.

Judge Roy: That's too bad. She got a younger sister

diSgUsTiNG

- - - - -

Hardison: No. No more. We gotta talk to Nate. No more rip deals. They take too damn long.

Parker (ripping paper): That's why they're called "Rip Deals". You have to convince them they're getting a deal before you can rip them off.

Hardison: Two weeks. Two weeks sleeping in crappy hotels. Two weeks eating in crappy diners. Two weeks having my soul sucked dry. It's 107 degrees. Who lives where it's 107 degrees?

Parker: Juan's not so bad. I kinda like this town

I wanna see that domestic shit of them sharing hotel rooms and eating the continental breakfasts and dingy diners and everything about them living in rundown hotels for two weeks

- - - - -

Hardison: You know, I had to retask two satellites just to get a lousy internet connection. Took more than an hour to torrent the last episode of Doctor Who.

Parker: Hey! Illegal downloading's wrong. (lights paper on fire in trash can)

that’s it. that’s their relationship.

- - - - -

Hardison: How we coming on the breakdown?

Eliot (loading truck elsewhere): Fake addresses are shut down. Post office boxes are closed. The phones are cleared. Five more minutes, we never existed

bruh those props ??? I wish I had a screenshot but wtf where they DOING for the con ???

- - - - -

Hardison: Want me to call the Delgado family, tell them the news?

Eliot: Nah. Soon as I clear county line I want to do it. I just wish we could do more than bankrupt that corrupt son of a bitch

eliot is so good you guys im-

- - - - -

Nate: Get out. Now.

Hardison: Is he talking to us?

Parker: An unmarked van parked across the street from a bank that's being robbed? Yeah. I think he's talking to us.

Hardison: Yeah, well, five more feet and he would have been in the clear. What the hell was he thinking?

Parker: Don't be an idiot, Hardison.

Hardison: What?

Parker: Sophie was still in there

parker knows nate loves sophie and would never leave her behind because she may not always get people, but even she can see how much nate cares for sophie

- - - - -

Derrick: Everyone empty your pockets. Wallets, purses, watches, everything you've got, throw it over here.

(everyone throwing stuff to center of floor)

nate threw his fucking toothpick

- - - - -

Deputy Arnold: No, right here, right here, and we need ...

(Eliot crosses police line)

Deputy Arnold: Whoa, whoa, I need you to take a step back, sir.

Eliot: Tell me what's going on in there.

Deputy Arnold: I'm afraid I can't do that, this is an active crime scene, and you need to ...

Eliot: (to cop) I'm not talking to you. (to Nate) How many are there?

Nate: Yeah, you're right. Clearly amateurs, these two. Yeah. The younger one, looks like he's never handled a gun before.

Eliot: Is judge blow-hard next to you?

Nate: Yeah, uh-huh. Yeah, definitely amateurs, That's what makes them so dangerous.

Eliot: Alright, 2 guys, both armed, neither one a criminal mastermind. You want me in there?

Deputy Arnold: Sir, we can't have you going inside the bank ...

Nate: Probably, uh, a good idea just to sit tight, don't you think? You know, and see where these guys' heads are

at, you know?

Eliot (backing away): Alright, your call boss.

Deputy Arnold: Thank you

poor deputy arnold + eliot being done with local law enforcement

- - - - -

Sophie: Okay. So what is the plan, Stan

“what’s the plan, stan” adorable.

- - - - -

(Eliot leans against a building across the street and watches Hardison and Parker pull up in a sedan)

Eliot: Nice ride.

Parker (taking notebook and removing badges): It's embarrassing. Everyone knows you don't rob a bank without an exit strategy. These two deserve to get caught. 42 seconds. (tosses notebook back to Eliot)

Hardison: What?

Parker: To rob this bank. One security guard who has never fired his gun before, 2 closed-circiut cameras outside, 1 inside, and a Glen-Reader safe built in the 50's whose default combination is the birth date of the manager's wife! Get in, get out, 42 seconds.

Hardison: Seriously

parker was so angry that she chucked the binder at eliot and he was like ??? we good ???

- - - - -

Hardison: Seriously? (to Bill) I'm Agent Leonard. This is Agent Elmore. We'll be taking over this crime scene,

Sheriff ...

Bill: Bill Hastings. Nice to meet you. You guys sure are quick, just called this in 20 minutes ago.

Hardison: Well, we were coming back from a little border skirmish. Patrol unit came under attack from a pack of Chupacabras.

Bill: Chupacabras? I thought those things were urban legend.

Hardison: You're adorable

I love it when hardison fucks with people it’s hilarious

- - - - -

Hardison: Whoa, what's going on?

Bill: Cut power to the bank. Standard operating procedure.

Hardison: Standard ... it's standard op ... it's standard? Where do you getting that bull-hockey from son?

Bill: Deputy Arnold, he took a seminar in crisis management last year.

Deputy Arnold: It was an online seminar. We got certificates.

Hardison: Certificates? Magic kits come with certificates. Does that make it cool for kids to saw their parents in half?

Bill: We're just going by the book.

Hardison: The ... the book? The book got a good man killed. I can't ... my blood pressure.

Parker: Ex-partner. Probably shouldn't mention the book again. Or propellers.

parker is doing so well with grifting considering and I’m so proud of her

- - - - -

Sophie: They are not cops, I promise you, they're friends of mine, you can trust them.

Derrick: Why should I trust you? I don't know who you are.

Sophie: I am a thief.

Derrick: Okay, I'm not sure what to do with that.

that’s it guys. that’s the show.

- - - - -

Nate: I didn't say it was going to be easy. But nothing's impossible, especially when you have the world's greatest thief on your payroll. Parker, have you ever robbed a bank that's being robbed?

Parker: There's a first time for everything.

her SMILE YOUR HONOR

- - - - -

Parker: The bank was built before 1980, before computers. Means it's got a larger than normal night deposit chute.

Hardison: 'Cause business had to drop off ledgers with their daily hauls. What, you thought my genius was only limited to ones and zeroes?

Parker: I'm thinking the chute's my way in. Only problem is, it's in the alley on this side of the building

the way she looks at hardison like damn boy you know my stuff

- - - - -

Hardison: I can take care of that, but, we actually have bigger problems.

Eliot: What's that?

Hardison: Well, Sheriff Coltrane over here called the FBI, the real FBI. Now the closes office is in San Diego, so they should be here, in about, um, give it 45 minutes.

Nate: We can't worry about that now.

Hardison: When do we worry about it?

Nate: In about 45 minutes

hardison, internally: lord give me strength

- - - - -

Hardison: Hold on ... Excuse me. (answers phone) Agent Leonard. We will do whatever you need us to do, just please, don't hurt anybody. Okay. (hangs up) Guys ... Boys, boys, come on, gather 'round. Now boys, that was THE call. The call we were waiting for. Now look, they have a list of demands. First off, they want 12 large pizzas. One cheese, one Hawaiian, extra pineapple. Two pepperoni and black olives, two meat lover's, t ... Seriously? Nobody's writing this down? Seriously? One triple-shot half-caf vanilla latte, tall,

(Parker goes down alley and opens deposit drop box)

Hardison: …three of the latest copies of the Hall and Oates CD. I know, right? Exciting stuff I didn't know they were coming out with a new one either. We're gonna need steaks. Steaks and a grill. They're trying to tailgate. Okay, they need your overalls, I don't know why. They need some kibbles n' bits, we need an Etch-A-Sketch, somebody in there likes to squiggle okay ... Are we good? Let's go people. Everybody. I need you guys moving. Everybody get out. Go. (hardison points at an officer) You stay. We need to talk about Hall & Oates.

I fucking loved this monologue,,, hardison is VERY GOOD at improvising

- - - - -

(Derrick opens night deposit box)

Parker: Hi.

Derrick (hands her the briefcase): There's a lot of money in there.

Parker: Yeah, I know.

Derrick: My wife's life depends on that money getting where it needs to go.

Parker: I understand. Sometimes bad guys are the only good guys you get

parker’s face softened and you can see that she understood. parker didn’t get people in the beginning of the show, and sure her values and ideas aren’t typical, but she was ALWAYS a good person. she cared and understood what was at risk and she consoled him.

also, this is yet another piece of evidence that parker was the main character all along!!! I’m not gonna go super into it because there are already posts out there about it, but she had three (3) episodes dedicated to her character in season one alone AND had her say what is basically the mission statement of the show here in this scene

- - - - -

Sophie: Things could be worse.

Nate: Worse than me getting shot and you blowing our cover?

