#shared brain cell analysis

[tylovingkit]

not us tsc fandom becoming professors, scientists, writers and analyze every single detail and talk about it in more of one essay for days as soon as C. C. posts anything related to TWP or Better in black

[charliemwrites]

From your latest post involving frustration with Shy Thing and Johnny, I can totally see that being a problem with all of the keepers. This sense of condescension comes with kidnapping someone, locking and hiding them away in a house that is practically baby-proofed, and then dismissing a lot of their fears or frustrations by saying something along the lines of 'I know what's best for you more than you'd ever know.' (I know they've done their research before taking them, but there are some things even the most well-trained soldiers can't know.)

And with a lot of your responses to the behaviors that the keepers show, they babify their pets in some sort of way, either by talking to them like a child or restricting access to items because they think they'll hurt themselves.

This level of coddling would drive me up a wall because as much as they're allowing me/the pet to do something, having them be the person who ultimately shoots down an idea, suggestion, or desire based on what they think is best for me is incredibly frustrating.

Just wanted to pop this into your inbox. Something about Shy Thing saying 'what’s the fucking point, you don’t listen' set me off into this discussion!

Hiii!!! Wow wow I adore this analysis because you’re absolutely right!! That’s some of the really deceptive and darker underpinnings of this au that I don’t tend to draw attention to. Because the fact that a lot of their chosen pets’ actual wants align with what the keepers think they need is pure happenstance (sort of… I mean they were picked out) and happy coincidence.

There’s a very good reason that Feral is feral, bitey and scratchy and snarly. There’s a reason that Johnny likes his Shy Thing so shy. And there’s a certain sinister tone to Good Girl having a collar - there were rules that she was trained to enjoy, rewarded heavily for abiding by.

In all practicality, it would be awful. I know that I, personally, would do a full crazy turn around and someone would not be surviving the experience. At the end of the day, these are normal human beings that got kidnapped from their normal (if unhappy) lives, isolated, manipulated to grow close to their captors, and encouraged to stop wanting their old lives because their new one is easier and safer and better showered in love and praise.

Thankfully, it’s safe to indulge and engage with fic like this. The narrative is still very controllable and genuinely safe (not keeper “safe”) for everyone to have a nice, temporary fantasy of a life being pampered and looked after.

(Also, on a more personal note, if you need me to tag more thoroughly, anon, let me know! I love you sending me this ask, I just want to make sure that the content is well-warned in advance)

[i-might-be-vanny]

I think after Choi Su-bong gets killed by Myung-gi, he would end up in the afterlife and live through what's effectively a time loop of the same moral test that he has to take over and over again until he passes through to the Good Place.

And I think while he's in the Good Place, he would meet one of the people that designed this kind of afterlife - a DJ from Florida named Jason Mendoza.

This would be Su-bong's first time ever meeting someone from the United States, and possibly Jason's first time ever meeting someone from South Korea. But their introductions quickly dispel any idea of a language barrier between the two, due to Su-bong's very basic English vocabulary (as confirmed by T.O.P) and Jason's very poor education giving him an equally basic English vocabulary.

I think the two would talk about their shared love of music, and maybe listen to each other's music. They might also do drugs together, maybe show each other some viral dance trends from their respective countries, and I definitely think Jason would offer Su-bong a tour of Jacksonville and Su-bong would offer a tour of his own home town in return.

I can see Jason hyping up Su-bong's entire Thanos aesthetic, and even becoming a Marvel fan because of it (assuming he's not already a fan of the comics)

I just really want them to be friends, will someone please write this crossover fic because I do not have the spoons to plan each and every chapter out myself

i think they would be friends

[autumnmobile12]

Endeavor: Physical Strength vs Emotional Strength

Or The Total Mess that is the Todoroki House.

*Note:  The following is not a defense of Endeavor nor is it excusing his actions.  It is a deep-dive analysis into the complexities and nuances of his behavior and how it affected his life and everyone else in that family based on observations I’ve made throughout the series. There are also comparisons with other objectively violent characters from other series.

Trigger Warning for domestic and child abuse.

...

We're gonna start out by looking at what happened to his character over the available time frame. Endeavor did not start out as a violent person to his family. We can see that in the flashbacks of the family's early days.

Starting here, note that he’s not cold toward Rei in this scene.  The way they’re walking around out here in the garden gives the impression that negotiations between him and Rei’s family are going well so far, but they’re out walking and talking in private just to make sure this arrangement is going to work and making sure further negotiation isn’t going to be a waste of everyone’s time.  I say this because if he was dead set on ice powers for this Quirk marriage, Rei probably wasn’t the only option.

It's also important to remember Rei did choose this. She chose for her family rather than herself, but it wasn't her parents' end all be all decision. (And maybe there was familial pressure on her side, but it's not explicitly stated in canon so exactly how much free will Rei actually had is up for interpretation.)

