#not half bad for a retrospective if i do say so myself

[captain-hawks]

BEST FRIENDS & BAD IDEAS

♡ — jean kirstein x f!reader

Big aspirations and even bigger dildos—in which a poorly thought out plan makes it incredibly hard to act like your feelings for Jean Kirstein are platonic. Not when they’re anything but. And especially not when you’re half naked in his lap.

18+ ONLY

wc — 2.7k

prompt — cockwarming, creampie

additional content — NSFW, 18+, best friends to lovers speed run, dildo use, implied masturbation, unprotected p in v, praise kink, jean kirstein’s big dick

╰┈➤ kinktober masterlist

“If you keep doing that, I’m gonna come,” Jean growls, and his low, rough tone sends you off-kilter, shoving you headfirst over the precarious edge you’ve been foolishly dangling from.

In retrospect, perhaps this wasn’t the best idea.

–

In the long list of questionable decisions you’ve made today, one of the first catalysts guaranteeing inevitable disaster was your lack of foresight to lock your bedroom door before stripping off your shorts and underwear and preparing to lower yourself down onto the ridiculously large dildo that had been delivered in an even more comically large Amazon box this morning. 

Your best friend of many years and college roommate, Jean Kirstein, came home just as your makeshift “stand”—you’d hastily attached the suction cup at the base of the dildo to the last clean plate in the cabinet for lack of a better surface—went flying across the rug, ripping the few inches you’d manage to ease down onto right out of your lube-slick channel. You’d hit the floor with a thud, growling in frustration. This, understandably, had the unfortunate effect of attracting the concern of said roommate, who swiftly burst into your room as if you were in the middle of being robbed. 

The concern quickly morphed into hysterics as he spotted the giant purple dildo wiggling uselessly a few feet away from where you were lying on your stomach, punching the carpet and yelling at him to get out with as much dignity as you could muster.

“That’s my shirt,” he commented dryly, ignoring your pleas for him to forget everything he had just seen. 

“Well it was in my drawer,” you spat back, trying to push the dildo-plate behind you, although the damage was already done.

Jean leaned against the doorframe, folding his arms. “I have so many questions.”

“Our business hours are between 8 and 5, so you’ll have to call back tomorrow. Sorry,” you said with a dismissive wave, subtly kicking the plate and dildo beneath the bed. 

The suction cup chose that moment to pop off, and all ten inches came rolling back into view right where a bar of sunlight was stretching across the floor from the window. It would have almost looked artsy. 

If it weren’t a fucking dildo.

“I thought you ordered a lamp,” he observed mildly, motioning to the huge cardboard box you’d yet to take out to the recycling bin. 

“I’m gonna order you a fleshlight if you don’t shut up,” you grumbled, shoving on a pair of sweatpants.

Jean crinkled his nose, running a hand through his hair. “That thing’s so big, the landlord might start charging us for three tenants if he sees it. Is this a cry for help?”

“I’m trying to prepare myself for seducing Eren at the party Saturday night,” you whisper-yelled, as if anyone else was going to overhear you in your otherwise empty apartment. 

“Jaeger?!” he barked out with a disbelieving laugh. 

“Everyone says he’s huge. I don’t want it to be a disaster.”

“He’s not that fucking big!” he exclaimed incredulously. 

You pinched the bridge of your nose. “Can you like, go be somewhere tonight? Go get so high with Conny you forget you saw anything? I’m gonna go try in the bathroom instead.”

“You’re kicking me out of my own apartment so you can shove a giant, sparkly purple dildo inside of yourself imagining it’s Jaeger’s dork ass?”

“I love it when you talk dirty to me, Jean.”

He groaned. “The bathroom sounds like an even worse idea. You’ll slip, hit your head on something, blood will go everywhere, and we’ll lose the security deposit.”

“Or my plan will work, I’ll get laid this weekend, and you can stop complaining about how grumpy I’ve been lately,” you reasoned matter-of-factly. 

Jean’s hand came to rest on your shoulder as you attempted to push past him to leave the room, aforementioned dildo jiggling menacingly in your hand. “You’re gonna hurt yourself,” he said a little more softly, raising a brow as he cast another look at the offending object.

“I have lube!” you shot back defensively.

Jean glanced up at the ceiling, muttering something about regret under his breath before exhaling, “Let me help you.”

–

In all the years that you’ve known Jean, you’ve done an excellent job at keeping your little crush on him your best kept secret. A secret kept under the most formidable lock and key, buried deep in the depths of your psyche. Tucked away in the very back of a dusty, old cabinet like an expired can of corn. 

Objectively, you know Jean’s handsome. You’re well aware. 

With his intense, hazel eyes—ones that see everything. 

His tall, solid form. 

His sinfully curved, pink lips (and his habit of idly sliding his tongue along the bottom one). 

His long, dexterous fingers—a dangerous thought. 

That fucking mullet he let grow in, which shouldn’t be nearly as sexy as it is when he rolls right out of bed and leaves his room looking like a pillow-rumpled supermodel. 

He’s hot, okay?

And sure, you’ve drunkenly kissed at a few parties over the years. Jean’s seen your ass more times than you can count. Definitely your boobs that time he ran into the bathroom to puke while you were showering. Sometimes he has a habit of putting his head on your lap when you’re both on the couch, nudging you till you card your hands through his soft brown hair like a damn dog. 

But it’s always been platonic. 

Friendly. 

Two people who are just very, very comfortable with one another. Comfortable in knowing that neither intends to ruin their stable, solid friendship by carelessly sprinkling feelings into the mix. 

Comfortably going so far as to share the sordid details of your sex lives (or lack thereof, lately) while leaning against the kitchen counter eating take out food without batting an eye—though you’d be lying if you said you didn’t try to one up him sometimes when you feel that familiar, unwelcome twinge of jealousy yawning awake inside of you.

But this?

This is asking too much of your restraint to keep your heart walled off and your mouth clamped shut. In your defense, it was already left in pitiful tatters after grinning-and-bearing it throughout the seven-month-long nightmare that was Jean dating fucking Pieck. 

—

The next phase of your slew of terrible ideas today began with Jean sitting at the head of your bed, back against the wall, holding the dildo between his legs. Like your own personal fucking dildo holder. Grinning like this wasn’t the single most awkward thing the two of you have ever done (save for the time you both fell asleep with your head in his lap on the couch and woke up to his accidental boner poking you in the ear—neither of you ever mentioned that again). 

And it would have been totally fine if it worked out like you imagined in your head the moment he pitched it—you sinking down onto the silicone schlong a few times, stuffing in as much as you could while he held it still. Then letting him carry on with his day while you lay there in bed for a little while with it lodged inside of you, getting yourself used to the stretch. Totally fine. 

The reality of the situation was far different, entailing a sticky, slippery mess of lube coating of your hands and a dildo that bent and flopped in every direction as you tried to carefully impale yourself on it while maintaining some sense of dignity. 

You had given up fairly quickly, butting your head against Jean’s collarbone and sighing as you asked if he thought Eren would go slow. 

He was quiet for a moment. 

“…do you trust me?” Jean had asked carefully, like his next suggestion wasn’t going to send you spiraling.

Like “Just sit on my dick, as a friend!” wasn’t the most fucking confusing statement your heart, brain, and vagina had ever heard.

–

Which is how you find yourself in your current predicament, straddling Jean Kirstein’s lap with far more inches of him than you’d realized he’d been keeping tucked away buried to the hilt in the velvety heat between your thighs. Raw, skin-to-fucking-skin, because you’re both in a miserable dry spell with not a single condom to be found between the two of you. And somehow the combination of “known you for half of my life” and “just got tested” and “IUD” sounded better than one of you being tasked with trudging to the pharmacy.

Or, god fucking forbid, going down one floor to ask Conny for one.

Nope. 

You have three days to prepare yourself for whatever may come with Eren, so sitting on your best friend’s intimidatingly large dick sans condom the least of your worries. Even if it feels so incredible you’re literally silently choking on the moan threatening to spill past your lips. 

Even if you fucking swear you heard his breath hitch when the thick head of his cock began to slip past your entrance, stretching you open wide as he breached your damp channel. 

Even if he hardly had to touch himself to get hard for this. 

Even if his gaze darkened when you choked out, “Jean, your dick is huge.”

This was a terrible idea. 

“If you keep doing that, I’m gonna come.”

“Doing what?!” you ask, exasperated.

He rests his hands on your waist, “Doing this,” and squeezes firmly, “on my dick.”

“This isn’t even sex,” you tell him, ignoring the way the close proximity of his hazel eyes sets a flurry of emotion stuttering in your chest. “It’s like, cockwarming at best. You can’t come from cockwarming if you’re not even turned on.”

Jean raises an eyebrow. “Do you even know how tight you are?”

“That’s obviously why I was worried about Ere—”

“It’s like this,” he cuts you off, wrapping a hand around your throat. It’s a loose hold, only meant to prove a snarky point, but a spark of arousal seeps through your body anyway at the mere suggestion. His eyes widen a fraction at the traitorous way your walls clamp down on him even harder in response. “What, you into being choked?”

“I’m into a lot of things, Jeanie,” you tell him haughtily, trying to ignore the heat blistering beneath your skin.

“Like dumb idiots named Eren Jaeger?” he counters, making to grab for the tongue you’re currently sticking out at him. 

If you didn’t know better, you’d almost think Jean sounds like he’s jealous. 

Which he definitely isn’t. 

But you poke the bear anyway. 

“What, are you jealous?”

He shifts slightly, and you bite your lip to stifle the moan as your cunt spasms around the pressure from his cock. 

If he notices, he doesn’t mention it. Instead, his brow furrows as the corners of his mouth tilt downward slightly. “I just think you deserve better.”

You tug on his earlobe, letting out a weak laugh in an attempt to dispel the sticky, messy feeling of hope trying desperately to cling to the arousal stirring in your gut. “Says the guy who’s currently fucking me.”

Jean scoffs and deadpans, “I thought this wasn’t sex.”

Who are you kidding? Certainly not the tension coiling ruthlessly in your abdomen. 

You move a little, trying and failing to relieve the sensation of hot wax dripping down your spine. Instead, you let out a tiny, strangled noise when your throbbing clit presses down against his pelvis, the resulting flood of pleasure setting every nerve ending in your body on fire.

The way he growls out your name through gritted teeth is a warning, but his low tone only serves to stoke the flames licking their way up between your thighs. 

You move again, inhaling sharply through your nose.

“Fuck,” he groans quietly, head hitting the wall behind him with a resounding thud. 

You’re not sure if he does it on purpose, but his hands find their way back to your hips, calloused fingertips pressing directly against your skin as he slides them up beneath your shirt. His shirt. 

The next time you rock against him, his grip on you tightens. And then, you feel it—he tugs you forward. 

You lean further into him, without really meaning to, forehead coming to rest against his. “What are we…”

“Just keep going,” he murmurs. 

He shifts again, sinking down lower so his back is pressed against the mattress, and you realize the angle gives you more purchase to grind down against him when he pulls at your waist, thumbs lazily skimming your hip bones. 

“Jean…” you whisper, not really sure what else you intend to say. 

“I want you to feel good,” he says softly, pushing his hips against you, even though he’s snugly bottomed out. 

It feels so fucking good—

—laying atop Jean while he stares back up at you, pupils clearly dilated in arousal—

—watching his eyes fall shut as you run a hand along the stubble on his jaw—

—knowing he’s well aware the slickness between your legs is no longer from the lube, your cunt gushing with arousal at the feeling of being stuffed deep with his thick cock. 

So you tell yourself you’ll figure the rest out later when you start to shamelessly grind down against him. 

“You don’t have to be quiet for me,” Jean teases when you cough to cover up a gasp.

Your answering moan is nearly a whimper, and Jean’s muscles tense beneath you as he continues to guide your hips. He doesn’t try to pull his cock out from where it’s lodged inside of you, doesn’t start thrusting and fucking up into you. He just lets you chase the clitoral stimulation you so desperately need while you’re cockwarming him, groaning along with you at each needy drag. 

“Good girl, that’s it.”

This is far more intimate than you bargained for, the gentle slide of his hands up your back scraping your heart out bit-by-bit. 

“Holy shit, you don’t know how close I am to coming right now,” he moans in a gravelly, unsteady tone. 

All you can do is whimper his name when the rubber band suddenly snaps in response, your body trembling as a wave of white-hot pleasure crashes over you. 

And then Jean’s hands are cupping your face, his lips crashing into yours. He kisses you fiercely as you whine and shudder through your orgasm, moaning into your mouth as you card your fingers through his hair. You can feel his cock throb inside of you, pulsing with need as your tight cunt spasms and contracts, relentlessly squeezing his shaft while you soak him with your release. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he’s groaning, both of you too drunk on pleasure to move when he suddenly climaxes, cock pumping thick, hot ropes of cum deep in your pussy. 

Chests heaving, Jean slowly sits up, forehead falling against your shoulder as he wraps his arms around your waist. 

After a few minutes of silence, he finally murmurs, “Don’t fuck Jaeger.”

You tilt his head upward, finger resting just below his chin, skimming the stubble that’s there. Too many emotions are swimming in his hazel eyes, more than you can identify—save for one that you recognize with a jolt of clarity. It’s the way you look at him, when he’s not paying attention.

Longing. 

Desire. 

Soft, gentle, unfiltered affection. 

This time, you’re the one to close the distance between your mouths, brushing your lips against his. 

“Who?” you ask, smiling into the kiss. 

Jean chuckles, the sound like warm honey, and he deepens the kiss, one hand sliding to the back of your head. Though you remain seated on his softening length, cum begins to seep from your slick heat, pooling on his balls and abdomen. 

He goes to move, but you don’t budge. “You wanna get cleaned up?”

You shake your head, the corner of your mouth tilting upward with a smirk. “I’m comfortable.”

Jean bites his lower lip, huffing, “My cum’s dripping all over, and I’m two seconds from getting hard again if you keep squeezing down on me like that.”

Feigning a look of innocence, you flex the muscles in your tight, soaked channel one more time for good measure. He chokes, and you grin. 

“Good.”

— likes, comments, &/or reblogs are greatly appreciated!

[theambitiouswoman]

hey there. i'm just 19 years old and been trying to find my way around things. i've been feeling really terrible lately. my situation's a bit messy.

i have a habit of comparing myself to my peers a lot. not to mention i have some addictions i must get rid of, like spending my time daydreaming a lot, which really affects my schedule. my mother would compare me to my peers when i was really little, and i think it grew on me, and now i'm starting to realize it as i grow up that it's stuck to me.

i couldn't do well with the university exam, so i'm taking a gap year to retake it next year. i feel like a failure sometimes. there were so many things i could have done as a high-schooler, but i just wasted my time. i succeeded in some stuff, yes, but i don't feel like i'm ready to be an adult yet. i feel like i should be knowledgable more, i feel like i know less than i should, and it's killing me inside.

i'm sorry if it's just ranting, but that's about my situation. your account is full of useful information and encouragement, do you have any previous posts/suggestions that you could give me? thank you in advance. i hope you have a nice day.