Sophie: No, no, you're not gonna lay that crap on me. We wouldn't even be in this mess if you'd just walked out with the cash when you had the chance. I would've been fine.

Nate: I know.

Sophie: Yeah, I can take care of myself. I've been doing it a long time. Since way before I met you. I'm just saying.

Nate: Yeah, you're right.

Sophie: Okay

nate knows sophie is a strong independent woman and that is one of the only things I stan about him lol

- - - - -

Sophie: We lost communication.

Nate: Yeah, we did.

Sophie: Hardison, Parker, and Eliot ...

Nate: That's right, they are on their own. Yup.

they ended up doing great on their own, but also, can we acknowledge what a glow up it was building up to the rundown job ???

- - - - -

(Mom gets out of truck and tries to run)

Meth #2: Where the hell you think you're going, old lady? (pulls mom back) Where the hell you think you're g ...

Eliot (catches Meth #2’s arm): Hey, what smells like crank and screams like a girl? (Takes his gun and breaks his knee)

Meth #2: AAHH!

Eliot (kicks car door closed before Meth #3 can get out, empties the bullets from gun): That's the right answer. (throws gun into car at #3, hits #1 as he approaches) Come on. (fights #1, kicks door shut, beats #1 more, kicks door again) Stay in the car. (beats the hell out of #3 and #1, kneels down near mom and removes her gag)

Mom: Who are you?

Eliot: Well ma'am, we'd be the cavalry.

this entire fight scene always has me ROLLING it’s so funny

also I’m not sure if this should go on the List Of Non-Weapon Objects Eliot Uses As Weapons but eliot DID use the car door in the fight

- - - - -

Sophie: Just let the paramedics take him. The rest of us will stay.

Judge Roy: And give up my leverage

*sophie and nate look at each other*

both, internally: tHATS OUR WORD

- - - - -

Nate: Hey, listen. She's gonna be alright. Everything's gonna be alright

Derrick: Your people ... they're good?

Nate: Yeah. The best.

nate’s smile when he says that??? proud dad alert

- - - - -

Sophie (looking at replay of tape): You're still a geek.

Judge Roy: They're trying to ruin me.

Hardison: Geek power, baby. Stay strong!

in other words: age of the geek, baby

also- kudos to 2008 hardison editing video like that. I can’t do that shit with today’s tech lmao

- - - - -

Bill: Go home now. Bank robbers are in custody, hostages are safe. FBI's got the whole thing wrapped up.

Taggert: Do you have any idea what?

Mcsweeten: Just go with it.

Deputy Arnold: Mr. FBI guys, can you help me here?

Bill: My, my. Look at this. Our local drug boys, both with outstanding warrants. It's incredible.

Taggert: Damn, we're good!

mcsweeten and taggert stumbling onto the leverage crew’s cons and directly profiting off of them is iconic. they have no idea. too pure for this world

- - - - -

Sophie: Hey, thanks Parker.

Parker: Whatever.

Sophie: No. It was an excellent performance.

Parker: Yeah, I think I can act okay when I'm yelling at people and bossing them around.

Sophie: Well, it's a good start.

proud mom!sophie + grifting parker

Nate: Listen, we have to make sure we get the cash to the Delgado family. Ow!

Eliot (tending Nate’s wound): Oh! Settle down. You act like you've never been shot before.

Nate (glances at Sophie): So, uh, pizza boxes, huh?

Hardison: Yeah, I know, I know, You could have done better.

Nate: No, no, no. No I couldn't have.

eliot casually stitching up nate’s wound bc no hospitals but also can we talk about how much nate has to trust eliot to literally operate on him

+

nate giving praise to hardison ??? rare af I don’t know her

[sou-ver-2-0]

So I'm rewatching yttd, and starting the beginning of Chapter 2 I've confused myself. Shin started faking amnesia (like the bastard he is), but he had splinters on the back of his head? Did he make Kanna whack him? Did he drop the wood on himself from above?? WHAT'S YOUR GAME, YOU PANICKED AND UNKNOWABLE GIFT??? Was this explained and I forgot?

Justsalpals!! You have no idea how happy this ask made me! I nearly jumped in my chair at work when I saw it. I was so delighted to hear somebody else asking the same question I'm constantly asking myself.

"How did Shin get himself knocked out in the beginning of Chapter 2? How did he get himself in that position?? Did he--? What did you do to yourself, Shin?!"

I've never seen anyone else wonder about this! But you and I are apparently on the same wavelength, and we both know that this is an extremely important question.

What...did Shin do...exactly?? 

(I have thoughts below the cut and please, I'm begging anyone reading this not to ruin my fun.)

Honest Answer

I don't know. I don't think it's explained. See, I remember that I was paying very close attention to get an answer to this question, because I was very invested in Shin's wacky schemes. But I don't recall Shin explaining exactly what he did. I could still be wrong, of course! My detective sight is not as keen as Keiji's. As I've mentioned before, I'm currently going through my own playthrough, but I haven't gotten far. If you discover the "right" answer on your watch, please let me know! Because I desperately need to know! 

Sensible Answer

Shin was probably just pretending to be unconscious. I'm guessing that this is what most fans assumed happened? This idea honestly never occurred to me until a friend suggested it to me, haha. Anyway, I have to admit that it is a Very Sensible Theory. After all, Shin wouldn't hurt himself, right? Right??

My Personal Headcanon 

BUT HE'S GOT TO MAKE IT LOOK CONVINCING, RIGHT?!

Miss Sara is almost certainly a criminal mastermind while Keiji is an extremely scary ex-policeman-something. I mean, whatever his job is, he can snap you in half. They're not about to let you off the hook if you do this halfway. You don't just get to PRETEND being unconscious. You're about to fake amnesia of all things! They're going to examine your body, aren't they? Somebody will surely call your bluff and then everyone will laugh at you and vote you dead on the spot.

And Kanna is busy trying to make peace with The Enemy, which means if you want something done, you've got to do this by yourself.

So yes, my personal headcanon is that Shin somehow managed to knock himself out. He struggled to yank out floorboards; whacked himself in the head; made objects drop on him; and repeatedly ran into the wall, all while the Benny Hill theme played in the background. 

In the end, it looked very suitably as though there had been a tragic attack on his person.

This has always been what I assumed happened as soon as it was revealed that Shin had staged the attack himself. I guess it just felt right for the character to me?? I have a ridiculous brain and that's why I like Shin's ridiculous brain. Precious gift that he is!

Nobody can take this headcanon away from me except for Nankidai himself. (And Nankidai loves to make fun of this guy so maybe he'd possibly take my side.)

I'm sorry that I made you wait so long for a simple question, and I'm sorry if it's not the neat answer you wanted, but please understand that I've been so excited to talk about this topic ever since you sent it in! Thank you very much!! <3

[bloomingshy]

Part 2 Rantaro Character Analysis

Since he has the same perspective as the player, he can ask the questions that reveal Kaede's perspective. We did not receive the flashback light telling them they were ultimates. We did not have our memory of the early prologue wiped. We still remember previous Danganronpa events. So how could we know that happened to Kaede unless somebody with our knowledge asks those questions of Kaede? Our perspective is not the same as Kaede's. So anything she now knows from the memory wipe or flashback light is invisible to us as players. Rantaro asks our questions of Kaede, so that we can understand Kaede's new perspective. The player and the class had the same perspective until the second prolouge start (We both remember Danganronpa 1 and we experience the early prologue together). Now only Rantaro remembers these things, and we, the player, need this indicated somehow. Rantaro is representative of the players knowledge. An experienced Danganronpa person who saw the early Prologue. He works in concert with Kaede, the players Hope. I will derail here to briefely talk about Kaede. The player has likely played Danganronpa 1, 2 and probably watched the Danganronpa 3 anime. That means, the player is pumped and ready to Hope themselves to victory. This is Kaede. She is already the Ultimate hope that Makoto didn't reach until the end of the first game. But Tsumugi(and the author) have other plans. The author knows that the player already has knowledge, and hope. So he has to work on those first. Kaede's Ultimate hope is thwarted by the Death Road of Despair. Her hope fractures the group, rather than unites it. It seems that the bond of trust have not been built yet, so her hope doesn't quite work yet. Rantaro is the players knowledge. He is the Ultimate detective stand in. Remember that Kyoko lost way more memory than everyone else, which is why she can't remember her own talent. so it is only after the whole Danganronpa 1 that she has done enough investigation to determine her own talent, and bring it to bear on figuring out the mastermind. Now you would think that the Ultimate Detective stand in, with all his own memories, stands a great chance of taking down the Mastermind. But Tsumugi has her own tricks. She uses Rantaro's knowledge against him. She gives him the Survivor Monopad. This survivor monopad gives Rantaro a map of the school. It explictly reveals the Secret Library Room. It does not reveal the secret passage though. The Monopad also tells Rantaro that the mastermind can be caught, since Monokuma has to rebuilt by a special machine. Obviously this machine is in that secret room that only Rantaro can find on his Monopad. The trap is set when the time limit motive is introduced. Not only does it mean that everyone dies if the time limit is reached, but it is specifically enforced by masses of Monokuma. Any other method of killing the class with the time limit would not have prompted Rantaro to action. It is only because he is given knowledge of the secret room, knowledge that Monokuma is built by a machine, and is given an explicit time when the mastermind should use the room to make the Monokuma. Rantaro questions why he keeps his memories, and asks how this supports the masterminds plan, but he is forced to act before he has figured it out as the timne limit draws near. The other main thing Rantaro lacks, is the trust of his classmates. Shuichi points this out after the trial 'proves' that Kaede killed Rantaro. And why is Rantaro so suspicious comapred to the others? Because he remembers the other Killing Games. He does show trust, and he tries to help Kaede and Shuichi on a few occasions, by supporting their efforts. But Rantaro eventually decides to act on his own to stop the mastermind, and this is where the lack of trust comes in. This is the exact problem that Makoto and Kyoko have resolved by the end of Danganronpa 1. At that point, they can work together. But Kaede and Rantaro can't work together this early.

