#no literally why is there a b plot that’s basically the a plot in this episode

[glimblshanks]

It's so difficult, because I genuinely do want to understand what the whole deal with Christianity is, but Christians are so apposed to any line of questioning about their belief system (in a way that no other religion is) that if you say anything they don't like they shut down and accuse you of being a sinner.

And it's like bro, I'm not trying to be insulting, I'm trying to understand why this religion is even appealing to you. How do you manage to get so many converts when you're not even willing to answer basic questions about your theology?

Everyone I've found who's actually willing to discuss Christian theology with me is an ex-Christian which is super unhelpful, because ex-Christians are people who have deconstructed Christian belief and come to the conclusion that it doesn't work for them. They're always very cynical about the whole situation. That's not what I'm looking for.

I want to talk to someone who's still into it. I want to understand what actually draws people to this religion ( I do not want to be trauma dumped at - I don't know what aspect of Christian belief confuses y'all into thinking that trauma dumping is an appropriate substitute for theological discussion, but it absolutely isn't).

Like you would really think for one of the most popular religions in the world finding answers to this stuff would be easier. Why can't you guys just talk about your beliefs?

[exquisink]

don't let all this be a letdown (polysatosugu x reader)

cw. no curses au, breaking up with one of them and then getting back together, there are no warnings really other than suggestive scenarios and teasing of smut but there's no smut this time, gasp!, poly satosugu x reader, they literally come as a package it's an unspoken rule, this is basically fluff so sweet it'll give you diabetes even though it's also lowkey messy btwn mainly you and sugu b/c you felt underappreciated, i am pretty sure i lost the plot somewhere b/c this was supposed to be TOXIC EX BF SUGURU with you getting back at him but it's somehow weirdly wholesome, never mind some things like the two of them cornering you in public spaces b/c personal space is a foreign concept to these men

wc. 11K... and if i choose to tack on the smut later as a bonus snippet/post then it'll be more

Stop this nonsense, that small, sharp, squabbling voice in the back of your mind scolds you. That little voice of reason bubbles up every time you try to set yourself free from the commitments of a relationship you have ended, all on your own accord, giggling too hard at some random guy’s jokes, or allowing them to brush their hands up their waist. Just a bit too close for comfort should Suguru be near, but he isn’t. Right now it’s just you and Satoru Gojo, mingling with each other and pretending like you’re still involved. 

You have tossed away any cautions, any questionings or doubts or asking yourself why anymore. Satoru Gojo may be Suguru’s best friend but he’s yours too, and each little flirtatious glance he tosses your way is just another ticket toward sweet payback. It’s what he gets for not appreciating what he’s had right in front of him. Of course this is all a charade, because Gojo understands more than anyone what bro code means and he’s only doing this as a favor to you, and in a way to Suguru too.

Get him to open his damn eyes. To read it all, soak it completely in, let the realization of what he lost dawn on him, and weep waterfalls upon waterfalls of tears.

Gojo may have gotten a little too into the charade but so have you. Those little late night texts, which he may have sent screenshots to Suguru ‘on accident’ but he definitely wants him to know. Let him simmer and stew in sheer anger over the fact that you’re just over being an afterthought.

Besides, it’s not like you haven’t been anything other than playing the role of the understanding, kind girlfriend. But all he’s ever done is taken your character and your time for granted, and you’re just finally cutting loose after everything you’ve done to try to make that fucking relationship work.

Oh, but it’s like you already said, you may have gotten a little too into this. Soaking up all of this attention Satoru is happy to fabricate for you all in favor of the drama, but also you have been actually actively responding to other suitors who have flooded your phone with messages since you have set yourself free.

That much you can admit to, but who can blame you when your ex’s best friend can be just as petty if not more so than you? Suggesting to send snapshots of your outings together in some of the most suggestive situations. Gojo has been nice enough to go run errands with you and while shopping for clothes, joins you in the dressing rooms for a quick way to set your ex off. Nothing too scandalous–just a snapshot of you two undressed in a few questionable positions but it’s not like you two really did much of anything. You don’t see how, not completely,  because your goal is just to drive that point home–he fucking missed out and now he has to deal with the consequences of missing out on someone like you. After a certain point, you have to put your foot down. You can’t remember at what point when you checked out of the relationship in your mind, because by the time you cut things off, it was too late for him to try to change his ways because you know how it always goes. They change for maybe a few weeks and then revert back to their typical behavior. No one can actually ever change overnight; you definitely didn’t.

Getting into the relationship and basically all throughout the relationship, you have always put your best foot forward for Suguru. Giving him moral support before huge exams. Hearing him out when he’s venting to you instead of spewing solutions. Giving him space when he needs it. Planning dates. Remembering birthdays. Remembering his big events and attending them. Obviously it’s all the basic stuff but they matter. Of course they all matter. And in the beginning, he’s just as supportive, but then maybe he’s gotten too comfortable with a girl like you. 

And that’s his biggest fucking mistake.

“You know,” Gojo comments as he hops back into his slacks and smooths out his hair, scrolling through his text thread with Suguru while waiting for you to get dressed. “There are ways we can amp this up but I don’t know if you’d be game to try it out. Even while you were dating him, you seemed so innocent.”

“Well, obviously, I proved you wrong,” you huff as you straighten yourself out, glancing at yourself in the mirror for a moment before your gaze flits back to Gojo. “It’s not like I’m getting into any of his friends’ pants. I just have to make him think I am.”

“And you’re doing a swell job with that,” he laughs with a wide grin brightening his features. He flashes his phone screen with Geto’s reply, and now you find yourself grinning.

Geto: what the fuck is wrong with you actually

Geto: she hasn’t been responding to any of my calls or messages. So this is what she’s been up to? 

You wish you could see his face, but all you can imagine is him attempting to remain calm and collected, suffering in silence like he always does. You always kind of loathe how he acts like nothing bothered him, and that’s another reason why you broke it off. Besides getting too comfortable and not trying anymore. There’s actually a whole textbook you can write at this point on all of the reasons why you two were better off not together.

Your stomach twists a little at the idea of actually not being with him, but you have to be stronger than your feelings sometimes and you know that all too well since that’s something you had to do far too early in your life. You deserve better, all you’re asking for is some reciprocity for fuck’s sake, and he probably knows that and is threatened by the idea of you actually leveling up your life. And that’s why he’s fighting a time where you doubt you can change your mind.

“So what was your suggestion? About upping the ante, I mean,” you ask as Gojo thinks of a way to respond to Geto’s messages. 

“Well, I mean, I can ring up some of our friends and they can get in on it. It’s not like they don’t like you too, you know. For as much of an idiot Suguru can be, he’s not wrong about people and we all like you.”

You sigh, flashing him your phone screen with a few threads from Toji, Sukuna, and Shoko. Toji keeps spamming your photos with fire emoji comments and Sukuna has sent you not so vanilla messages that you have no idea how to respond to, since you’re not that into the guy, even as a friend. A shiver dances up your spine as you glance at one of the raunchy messages he’s sent you upon the other couple hundred, frowning until your forehead creases and Satoru catches onto your discomfort, sneaking a glance at the thread. Even he grimaces, swiping the thread out of your line of sight. 

You breathe out in relief. Satoru really is a good friend, isn’t he? 

“No kiddin’. I mean, Toji and Sukuna are kind of expected, but Shoko? That’s something I would have never considered because she likes you guys so much,” you reply, but your eyes roll upward as you ponder over the situation you have found yourself in, wondering what to make of it. “Though, she is my type…”

Gojo whistles at that. “Okay, damn. I didn’t expect that from you, either.”

You beam at him with your eyes twinkling like little gemstones, standing on your tiptoes to plant a quick kiss on his cheek. 

“Thanks, Satoru. You’re a great friend,” you tell him, and he’s grinning wider while dreamily sighing. “To me and to Suguru. He’s lucky, you know? To have someone like you who reminds him what’s important. I just think it might be too late this time, but who knows?”

“I’d really hate to see the two of you not work things out in the end,” he remarks, as another stream of notifications clutters his lock screen from Suguru. “Sheesh. He’s not a happy camper, but it’s one thing to say it and another thing to do something, right?” 

You nod. “Right. Sometimes it feels like that’s all he is.”

“All talk, right?” he replies, sighing as his shoulders sag a bit. “Yeah, I get that. I really do. He’s a bit too wrapped up in his own bullshit sometimes to understand what’s going on around him. And sometimes, the best thing you can do in these situations is just let ‘im figure things out for himself. I mean, you can’t force someone to change, right?”

“Yeah,” you reply, glancing at the time on your phone. “Should we get out of here? I think the store’s closing up in like an hour.”

“Sure. But you should still get that dress. With legs like yours, you’d kill it,” Gojo suggests, swiping the dress for you. “And it’s on me, as a token of apology for dealing with someone as dense as Suguru.”

“My hero,” you tease, exiting the fitting room with Gojo following suit. He catches onto the little skip in your step and there’s a hint of a small smile. That’s the happiest you’ve been since you broke it off with him. He can’t help shaking his head to himself before paying for your dress and leaving the store with you. Now you’re practically frolicking like you’re in a fairy world. Glow any brighter and maybe you can hear a choir of angels singing. 

Suguru is an even bigger idiot than he is, and that’s saying something. 

Geto does confront Gojo later. 

Shoving him into the wall after showing up at his penthouse (unprompted but that’s essentially routine for them at this point), indigo eyes practically oozing rage and gritting his teeth like he may pummel him six feet under. Gojo knows he’s not going to, of course, out of everyone Geto knows Gojo’s still the one he can’t say no to who isn’t his girlfriend, but Gojo digresses. 

“What the fuck, Satoru?” he growls, and Gojo merely picks at his cuticles, avoiding his eyes. Geto knows Gojo is stronger than he is but he lets him get his way. Sometimes. Sometimes. “Why are you fooling around with my girlfriend?”

“Ex-girlfriend,” he corrects, pushing him off with slight force, catching Geto off guard for a moment but he bounces back, shooting a death glare as Gojo goes on. “And she’s been your ex longer than when she finally dumped your crusty ass.”

“The fuck are you talking about?” Geto mumbles, “And my ass isn’t crusty.”

“She’s been over you for months before she broke up with you,” Gojo explains, “What, you really haven’t noticed her distancing herself?”

“Of course I have,” Geto shoots back, his posture relaxing. “I just didn’t think it’d get to this point.”

“Aha! And you admit it, you don’t think! That’s your problem,” Gojo counters, matching his glare now. “Just because you get the girl doesn’t mean you don’t stop trying. You have to show up for her, you know, like she’s always been.”

Something flashes in Geto’s eyes. Realization, perhaps? Or regret? 

No, maybe Gojo’s giving him too much credit there. 

“Suguru,” he starts, taking a step forward. “You can’t just stop trying. She never did until the last few months.”

“Well, what the hell do I do? She’s not responding to any of my messages or calls,” he shouts back, “Do I just show up at her doorstep or…what?”

“You’re going to have to go a little beyond that to make up for all of the things you missed,” Gojo shouts back, “And disregard anything performative. She can sniff you out like a drug hound, so don’t bother.”

“You’re supposed to be on my side, you know!” Geto retaliates, folding his arms as he tries to collect himself. Rounded grounding breaths and whatever else. Gojo has no idea how that’s supposed to keep him centered, but what the hell does he know about mindfulness anyway? He’s just as clueless as Geto is in that regard, if not more so. 

Gojo sighs, exasperated, just seconds away from punching the lights out of him. Yeah, mindfulness and whatever, but he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about that stuff when both of his best friends are being fucking idiots.

And if that’s coming from the likes of him? Well, clearly there’s an issue. He’s not even saying this to be self-deprecating or whatever; he’s not that kind of guy and everyone who knows him knows that a little too well, but this whole charade is just appalling. 

Gojo wants to see both his friends happy again, but they have to motherfriggin’ cooperate.

“I am, but I’m not going to solve your BS for you!” Gojo shouts back after a beat of tense silence. The air suddenly feels staticky and stiff, and he wonders if his judgment is clouded concerning this whole ordeal.

“Yet you’re fooling around with her to what, piss me off?!” Geto questions, pinching the bridge of nis nose as he struggles to control his emotions. He is many things, but violent he isn’t, and Geto doesn’t want anything to escalate around here for absolutely absurd reasons.

“Well yeah,” he scoffs, glowering at him like somehow he’s lost more brain cells. “She wants to have fun a little, and wanted to have fun with just me this time around. You can’t fault her for wanting a piece of this.”

“You’re part of the package when we are together, Satoru,” Geto grumbles. 

“It’s almost like I’m well aware of that, Suguru.”

Geto’s eyebrows furrow; that tone Satoru tacks on is… curious. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Geto quizzes, wary. Like he shouldn’t hope for more, but if Gojo is on his side like he claims he is…

“I don’t know, man. Figure it out, or do you truly have no brain and that noggin of yours is just hollow?” Gojo mocks while playfully knocking the crown of Geto’s head. Geto swats his hand away, appalled. 

“I just fail to see what you hoped to achieve, fooling around with her without me present,” he says, “I can’t imagine the kind of trouble she’s getting herself in just to cut loose. Has she done this with anyone else?”

Gojo shakes his head. “Not as far as I know. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she wants you to reach out.”

“You say that and yet she leaves me on delivered,” he mutters, more to himself as he whips out his phone and opens your shared thread. 

“Well, like I said, you have to go a little harder than what you have been doing. Spamming her is so three decades ago. But it’s also like I said, don’t do anything too out there or performative because she definitely won’t buy it.”

“Sometimes I don’t know whether to punch you or kiss you,” Geto mumbles, “And you swear she hasn’t fooled around with anyone else? It’s just been you? Which doesn’t bother me for obvious reasons…”

“Of course not, I still have my rights to her!” Gojo laughs, “But in all seriousness, you should act or something before things really begin to escalate. She’s already deleted some photos off of her phone and has warred with herself about straight up blocking you, so…”

“You’re telling me this now?” Geto rubs his temples as a headache comes on from all of this unproductiveness between the two of them. “Since you clearly want me to make amends, what do you suggest should be my first move?” 

Gojo whacks his shoulder. “I told you countless times in this one conversation alone: I can’t do the work for you. This is something you have to figure out for yourself. I’m just here to support you, whatever it is you decide to do, alright? That’s what friends are for… even friends with certain additional benefits.”

Gojo winks at him, with that fucking look on his face that he always sports when he has something up his sleeve and Geto can’t even decipher it himself. 

Geto scoffs, rolling his eyes.

“So nothing performative, nothing over the top… that doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for anything too creative if you ask me,” Geto muses out loud as he racks his mind for some kind of solution because this has gone on long enough for his tastes. He wants you back. He wants you, period. The idea of any other man touching you is completely out of the question; just entertaining the idea has Geto seeing pure firetruck red, clenching his fists at his sides as the impulse to punch something out wash over him. He’s not violent. Not really. He doesn’t want to resort to violence. Not even if it can be argued it’s warranted, like if another man touched you in ways you weren’t okay with, for instance… 

Oh no. No no. Get those images out of his head NOW! That’s just adding fuel to the fire unnecessarily! 

Gojo rests his hands on Geto’s shoulders, and all of the tension suddenly melts away. Gojo, as infuriating as he often is, has a way of being his calm, tranquility, and peace, too… you know, It’s actually quite perplexing, but that is the beauty of love, isn’t it? In all its nuances and complexities and mysteries.

“Come on, you’re doing so well. You’re just a whirlwind of emotions in just nanoseconds,” Gojo teases with a grin playing on his features. Somehow even in these moments, Gojo seems to glow, radiant, snow white hair shimmering and those electric blue eyes boring into the very essence of Geto’s being. 

Geto kind of hates how much he loves this guy too.

But it’s also the most thrilling thing in the world, simultaneously.

“Okay, okay but can we stop dicking around and figure this out?” Geto sighs, “The more we stall, the further away she is from me. And I don’t like that I let it get this far already. I mean, for fuck’s sake… she can’t be having that much fun without me.”

Gojo flashes back to the way you had a little skip to your step finally having a chance to fool around and be a little silly for the sake of it besides just proving a point. As much as he wants to tell Geto a harmless little white lie, he’s not known to sugarcoat things… 

“Eh… well, actually… this is the most relaxed she’s ever felt in a long time. So you really have to act fast, buddy!”

Geto’s eyes widen, perplexity shining in them as he grumbles out loud once again in sheer annoyance at Gojo’s ‘impeccable’ timing. “And again, you’re telling me this now?” 

“Sorry, Suguru,” he quips with a shrug. “I can’t exactly go against either of you in this scenario. I can’t offer any bias toward either of you and as much as I love you both, I’m trying to stay objective here. This is something you have to settle between the two of you, and I”m just here to be of any kind of assistance. Anywhere feasible, I mean.”

“Duly noted,” Geto snarks back, as his mind wanders, swimming through a sea of clashing thoughts and ideas that don’t seem all that fitting for what he hopes to achieve, and that’s you back into his arms, safe and sound, loved and cherished and spoiled, something he should have still been doing even months and months into the relationship and he can’t believe he’s been so blind to see you haven’t been all that happy with him for that long. Come to think of it… 

“Suguru, what do you think of this dress for our anniversary date?” you ask as you twirl around in a flattering LBD, with a sultry, darker makeup look. Geto barely looks up from the papers he’s too busy scribbling on to acknowledge it or appreciate the view. Even if he does see her every damn day, he should still take a moment to show he appreciates the effort she puts into everything with them. 

“You always look lovely, pretty girl, but I’m in the middle of something…” 

He can’t believe he missed the way your voice cracks, or your wistful expression. “Okay…”

Geto’s gaze flits down at his hands, these negligent hands which have failed to grab you by the waist and pull you in for affectionate kisses while he’s doting on you about how good you look in that dress. He’s wincing at his own negligent behavior… how has he been that blind? He knows that’s not the only incident, either; more and more recent memories flash before his eyes and he clenches both fists, groaning at his own idiocy.

“Fuck me,” he mutters under his breath. “I’m actually the worst boyfriend in the history of boyfriends.”

“Actually I can argue you’re a step up from the majority of men but you’re still right,” Gojo wisecracks. 

Geto glowers at him but he just grins back; he keeps grinning like that and it’s going to be permanent.

Oh wait. Too late.

“Sooo, now that you actually acknowledge how much of a piece of shit you truly are, how are you going to change it? Or at least begin to? Because once you start, you can’t stop. You can’t let things go again like you did the first time. Your shot at a second chance with her is already slipping from your grimy fingers so hurry the fuck up and think of something.”

“Satoru, I swear to God if you don’t shut up so I can hear myself fucking think, I’ll shut you up myself.”

“How? With your lips? Because that’s not the productive route we’re aiming for right now, though under any other circumstances, I’d have not hesitated to take you up on that offer–!”

Suguru bites back a groan.

“--Satoru, are you absolutely shitting me right now!?--” 

“--hey, I’m just saying sometimes talking your head off can help you come up with ideas  on the spot so I’m just trying to get your creative juices flowing here!–” 

“--by annoying me half to death in the classic Satoru Gojo fashion?–” 

“--Exactly! So did you come up with anything yet?” 

Geto scowls, but a lightbulb does click on in his head as actually, by some amazing miracle, Satoru annoying him to death does help him think of some viable solution to the mess he’s created for him and the girl he’s so madly in love with but didn’t express such emotions well enough, Because he may as well be so emotionally constipated you’d need to shove a stick up his ass to get him to squeal! 

“Satoru, does anyone ever tell you that you’re actually a genius, never mind the image you often set yourself up as?”