Hi angel,

At 19, it's normal to feel uncertain and overwhelmed. Remember, you're still figuring things out, and it's okay to take your time. 19 was one of my favorite ages, for no particular reason other than it was fun and I felt like an adult. I certainly had nothing together. My parents would have loved a lot of things for me at that age. Married to the boyfriend I had at the time because it was a huge sin to them based on their religious views, which in retrospect would have been a huge mistake.

Comparing yourself to others is common, but try to focus on your own journey. We normally compare ourselves because we don't have a set plan for our lives with clear goals and intentions. I am sure your mom means well, and its normal for parents to have the same expectations for all of their kids, even though they are literally different people. But everyone has their own path, and what matters most is your progress, not how you measure up to others. You cant let yourself feel bad for meeting anyone else's expectations.

I always tell people to not compare someone else's highlights to your life because life has its ups and downs, and you don't know what is going to happen tomorrow. We all have different lives, different qualities. Maybe what took someone else x amount of time and effort to accomplish, is something that is a strength to you and you can accomplish it in half the time, when you are ready.

All you can do for yourself is really focus on you, learn, prepare. Train your brain into processing things faster so you can evolve faster as a person in your brain.

If you know you have some negative habits you want to work on, like daydreaming, you can start taking action and maybe setting small goals to manage your time better. Focus on the things you want to improve about yourself instead of feeling bad about yourself for it. You already know the problem. Maybe working on these issues opens your mind and your live to different opportunities. We have to learn to overcome obstacles, not just physical but mental. This creates a ripple effect not only with our thought process, but our physical actions and in turn attract different realities and opportunities.

You are an individual. You are unique and special. Comparing yourself or living up to someone else's standards for YOUR LIFE when they don't have your strengths or brain, or potential is doing a huge disservice to you. We cant abandon our strengths, we need to discover them. When we abandon them, we are basically abandoning ourself and who we could be for the sake of someone else.

Taking a gap year to retake the university exam is a smart choice. It doesn't mean you're a failure; it's a chance to improve. It is actually great that you recognize that you want to be better. Most people take a gap year anyway. Who says you can't? Why would it make a negative impact on your future? That is simply NOT TRUE <3

[fanfic-inator795]

WoY: A Decade Later (A personal retrospection)

Wander Over Yonder… for a time, it was - in my opinion - the best cartoon ever. It was my number one, and I wasn't sure that anything else could top it. While I don't necessarily feel the same way these days, it's still a cartoon that very much lives in my heart and I don't think I'll ever truly leave it behind.

From a personal perspective, it was probably the biggest and most active Fandom I had been in at that time. It wasn't my first fandom/hyperfixation - prior to WoY, there had been Cartoon Network's Chowder and Regular Show, as well as Disney's Phineas and Ferb. But Chowder was short-lived and RS and PnF were both shows I had lost interest in due to them beginning to dip in quality.

WoY, however, was new, fresh, exciting and growing rapidly. It inspired me to write probably at least a hundred fanfics. It was a blast live-reacting to new episodes with everyone and seeing all the art that would come afterwards. It brought me into the RP scene and, if not for that, I might have never met my best friend of 10 years (and counting! Love you, Tessa).

Looking back on it 10 years after the fact, I can't fully say that WoY is still my favorite cartoon (shows like Kid Cosmic, The Ghost and Molly McGee, Big City Greens and Craig of the Creek have all outshined it in one way or another), nor can I claim that it is/was a perfect show. But man… It sure was a hell of a ride.

(Keep reading for all my admittedly VERY LONG personal thoughts or opinions regarding this one of a kind show)

Humble Beginnings

Pretty sure I've mentioned this before, but I actually didn't care for WoY at first. It was the summer right before college, and I remember watching the sneak peek - The Picnic - early one morning after not being able to go back to sleep. I remember not really laughing much or even seeing the appeal… and yet the episode stuck in my mind, to the point that I ended up watching it again during a free moment I had from Freshman Orientation Week. I had a similar reaction to the show's proper pilot, The Greatest - not loving it, but not hating it either.

The fact that people/friends from my RS and PnF days were also posting about it helped keep the show in my mind (shoutout to Taylor, Erin and Darkwing). But it wasn't until two specific episodes - The Fugitives and The Good Deed - that I managed to finally start to connect with the characters myself. 

I started to see the appeal in this little furry orange spoon who just wanted to do good and make others happy, even when it was a struggle. I really liked the show's core theme of not just optimism and positivity, but also just being kind. I also started to really enjoy the show's sci-fi and space aesthetic and grew to adore its animation and gorgeous backgrounds, as well as laugh at its wacky sense of humor (I still laugh at The Fugitives/Good Deed quite a bit, even though I probably have their entire scripts memorized at this point).

So, it was official. I was hooked. Whenever there were new eps, I'd either try to watch them on the basement TV in my college dorm or wait for a livestream or FreeCartoonsOnline upload. If we're being honest, the first half of season 1, while being much more low-key than the wackiness that the show would end up eventually shifting to, was probably when it was at its most consistent. Other eps later on would reach higher highs, but getting stuff like The Bad Guy, the Prisoner, the Troll, the Pet, the Box and The Little Guy back-to-back just made my love for the show grow more and more.

The Little Guy specifically is one that is just incredibly well-crafted in its dialogue, story-telling and pacing, being both enjoyable and heartfelt. (Also the last time I watched it the ending made me bawl so, there's that, lol). Shortly afterwards, The Hero was another ep that I distinctly remember sticking in my head for whatever reason (Dracor and Demurra are still adorable, ngl). Then we had another favorite of mine, The Nice Guy.

I know I may be in the minority on this one - I remember my parents being annoyed and frustrated when they watched it with me, haha - but I absolutely love this episode. I find the jokes funny enough - the cashier is one of my favorite minor characters tbh - and the space gas station appeals to my aesthetic. But what really sells this episode for me is how it handles and portrays its moral of "being nice isn't always easy, but it's still right and still worth doing". Its ending never fails to get an "awwww" out of me, and honestly I could probably go on for an hour about all the little details and things I like/appreciate. I've also grown to really like its sister episode, the Time Bomb.

But no show is perfect, and right around here is where the show, in my opinion, started having some misses. It was mostly just "meh" affairs like The Night, The Toddler and The Big Job (weird, since I usually like heist eps… though I haven't rewatched this one in a while so *shrugs*). Other eps like The Tourist and ESPECIALLY The Helper (which I consider to be the show's worst outing, the vibes are just SO WEIRD on this one) I just didn't care for at all. 

Nothing terrible (save for the Helper), just cases of the jokes not landing or the stories being boring. This was also when the show really started leaning into the wackiness - which wasn't BAD persay, since it led to some really funny jokes and memorable moments when it was used well - it's just that looking back, I sorta miss the simplicity of early s1.

Thankfully, the season put out some real bangers by its end, with my personal faves being The Epic Quest (that ending will never not make me cackle. Again, it's a case of the wackiness actually working incredibly well), the Halloween/Christmas special, and the Rider, which is a great adventure to cap off the season and also the Horse from Horsin’ Around guest stars in it! (and does a pretty good job too. Will Arnett is def one of my favorite celeb VAs at this point, ngl)

So yeah, between the two seasons, s1 is easily my favorite. Call it nostalgia or personal taste, but for me it's all about that consistency. Adding in the fact that s2 has some pretty notable flaws and is thus a lot harder to look back on without noticing those flaws, and it's really no contest for me. 

New season, New problems

I certainly remember the excitement - as well as the fandom's stir craziness - in the lead-up to s2. There were crackships that were invented, silly RP blogs were rampant, Craig McCracken and crew (back when they were still on Tumblr) kept us fed with cool behind the scenes info as well as sneak peeks of the new season, and while I can't recall when it specifically happened, I also vividly remember the 'Bad End to Episodes' phase that the fandom was in at one point. Ah, the joys of still being in your angst phase.

Come that year's Comic Con, and a new round of hype came from the reveal that our new villain of the season was going to be a girl! …yeahhh, it sorta sucks recalling how hyped we all were about Dominator now that we know that she didn't quite work out the way we were all hoping for…

But regardless, s2 had a very strong start. Outside of the premiere, my favorites of this first batch would easily be The Boy Wander and The It for both just being incredibly funny. Although, if you had asked me at the time though, I probably would have said the Skeleton Dance fueled eps that were The Big Day and the Fremergency Fronfract - and like, yeah those eps can still be funny and enjoyable, but I've definitely cooled on the Skeleton Dance ship since these eps first premiered. (Still love a lot of the cute fanon stuff though)

Skipping past the next tent-pole episode for right now, this season had two of my favorite episodes of the ENTIRE SERIES - these being The Cartoon and The Black Cube. The former is just hilarious while the latter has a unique visual presentation and feels like an early s1 ep, and I mean that in the best possible way. I also really enjoy the Eye on the Skullship as well as the Hole… 'Lotta Nuthin' (this one especially, as it's another instance where, for as good as the ep is as a whole, it's the heartwarming lesson and hilarious ending that makes it such a winner in my book).

But for as much as the show was still putting out hits, I'll admit that there were also quite a few meh or just okay eps, especially as the season goes on. Some eps I found funny when I first watched them, but that humor doesn't hit as well when I watch them now. I also feel like there were points where it tried to be TOO silly to the point where it inhibited the actual humor and made the characters flatter and a bit flanderized compared to how they were in s1 (Hater especially got hit bad with this, where it’s less about him ‘softening up’ to show that he has the potential to be a good guy, and more just him constantly leaning into him being a bratty teenager instead of having that mix of dumb/bratty teen boy and legit evil conqueror).

Other times, it was just another case of a story not being as good as it could have been - and by this point in the season, while there are still enjoyable eps with fun concepts/jokes in the latter half of the series, the only one to get near the peak of the show's typical high quality is the musical ep, and if we're being real, it's Andy Bean's impeccable songwriting that saves this ep and makes it so good to rewatch despite its connection to the season's flawed overall story.

And I think it's about time we talk about that…

Not Quite Ready for Serialization

Being a show that was made right after Gravity Falls but before stuff like Star VS, Amphibia, and Owl House, s2 of WoY felt like a show with one foot stuck in episodic stuff and one foot trying to step into serialization. Because of this, the season’s overarching plot feels incredibly underbaked.

Now… Am I saying that I’d want the show to be like ATLA where every episode had to relate back to either the overarching story or one of the side-arcs? No, absolutely not. We’d be missing out on some of my favorite one-shot episodes if they did that, and if I had to choose between the season we have now and the season we could have gotten had the WoY crew gotten more freedom and were allowed more serialization, I’m going with the former each and every time.

HOWEVER, I still have to acknowledge just how poorly done the structure of this season was when it came to the overarching story. Basically we got four tentpole episodes acting as the season’s beginning, arc shifts and ending. During the season’s second and third arcs, there would be certain episodes afterwards reacting to the change in the show’s status quo.

Now, I get what they were TRYING to do but in my opinion it just really didn’t work as well as it could have. I’ll talk more about this in a bit but the season’s second arc (the “romance” arc) definitely got tiring after a while, meanwhile the third “Stop Dominator” arc felt like it was sort of killing time given that it was mostly just the main 4 trying to find some sort of weapon/figure out some sort of plan that ultimately resulted in some ‘funny’ failures and some quick lessons, with the occasional character piece thrown in here or there.

Now, I didn’t hate these episodes. By this point, it should be evident that one of my favorite elements of WoY are its morals and lessons, so even if the episodes themselves didn’t amount to much in the grand scheme of things and were essentially filler, I can at least appreciate a message like “being sad doesn’t mean you’ve given up hope” or “allowing yourself to laugh even in the dark times can help a ton”. So yeah, not completely pointless.

Unfortunately, even with a few bright spots here and there, the overarching plot of s2 still feels underbaked somewhat - and that’s ultimately because of the new character its focused around.

Dominator’s Dilemma

Okay, fess up. Whose idea was it to completely exclude Dominator from the first six episodes of the season (after the s2 premiere)? Because WOW does this decision backfire a lot. I don’t even like Dom that much and I can still acknowledge that she needed much more screen time and focus than she got.

I don’t know if this was to build up the ‘mystery’ surrounding her or because they wanted to get back in the groove of writing the main 4, but this was the crew’s first crucial mistake. Hell, in the first two episodes she plays an active role in, she’s nearly silent in both of them, only having her little fangirl rant in The Greater Hater and a small handful of lines in The Battle Royals. (Which, if I’m being honest, is still a really fun episode for 90% of it, having both great action and absolutely hilarious jokes that still make me laugh, but I get the ending of it making people sour on the episode as a whole.)

Again, it felt like trying to build up this artificial mystery surrounding her when it really wasn’t necessary. Dominator was meant to be a MAIN MEMBER of the cast! Yet I’m pretty sure Emperor Awesome got more significant screen time than her in the end!

Things got a teeny bit better as the show went on, with Dom at the very least getting more lines and more moments to be both badass and totally villainous, but she still felt more like a goal/obstacle than an actual character. I’m not sure if the writers MEANT to do this persay, or if it was just an accident.

Ultimately, it wasn’t until The Night Out when Dom finally got a spotlight episode… which was a little over 3/4ths of the way through the season. You could argue that she also got a bit of characterization in the musical episode, but it was really more emphasizing what we already knew or could infer about her. 

The Night Out, meanwhile, gives us something new - that she’s lonely - and we get a teeny hint of this again in The Robomechabotatron before being told outright in the series finale. Ultimately, it truly does feel like too little too late - especially when her secretly desiring friends just sorta feels like it’s aping off Hater’s secret motivations of wanting to be liked/admired and to have friends/people who love him for who he is.

So yeah, the crew completely dropped the ball on Dom’s characterization, using her as just a goal/threat/obstacle/etc. for nearly all of her appearances. Not only does it make Dom feel like a shallow character, but it also just feels unfair in general. Practically everything we know about Dom is for the sake of other characters.

She’s a test for Wander, an enemy/temporary love interest for Hater, an obstacle for our main four to overcome, and a threat to the characters we already love. Again, there’s nothing wrong with having a character that’s only meant to serve a purpose in the narrative, nor is there anything wrong with a character being shallowly evil… it’s just that the WoY crew hyped her up so much and claimed that she was a fifth main character (implying that she would get about as much development as the main four), so it just felt all the more disappointing when we didn’t get that. Add in her character design - a mix of goth/punk girl energy with Hartman Hips - and it does feel just a tad misogynistic.

There were things I liked about Dom - her cool lava powers and gadgets, her excitable personality, her villain spotlight moments, and her fun vocal performance provided by Noel Wells were all excellent. But unfortunately, these were all surface-level elements, and the crew just didn’t put in enough time to give her much else, essentially saving all her deeper character stuff for the never-made season 3…

A love-hate relationship (leaning towards hate)

Of course you can’t talk about Dom without discussing the season’s second arc, which many see as both a tumor on the plot and the absolute low point of the season. Admittedly when I was watching the season for the first time, I didn’t mind the romance arc all that much. I didn’t care if Dom was getting short-changed, I was too busy laughing at Hater falling all over himself like a dork and thought all the ‘critics’ of the arc were just focusing on the wrong thing and didn’t know how to have fun with a silly cartoon.

Obviously, this was the wrong perspective to have about this sort of thing (I was in the mindset of “I don’t want to accidentally make myself hate this thing I love so I’m going to ignore all criticism of it”. Definitely not the right approach), one that I still apologize for because the critics were totally in the right. From both an objective and a storytelling standpoint, this arc was just the worst - and for several reasons.