[schoolfullofmorons]

petey lowkey having a crush on gary for a long time bc hes a pretty bad boy, but it takes some actual therapy and a small reunion for gary to feel some actual LONGING to have petey in his life again. he becomes surprisingly soft and supportive, in his own way, with their renewed friendship, and it takes jimmy casually promising to kick his ass if he messes up with petey for gary to realize he might actually have developed some romantic feelings for their friend. cue panic and breathing exercises

July, 2007.

Here he stood, on the threshold of hell on Earth, about to talk to Satan himself, and he still wasn't ready to run.

Well, maybe that wasn't entirely accurate. Pete Kowalski, rising junior of Bullworth Academy, was very prepared to run from the menace that had tortured him last year. Gary Smith, the mentally unstable asylum patient, waited for him just on the other side of this door.

His palms had grown hot with sweat, and he nervously wiped them off on his clean, ironed jeans. Pete hated having generalized anxiety disorder. It made him nervous even about this, even about coming here, which was literally his own choice to begin with. The thought of facing his once best friend filled him with a mounting dread that made his throat burn with the urge to cry.

But Pete wanted this. He was determined to get the answers he wanted, because Jimmy and him had been fucked over. And Jimmy might have brushed his hands of Gary, Jimmy might have decided that he was done caring, but Jimmy wasn't Pete and Pete cared way too much. He needed to know why Gary had ditched them, betrayed them, left them to rot. He wanted to know the cause of all this.

And, deep down, maybe he missed Gary, too.

He had been standing there too long, staring at the door. Pete knew if he didn't act soon, the orderly that had trailed behind him would get annoyed. Licking his lips and swallowing down his own anxiety, he pushed open the door, letting the orderly shut it behind him.

And there he was, the mastermind himself.

Gary was so... different, in here, but in reality he still looked like a Smith. All sharp jawlines and piercing stares. When Gary rose his head to look at him, hair that was growing slightly shabby due to a month of no cuts falling into his face, Pete felt his heart skip a beat.

And then a grin passed over his face, his eyes lighting up with genuine joy. He launched himself off of the small white cot all asylum patients had been provided, and sauntered over to Pete with slow, calculated steps. Too proud and too arrogant for someone who was incarcerated.

"Well, well, well, what do we have here? Did Petey Kowalski decide to pay lil' ol' me a visit? The big, bad, awful wolf, Gary Smith?" Gary's words cut into him, and Pete felt the urge to wipe his hands off on his jeans again. His friend's eyes bore into him.

Why'd you do it? Was the question that sat on Pete's tongue, but instead he cleared his throat and avoided Gary's eyes. "I... wanted to check up on you. Y'know, see how you were holding up."

"Oh, look at that! He cares about me!" Gary reached out to sling an arm around him, bringing Pete in close with a sharp jerk that had Pete yelping. "Did somebody miss me? Just couldn't sleep at night knowing I was away, could you?"

"No, I-"

"I already knew you weren't straight, but this is taking it to a whole new level."

The protest died away on Pete's tongue and he swallowed as the familiar burning sensation hit the back of his throat. When he didn't get an answer, Gary huffed and shoved him, hard. Pete stumbled, hitting the cell wall and sliding down it.

"God, you're pathetic." Gary spat.

"Why do you have to be an asshole all the time, Gary?" Pete snapped, and in one sudden rush, angry words bubbled up and out of him. "For once in your life, can't you just accept that you're the one in the wrong? You're in a cell, for god's sake! Don't you realize that I'm the only one left who doesn't want you to drop dead? Half the school pities you and the other half hates you! You destroyed our lives! You took away our peace! You don't get to be calling me the pathetic one!"

The room fell silent enough to hear a pen drop. The air around the two boys grew thicker, and thicker, and thicker still with tension. Pete risked a glance at the boy who stood looming in front of him. He had to swallow back fear as he noticed Gary's hands were clenched so tight that the skin was starting to turn white.

Pete pushed himself to his feet, slowly, unwilling to startle Gary. If he moved too fast he was afraid that Gary would snap. A predator in a hunting crouch, moments away from delivering the killing bite. That's what Gary was.

"You know, I used to like you. I used to want you around. I used to think you were smart, and funny, and cool. But now you just remind me of a... a walking toddler, who throws a temper tantrum when he doesn't get his way. I hope you get better, Gary. I hope you get the help you need so you can finally grow up."

Pete sidestepped Gary, who had yet to move except for his head, his eyes slowly following Pete back towards the doorway. Pete opened the cell door and looked back one more time, meeting eyes with the person he once considered his best friend.

And then he left.

-

September, 2008.

To the parents of Gary Alexander Smith,

I am writing to you to inform you that your son has completed rehab. According to his court order, this is the final step needed in order for him to be released back to the public.

Please note that he will still have to check in weekly with a nurse that will ensure he is still taking his medication. This will no longer be a requirement after his 100 hours of community service is over.

With this in mind, we will be releasing him on the 8th at 3 PM. We require a signature before his release in order to ensure that he is in the proper hands of his guardians.

Thank you for your time,

Happy Volts staff.

-

The reunion with his parents was about as happy as you'd expect with parents as terrible as his. Really, they didn't talk much through the entire thing; it was pick him up, take him home, and let him clean himself up before they had dinner.

It was the first meal that he had had in a long ass time that was actually good, instead of being almost edible. He really did have a newfound appreciation of his maids after that, though he'd never admit it to them out loud.

The thing about spending a year away from home is that it caused him to reflect on things he could have done differently. It also made him realize that a lot of the shit he had done his sophomore year simply didn't... matter. Maybe it was the medication, and the advice of actual doctors from the state after being transferred from Volts and their terrible medical department, but Gary was beginning to see things in ways he had never thought to see them in before.

For example, he was pretty sure Jimmy had never said anything all that terrible to him. Where had he gotten that idea from? Yeah, some of it was an addiction to power, but he was pretty sure the other part was perceived rejection. Learning about rejection sensitive dysphoria really did help him out in a lot of ways. He just wished it had been explained to him sooner, before, y'know, he betrayed all of his closest pals because of an inexplainable fear that they hated his guts.

(Which now they probably did. Go figure. Pete's words still ate at him when he tried to sleep at night).

That didn't matter as much now, anyway. He wanted to know what he'd be doing. He wasn't trapped anymore, with only medical professionals and other patients that had, admittedly, been really kind to him when they weren't Bullworth Branded(tm). He wanted to know what his future would be like, now that his head was much clearer.

When he asked his father, the response he got didn't surprise him much.

"We've decided to respect Crabblesnitch's decision and homeschool you. It'll be best, in order to prevent anymore... incidents."

And so began the process of sleeping, waking up, eating, being immersed into various studies by a freshly hired tutor with a bitchy voice that Gary tried very hard not to snap at, eating again, and going back to sleep. This pattern only broke on days where he had been assigned community service, or had an appointment with his psychologist.

As the days went on, he began to make the effort to expose himself to the outside world. Being locked up made him unusually skittish around people, and he was still having trouble getting used to the crowd that was his father's staff. This led to him climbing onto the roof of his father's house as he watched the sun dip steadily over the horizon after a long day of studies.