“Not routinely,” Gojo admits, his voice trailing off. “But it’s a refreshing change of pace to hear that every once in a while. So, what’s brewing in that puny noggin of yours?” 

“That I’ll keep to myself,” Geto remarks, his eyes flitting to Gojo’s phone stuffed in his back pocket, buzzing with notifications. “But I can assure you it’s… a start, which is better than what I had before.”

“Ah, so you are catching on,” Gojo replies with a nod as he whips out his phone, typing away at a message thread with you. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I promised her I was going to meet up with her as a plus one at some party her roommates are dragging her to.”

“That’s usually my job,” Geto points out, shooting Gojo another glare but to that Gojo raises his hands in defense. 

“Yeah, well, you can easily get that position back, if you just act now. So get dressed and go there with me. If she sees you with me then she’ll have no choice but to confront you.”

“Dressing up to the nines is certain to sweeten up the deal, don’t you think?” Geto murmurs while pondering over what could make you fold immediately as soon as you see him again since the breakup. He’s still not convinced you want to completely move on if you’re still messing around with Satoru, so that must mean there really is hope that things can still work out between the two of you, right? 

…Right? 

“Don’t ask me, you figure it out!” Gojo retorts with a huff. “Now if you’ll excuse me I have to freshen up for a lovely girl waiting for me that you so stupidly let go!”

“It wasn’t on purpose!” Geto exclaims and Gojo mock sympathetically pats him on the shoulder again.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Gojo dismisses, making an incessant yapping gesture with his free hand. “Thank goodness I'm not in my designer clothes or you would have owed me thousands right now.”

Geto’s jaw hangs open. “I’m in a crisis right now and that’s what you’re more worried about, wrinkles on designer clothes? God, that really is some nepo baby shit…”

“No, nepo baby shit is worrying about someone suing you for a car wreck just to scam you out of some money. This is just wanting to look fresh and clean, man!”

“Whatever, fucking nepo baby,” Geto counters with a little smirk playing on his lips now, which means at the very least, he’s feeling something other than mental turmoil at the idea of you slipping away from him.

Gojo straightens his posture, shoving his hands into his pockets.

“You love me anyway.”

As per Gojo’s request, Geto doesn’t pick you up with him. Not unless he wants to be stuck in the car the entire time there, avoiding looking each other in the eyes, talking over the other because they don’t want to discuss anything around Satoru and not being involved in conversations involving the other. Gojo knows better than to put either of you on the spot like that; he has more class than he ever cares to let on (because he’d much rather be a show off and not let people know he has much depth to him at all). 

Still, though. It’s not exactly becoming of a man like Geto who’s sitting somewhere at some secluded corner of the bar, dressed in a sapphire button up and black slacks, his black gauges accompanied with other piercings (some of which he’s still borrowing from your collection of diamond studs, just to sweeten the deal a little more). He’s set his obnoxiously thick hair free, cascading around his sharp face, accentuating his unique features. He’s definitely attracted potential rebounds but he’s not interested in rebounds. He’s only interested in winning you over again, whatever it takes. And he really means whatever it takes, because here he is, reapplying the cologne you love on him the most, hiding the necklace you’ve given him earlier on in your relationship beneath his skin tight v-neck top that usually gets you going because it still leaves just enough room for the imagination (as if you don’t already know and adore what’s underneath)… 

This is just the bare bones of how far he’s willing to go just to drive the point home: he’s not going to lose you over the fact that he’s just a fucking idiot. Sometimes he doesn’t realize what’s in front of him. Good God, how long has it taken him to realize he’s fallen so hard in love with Satoru that he practically smacked his head onto the pavement when it dawned on him? 

It’s not your fault he’s so fucking dense. He’s just as slow as Satoru, sometimes if not worse than he is when it comes to acknowledging anything because of how one-track minded he can be, and he’s willing to admit that to himself but never out loud. He and Satoru are far too alike than they ever even realize.

He breathes out through his nose, burying his head into his hands as he bounces his leg against his stool, waiting for the next course of action in whatever Satoru has planned with you tonight other than just being your plus one.

He has caught onto some of your roommates conversing with one another and trying to pick up some men who are too engrossed in some sports game on the televisions hanging above the bar, but he doesn’t bother going out of his way to exchange pleasantries. If any of them acknowledge him first, he does flash them a smile, at the very least, because even if he’s not that kind of guy he’s not going to be outright rude. If he’s going to win you back, he may as well try to win your friends over too. Their approval matters just as much as yours… he understands all too well how much what your circle of friends believe may influence your own and that’s precisely why he keeps his so small. (Aside from the fact that he is a firm believer in quality over quantity…)

His phone dings. A text.

Satoru: we’re going to be there in like 10 minutes or so, how’re you holding up?

Geto: that’s up for debate

Satoru: always so cryptic and ominous… you might as well be a member of the addams family 

Geto: don’t text and drive

Satoru: awwwww someone’s worried about me ;) 

Geto: satoru i WILL punch the lights out of you when you get here.

Satoru: you’re going to punch your face with my face? :D

Geto, having no way to respond to that, sets his phone down and signals the bartender for something stronger than a Screwdriver. Whatever they make him, it’s all going to be on Gojo’s tab anyway. He’s going to need that liquid courage for what he’s about to do tonight just for the sake of a girl. 

But you’re not just any girl–you may as well be the love of his fucking life and he doesn’t use such language lightly. 

No matter what, he’s winning you back. It is an inevitability in his life that you belong in it, and he knows better than to make the same mistake twice. What is it that they say? One time is a mistake. Twice is a conscious decision. Any more than twice, then there’s no chance of things ever being the same again and that’s the last thing he ever wants for someone like you, who is one in a billion, in his eyes.

But it’s one thing to say it and another thing to show it. And that’s where he fucked up.

He won’t ever again.

And as if the universe wants to toy with his feelings just a little more, someone shouting your name catches his attention and he twirls around on the bar stool he’s sitting on, jaw agape as he watches you strut into the bar with the sexiest LBD… is that the very LBD he’s ignored you putting on for him with that slit showing off your gorgeous legs? With that subtle shimmer and you’re even sporting that darker, sultry makeup look that’s excellent for a night out where you want to forget the fact that you’ve just called it off with your deadbeat boyfriend.

And he REFUSES to be the deadbeat boyfriend. Glancing at the drink the bartender so generously mixed for him, he dismisses it, adjusting his suit and tie as he hoists himself up from his seat and strides over toward you and Gojo who is lagging just behind you as your plus one like he promised with a kind of confidence and swagger he’s always been known to carry. Because for fuck’s sake, Gojo’s his best friend and maybe some of his behaviors have rubbed off on him a little.  

The worst part is throughout the entire time he’s spent building the courage to do something about what’s become of the two of you, you haven’t even spared him a glance. From the moment you enter, you are soaking up the attention you get from your friends, some he doesn’t know, and your mutual friends, practically glowing so bright it might rival the full moon tonight. You have never looked happier, more at peace, and it’s because you kicked him out of your life. 

His eyes bulge out of his sockets when he watches you saunter up to Ryomen Sukuna, of all the people in the world you are choosing to talk to, with a little flounce to those luscious hips of yours Geto is dying to sink his fingertips into while kissing you like he never wants to let you out of his grasp again… and he genuinely doesn’t, he understands his mistakes now, he wants to change himself, change for you, as long as he can make you happy and no one else. 

Call him selfish, but the only person he’s ever going to allow sharing you is with Satoru Gojo. He’s never had an issue with sharing anything with his best friend and that includes you, but with Sukuna? That prick with that hard stare that looks like he’s undressing you with his eyes every second he gets and this time, for some reason, you aren’t quivering and are instead leaning into it? Do you know he’s standing there, completely dumbfounded as your hand slides up Sukuna’s chest, your shoulders shaking as you laugh at one of his super unfunny and probably downright creepy jokes? Haven’t you told him on several occasions Ryomen Sukuna does nothing but give you the fucking creeps? And not only that, but even Toji Fushiguro has shown up to your side, greeting you with a bear hug that you don’t shy away from for reasons that are utterly lost to him. He’s drinking in the sight and hating every flavor he’s being introduced to and he doesn’t know what to do to cease all of this nonsense. He has to make a move though and fucking sooner than too late.

He inhales sharply, adjusting his posture and continues to weave through all of these sweaty dancers who are holding their drinks up in the air while singing along to some cheesy pop song but none of that is even important to him right now. His eye is on his prize but your eyes are on everyone else but him.

He stops as someone zooms past him, almost wanting to cuss the person out but he decides that’s a battle not worth fighting because he’s only focused on you and how you seem to be so keen on feeling up Toji’s pecs now! God! Doesn’t that guy ever skip a workout? It might do everyone around him a lot of favors–like having a shot at winning their beautiful girlfriend back! 

He stops, wetting his fingers and smoothing back his slick back bun of any flyaways before rubbing that hand on his slacks and using his dry hand to rest his hand on your back. He tries to put on that picture perfect smile but he can feel himself seething so much behind this smile of his that his teeth may crack from the pressure. 

And then he catches it: the way your shoulders lock up, the way your eyes dull ever so slightly under the cycling LED disco lights flashing everywhere around the bar. Toji gives him a look but says nothing; he and Sukuna know what type of person not to cross and Suguru Geto definitely isn’t one of those people they should mess with at all. 

You finally whip around, and his breath catches as he takes in your ethereal beauty, unmatched, no one in the world other than him can properly make it known just how much of a beauty you are to him. And he’s never going to make you feel anything other than beautiful and wanted. 

He’s never going to let you slip from his grasp ever again.

This is the moment of truth.

“Hey,” he greets with a low purr, as his fingers spread across your back. You shiver under his touch. Ah. He still has an effect on you whether you choose to acknowledge it out loud or to yourself or not; that’s reassurance in a way. That means there is still a chance for the two of you to live a happily ever after together, frolicking in the sunset as the credits begin to roll in the film or whatever it is people these days find to be the pinnacle of romance.

“Um,” you blink, eyes flitting from one area to another–perhaps in search of Gojo? “Hi.”

“Stop giving me the cold shoulder, pretty girl,” he drawls with that classic smoldering look on his face which may as well rival James Dean himself, as he draws you closer into his body. He’s impressed you don’t openly protest–perhaps your conviction in the breakup isn’t as strong as you made him believe it is? Or is he just clinging onto false hope? Either way, he’s good with either option because there’s something he can shape and mold from it. “Why don’t you let me dance with you?” 

“Because you’re not my date tonight,” you retort while sticking your nose in the air. “Satoru is.”

And speak of the fucking devil, he slides into the scene with a club soda in his hand because he’s not much of a drinker, casting Geto a look as if he hasn’t been plotting with him about winning you back just hours before all of this.

“Yeah, and I don’t exactly appreciate you trying to hog her attention, Suguru~” Gojo chides as he wraps an arm around your waist and pulls you toward him, or attempts to, anyway. Because Suguru’s grip isn’t budging. Not one bit. Even if Suguru has no problem sharing with Satoru, the whole point is that they share you. That’s the agreement. That’s the arrangement. He cannot let you go; he’s been dragged to the water and now he’s going to fucking take a sip.

“Fuck off, Satoru. For once,” he sneers, keeping his grip secure around your waist like you’re some consolation prize and he has a feeling this isn’t helping his case at all but what the hell else can he do right now if he wants to get you alone to talk? “I need to exchange a few words with her if you don’t fucking mind. YOu can have your fix of her later, but you remember what the rules are, don’t you?” 

“Rules schmules,” Gojo quips, pecking your ear and making you giggle, which makes Geto’s blood sizzle beneath his skin. Gojo really is trying to stir the pot just because he has such a fucking appetite for the drama and not because he actually wants to help him out, huh? “All I can say is you snooze, you lose, Suguru, and I can’t believe you slept on a beauty like this lovely lady who I get to spoil all night. Isn’t that right, gorgeous?” 

That look of disgust immediately melds into one of adoration when you look at Gojo and Geto’s heart sinks into his stomach at the mere sight of you like this. That look should be toward him, not just with Gojo. 

His grip tightens around your waist and you yelp a bit from the sudden pressure of Geto’s fingertips digging into the areas of your dress which expose your skin. His breath fans against the crook of your neck, and suddenly you’re covered in goosebumps. This position they put you in is definitely … 

“Ummm…” you trail off, your face flustered as you try to wiggle between the two men who are acting more like grade schoolers on a playground right now… which is 100% your fault. You put yourself into this mess all because you wanted to feel more seen and this is not exactly what you had in mind… “Guys, don’t I get a say in this? You know I adore the both of you–!”

“--then why did you break up with me? You know by extension, that means breaking up with Satoru too, right?” Geto challenges, yanking you closer toward him but Gojo doesn’t lose his grip on you either, stopping him and now the two of them are closing in on you to the point where you can feel their pelvises grind on either side of your hips.

Oh for fuck’s sake… 

Gojo’s breath fans against your face; your eyes fall to his face before flitting up to meet his electric blue eyes which are full of heat like blue stars. 

“Did you know he was going to show up tonight and you conveniently left out that little detail, Satoru?” you ask in a demanding tone, and Gojo returns with a noncommittal hum while Geto doesn’t waste his time, feathering his lips along the crook of your neck like he’s reclaiming his territory.

“We’re in the middle of a fucking bar,” you point out with a growl and both men laugh. 

“Come on, Princess, have a sense of adventure,” Gojo chuckles with a little twinkle in his eyes which can only mean trouble is brewing in that noggin of his. “Besides, we both really miss you, you know.”

“And just whose side are you on!?” you cry, exasperated as Gojo mirrors Geto’s movements, peppering kisses on the opposite side of your neck.

“Ours, by that I mean all three of us,” Gojo mumbles into your skin. “I want us to work out.”

“Ugh,” you groan, smacking your head. “This isn’t the most appropriate way to go about it when I just wanted a carefree night.”

“A carefree night when you look this good and I can’t be the one to sing praises to you like I’m part of a church choir?” Geto snarks as he bites onto your shoulder, making you jolt in place but they keep you secure. Arms snaking around your waist like chains. They’re not tugging and pulling you toward their direction and instead opting to share like they always do. 

“And did you really think, even if you broke up with me and ended up going out with Satoru, it meant you lost me? We come together whether you expect it or not.”

“In more ways than one,” Gojo adds with a playful wink, but Geto shoots him a glare. 

“While I appreciate the comedic timing, this isn’t the time, Satoru. Can you give us some time so we can talk about this for real? Go annoy Shoko or something. Or kick Toji in the dick for getting too close to her.”

“Toji would never have a shot with her and you know it,” Gojo replies easily and you can’t help but nod in agreement.

“I’m not attracted to bums,” you state, your stare boring into Suguru’s. “Clearly.” 

Fucking ouch. You don’t need to read him to filth like this but Geto knows he definitely is deserving of all that and probably more and he’s just being let off a little easy with a few blows to his ego…

But he’s willing to swallow that along with his pride right fucking now! 

“Baby,” he purrs, “I’m only here to take back what clearly belongs to me.”

“I’m not an object,” you sneer while narrowing your eyes into slits at him. The corners of his mouth twitch. So that game isn’t going to work on you either, huh? You’ve always been a tough nut to crack and that’s what he admires so much about you, and clearly he’s making an insult of that trait of yours now so he may as well backtrack and come up with an alternate plan on the spot! 

His eyes roll up to meet Gojo’s, which are still occupied on you (and who can blame him? You’re a shining star amidst all of these duller ones). 

“But seriously, Satoru,” Geto begins, as his hands slide slowly down your hips. You stiffen in their shared hold over you. “If you still want access to her you have to be fighting for her back with me, don’t you?” 

“I mean,” Gojo retorts with his voice going up an octave. “I see your point and I raise you: I can’t fight all of your battles. You’re on your own here. I wasn’t the one who was neglecting her!”

Geto glances at you, then back at Gojo, and then at Gojo’s hands still around your hips, tangled with his. Something hitches in his throat. This is not the most ideal situation to put you in, he can see you attempting to wriggle your way out but with both him and Gojo keeping you in place that doesn’t make it easy for you at all. 

“So will you let me take this elsewhere with her?” He meets your eyes. “Are you willing to hear me out?” 

You mirror his actions before turning over to Gojo, nodding at him and with a little scowl (which you quickly remedy with a smooch on the corner of his lips), he separates from the two of you. 

“Go kiss and make up with each other and hurry back. In the meantime, cheap bar food is waiting for me and I think I’m going to go annoy Shoko to death–”

“--I already pity her,” Geto snarks while scooping you into his arms practically and some brave soul whistles at his action while he whisks you away. 

To the fucking restrooms. How fucking glamorous and romantic. Holy shit, is that some dried piss on one of the stall doors? Gross! 

You glance around, fluffing your hair as you catch your reflection in the mirror. Geto peers at all the stalls ensuring there’s no one there to listen in (not that it matters, this should end as soon as it begins). If he thinks he’s going to get any just because he’s making an effort now then he’s got another think coming.

As well as more blows to that swollen, oversized pride of his.

Tapping your foot against the cold tiles in an impatient kind of rhythm, you wait for him to break the ice. You think you have done enough talking yourself, and you are a woman of your word, about hearing him out. See where that leads him. Maybe a black eye? A kick to the groin? That’s still letting him off easy because for fuck’s sake, you know how much you’re worth, and it’s not whatever he’s been giving you, for fucking sure. 

Chewing on his bottom lip, he wrings his hands together as he meets your eyes. Those beautiful glittering eyes of yours that may only rival Satoru’s. Your eyes and your heart are like an atlas in his world. Such a cliche line but it’s true. 

He addresses your name. You quirk an eyebrow, beckoning him to get a move on with this before you decide to walk out instead.

“Listen, I…” he starts, racking his mind for some form of a coherent argument as to why he hasn’t been as attentive as a partner as he should have been all of this time. “I don’t have an excuse, okay? You have every right to be upset with me, but what was with all of that before?” 

“Shifting the blame onto me? Is that where we’re starting with this?” you shoot back with another narrowing of your eyes. Oh he’s never felt more judged in his life but he deserves every bit of it. 

He takes a grounding breath. Here he goes again fucking up everything even more. Dragging his hand down his face, pulling down on his lower lip, he is still pondering over his words. If he’s not careful he’s going to dig himself into a six foot deep hole for you to kick him into and bury him alive. And maybe he’s not going to protest, because he almost would rather that than you moving on from him.

“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” Geto finally says after a beat of silence. He takes a step forward toward you. “I’m not trying to be difficult. I get it–I was inattentive. I know I was. I wasn’t making you feel seen or appreciated and I’m in pain just thinking about how much I neglected you without realizing it before it was too late. This can’t be the point of no return for us if I’m trying to reach out, right? I’m not asking you to give me any credit because I don’t need you to. What I want is for things to be better between you and me, and you know I’ll do everything to make that happen.” 

You pinch the bridge of your nose, biting back a groan. “Suguru, I’ve said it a million times: it’s one thing to say it and another thing to act on it. Love by itself isn’t enough, you know. It’s a choice. You have to make it work. Otherwise there’s no spark here.”

“Don’t say that,” Geto protests, resting a hand on your shoulder. “I want things to work.”

“Trapping me in the middle of a bar and pinning me against you and your best friend isn’t exactly the best way to go about it! I felt completely objectified!” you counter, jabbing your finger into his chest. “Sometimes I just don’t know who the hell you and Satoru think you are! Like what, you think I’m your property, or something? You have rights to everything about me as if I’m not my own goddamn person?”