Leaning into the overall problem with Dom herself as mentioned previously, this arc was focused solely on Hater and Wander (and to an extent Syl and Peeps as they tried to talk some sense into their respective friends). Whenever Dom was brought in, she either used Hater’s crush to mess with him or just ignored it entirely, being obviously annoyed - and that was the extent of focus that her feelings got.

Outside of those moments, however, Dom’s feelings are relegated to the background, deemed as ‘unimportant’. Sure, in the climax of the arc, she gets this big whole musical number about how she’s “not the damsel” and isn’t interested in Hater’s affections - but again, it’s at the VERY END of the arc and the moment is less about Dom standing up for herself and more about emphasizing just how cruel she can be, as instead of simply rejecting Hater’s advances, she laughs in his face, continuing to mess with him to try and make the rejection as painful as possible before ultimately trying to kill Hater.

But while the arc ends in a showy (and admittedly still kinda fun, thank you Andy Bean and your musical talents) way, the way it starts sorta proves why this idea was so rotten to the core. The ONLY reason why Wander tries to get Hater and Dom together is ONLY because he knows Hater wants a GF and believes that a ‘positive’ thing like love could only ever result in the two villains finding happiness and no longer being evil. Nevermind the fact that Wander is shown only really caring about Hater’s perspective, not once considering Dom’s feelings or even asking if she wants a BF or romantic partner in general.

We get Syl calling him out on this a couple of times, but it’s in that ‘oh that Wander, always with the crazy ideas’ way. You’d think Sylvia, the icon that she is, would be just a bit more blunt and maybe even a bit harsh about how Wander’s treating Dominator - it’s not just a matter of it being a dumb and dangerous plan, but it’s essentially objectifying Dom, treating her like Hater’s missing piece. But hey, it’s fiiiiine, because Wander learns his lesson in the end, right? Except, no not really.

Because even when Wander FINALLY realizes this and feels guilty about causing so much trouble, Syl is more concerned with comforting Wander about it, because he TRIED to do what he thought was right and that “acknowledging you messed up is the first step towards making things right”. Like… yeah I guess but you could have let Wander actually acknowledge what he did was wrong and super messed up, focusing more on the personal aspect of how his whole romance scheme affected Dom AS WELL AS Hater (not JUST Hater) instead of how his scheme broke Hater’s heart and inadvertently made Dom more powerful.

(Also we see Wander shipping and actively pairing up the little Pikmin things in “The Sky Guy” soooooo no I don’t think he fully learned his lesson)

I also have to bring up how there are fans who view Dominator and her whole anti-love thing as aphobic. As someone who only recently figured out she was almost definitely aromantic, I’m certainly not the authority on this, but I can certainly understand the critiques.

What I THINK the WoY Crew was trying to go for was a ‘strong female villain who don’t need no man’, but between Dom constantly being described as ‘heartless’ and Peeps saying that he “doesn’t think she likes anybody” and her cruelty being turned up to 11 whenever someone expressed romantic feelings towards her, it does sorta imply “She can’t love and THAT’S why she’s a villainous monster” rather than simply “she’s a villainous monster”. And because we don’t get any real development or strong characterization with Dom, it’s hard to say where exactly her cruelty comes from, so it’s hard to really argue against these implications without simply inserting headcanons like “Dom is a lesbian”.

Now to be fair, I have seen some aromantics see Dom as good representation - I recall a month or so back when I saw people praising her after she was included in one of those Tumblr polls, with this one being focused on aromantic characters, saying that they liked how she didn’t sugarcoat her rejections and seeing her as this strong, cool, badass villainous who didn’t need romance. So yeah, obviously not every person who shares an identity is going to agree on representation and whether or not it's good, but considering all of Dom’s baggage and the inability to determine whether or not her heartlessness is the cause of her evil or simply a by-product of it, I personally feel like she’s just too messy of an example of a potential aro character.

(Honestly, Syl feels like a better example of an aromantic character to me, given that she and Ryder seemed just as platonic as she and Wander are, as well as her multiple rejections of Awesome and general disinterest/discomfort with romance. Buuut given that those latter examples are specifically with villains and thus it makes sense why she’d reject them regardless of her orientation, it’s still just a vibe/headcanon).

Before I close off this section, I do wanna acknowledge that beyond the potentially aphobic nature of Dominator, WoY’s LGBTQ+ rep isn’t nearly as great as I thought it was once upon a time as a young shipper. Some parts are still pretty okay, like Wander being coded as genderfluid/agender, but overall it still feels more like an old Looney Tunes cartoon than an episode of “The Owl House”, if you get what I’m saying.

In Craig’s defense, the man has never been all too interested in romance in his shows nor has he claimed otherwise - he either uses it as a joke while portraying it as a negative (see Ms.KeenexProf.Utonium, BlooxBerry or, obviously, DomxHater) or it’s a wholesome relationship that ultimately still stays in the background because it’s not all that important (see DracorxDemurra or Ramona and Carlos Flores from “Kid Cosmic”). 

BUT given that there were LGBTQ+ crew members working on the show in s2, such as N.D. Stevenson, as well as LGBTQ+ allies, it is a shame that no proper representation came of that. We got a whole episode where the joke was “oh, Wander and Hater are planning Wander’s execution like it’s a wedding”, an episode where Peeps and Hater essentially break up when Hater fires him, and an “I just can’t quit you” sort of moment from Peeps in the s2 finale when he goes all heart-eyed over Hater deciding to continue being a villain. That’s it, all jokes but nothing substantial. Even the show’s number one lesbian/wlw pairing of SylxDom got a quick Girls Night montage and one sweet moment between them, nothing else.

Again, it’s fine if you’re just looking for jokes, and yeah the WoY Crew never outright promised any romances… buuuut given how much they chose to lean into the Skeleton Dance and DeathGlare stuff while at the same time never outright confirming any of these characters as LGBTQ+ (they didn’t even have to make any ships canon, they just had to say whether or not Wander/Hater/Peeps were gay/bi/pan/etc), I’m not gonna invalidate people who feel just a bit queerbaited about the whole thing.

Bittersweet Goodbyes

As I said before, I was starting college when WoY first premiered. It’s the show that led me to my best friend and it’s the show that helped me through those first two years of college (easily the roughest part of college). It was a show that made me laugh and got me excited, even during the times where I was stressed out or worried. For all its flaws, it was one of the brightest lights in my life at that time.

So, needless to say, when I heard the show was canceled, I was devastated. I remember crying about it that night and even the day after, and I remember joining in as many online strategies as possible to try and get the show back, from letter writing to petition signing. Of course none of that worked, but as a bright side, going through this helped emotionally prepare me for the next time one of my favorite shows was suddenly canceled (looking at you Nickelodeon. Though considering how the RotTMNT movie turned out maaaaybe it was for the best…)

Honestly, for as much as I can look at the show through a critical lens nowadays and point out all the ways it could have been better, I think there will always be a small part of me that wishes we could have gotten some sort of continuation, whether it be through a special, a TV movie or a comic - or hell, I’d even take the plans for s3 leaking at this point. Now, given that the end of WoY brought about the creation of “Kid Cosmic”, I feel like this part has faded a bit, but I’m always gonna want closure on things like Hater’s arc as well as his origins given how much they were teased.

But that in itself is another critique I could give the show. Whether it be Wander facing a different type of threat that wasn’t just another villain, Hater’s transition into becoming a good guy, Peepers getting fed up with his boss and striking out on his own, or Dom’s true characterization that the crew kept insisting was there - the show simply saved a lot of it’s most interesting ideas for a potential Season 3. It was a gamble, and it was one they ultimately lost. It sucks, but it is what it is.

There’s a few more things I could critique about the show, such as its take on the idea of character redemption and Wander becoming a bit of a karma houdini that the show pretty much stopped calling out, and while these critiques are valid I feel like there are other fans who could do a better job talking about those points. But in the end, while season 2 was both a let down in some parts and a bit of a mess in others, I still feel like there were ultimately more good things to be found within the show than bad things.

It’s not a perfect show, far from it. Frankly, I don’t look down on anyone who fell out of love with this show or enjoyed s1 but hated s2. But for what it’s worth, the memories I got from the show are still ones I treasure, and episodes like “The Good Deed”, “The Little Guy”, “The Nice Guy”, “The Epic Quest”, “The Rider”, “The Boy Wander”, “The Black Cube”, “The Hole… Lotta’ Nuthin’” and “The Cartoon” are ones I still love to bits and will probably always love as I watch them over and over.

Disney Channel itself may not care all that much about this show these days save for an occasional rerun or a quick cameo in their Chibi-Verse shorts, but I’m always gonna remember it - for better and for worse. So here’s to 10 years, WoY. I may not always like you, but I still love you.

[griancraft]

Ok as per my last post. This is Long and very much about my feelings so uh don’t read it if you don’t want to. Also I’m aware I sound genujneky crazy for half of this I’m just really really mentally ill in ways I don’t talk about here at all and now I am sharing them and it’s. A little scary but oh well. The system stuff is the stuff I’m most concerned about right now to be honest bc it effects my day to day and if anyone has any kind words or thoughts on what to do I’ll be happy to listen

Please read my previous post if you’re mad /gen I don’t think I say anything bad here but I have really bad morality ocd so like uhm I am scared to post this!!! Prev post

Also I’m very sorry that the prose is terrible to read and my spelling is shit I have dyspraxia which is a coordination thing and it’s worse rn

The maybe I was boring album came on yesterday while I was cleaning and I had to stop what I was doing and turn it off halfway through because I just couldn’t stop hearing an admission. I wasn’t even sad I was just. So done with it. I still am just kinda like. God I hope Shelby is doing ok with all this being public now. I’m glad she was able to heal like she said and I’m glad she made the video dude.

I almost got his lyrics tattooed if that’s testament to how much I loved his early music. It’s not connecting in my brain that this music that’s been apart of my life for like 4 years and helped me through so much was made by an abuser.

But like, in retrospect you can see it. I can’t bear to delete ycgma off my mp3 player bc I related to his songs so much as an abused lonely teenager but I also can’t bare to listen to it. I learned the fall on my guitar as my final exam and I used to repeat his lyrics to myself to cope with abuse and I wish I could still love these songs. I dressed like his dsmp character bc I thought it made me look cool. Which is lame as fuck to admit now lol

Originally I was planning on pirating them and I like, can’t especially after that manipulative ass statement. How much was an act? I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m a bad person because I still kinda do want to listen to that music again. I still want to feel that safe but I know I won’t feel that way anymore.

with dsmp stuff I think I’m going to be still able to look back fondly on it generally and I don’t think I’ll ever stop. The community was what made it and the community is what I loved, and i still do. I don’t think I’m going to reblog art of him specifically but if he’s in it I might. Idk. My policy on dream fanart is if he’s not alone in the art and it’s dsmp or mcc related I reblog so I guess I’ll continue that here. Im sorry if that sounds callous I just. Am not prepared to talk about this so I’m going back and forth

And like. We also have a wilbur factive/fictive and we have for years now and nobody in our system knows how to feel about that. He formed to fill the role of a big brother (I was being heavily emotionally neglected at that point and needed someone to be there for me) and protector from my parents abuse. Obviously, he is entirely separate from his source now bc alters change a lot for me but how we picture him is still wilbur. he’s literally just some guy now but grappling with that connection is fucked up dude it’s weird. He’ll probably further distance himself but it still fucking sucks and I don’t know how to communicate the cognitive dissonance we had to push through bc our brain struggled at first to make sense of how this person who we liked so much that he became the template for a Protector to shield us from the emotional neglect and abuse, essentially, is a terrible person. I’m sorry I know people who aren’t systems, and some who are ngl, will find this fuckibg nuts and I get that but we’re a very very internal person like I just. Kinda am with us as a system a lot and nobody else. It feels like my safe space that I’ve created in my head has been marred. Also. uhm. Our alters speak in distinct voices so it’s bad bad for me rn and we are trying to fix it. I know I know fictives and factives arenttheir source but that doesn’t change that it makes me feel gross. I’m rambling rn I’m sorry. Support Shelby.

[autumnalwalker]

Ashan, I named you Glassheart and now you keep being a mirror for people.

In retrospect I should have seen this coming. It was practically in the title of your first POV chapter even though I meant it as a reference to something else.

Sullivan since the start of the story: “Huh, this Glassheart kid is a pretty strong wizard and has a lot of similar ideals with my friend (Road). I should arrange for the two of them to become friends so Glassheart can replace me one day, because I’m pretty sure my presence is ultimately harmful.”

Road in Chapter 24: “Hey Ashan, I think Sullivan likes you and he almost never likes anyone. You should try talking to him. He’s had something eating at him lately and I think he could really use more than just one friend in his life, especially now that his wife’s gone. I promise he’s not as bad as he tries to make himself seem.”

Road in Chapter 21: “You know, Eris, you kind of remind me of Sullivan.”

Sullivan in Chapter 24: “You know, Ashan, you kind of remind me of my friend (Road).”

Road in Chapter 21: [Calls Eris by a nickname that only three other people use for her and then gets told that name isn't for them to call her.]

Sullivan in Chapter 24: [Starts to call Ashan by the name his parents remember him by and gets interrupted and told that name isn't for him to say.]

Lacuna ever since first meeting Ashan: "Wow, he's so pretty and cool and powerful. Maybe if I were more like him I could actually be useful instead of an ugly, awkward, anxious wreck. Then I actually join everyone else on their cool adventures and help keep Eris safe the same way she makes me feel safe when she's around."

The child in a side story who would grow up to be Sullivan: “This street urchin (who will eventually grow up to be Road) just broke into my room to steal my leftover cake. I’m going to feed them and we’re going to be friends. I’ve never had a friend before.”

Eris and Ashan in Chapter 12: [One of my favorite exchanges in this whole story so far...]

“Hey, maybe don’t eavesdrop on people,” a low voice from behind Ashan says at the same time a heavy hand grips his shoulder.

He looks around to find Eris standing behind him. She gestures back down the garden path with her head and gently but irresistibly pulls him away from Lacuna and Jero.

“I apologize but it was not my intent to intrude on their privacy,” Ashan says once he and Eris are out of earshot. “I was merely waiting for an appropriate break in the conversation so that I would not interrupt.”

Eris rounds on him with a protective fury in her eye and raising her voice as much as she can without drawing attention. “Do you really think I would really believe that half-assed an excuse coming from a…” She trails off, really looking at Ashan’s face for perhaps the first time and then studying him up and down. He can see the gears turn in her head as snippets of information gleaned over the past two days click into place. A hand goes to her head and she begins massaging her temples before continuing more softly, “Oh, God dammit, you’re a frickin’ homeless kid who hasn’t had legit social interaction in years aren’t you?”

“A wizard makes his home wherever he wishes, and solitude is the whetstone of the mind.”

“Yeeeaaah… no. Are you even old enough to drink?”

“By this world’s calendar and the laws of my birthplace, yes.”

“Uh huh… And with inter-world temporal sync factored in?”

“Probably.”

“God dammit. Have you had dinner yet?”

“I do not see what that has to do with -”

“Have you eaten yet today?”

“I was going to after everyone else was seen to.”

“God frickin’ dammit.”