Being in high places had been a huge comfort when he was a child. He liked to watch the world, and he liked to feel in control by being able to see his surroundings. His friends would occasionally join him. He had many memories of Pete's smile catching on the sunset, or his nervous expression watching him as Gary got too close to the edge.

This was their place first, before it became his and Jimmy's. He wondered, briefly, if Jimmy still thought of their battle as often as Gary did, or if Gary just did that because it was the last substantial thing he had ever done with himself before the lock-up.

He really missed those two.

He got it, though. He couldn't have them back in his life. They had both kicked him out, and that was his own doing. He had hurt them, and he might regret it, but he had to let go.

He just didn't know how, when he didn't have anyone else.

-

December, 2008.

He finished his community service. Christmas break came, and since he had been working so hard on catching up with his junior year studies, his father had allowed him to take it off for himself. He was grateful at the idea of a break; he had been working tirelessly, and was nearly three quarters of a way through his junior year. He wanted to catch up to his senior year already, so that he could graduate in May like the rest of the Class of 2009.

Suddenly filled with free time that he did not want taken up by family, Gary found himself wandering into town more than he had previously. At first he didn't go far, but as the days passed he found himself going on longer strolls until he found himself deep in the heart of Bullworth Vale.

He should have known it would be easy to be spotted there, considering the gym was a hotspot for prep activity. Jimmy's lighthouse was also down here, causing Gary to avoid that spot as much as he could.

It was a smart idea, by all means. Unfortunately for Gary, however, Jimmy was king, and the preps told him everything. Especially Gord, who he'd had an on-and-off relationship with for a few years now.

That's what led to his peaceful stroll being interrupted by a massive fist slamming his head into the side of a brick wall, so hard that his ears rang.

"Well, well, well, what do we have here?" Came a familiar voice in his ear, and his blood ran cold.

"James." Gary grunted into the brick wall. He tried to lift his head up, but was deemed unsuccessful when Jimmy's fist jerked him back down, causing him to wince. "What is it you want? I was busy."

"Busy doing what? Making the smiles of tiny children disappear?"

Gary had to remind himself that Jimmy was completely justified in this reaction, but it was hard when his cheek was beginning to fucking bleed.

"Get off."

"Not until you tell me what you're doing out of jail where you were supposed to rot."

"I got released! I finished the stupid program, okay? Let me go!" Gary hissed, and to his surprise, Jimmy did.

"What program are you talking about?" Jimmy asked, crossing his arms. Gary rubbed the grit off his face and took a moment to let his eyes wander over Jimmy's freckles.

Jesus, he forgot just how many James had. He was like a freckled forest.

"Technically a bunch of different programs... rehab was one, and I went through some community service hours." Gary shrugged. "Does it matter? I'm out now."

Jimmy's face contorted into three different expressions of confused anger, and Gary had to stop himself from laughing out loud at it.

"Like hell you're coming back to Bullworth-"

"I'm not, actually. I'm being homeschooled." Gary replied, smug at his one-up despite his best efforts not to be. It was just easy to feel smug around Hopkins.

(He wondered, briefly, why he wasn't downright pissed at Jimmy for sophomore year; but it had been a long time since then, and Gary was different, more different than he'd ever been).

"What? How long has that been going on?"

"Since September." Gary told him.

"Oh. Wow."

The two of them stood in an almost awkward silence, and Gary flicked his eyes over to watch the road as cars passed by. He had almost zoned out when Jimmy spoke again.

"So, what? Are you scheming to get back in?" When Gary turned his eyes back to Jimmy, the shorter boy was squinting at him, looking suspicious.

"No." Gary said, honest. "I'm not going to bother you, either, if that's what you're going to ask."

"Why? Not that I don't appreciate your kindness or whatever. I'm just trying to understand."

"I get it, don't worry." Gary shrugged and sighed, turning on his heel to face the road. "Honestly? I've had a lot of time to think. And... I messed up with the two of you. Bad. I don't want to pressure you into having to deal with me again, because, well... I fucked up your lives. I understand that now, I understand how bad it was back then for you. I wasn't going to seek you out, but I suppose thinking that I could hide from you forever wasn't necessarily the brightest idea."

"I can't believe this." Jimmy mumbled. "Gary Smith? Showing remorse? Who would of thought."

"Yeah." Gary said, quietly. "Wild idea, for sure."

The two boys stood looking at the cars in a slightly more comfortable silence. It had started to lightly snow, and Gary rubbed his gloved hands together to create the idea of warmth before he half-froze to death.

"I don't know if I forgive you, you know." Jimmy spoke.

"Yeah, I figured." Gary murmured. "And you don't have to."

"I think if you're putting in the effort, I'd like to forgive you." Jimmy told him, and Gary turned his head, regarding him with surprise.

"What you did was... terrible, to be frank, but I've seen worse. You weren't all that bad, back before the fight with Russell." He shrugged and Gary continued to stare. Jimmy had liked their friendship? It felt like a crazy idea.

"And I think... I think Petey really misses you, too." Jimmy shifted to glance at him. "He... told me, about your fight."

Gary didn't like thinking about it, much less talking about it. He clenched his hands into slight fists and let out a small huff. "Really? Man..."

"Its fine, really. I mean, I was pissed at the time and so was he, but I think he just misses you now." Jimmy turned his whole body towards Gary, suddenly furrowing his brow. "Hey, give me your hand."

"What?" Gary frowned. "No, get your own hand to hold."

"I'm not tryna flirt with you, dumbass. I'm gonna write Pete's number on your arm."

"Pete's - what?"

"You should apologize to him." Jimmy said, matter-of-factly. Bewildered, Gary handed Jimmy his hand. Jimmy took a pen out of his pocket and uncapped it, scribbling a hasty number on his wrist, just above his glove.

"Pete's parents had enough money to get him a cell phone. He can answer texts but texting back is a slow process so he prefers to call." Jimmy pocketed his pen. "I'm sure you two can work it out for yourselves though."

"Why are you giving this to me? I thought you hated me." Gary asked him, pulling his arm back to run his fingers over the messy digits that were gracing his skin.

"I never hated you, to be honest." Jimmy told him. "I was mad, but I never hated you. I was always rooting for you, Gary."

"I see." Gary replied. "Thank you, then, James."

"Of course." Jimmy clapped him over the back, causing him to stumble. "See ya around, crazy man."

He went home with black ink on his wrist and the words I was always rooting for you stuck in his head on repeat.

-

January, 2009.

Gary procrastinated all of Christmas break away thinking about calling Pete.

He didn't know why the task was bothering him so much. It hadn't been difficult to apologize to Jimmy, but then again, he knew he had been wrong about Jimmy going into it. Admitting to himself that he had no idea what Pete thought of him was a different challenge that was taking a lot of effort to push through.

There was also the part of Gary that had finally, finally let him accept that he missed Pete. And now he was getting a second chance with him, to fix things. To make things right.

He really, really didn't want to screw things up. That's why he was having so much trouble with this one, stupid, idiotic phone call.

(Rejection sensitive dysphoria, thou is a heartless bitch).

He was once again by the house phone, twirling the wire around his finger as he held it up to his ear. He chewed on his lip as he continued what had become a daily debate in his head: to call, or not to call?

Fuck it, he said, and dialed the number.

Pete picked up on the third ring. "Hello?"

Gary took in a sharp breath as the static in his head got louder. Was this a good idea? Probably not. Why did he trust Jimmy? Jimmy was a moron, how would he know what Pete thought?

"Hello? Is this a prank caller?" Pete asked, sounding slightly annoyed.

"No!" Gary spoke and then cleared his throat. "No, uh, its-"

"Gary? Is that you?"

"Yes! Yes."

"Holy crap, I thought you were still in-?"

"No, I got released a few months ago. I ran into Jimmy and he said you've missed me, so-"

"If this is going to be another teasing session about how 'homosexual' I am, I swear I will end this call right-"

"No no no, its the opposite actually. I wanted to apologize."

The line fell silent, and Gary shifted from foot to foot as nerves raced through him. Pointless restless energy. Only ADHD things.

"Look, I really messed up with you."

"Uh-huh. I know."

"And I wanted to say I really, really regret it. You were one of my best friends."

"And?"

"And I'm sorry. You deserved so much better than how I treated you."

Another silence. There was a noise as if someone had sat down a dish. "Listen, if you expect me to just accept, then I don't think I can do that."

Gary's finger twitched and he rested his head back on the wall. "I understand."