“Of course not!” Geto retorts, appalled that you would even consider such distasteful things about him among all of the other distasteful things you have accused him of since you broke up with him. “Of course you’re your own damn person! Satoru and I got a little ahead of ourselves, sure, but only because we find you irresistible and perfect. Goddamn it, I”m sorry I wasn’t attentive enough, but you have no idea how much I adore you and need you with me. I love the way your eyes sparkle whenever you talk about something that happened on your favorite drama series or how engrossed you get when you’re in the middle of something that means something to you. I love that when your favorite song plays you have to act as if you’re in a music video or a play with that song and you drag me along to do your silly little skits. I love that you call people out on their bullshit and don’t pull your damn punches when you do. I love–!”

–your eyes soften as your voice drops to a whisper. “Suguru…”

“--I’m not finished, dammit. I love that I spend most of my days knowing I can come home to you. I get through my days knowing that you’re who I get to come home to and I fucked that up. I fucked that up royally and I get it, words are cheap and actions are louder. But goddammit, if it’ll take me until my dying breath to get a smile on that stupidly gorgeous face of yours, then I mean it when I say that I will do everything to make that happen.”

You’re rendered a speechless, blundering mess, face flushed a deep yet flattering shade of red for your complexion. Maybe you have taken this a few steps too far yourself, but all you wanted was to be seen and you suppose you are after all.

If you don’t know any better steam might be blowing out of your ears out of sheer embarrassment over how far you’ve blown this entire thing out of proportion. Now you’re the one feeling like a total ninny, certain your body is going to melt into a puddle of goop because there’s a part of you that can’t resist Suguru Geto like some shriveling school girl who keeps tripping over herself. 

Suguru calls your name again, gets your attention. Ugh you hate that his voice pulls you in even when you’re frustrated as fuck with him and with yourself. 

“S-sorry, that was just, um, a lot to take in at once,” you stutter, trying to compose yourself and find some kind of footing again in this conversation. Aren’t you supposed to be having a screaming match with each other? Instead he’s going on listing off all the things he loved about you which means yes while he has been negligent he still has paid attention to you. 

“Take your time,” Geto tells you, which makes your heart sink to your stomach this time. He’s always so goddamn patient with you, even when you don’t deserve his grace! “I’m not going anywhere. Not any time soon.”

He glides closer to you, cupping your face. You sniffle a little, feeling far more than just a little silly for everything that’s happened all because you let your feelings get the better of you. It’s human to err, but this is a royal fuck up on your part, too.

So you begin to apologize. 

“I–!” 

–yet he silences you with a tender kiss, which that action alone speaks for itself, speaks louder than any words he’s going to pull right out of his ass but you still feel like you need to address your own shortcomings… 

He pulls away for a moment, staring down into your eyes with that soft look he reserves only for you or Satoru. It’s maddening how easily he forgives you compared to how easily you forgive him. His thumbs stroke your cheeks and your mouth is suddenly void of moisture. 

No words left in you right then, either. So if you’re going to get onto him about not acting, you may as well follow up on your side of the argument. Grabbing a fistful of his fancy dress shirt (he’s not vain like Satoru), and pulling him in for another desperate kiss.

Soon you find your back hitting the edge of the sinks behind you, and Geto takes the liberty of hoisting you up by your bottom and helping you perch on there while he deepens the kiss, humming in approval. He doesn’t seem all that angry with you… but somehow you find that maddening because he should show more emotion sometimes!  He is always so… reserved and collected like nothing touches him when you know for a fact that isn’t true. He thinks he’s above feeling anything other than completely alright with the status quo which is another thing you have to address but one day at a time.

You find yourself swinging your legs while wrapping your arms around his neck, nipping onto his lips and playfully pulling on his bottom lip. He stares down at you with that trademark wolfish grin on him that makes him so unbelievably irresistible in that moment. You’re about to lean in for another kiss, but then the door swings open with Gojo holding a few plates of food and the background noise of some of the bar music seeming kind of distant where you are. 

“Did you two make up and fuck yet? Ohoho, I guess I checked in on you two right on time before someone else waltzed in here!” Gojo laughs, “Seriously guys, as brilliant as it is that you’ve made some progress here I don’t think it’s sanitary to fuck in a public restroom. We should save that for after we stuff our holes and then stuff someone’s gorgeous holes later.”

”Satoru!” Geto yells at him, exasperated and unimpressed. You can’t help but cackle, never mind how crass Gojo is (that’s basically ingrained in his DNA).

You sneak a kiss while Geto’s caught up in reprimanding Gojo on the corner of his lips, and Geto gasps while he glances at you, this time his face flushing a beautiful crimson and that’s not the only place that’s going to be red later if you have anything to say about it.

”We can talk more about this later,” you tell him, “This might not have been your greatest plan but thank you for reminding me of something important.”

”Oh? What’s that?”

”That you and Satoru really do see me,” you answer as your lips quirk into a small grin. Geto’s heart feels like it’s going to burst out of his chest, and he rests his hand over it to ground himself. 

“I never meant to make you feel anything less than.”

”Huh? Less than what?” you beckon, tilting your head.

“That’s it. Less than. Less than what you’re worth, which is everything.”

Ugh. 

“You’re going to make me lose all feelings in my legs,” you mutter, but you’re not angry, just frustrated because how can someone be so poetic without meaning to be? 

Geto grins wide, so wide it eerily resembles Gojo’s when he is scheming something.

”Not yet,” he promises.

You smack your head as you follow him out sometime after Gojo leaves. 

Oh no… now he even has a little skip to his step as he takes your hand in his, leading you toward one of the more spacious areas in the bar. Your roommates acknowledge you and one of them is pumping her fist, cheering for you, and you try not to read too much into it but you’re glad you have a good circle of folks around you. One of your roommates who has never felt any kind of way toward Geto does give him a bit of the stink eye but that’s only because she’s more on the protective side; she harbors similar feelings toward Gojo. The rest of the night moves faster than you can blink, and you exit the bar with your arms hooked around one of Gojo’s and one of Geto’s.

After your personal afterparty with the two of them, the three of you are tangled in Satoru’s bed together while you mindlessly scratch along Satoru’s scalp like a calming exercise. Whether he admits it out loud or not Geto is a thousand times clingier especially after sex with you than Gojo is so he has his head resting on your chest while playing around with your phone instead of his. All about that skin on skin contact even when all of your bodies are drenched in sweat… it is both disgusting and weirdly intimate all at once, but that’s the nature of sex itself, isn’t it? 

Gojo eventually into the cuddle fest confesses to Geto that the two of you never did anything together after you broke up with him and it was all just a charade to get him to act, to which he says he doesn’t mind, because he deserved it. And yes, indeed he deserved every bit of that and then some because you put him through way more than just fooling around with just Satoru. 

“I still didn’t like the idea of you humoring any of Sukuna’s texts to you,” Geto scoffs as he scrolls through your text thread with the aforementioned acquaintance. “This guy ought to get buried six feet under for how he’s talking to you like you’re just a fresh piece of meat.”

”You make him sound cannibalistic,” you remark with a teasing grin. Geto shakes his head as he hones in on a particular text, making him grimace.

He presents you with your phone screen. “What the hell? ‘Would love to see you on all fours, gorgeous thing’? Is this grown ass man for real? Is that supposed to be flattering?”

”Sounds like borderline harassment to me,” Gojo comments while chewing on some licorice. He offers you one and you decline. Geto takes a small bite off of his piece, but makes a face at the taste. Not a fan of sweets as a whole but he still tries whatever Gojo shoves down his throat (especially his dick). 

You curl your lips in disgust again. How can anyone like black licorice? Apparently Satoru… who otherwise has the palate of a five year old. 

“Fuck, yes it does. Should we pay him a visit?” Geto suggests and Gojo nods eagerly, making you bury your face into your palms. These two… 

“We’re just saying—you don’t deserve to be objectified. You said so yourself you’re not a fan of it,” Geto brings up, and you sigh, relaxing your shoulders. 

So he really does see you, huh? Shaking your head to yourself, you find yourself snorting at your own foolishness. Silly. So damn silly you are. For someone who makes a big deal about ensuring there is ample communication between the three of you, you sure feel like a bit of a hypocrite right now. But again, it’s not like you haven’t tried to talk things out with Suguru far before all of this began. 

Speaking of which… 

You plant a swift kiss on his cheek, and his bewildered indigo eyes meet yours. You smile a little. There’s still plenty of time to discuss the elephant in the room, but not when they’re all appreciating each other’s afterglow. Suguru traces a finger along your collarbone, leaving a reverent trail of kisses after. 

“Man I didn’t expect to be third wheeling in my own relationship,” Gojo interjects with an exaggerated frown on his face. You laugh before planting a kiss to his lips, which instantly makes that frown disappear. No one likes to see such a ball of sunshine (and insufferableness) upset too long. Time to make that frown upside down! (Ah it seems he is rubbing off on you too…) 

While you’re attending to Satoru’s neediness, kissing down his neck and making him purr like a content kitten, Suguru continues to trail kisses along your cleavage before trailing to your back, kissing down your spine, hiking your leg up— 

“—if you try anything, I’m going to kick you in that stupid pretty face of yours,” you warn, “I don’t think I have another orgasm in me.”

”If you would be so kind as to let me challenge that theory…” he murmurs, face inching closer to your intimates.

”Suguru,” you chide again, “Not now.”

”Fiiiine,” he pouts, behaving as indignant as Satoru would be when he’s denied his favorite sweet. 

He still doesn’t stop himself from kissing along your thighs and just in general continuing other ways of spoiling you to death, which in that case, who are you to deny him something like that? 

Satoru lets out a little yawn that surprises even him as he tries to snuggle you a little closer into him and you nuzzle your face into his strong pecs. He may be skinny and lanky like Geto but his build is still sturdy. You draw circles around his unoccupied pec and he responds with a dreamy sigh. As messy as things can get with the three of you—a lot of it’s your fault this time—you can honestly say with your full chest that it’s in these moments where all of those other trying times make it all worth it. You don’t want things to go south with any of you so as long as they try to remember not to take each other for granted, then this could be all you need in your life. This is worth settling down for—these two gloriously hopeless men who you have fallen helplessly in love with yourself. 

“Baby?” you hear Satoru sleepily murmur as he decides it’s time to retire to sleep finally… you glance at your phone screen to see it’s just over a quarter after 3AM and you know at least for yourself you have a pile of work to attend to tomorrow. That can be tomorrow’s issue, along with still talking things out… 

“Hm?” you acknowledge him as both you and Geto join him. 

“You’re going to stick with us forever, right?” he prompts, glancing at you with hope in his eyes like some impressionistic child. 

“What are you, five? You do forget how finite our lives are, don’t you?” Geto interjects with a judgy look. You huff at his remark, which while true and another inevitability about their lives, he should still be a little more sensitive about Gojo’s feelings as well.

”Humor him, Suguru,” you chide with a playful whack on his shoulder blade, making him grunt in response. “Of course, Satoru. I didn’t mean to make you feel uncertain.”

”I know,” he remarks, before glancing at Suguru. “Er, we know.”

You chuckle at their antics, as Geto and Gojo simultaneously cage an arm around you and keep you snug in between them like nearly every night spent together. Just the three of them. The three of you work as a unit; you can’t believe you’re about to let all of that go just because you didn’t communicate your needs effectively enough. You have learned your mistake; you only hope Geto has learned his. There’s more to discuss when your mind isn’t about to drift off into blissful unconsciousness with the two men you love completely and wholly and hopelessly. 

Both Gojo and Geto plant a kiss on your cheeks, and you stifle a laugh. Oh, how silly you are,  how silly, indeed. 

“You better not break up with me again,” Geto warns but you pick up on the playful undertone. You roll your eyes, before exchanging a look with Gojo.

“Way to ruin a moment, Suguru,” Gojo scolds, shooting him a look. “And that’s usually my role! We were just getting all cozy and stuff and you had to go and make some empty threat.”

“It’s almost like that was the idea,” Geto counters with a smirk. 

“Just go to fucking sleep you two,” you groan as you flutter your eyes shut. “If I hear one more word come out of either of your mouths I’m washing them out with soap tomorrow morning.”

“Jesus,” Gojo breathes, his breath fanning your forehead a bit. “Whatever you say, Princess. We’re just glad you’re not leaving us for real any time soon.”

“Damn right she isn’t or we’re going to have serious issues,” Geto grumbles. You fall asleep to a bit more of them arguing as per tradition at this point, but it’s all white noise to you now.

It’s something to remind yourself to be grateful about having in your life.

[lemonhemlock]

the reason why i don't think blood & cheese works without maelor is because it undermines the gravity of helaena's choice

in the books, as we all know, she has to choose which son to sacrifice. blood & cheese are going to kill one either way, so, whatever happens, if you want to get cynical about it, aegon will still be left with a male heir of his body. no, the horribleness of the choice lies not really in dynastic matters, but in basic humanity: which of your children are you willing to condemn to death? and helaena truly does try to make the best out of a bad situation, she picks not because she loves jaehaerys more, but because maelor is so tiny that she hopes he won't understand what's going to happen to him.

and she absolutely has to choose, because b&c threaten to rape her daughter if she doesn't. it's psychological torture. b&c just want to fuck her up in the head as much as possible and helaena tries her goddamnest to minimize the harm done to her family. to further compound on the tragedy, b&c kill the opposite child, so now she has to live out the rest of her days knowing that the son left alive is the son SHE herself marked for the axe. which is what understandably drives her to lose her mind

now, in the show, the "problem" blood & cheese have doesn't exist at all: that they can't supposedly tell the twins apart. but (as awful as it sounds, since it involves sexual assault) they could very easily check which child has male genitalia and be done with it. it's a "problem" that takes literal seconds to solve. they don't need helaena at all! it becomes irrelevant which child she points towards - b&c can always just check! she can't save jaehaerys in this situation no matter what she does, because b&c were never interested in jaehaera in the first place. in the books, she has the ability to save one child and this exact horrible "agency" bestowed on her torments her for the rest of her days. in the show, even had she pointed towards jaehaera, it would have been a narrative plot hole for the writers to have killed her without checking

likewise, in the books, she begs them to kill her instead, but, in the show, she offers them a necklace? you can't deny that the dramatic stakes are lowered substantially by making that change. which one of these options would have been more filled with pathos? personally, it just feels like this was phia's moment to shine and, while she did a good job with what she had, every narrative choice was somehow made to subdue this horrible event and left her only crumbs to work with. cinematically-speaking, this scene (as it was executed) does not even come close to the iconic moments that cemented GoT into the collective consciousness, which is very strange, as the subject matter is anything but mediocre

and that's not even getting into the rest of the plot holes that others have already pointed out, like:

- why are there no guards at helaena's door or anywhere else for that matter? not just on that hallway, but on many other hallways, she has to run quite a lot to get to alicent's chambers

- why is her room unlocked at the very least

- why is ALICENT's room unlocked, for that matter? she is having secret guilty sex with criston and she forgets to lock her door in a castle full of spies? anyone could have walked in

- not even getting into this whole thing just being one huge misunderstanding + minimizing daemon's and mysaria's roles :))

- NOT EVEN mentioning removing the trauma of alicent witnessing all of this, gagged and bound on her own bed, not being able to help or intervene in any way

i can understand the likelihood of these elements happening sometimes (maybe someone does forget to lock their door from time to time, maybe a guard does shirk their duties from time to time), but you can't write all of them at once without it turning all looney tunes. if you introduce too many aspects that defy logic in your story, it ceases to be believable and just becomes bad writing

___________________________________________

also, "they killed <the boy>"? not "my son" or "jaehaerys"? it sounds so removed, don't you think? helaena out there on her mother's floor dropping exposition for the audience 🥲

[marronje]

Now having gotten somewhat used to the void in my chest I can finally drag all my thoughts about the epilogue into one pile

I know it may be getting old for some of you guys already, but I haven't seen some things being discussed anywhere

My problem with the ending is actually with the audience, I literally have almost no issues with how the epilogue is written, all the minor ones I have don't come from the epilogue but the previous plot building which wasn't perfect by all means.

1. People forget that this chapter isn't the Epilogue but the Epilogue pt. 2

TWO PARTS YOU KNOW

Please reread 430. You did? Now let's compare.

a) Can you see what the chapter is focused on? 430 is a lot more shallow, it focuses on facts and tries to contain all the changes at once and looks VERY rushed. Hori didn't have much time with his schedule, so of course he tried to fit all at once and nothing at all. This chapter is more about the system and facts, trying to answer the more crucial questions fans may have.

Chapter 430 has ~20 pages

431 has almost 40 (!)

b) 431 finally has time to look at the characters up close. Why there is so much about Uraraka? Well, because in the pt. 1 she's got one panel and a couple of words. That's why half the chapter is about her now, because she and Izuku are the male and female leads of the manga.

c) Why didn't we have more of Katsuki? Well, this character isn't very known for huge inner monologues and all this sappy stuff. We can get enough from character interaction and subtle cues, as always. Despite being a big asshole and a major loudmouth (I say this with all my love and adoration guys), Katsuki is a really stoic character. And this kind of character doesn't need a whole 5 pages writing down their motivation and inner thought process. I like this. This man remains the most conscious person here and has the greatest development in the series (and Shoto, sure, these two are on the whole other level compared to others in terms of writing)

Izuku and Ochako are more open to us, and it shows in the chapter's way of storytelling

And Shoto is still the most relatable dude here, me too, Shoto, me too...

2. Izuku is NOT shutting Katsuki out of his life. He basically invited him to TEACH TOGETHER just like Katsuki invited him to BE HEROES TOGETHER.

To me it shows clearly that these two just found their two paths that don't align fully. Izuku has been teaching for years after his quirk was gone. Sure, he still adores hero job, but he already has stability and purpose and it's IMPORTANT to him. He's only been back to heroics for a month after all. Izuku has matured significantly, and I respect that about his character even if it's not perfectly written.

"Izuku wouldn't ever decline the offer". Do I need to remind you that it's whole 8 years after their school days?

Imagine yourself 16, dreaming to start a rock band with your best friend. You're both so passionate about it, you think music is the most beautiful thing in your life and you'll never be over it.

But you get your fingers injured severely, and you can't play your guitar anymore. You're devastated, but your knowledge is valuable and you get a whole teaching degree and go to work in a musical college. It feels very fulfilling to you. But your friend is very talented, he continues and pushes forward and actually becomes a worldwide known rock star! You're so glad for him!

But the time passes, and your friend, now famous and loaded, states – you're getting most expensive treatment and surgery, and we – I and our old band bros – pay for this.

And your fingers, they work properly again. You had a whole life of 8 years, and now there are so many possibilities open. You know your friend wants you to join his band and travel and rock the stage together, he offers it to you without expecting much, because he knows you have your life settled already, you can't change that with a flick of a wrist. He's an understanding friend, even if his passion for your old shared dream burns brighter still. You can join his band for a concert or two once in a while, it's a good reprieve from your everyday life. But as much as you love music, your priorities shifted significantly since your youth – and now teaching is as important and precious to you.

You even invite your friend to give a lesson of two in the college where you work. It's a way for you two still remain in each other's lives even if your paths are a bit different now. Your connection is built on compromise and genuine support from both sides, and it's fantastic!

I know the analogy isn't perfect, but it works I suppose.

3. About Himiko and Ochako. It's a painful one, but

No, Himiko wasn't haunting Ochako for the whole 8 years, it's probably a time to time occasion. It's not because Ochako is tired, it's because she can't let go of her guilt and at particularly taxing times it manifests in these visions.

Dreams are still a big mystery for science, but what we know is that they're almost always NOT about what you see, but about the hidden layers of meaning.