Eris grabs Ashan’s wrist and begins dragging him toward the entrance to Bridgewood Manor. With her other hand she begins typing a message on her phone.

“What ever are you doing?”

“Dealing with the fact that I now have two dumbass friends who don’t know how to feed themselves.”

“I assure you I am perfectly capable of feeding myself.”

“Kid, you have no idea how many times I’ve heard that one.”

Ashan opens his mouth to object once more to such humiliating treatment when one of Eris’s words catches up with him and forces him to reconsider.

Friends.

Ashan Glassheart, you're the only member of the main cast without a pre-existing relationship to the others and now they're all projecting those relationships onto their interactions with you.

I love it when I do this sort of stuff on accident. Makes me feel like I know what I’m doing.

[ravynfyre]

do not come at me if you read beyond the cut and get traumatized.

my elderly cat died yesterday. i wish i know how, because the not knowing is killing me. she'd suddenly taken a turn for the worse, and i had already decided that we were going in monday to say goodbye. i don't know how she died, though. i had a really bad bout of insomnia the night before, and laid down to take a 3 hour nap in the late morning after chores. when i woke up, she wasn't begging for more breakfast, so i got worried and went looking for her. i couldn't find her. looked all through the house in all of her favorite spots, but she wasn't there. i didn't find her until i checked the crate of one of my dogs. the dog was eating her. dog had already pulled her head off and eaten the front half of her body. i had to get bags to collect what was left of my elderly cat from the dog's crate... and i will never know if the dog just found her body soon after i laid down for my nap (because i know my cat was alive them... i had fed her a little breakfast - less than she would normally want, so i was worried already - and then she'd come to lay down on me once i was settled) or if my dog actually killed her. i know that she was in multiple pieces, though, and i had to clean that up... and i have already had multiple people today telling me that my mental and emotional state, my distress, is unreasonable. one person literally asked me how i could be this upset for a cat when i have spent my life dealing with dead humans in even worse conditions.

here's my awful confession: i don't like people. they lie. they're complicated. they bring drama to my life. they hurt me. they go out of their way to hurt me. they hurt each other for the joy of inflicting pain. they destroy the world for fun and profit. humans are terrible creatures and i cannot stand them. there are individual people that i care for... but humans... fuck humanity.

my animals don't lie to me. they want food, safety, and compassion... and they love whole-heartedly. they don't try and deceive me for personal gain. except maybe for another snack, but i like food, too. my animals don't want to destroy the world. at most, they want the fun of the chaos of wrecking a stuffie.

but now i am conflicted, and that's the worst part, i think. she's a dog. dog's gonna dog. it's not like she was being malicious when she started eating my cat. she's got behavioral and medical issues that make her feel like she's starving, even when she's full. she licks things off the floor, sometimes, so it's pretty believable that she would start eating a corpse. but when she came to me, she wasn't cat safe, and it took many months to train that out of her. except i forgot that you can never 100% extinguish a set behavior... so an elderly cat on her last legs who was slow and weak... yeah, i could see this dog killing her out of misguided instincts, too. i just don't know. and that makes me sound like a shitty, unprepared, ignorant person, i'm sure, that i would risk my elderly cat like that. trust me, you can't say anything i haven't already been thinking about myself. (and other people have said to me already yesterday and today. you'd be late to the party) but the dog had been so trustworthy for so many months that it honestly wasn't something i could consider - except in retrospect. so i'm going back to closing the crate when i am asleep or not home. all of my other cats are young and spry and well able to take care of themselves, unlike my herschell was, but i am not going to risk that ever again.

i fucked up and my cat might have paid the price. or maybe not. either way, i still had to fish her decapitated, partially consumed remains out of my dog's crate... and apparently, being upset about that makes me irrational, offensive, and unreasonable. you know, because i have scraped decapitated, smeared human off of highways before. i should be immune or some shit.

how do i love that dog again?

[pb-dot]

WIP Wednesday: AUs are hard

This Wednesday, I figured I should get some words in edgewise about what I'm actually writing this October before the NaNoWriMo madness takes me fully. Writing what is essentially fanfiction of my own unreleased work is a bit odd, so here are some thoughts on that particular process.

So, for those not in the know, I'm writing a shortened version of The Clockwork Boy as a horror story, in which Jake is a bit more cynical and 13 has... let's call them "overly invasive implants" instead of a clockwork body. There's also a bit more of a Beauty And The Beast kidnapping thing going on. That's just a trope I find works for me, but more on that at a later date.

Honestly, I feel like I made things a bit unnecessarily difficult for myself to go epistolary with the thing. First-person perspective seems reasonable enough for horror, since our hero being confused and scared and not entirely picking up on everything is a great place for a horror protagonist to be, but I do fear that constraining it further to what can be told in retrospect may be a limitation too far. Well, I'm committed to finishing it this way, and I do have a pretty fun twist to tie it all up with for the third act, so I am excited about that.

My main problem is honestly that horror very seldom feels good to write. Not because it's fucked up and scary, really, if anything the opposite is the problem. Fear comes from uncertainty, and the terrible miles imagination will go if given half an inch. Writing horror is kind of backwards in comparison, where you have all the facts, insomuch as you have thought of them, and just have to imagine the emotional reaction you aim to induce in the reader. It feels very perilous to me, in that I have to trust that my words will have the intended effect even when they don't have it on me.

In a way, I suppose, it's a good exercise and a good reminder that any piece of writing is fundamentally incomplete without a reader. It is also, I suppose, possible that my writing just lacks the sufficient Word Magic that makes it all work, but it's not a very helpful hypothesis, so into the bin it goes.

As for the non-neurotic side of writing, I have been struggling some with 13's redesign to fit the gnarly Beauty & The Beast aesthetic that I wanted. The thought of making a slightly more realistic and significantly more horrifying design for the clockmen was easy on paper, but boy howdy did I find it difficult in practice. Description of physical matters has never been my strong suit, mostly thanks to getting my start in serious writing in screenplays, where the set designers, makeup and wardrobe people throw things at you if you get too specific, and that's before the producers and actors get to yell at you.

At any rate, I tried to go a little bit ham on describing 13, aiming for something between Brahm Stoker and a (hopefully considerably less racist) H.P Lovecraft in style. My main motivation for the descriptions, if I'm entirely honest, was thinking back to the 2011 YA stinker Beastly and going "Yeah, okay, that, but GOOD and SENSICAL (and a bit GROSS.)" See, to my estimation, a Beauty And The Beast story doesn't really work if the Beast isn't some sort of fucked up. Yeah, there are many ways to be a monster, but if someone's more of a monster on the inside, as it were, then the story stops being cute real fast. This is why I say that there are a thousand ways to make a Monster, but basically only one good way of making a Beast.

So, how is it all going? I think it's shaking out all right. I'm glad I went with the more politically-minded battle anime approach to the story for the "main" version of the tale, but the short and sweet horror thing isn't bad either. Now I just have to stick the landing...

[torchickentacos]

Physical Education Class and Ableism (AKA, 'Is my invisible disability actually invisible, or do you just close your eyes when confronted with a student in pain?')

I will not pretend this is a well-written discussion on the issues in PE. This is not that. This is an outlet of the grief and pain and genuine suffering that I, and many other students, felt through PE class- which goes far further than having a couple blisters after running the mile. I am in no way being dramatic or hyperbolic when I say that PE class leaves a long-lasting stain on not only self-image, but for some of us, our bodies. LONG POST. This IS personal and emotional (because years later I'm still angry at how I was treated), not a purely fact-driven dissertation, though personal anecdotes are relevant to the topic, and my emotional biases do not invalidate my points.

TW for ableism and brief mention of ED behaviours (clearly labeled and easy to skip over). This was definitively NOT fun to write, and I quite dislike talking about exactly how much disability affects me but I'm honestly angry enough to not care right now. Because every time I think about how I was treated, I get angrier and angrier. The wound grows deeper with each year I have to process it. I just want this to reach anyone else who is as angry about it as I am to reassure you that you have every right to be angry. A hell of a lot more people should be mad, too. I want people to get mad reading this. If you want, share it. Put it on tiktok without credit, for all I care (though actually please don't do that). If nothing else, just listen to kids when they say they're in pain.

To preface, I have never been able to do a push-up. Never. My shoulders and elbows just cannot support me. Any time we did push-up tests, I'd just sit on my ass because why hurt myself trying to do what everyone around me could do with ease? As for curl-ups, I think I peaked at 27 once. I never ran the mile in under thirteen minutes. Never did a pull-up. Was always last in every activity consistently (even during Ramadan, as a non-muslim who was not fasting- which, Ramadan and PE expectations are a WHOLE other topic that I am not educated enough on to make comments on, so I digress).

There were maybe three things I was good at, though. I could always far exceed everyone else in stretching and flexibility tests, and I was uniquely really good at gymnastics and hurdles, of all things. In retrospect, this is due to the leg flexibility needed for hurdle jumping, and I'm flexible due to disability- I'll get into that soon, though.

All of which is to say, I was bad at PE.

No matter what we did, for the most part, I'd be lagging behind and dizzy and in pain.

At first, I tried to push through and ignore it, determined to not fall too far behind my classmates. I was already a weirdo in the special ed program, didn't need another reason to feel like an outcast. I was already, at that point in time, missing large chunks of the year due to 'psychiatric help' stays, to put it mildly. So I just tried to keep up and never could.

Eventually, the complaining started. Or rather, the advocating that fell on un-listening ears. I started telling my teachers that running hurt and I didn't know why. That I was out of breath and my head hurt. This went on for a couple years and every single time the answer was 'well, you'll get half credit for the class if you walk today, but if you do that too much you'll fail'. So basically the answer I was given was to run with everyone else or fail class.

I started having a crunching knee. A clicking kneecap. Ankles rolling. Progressively getting worse over time. I started running with a limp. I started lagging even further behind. I started giving up entirely, opting to walk and take a bad grade because I could not keep willingly and actively hurting myself. One time, I even almost passed out after the mile and was told "well, put your head between your knees and see if that helps, then go back inside and get ready to go to your next class".

What that response told me was that I was being dramatic and lazy. The lack of seriousness they took it with told me I was just being overdramatic. So, I started believing them. Every time I walked up the school's stairs to the second floor, knees hurting and chest heaving, I just told myself I was out of shape and needed to work out more. I convinced myself I was lazy, just like they thought I was. I tried to get better. I tried to exert myself more and more in class only for it to hurt more and more.

The harder I tried, the worse I got.

I didn't understand it. Everyone around me was doing the same exercises and getting faster and stronger. Everyone else was improving or at least staying at the same levels of health. I was deteriorating, no matter how hard I tried to get into shape. I wasn't trying hard enough, maybe. SKIP RED SECTION IF ED TOPICS ARE TRIGGERING FOR YOU.

Maybe I was overweight, I thought (not true and led to some very bad habits that made me worse). I'd go from not eating lunch one day to eating two the next, trying ANYTHING that would make me feel like I was putting in the 'effort' to be healthier. Maybe I needed more food and more muscle. Maybe I needed less food and less fat. I'm sure we can see how this was an issue (that could have and would have been avoided had I been listened to).

RED SECTION OVER.

I was roughly thirteen to sixteen through all of this, if my math adds up (which it very well may not, since we can also put math in the disability zone for me).

I still get stuck in this thought pattern. I'm still working to get rid of these thoughts and attitudes in 2023. My last PE class was in 2018 if I recall.

I started skipping class. I was getting panic attacks and hiding out in the halls, in the bathrooms, trying to strategically schedule counselor meetings, doing anything I could to avoid PE class and the pain that came with it.

Eventually, though, after an eternity of pain and being told to suck it up, I stopped PE classes and fulfilled my credits for them (how I passed, I have NO idea- I can only guess my IEP team pulled strings for me behind the scenes). Only after this did I learn I had Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and Postural Orthostatic Tachychardia Syndrome (and some other random stuff that's less pertinent but definitely didn't help).

Ehlers Danlos or EDS is, to put it simply, a joint/connective tissue disorder characterized by hypermobile, super flexible yet weak joints that are prone to injury and dislocation. It comes with a plethora of comorbidities and other symptoms that aren't as relevant but still made it harder for me to work out.

Postural Orthostatic Tachychardia Syndrome, or POTS, is where your heart rate spikes when you stand from sitting or laying down, causing dizziness and blacking out. For me, it also results in chronic hypoxia- low oxygen.

During exercise, my joints were not strong enough to take it. My joints would not stay in place and this caused injury. Want to know one of the owrst things people with EDS can do? High-impact repetitive exercises. Like running. The POTS made me dizzy and weak, and I couldn't get enough oxygen to sustain the level of exertion required of me to run.

I am now not ALLOWED to run by my doctor. I'm still working on finding a way to work out that is safe for me because the truth is, most exercises are NOT safe for me. Granted, exercise in specific ways are actually helpful and considered treatment, but this is with a physical therapist and medical professionals who know how to help you work out in ways that will help and not prove to be detrimental.

Safe to say, PE class is not that.

And here's the thing. Ehlers Danlos and POTS are what are known as invisible disabilities. Unlike amputees or people whose disabilities altered the physical look of their bodies, my disabilities are all internal. But they aren't truly invisible.

My teacher could have seen the way I was white as a sheet and stumbling after attempting the mile, the way I would almost black out once I finally sat on the grass. She should have seen the way I winced as I got up from sitting every single time. She saw me limping when my kneecaps were sliding OUT OF THEIR SOCKETS as I ran (but she likely assumed I was being dramatic and faking that limp). Invisible disabilities are not truly invisible. Through the easy bruises, the never-healing injuries, the blood pooling, the pallid faces and the hyperflexible joints, the rashes and reactions, through the pain and through all the times I tried my damn hardest to vocalize these issues, it was immensely visible if someone was willing to see it or listen.

She only ever saw the issue when I started to skip class because I was getting panic attacks about attending.

The last interaction I ever had with my PE teacher was at Graduation.

We had an outdoor venue due to Covid. By then, I'd had diagnoses for Ehlers Danlos, Postural Orthostatic Tachychardia Syndrome, and various other things, and I'd been out of PE for three years (I took two years of pe freshman and sophomore year, none during junior and senior, and had one extra year for a veterinary science thing).

I had seen her during our practice round, which took place in our gym. I'd asked her about the amount of stairs at the venue and about how much standing was needed, explaining my disability to the same woman who would force me to run with it. She said she'd make sure she was there to help me through it and to find an accessible way to get through the venue.

I get to the venue and she's nowhere to be seen. I walk to the area we were told to go to, no teacher in sight to take me to any shortcuts or to keep an eye on me. I sit in the line of students on the hot concrete behind the stage (where everyone else stood) in my comfiest, most supportive shoes that clashed with my graduation dress, among the girls in their best heels.

I graduate in the same way I took PE class- without her help.

Afterwards, she finds me. After I've walked and sat on hot concrete and sweated and been dizzy and steadied myself on walls and the ground.

She says, in the most condescending voice I could possibly imagine, that I seem to have been fine without her help.

It was obvious to me. This final act, this final stretch of forced self-sufficience on my part had solidified it to her- I had never needed all the help I had seeked. All the complaining had been just that- complaining. Skipped classes were truancy. To her, I'm sure I'm long forgotten as one of the lazier students she's ever had.