"But I'll give you the chance to prove that I should accept." Pete's voice was quieter now. "You just... you just have to prove it to me through actions, not say sorry and go right back to being a jerk."

"Yeah." Gary said, equally as quiet.

"Do you want to meet up sometime? To catch up?" Pete asked, and Gary had to fight to keep down the grin spreading over his face.

"I'd like that," he answered.

He might not have been forgiven yet, but he'd take what he could get.

-

They made plans to meet at a small cafe just outside of Bullworth Vale that following Thursday.

-

Pete Kowalski, senior of Bullworth Academy, sat in the quiet coffee shop that he had recommended for his and Gary's little "outing."

He had brought his laptop, as he had an essay due for his current English class and like hell was he going to pass up an opportunity to write it in a quiet space. He had actually arrived early in order to start it, since he knew Gary liked to ramble on, and he wanted to get some work done before he was interrupted.

He also wanted to think, which he had been doing between writing paragraphs analyzing the societal symbolism in The Scarlet Letter. His thoughts were turned towards the boy who he was currently meeting today, his good friend, Gary Smith.

He had missed Gary, if he were being honest. That didn't make him any less bitter about the things Gary had done to him, but it was still a cemented fact nonetheless. Gary Smith just... felt like his own addiction. Once you were around him once, he wouldn't get out of your head, and you wanted to see him again and again.

So Pete had decided to meet him here.

Of course, Pete wasn't stupid by any means. If Gary showed up acting like he had the last time they met, Pete would end all arrangements here. But Gary had shown... actual remorse. It was more than he had seen from him in a long time.

He just, really hoped it would work out well.

When the time came for him to show, the small bell over the door rang, signifying that someone had entered the coffee shop. Pete lifted his eyes and was immediately faced with the boy he had been crushing on for a good few years now.

Gary Smith, although he looked significantly less Smith(tm) now, his facial features softened but what could only be newfound maturity. Gary's brown eyes scanned the room and landed on him, and Pete swore his heart fell into his throat.

He was just so handsome. It wasn't fair, when Pete was supposed to be angry at his dumbass.

Gary approached the table, a lot less intimidating in his stride but still as confident as ever. The closer he got, the more his face cracked into a grin, sporting the gap in his teeth.

"Petey. Long time, no see!"

Pete couldn't help but smile faintly. "Hey. Go ahead and take a seat."

Gary slid into the table opposite from him and reached over to grab Pete's cup of coffee without warning. "What are you doing?"

"I could ask you the same. That's my coffee, Gare." Pete huffed and watched as Gary froze halfway to putting the cup to his mouth. A red blush spread over his face and he grumbled, setting the cup down.

"Yeah, sure. Don't share then."

"Don't be a dick. And I'm working on my English essay, to answer your question."

"Essays aren't too hard to write as long as you can focus on them."

"Well, yeah." Pete shrugged and looked down at the computer. He knew Gary had pretty much a natural talent at anything academic. "It just takes up a lot of time."

"What's the essay on?"

"The Scarlet Letter. You ever read that book?"

"Duh? Everyone in our grade has read that stupid ass novel. Its notorious for being boring." Gary rolled his eyes and Pete cracked a smile.

"Yeah, it honestly is. Doesn't stop the teacher from assigning it, though."

"Did you get Galloway again?"

"Nah. Got an actual competent teacher who makes us do stuff."

"Oh, I bet Bullworth isn't taking that one well." Gary smirked and leaned forward. He practically radiated smugness. "How has it been, with ol' James Bitchfucker Hopkins there to rule it?"

"You know, you could be nice to him for once instead of insulting him every other sentence." Petey chastised and rolled his eyes.

"Its our dynamic, Peter. Gotta insult him before the weirdos think I'm getting soft on him." Gary laughed. "Now answer the question."

"Yeah, yeah. Bossy." Pete looked at the words on his screen and then sighed, closing his laptop. Seems his work time was over. "Things have calmed down a lot, actually... the cliques all kind of kiss up to Jimmy, and in turn he settles all their disputes for pocket cash before they can get too violent. Its honestly kind of nice?... A lot of people have, uh, come out recently, and Jimmy's been beating up people who make fun of them."

"Come out?" Gary eyed him. Pete wasn't sure if he was making up the accusation in the burning stare or not. "As in...?"

"Gay, of course." Pete's cheeks burned. He almost wished he hadn't brought it up. "Jimmy is - he's bi, you know? He's been talking to a lot of kids who have come to them about their sexuality, like, um, Mandy-"

"Mandy??? The girl who is always clinging to a guy?"

"She doesn't do that anymore. She even talks to the nerds now, sometimes. As in, like, nicely." Pete shrugged and shifted. "She, she came out as a lesbian."

"What the hell." Gary furrowed his brow. "Did Jimmy put queer shit in the water?"

"Gary, don't say that, its rude. And no, Jimmy just..." Pete chewed his bottom lip and smiled. "He's supportive."

Gary pursed his mouth into a tight frown and Pete narrowed his eyes, his smile falling. "If you say something homophobic, I will cut you."

"Jesus, Pete, I leave you alone for a year and a half and you turn into the sass master. No, I wasn't going to say anything homophobic." He scoffed and turned his head to the side, purposefully ignoring Pete. Pete felt his cheeks burn.

"Okay, well, I just - wanted to make sure. Since, you know. I'm bisexual."

Gary snapped his head around to stare at Pete, and Pete felt his cheeks grow darker. "Stop looking so surprised. You already suspected it."

"I thought - I didn't - what?"

"Weren't you the one to call out the fact that I stared at boys for too long, repeatedly, for years?"

"I never thought you'd actually admit to it."

"Yeah, well, I wouldn't have if I'd had stayed around you." Pete said, coming off colder than he meant to. When Gary's face fell, he blushed and put his hands up. "I- shit, I didn't mean it like that, don't get upset. I just... you weren't the most accepting, Gary. I needed someone who would be so that I could experiment without feeling dirty."

Gary stared at him and then glanced out the window, huffing and setting his face in a tight line. "Yeah, okay. I get it. You don't have to explain."

"So... are you okay with it?"

"Obviously." Gary turned a glare at him, looking annoyed at the implications, and Pete smiled softly.

"Cool."

-

The two boys fell into a familiar routine after that, with Gary visiting the coffee shop after class on Wednesday to talk. On weekends, when he had nothing to do, he would call up Pete or Jimmy - sometimes even both of them - and they'd walk along the train tracks, talking as they relaxed in the quiet wilderness.

It was nice.

-

February, 2009.

"So I was like, dude, can you shut up already and give me the dang pencil? I don't care if it has MLP on it."

Gary snorted. "Is it really that surprising that Trent was into MLP?"

"No! That's why I didn't give a shit!" Pete laughed from beside him, and Gary couldn't help the chuckle that escaped him. Pete's laughter was infectious.

Their shoes made crunching noises on the gravel as they walked along the train track. They had been walking like this for a good twenty minutes as they caught up on their week.

"Valentine's Day is coming up." Gary mused. "Do you have a date?"

"Who? Me? Pete Kowalski, the quiet kid? Please." Pete chuckled softly, but it sounded sad more than anything.

"Hey, I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt." Gary teased and gently shoved him. "Do you have anyone you want to date?"

"What, like a crush?"

"Yeah."

"Well..." Pete hesitated.

"You do have someone." Gary grinned as Pete returned to his side. "Who is it? Don't tell me its MLP boy."

"Trent? Ew, no. I'm not Jimmy, man."

"Is it Jimmy?"

"What?"

"Is it Hopkins?" Gary rose an eyebrow. Pete blinked, seeming caught off guard.

"No, of course not. I mean, Jimmy is cool and all, but..." Pete shrugged and glanced away. "I just, like someone else."

"Who, then?"

"Why do you want to know so bad?"

"Because I'm curious. Bite me."

"Curiosity killed the cat."

"Satisfaction brought it back. Just tell me, Pete, please?"

"I..." Pete stopped abruptly and Gary turned, alarmed as a frown made its way on Pete's face. "I don't want to talk about it, okay?"

Well, that's not weird at all. Gary let his eyes roll up and down Pete's figure, reading his body language (which screamed I'M SAD! in all caps), and then sighed. "Okay."

"Thanks." Pete smiled softly.

Gary wondered just why it bothered him so much in the days to follow.

-

Gary finished his junior year assignments and started his senior year courseload, feeling a lot happier now that he was in the proper grade level, even if he was behind by a small margin.

Despite that, his thoughts were mostly on one person: Pete.