And of course we know this is not REAL Himiko, it's just Ochako's mind.

So I don't understand all the weeping around Himiko now being DEAD FOR REAL OH. This is Ochako's mind, not a literal Toga's spirit no matter how much Horikoshi wants his symbolisms to be literal in this story. It's still open to interpretation if Toga is dead or notnot (she's coping).

Tsuyu is so Tsuyu 😭😭😭

Right, my girl, this dummy really thought there's something wrong with her health while she just needed to see a psychologist...

I remind you that psychotherapy is severely underdeveloped in Japan. There's still a lot of stigma around mental health there, so please keep this mentality in your mind while reading manga. "They could just go and see a therapist." No, they couldn't. Their culture doesn't work like this, and societal norms aren't a joke in Japan, they're literally overwhelming.

And about how this chapter "ruined" Himiko. To me, it didn't.

"Himiko was written for Ochako". Exactly. Ochako's main negative character trait was inability to open up about her true feelings, putting up a cheerful front and all that.

Himiko was created to get her to understand what suppressing emotions does to people. Unfortunately, it seems she didn't catch this message fully until Himiko told her with plain words and freaking pushed her forward.

And isn't it a torture for Himiko seeing Ochako beating herself over her death, putting up a brave front to avoid her inner struggle which is COMPLETELY OPPOSITE to what Himiko tried to convey?

And Himiko loved both Izuku and Ochako, so of course she wants them to be special for each other and open up to each other too.

Because Himiko LOVES love in any form (pun intended), and wishes happiness for her special people, and sees how they have been holding back from living how they wanted.

Do you really think Himiko would prefer a depressed Ochako having hallucinations of her over an Ochako who's opening up and rebuilding connections with the man she yearned to reach out to for so long?

And of course I'm not about the ship. This manga was never about the ships. We've got a clue that Izuku barely had any contact with his former classmates since graduation in 430. This chapter is created to gives us hope that it'll change, starting with Uraraka because Uraraka was the one to reach out to him first in the beginning, and now it's his turn.

I imagine that it's just a start of the reconnection arc. Izuku can do this with the rest of his classmates too later, and knowing his tendency to butt into others' business he certainly will.

(Yeah, it's an actually good idea for a new tome for you Hori, not Boruto 2.0, never Boruto 2.0 please...)

4(?). This one has gotten me confused...

They studied 3 years... so they must have become class 2-A, then 3-A.... I hope it's a bad translation.

Do you trust Jirou? She certainly did put a whole ton of wasabi in his food, look at her face

Katsuki not toasting because he's the sober friend for his whole bunch of idiots>>>>

(he really has come here for the food)

Katsuki, when did you undergo your Syndrome arc?

[aroaceleovaldez]

what's your opinion on the trials of apollo series? (if you already have a post like this, you could link it below, i just haven't seen it if so)

I think it has an interesting concept and introduces some interesting worldbuilding, plus some nice new characters, but overall it's not executed well and is an unnecessary third series. A lot of TOA kind of ends up breaking the theses of the first series by creating a premise that basically every character involved needs to be retconned to be able to fit within. It also focuses way too heavily on unnecessary cameos and retcons/overcorrecting previous mistakes. Not to mention how much new stuff it introduces that is... not great. Altogether it's kind of a mess. But I can see promise in some of the core concepts.

My two main sort of main "takes" on how I think TOA could be improved is either: a.) remove Calypso from HoO and instead have her be re-introduced in TOA as a tritagonist in a trio with Apollo and Meg, with the focal point of the trio's dynamic being the intersection of their experiences and how they relate to one another - with a lot of emphasis on Calypso being a mirror to Apollo in both being stripped of their immortality and thrown into the mortal world and having been unfairly punished. Then have Calypso join the Hunt in approximately TTT (essentially her way of taking control of her own life again and regaining her immortality) so the finale is Meg and Apollo on their own and Calypso's absence is naturally felt because we're used to trio dynamics in the franchise. It'd be a great way to break the convention of the series while also playing with this feeling of loss but also hope leading up to the final fight in a meaningful way without having to lean so heavily on unnecessary (and poorly executed) character death. Calypso is gone because she got her happy ending, and now it's Meg and Apollo's turn.

or b.) - and this is apparently controversial - instead of having the protagonist be Apollo, have it be Ares. Otherwise the overarching plot is the same. This way you can keep the plot structure but not have to entirely retcon Apollo's character to fit the story concept. It also finally ties up that loose thread about Ares never seeing repercussions for his actions and allowing him to have a positive character arc that way more naturally touches upon events from the previous series. As a bonus it also allows for bringing PJO!Ares closer to how he's mythologically portrayed and examining some of his mythological themes and what exactly he's the god of. Mars is an agricultural god! Having his deuteragonist being a daughter of Demeter would be really fun to highlight that! Mythologically he's usually portrayed as a really good father! Let's allow him to have some character development where he stops being such a jerk!

One of my core problems with TOA is Apollo's character is retconned entirely for TOA to even begin, he doesn't have any actual true flaws that he needs to work on throughout his character arc, and by the end he's literally just back where he started with his characterization in PJatO. It's a total net-zero. Why? Having Ares be the protagonist instead would be a great opportunity to take his currently very stagnant character from PJatO (and the very little he shows up in HoO) and have him change dramatically for the better. Doing so would also fit way more with the themes of the first series.

[beifong-brainrot]

Everytime I hear these "The Krew were weak/ the Krew were bums" takes I lose a year of my lifespan.

Like this style of take that I've seen almost everywhere?

Im fucking tired, and I don't think it's a good way to defend Korra either. Like, ok, it's shifting the 'blame' from Korra's supposed weakness through the show onto other characters.

Like, I'm sorry but Asami's hand to hand combat skills, even without her glove, are at least on the level of a Kyoshi warrior. And she can do that shit in heels too.

Like she's hella flexible and smart about her combat, usually using her opponents momentum or weapons against them. She thinks well on the fly, and is highly adaptable, which is crucial for a nonbender going up against benders.

This is without even getting into how smart she is with engineering/tech and how she seems to be able to pilot literally any machine somehow.

Mako is also, just a ridiculously talented firebender, especially for someone raised on the streets. He can genrate lighting, something even Zuko was unable to. He's one of the precious few, and only non waterbender/bloodbendee or Avatar to break a bloodbendinh hold.

Like Amon himself spoke about how it was almost a shame to remove the bending of someone so talented. Mako has also been shown multuple times to be able to almost completely halt explosions in their track, even injured.

And Bolin. BOLIN.

I'm sorry but if you think Bolin isn't a fucking killing machine held back from mass murder by onky his golden retriever personality, you watched the show with horse blinders on.

Like the lavabending itself is so op thay the writers will actively nerf him by making him only use his lava disk, when, realistically, he should be yeeting lava around.

But Bolin is also insanely agile for an earthbender, literally going up against earth's steady and grounded movements. But, I'd say Bolin's earthbending resembles firebending in how he moves, particularly the speed and power.

Like, controversial opinion? Bolin at the end of tlok, could probably beat Toph at the end of atla. Or at least be evenly matched enough for me to not see a clear winner. Maybe he can even hold his own and beat out old lady Toph too, if he locks in.

Like I'm sorry. He's Fucking goated.

And honestly, it took me a while to figure out why this idea that the Krew were weak is so persistent, and I think I have a theory.

See, in atla, whenever a character achieves a new skillset, its a momentous moment, or we linger on it. Katara had a whole storyline around becoming a master waterbender, and she is given the accolades she rightfully deserves for it. The Blue Spirit was, essentially the "oh, look, Zuko's a super cool ninja too" episode. Sokka gets a whole episode to add swordsmanship to his skill tree. Toph's moment of discovering metalbending is incredibly framed and focused on, with it being a huge gamechanger against the Fire Nation. And of course, Aang mastering the elements is a centerpiece of the show.

In contrast, due to its faster pacing and bigger focus on plot, tlok has to kinda gloss over the big moments the characters have. They have to learn their skills quickly and without fanfare, and so we don't get the feeling of achievement or awe when they do display some exciting feat.

For example, let's contrast the moment Toph developed metalbending, to the moment Bolin discovered he was a lavabender.

Toph's discovery of metalbending is well prefaced with her storyline that episode being entwined with Aang's and Guru Pathik's lessons, taunts from her aggressors, deep family drama, the resolution of a b plot that has been going on since basically her introduction, as well as atrong focus on her mastering and understanding the technique.

After she gains the ability, she is boisterous and triumphant, singing her own accolades. Its a very compelling an uplifting moment that we can empathise with, and we're often reminded of it with how other characters (specifically Sokka) will often be "so glad they added her to the group".

In comparison, Bolin had a few little moments diplaying his personal issues surrounding metalbending, and some nice forshadowing with Wei's "trial by fire" comment, but it's nothing you will linger on, or get attached to as you would with Toph's storyline. You don't have time to get acquainted with this particular issue of Bolin's, so you don't exactly feel vindincated when he does prove himself by learning lavabending.

There is also no weight to the actual discovery. Sure, there's the lingering shot on his face, the implication that he's throwing himself into the inferno for only a sliver of hope of dabing his brother and friends. But when he does successfully become the third non Avatar lavabender known to history, he only gets a little joke to mark his status. Then the group immediately jumps into action, as the plot has to keep going again.

It's... depressing? And once again reminds me of what tlok could've maybe been if the show weren't so fucked over runtime wise. Because the building blocks are there. We just have to skim over them, and if you're expecting your characters' 'powerlevel' to be quantified into easily tangible storylines, weighty moments and character dialogue, you're not really gonna find anything remarkable.

Though I really wish we didn't put down characters just to elevate a broadly hated character. There is, in my opinion, very little rhyme or reason to the overwhelming wave of hate Korra gets. Trying to disperse it by blaming her supposed 'failures' on other characters won't work, because they are here fo hate Korra. They're just looking for an excuse to do so.

[namelessdumbass]

Rite Here Rite Now

It was amazing and funny. Copia girlies and boys fucking won!

I expected different outcome, tbh. Tobias managed to surprise me and also made me a tiny bit sad (reasons will be explained in the spoilers below).

The film consists of like 95% of concert footage and 5% of off stage/plot stuff. The quality of sound and editing is just 🤌 I expected the live of Twenties to be good and gosh Ghost delivered. And Mummy Dust...Tobias let Mary Goore out! But i honestly prefer Terzo's version (CaD) better. Sorry not sorry haha. Ghouls/Ghoulettes footage. Everyone who loves them will be very veeeery well fed!

Dance Macabre live...i was'nt wrong when i called it a satanic gay party 😁

The movie is worth watching and i do hope Ghost releases it as soon as possible for all those who were not able to go.

The spoiler free review ends here. Don't read further if you don't want to spoil it for yourself. And please, don't copy them and paste it everywhere for the sake of ruining other people's fun! Seriously, don't fucking do that!

If you accidently clicked here, don't worry! spoilers will be below and you still have a chance to avoid them :)

Alriiiiight:

Movie starts with Saltarian who tells fans to record for the first 2 minutes, to show how happy they are etc and posted a qr code for fans to upload those recordings. I guess it will be put up on RHRN website. We'll see. There were also photos of fans who attended LA ritual. I fucking loved the person who showed up in a giant Plushia suit. I LOLed! Then fans were asked to put down the phones and enjoy the movie. The beginning was narrated Star Wars kinda style (a little bit) with the small recap of the chapters and about Copia's worries that he might die. And yes, it literally began in space lol. The movie is basically is like what we saw in small snippets Ghost posted earlier. Plot mixed with a really good show.

And the plot: -Short footage of Copia and Ghouls arriving. ALmost the whole set was the same as any other concert from Re-Imperatour + a few awesome exceptions. -Dews does that annoying thing with guitar, Rain stops him, takes his pick and throws it into the crowd and Dew...he freaking showed him YouSuck sticker on the backside of his guitar. Peak Dew moment! -Copia asked the right question about the Clery. He also does not quite understand what it does, why and where it goes. I suppose Tobias decided to thicken the Ghost lore a bit and will have more clarity in the nearest future. -Remember when Copia jumped at the end of the Watcher in the Sky? He ended up in one of those stage boxes (for equipment or something) and is taken to the stage B. While he's carried to it by Kevin he has a chat with Nihil's ghost. Nihil says he recorded not 2, but 3 songs. That probably means that we'll hear a new one. (UPD: the new song we heard during the credits, "The Future is a Foreign Land" is Nihil's 3rd song! Confirmed by Tobias himself in a new interview). He also tells Copia to breath in deep and then farts. -On the Stage B Copia sings "If You Have Ghosts". 3 Ghoulettes played piano and violins and the 4th one did the haunting ghost-like opera vocals. It was beatiful. Copia kissed her hand. -He then wore boxing robe and went next to crowd. Almost the whole scene was shown in the trailer. -Btw, remember that silly moment when Nihil's eyes were crossing? Well, Kevin was also included in that staring contest. -Twenties live. The skeletons, the performance and one of those skeletons who crawled between Dew's legs...that's hot. -Nihil calls Copia "son". Copia calls Nihil "Dad". Cardi will insult him later, don't worry. -Nihil/Seestor cartoon during MOAC. Yes, that's when Sis hit him with the car. Basically it's what happens after "Kiss the Go Goat" mv. Sister leaves and Nihil runs after her. "I'll never let you go". They end up kissing in a coffin on a graveyard , later Nihil wakes up naked in a bed in a motel and we see Sister leave. -There was a moment in a movie when we see Ashley (stage crew) bring Copia a new pair of shoes and put the on on his feet. Tobias, goddammit what the hell was that? :D -Seestor was a in wheelchair all the time -She and Nihil encouraged Copia throughout the whole movie and gave him a piece of advice. -About the baloon from the poster. Copia flies on it after finishing the set...or he imagined that because a few moments later after Nihil/Seestor flashbacks he ends up on the floor and watches Seestor die. All of the Ghouls and Ghoulettes also stood right next to her. -Copia has a twin brother -Copia didn't die and became the head the Clergy (Father Imperator or something like this). He found out about his new position from a letter Seestor left for him. -New song during credits (credits show dictators, assassinations, wars and the use of nuclear war). Years 1984 and 2024 mentioned. The song is not heavy. -Ghouls/Ghoulettes real names mentioned in the credits -Funny post credit scene with Copia. He had no piant on and had a new cool drip (with black jacket and red and black cross). Seestor is also a Ghost now. Tobia's children cameo. They're also Ghosts. -Papa V is teased the same way Copia was teased in a chapter 1. They even used the same music (Pro Memoria). No face reveal. Either he will be revealed in new Chapters or at some point during the new tour???

-aaaand my biggest disappointment: no footage of Primo, Secondo and Terzo. Literally ZERO.

I mean, Nihil is a Ghost, Seestor also became a Ghost, even Tobias' children made a cameo as Ghosts, but nothing for previous Papas? Really?! The same could have been done for them, but i guess Tobias doesn't care about them anymore :( And it hurts. I know that's my fault that i had so many expectations and hopes, but holy shit :( As a newbie who never saw previous Papas, i'm so sad i'll never get a chance to see them and there won't be any new footage of them. Being Terzo widow is so hard. Guess that's why i'm a bit salty Copia lives (sorry, guys, i like him, but i also hate him haha)

And yes, as it turned out the twins theory from Square Hammer was true...but not for Terzo 😭

I enjoyed the movie nevertheless. It's fun and kinda gives you an opportunity to see the band "live" if you've never been to a ritual before. And yes, the movies was'nt just about Papa IV and his fate, i believe it was also Tobias' message for us to enjoy the life rite here rite now! As i said, Copia's girlies and boys truly fucking won. Congrats, lads, your Papa lives and will live! I bet that feels amazing. Thanks for reading! P.S. since you know the plot, don't spoil it for the others please.

[ekkotimesthree]

RE: Homestuck Discourse, Media Literacy, Fandom Entitlement, & The Puppet Theory

an essay by yours truly

content warning: discussions of child abuse, CSA, & child neglect

so many discourses and debates surrounding homestuck boil down to lacking basic media literacy. so instead of making a petulant rant, i’ll attempt writing a productive essay, but forgive me if my annoyance seeps into parts of this post due to the subject matter. let’s start with dave, since he’s one of the most contentious characters (also because he’s my blorbo, sorry not sorry), and move on from there!

i constantly see people say something along the lines of “davekat happening in the retcon timeline makes no sense why would terezi ignore dave and gamzee yada yada yada”, like there’s not a whole scene that explains this! and it’s one of the most plot relevant scenes in the comic!! if you don’t know what the blood scarf even is, your opinion on this irrelevant, since you didn’t read/remember the text. rule number one of media literacy is properly consuming the media.

“dave being abused and the gay stuff came out of nowhere” this is definitively not true. one of the first things we learn about dave is that he has to hide food in his room so he doesn’t starve, and that this is an intentional choice by his brother. oh, and then his brother actually beats the shit out of him on screen, while not letting him abscond, right after we see john and rose strife their parents in a healthy way no less. (take note of bro using cal, and dave trying to abscond from him. more on that later.)

and re: dave’s sexuality, rose immediately points out that dave is probably gay during their first on screen interaction, and it’s her first line of dialogue to him.

TT: In some cultures the persistent refusal of a lady's invitation to play a game with her would be a sign wanton disrespect.

TT: Either that, or flagrant homosexuality.

moving on, later that same day, dave outright admits he loves john:

in these scenes, rose would be considered a mouthpiece! author’s use mouthpieces to get across information to the audience, that the character(s) themsel(ves) don’t know. in this case, that character is dave.

so now let’s address the elephant in the room, you probably thought these messages were just jokes, and that’s okay! that’s for three reasons:

first, your worldviews and perspectives shift the way you perceive the world, and more specifically art in this instance. that’s a fundamental part of the human experience. having your own personal biases based on your life experiences isn’t inherently a bad thing! for example, if you finish my essay, you can learn more about compulsive heterosexuality, or the effects of child abuse, see all of the signs, all without having to deal with it first hand. which is great! that’s the point of art and storytelling.

secondly, you probably still thought dave was straight while reading this narration. that’s because homestuck is written in deep pov, or as you would probably call it, unreliable narration. these are technically two separate things, but i don’t feel like breaking down all of those pedantics. all you need to know is: deep pov is when a character’s worldviews and perspective shift the narrative, rather than a story being told objectively. think junie b jones, the percy jackson series, or uh, catcher in the rye, if you’re into that sort of thing. that means that all the dialogue and narration within homestuck will always have some level of subtext, aka the non-literal explanation for text. homestuck is made by adults for adults, so it’s created on the basis we can analyze the text, and come to our own conclusions, unlike YA and children’s media.

a lot of people assume homestuck is supposed to be YA series, but that’s not the case. homestuck’s themes are about exploring the effects of child abuse and neglect, which you need to be an adult to fully understand. and unlike cinderella, homestuck shows child abuse on screen, and as we’ll discuss later, tackles subject matter about CSA, or child s*x*al *ss*lt. that inherently makes it a 18+ story, no matter the ages of any characters involved. just because most of us read homestuck as kids doesn’t really have any impact on that.