I don't recall her name but I remember her face as clear as day. I remember how I felt every damn time I walked to the dressing room, the pain as I took my backpack off in the locker rooms and felt how much my back hurt from it. I remember her every time my knee crunches as I stand up from my desk chair, every time I'm out of breath. Every time my shoulder aches after tossing a stray ball to the kids across the street from my grandmother's house.

I remember how she made me feel.

I want to wave my cane in her face. I want to make her take my vitals and WATCH as the blood rushes out of my face as I stand, to WATCH as my heart rate goes from 65 resting to 120+ as I stand up. I want her to hear how my joints crack and pop and snap. I want her to see my kneecap sickeningly glide out of place and into the side of my knee. I want her to have been in the same room as my mom and I when my Cardiologist said my oxygen levels from POTS hypoxia could have been confused with that of someone in heart failure. I want her to know how I cried in the car after that appointment.

Not because I want her to be miserable and sick with guilt, but because I want to prove to her that I wasn't a liar. I wasn't faking it. i wasn't seeking attention.

But I can't do any of that, not that it would help anything if I was able to and did. All I can do is sit here and type and seethe, as my wrist pain starts to shoot into my forearm and as my hands and feet grow cold from blood pooling- I've been sitting and typing too long, and now my hand skin is mottled and my feet are growing purple with that so-called 'invisible' disability that nobody saw in me.

I don't want consolation. I don't want pity. I don't need sympathy, though I appreciate it. What I want is for this to stop happening. I want disabled people to be seen and to stop being forced to do things that are harmful to their bodies. I want for schools to stop giving a letter grade to someone's health. I want some random thirteen year old to not have to go through what I did at their age.

I WANT PEOPLE TO FUCKING LISTEN TO KIDS WHEN THEY SAY THEY'RE IN PAIN.

[okayto]

Mini-Review: Princess Tutu

Inspired by ballet and fairy tales, particularly The Ugly Duckling and Swan Lake, the story follows a duck who is transformed into the mythical ballerina Princess Tutu in order to save the shattered heart of a storybook prince come to life.

I peer pressured myself into watching this 2002 classic that seems universally beloved.

Anime classics--the ones that people say still hold up after a couple decades, the ones that pros write retrospectives about--are an intimidating thing to begin. Try as you might, it's hard to ignore the part of your brain that's waiting for something to appear and be impressive. And then, if that doesn't happen immediately, to ever-so-quietly make some observations while the rest of you tries to pretend it's not happening.

Interesting, it says innocently, I would have expected a series with this level of renown to be a bit less...monster-of-the-weeky, while the rest of your brain covers its ears and goes LA LA LA STOP TALKING WHILE THE TV IS ON.

(It doesn't work.)

Princess Tutu intrigued me because looking at it, it's not the sort of thing that I'd expect to get adults to write eloquent paragraphs 20 years after it premiered, and I don't mean just the art (which is fine, but nothing to write home about). The shows that, in American fandom, get spoken about as classics with depth and layers, do not tend to be dreamily-colored fairy tales.

This is a magical girl show about a duck who turns into a ballerina.

The show is divided into two halves, and I liked the second half much more than the first. The first half sets everything up, introducing Duck and the other prime characters and slowly expanding our sense of the fairytale-ness of the world. The second half gets a lot more interesting because, in my opinion, there are far fewer secrets and we get some interesting backstory, character studies, and also more action.

One thing I wasn't prepared for was how gentle and deliberately-paced this show is. It's categorized as magical girl, and that's true in the literal sense, but this isn't a Sailor Moon-style epic fight of good verus evil, nor a Madoka Magica-style dark exploration of the repercussions of magical teenage fighters. This is magic like a fairy tale. Duck does transform into Tutu, and it's clear that it's not just a costume change--Tutu is much more graceful and a better dancer than normal Duck, which is good because that's how fights are resolved: dancing.

Tutu dances to express her feelings and to reach her opponent, who is often overcome with a negative emotion. The turbulent dancing of an antagonist eventually synchronizes with or complements Tutu's when the conflict is resolved.

If you approach it understanding that it's a fairy tale told primarily as a ballet, your expectations will be better set than mine. And as a fairy tale/ballet, it's very good! You get that fairy tale setting where some animals are talking animals and no one really questions it. The sense that there's a narrative or purpose driving everyone's lives--and there literally is, in this show.

While Duck is the main character, there's really a primary quartet that all get developed, and in the second half of the series we really get to dive into their backgrounds and motivations, which is another reason I liked the second half better than the first.

Verdict

English dub? Yes. It's okay, although there's something about it that feels very 00's to me. I've seen some criticism of prince Mytho's voice, which is somewhat vague and aimless--but a key plot point is that Mytho is a pretty vague and aimless character to start, so I didn't think it was bad.

Visuals: Average. The dancing looked good to me--I don't have more of a ballet background than "watching my sibling for 10 years growing up," but I'd be surprised if the production team didn't do their research. That said, it's probably not going to impress anyone, and some obvious CG used for a specific, repeating location has not aged well.

Worth watching? Yes. If nothing else, it's a good show to put on when you're also doing other things. While I struggled to stay engaged with the first half, I really enjoyed when it felt like the meat of the mystery/plot got going in the second. I can see why this is so beloved, and there is plenty of meat for discussion, articles, and meta. Many of the things that stayed with me or would be fun for me to analyze I've left out, just because I try to keep these mini-reviews spoiler-free, but there is certainly no lack of them online, and after watching it's easy to see why!

Where to watch (USA, as of May 2023): Amazon Prime (dub and sub), HiDIVE (dub), BR/DVD

Click my “reviews” tag below or search “mini review” on my blog to find more!

[that-house]

Hey so how did you get started in making tabletop games? I really wanna start but I don't really know where I can look to even get basics. I haven't been able to find anything applicable to it.

Especially since I didn't really have much experience with any games that weren't video games til like a few years ago. And I can for sure see it as a case of a big part of learning is doing both playing games then tweaking those games to be somewhat different in ways that suit you but I just don't have anyone with the time to play.

i mean part of it is just. this has been a huge part of my life literally since elementary school

i loved pretending to be fantasy heroes and whatnot with my friends, and at some point long before i'd heard of D&D i was like "wow i sure am tired of forgetting what my character can do, i should write it down" and made my first ever character sheet which (a) was totally incomprehensible like a week later and (b) got lost super fast

after that i think i encountered the official warrior cats rpg, Warriors Adventure Game, and that inspired me to start making my own games using Word on the family computer. they were not good, as you might expect from a 4th grader

this post is turning out to be Long so

i got more serious about it in middle school. my school had a LARP program, and that was my first ever brush with actual organized RPG stuff. i loved it so much that i wanted to keep doing it over the summer, but didn't have access to the official rules, so i made my own for my friends and I.

one of those LARP friends got me into D&D, and i almost instantly ruined the campaign i ran for him and our other LARP friends with broken homebrew items because ough game design

i got serious about indie ttrpg design in high school. my big project was Reclaim, a sci fi RPG focused on supersoldiers reconquering the planet for humanity after an apocalypse (which gradually morphed into a critique of the military-industrial complex and american imperialism as my brain pathways connected properly in the later half of high school). it was the focus of my college application essay, but the game itself was not great in retrospect

nowadays i've further refined my approach to game design for my high power sci fi/fantasy anime bullshit project, Field of White Flowers, which is definitely the game i'm proudest of to date (it will probably have a basic version of the rules available for free some day, but the full game is enough of an undertaking that I will be charging some money for it)

the issue with advising people on how to make RPG systems is that there isn't necessarily a "right answer." RPGs can be anything. I can say "making a fun game is the most important part" but different people are going to have different definitions of fun.

like some people want crunchy systems with an answer to everything and rules for how many moles of oxygen you can hold in your lungs, while other people want stuff that's more rules light and lets them get right to the narrative and the roleplay. so i think the main thing when designing a game is pick an audience and stick to it: my games' primary audience is usually myself (i like systems with a lot of room for customization and optimization)

the other big tip i have is to play and read as many RPG systems as you can. almost everything has at least one good idea in it somewhere, and even stuff that's just Bad might give you a moment of inspiration while you're laughing at it.

as a suuuper bare-bones outline of what a game might consist of:

Resolution Mechanic: how does your game solve questions like "can i jump over this gap" or "can I cut this mountain in half?" for example, D&D does the whole thing with a d20 + modifiers compared to a number. other systems handle this in different ways. as a baseline it's nice for players' choices to matter, so i like to keep it somewhere between "flip a coin" and "consult thirteen tables based on your Class and Sense of Style, and then add four if you're a Gemini"

Combat: not every RPG needs combat, but the hobby has its roots in wargaming and so a lot of RPGs end up having some element of combat. your combat can be as simple as a more narrative game saying "make a skill check to kill this guy" (and thus overlapping entirely with your Resolution Mechanic) or it can be a multiple-hour tactical engagement like in Lancer

Stakes: what happens if players fail? can they fail? this is stuff like hit points in combat games, or the king finding out about your plans for the revolution in an intrigue game.

Character Creation: you need a Guy to be. how do you make the Guy? can the Guy be a dragon. an offshoot of this is progression: can my Guy get stronger? how?

this is very much an abstraction. games don't necessarily need all of these things. you can have a game without combat, and if you get silly enough with it you might be able to avoid character creation of any sort. it's harder to make a game without a resolution mechanic or stakes and have it be fun, but it's possible someone out there has done it

but that list of four things, in addition to more literary things like tone and setting, are sort of the basic framework my brain operates off of while making games.

at the end of the day, if you want to get good at something, the first step is to get out there and try it! good luck and happy game development!

[dentwy]

number 7: here is greenwood

GREENWOOD!!!!!!!!! WOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! okay i'm cool. "here is greenwood" is a shoujo manga serialized in hana to yume from 1986 to 1991 written and drawn by nasu yukie. in 1991 until 1993 it got adapted into a 6 episode ova and this is kinda where it ends i feel. i wouldn't say it has had any kind of major impact in the medium, the genre or any major group of individuals, but god i do think it did stir something inside me.

i either tend to gravitate towards stuff that isn't particularly popular, because i'm trying to come off as cooler than i am or simply because it just happens naturally. couldn't tell you, but finding that one little thing you end up enjoying so much without anyone else seemingly caring about it is always fun regardless of your personality. turns out it's a lot easier to become the biggest fan of a thing no one has seen, you know. a bit like becoming the world record holder of a game no one has cared to speedrun, it's just funny.

picking out what consists of "my favorite shows of all time" isn't so easy once you've been watching media more seriously after a while, those starting years will definitely shape you up and become a major part of the main stuff you like. even if you fully know it's bad, you hold it close to yourself because it was there at the start, and it's always nice to think back on that. so, it often happens with me where i certainly enjoy something enough to think of it as "this could be a favorite, but does it deserve the spot?". not even sure right now if greenwood deserves it, but i don't know if it matters that much. i decided to make a list of "favorites that aren't favorites" because of greenwood and even if it doesn't stay there and goes up into the list, it sure means something.

ironically, i don't quite think this show came out as a surprise to me as i'd been hyping myself up before even getting into it. it did, though, take turns i wouldn't have seen coming and i'm glad for that. these days i honestly tend to watch anime based on the soundtrack and it's no different here. the soundtrack showed up in online platforms on september of last year, which is around where i found out about it since i already follow nagata shigeru (even if i haven't even seen ocean waves, he just makes good tracks). my first mention of it over discord was me getting mad at my bank while i was dealing with my phone insurance after i tried reading one piece and got my phone stolen 13 pages into the first chapter, but that's a story for another day. i just said "this is the soundtrack of me killing a man" with a link to shun's theme , which is honestly accurate for any man killing activities. in context however, there's a bit more to the story.

this is why, to anyone caring to read, i want to do the longest and probably only essay / analysis / backtrack / retrospective / whatever the hell for "here is greenwood" you will find online. i HAVE to be that guy. otherwise, what have i been obsessing over this thing for around a month? the show has 6 episodes while the manga has 11 volumes (although viz squished it into 9 which is better), so i'll be basing myself on the pacing of the anime in relation to the manga, back and forth between them so the chapters match up. the manga does, however, have more stuff to it throughout half of its runtime so it's gonna be a lot of that i suppose. although, and i'll get into it later, the anime seemingly ends up being the more enjoyable version of the two. otherwise, skip to the tldr in bold letters to avoid reading the long ramblings of a crazy man skimming through a show and manga you probably haven't seen and read.

we begin with the hero of our story. he doesn't really have anything that would actually make him a hero, he's just a teenage boy just starting his first year of highschool at ryokuto academy. his name is hasukawa kazuya and i don't blame people for making him the least popular of the 4 central characters on myanimelist, but he's still technically the main character. our dear boy kazuya is moving into the ryokuto dorms, because it turns out he's kinda the unluckiest guy you'll ever meet. his older brother just married the girl he had a crush on, and since they don't have any parents left, they're all living under the same roof, something he simply can't stand anymore. he took the entrance exam for this prestigious boys only school and managed to get in, but in the process he: almost got ran over by a car while he was visiting the school, barely managed to take the entrance exam since the trains were stopped by a blizzard, had his acceptance letter delayed in the mail, and got an ulcer the day of the entrance ceremony that forced him to stay hospitalized for a month. even if god is against him, he persevered, and finally got in.

kazuya is hot headed (almost literally since he's prone to getting nosebleeds), overly serious yet still a bit of a goofus. he's not particularly smart, but he proves himself with the sheer effort he can put into the things he wants to achieve. he often feels like he needs to be stronger and grow on his own, failing to rely on others, as he doesn't really like getting pampered either.

he is introduced to the dorm head, ikeda mitsuru, and the president of the student council, tezuka shinobu. the two most popular, best looking, and important members of the dorms, currently on their second year of highschool. these two are the ones that will introduce him to "greenwood", as they call the dorms, since the full name is kind of a mouthful.

inside room 210 rests his roommate, which he's quickly informed is, in fact, a girl. according to them, kisaragi shun was born a girl, it's just that her birth certificate and every record lists her gender as male. by this point, 8 minutes into the first episode i'm already clocking out. i understand we're talking about japan here and it's the 1980s (rest assured, this becomes more evident as it goes on), but i have the sneaking suspicion that gender identity can't be this series' forte. from my understanding, hibari-kun does tackle these topics in a proper manner and it was also a manga from the 80s, so perhaps it's not completely unheard of. besides, shoujo manga isn't known to be scared of tackling stuff the rest would never dare, but still. me, the audience, and the guy on screen, kazuya, are being informed that he absolutely must keep this fact a secret from the all the boys at the school. if he does not, there will be consequences. added to the fact this guy is seemingly pissed off at his brother for not being "manly enough" since he "works as a nurse" at this school (and also the fact he got married to the woman he liked, even if she's at least a decade older than him), we're not looking too hot. whatever, i'll give it the benefit of the doubt.