For some reason, it bothered him knowing that Pete had a crush. Especially one that he wouldn't tell Gary about.

It felt like... this strange mix of anger, worry, and sad that Gary wasn't quite able to process.

Mostly because it felt an awful lot like jealousy, and he was not going to be jealous over Pete Kowalski, especially considering that had even deeper implications such as the idea that he might not be as heterosexual as he once thought.

Not that he had ever been attracted to girls, which... honestly, confused him more. Did that mean he was gay? But it couldn't. He hadn't ever been attracted to anyone except Pete. Maybe he wasn't... anything. Maybe he was just Gary.

Did sexuality have to be as labeled as Pete and Jimmy's? And, fuck, why was he even considering this in the first place, he so totally did not have a crush on Pete because he was NOT jealous.

A loud snap brought him out of his thoughts, and he realized he had broken his pencil. Fuck.

-

March, 2009.

February passed with little to offer. Valentine's Day found Gary wandering Bullworth Vale - Pete said he didn't feel like leaving the house, and Jimmy had a date. Overall, it was uneventful, except for the fact that Gary couldn't stop thinking about Pete.

Spring break would be coming up, the first week of April. Jimmy had suggested that they go camping by the train tracks. Gary had agreed, trying to ignore the pounding of his heart when he thought of Pete being there, sharing a tent with him.

-

April, 2009.

"Tent building is hard." Gary breathed out heavily as he leaned across a nearby tree.

"Lazy ass." Jimmy passed him with some firewood in his arms, hitting Gary lightly over the head. Gary rose an arm to shove his hand away.

"Shut up. Pete's complaining too." Gary pouted.

"Pete's different." Jimmy passed said boy, who was sitting on a treestump, and gave him a friendly smile. Gary felt jealousy pulse through his veins.

Okay, so he had accepted he was jealous. But that didn't mean anything. So.

"Pete's a loser." Gary retorted and playfully smirked at the boy, who rolled his eyes.

They had spent the first hour or so setting up camp before the sun went down. It had made two out of three of them tired, with Jimmy being unable to feel exhaustion ever.

As Jimmy began to build the campfire, Gary moved from the tree he was leaning against to settle next to Pete. His heart beat hard in his chest as their knees brushed.

"So, little Petey, are you ready for a night with the creepypastas?" Gary teased and shoved him lightly.

"Shut up. Its bad enough that you've been trying to get me into them without mentioning them here." Pete huffed at him, putting one hand up to shove his face away. Gary laughed, ignoring the tingle that ran through his skin where Pete's hand made contact.

"They're fun! Come on, your gay ass can't tell me you don't find at least one of them attractive."

"They kill people!"

"So?"

Pete opened his mouth to respond, then seemed to think better of it, pouting instead. "Shut up."

Gary felt his face slip into a familiar grin. He let his eyes trail over Pete's face as the boy turned away to watch Jimmy, taking in his soft brown eyes. When he smiles he gets dimples...

He felt a burning stare pierce through him, and slowly turned his head to see Jimmy giving him a knowing look with a raised eyebrow. Gary felt panic shoot through him, but externally he kept his face in the same grin.

"Done yet, James?"

Jimmy studied him curiously and then looked back at the fire. "Yeah. Should be enough for the night."

"I brought stuff for smores." Pete smirked and moved away from Gary. He tried not to be disappointed at the distance.

"Hell yeah, we like, gotta roast marshies. That's the first fuckin' rule of camping." Jimmy smirked and sat down by the fire. The sun wasn't down yet, but it was steadily approaching the horizon - it would be sunset soon.

"Marshies?" Pete laughed. "Are you in grade school?"

"Hey, don't diss my flow. Marshies are the bomb, man."

"You're so weird." Gary rolled his eyes and Jimmy shrugged.

They spent the next few minutes unpacking the food, preparing to make dinner. The campsite they had picked out had a grill nearby, and Pete had brought burgers for them all to eat. Jimmy lit the grill and left Pete to cook as Gary stayed by the fire just a little ways off.

"Hey." Jimmy greeted, his voice quiet as he sat down next to Gary, moving to rest his hands on his knees. "I need to talk to you."

"What is it?" Gary rose an eyebrow. "Does Pete need help with something?"

"Nah, that little dude's got it all figured out. I was gonna grill but he insisted. He's had a fascination with cooking ever since his parents decided he was old enough to touch the stove." He chuckled and shrugged.

"Then what?" Gary pulled his knees to his chest, eyeing Jimmy out of the corner of his eye suspiciously.

"Look, man. I don't want to pry, since I know it isn't any of my buisness, but... I see the way you and Pete look at each other."

Gary felt his blood run cold, and he turned his head to look at his friend. "I don't know what you're-"

"Earlier you spent like fifteen seconds staring at his face man, you were practically swooning like a stupid schoolgirl. Its so blatantly obvious that you like him."

"I..." Gary was at a loss for words, panic rising up in his chest. "No, no no no I-"

"I'm not going to tell him or anything." Jimmy held his hands up. "I just want to say... if you mess up with him again, I'm gonna have to kick your ass, alright? So, don't."

"What?" Gary breathed out. No, no no, it can't be that obvious. I thought I was hiding it better than this, I can't like Pete, I can't.

"I'm rooting for the two of you. You two deserve to he happy and its obvious he likes you back, so..." Jimmy shrugged and then furrowed his brow. "Are you okay?"

Gary realised then that he was hyperventilating. "What? Yeah."

"Gary, man, take it easy." Jimmy reached out, hesitated an inch away from him, and then gently allowed his fingers to snag around Gary's wrist once he was allowed. "Look at me. Focus on my hand. Breathe in, breathe out."

Gary took in a deep breath, letting himself focused on the calloused feel of Jimmy's hand around his wrist. He released his breath, and looked at Jimmy. Breathe in, breathe out. Repeat.

When he was calm enough, Jimmy let him go and nodded awkwardly. "You good?"

"Yeah." Gary muttered, embarrassment pooling in the pit of his stomach.

"So did I assume right?..." Jimmy murmured, keeping his voice low. Gary nodded, looking into the fire. The heat coming off of it soothed him.

"Really? Does that mean you're gay?"

"I... have no idea?" He could feel his face flushing. "Look, don't tell him, okay? I've only figured it out recently-"

"Recently? You've been looking at him like he's your princess ever since you came back into our lives."

"Don't tease me Hopkins, okay? Fuck you. I was in denial about it, it isn't every day that I actually like someone, let alone like them in that way."

"Yeah, yeah, you're an emotional robot, we get it." Jimmy rolled his eyes. "I won't tell him. But you should. He likes you back, I can tell."

Did he? Gary pursed his lips together and stared into the fire, choosing not to comment. But why would he?

He spent the rest of the night in bewilderment as they roasted "marshies," told horror stories, and eventually went to sleep in the tent. It was weird, sleeping beside Pete with the revelation he had just been presented, and he tried very hard not to freak out.

Eventually, morning came, and Gary got up, groggy from anxious sleep. They had to pack up and then they'd be heading back.

He really, really hated the disappointment he felt because of that.

-

May, 2009.

Gary decided that emotions were not something he was very strongly suited for.

He had been avoiding Pete, unsure how to feel about his conversation with Jimmy. Part of him still did not want to accept that he was capable of a crush, let alone a crush on a guy. (God, his father would be so pissed). The other part of him wanted to accept it and let go, because Pete was cute and smart and kind and... well, Pete.

As the month went on, Gary found himself missing Pete more and more. It was easy to cancel plans under the guise of schoolwork, but it was becoming excessive. And, well...

Maybe it was time for him to admit to himself that yeah, he was queer. He wasn't sure of the proper term (gay? bi? who knows) but he knew he was LGBTQ+ of some origin. And...

Well, Jimmy had given him a vote of confidence. Maybe he should just go for it.

He held off for a few weeks, but Gary was never one to deny himself what he really wanted. And he wanted Petey to look at him, more than anything.

He decided that he'd have to do this. It was time. And, readying himself, he began to devise a plan.

-

Pete had a burning frustration for all days dedicated to couples. He had always wanted to be a part of a relationship. It wasn't that he hated being single; he just... wanted to know what that connection was like. And, well, he also wanted to like someone that was actually obtainable for once.

Because of this, he tended to lock himself in his dorms during those days. And, here he was once again, in his dorm.

It was Prom Night, and Peter Kowalski had bought a new book to read to distract himself from the painful torture that is Being Single.