“well there’s no explicitly 18+ content in homestuck!!! they’re all 13!!!!” please take one look at equius’s room, or translate damara’s dialogue, and tell me if you still feel that way. oh, and read the epilogues too. also do you not remember the sheer amount of bloodshed, sex jokes, and cursing shown without a single censor??? even the official homestuck twitter said this:

finally, it’s also worth mentioning the time homestuck was made, because art can’t be removed from it’s historical context. so in 2009, gay representation was still virtually non-existent, especially in children’s and teen media. in the 2000s there was an extremely prevalent trope, “queer people are funny”, where the whole joke is that a character doing something that could be perceived as gay, or transgender, is funny. this problem was especially rampant in media for men. the most infamous example of this is family guy this was s8e18 of family guy, “quagmire’s dad”, where the whole joke is that brian slept with a trans woman, and everyone single joke comes at the expense of the trans woman, who’s relegated to a background role, while the narrative focuses on quagmire and brian’s emotions, the two cis men. so what homestuck is doing is called a deconstruction of this trope! deconstruction is where you break something down to critically analyze the philosophy behind it. we’ll leave a pin in john for now (just you wait), but it’s made extremely clear that dave is struggling with internalized homophobia, thus deconstructing why he makes these jokes in the first place. by the end of homestuck, dave says:

DAVE: but ive had a fuck ton of time on my hands to think about stuff. about stuff ive said and done in the past why i said and did them. a lot of things i once would have insisted were like part of my brand and helped me come across cool and smartassy, but now im not so sure. we used rip on each other all the time for being gay even though we knew we werent which of course is what made it "funny" remember?

with this quote, and the knowledge that dave goes onto date a man, i don’t think anyone is denying the internalized homophobia now, so let’s move onto reading this:

i’m sure all of us are thinking “there’s no heterosexual explanation for this, he doesn’t even like ben stiller!” OR “maybe dave’s just too embarrassed to admit he likes shitty movies? is it really more than that??” either way, that’s because hussie utilitized the rule of three to make you subconsciously notice dave’s obsession with irony! the rule of three is used to set patterns in a story, either to establish a fact, or to subvert the viewer’s expectations. for example, let’s analyze this joke:

notice how terezi’s third response is the funny one?by setting up the pattern, both you and john are expecting her to keep laughing in response, so when terezi flips the script on him, it’s hilarious. that’s called payoff, or in this instance, comedic payoff. now we can compare that to dave’s irony, where it was mentioned three times on one panel. no subversions of expectations here! that’s because hussie wants to establish dave’s obsession with irony, and they did so by creating a pattern you would notice subconsciously. this is how the rule of three works! psychology is cool, right?

so now that we can all agree that the subtext here is related to the irony, we have a new problem: we’ve only gotten dave and rose’s perspectives. we still need one more to complete the rule of three. fuck. thank god i can skip ahead!

using my whimsical ability to read ahead analyze text, i find out what john said to dave, and leave out the unimportant bullshit for everyone’s sake (mostly mine though):

dear dave, happy birthday!!! (…) i got you these. they're totally authentic! they actually touched ben stiller's weird, sort of gaunt face at some point. i'm sure you'll dig them because i know you lolled so hard at that movie. ok so for real, this is sort of a shitty present, but it is an ironic present because i know you wouldn't have it any other way. maybe you can wear them ironically some time. they MIGHT even be more ironic than you and your bro's dumb pointy anime shades.

now we have three characters’ perspectives on dave’s behavior. you’re probably able to put together the pieces i’m putting down, but for those who aren’t getting it: when you compare john’s letter, with dave’s actions, and rose’s messages, you realize that: dave is keeping these glasses because he loves john, not because he likes ben stiller, but he can’t admit that to himself, hence why his narration overcompensates with the usage of irony! it’s worth noting that all of these examples are from dave’s pov, because switching to rose or john’s pov would no longer make them mouthpieces!

“okay but isn’t dave’s perspective not reliable either??” yes! that’s why we’re using his actions as textual evidence, not his statements. the fact dave kept these glasses, and hung up a picture of an actor he doesn’t even like, is the proof he loves john, not him saying outright that he loves him. like i said earlier, this is a comic intended for adults, so characters aren’t going to outright say themes or how they feel. that’s more for peppa pig, hannah montana, and riverdale, you feel me? just like in real life, talk is fucking cheap here.

so now we’re left with a new question: why does dave feel comfortable admitting his love for john to rose, but not john himself? i’m sure the answer is becoming obvious! putting all this together we can gather the following: hussie wants us to know that dave possibly has a crush on john, but definitely loves him.

wait a minute… possibly?!? that’s because we still need textual evidence dave likes men. luckily, like i mentioned earlier, we can skip ahead to the epilogues, where him and karkat get together in the meat timeline, thus proving dave has liked men this whole time. boom! that’s payoff!!!

now we can OFFICIALLY put together that dave had a crush on john. once again, notice how we’re using dave’s actions to prove this, and not just quotes! either way, now we have officially used media analysis to deduce that dave had a childhood crush on john! huzzah! pat yourself on the back my loyal reader.

and for those who still aren’t convinced of dave’s crush on john, this masterpost has way more evidence than i ever could fit in this post.

(trigger warning: csa)

so now with everything we’ve learned about media analysis, i present you with my own analysis: the puppets are a symbolism for abuse, and the sex puppets specifically are an allegory for CSA, or child s*xual ass*ult. symbolism is where you use a certain object to represent ideas or qualities. the best example of this is the iconic green house logo we see throughout the comic. in comparison, an allegory is when a certain object or plot device is used to get a point across, without directly stating the point itself, aka, a hidden meaning. for instance, hussie has said their game “pyscholonials” is an allegory for how they feel about their gender identity!

so now, let’s start finding textual evidence to back up my claims about the puppet allegory, through looking for textual evidence of dave’s symptoms, aka analyzing character psychology:

dave’s anxiety manifests in the way he types. according to healthline “rambling or excessive talking [is a sign of] social anxiety. you fear saying the wrong thing or being judged by others, but you end up talking more (…) in an effort to help make up for your anxiety, and help quiet the worries revolving around what others think of you”. this is basically dave’s whole personality, but more specifically, you can see him doing this around the puppets in this scene, he rambles to himself non stop when returning to his childhood bedroom, and he’s still doing so on the meteor when he can’t find terezi to do “some stuff”. by the end of the comic, dave even acknowledges this himself by saying: “DAVE: yo im hardly one to talk here since i am a goddamn geyser of hilariously self-pulverizing freudian bloopers”. it’s also worth mentioning that, generally speaking, dave also spams his friends a lot until he gets a response, implying he gets anxious when people don’t respond quick enough to him, which is a normal reaction after being neglected as a child. that’s called a trauma response! all of these bullet points are trauma responses that happen to people who had to deal with CSA. in this case, the trauma response would be dave’s anxiety in general, and not him spamming his friends specifically. moving along…

dave’s hypersexuality manifests in a pretty in a pretty straightforward way, hence him constantly making s*xual jokes, and him drawing dicks on stuff on the meteor, much to the annoyance of everyone else. terezi even points this out herself while dave is failing to grieve bro:

TG: im sorry you are so flustered by the mere mention of glittering mythical cryptodick it honestly makes me think youre not ready for the truth

GC: D4V3 YOUR P3RPL3XING 3UPH3MISMS INVOLVING WHAT I PR3SUM3 TO B3 L3WD 4ND VAGU3LY INTRIGUING PORTIONS OF HUMAN 4N4TOMY 1 THINK 4R3 NOT 4S HILARIOUS 4S YOU PROBABLY B3L13V3

his dissociation is also pretty straightforward. he constantly talks about himself in the third person, and treats himself like he’s a character in a story, rather than a person who has wants and needs. for reference, dave immediately pulls meta shenanigans when you meet him, foreshadowing his dissociation. you can tell it’s built up to an already toxic level when we meet him, because on the same day, he has almost no reaction to seeing his own corpse, and immediately disposes of it “for jade’s sake”, rather than his own. and to make matters worse, he immediately “moves on” as if nothing happened. deep pov, remember? he also couldn’t properly process bro’s death. once again, terezi tries to point this out to dave, and he’s still not getting the message. put a pin in this section for now.

near the end of the comic, davepetasprite outright says that davesprite was depressed, regularly talked about how he wanted to off himself, and implies he might of attempted it. this is a grey area since davesprite is technically a separate character, and grieving the death of everyone from his original timeline, but it feels weird to just ignore it. to each their own on this point, but i would assume davepetasprite was referring to dave’s whole life when they talked about him being depressed based on wording, and his terrible childhood, but the s**cidal stuff could go either way. again, the proof here is dave/davesprite’s actions, not davepetasprite’s quote itself.

he displays regressive behavior 24/7 by wearing his shades to avoid eye contact, refusing to participate in common social cues (i.e.: constant dick jokes), and the few times we see him get upset, he shuts down rather than feeling his emotions. not so fun fact, the only time dave cries in all of homestuck is because of onions being cut in front of him. there’s an allegory in this scene, can you find it? (hint: the dragons forced dave into the soup, but he refuses to get out of it) also, in his most emotional scene, he still tries his damndest to not talk about emotional stuff with dirk, and still doesn’t cry when they hug, despite discussing bro’s death, and his thoughts on his own abuse in detail:

the lack of self esteem is pretty apparent. he constantly over compensates at the beginning of the comic, as seen below. he always talks about himself as if he’s a famous important guy, despite that all of his friends know he’s lying, and regularly say it to his face, but he’s still adamant that they’re wrong, or commits to the bit without actually admitting the truth. i wanna note that dave’s humor is always more of a commit to the bit and keep it going sort of thing, for better… or usually worse. not full on sarcasm. this is opposed to rose and john’s teenaged douchebaggery mixed with flagrant sarcasm. also, in the aforementioned scene above, davepetasprite still refers to davesprite as a piece of garbage, showing this is something dave struggles with even while being combined with nepeta. again, we’re using the action of putting himself down, not the quote itself. (also, sorry for the image quality, i’m on mobile)

in the long term, it’s basically impossible for him to form long lasting, fulfilling, and romantic relationships. first, it’s his crush on john, but that’s just kids being kids stuff. there’s also the fact dave and rose had some sort of failed relationship in davesprite’s timeline, due to them not learning they’re siblings. then we see the serious problems arise with terezi, who he dates pre-retcon mostly just cause she’s there, and his weird definitely not gay rivalry with karkat, which leads to her being unfulfilled in their relationship, and starting a kismesistude with gamzee. obviously the jade stuff is a big wooooof (pun NOT intended), both with davesprite, and the candy timeline. ultimately, both times, dave only dates jade because he feels bad for not liking her back, which leads to the relationship falling apart both times. remember the pin in dissociation? that’s what he’s doing here. karkat would be the opposite of jade. dave doesn’t let himself date karkat because dave hates himself, and more specifically, his attraction to men, which i’ll elaborate on later. this is what we call a character foil, aka two characters who have similarities so you can contrast their differences. think naruto and sasuke, or uh, deku and bakugo i guess? how do you do fellow kids? actually yeah! cause jade is green, and karkat is red blooded, which would symbolize how dave sees karkat as the “wrong” choice, while jade is the “right” one. the colors green and red are opposites, but jade and karkat are both of dave’s love interests in the epilogues. see? character foils! symbolism! personally, i refer to this as “star wars logic”, cause the good guys have green lightsabers, and the bad guys have red ones. this is definitely intentional, seeing as homestuck is littered with star wars references, like how HIC is basically just darth vader. meenah is also definitely a reference to darth maul, just look at her double sided weapon, or how they both die before getting to their respective thrones. i could keep going but it’s not really relevant to the discussion.

so right now you might be thinking “well you still didn’t explain how dave got assaulted tho”, and that’s fair. however, i wanna remind you that showing children porn against their will is 100% a form of CSA, same with sex paraphernalia, and especially forcing sex paraphernalia onto them. to do that to a child non-stop, in an environment they can’t escape, would have horrid effects psychologically, and dave displays almost every one of them, as you saw with the textual evidence above. so when dave can’t admit to himself that he he hates bro’s puppets, and more specifically the sex ones, it’s because doing so would force him to admit: a) what bro did to him was wrong & b) that he enjoyed it in some aspect. john even points out how weird bro’s affinity for puppets is weird and definitively not cool, which causes dave to immediately shut him down hardcore (more allegory).

speaking from experience, one of the worst parts of CSA is that you have no clue what’s going on. victims of assault often blame themselves, or feel guilty of what happened, and children lack the ability to tell what’s fully going on in the first place, due to their brains being underdeveloped, thus amplifying the guilt and blame. people often worry so much about the “man tricking kids with candy” because it’s the most pervasive p****ph*le you see in media (god i hate true crime culture), that people forget that 84% of csa happens in the home, 50% of the time it’s someone the child trusts, and 40% of time it’s family members specifically. even if 99% of your experience is terrible, you’ll still find a way to blame yourself for the 1% until you can properly process that you didn’t do anything wrong. this is what’s referred to as the “the myth of the perfect victim”.

i know this is “personal speculation”, but to me, it seems very apparent that dave is gay, and can’t come to terms with it because of his CSA trauma, hence his inability to just admit to himself he has a crush on john. every girl he dates in the main comic is quite literally the ONLY dateable girl in front of him, or usually the only girl in front of him at all, and all three girls have crushes on him/flirt with him WAY before he starts their relationships. and once again, he only dates jade in the epilogues due to his own guilt and dissociation, combined with her doing everything short of forcing herself onto him. compulsive heterosexuality is a major part of homestuck. for instance, hussie has confirmed via author’s notes that rose had a crush on dave when they were kids, and that something happened between them when they never learned they were siblings on davesprite’s timeline, yet hussie has also said that rose is a full on lesbian. that’s comphet, and it’s very intentional!

i also wanna take a moment to acknowledge that dave and rose are 100% nods to luke skywalker and princess leia, who also kiss before finding out they’re related. notice how dave fights with swords, like a lightsaber, and has the same hair as luke. meanwhile, rose’s seer of light powers are basically the same as leia’s force powers, and she uses most of her weapons as blasters, just like leia. i don’t think hussie was trying to be weird or add this stuff in for any unsavory reasons, like some people imply. there’s a reason all of this extremely vague, and not shown on screen. put a pin in that.

so in the same way the katanas in dave’s fridge symbolize bro prioritizing preparing dave for battle over what he actually needs (food and shelter), that’s how the puppets symbolize dave’s CSA. now, if you read dave and rose’s conversation about the sex puppets with that knowledge, it starts to paint the harrowing picture (again, allegory). it’s important to remember that rose had a canonically had a crush on dave at the time during this conversation, so she was probably just negging him the same way she negs her mom. she was upset because she knew that dave liked john, and probably was just gay in general, so he was never going to like her back. she’s definitely projecting her gayness (and love of puppets) onto dave too. again, all of this is definitely comphet lesbian behavior. all that’s to say, i’m not claiming she’s intentionally victim blaming him or anything during this scene. she’s just as much of a child as he is. put a pin in that too! i got sited sources coming, but i can only put so many goddamn words and images in a single post.

so, i see the sentiment shared a lot that hussie just tacked on the abuse stuff at the end, and that the beginning of homestuck “was just a silly comic at the beginning it’s not that deep”. that is an objectively ill informed take, and now you know why! the entirety of homestuck’s themes are exploring the effects of child abuse and neglect, hence the name, home stuck. there’s a reason the protagonist who is able to save everyone, also has a seemingly perfect home life. notably, the only other character who’s a completely well adjusted nice person is nepeta. she’s also the only character who’s able to free roam as she pleases, has a loving lusus, and ironically, is the only character without a home/hive to begin with. once she makes into the game, her land is quite literally her cup of tea as well. these definitely aren’t coincidences. i hope your allegory alarms are going off right now!

the only reason homestuck is sillier in the beginning is solely because it was a fan lead project for the first few acts. back in the day, there were forums dedicated for audience input to decide what happens next in the story. fun fact: this is how a lot the characters names were decided as well! so there’s a reoccurring bit where (insert beta kid) does (something stupid) and then the plot just moves on (i.e. john’s HILARIOUS antics). those were the silly suggestions sent in by the fan community! that was back when the homestuck community was still pretty small, all things considered. this explains the wonky pacing in the first few acts, and the more comedic tone.

moving on, the reason the puppets and the katana fridge are used as symbols, is because yeah, the tone would be way too dark if they played that straight. however, there’s another reason that’s way more important. remember how homestuck is written with a deep pov, aka unreliable narration? (please don’t kill me pedantics police!!!) hussie uses deep pov to display how homestuck chacters see their parents/lusii, in order to convey the themes of the story. stick around a bit longer and i’ll explain the theme of homestuck! just let me explain something real quick, so you get the big picture.

bro is shown in a positive zany light because that’s how dave sees him. to dave, bro is his whacky older brother, and sure he’s a little out there, but ninja battles and puppets are sick as fuck, right? well we as the audience know that’s NOT the case. again, dave is literally starved on screen, and gets the shit beaten out of him, also on screen. this parallels rose’s relationship with her mom, who gives her everything she could ever want and need, but doesn’t fulfill rose’s emotional needs, so rose sees her as a some sort of spiteful cartoon villain. dave even calls this out the second he sees all the wizard stuff rose got from her mom.

meanwhile, you can see rose admit to liking the puppets here, and she says she’s a fan of bro’s pornbot websites as well.

ultimately, they both want what each other has, but aren’t really able to fully grasp why their own parents did what they did, much less each other’s parents, which leads to them both envying the toxic part of each other’s households. i’m sure you’re starting to see the big picture with the puppets now, so to send the point home, remember that image i showed you during dave and bro’s strife? well, bro is attacking dave with a puppet, and dave wants to abscond, but can’t, perfectly paralleling dave’s abuse to a puppet. furthermore, that’s why he’s surrounded by sex puppets specifically, and they’re all throughout his apartment. it’s all symbolism for how dave is trapped in home dealing with CSA.

this is the purpose of allegory, telling you something without directly showing it. i doubt any of us think homestuck would be better if this stuff was depicted literally, for all the obvious reasons. i’ll close out with this dialogue since it shows what i mean better than i ever could myself:

DAVE: why did i get such a raw cut of the asshole deck? and why did it take me so long to figure that out? and like hes dead now so thats that. so all thats left to do is look back and try to put the pieces together of my first 13 years, and all i can think is what the fuck WAS that?!

DAVE: i dont come away with the impression i used to try convincing myself of, that he was like "mysterious" or "stern" or "aloof". the only feeling left is this insane impression that i was raised by somebody who fuckin HATED me, and the whole act of even "raising a child" was some totally fucked up game to him.

DIRK: What… did he do?

DAVE: i dont want to get out the laundry list, but for reference laundry wasnt one of those things. that was just one of the many little domestic things i just had to sort of FIGURE OUT. sorta like i eventually had to learn what the REAL purpose of a refridgerator was from movies.

DIRK: Wait. What???

DAVE: i dunno theres too much to even get into. just- i dont remember the atmosphere ever not being nerve wracking. all havin to sneak around and... ugh my shitty childhood spider senses are tinglin just thinking about it.

DAVE: it was "training" you know?