3 days go by for kazuya living with a girl in his room, often going outside to let her change, being uncomfortable at night and trying to ignore people's comments of his situation. he finds out, however, that it was nothing more than a farce. shun isn't a girl, he's just a cute guy with long hair. this dude got tricked into thinking otherwise only so everyone in the dorms could bet on how long it would take him to figure out. "damn! i lost... if only it took one more day..." you hear a guy in the background. greenwood, refers to "a nest for bandits and villains" which is all this place is. as much of a prestigious school as this may be, it doesn't speak for the people actually attending it.

there's the guy that sleeps with his motorcycle, the club used to devote their time to a made up religion, or the duo that rent out their room as an arcade. the main trio that will share their time with kazuya stand out as much as anyone else, if not more, so we should get into them.

shinobu (on the right) is the son of a prestigious family. he's calm and collected, devious and cunning. not a lot seems to change his expression, as he's swift and decisive yet his has his mischievous side as he often enjoys messing with people, and specially his roommate. mitsuru (left), is the handsome, aloof guy that simply loves giving kazuya as hard of a time as he can.

shun, aka the most popular character in the show, is a confident, assertive and strong willed young man. it just so happens he kinda looks like a girl. it is very often played for jokes, but not once does he mind it and finds enjoyment in it himself. he is, in fact, "a guy with a gender", as you could say. he leaves his hair long because he likes it, he dresses up however he feels like and often more feminine because he finds it fun, and he just knows who he is and what he wants to be, which is highly respectable. i was mentioning earlier about his theme and it's honestly pretty fitting for the guy, there's something magical and cheery about it that really sticks out, while having a tone of that seemingly feminine side.

these four are the rag tag greenwood team, getting into trouble, helping others and messing with each other. guys that maybe wouldn't usually be friends with each other, but it's always the time and place that will bring people together.

most of volume 1 isn't too dissimilar from episode 1, they change around the order of some scenes for it to make more sense and remove or add dialogue for it to flow better, but most of the main events stay intact. kazuya's main goal is to stay far from his home to avoid thinking about sumire, the woman he loves and his now sister in law. this is what he's in greenwood for. it's not as simple as "running away" from it and his feelings, but trying to come to terms with it, get distracted, and find himself. the main overarching theme of this series is moving past a love that was not meant to be. whether it's by moving away, making new friends or finding new love, the goal is the same. ironically, the people around him don't really allow him to move past so easily, since his brother is still around all the time, his friends kinda make fun of him for it (because it is funny) and sumire herself is so oblivious to it that it keeps stabbing him in the heart which, yeah, i get it.

not sure if you, dear reader, has had the experience of being in a dorm with other people, or going through a moment of unrequited love, but it doesn't get any realer than this! for one, living with people close to you for a while is just a nice experience. always having people to rely on, to hang out with, to talk to, at any given moment. almost to the point you may start depending on it. as a matter of fact, the room i shared with other people for a bit was 211, the same one mitsuru and shinobu are in! for the other, trying to move past something like that isn't the easiest. in fact, it may just be the aftermath that's the hardest and that takes the longest, that is, finding the same feeling somewhere else. filling that spot with something new, or someone new. cannot really blame a guy for trying so hard to change his life around.

kazuya decides to stay in the dorms for summer vacation, as he insists he does not want to set foot home, and sumire decides to pay him a visit. not only her but his brother kazuhiro also plays fun with him at times simply because he likes to see his reaction. he's kind of a goat, but he does genuinely care for his brother. later he's informed he can't stay in the dorms for winter holidays, which is what forces him to go back home for once.

half of the first volume doesn't get adapted probably to improve the pacing, although the extra chapters also don't feel too substantial to the story overall. in one of them the lights go off at the dorms and a couple of girls get in, which they initially think are ghosts, only to turn out they're not. it's not that exciting of a chapter and the show does a better version of this a bit later on. besides, i believe that not showing as many female characters in the ovas works better for the series, as opposed to the manga which starts doing it more often from here.

after kazuya goes back home for the first time in a while, the boys meet up out in the city. here, they find a strange looking girl being tailed by men in suits. it only turns out this girl is "nitta mieko", an idol that simply wanted to get some free time for herself while her agency wouldn't let her. uh, she becomes a bit of a prominent character throughout the manga, while she doesn't really appear at all in the anime. to the actual plot itself, she doesn't do a whole lot, she just comes and goes from time to time. not much against her, it only feels like she's just there.

for another chapter, they're already on valentine's day, meaning they will get chocolate. shun mentions he's straight and he had a girlfriend already which the rest find strange, i suppose. both mitsuru and shinobu get all the girls from other schools to wait outside and throw chocolates at them, to which they run away from. kazuya has one girl that's a bit obsessed with him, yet he doesn't remember her name nor who she is. she mistakes shun for a girl, so she gives up on him quick, though. i'm a bit iffy with this chapter because even if it is supposed to be a well known fact that mitsuru is constantly getting girls to ask him out (and he's generally also unlucky with said girls) the anime doesn't actually show much of that, unlike the manga. i don't think this is bad though, it's more of a thing they just say but never really show as you're kind of invited to fill in the blanks for yourself. since it is only 6 episodes they obviously skip around a lot of parts of the year, and i don't think it's quite necessary to see everything they do, as getting a glimpse around their life is all you need to understand how they're doing and what a random day in greenwood can be like. the manga almost incessantly needs to show both mitsuru and shinobu as the popular guys and since we're talking about an all boys school, even if they are popular, it doesn't feel like it's something that should happen so often and at such a big scale, in my opinion.

kazuya also simply not knowing who the girl that has a crush on him seems off and a bit too early. i suppose his mind is still focused on sumire, sure. so, he's probably not ready to move on that quick? even then, the situation kind of presents itself in front of him and he simply fumbles it for no major reason, he simply does not know the girl from his previous school.

the final chapter sets up the next volume, where mitsuru gets abducted by none other than shinobu's big sister. the anime does a funny thing here on episode 2 where they kinda tell you "go read the chapter for context" but it doesn't really matter. the episode centers around shinobu's sister, nagisa, kidnapping shun's little brother, reina, who obviously looks like a little girl because feminine looking boys is a staple of the kisaragi household. this is, in turn, a direct sequel to the manga chapter.

nagisa hates her brother because he's kinda just better than her really. she's stuck up, pretentious, demanding and selfish. since they were little she always wanted to be seen as the superior one, and because shinobu doesn't give a damn about anything, he never really cared about whatever she tried doing to him. part of their father's favoritism towards shinobu must certainly come from the fact she's a woman, i will not deny that, and she has the right to be mad. she's still an awful person though and only wants her to be the one to inherit the family business. so, to "take revenge" on him, she decides to kidnap his friend. genius!

part of the volume is dedicated to them finding out it's her and then going to save him. in the process mitsuru tries to escape and makes fun of her. he ends up with only his underwear on to, uh, make it worse for him? i guess? in the process of escaping mitsuru gets his face cut which was supposed to be something they planned on doing to ruin how pretty he was or something, but apparently mitsuru has superpowers so the skin on his face simply fixes itself instantly. now, greenwood isn't scared of the supernatural, weird things will happen. but having his face regenerate is a bit too much in my opinion. i think it would be a really solid joke for him to "suddenly be fine the next page" instead of it actually and legitimately being superhuman. would play on the meta and sell the ridiculousness of it even more. which seems even weirder considering nasu loves to play with meta jokes. she will often draw herself commenting on facts or details that don't really make sense so she can address them herself, or have the characters directly refer to her or the manga as a whole. in this same chapter in fact, she mentions how it doesn't make sense that they're still in their first and second year of highschool if holidays are already over. i think some of these jokes are fine, but nasu loves doing it a little bit too much for my taste.

anyway, what the anime does instead, as i mentioned, is have shun's little brother be the victim. nagisa decided that she won't deal with boys anymore and only cares about girls now, so he picks up reina instead (unbeknownst to her that he's actually a boy). i think this take on it is better, since shinobu ends up knowing what the deal is way faster and manages to figure out a plan for the rest of the boys to follow. reina does, too, mess with her and her agents by asking for food and to take a shower, which gets weirder than it should! these guys kinda get really flustered about the supposed little girl they've kidnapped which is extremely weird (one of them even trying to peep while he's taking a shower!). nagisa is also really weird about it at the start but we know for a fact she's a terrible person so whatever. it tries to follow with the joke that people often mistake the kisaragi boys for girls, but it could've been something else, you know. specially when it's grown ass adults we're talking about, but whatever, it's still a fun episode. all of this ends with shinobu giving his sister a final warning, effectively pointing a gun at her and saying he was gonna take care of her this time for sure. only to turn out it's a toy gun. a little detail that stands out at the end of this episode, in a strange way, is mitsuru making fun of kazuya for developing a crush on igarashi miya, a girl from an all girls highschool that will become relevant later. it's a bit funny because by this point they have never shown the two of them interacting, and the first time that he will see her is later on in the anime. however i think it's mostly working as a little nod of foreshadowing, as the events in the ovas don't really seem to be in chronological order.

what is honestly surprising is the chapter that follows this, still on volume 2. a side story about two guys from the dorms in room 117 ending up as a couple and finding out they're gay. i'd honestly recommend just reading this chapter, as it's surprisingly good and i'm almost left wishing they had adapted it. they sure do the "but it can't be, he's a guy!" / "there's no way i'm a homosexual!" and sure, one of the two guys also does look like a girl, but it's cute and well handled in my opinion. throughout both the show and manga kazuya stays as the guy that like, simply doesn't know gay people exist, i think. he's not inherently homophobic, i'd say. he's always genuinely shocked as if he doesn't know what just happened, almost to the point it's funny. it simply does not process in his mind and he resets.

next chapter is about girls from another school taking pictures of mitsuru with his shirt off because it's too hot? and shinobu has diarrhea. the one after that, the boys go to the pool. everyone there thinks shun is a girl (as usual) so they ask him to go into the women's dressing room, and the lifeguard gets disappointed to find out he's a guy, but their outfits are sick so it's fine.

we continue to see kazuya being the one taking care of dorm head duty since mitsuru is away for the week. reina rolls up to the dorm and he's actually way more of an annoying brat than in the anime. kazuya lowkey bullies the kid and thinks shun should be rougher with him, or something. he still kinda has that thing of being disappointed that his brother isn't tough for whatever reason.

volume 3 starts school sports festival, not a thing we see in the anime. shun is dressed up as a cheerleader, kazuya is the fastest runner alive, shinobu set up bets for each team. typical stuff. later we see a girl show up at the school because her girlfriend was going there to see someone else. every single one of the boys absolutely loses their mind at the sight of a "real lesbian" who they thought was nothing more than a myth, and then it just turns out the her girlfriend saw mitsuru dressed up as a woman as part of the festival event (which they never even showed) and she was interested. rest of the volume is mieko showing up again asking for a favor because someone is trying to assassinate her, the boys celebrating new year's, a kid trying to figure out if shinobu is evil to get into the journalism club, and the motorcycle guy getting a real girlfriend.

a thing the manga definitely does better over the anime is showing the rest of the people in the dorms. although i barely even up remembering their names, they sure are there and have their own things going on. they do become more prevalent and they're part of greenwood as a whole. i just don't particularly feel like they stand out as characters themselves? some of their stories are fine and all but they serve as a bunch of background dudes that chip in at stuff most of the time. while it is cool to see the dorms more lived in, they're also not so important that it makes them feel like they actually matter, if it make sense.

as the manga goes on it starts feeling like a bit of a bottleneck. by no means is it not entertaining, it's simply that it jumps around between stuff that doesn't feel like it amounts to a lot. probably the reason why as i continue explaining things here i go over these chapters with stuff to say about them. next is volume 4 though! so almost halfway through!

this volume shows us the woman that shinobu's older brother (because it seems he has one) was supposed to marry. i believe, she doesn't really amount to much in the story, so i won't even go into detail about her. they go into a flashback with how shinobu and mitsuru met in their first year and fought, to then end up respecting each other. it's cool.

the rest of the volume is half a dragon quest parody and the other half a ghost story. both of these do, in fact, appear in the anime. however, they do so in a different way. in the manga, the fantasy manga parody is really just that, a sort of spin off that goes for a couple chapters. in the ova, the boys at the dorms plan on filming a movie to show at the festival, which is honestly such a cooler idea. they show them going around planning and filming stuff. shinobu and mitsuru even have to go pose for the self insert manga author that uses them as reference for her next manga so they can get the outfits they need. it's a whole process of them showing how they're doing this indie movie at their own school while cutting into the actual scenes of the supposed movie, real neat stuff.

in the other chapters, they go to a hotel shun's family just acquired and stay for the night. it just so turns out it's haunted and a bunch of girls try to get the boys to become ghosts as well so they can be together. mitsuru, however, manages to exorcise them since his family runs a shrine and he simply knows how to do that (?). ironically, he's the one that needs to get an exorcism in the ova.

this episode is one of my favorites by far. the lights go dark in greenwood, just like they did in volume 1 long ago. this time, mitsuru gets haunted by a girl he doesn't know. what's funny about this is that she is just a normal, cute girl and nothing else. she hangs around, talks to them, plays games, etc. fully visible to everyone, you simply can't touch her. mitsuru gets into trouble for bringing a girl into the dorms since he's clearly not allowed to, but it's not like he can do anything about it. he gets really stressed out and consistently asks her to leave him alone (which, wow. rude). i'm almost definitely biased here but this girl is actually voiced by the same woman that does my favorite character in the trails series, so, yeah. she's just really cute and fun and doesn't really hinder his daily activities in the slightest so seeing him get really pissed off about it is entertaining. the way the episode starts is also my current favorite thing ever:

this episode perfectly encapsulates the charm that has me tied to greenwood. the music, the characters, the wacky situations that get oddly real for short spans. by the end of the episode, she reveals that there isn't any major reason for her to be haunting mitsuru besides the fact that he's good looking. she simply hadn't ever kissed anyone before dying, and she wanted to do that. he strictly refuses because he's a little baby bitch and she leaves. instead, a day later, she tricks him by picking up the cat and having him kiss it. except that she's actually not done with him because she still likes him, so she brings a bunch of other ghost girls to mess with them. really funny. again, ironic, how he's the one getting haunted this time and he can't do anything about it.

the two final episodes of the anime are the most relevant arc of the series, which won't happen until much later in the manga. so we keep moving.

volume 5 takes place around the school festival, the one they made a movie for in the ova. kazuya gets tricked into a game of ping pong to see who would get the main role for the play they're doing, while shun does also take part of a different play. basically, we get 3 of the 4 main guys to dress up as women. shun's play is lupin's castle of cagliostro, which did also happen in the anime as an extra special segment at the end of that episode and it's really neat.

the rest of the volume has a new guy show up claiming that kazuhiro isn't worthy enough to be married to sumire. this guy is just her cousin, which is also in love with her, so let's leave it there. at the end they show a flashback into how the two of them met back in college, to then get introduced into the hasukawa household. this flashback is neat overall, it gives further information on how they've been doing as a family of two brothers, and a bit of insight into both kazuhiro and sumire's relationship.

sumire has been with them since kazuya was around 14, while she was in her early 20s, which i suppose isn't too terrible for him to fall in love? it obviously wouldn't work out regardless of the circumstance, but this isn't something they actually ever try to push for or imply it could've happened. not a lot more than teenage love, you know. what is actually fun is getting the news that sumire is pregnant with a boy. it doesn't really shape the story at all, but in the large scheme of things it does try to show the shift between their relationship and kazuya's feelings, which is great to see.