A knock on the door distracted him from Pip's adventure into newfound wealth. He stood up and went to answer it, curiousity pumping through him. Jimmy was the only one who ever came to his dorm, but Jimmy had told him he had a date tonight.

He opened the door to find Gary Smith there, a grin on his face and a suit in his hand. He was dressed in formal attire of his own, making Pete's heart skip a beat.

That is, until it hit him. "Gary? What are you doing here? You aren't allowed on school property."

Gary shrugged. "It isn't like the Prefects will care anyway. Its prom, Pete."

Okay, he had a point. "Still... do you have a date or something?"

Gary's grin widened. "Yes, actually." Abruptly, he shoved the suit into Pete's hands. "Get changed, we're going out."

"What?" Pete furrowed his brow. "But... what about your date?"

"Do I need to spell it out for you? We're going out. I already bought the suit for you and everything."

It clicked in Pete's head, and he flushed a bright red. "Oh!" He squeaked. "Okay!"

He went back in his room and quickly changed. He had not been expecting this, and part of him was still sure that it was a prank? (If it was, well, he'd deal with it later).

Pete stepped out of his room in the new suit. Gary's eyes scanned down over his body, and Pete flushed red, fidgeting nervously. "Is this... okay?"

"Its perfect." Gary told him, reaching out to grab his hand. Pete could see the faintest traces of red blush on Gary's face. "Let's go."

"Wait." Pete stopped him. Gary turned to him, looking annoyed. "For clarification. Are - are we dating now? Like, um, boyfriends."

Gary narrowed his eyes. "Ugh, that's such a stupid term."

"Well?"

"I guess. If you want to be b-words then I'm here for it." Gary glanced away from him.

Pete broke into a grin. "Okay." He said, very quiet, as happiness settled in his chest.

"Are you ready now?"

"Yeah. Yeah, let's go."

[foolsiwillshowthemall]

Rayla doesn’t do slow burn.

Random thoughts on Rayllum, heavy with TDP Season 3 spoilers, following.

Rayllum has been the most likely endgame ship among the main characters for a while, which is ironic considering that it wasn’t even planned from the start of the series.  The writers just realized midway through Season 2 that the chemistry between the two of them worked out really well.  For me, it clicked when Callum was reading the letter from his father, who advised Callum to seek a narrative of love instead of power.  It’s not clear if this line was written before or after the writers decided that Rayllum would be a thing, but it does fit perfectly with the love of a human prince and an elven assassin/Dragonguard helping bring peace to the two sides.

However, while I was expecting them to get together, I was expecting it to happen a lot more slowly than it did.  Usually in these kinds of shows, they’ll string along the will-they-or-won’t-they dance for as long as possible to build tension, and only resolve it in a season or series finale.  We were all expecting a slow burn situation.  But in a brilliant bit of character-driven storytelling, just as the existence of the relationship was driven by the chemistry between them, the pace of the relationship was also decided by the characters.

Because Rayla is just not a slow-burn kind of person.

Callum could do a slow burn, easily.  At the start of the show, it’s implied that he’s been pining over Claudia for some time.  Years, maybe.  He just doesn’t have the confidence or any idea on how to progress that relationship.  In an alternate universe where the Moonshadow elves never attack, he and Claudia could spend years dancing around each other before finally ending up together.  He’d probably also end up apprenticing to Viren to become a dark mage in that alternate universe, so it’s just as well that didn’t happen.

But Rayla isn’t the kind of person to do a slow burn relationship.  Rayla makes sudden, life-changing, emotionally driven decisions.  Deciding to not kill Marcus after he discovered the assassin team, or deciding to take the Egg to Xadia along with the human princes, or to go and save the downed red dragon from Soren and Claudia.  And when she makes these decisions, she acts on them, immediately and decisively.  So once she realized that she’s in love with Callum, she’s not going to sit around pining for him or wondering if he feels the same.  She’s going to immediately start courting him, Moonshadow elf style.

Admittedly, we have no idea what Moonshadow elf courtship looks like.  But we do know that they keep their feelings secret, they’re not supposed to admit to fear or apparently anything else openly.  So Rayla’s not going to be ready to openly declare her love just yet.  But a lot of her behavior in the first few episodes of Season 3 makes more sense when interpreted as attempted courtship.

Episode 1:  Sol Regem.  When all else fails, Rayla makes a heartfelt speech praising Callum’s virtues to try and convince Sol Regem to let hum accompany her and Zym into Xadia.  It’s totally wasted on Sol Regem, but really we know this speech was meant for Callum.  It’s Rayla’s way of letting Callum know how much she likes him, without actually admitting anything.  

I suspect that praising someone you like to a third party, where they can overhear, is a common courtship method among Moonshadow elves, as it lets them know you like them without you having to admit any feelings of your own.  “I don’t admit to personally having feelings for them, I’m just stating how amazing they are as a fact” is a distinctly Moonshadow-ish behavior, and something that both Rayla and Callum have done for each other.

Also, she keeps his scarf, although unfortunately not past the end of the episode.  This comes after they’ve established how strongly it smells of him, because apparently Rayla likes the way he smells.

Episode 2: The Crown.  Moonshadow elves are all about concealment and secrecy, so showing somebody a secret place where you played alone as a child is an incredibly intimate and personal step.  Rayla might as well have stripped naked in front of him for all that she’s laying her life bare.  Fortunately, Callum has responded positively to her courtship so far, although at this point he doesn’t realize that this is what she’s doing.  As incredibly empathic and perceptive as Callum is, he’s fairly clueless at figuring out matters of romance, and has no idea that Rayla likes him that way yet.

Episode 3: Ghost.  Courtship is going well, so Rayla takes the next step of introducing Callum to her one remaining parental figure and showing him where she grew up.  Unfortunately, things don’t go well, as she’s been magically banished and is reminded of how she’s disappointed everyone and was more or less responsible for all of the other members of the team being killed or sealed in coins.  Callum tries to comfort her, and we might even have proceeded to the scene we do eventually get in the next episode, but Ethari interrupts them and gives them the means to start seriously traveling onwards again.

Episode 4: The Midnight Desert.  Enter Nyx.  Nyx is a conman (Con-woman?  Con-elf?) who is skilled at reading people.  She figures out pretty quickly what’s going on with these two, which is why she makes that teasing comment about whether they need one blanked or two.  She’s also smart enough to realize that Callum and Rayla will, given the chance, provide enough distraction to each other for her to slip away with Zym.

It’s in this episode that we get the continuation of the emotional moment interrupted by Ethari.  Rayla is wallowing in self-loathing, but Callum comes along and starts praising her virtues.  At last, Rayla thinks, the big dumb human has caught on and is reciprocating my courtship.  So she kisses him. 

Unfortunately, Callum wasn’t actually trying to court her, at least not consciously, so things get all awkward and stuff.  Poor Rayla is very confused, as what seemed to be fairly clear signals weren’t what she thought they were.  It turns out that Callum does actually like her like that, he just didn’t even realize that it was an option so far, and they probably would have resolved things with a little more talking, but Zym’s been abducted and they have to put the courtship on hold to deal with that.

Ironically, if Callum hadn’t backed down and had been kissing her back right away, Nyx would probably have gotten away freely.  Emotional awkwardness saves the day.

Episode 5: Heroes and Masterminds.  Zym has been rescued, Nyx has been defeated and then also rescued, and Callum get the opportunity to praise Rayla to someone else in front of here.  You can see the surprise and hope on her face as she’s trying to figure out the meaning of this gesture, not wanting to mis-interpret his intentions again.  You can also see that Nyx figures out pretty quickly that this speech isn’t for her benefit, as she turns and walks away halfway through it.  Rayla still isn’t sure what Callum’s intentions are, but he makes them more clear when he kisses her.

He then gets flustered and tries to back down again, but Rayla knows what the deal is.  If she wants the relationship to proceed, she has to take the initiative.  Fortunately, she’s more than capable of doing so, and Callum is willing to let her.

So where do things go now?  At the moment, we don’t know if there even will be a Season 4.  Netflix likes to cancel shows after 2 or 3 seasons, and the internal drama among the creative team at Wonderstorm still might tear the company apart.  Personally, I’d be satisfied with the story as it is if it ended here, since the third season wrapped up the initial plot very nicely, but I’ll also happily watch season 4 and any more that they make.