DAVE: but you know what it really was, it was some vicious shit that was bad and sucked and i hated it

DAVE: it didnt make me stronger

DAVE: it did the opposite

DAVE: it made me never want to fight

DAVE: it made me never want to see blood or be near danger or hear metal sounds

DAVE: it made me hate the idea of being a hero cause he was a hero and he ruined the idea of heroism

(…)

DAVE: i know how it sounds but i am NOT joking and there is NO shred of doubt in my mind that he loved all those puppets more than me

so uh, this essay is already long enough, and you definitely want me to just say the theme by now, so let’s explain the rest of this allegory in optional bullet points that you should definitely still read.

rose liking the puppets is symbolism for how emotionally neglected children often end up subconsciously “wanting” terrible things to them, like abuse or self harm, so they can justify their own unhappiness with their lives, due to them not understanding that their emotional needs aren’t being fufilled. again, the myth of the perfect victim, starting during childhood specifically. rose does this by convincing herself that her mom hates her, rather than seeing that her mom is trying her best to parent, and failing miserably. rose is also unaware of her mother’s alcoholism, which symbolizes how she doesn’t understand that her mother is emotionally neglecting her. this parallels how dave is seemingly caught off guard by dirk’s sexuality, and thus bro’s sexuality, due to dave not processing that his abuse is sexual in nature.

jade’s love of plushies parallels dave’s love, and eventual hatred, for puppets. (once again, notice the red vs green. character foils!) this is because her neglect causes her to become extremely immature. when she’s a kid, this mostly just manifests as her liking children’s toys, and speaking with a childish affectation. however, this immaturity goes unchecked, leading to the epilogues, where she completely ruins dave and karkat’s relationship for her own sexual desires (paraphrasing). you could say the same for her secretly getting rose pregnant in hs^2, knowing kanaya will be upset when she finds out. basically, she has a huge emotional disregard for everyone around her, which stems from her almost complete isolation for most of her childhood. once again, emotional neglect leading to regression, more specifically maturity regression in her case, which makes sense when you remember she grew up raised by an actual dog. and interestingly, dogs have low emotional intelligence compared to other animals. jade herself becomes part dog while going godtier, right as she has to go into further isolation during the three year journey. dogtier symbolism! jadesprite also throws a tantrum when she’s created, right after being combined with a dog. more symbolism!

dirk loving cal is an allegory how he can’t let go of his own self abuse, which becomes extremely literal when he cuts his head off. something something symbolism. this is also foreshadowing his eventual role as the villain of the story once he achieves his ultimate self, and begins thrusting abuse onto others. after going ult, dirk ends up pushing jane into presidency, thus allowing a troll genocide to happen. it’s also worth mentioning jane r*pes jake in the epilogues, and while knowing this, dirk still supports her because he believes “the ends justify the means” during all of this. now he’s officially just as bad as bro at this point. i also wanna point out that this, once again, this makes dirk a huge foil to dave, with both of them helping their respective presidential picks to win the election. i believe this is hinting that dave will eventually be the one to defeat dirk, thus finally not letting his bro have power over him, or anyone else for that matter. remember how dave is a reference to luke skywalker? well the main villain of homestuck^2 is his father figure from another timeline/universe, so at this point, it seems like dave will have to be the one to do the killing blow on dirk, the same way luke did to vader. only time will tell. pun intended bitch. also, dirk’s shade of orange is right in between dave’s, and the yellow bloods, possibly symbolizing how dirk is doomed by the narrative just like sollux, mituna, and the Ψiioniic, combined with his own self abuse.

roxy has seemingly no affinity or hatred for puppets, dolls, or plushes, foreshadowing her failed assassination attempt on the batterwitch, and her short lived alcoholism. however, she does still have a pile of cat and wizard plushes in her room. roxy is probably the third most well adjusted character in all of homestuck, and had a pretty nice childhood all things considered! obviously it wasn’t perfect though, hence the short bout of alcoholism. all that fits into my puppet theory pretty well, implying that roxy made it to the end of her game due to her lack of alcoholism, unlike her alpha self, but just like rose. her shade of pink being the middle ground of dave and rose’s makes sense as well.

on davesprite’s timeline, his sprite prototypes with cal, and one of the birds who never left his apartment, symbolizing how he was unable to escape the trauma of his abuse and homelife. also another easter egg! crows are the smartest bird, and one of the smartest animals in the animal kingdom. this is symbolizing how dave is actually the smartest member of his session, which makes sense due to the sheer amount of math he does for his sylladex, despite bro not bothering with his homeschooling. this is why davesprite’s wings are clipped, to symbolize how his neglect and abuse ultimately made him worse off, rather than “being the air beneath his wings”. actual dave notably fights with a clipped sword, can you guess what that symbolizes? (hint: bro clipped the sword)

john interestingly fits into this as well, due to him receiving a harlequin doll for his birthday, and it later prototyping his kernelsprite. john hates clowns, and is the main character, which interestingly foils gamzee, who loves all things clown, and is relegated to a joke background character. let’s just put another pin in john and gamzee for now! i promise it will pay off.

but most importantly, lord english is the referred to as “the 8ig 8ad” by vriska (not a coincidence! think about spidermom!!!), and lil cal himself is referred to as the “most important character in homestuck”. notably, lord english is also the mind behind lil cal. this symbolizes how abuse is a central theme of homestuck, and the last trial the characters must overcome. that’s why rose stops drinking after the retcon, and why dave starts… doing something with karkat?

so there’s a huge elephant in the room! if we’re discussing davekat, we have to to mention the contentious reveal scene, don’t we? forgive me, but we have to address all the little nuances of this. so uh, remember dave’s anxious speaking habit we’ve established? well he starts blabbering when karkat immediately brings up his old black feelings for john, most likely implying he’s a little jealous/insecure about that. this is pretty normal, cause he’s still teenager at the end of the day. you can see it specifically in these two lines:

DAVE: so are you SURE you still dont have these unreconciled blackrom feelings about john

DAVE: i say we air this out before it ferments into some rank and hella unexamined feeling sauce

see? remember what i said about dave having trauma responses? this is it. he’s just anxious karkat might still like john, thus ruining their relationship, or uh, situationship at the time. he also might be projecting his romantic attraction to john onto karkat as well. then, he rambles a bunch of incoherent bullshit when john asks what his sexuality is. karkat is extremely embarrassed by this part of the conversation, yet he was able to calmly discuss his old crush on john. so this all comes to a head with the following dialogue:

JOHN: did you... like, date any boys?

DAVE: uh

JOHN: but there weren't even that many boys on the meteor? well, there's the clown guy, but i don't really see you and him... that really only leaves... um, were you and karkat... ARE you and karkat, like. hmm.

this makes karkat officially loses it due to embarrassment, but i’ll spare you from that huge wall of text. next dialogue reads:

JOHN: dave, i'm pretty sure we're making karkat uncomfortable now.

DAVE: yeah maybe we should drop this

JOHN: ok.

so lets think. they aren’t dating, but they definitely did something kinda gay. notably, this parallels the “things” dave did with terezi pre-retcon, while still being tastefully vague. the idea that dave did some gay teenager shenanigans actually does make sense for his character arc, because it implies he’s comfortable enough now to try something like that now. though i do wanna emphasize that i’m not try to explicitly say they had sex, i’m just saying dave explored his sexuality. come to the conclusions you’re comfortable with here! hussie goes out of their way to not display or mention characters doing any sex acts while they are minors, and this is the closest we ever get to anything like that. there’s only one instance of making out even happening in homestuck, and it’s just jake making out with his avatar poster. well, unless you wanna count this i guess? considering everything we’ve gone over in this post, this is most definitely intentional.

through john’s retcons, the butterfly effect forces the dave and rose to address their respective childhood traumas, which leads to them being able to beat the game. same with davepetasprite finally giving jade the closure she needed right before she woke up. same with terezi fixing her relationship with vriska. karkat runs for president later, proving he’s got over his leadership trauma as well. that’s how you win sburb. john saving everyone with that retcon shows the central theme of homestuck: you can change at any point, and get through any hard times, as long as you have people in your life to help and support you. the retcon is great because it shows you how a timeline is doomed, so that way you can understand why they won.

EB: well to be honest, i never really believed any of your guys's doom and gloom nonsense. not because i think you are lying... i just feel like there must still be a way to win! (…) also, there is always hope for someone who has good friends to count on!

so when dave and karkat start getting together, and do “stuff” on the meteor, that’s all the tasteful way of saying: dave was able to process things, and become more comfortable with himself. again, this totally could’ve just been making out, come to the conclusions you want. the vagueness is intentional.

notably, vriska, dirk, jake, gamzee, and jane are the only surviving characters to not address their trauma at all by the ending, which leads into their current arcs in homestuck^2 (or lack thereof in gamzee’s case). there’s also one more character, who we’ve carefully left pins in until now….

it’s time to address june egbert. spare the torches and pitchforks please! i’ve done a ridiculous amount of research, and there still doesn’t seem to be a proper explanation for june egbert from either a homestuck fan or a creator behind homestuck, so i’ll bare the cross of this explanation. from here on out, i’ll still say both names interchangeably for pedantic reasons, but that’s solely because this is still in a weird state of schrödinger’s canon, and hs^2 is pretty much it’s own thing in itself. but i’m a trans woman so w/e. once again, spare the pitchforks! please!

the reason why her being trans works is because john/june spent the whole series so focused on saving everyone else, that she never focused on herself, or thought too deeply about anything. that’s kind of her thing, taking everything at face value, and not thinking too deeply about herself (i wonder why… ♾️). this is even pointed out by dave himself during The Davekat Scene™:

DAVE: ok i guess what im saying is… i dont think its all as simple as you think it is, or maybe not like ACTIVELY think it is but continue to assume it is on account of NOT thinkin about it much, due to a lot of junk about the subject that gets shoved into our brains from movies and stuff while we were just dumb kids

JOHN: i,

JOHN: hm.

so you see the set up here right? the character who i was referring to, who still hadn’t processed their childhood? it’s important to realize that june/john has never actually had a character arc herself, because her story is told via the hero’s journey structure, not a typical three act story structure like almost every other character receives in their arcs. ever notice how homestuck is constantly compared to the odyssey or the iliad? that’s why! this all means, june/john is a plot motivated character, rather than a self motivated one, again, like almost the rest of the entire cast. it makes sense for her to have to start self introspection once the game is over, she never really had the chance to while saving everyone else. interestingly, vriska’s arc is told in the format of the hero’s journey as well. dave/davebot’s arc in the epilogues and hs^2 is also told in the format of the hero’s journey. he seems to be in between “woman as the temptress” (aka jade) and the “atonement” stage, which would most definitely be finally seeing karkat again, something hs^2 is still building up to. this makes sense for all three characters, seeing as being a “hero” plays huge parts of all of their respective storylines.

i also wanna bring up the clown stuff again, and more specifically, gamzee. even more specifically, this amazing analysis by @abcq2:

before murderstuck, gamzee has no idea that he is a clown. sure, he anoints his face with greasepaint, rides a unicycle, and juggles, but these are serious religious sacraments to him. and, sure, sometimes he trips on his giant floppy shoes and lands face first in a pie, but that's just being blessed with a miracle, because he was just thinking about pie. and, sure, sometimes his friends say things like "HEY ASSHOLE. CLOWN ASSHOLE. YOU WORSHIP A CLOWN RELIGXON. FOR CLOWNS." to him, but he's too zonked on sopor slime to extract any meaning from it. when gamzee sees the ICP miracles video, he's too sober to dismiss it as a mere coincidence; for once, he gets the joke, and realises that he was the butt of the joke the whole time. he understands that every time he fell face first in a pie, it was the work of an unsen riddler. he grasps that he is, in a cosmic sense, a clown, and hates it. (…) when the murder spree is over, gamzee's beatific grin returns; no longer a look of blank ignorance, but a knowing smirk. he's successfully ruined his character forever - no one wants to see him and no one thinks he's funny. hussie seems to say: jesus you are such a shitty clown. and gamzee's impassive face seems to say: i know. gamzee refuses to clown out of spite, and hussie refuses to remove gamzee from the story out of spite. it's a committed relationship of reciprocal, mutual antagonism. what i'm saying is that hussie and gamzee ar-

once again, all credit for this gamzee analysis goes to @abcq2, please check them out!!!

so i’ll cut straight to the chase, mostly due to me getting close to tumblr’s character limit. the clowns are an allegory/symbol of being transgender. it’s impossible to ignore. remember that game i told you about? psycholonials? if you’ve ever played it, you’d know that clowns and transgenderism are tied up together in one big scene. i won’t spoil the game, it’s really good! check it out! this parallels homestuck, where june has always been associated clowns. not a coincidence. once you fit gamzee into this equation, it’s clear that gamzee’s “clown” dysphoria is a stand in for gender dysphoria. read the analysis above one last time and tell me i’m wrong. hussie themself has only posted themself in clown makeup since 2020, this started exactly half a year before they unofficially came out as non-binary via a homestuck announcement. they also tweeted that they use any pronouns shortly afterwards, on a private (?) twitter account. it’s also worth mentioning that one of the few of photos of hussie that we have, they were in ICP/juggalo stuff just like gamzee, and this photo was taken in october of 2010, mere months after gamzee’s introduction, and possibly a month or less after act 5 act 1 was finished. if you know anything about this image, or tumblr user @dead12234352356456775, please message me! this blog is the earliest place the picture can be tracked to, and i’d love to ask OP if they know anything about this image. hussie has notably referred to themselves “clown gender” as well. it’s unclear to me whether hussie actually likes icp, or if this is one huge coming out ARG, but either way, clowns = trans, got it?

so when john/june have a clown sprite following her around, it’s an allegory for how the trans stuff is literally in her face, but she can’t understand it!

“but there’s no textual evidence of john wanting to be a girl!!” see, we’ve officially waded deep all the way into the murkey grey waters of nuance. so if you don’t know, june is the embodiment of what us trans women refer to as the “pre-egg crack”, aka, the phase before you realize you’re trans. this phrase applies to all trans people, but trans women use/identify with it the most, just cause we usually come out way later, usually around say, 20-23, like john/june is by the end of homestuck! huh, what a coincidence. in all seriousness, this is because most trans women start their transitions when they first live on their own. john/june’s also a computer scientist by hobby, something a lot of trans women do. this is because trans women are one of the smallest minority groups, so we usually have to go resort to online communities to talk to each other. this is also necessary for a lot of us, due to research on hrt not really being as advanced as it should be, and the fact transitioning is still illegal/hard to access in a lot of areas. trans women are also likely to stay inside on our computers cause yknow… dysphoria. plus computer jobs often have decent pay, low barrier to entry, and require little to no interaction with other people in person, making them perfect to both medically and socially transition. sure, june never outright says “i want to wear a dress” or laments about dysphoria, but again, homestuck is by adults for adults. the story shouldn’t have to explain something like this to you. the only reason you had the impression that there’s no evidence of john being trans is because you weren’t educated on the subject matter, but now you are!

“you’re just projecting onto this character!!!” and you are too! again, that’s how everyone engages with art. to think you don’t do the same yourself is foolish. utter poppycock even! however, i really despise this sentiment. the fact i’m a trans woman makes me the most qualified to speak on this subject, not the other way around. who are you to speak on the experiences of trans women? exactly. i’m tired of us trans women being berated for headcanoning characters as trans women, even when it’s extremely obvious why we do as such. it’s always the boils back down to the same bullshit in response: “well actually YOU’RE the transphobic one for saying all trans women look/act the same!!!” *sigh* that is literally the definition of an identity. you sound dumb, and are speaking over actual trans women, whose opinions are infinitely more important than yours when it comes to this subject. this is literally just the “what is a woman” debate repackaged with the guise of liberalism. it’s annoying.

“all this june stuff came out of nowhere!!!” this headcanon became prevalent during the pandemic, where tons of trans people were able to start their transitions! i did this myself, and so did hussie. doesn’t seem so random now, does it?

“hussie is just doing this for woke/fandom points!!!” uh, and what would they be gaining by making john trans? if this was about making money, wouldn’t the merch link on the official website work? hussie makes visual novels now, and has removed themselves from homestuck as much as feasibly possible, while still maintaining their ownership of the IP. not exactly the most lucrative career path. and if you’re implying hussie is adding any element to homestuck simply to please fans (yes, that includes davekat), you obviously know nothing about hussie. go on reddit, read ANY responses to the epilogues, or the plot of homestuck^2, and tell me when you find the tons of people happy with their contents. oh, and see how homestuck fans feel about kankri and cronus while you’re at it. i’ll wait.

“okay but the toblerone stuff is dumb!!!” at no point before the june wish did hussie say that finding a toblerone would give the finder the power to make a canon-altering wish. as you can see here, all of the wishes weren’t even granted, some of which have no impact on canon at all. if hussie wanted to, they were well within their rights to go “yeah no, this is dumb, sorry” when the wish for june egbert was sent in. this means that june egbert already fit into hussie’s idea of canon, and as i’ve already pointed out, june egbert has properly been foreshadowed, so this all adds up. the idea that hussie “turned john transgender because of a toblerone” is an exaggeration of events perpetuated by losers misguided and ill informed fans. hussie has been sent an insurmountable amount of headcanons over the years, and aysha u farah, who has had major involvement for multiple homestuck projects over the years, has said “the only headcanon i've ever seen andrew get excited about is june egbert” on a now defunct podcast called perfectly generic podcast. (forgive me, but any links to the specific episode i’m finding no longer work due to their official website no longer working. i’m not listening to hundreds of hours of an archived podcast for this minuscule of a clip. be my guest if you want to take that on! once again, message me, and i’ll update this section.)

either way, based on everything we know, june egbert is canon because hussie wanted this prior to the toblerone wish, because if the wish contradicted or retconned canon, it wouldn’t have been granted in the first place. simply put, june egbert is canon because it’s want hussie wanted to begin with, and the wish came after that. once again, the sheer amount of foreshadowing here should be more than enough proof, and if you want more even more proof of june egbert foreshadowing, check out this blog post! it’s great!

“well it’s dumbledore logic!!!!!!!!!” is it though? j.k. rowling is a transphobic bigot, who’s works cost money to access, who confirmed dumbledore was gay only after he died, and then she still straight-washed him in future harry potter media. hussie is an actual trans person, running an indie project, who wrote one of the longest literary works in the entire english language, made it all free to access, supports all fan archives, and hasn’t even ended homestuck^2, where john/june is very much alive. and once again, the wishes were to add something to post canon content specifically, without shifting the canon of the main series. homestuck^2 is still updating, and as far as we know now, more projects are on the way, like the completion of hs^2 and hiveswap. these situations have almost nothing in common aside from deriving from twitter. if you’re mad about this, were you mad when jake was confirmed to be brazilian in a youtube livestream comment? or when gamzee’s red crush on tavros was confirmed via a dubiously canon comic? probably not. eh, maybe you were actually, i don’t know you. either way, feel how you wanna feel about jake being brazilian, i don’t care, but you can’t say there was “nothing building up to june egbert” now that you’ve read this essay. the dumbledore comparison is dumb as hell.

“well i’m trans and i don’t feel represented by june!!!” if you’re “feeling unrepresented” by june, it’s probably just because you’re not a trans woman obsessed with computer science. that’s just you not relating to the character. it’s really not much deeper than that. and on that point…

“well i just don’t like this!!!” with all due respect, you seriously need to put thought into why that is. i can’t think of a single non-transphobic to be upset about a character transitioning in a story. and again, homestuck is one of the longest literary works in the entire language, and is completely free to access. in all of homestuck history, not a single product was sold under the guise that “john will be cisgender forever” or “dave will not end up with karkat” or “jake will never be brazilian”. hussie doesn’t owe anyone any part of their story’s canon. it’s their story, full stop, and if you’re mad about that, you’re entitled to something that was never yours to begin with. not all art is made purely for your consumption, and free art is especially not made for your consumption. can you critique it? absolutely. there’s a big difference between criticism and bashing though. if you don’t like any part of homestuck, write a fan fiction, make some fanart, or write an oddly soapboxy essay about your personal fan theories and headcanons. turn that negative energy to make something positive! i’m being serious! hussie themself encourages this!!!

“okay but it’s still lame the davekat stuff happened off screen” i can agree to a certain extent, but dave and karkat’s relationship plays a major part in the epilogues, as well as homestuck^2, and that’s not even unpacking their weird borderline black rom dynamics pre-retcon. to act as though their romance starts and stops during one intermission really downplays how seriously their relationship is taken throughout the homestuck series.