volume 6 has one chapter of shinobu meeting an alien that tells him he has a specimen that looks exactly like him who recently escaped containment. shinobu shoots him and doesn't flinch at the idea of killing someone that looks exactly like him, maybe because he's more of a robot than whatever this alien made could be, but we're still stretching the logic of this manga the more we go.

following chapter is the boys playing baseball against a friend of mitsuru's, fun chapter. the dorms move on to the next year, and they do actually start their second and third year of highschool. kazuya is the one becoming the dorm head this time, either because mitsuru likes to mess with him and / or because he does genuinely respect the guy. kazuya isn't too sure himself, though. some new students show up like the kid from singapore who they keep trying to explain things to as if he's some sort of otherworldly being, and he also shows signs of being completely clueless on how stuff works like not even knowing what a school trip is. i asked someone i know if this is true and they said that people in singapore do know what a school trip is (as i assumed), but sure. the school trip does happen, where they meet mieko once again and she asks mitsuru to do some modelling for a tv ad. this becomes a whole thing with mitsuru not being sure whether or not he wants to do it because like, his brother will think that he's only doing it to attract the attention of his "real parents" because actually he feels that he's not really part of his family since he's adopted? it's weird, the adoptive part will come into place later (although it's not that big either).

in volume 7 kazuya's nephew is born and they need to take care of him because sumire was gonna give them a couple of tickets for the ice ring. in the ice ring, two girls try to trick shinobu and mitsuru into becoming their partners because they need a couple to do competitive ice skating, or something. the conclusion is shinobu saying "why doesn't one of you get a sex change?" and they think it's genius and leave it at that. hooray for surgery. there's another three side stories with an edo era spin off, the boys going into the kisaragi onsen, and the duo in the arcade room getting cursed by an evil videogame you have to beat in one go.

it doesn't end with, but midway through we got the start of the main final arc, the one with igarashi miya. miya is a girl mitsuru used to know back on his previous school, she seems to be a bit of a delinquent that got into trouble with some girls over turf conflicts. she needs a place to stay for the night and tries to get help at greenwood. kazuya insists in helping her and offering his room even if it's strictly forbidden, because he sees something in her eyes. there's a certain sadness and uncertainty he's not sure about, so he wants to know more.

she explains to kazuya about her situation, and it turns out, she's not as tough as she seems. she doesn't like that people see her as a delinquent, she's not strong, she's a bit of a scaredy cat and is always trying to keep herself from crying. in the process of helping her and getting the girls from the other school to stop annoying her, kazuya realizes that, whoops! he kind of likes her! unfortunate for him, she already has a boyfriend. she does really insist that he's a good guy since he's always been there for him. on the other hand, kazuya wonders why was it because of him that she turned into a delinquent, or why doesn't she ever feel loved by him. she feels that he doesn't like her for who she is but rather he believes he likes her because they've always been together. not a lot he can do about it though, as he doesn't really have an excuse to see her again.

the anime doesn't change much here, the episode starts with kazuya already dwelling about her as they usually do with these episodes, starting with the aftermath of the events and recapping on what happened to them. i do like this, i'll say.

volume 8 is the last one before overlapping with the final episode, so it's mostly filled with extra chapters. there's one about a boy not going to class because he hates one of the teachers, another one with mitsuru getting tailed by a girl (again) who loves the made up version of mitsuru she imagined while seeing his commercial, devilwood again with the dragon quest fantasy manga parody, and the sports festival once more. the thing i like about the sequel to the sports festival is how kazuya gets into the track team to distract himself from thinking about miya, which seems to work for a bit. not essential, but realistic.

another one of the chapters is him falling off a ladder and landing in an alternate dimension where everyone is female, which is actually kinda fun, if not a little bit short. they call it "cherrywood" instead of greenwood, and there's actually a version of this they had the voice actors record as part of the drama cds. there are a couple of these mainly for the special chapters like the sports festival and stuff, they're neat. once kazuya comes back to his world the boys in the dorm keep dropping themselves off the ladder to see if they can go there as well so it's pretty funny.

i think the girl that was obsessed with mitsuru is somewhat a different version of the ghost girl from episode 4, although this one gets so mad at so many things he does that he legitimately cannot go around doing anything without having this girl break into tears, so it's funny i'll let it slide. i insist that having mitsuru be overwhelmed by girls all the time doesn't give the vibe of the "all boys dormitory life" that most of the series tries to push forward, but only some of them wouldn't hurt too much, i suppose.

we arrive to the final volume, as well as the last episode. had you been reading and watching these alongside, you would have a decent grasp of all the activities these people have gotten involved with. the thing is that, the 6 ova episodes released some time after the manga was already finished, meaning that it's not like anyone actually expected you to go back and forth between each other. it would be impractical to do so anyway without knowing what actually gets adapted and not. i've seen people mention that the way these episodes are formatted makes it so only a fan of the original manga would be able to enjoy it, with how much time is skipped between each one. i can't really agree with this point, as it is very much structured in the normal episodic anime way, only with some details here and there that probably don't end up being super clear since they weren't addressed but don't actually hinder the overarching narrative or actual character interactions. after all, these dynamics work well enough on their own to be used in whatever situation they get in. it's not that the manga does not do this, but it often feels like they're there to fill time rather than to simply entertain. more often than not, the chapters feel disorganized, same-y and as if they don't have any major purpose to be there than simply "what if x thing happened". it happens, and it's over. probably not inherently a bad thing, i guess it's a matter of presentation after all. ironically, the manga may just feel like more targeted towards fans than the adaptation, as it really takes a long while for these relationships to grow and develop. if i get too many details, it'll get stale and won't feel like i'm really learning much until something major happens. if i just get the core elements, i can build the gaps myself. less can definitely be more. dudes will be dudes, after all.

in that regard, the episode starts with kazuya helping out at mitsuru's house. the place used to be a bigger temple, but over time the land was reduced and the place isn't what it used to be. not a big deal for them though, as they still maintain the place. it's a nice family of 4. mother, father and siblings. sho, mitsuru's younger brother is only a few weeks younger than him, as by the time they found mitsuru outside their house, it had already been a little bit since he was born.

adoption is usually treated as a careful subject matter, but i don't really think it should be. throughout the manga, mitsuru has his moments of doubting himself, his past, where he comes from and his family. he cares about them and they care about him, specially his brother, but there's always a weird air to it. since he is the older son, he would be the one to take over the shrine, which he's not really sure if he wants to do himself. his mother makes sure to tell him that he doesn't need to worry about it, he should just do whatever he wants to do. his brother misses him, but he needs to focus on himself too. sho seems to be angry at him because mitsuru mentions how he is trying to go live on his own as soon as he can. this is where we get a little bit iffy.

from what i am able to gather, mitsuru feels indebted to his family. they aren't blood related, so sure, he loves them but he knows that they had no right to take him in and they did anyway. it's not that they actually show any sign of it being a pain on them or anything, he is just a son to them. i suppose he feels bad for taking his brother's spot for the shrine, but he doesn't even need to take the place if he doesn't want to. so, in the end, "wanting to leave home as soon as possible" is kinda just a normal thing i believe. i mean sure, deep down it's probably because he doesn't want to be more of a burden, and even if he's not he still wants to make their life easier. this is fine. he makes it such a bigger deal than it should ever be, though. his brother gets pissed at him and his response is "i'm not trying to be an outsider, i am an outsider" my guy what are you saying. kazuya goes as far as to ask him if he ever thinks of his blood related parents and he says no, so what is even his deal? mitsuru wonders to himself if you can still be family even if you aren't blood related, kazuya says that it's love that matters. unfortunately this is literally where this ends and it will never be brought up again or be concluded, because miya appears in front of them. it's unfortunate that it doesn't really get any closure, i feel exploring the meaning of family, specially with kazuya's situation being a thing, could be a really cool addition to the series. nevertheless, it doesn't happen. mitsuru just says that, he feels like he has to leave home as soon as he can, his brother doesn't like this mentality, and that is it. not even the manga chooses to explore this further, that's all there is.

they bump miya and his boyfriend tenma on their way back to the dorms, kazuya still sees that expression in her face, as if she's about to cry but she's holding back. now before getting ahead of ourselves this guy isn't abusing her or anything, he is kind of just a dude. not the best dude, but a dude nonetheless. miya has been wanting to say thanks to kazuya for a while, but she never gathered the courage to go visit him and say thanks. she would go nearby the school and then run away, never sure herself of why she was doing that. this time with the opportunity right in front of her, the only thing she manages to say is "i'm sorry". inevitably, this almost kills kazuya and gets him sick for a couple of days.

"sorry" doesn't really cut it. sorry for what? she didn't do anything. kazuya decides to give her a call after his brother convinced him to. his counseling is essentially: "you shouldn't care about the other guy, focus on yourself", which is fair enough i suppose, but i think a situation like this is very much gonna depend on who you're talking about. kazuya doesn't want to ask a girl with a boyfriend out, no one wants to be the guy that steals someone else's girlfriend really. but you know, there's something going on here too, as she doesn't seem particularly happy with him either. i think this brother bonding is a good moment for the two of them, although not the most particularly touching. kazuhiro is a fun guy, he is confident and he would do anything he needs to get the girl he loves (he did, after all, get the girl his own brother loved). it does come off as a little weird piece of advice from his part, but it works in context so that's all he needs to call her. she does, however, say sorry again and hang up instantly.

"i heard hasukawa got rejected by that delinquent girl", no! he hasn't even said anything to her! so the guy decides to wait outside her school to see her. he stays for a week until he finds out she was hospitalized, they find where she's staying and she's already gone. he sends her a letter but tenma grabs it before she can read it. luck is never on his side. persistence, however, never fails. a little bit of a bizarre thing here, tenma explains how "you need a special permission from their parents to date the girls from this school" which i don't - know, if it's a real thing or not in some japanese schools and honestly i don't even feel like looking it up right now. they both leave and run away from kazuya, leaving him alone.

then, on their way home:

which is an excellent moment, although my favorite part of this is how loud the trains are it's so funny to me i can't even begin to explain. tenma is a bit of a self centered prick, he mostly shows off his nice side but he's the guy that wants things to go his way all the time, you know. he didn't particularly do anything wrong, he's just a bit of a toxic influence on miya. he's the reason she became a delinquent so maybe he would care about her more (or get scared and dump her), he's the reason why she doesn't feel loved or particularly pretty, he's the reason why she's so sheltered. having a guy like him that won't let you do the things you want, always holding your hand and trying to keep you "safe" isn't part of a healthy relationship. kazuya is the one that incites her into being herself, opening up, finding her strength and dealing with her weakness. "i'm with you", is what he replies to her once she tells him how he feels. it's about finding that person that will be there for you, the one that will always be around and, most of all, love you unconditionally.

the rest of the manga has a little bit of the aftermath and how the people at greenwood are doing. it, once more, doesn't stand out from the crowd. they're not bad chapters, they're fun. the story is already over, though. the final chapter is actually nasu drawing a bunch of reader requests she never got to do and kazuya inviting some of his friends over to show them around greenwood and work on a project (friends we have never ever seen nor have been mentioned before now, but whatever). here is greenwood in all its glory.

if you didn't care to read all of that, great. this is the tldr; greenwood is about finding that next opportunity. mainly in love, but in most things in life. the anime adaptation takes things in some fresher directions, streamlining the experience and focusing on what is important. in the span of 6 episodes we get to know these guys, what their deal is and how their relationship works and shapes who they are. some more than others, but meeting new people you care about and will be there for you when you need it (for better or for worse) is what makes us human, and what inevitably helps us grow as people. grow out of pains, grow into understanding others and what makes us who we are.

there's something special about the serenity behind it all that i can't quite put into words, hence why i didn't go into much detail. the backgrounds are often soft and share a clean palette with a watercolor texture to it that makes it feel like a never ending dream. compared to the manga in this case, nasu's art is nice and specially with the covers and colored pieces, but it does take a while for characters to particularly pop or look like themselves as they often suffer from the same face syndrome shoujo manga can be known for. color goes a long way into helping battle this. the manga does also often rely on jokes that maybe aren't as funny in the current age, so there's that too.

the music helps sell the impact of it all, with the magical orchestra that follows around the almost play like scenarios that overcome greenwood on a daily basis. as the subtitle reads "under the tree of memories", like looking back on the moments that mattered the most and shaped the future. the theme of greenwood echoing behind this feeling. some of the other songs they made for the show sell the fun of it all as well i'd strike a comparison with ocean waves considering it's the same director and the same guy doing the music, but i haven't actually seen that so there isn't anything i can mention.

in retrospect, 6 episodes isn't really a whole lot. there's 3 of them that center around some plot and then the other 3 are extra content that focus on whatever the hell they felt like. it's obviously not something for everyone, i'm not gonna come out and say this is a must watch or anything like that, only how i feel about things. stuff doesn't need to be deep, it can just be for self fulfillment. it's often the mindless things that get the most enjoyment out of me, being there to have a good time before anything else. exactly what they do here at any moment, picking out a day at random and making the most out of it. a day where any one of these bandits will get into trouble and they'll come out of it with a smile.

i could wish it was a bit longer. maybe add some of the chapters with the other boys at the dorms, add the part with kazuya's nephew and then him entering the track team and idk, maybe the one with mitsuru and his commercial to actually give an ending to his whole adoptive family thing. alas, this is what we get, and i will not complain.

had it been at a different point in my life i watched this, i probably wouldn't care as much. it speaks to a part of me i hadn't learned about years ago, and would probably only look back on fondly into the future. those things that happen and make you rethink stuff for a good while and, in turn, open your horizons. so, feeling identified with media and connecting with stuff is a bit of what we do this for, i think.

[morporkian-cryptid]

Fic author interview! Thank you @vampirenaomi for the tag! I'm a bit late to the party, sorry.

Tagging @crimetimesteadicam, @dandunn and @carriagelamp!

1 How many works do you have on AO3?

I have 48 works there, and there's a few (including my very first long fic and very first NaNoWriMo novel) that are only on Fanfiction.net.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

562,503 words total. To be honest, considering the amount of long fics I've written, I'm a little surprised it isn't higher, but also I'm bad at estimation.

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Treasures of time - JigLup one-shot, emotional angst with a happy ending (221 kudos)

Up in the mountains - JiGoe getting together (197 kudos)

In the middle Part 2 - Polygang getting together (150 kudos)

We are beginning - Goemon POV Polygang fluff drabble (140 kudos)

How to make a gunman snap - JigLup not-quite-porn-without-a-plot one-shot (133 kudos)

It's mostly one-shots and old-ish long fics, which I am a bit surprised about - but then again, they have had more time to collect kudos.

4. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I do! Unless a comment is just two words and I don't know what to answer, I always reply, at least to say thank you.

5. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

I don't really write angsty ending. The closest to an angsty ending would be Adieu (a Netflix Lupin alternate ending one-shot).

EDIT I forgot about my entire MorMor period skjlsjkldjkl so yeah my angstiest fic is Bang Bang, a MorMor post-Reichenbach one-shot based on the song by Nancy Sinatra.

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

They all end well, so I can't really designate a specific one.

7. Do you write crossovers?

I've written I think one crossover ever, a Discworld/Harry Potter fic way back in the day. I'm not gonna link it because it was bad, but it's on my AO3 if you're interested and you can read French.