It’s rumored that there will be a timeskip before the next season, and if so then presumably the relationship between Rayla and Callum will only develop further during that time.  Although she won’t be able to actually show him around the Silvergrove until the banishment is lifted, and it will probably be a while before they can free her parents from the coins they’re probably trapped within.  I think that I speak for many in the fandom in hoping that the writers don’t split Callum and Rayla up for cheap drama, since they’ve been pretty good about not doing that kind of thing so far, and since Rayllum wasn’t even planned for part of the story initially it’s probably not going to be a major driver of the plot.  Which is actually kind of a relief, if they can just be a stable couple together while the rest of the plot is going on around them.  There’s enough drama happening in the world of TDP as a whole, they can just be the rock that keep each other stable and safe.

It’s also been really amusing seeing the fanfiction sites react to season 3.  So many slow burn stories that are now just completely AU compared to how quickly things went in the canon story.

[serendipitous-posts]

Sometimes, when I’m bored, I like to imagine a world where Rantarou and Kaede both survived, and the two team up with Ouma and Shuichi respectively, becoming two rival teams that basically become the schools two cliques, dragging everyone else in.

Because I love the idea of factions in Danganronpa and platonic(?) Oumami

Kaede and Shuichi’s relationship doesn’t really change; it basically stays as is

Whenever Shuichi lies to try and catch someone out, Kaede will usually back him up

There is a lot of tension after the whole ‘shotput ball’ incident, but they make up after a bit, because, y’know, literal life or death situation 

She’s very supportive, defending him from others and as such Shuichi is slightly more confident

But, in turn, he’s also quieter, shyer. He doesn’t have to be the leader, because Kaede is here. He’s the follower. 

He’s probably not as close to Kaito in this verse, since Kaito and Kaede hit it off so well. Oh, he’s still invited to their training sessions, but Kaede and Kaito are naturally closer than Shuichi and Kaito, with Maki and Kaito being the closest

Amami and Ouma would have probably gotten along great if given the chance

Oh, sure, you may not think so at first, with how chill and laid back Amami is compared to Ouma 

But, like

Rantaro canonically doesn’t trust anyone, and thinks trusting anyone in this situation is the dumbest possible thing to do

It’s also implied that Ouma was especially interested in Rantarou, even to the point of entering his lab, all because he knew something was off about him

So

Ouma knows that there has to be something special about Amami- why else wipe his mind?

He’s also pretty sure that Amami isn’t the mastermind, because why would the mastermind draw attention to himself like that?

But Kokichi is a paranoid bastard, and so settles for needling him any chance he can

Meanwhile, Rantarou’s survivor instincts (tm) are going ham, telling him that Ouma is planning something, and that he’s probably not the mastermind, because the mastermind wouldn’t be so obvious and seclude themselves

Probably

Despite this, the two don’t create an alliance until much later on.

Kaito and Kaede probably drive the two nuts. It’s a lot subtler in Rantarou, but their continued insistence that everyone should stay together and not suspect anyone, basically dancing on strings for the Mastermind, is fucking infuriating for Amami especially

In fact, as I’m thinking about it, had Rantarou survived for longer, he would have really hated Shuichi. It’s an odd thought, but the fact that Shuichi never really looked into the possibility of a mastermind, or one of the students being behind it until the very end, would have pissed the Survivor off to no end

(No offence, Shui, I love you so much. But, like, Kirigiri was investigating that possibility from the very beginning. Step it up, emo boy)

Anyways, Rantarou and Ouma would both be annoyed by Kaito and Kaede, though Amami chooses to show it through subtler means, usually by giving them vaguely threatening advice before walking off

Eventually, Amami says out loud, with Ouma in earshot “they are going to get themselves killed” and Kokichi is just like

“rIGHT?!?!?”

They start to bond over this shared exasperation, sharing looks and complaining to each other when they’re alone, but they still don’t trust each other yet.

I think Rantarou would be the first one to extend the hand of friendship; not by telling Kokichi his secret, but by showing him the bookshelf, and explaining his theory

So Kokichi and Rantarou go to check it out, and the shotput ball trick fails, as it does in canon, but Shirogane doesn’t attack Rantarou because now Kokichi is with him

Instead, the two hastily retreat, because they know a DEATH THREAT when they see one

They go back to Amami’s room, and Kokichi is too freaked out to even freak out about being in someone elses room, vulnerable, during a killing game, because what the hell was that-

The two go back and forth for a while, trying to figure out what the hell just happened, and eventually realise that that must of have been a trap set by the mastermind

“Pretty shitty trap” Kokichi jokes weakly, but Rantarou still laughs a little

Meanwhile, Kaede and Shuichi’s side of things, Kaede realises her shot-put ball trap failed, but doesn’t say anything

The cameras are checked and-

There Are TwO mAsTeRmInDs?!?!

They are, understandably baffled. Shuichi cautiously suggests that maybe, like them, Rantarou and Kokichi found the secret door which-

Kaede denies. It can’t be true. It can’t. Because if it is-

She glances at her shotput ball, then looks away before Shuichi can see what she’s looking at

Instead, she suggests that they bring it up in front of everyone, to see if they can explain themselves

And boy, can they

Even as Shuichi and Kaede lay all of these things out for all to see, Amami and Kokichi are dead silent, glaring at the two

And Kaede feels her hopes start to rise; maybe she was right. Maybe this entire thing can end, right here, right now

And then Amami starts talking

It’s weird; it looked like Kokichi was going to at first, but then he and Amami’s eyes met, and he steps back and allows the green haired boy to speak

It is the first case of silent understanding and trust between the two

Amami carefully explains what happened, how he found the door, and showed it to Kokichi

Since he’s the one explaining, and not Kokichi, nobody is quick to accuse him of lying, but Shuichi does cross examine him a bit- why Kokichi? Why not tell anyone else?

And the bitch goes off

“Look, I’m all for the optimism here guys, but the fact of the matter is, we are a bunch of strangers being forced into an enclosed space, prodded with sticks, and being told to kill each other. Sorry if I’m not exactly trusting any of you.”

Kaito sputters for a bit, gesturing towards the grinning Ouma “and you trust him.”

Amami eyes him for a moment “yes” he says, surprising himself “he’s the only one here talking sense.”

Protests all around, but Rantarou speaks over them all “the fact that the door was in the library tells us that somebody is working for Monokuma and that that somebody is in the building.”

Kaito raises a fist, ready for anything “really? Well, lets go find them then!”

“You idiot” Maki mutters “he means that whoever is working for Monokuma has to be one of us.”

“Well, duh!” Kokichi sticks out his tongue and gestures towards Kaede and Shuichi “they think so too! That’s why they set up the camera, to catch the Mastermind”

Then his expression darkens, and he’s almost whispering when he says “you wanna tell ‘em what else you set up?”

Shuichi is really, really confused, and Kaede is really, really scared, because now she realises just how badly she screwed up

When Kokichi and Rantarou explain what happen, Shuichi immediately interjects, saying that they didn’t do that, that it must have been the master-

He notices how quiet Kaede has gone. She’s pale, and her eyes are watery, and-

And she admits it

She admits what she did

And- damn

Kokichi and Rantaro didn’t think Kaede had done it.

What follows is an hour long argument. The group basically fights over the two basic ideologies of the killing game

No Kaede shouldn’t have done that, but wasn’t killing the mastermind the right thing to do? Should they really trust everyone, especially as one of them could be working with Monokuma? So what you want to just turn on eachother? That would be playing into his hands!

They don’t even notice when the time runs out, and Monokuma rushes in to tell them all that he’s not going to kill them all, that would be too painless, but warns them

“I’m being super duper nice, letting you off with a warning this time around, but don’t think it’ll happen again. Even I can’t be that sweet!”

(Realistically, they wouldn’t kill everyone off after only one episode, it would be a hassle and a half to reopen auditions and find a new location and it would really disappoint the fans, so, no, I don’t think Monokuma was ever actually planning on killing them all off. But they didn’t know that.)

And now our ragtag bunch of misfits basically splinter off into two separate factions.

One faction, basically lead by Kaede and Shuichi, believes in keeping the peace, and trying to stop the killings before they happen, to keep distrust as low as possible to avoid a blackened situation and values things like optimism

Their members include; Kaito, Kiibo, Himiko, Tenko, Angie and Tsumugi

(I think Tsumugi would like to be in the other faction, so she could keep an eye on Amami, but is also scared that they’ll see through her)

Meanwhile, the other, lead by Ouma and Amami, believes in finding out which one is the mastermind, of not playing into the masterminds games and values things like pragmatism

Their members include; Maki, Miu, Korekiyo, Gonta (kind of? He just follows Kokichi), Hoshi and Kirumi

Both sides have equal points in their favour, and both sides are flawed

Basically, it’s highschool cliques all over again

I’m absolutely going to come back to this again when I have the chance