“okay but isn’t a lot of that stuff dubiously canon?” baby, everything is canon. hussie has said so themself. there are infinite possibilities for what could have happened during homestuck, so maybe we should just focus on the fact it’s taken seriously at all? honestly, the line between dubiously canon and actual canon is paper thin. homestuck^2’s entire plot is currently deconstructing what canon even means. if you wanna only see the main series as canon, be my guest, but the accusations of homophobia and queerbaiting over the davekat reveal are a little ridiculous. their relationship plays a major part in all homestuck content for years now. also, big reminder that, with the reveal of june egbert, there’s now only one canonically straight character from the main series, and she’s a villain now, so…

“well you’re just strawmanning me now!!!” my loyal reader, i understand you are a human being with infinite nuances i will never be able to understand, cause quite frankly, i have no clue who you are to begin with. i don’t think everyone who hates davekat or june egbert is some anti-lgbt bigot. i’m just here to set the record straight, and provide context for people who are willing to listen. a lot of this shit is confusing, and there’s misinformation a plenty out there. most people who are participating in this discussion clearly haven’t bothered reading homestuck for years at this point, possibly even a decade. and that’s fair, most of us read it as kids, and probably stopped by the final update, if not sooner. honestly, i think the main issue here is that people are playing the telephone game via fandom discourse. that’s how we went from “hussie supports june egbert” to “hussie made john being transgender canon cause of a candy bar” in the first place. if you’re participating in this discussion, maybe try rereading homestuck before you let your vague memories of reading the comic years ago define your current day opinions? besides, i’m not delusional enough to think any bigots are going to read this post and be convinced, but i’m sure i can open up the minds and eyes of people who are willing to listen! give homestuck a reread, imagine how much more foreshadowing has gone unnoticed over the years!

i feel the need to be so thorough, bust out so many references, break down every bit of nuance, and speak from my own experiences, because inevitably, a small group of people are gonna read this post and still go “it’s not that deep! they’re just puppets! june egbert is a bunch of sjw malarkey!!!”, and to those people, i hope you stop making fandom spaces miserable because you didn’t wanna pay attention in english class. media analysis is a necessary tool, and i’m sorry our education system here in america failed both you and i. (or maybe your a non-american country has english classes as terrible as ours? idk.)

honestly, i think i read like five or six books in throughout of all high school. i failed english my freshman year, and dropped out by my senior year. there’s always room to grow though! look at how i’m able to write this essay now! all you have to do is just watch some video essays that break down your favorite movies, tv shows, books, and more!!! there’s tons of jackasses like me who will lament about their hyperfixations. plus, now you already know what symbolism, the rule of three, and allegories are! before you know it YOU’LL be the one noticing all of the easter eggs in the media you enjoy, just like us the rest of us pretentious media analysis fuckheads.

i’m sure all of us are old enough to remember how exciting it was when rosemary was first confirmed, or when the dirkjake kiss happened, or all the recent stuff with davekat. and guess what, june egbert is going to be that lots of young trans women! after reading all of this, is hating june egbert the hill you’re gonna die on?

you know, hussie practically uses homestuck as their personal diary. i don’t think anyone’s denying that. it shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to understand why they want their main character to be trans, or why they wanted dave to end up with karkat. maybe you’re just not willing to understand it? if we’re allowed to project on to these characters, then why won’t you let hussie?

if you got to the bottom of this post, thanks for reading! i might turn this into a video essay if i’m being honest, but if you wanna repost this, or make your own response, please just credit me! also check out my homestuck fanworks if you like this post, i’m sure you’ll like them too!!! i don’t really have anything else to promote so uh…. if you’re on the homestuck^2 team and read this…pleasefortheloveofgodiwouldkilltoworkonanofficialhomestuckprojectidontevencarewhowhenwhenwhereorhowbutillsettleforanytjingpLEdareplelaplwlalsplelallaldle

in all seriousness, thanks for reading! i doubt this post will take off simply due to how long it is. i’d love to hear other people’s thoughts and opinions on this, or possibly make mutuals to yap with even! dear lord i miss having friends to talk about homestuck with. also sorry for the censors, normally i wouldn’t bother with something like that, but i’ve been working on this non-stop for the past few days, so i don’t wanna risk it being taken down.

anyways….. THAT’S why i have the bro strider tag muted 😭

(EDIT ON 9/15/24: added a new source i found and fixed some minor grammatical errors)

[kaprisvn]

Hi!

I'm a little confused about what Y/N works as. To me, they look like a manager, kind of, but they have a staff hat, so I assume that means they're a lower/general employee. Do they work with Sun and Moon directly or do they just see the boys often when they're working?

Sorry if this was asked before!

-An interested anon :))

P.S. you're art style is beautiful <3

You have activated my trap card, dear @chor-reblogs >:)

So, this is something I'm INCREDIBLY glad I got an ask for, as Y/N's role is very plot relevant to the catalyst event of the fic. (In a way...)

To start off, you're actually half-right on the manager idea! In Chasing Stars, every Pizza-Plex employee is meant to have a 'supervisor' for the first month or so - the person they can go to for help or clarification instead of bothering upper management with their plebeian pleas. This supervisor is also meant to give the employee under them their welcoming tour, along with their uniform. The supervisor is always the most experienced (via time there worked) in the same position (ex. food staff, custodian, P&S) as the person they're supervising, and don't actually have much authority over them.

This is how things usually go, HOWEVER, when Y/N was accepted into their role as General Staff, there wasn't anyone else currently in that position (the previous ones 'left' rather quickly. Hm.) This resulted in them not receiving a supervisor, along with a stark lack of instructions. Sucks for them I guess!

But what sucks even more is that shortly after being hired, ANOTHER general staff member joins the team, and since Y/N is technically the most experienced General Staff member... They become her supervisor.

Who is this mysterious girl? Why, Vanessa A. of course!

Vanessa's nickname for the reader in the fic is 'Boss', and despite Y/N trying to correct her that: A. They have have literally no jurisdiction over her and B. That they're just as clueless as she is, she insists upon the name. Even after she gets put on Security duty due to [SPOILER], she keeps term for Y/N. (Interspersed with a more fond nickname that I shall not disclose yet).

Vanessa and the readers relationship is a significant and complicated one that's going to change a lot throughout the fic. In fact, I'd call it the second most important relationship in terms of plot/themes, after the DCA. But overall, I'd say they're... 'good friends'.

As for the last part of your question - which yeesh, sorry for the yap session - the role of General Staff is to do whatever odd jobs are left over after everyone is assigned their work, but more importantly, they can be called on by any animatronic or other staff member that happens to need help with their job. You can basically summon them like your personal butler. Of course, Sun and Moon abuse this ability to the extreme, which means that Y/N ends up working with them very often. (I mean, the daycare just gets so busy and we're so understaffed!! You understand, don't you? And- we finish the work so quick with YOUR help that you may as well stick around awhile longer, right? Management won't care about a few missing minutes... or hours. We won't tell if you don't :) )

(PS. CS! Vanessa's personality is very inspired by @/naffeclipse, because by god I love her interpretation of the character so much.)

EDIT: I don't consider any of this to be a spoiler btw! You learn all of this within the first 2-3 chapters :3

[vinecstasy]

will poulter x popstar!reader sfw alphabet

get to know a little bit of the lore within the will x popstar!reader universe

dividers by the wonderful @saradika-graphics

A = Affection (How affectionate are they? How do they show affection?)

will is just the sweetest ever. he is just all over you in any way he can. whether that be throwing his arms around your neck and pulling you close from behind or even just having your pinkies interlocked; a habit he has kept since childhood.

B = Best friend (What would they be like as a best friend? How would the friendship start?)

you and will were raised together by two mothers that were best friends…so of course it was only natural that you both follow suit. in school together everyone just naturally assumed that you guys were a thing, but every time will would be asked about it by one of his mates he’d turn a bright red and stutter out some excuse to why you weren’t dating.

C = Cuddles (Do they like to cuddle? How would they cuddle?)

he is such a cuddler. i’m talking legs wrapped around yours, smothered by his thick arms (which you have no complaints about…) and him borderline swallowing your hair, but he wouldn’t have it any other way. most nights you end up sharing just the one pillow. he lives for the intimacy of it. in his eyes anytime is a good time for a cuddle.

D = Domestic (Do they want to settle down? How are they at cooking and cleaning?)

will vowed when he was 10 years old that he was going to marry you and he has held the same view ever since. he longs for sleepless nights with your dog, tinker, softly snoring on the floor next to the bed whilst you cradle a little baby girl in your arms. that’s his dream and he vows to make that dream a reality when slips that silver band onto your finger.

E = Ending (If they had to break up with their partner, how would they do it?)

no i cant. i’m sorry. i cannot do angst. not for will. 🥲

F = Fiance(e) (How do they feel about commitment? How quick would they want to get married?)

literally jumped to propose to you. confessed your feelings in the december (when you’d basically been forced to by your mothers over christmas. to this day he swears they had plotted it together.) and then he proposed to you in the following july. it just felt right to him.

G = Gentle (How gentle are they, both physically and emotionally?)

he is such a lover boy that sometimes it is a bit overwhelming. you love how tall he is, how he can just pick you up and swing you over his shoulder…but he’s so conscious of how unaware he is of his own strength sometimes. he’s accidentally gave you bruises more times he can count just by flinging you around too recklessly or playfighting a little too roughly, every time he apologised profusely as you just giggled and promised him you were fine.

H = Hugs (Do they like hugs? How often do they do it? What are their hugs like?)

will loves your hugs and you love his. he can just engulf your entire body with his arms and has you melting within a singular second. he swears your arms are his second home and he would happily live there forever and ever. it’s his favourite way to love on you.

I = I love you (How fast do they say the L-word?)

you were both very loving towards each other before you confessed, always telling how much you love the other. but i think the first time that he truly said he loves you romantically was when he confessed to you. he’d been waiting long enough to say it, so it all came out at once. he never stopped telling you after that, he had to make the most of it.

J = Jealousy (How jealous do they get? What do they do when they’re jealous?)

will knows you’re pretty. of course he does. and yes sometimes, he will admit, he does get a tad jealous. never over anything you do, just over people looking for a bit too long or something someone says that could be taken in the wrong way. he always tells you about his feelings and you both end up laughing at how silly he sounds. you’re his and only his.

K = Kisses (What are their kisses like? Where do they like to kiss you? Where do they like to be kissed?)

he loves to grab you by your face and pull you in. he just loves how warm your cheeks get as you get flustered by him. he is a big fan of kissing the back of your hand. in public reaching over to just brush your knuckles with his lips. his kisses are full of warmth and desire, no matter how soft or rough.

L = Little ones (How are they around children?)

this man just melts around kids. becomes their favourite person in the room as soon as he hoists them up above his head or lets the climb his long legs. he’s always wanted kids himself; one boy and one girl, which he considers the perfect balance. when you were both 12, you decided that if you don’t have kids by the time of 30, you’d just do it together. let’s just say you sealed that deal about 2 years before that deadline.

M = Morning (How are mornings spent with them?)

will is an early riser, most mornings waking you up with a big cup of tea and a slice of toast. but on a weekend, you will most likely wake up to him cuddled into your torso, snoring gently. it was one of the best sounds to wake up to. but his morning voice was even better, all groggy and raspy. just like when he was younger. he groans every time you express how cute it is.

N = Night (How are nights spent with them?)

we all know that will can cook. he is the one, more often than not, doing all of that work whilst you lounge on the one of the bar stools with a glass of wine, asking about his day. you both always vow to end the day with a shower together at least once a week just to feel the intimacy and closeness; washing each others hair and gently gliding sponges over shoulders and legs. when he’s fully kitted out and in bed you’ll often just lay in the silence doing you own thing, but always having a hand intertwined with his. you reading a book, him looking at some missed emails. this is what you always wanted, although many that know of your routine compare you to and old married couple. you both cannot find it in yourselves to mind.

O = Open (When would they start revealing things about themselves? Do they say everything all at once or wait a while to reveal things slowly?)

will is really an open book to you. sometimes you think you know too much about him, but there are no boundaries in what you can talk about; nothing too tmi or too risqué. just honesty. it’s been like that ever since you can remember, mostly due to your mothers never being able to keep anything about you both to themselves and you knew that the other would end up finding out. so why not just tell each other everything.

P = Patience (How easily angered are they?)

will is only ever angry when he lets his intrusive thoughts get to himself. he’s not easily aggravated other people and almost never by yourself. life is too short to get angry at each other, so why not just talk it out.

Q = Quizzes (How much would they remember about you? Do they remember every little detail you mention in passing, or do they kind of forget everything?)

will likes to take pride in knowing basically everything about you. it’s a skill really. he remembers everything you say, everything you do and is just so obsessed with you. it’s sweet and so obvious to anyone that knows you both. have a bad day? he’ll be waiting at home with your favourite meal on the stove and a bouquet of your favourite flowers.

R = Remember (What is their favorite moment in your relationship?)

the first red carpet you walked together as a couple will always hold a special place in will’s heart. it was for a new film of his coming out and everything that night seems to blur into one, apart from the moments when he was focussed on you. which was basically the whole night. your body never left his; holding your hand, draping an arm across your shoulders or wrapping on around your waist. let’s just say the press loved it as the photographers cooed at you both to give them a wave.

S = Security (How protective are they? How would they protect you? How would they like to be protected?)

will is very protective over you, but not in the way that is super obvious and borderline patronising. just in the way where he always wants to make sure you’re doing good and he often tries to avoid questions he is asked about you both that even seem slightly too personal. you, however, have jumped to his defence multiple times and you’re not afraid to tell people that they are wrong in any assumptions that they have made about you both. he blushes any time anyone mentions it.

T = Try (How much effort would they put into dates, anniversaries, gifts, everyday tasks?)

like i have said, will is literally the ultimate lover boy. you’re his everything and he will always try to go all out for anything he does for you. a big acts of service guy aswell. like he takes pride in just doing the tiniest things for you, whether that be something as little as stocking your favourite drinks in his fridge or making sure that he walks closest to the road on the pavement. he thinks he subtle about the whole casual dominance things (he’s really not), but you love it.

U = Ugly (What would be some bad habits of theirs?)

when will is poorly he acts like a victorian child dying from cholera. it would be impressive if he wasn’t so insistent on you taking care of him. not that you particularly mind. but he is an actor, so really you signed up for this. he goes all out with the ‘too weak’ act, as if you hadn’t just caught him smiling at you changing his socks.

V = Vanity (How concerned are they with their looks?)

will likes to think that he looks pretty good. i mean he’s got a good body, he’s tall and you fit just so perfectly into his side. but social media does exist and people can be mean. he thinks the eyebrows thing is getting old at this point. i mean it’s been over 10 years. can people just not get over it? but he’s never really that insecure about his looks, especially not when he has a pretty girl telling him how handsome he is multiple times a day.

W = Whole (Would they feel incomplete without you?)

he literally calls you his other half like middle aged couples do. you always have been. ever since birth you had been inseparable and he really knows no other way of living. not that he has attachment issues! he just really misses you on the long shooting days.

X = Xtra (A random headcanon for them.)

will is very big on pet names. as much as he will call you by your legal name in public, at home he’s just sappy with it. he likes to call you ‘lovie’ (which is something he adopted from your mother calling you both that since you were young), ‘sweetheart’ and ‘honey’. he’ll also never admit it, but he absolutely melts whenever you call him ‘william’. it just feels like you’re an old married couple and he thinks it’s cozy. however, he will cringe whenever anyone else tries to use it.

Y = Yuck (What are some things they wouldn’t like, either in general or in a partner?)

he is a very open person about his feelings and wants to share them with his partner. so someone closed off and not open to talking is his worst nightmare. he gets even more anxious whenever he feels like he can’t share his thoughts, so he needs a partner that is willing to talk and willing to share their feelings too.

Z = Zzz (What is a sleep habits of theirs?)

will is the heaviest sleeper ever. and this is not great for when you’re up before him in the mornings as you will often wake up with him draped over you. and he is not the easiest to move either. whenever you try it’s useless as he just holds on tighter and mumbles something incoherent. he’s a big warm bear of a man and you wouldn’t change anything about that.

i 🤍 will. like that’s my baby. please send any requests you have for headcannons etc, i live reading your thoughts and asks!!!

[turtleblogatlast]

Thinking about the Don Suave scene and what it means in terms of LGBTQ+ representation because my brain does nothing if not torment me with random topics to ramble about on the regular.

Anyway, I just wanted to ramble about why I like the scene but to get it out of the way - the scene can very easily be interpreted in so many different ways, and all of them are valid. I personally see it as Leo having at least some attraction to a man. And the following is an explanation of my own interpretation and thoughts on it and what it means especially for Leo’s portrayal in the grand scheme of things.

Long-winded interpretation under the cut!

Now, to start with, it’s important to me that in the scene Leo looks at Don Suave in the very beginning and then for the entirety of the rest of the time the man is on screen, Leo’s eyes are closed. Yet, in the end, he is still visibly enamored with Don Suave, happily cuddling up to him as he’s being carried away.

You can very easily interpret this as Leo being spellbound and that’s honestly super valid and I believe he likely was at least somewhat in the beginning, but considering how fast he looked away and how he never looked again, I personally think it makes more sense to read it as Leo just finding the man attractive, at least somewhat. (For the record, I personally headcanon Rise Leo as bisexual with a heavy preference for men, but I want to be blunt when I say that any interpretation is valid. Literally any. Ace, pan, gay, bi, none of the above or a mixture of something new literally all of it is more than okay and fair. Hell you could even interpret this entire scene as more romantic attraction than physical and it would still work. Anything goes!! Don’t bother people, guys, really.)

The main reason I take this scene to be at the very least LGBTQ+ adjacent isn’t just because of how it’s portrayed, but because of who Leonardo is. Not in terms of Rise of the TMNT, but in terms of the entire Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles™️ franchise.

Leo’s a character who, while changing with each iteration, has still at his core been around for decades upon decades as “the blue one”. One fourth of the team. He’s the one most are going to look at as the Leader, and oftentimes he is the one closest to having the title of Main Character. Not to say the others aren’t just as important, but Leo’s presence in the A plots of basically all TMNT media is often something very main character-esque.

And that’s very, very important to note. Here we have a Main Character of a prolific and decades long-running franchise distributed by a children’s television network. You can play around with his and his brothers’ characters all you like, but there is always going to be challenges to dodge around, especially since this was still in 2018-2019.

For example, you can play around with their designs so long as they’re color coded turtles, but their sexualities? Now that’s tricky.

“But what about Hypno and Warren?” Not main characters and also they’re Rise originals. They have a lot more room to play around with than a character like Leo does. But even talking about main characters in the franchise, you could arguably have an easier time playing around with Donnie or Mikey’s sexualities than Leo or even Raph, as (unfortunately) the former two tend to get more B plots, so they’d likely have had a little more leeway (still not a lot though.)

So, where does this leave us?

It leaves us in a place where outright stating and/or showing undeniable proof of Leo’s attraction to men is very, very difficult. So, workarounds!

Workarounds like the entire Don Suave situation.

To be honest, as left up to interpretation and lowkey and deniable as it is, this whole scene means a lot to me because of who Leo is as a character. It’s just nice when we get so see even the bare bones of representation with characters that have been such a large part of pop culture for decades, y’know? Even if more would be so much nicer, this is better than I thought we’d ever get for these boys.

And, again, literally nothing I’ve said is the only way to interpret it, I’m more than happy when people interpret media on their own honestly, it’s just something I’ve been thinking of lately and I was wondering if others felt the same way.