However I have a BUNCH of AUs that I haven't written up into fics: Lupin III/Discworld, Lupin III/Ewilan's Quest, and an ooooooold MorMor (or Mor4)/X-Men AU that I did write a couple of unpublished one-shots for.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I haven't, thankfully!

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I've written one smut scene several years ago, it was very difficult and awkward to do, but in retrospect I think the result was alright. I'm planning to try again. The past try and the upcoming one are both scenes in longer plotty fics, I've never written PWPs.

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge.

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

I've translated my own fics (usually from French to English)

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I haven't; but I did co-write half of an original novel with my best friend, and the possibility of finishing it isn't off the table.

13. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

LUPIN III POLYGANG. And all variations thereof.

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

I started a Lupin III Polygang soulmate AU fic, I really want to carry on with it because I love that specific soulmate concept, but I don't really have a plan for what's going to happen in it; and wouldn't you know it, it's waaaayy more difficult to write a soulmate AU fic for five people than for two.

15. What are your writing strengths?

I think dialogue and banter; when I get in the right frame of mind, it practically writes itself. I'm pretty good at writing pacing in action scenes I think.

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

I tend to write looooooong paragraphs about character's feelings that kind of get out of hand.

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I love doing it, and including foreign words, but I have to restrain myself otherwise my fics would be unreadable.

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Discworld. I discovered fanfiction through a Discworld forum. Although to be honest, I think the first thing I ever wrote that qualified as fanfic was the begining and vague plot outline of a self-insert isekai next-gen story in the universe of Ewilan's Quest, my childhood favourite book series. Ewilan's Quest was a huge and formative part of my childhood, and the reason I wanted to become a writer as a kid. And Discworld was my favourite novel series after that, and it solidified my desire to write stories. Both series are still very dear to me; so it's unsurprising, and very fitting, that my introduction to fanfic and writing was these two fandoms.

19. What’s a fandom/ship you haven’t written for yet but want to?

I'd like to write a Zenigen fic, if I ever find a precise idea for it.

20. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

That tends to change a lot. Lately, it would be Become, a one-shot about Lupin's journey of finding out he's trans after meeting Jigen; and Hanafuda, my ongoing WIP, a JiGoe florist/tattooist AU where Jigen and Goemon both quit crime before they met and are trying to juggle between their new normal lives, their dark pasts, and what they really want out of life... and their pesky little feelings for each other.

[1eos]

hello ms kendra! first off just wanted to say i hope you're doing well and i love your blog theme. also that i hope only good things come to you and those you love 💗

i don't know if you feel comfortable sharing, so please don't worry if you don't want to answer, but how did you know you were a lesbian? sorry if this seems out of the blue ahfjfkal but i've been kind of questioning myself lately and i trust your thoughts and opinions and i was just... looking for some thoughts/feelings i guess? once again please don't feel pressured to answer. thank you for reading 💗 have a sexy day ms leos!

omg its not too much at all 😭😭😭 how i realized i was a lesbian was obvious in retrospect but i was surrounded by so much comphet i didnt realize it was an option until one day i was like ohhhhhhh i can just like women lol

anyways when i was a kid i felt a bit left out bc ive always been a girls girl and only rarely found boys worth hanging out with but when all my girl friends were starting to be boy crazy i just had. no interest. none at all. when i was in elementary school the one boy everyone liked he did nothing for me but i started to fantasize abt him liking me so all the GIRLS would like me 😭😭😭 like i said obvious

but it didnt click bc i had crushes on 2 guys. one was gay so 😶😂 LOL and for a while i was like so im not gay bc i liked 2 guys but then i realized those 'crushes' were just how i am with ppl i like and want to be friends with. this all encompassing desire to be with them 24/7. i didnt want to do anything w my friends i just wanted to but stuck on them and im the same way to this day just toned down (scorpio vedic moon)

and then i started having intense and tumultuous friendships with other girls who similarly didn't like boys at all. and i would be consumed in wanting to be with her all the time and got jealous. it was how i was w close friends but even more intense bc it tended to be mutual. YOU KNOW HOW IT GOES. like i was in a toxic lesbian not relationship in middle school looking back

and then in high school when my mom left me alone at home i would runnnnn to the dvd player and rewatch the sex scene in monster's ball bc halle berry was topless 😭😭😭 i was kinda obsessed w sex but again had NO interest in the men? and if boys approached me irl i would just be like 🧍🏾‍♀️ what the hell did u want. and i was learning that u can be other things than just straight so even tho i was fucking sneaking away at my grandma house (we didnt have internet at our house) to scroll thru playboy and look at pics of half-naked WOMEN bc i didn't want to be desired by men i was like 'ohhhh ok so im asexual'

I WAS SO CLOSE TO THE TRUTH but comphet was fucking beating my ass bruh. andddd in college i branched out started meeting more girls like me (black and gay) and i was like oh ok. so im NOT abnormal there are ppl like me. met more men still didnt want to do anything w them. met more girls i wanted to fucking build a house with after geeking out after dragon age once. anyways i got a girlfriend...sophomore year and magically turned from sexless nun to disgusting horny beast and also i met this very sexy butch girl who i wanted to [redacted] so bad and wouldve if not for girl code. and it finally clicked that girls just do it for me 😭😭😭😭severely. all the romance and sex things i was all ick abt fell into place bc i finally beat the comphet. ofc i found sex disgusting bc i didnt like men and it put alllllllllllllll previous relationships into perspective

so for me what helped was to just not try to force myself into any label or worry oh what if im actually this or that? i just lived my life liked who i liked and slowly the reality that i want girls to [redacted entry] me very nastily fell into place!

and thank you so muchhhhh wishing good things on you too. good things and clarity 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

[ast1lb3]

[while digging for screenshots I also found this! i present you with a bit of cringe and a bit of pride two-part monologue written in the middle of february. please, be kind and remember that english is my second language and I am mostly self-taught]

Oh, don't pretend to be so holy. You know how it goes. The tiny closet-like apartment, an enormous student loan, and then a corpo internship suggests a clear way to the top. Of course, I say yes to Arasaka. After all that dirt I was forced to live in, why shouldn't I? Your petty morals are not my concern. There are no good or bad people, only those who win and those who lose. And for a while, I've been proving myself victorious. Jenkins pulled me out of Washington's outskirts somewhat six years ago and threw me right in the eye of the storm instead. So just like that, I became a promising bright protege. Accompanied him all around NUSA from one hotel to another until we were finally set for NC. Arthur was no fairy godmother saving another insolvent Miss Nobody. Hell, no fucking way he did it out of grace. I was a useful intelligence asset, a handy tool picked and groomed with caution, and a pretty doll to go with at cocktail parties. Arthur had a good eye for details like that, but it could never save him. Gonk got what was coming for him, that's the rules we play by. He lost the war with Abernathy, he paid for it. I was bound to drown miserably by his side. I wasn't allowed any famous last words in this matter. Unfair. A year or two more, and I would gladly snap Arthur's neck in two by myself. Never liked the way he looked at me anyway.

But I am not complaining. No, it was a good life until it wasn't. Without Arasaka HQ... Well, Night City had nothing for me to offer. But there was nothing and no one left to miss in Washington either, so I stayed. Family? Bitch, please. The heartbroken mother of mine still nurturing my older brother's nasty kids. I bet Garret himself is still nurturing the gambling addiction that got him wasted in the first place. It's not a support, it's a dead weight I am happy to leave behind. The rest of Delacroix's proud noble family are welcome to suffocate in their own shit. I won't be there for them, I know better for myself.

Jackie's case was a completely different story, though.

When we first met, I treated him like an instrument. The merc was not even human to me, just a gun pointed at whatever the fuck I needed. From my point of view, it was a painfully familiar and comfortable way of dealing with people. But Jackie himself? Guy looked at a corpo middlewoman with a resting bitch face and thought he just made a brand new friend. Stupid, but... adorably stupid, y'know? There was no need to say how wrong he was, so I decided to play along. I thought to myself, what harm could some hangouts with local barbarians possibly cause? So, a day after Jackie's first gig as brute power for my cause, he gave me a call and offered a beer at the El Coyote Cojo. I, being a City Center spoiled brat, didn't even know there was a bar like this. And Jackie Welles barely knew me, barely got paid after fixer's cutout, and was this fucking close to catching a bullet in my place. So I ordered a taxi, found something more or less casual in my wardrobe, braved myself, and went for that goddamn beer. If nothing, the evening promised to be an exotic change of pace.

And to make this retrospective a proper one, some context needs to be addressed. In this chapter of my life, I've lived in Night City for half a year. As a foreigner, I didn't know a single soul outside of the corporation's walls, simply didn't think I needed to. In the meantime, all of my honored colleagues tried to act like apex predators, and barely anyone was successful. I myself at least knew where I belonged in a food chain. Making acquaintances wasn't a top priority on my to-do list, being on my own was a safer option. But you can't trick human nature for long, loneliness has started to sting under my skin. I guess, it showed. Jackie saw those hollow insides of mine for sure, but instead of finishing me, he chose to help. Even more, over the years he lost more than he gained from my presence, and yet still cherished our relationship with such care and love. It amazed me as much as it scared me. Ugh, I once said out loud that I manipulated him into thinking I was a good person. It could be a refined gesture of honesty, it could be just a hangover. Doesn't matter either way, 'cause he laughed it off and called me a gonk. We have never spoken of it ever again. What else could I say? It isn't hard to see the worst in people. I mean, no need for second glances to know I am full of shit. The world is overflown with mistakes, regrets, and blood spilled for nothing. Fuck, Night City is ugly and repulsive even for those who managed to crawl to the top. But not for Jack, no. He had a true passion for life and a heart of gold fueling it. Did what needed to be done, said what needed to be said. Not the brightest of minds, of course, but being street-smart worked well for Jackie. He never allowed any doubts to creep in, or any fears to stop him. Proud son of Heywood who ditched the Valentinos not out of cowardice, but for a promise of a better life. A truly unique human being so full of hope he was.

So when the time finally came, I ordered a taxi, found something black in my wardrobe, braved myself, and went to El Coyote Cojo. For one day Jackie Welles was a true hero, a living legend capable of everything. And yet payback is inevitable. He did catch a bullet in my place after all, it just took him five full years.

[recurring-polynya]

Writing/Art Update 3/21/2023

It's Tuesday, here are some MORE SKULLS

(yes, the last one is just the next-to-last one with some texture added)

I am really not good at doing art studies, they do not hold my attention at all. Also, it's March 21 and I haven't drawn any finished pieces this month, which is going to Look Bad on the year-end retrospective, so maybe I should...draw...I don't know what. 😬

Let's talk about the fanfic! The fanfic is also 😬

I lie. The fanfic is going okay. I am in deep edits phrase which feels like it is going incredibly slowly and painstakingly, but the fact is, I've got a little under half of the thing posted into the new draft, in sequential order, with no hanging "to-dos" or unfinished scenes. That's not to say that I won't go back and add or change things later, but a person could read this. Every day, I try to work on it and check off as much as I can, which is usually only a section or two. (Per my updated outline, I have checked off 11 out of 23 sections). Sometimes the sections are pretty much done and I just paste them in, and sometimes they need an ending or an adjustment and it takes me four hours to write one sentence (but it was a very hard sentence!!) and sometimes I have to write or re-write most of the section (I'm on one of these rn and I do not love this for me). It's evolving a lot as I go. It's possible that I will be nearly done at this time next week and it's just as possible that I will have written myself into a quagmire. Exciting times!!

The other important thing is that this week, I made some cookies and they didn't spread ridiculously like always happens to me.

Little Polynya said she liked the last ones I made better "because they felt bigger." S I G H.

[friendofthecrows]

If there was something that could reach inside my memories, or back in time, seeing everything, even things I can't remember anymore, I know the first thing I'd do is look at statistics about my emotions.

Was it really that bad? How did I feel compared to a normal person? Was I weak and lying to myself?

I'd stare at my average feelings laid out on a bell curve, without the bias of what I remembered or remembered to write down in the moment. I'd try to make sense of it. I'd look at an arc of my emotions over time, I'd see myself spiraling downwards - or healing, whichever turns out to be true. I'd look at my low point, and maybe it wouldn't be the spring I lost my best friend. Maybe I made an altar to that suffering in my mind. Or maybe I would look and go, "I see, so I was right. At least I don't have to worry about finding a secret, worse rock bottom." And for joy, maybe the stereotype would be right, and my happiest memories would be in childhood, even though I remembered it sucking in retrospect. Maybe there would be the same baseline, for the most part, but with big spikes for my favorite moments. An especially chaotically fun sleepover with my ex-best friends, the first time I watched my old favorite show that I don't like any more, the concerts, probably the concerts.

Once I'd made sense of the numbers, graphs, and general trends, or had stared at them long enough to know that I had gotten my share of attempted understanding, I would want to see the memories.

There's too much to watch, 22 years of it, so I would ask, "What was my best day from each year? The day that I was happiest?" I would ask it for a summary of each and a short explanation of why it's the best, each totaling a couple of pages. Then I'd watch the best hour of each of the best days.

I would have to split the watching over the course of a few days, and I know that in-between, I would be thinking about it, wanting to immerse myself in happy memories again.

I would write a little story for each of the 22 days. Happy little stories that don't mean anything.

I would do the same for the worst memories, locked in reliving like a trauma flashback.

Then, I'd want to know which moments were most impactful. Which ones changed me the most and altered the course of my life. What if I was shaped by my worst moments, or what if they were all completely mundane? Why am I this person? (These people?)

When I had all 44 to 66 stories, I'd put them in order and read them through. Would it make a coherent story? I would look for themes and compare them to my favorite novels. I would treat the thing like an English class until I understood. I would be scared to find it devoid of merit. Maybe I would share it anyway in the hopes someone would understand me through it.

How much would it say about me, really?

It should say a lot, what my happiest and saddest and most important memories are. How much characterization happens if the moments of joy don't center on graduations or meeting my best friend, but instead on concerts or frenzied mornings of internet chaos? It would be important if the day my mom's boyfriend died, when I was four and didn't understand death yet, so I thought he'd abandoned us and I couldn't understand why, didn't make it into the worst moments, and they were instead occupied by mundane moments of misery, those days where nothing important has happened but your chest rips itself open regardless.

Earlier today, I'd had an idea for a short story. It was about the ghost of a dog trying to keep his still living owner from killing himself.

I wonder if I was really thinking of Nikki, the half wolf half akita that did most of the work of raising me when I was a small child. Many times, my mom has remarked that she thought she heard a dog, only to find the dogs accounted for in another room. Sometimes, people catch glimpses of silver fur out of the corner of their eye, but Nikki isn't there. When I was a child, I was convinced she was with me. I couldn't see or hear her, but I knew she was watching, and I would talk to her. I'd hold my hand out to my side and imagine her running her back under it like she used to, and I couldn't feel her, but I knew she was there. When I was little, I got myself through so many things by thinking that I wouldn't want to make Nikki sad. The dead wolf who raised me. I couldn't break her heart.

At some point, I stopped doing that. I can't remember when.

Would memories of her make it into the book of moments? Would I want to live or die if I relived my most defining moments? Would Nikki be there, trying to comfort me? I wish I could remember how it felt to bury my face in her fur and cry.