Whatever you think when you interpret this scene or Rise Leo as a whole, I just thought this would be interesting to think about, even if it was ramble-y, haha.

[onion-souls]

In Bloodborne, there are aspects of the Beast Curse that implies its a failure to ascend (b/c people lose their minds), but some beast bosses are resistant to Kin-type damages (Bolt) and deal damage that's strong against Kin, which also implies that the Beast Curse is a counter measure against Outer Powers. What are your thoughts on this? (Also perhaps Kin beings, like the Emissaries are the real failed ascensions.) Because the precise, Ascended-Nature of beings is also unclear, like how Ebrietas and Rom bleed serum and blood, which also implies they're not quite ascended unto the level of Outer Gods like Amygdala and the Brain of Menses. Thoughts?

Yeah, I think you're correct. The text is pretty clear that beasts and kin are both failures of different methodologies and philosophies.

If you want to look towards real world 18th-19th century philosophy, the blood-and-beasthood faction has elements of Romantic conservatism, with the notion that regressing to a primordial state of man would bring about moral superiority. That is a good clue as to why the Healing Church was so readily accepted by the xenophobic Yharnamites- it's highly likely that they genuinely believe that they were once a great people (the Pthumerians) before outsiders ruined it. But blood and mythology does not make a people great, and we see that simply exaggerating the primal nature in man leads only to mindless savagery, if you want to have a go at the Rousseau-esque side of things.

Then we get the more rational and scientific side of the Bergenwyrth ideology that leads to kin. And here, Bloodborne critiques the coldness of scientism, and the idea that despite claims of reason and enlightenment, there is still a great deal of human frailty and narrowmindedness involved. Note that the Japanese word translated as "Insight" in English is actually more commonly used for "Enlightenment"; 啓蒙 (keimō). The tools of the enlightenment led to a lot of the certainty of the universe being lost, and here we start to see elements of that Lovecraftian Cosmicism creep in. Rather than being humbled by the unknown, the Choir and Mensis both doubled down on the notion that enough study would lead them to ascend. This is the coldness that leads to vivisection and human experimentation.

And there's a lot of this in the visual language of the game. The beast/blood side is very, well, hot-blooded, while the kin are characterized with cold blues, violets, white, and grays.

And I think that beasthood isn't a deliberate countermeasure to kin, but simply due to thr incompatibility.

The kin and the hunter's tools associated with their study, like the Augur of Ebrietas and A Call Beyond, are based on channeling cosmic forces, something that being a beast would diminish. Ludwig's boss fight tells this story. He fights in an extremely aggressive and bloodthirsty style until he regains his senses, upon which he starts using his sword to channel that cosmic blue power.

(And while the bolt resistance might be purely mechanical, the literal electrical resistance of beats and the kin weaknsss may be because it's harder/easier for them to channel such forces).

But anyway, the kin are failures because they are creatures of coldness, of the lab and isolated. Ebrietas was left behind. Rom is confined to a lake. There's a strong theme of abandonment, being discarded, or lost among the kin. Many of the kin and lower Old Ones have this sense of failed maturation. Rom is vacuous, Ebrietas and the garden of eyes have these big baby heads, the celestial emissary and its little copies have that exaggerated Neoteny of Greys and babies, the brain suckers are brain sucklers. Slime Scholars are, heaven forbid, eternal grad students

What finally causes a full ascension in the PC are the cords of the eye item, basically a psychic umbilical cord, symbolizing our understanding of the connection between mother and child. Maternity and surrogacy are massive parts of the plot and theming of Bloodborne, and it is through that maternal connection that we are finally able to bridge the gap between the primal, instinctual edge and the willingness to understand and mature without being stuck in a stagnant false childhood.

[silverfox579]

TWST fic idea

I need this out of my head.

Okay so we all probably know the time travel theory in TWST...but I just got a crazy fic idea and I need to write it out b/c i know i'm never gonna have the motive to write it LOL

Okay basically: what if yuu was never a foreigner to this world.

Like, im thinking of a scenario where yuu was originally a student at NRC and was just ur normal, faceless background character. as a result, he saw everyone OB and sort of heard about/was exposed to all their tragedies in the aftermath. mood in school is depressed as powerful figures are turning up dead left and right...their friends and family are devastated...it's just not a good time.

in my head yuu admired the dorm heads and OB-ers from afar, like they knew azul as that crazy talented capitalist dude, riddle was obvious Mr. Perfect in terms of his grades, leona's literal royalty, blah blah blah...

then malleus OBs, but NOT in dream form b/c he has no friends and doesn't want to "preserve" happiness, more like angry hoard dragon mode. and yuu sees that everything is going to get destroyed and awakens his UM.

"Wish Upon a Star"...

he makes a 'wish' to turn back time and go back and prevent this from happening...not just the destruction of the school, but the mental breakdown of all of these amazing people who should never have reached this point.

in my head, this is powerful magic, so every time yuu makes a 'wish' he has to sacrifice something about himself...

maybe the first time he sacrifice his first memory of magic. it sends him back a day before malleus's overblot. he tries to find a way to save malleus, but realizes that everyone is scared of the prince of fae, no one wants to get close to diasomnia, and even the faculty won't get involved.

so the next time, he sacrifices something bigger. all three years of his memory of middle school. after all, who needs those embarrassing preteen memories, right?

now he lands smack in the midlde of the aftermath of vil's OB. he rushes over to ignilhyde, but idia is so isolated in his own dorm that no one even knew that he was "gone" when his OB happened. by the time yuu goes, idia's already missing.

and yuu realizes. he can't just stop one OB and call it a day. the root problem is much, much deeper. the social pressure of the OBs...the faculty's indifference to students...and the student's own attitudes towards each other..,they're all deeply intertwined in the net that is NRC.

yuu is keenly aware that he's Just a Guy. being a background character is kind of his defining characteristic--kinda like how trey thinks about himself (even tho it's SO not true lmao). so yuu goes to the only person he thinks can and will help the students at NRC.

(no it's not crowley)

(obviously)

it's the dark mirror.

so the dark mirror is kind of like. this ancient (maybe eldritch?) artifact thing...thinking of who its original master was, its safe to say that its one of, if not the most, op things in the school.

anyone, they team up. the dark mirror's power is related to "truth". it is an artifact created to the absolute truth of the world, which is why its not affected by yuu's "wish"--it can see the entire truth of the world's timeline, including the effects of yuu's UM.

the dark mirror agrees to help yuu by giving him some of its power. they make a magical contract--basically, dark mirror will lend yuu some of its power so that he doesn't forget his mission even after sacrificing his memories, and in exchange yuu will not be allowed to change his 'wish' until he succeeds. (dark mirror's ultimate goal here is to make sure NRC is still standing by the end of this lol)

(this is also where those "dreams" will come from---in this verse, the plots in disney were actually canon, its just that the "ending" continued after the story in our world and gave more power to the villain here. later, the villains got rid of the original history and changed it to their liking. the "dreams" are just the residual power of the dark mirror which stimulates yuu according to their contract by preemptively sort of "warning" him about the next upcoming OB.)

so yuu sacrifices. he goes back: three weeks, three months, six months, nine months--and then he does it again, and again, and again. He forgets the faces of his family, his friends, even the common sense and history of this world.

and in doing so, he dies, over and over--and watches others die, over and over. and suddenly it's no longer about just preventing the destruction of NRC -- and likely the world, considering the OB's powers and positions -- but about saving THEM. Not the authoritative, far-off figures he admired...but just...them.

the guy with mommy issues who'll write personal study guides for his students just to see them pass. the guy who hides his poisonous thoughts behind a smile but still won't turn away a person in need. the greedy mf with self-esteem issues ten miles long who treats his business like his goddamn baby. the prince with the crappy attitude whose inferiority complex is so infuriating it makes even pacifists want to throw hands.

the iron-willed celebrity whose exacting standards brutalize even himself. the grieving shut-in who's trapped in his past. the gargoyle-loving dragon prince who's never had a real friend.

and more. and more. and more.

yuu cuts himself into pieces for them. he takes away everything that made him, "him" -- until even his true name is lost to the world's memory, and all that's left is "yuu". he bleeds for them, laughs with them, cries with them--and sacrifices, and sacrifices, and sacrifices.

until...

until all that's left is a vague memory of the world...a vague memory of "himself". until he's back, to the day of the entrance ceremony.

until the day of the very last "wish", where "he" finally sacrifices the only thing "he" has left -- his very...soul.

on that day he stands in front of the dark mirror, in front of the only being in the world privy to the "truth", and it declares--

"the nature of your soul is...

...

...

...unclear to me."

i have more but this is enough to scratch the itch for now so i'll just leave this here for my future self...

[sulumuns-dootah]

Can I request headcanons for whb kings (+sitri) with a fem mc (or gn if you prefer) who has a similar life to athanasia from who made me a princess and them witnessing a memory in her dream that is basically that scene in the first chap where lp athy was on her knees crying to claude

WHB kings (+ Sitri) with reincarnated princess having a nightmare about her past

⟡ Masterlist ⟡ 

A/N: HI! I had to look this manhwa up, so sorry if I got some plot stuff wrong ^^

Characters: Satan, Sitri, Mammon, Leviathan, Beelzebub, Belphegor, Lucifer

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

His first reaction is anger

Who does that scum think he is to reject you?

Expect him to be really nice and considering to you from then on

He'll always make sure you know how much he cares about you and how he'll never abandon you

You'd never really find out why he changed so much all of a sudden unless you ask him about it

Apparently he didn't want to reawaken that wound by bringing it up

       ༺☆༻

Sitri didn't want to pry into your personal dreams, but your heart was beating so fast and if he correctly saw, there were even some tears streaming down your face

After seeing that traumatic memory, he'll hug you close to his body and kiss all over your face to gently wake you up

When your eyes finally open, he'll let you hide your face in his chest and hold you as you sob

He's curious, but doesn't want to push you, so he's just hoping you'll bring it up when you're done

Will make sure he's there for you the following day, cancelling all plans he has for the day

       ༺☆༻

Your dream reminds him of his own sad memory about his father

If you wake up on your own, he'll be there so you can confide in him

If not, he'll let you sleep unless your dream turns even worse

Just like Sitri, the next day he's all yours and reminding you that he's never leaving

Showers you with gifts and love to make up for the life you've been deprived of

He'll even get you a live pet if you ask so

       ༺☆༻

At first heard you cry out someone's name

His first thought it that you're draming of some other man

Which you are, but once Levi sees/hears what the man is saying, he's speechless

Someone dares to treat his lover like that?

On the next day he will ask you about it and when you break down telling him about your past, his expression softens

The two of you trauma bond by sharing stories of your past

       ༺☆༻

Beel doesn't like this at all

Now, he's not a father, but even he knows that's not a thing to tell your kid

But seeing your traumatic past kinda makes him feel bad for just disappearing from you at times

So now before he leaves, he makes sure to let you know and that he still loves and cares about you

Similarly to Mammon, wants to help you experience the life you've missed out on and heal your inner child

       ༺☆༻

You're thrashing in the bed and making noise, which is waking Belphie up and he's annoyed

So he enters your mind to see what's up

Oh, this bitch didn't

As much as he's tired even in his mind, Belphie will manifest into your dream and irritatedly tell your father off

"She can do better off without you anyway, ya windbag."

"Gonna show 'er how livin' in real riches looks like."

The next morning you're confused

Like literally, what tf happened?

You can't even ask Belphie because he's still sleeping and probably will for a long time

       ༺☆༻

Ah, that is tragic

He knows the pain of loosing a father

Though, your story is worse

Even if you're crying, he'll hold off his dacryphilia, because this is serious matter

In the morning he asks Buer to do some evaluation and maybe help you with some shadow work as a therapy method of preventing any further nightmares

This is kinda random, but I feel like he'll buy you a plushie to cuddle with when you need it and he's too busy at the moment

[goatpaste]

Do you think P7 is actually good or is it overhyped? I think too many people considering it the best part overlook loads of its flaws and how badly a lot of characters arcs ended by the end (Soundman and HP being the most egregious)

Personally, its not my favirote part

If I had to rank? P8>P4>P6>P7>P3>P1>P5>P2 (not ranking P9 as it is not in completion at this time but I really like it and probably would but it floating around P7s slot)

Like, its got some great bones (no pun intended) With a generally fun concept and world/story set up. With a few icks (ie Lucy Steel's deal) I was a fan of what Araki was cookin.

I really really love the main four, I think Araki did a great job giving Gyro and Johnny character plot while not totally overshining either one like he tends to struggle with in other parts. I wish he had done much more with Hot Pants and Diego, truly i mean this. I think those two, ESPECIALLY Hot Pants had such potentially to be a really deeply rich character. Everyday I mourn my head world were Diego, HP and Lucy travel togeather as a B plot for SBR.

BUT its about the halfway point of the story where Lucy and Funny Valentine get introduce that i feel like the story falls apart. Like FV is a character that on basic knowledge of him that he was 'a jojo flavored nationalistic american president' I was like that sounds hilarious. But after getting through the part i find him one of the least interesting villians. Like beyond how poorly handled Lucy Steel is and his interactions with her, I just find him extremely uninteresting. The only saving grace he has is that his stand is interesting in design and power.

And yeah the ending is kind of a mess imo. I think... SIGH see i feel very mixed for the ending. On one hand i love a tragedy, i think the fact that they all lost in a way is so bittersweet but so good for sbr general vibe. But i dont think like it always feels like it works. For Gyro it works best, he's winning in his lost because he doing it for johnny. But then you tend to forget why he was doing this in the first place until they do their wrap up at the end where the Zeppeli's are gone, the country is gone, and that little boy died of the sickness anyways. Like idk, it just feels silly at that point.

And HP and Diego would have hit SOOOO hard if we got to let their shit marinate throughout SBR....GODDD if the anime allows them more screentime im gonna go ape insane... Like i know we know their tragedy and their place back in the front through right before their end but.. idk i wish HP's ending wasnt so.. idk empty? Diegos is closer to satisfying, this is the final act of a desperate man who i s dying to get victory. He dies thinking he has won. that means something, its tragic but its something.... then they bring in the alternate Diego who sucks and is just Normal Diego but worse. its a version of Dio and Diego that is just worse.

Then Lucy gets thrown around the story to be a half dressed sex object. like man... She coulda been so much more

I love the first half of SBR, and the second half has some stuff in it when its just johnny and gyro that i still like. But its kinda of a mess and really its like

If you like this part, that is fine i can understand why. But almost 60% of the time SBR fans love to talk about how good it is and then never mention the problems with it especially when reccomending it to other ppl... OR LORD the amount of ppl i've seen jump to defend it is insane.

How everytime i've gone 'hey yknow its kinda weird how Lucy is married to a 50 year old man' and everyone immediately jumps to

'it was the way things where back then!'

The part literally starts with someone commenting on how weird her age is for their marriage. Also its jojo's this whole part is full of inaccuracy for the time, the horses and also theres magic ghost.

'its just a pretend marriage!'

Then why are there that weird scene of her and Steel kissing? why they did that? what was the point of that? also there is still Mountain Tim, Funny Valentine, Scarlet Valentine, and Alt Diego.

or when i talk about how Araki goes from drawing her like something i could believe in 14 yr old girl to drawing her like an adult woman half dress like shes popular slut club

Ppl got mad at me for that saying 'thats just puberty!' which yes puberty can act really fast and you can develop wildly. but like... doesnt sbr take place over 3-4 months and this doesnt change her outfit to suddenly be less clothing puberty didnt undress her.

but anyways. I get really grumpy about Lucy's treatment, and how SBR fans often love to not see an issue with it. Its a fine part, i dont hate that part in full. Its frustrating! it really is frustrating. What's good its fun and good. but what sucks really sucks

[jessconsumesmedia]

Finally have the time and energy to have a long rambly spiel about new ghosts episode (might go back and just talk about my thoughts on the rest of season four but for right now y’all are getting thoughts on 4x06!

Spoilers and a lot of rambling below the cut :)

OKAY this episode genuinely got me. I am a huge Trevor softie and an even bigger H-money enjoyer. So when I get crumbs let me tell you I will run with them. I also just enjoyed all of this episode. The A plot with Issac being a slut for sandwiches. (Which he technically said he didn’t like them but who writes that much about something they hate?) The B plot with darling Trevor being a little wet puppy. (also me too) And the secret C plot which was just the minuscule h$ moments. (delusion)

The two real plots were genuinely silly and lovely and heartbreaking and heartwarming all at the same time.

I will actually talk about them for real now

A Plot - Issac’s Journal

I do genuinely like the bit that it was literally just his sandwich journal and then the whole vampire thing. It’s just funny plain and simple. That being said I do get why some people were kinda iffy on the idea of Issac’s biography being turned into a vampire novel. Depending on how the season continues it could turn into a dumb joke. But l really like the whole vampirism is the counterpart to him being very gay. Like not only is it a 21 minute long episode there is only so much you can do on network television but it actually leaves a lot open possibility wise. It being just another biography may not have been a huge selling point. (I do not know the actual logistics but I don’t know a lot of people who just pick up books on founding fathers so) Vampire books however, that is a selling point, and then you bring in that it is Issac’s story, that is interesting! (Even to me and I am not a fan of vampire stuff) Plus I saw something that said that it could say inspired by his real story and people love a little digging when it doesn’t feel like a history lesson. But Idk how I feel about this whole plot lands on the fact that I think it was really silly and also it opens good doors.

B Plot - Escarghost/Shelly

I endlessly love this story. Like genuinely it tugs in my heartstrings wayyy too hard. Like you’re telling me this darling little morally ambiguous snail shows up (no telling how long he’s been slowly putting around) and becomes a pet for our beloved ghosts. And Trevor acts like he hates pets until poor Thor gets berated and he feels the need to confess that he actually loves pets and then he gets attached and he tells Alberta and Hetty that he feels guilty that he never came home to his dog (i will cry just thinking about it) and then they comfort him and then the snail gets sucked off because all he needed was for someone to call him a good boy like I will go be sad about my pets now thanks. Like that is just a summary basically but it is all I can say about the little guys.

Hetty side-eying Flower for being Flower

And finally

H- Money

I am firmly in the boat that says they are learning the whole friend thing before they can get back into the actual relationship thing. Like they both don’t actually know how relationships work so they need a bit to like actually get a grip. Plus they are both still kinda full of themselves in their own respective ways. Trevor is much quicker on the uptake but it would stand to reason that he would fall first and then somehow manage to get a hold of his feelings and Hetty just be like way over there sitting on a washing machine. They could be slow going. BUTTT Those two are consistently doing things that is like Domestic but only in a Trevor and Hetty way. And what I mean but that is like they have that comfort around each other that they seemed to have at the very beginning of the series but now it is heightened or at least played into (we all know Rebecca and Asher are the biggest h$ supporters) and it is very specific and well done. I saw something not to long ago that I thought was cool and it was like they are kinda like the Monica and Chandler but ghosts. And that spoke to me because not only is Friends my forever love it also is just pretty similar. Like in Friends Monica and Chandler are so domestic immediately in the show like first season they say they’ll get married if they don’t meet anyone else and they are both a bit emotionally stilted much like h$ so idk but I like that dynamic they have. I so digress but they mean so much to me those silly guys who don’t understand how feelings work.

(I reference multiple other posts and random tweets I am so sorry I have literally no clue who said what)

And I’ll end with yes Jay is a wife guy I’ve been saying that for months and now Pete is speaking Jay’s truth and his former? truth (boo carol with love and contempt)

-Jess💖