However what I think shows here is they weren’t really talking all that much. Specifically, he is not ‘talking down to her.’  He is not treating her with any particular disrespect or putting her down as inferior.   He doesn’t have the arrogance he later exhibits. This also isn’t him being aloof and ignoring her either.  Look at his face, specifically his eyes.  That is the same blank, deer in the headlights, “I have one brain cell dinging around in my head that is struggling to find a way to interact with people,” stare he shares with Shouto.

He has no idea what to say to her. 

So finally, Rei turns off to the side to admire the garden, and he asks, “Do you like the flowers?”  It’s a small thing, but it does show that in some capacity, he did show some interest in Rei and making her happy.  He’s just stupidly awkward about it at this point. (Even if his ultimate goal was…well, we’ll get into that.)

But this trait of never knowing what to say is a massive defining part of Endeavor’s character that has manifested in a myriad of disastrous ways throughout his entire arc.

Now I don’t think there’s enough shown about Endeavor and Rei’s relationship that we can conclusively say they ever loved each other at any point, but I do think they were, at the very least, cordial in the beginning.  They got along, they loved their children, and that in their minds was good enough for them. If you look at the scenes that are Touya and Fuyumi's early childhood, the family seems content. There's no sign of the abuse we see later.

The other big indicator that Endeavor was not originally a violent person to his family is the two very different ways he approaches training with Touya and Shouto. His motive for training them hasn't changed, but compared to the warmth and pride extended toward Touya we see in the above picture, Shouto’s experience with training in the second screenshot is harrowing and traumatic.

So why the difference?

A big reason is it has to do with age.  When Rei defends Shouto, telling her husband that, “He’s only five!” and Endeavor is still pushing their son to achieve the standards of an older child, yes, this does show his impatience. However, the other unspoken sentiment here is he himself is not getting any younger.  When Touya was born, Endeavor was twenty-two and had his whole life, career, and all his hopes with it ahead of him.  His kid has a greater Quirk than his, his legacy is secure, nothing to worry about.  But then they learn about the genetic issue with Touya’s Quirk.  He can’t use his fire safely, he’ll never be able to use it safely, and he will never be a hero in the way Endeavor can.

Touya:  Failure

Fuyumi:  Failure

Natsuo:  Failure

Shouto was probably viewed as his last chance.  Endeavor was getting older and running out of time.  If Shouto didn’t work out, then this legacy was dead in the water. At least, I hope Shouto was the last chance, otherwise he might've tried getting another kid out of Rei, divorced Rei and married someone else for the same reason, or attempted securing his successor through a grandchild.

Which is some freaky medieval way of thinking.

Anyone else getting Henry VIII vibes here?

Remember what I said about him never knowing what to say? The most obvious example of this is his complete and total inability to control the situation with Touya.

The tragedy of both Touya and Fuyumi's characters is they are the only two kids in the house who remember the happier childhood, and they both cling to that in their own way. It's why Fuyumi is so determined to 'fix things.' She's trying to regain the family they lost. For Natsuo and Shouto, things have always been bad in the house, hence why Natsuo bailed as soon as he could.

Then we have Touya. His flashbacks start with him at a toddler age. It is very common and normal for a child that young to prefer one parent over the other, but usually it's the parent they're most familiar with: The one that stays home with and takes care of them. Remember, to a toddler, everything is new and potentially scary, and that can also include a parent that is not always present: The parent that's working. In the Todoroki house, Endeavor has his career as a hero, so we have the indication that Rei was the parent who stayed home. In that situation, the probability of Rei being the 'familiar parent' was more likely, so for Touya to prefer his father over his mother shows just how close he was to Endeavor. Or because Fuyumi was the new baby and needed more attention, he could have gravitated away from Rei and gone to his father instead. He didn't see his father's ambitions for him. He didn't see that he was a successor as opposed to a son.

What he, through a child's innocence, saw and understood was that his father loved him and wanted to spend time with him.

Cue the genetic disparity of his Quirk: Where Endeavor failed as a parent was him never talking to Touya about what had happened. He didn't sit down with him and explain it wasn't safe for him to use his Quirk.

The My Hero world has a social problem of Quirks defining one's worth. It's not just the PLF's philosophy. Having no Quirk is viewed with pity and having a Quirk that can't be used could be viewed as a disability by this society, regardless of the fact it's completely possible to live a healthy life without having a Quirk. So Touya's 'issue' required compassion and understanding, especially from a parent. What Endeavor needed to say and what Touya needed to hear was, "This is a path that is blocked to you, it isn't your fault this happened, and I will love you regardless."

Instead, he just dropped him completely. (Given his character, I doubt he's even the one who broke the news to him.) In Touya's eyes, he didn't have the adult nuance to understand why he was being ignored; he just had the child innocence of, "I don't want to hang out with Mom and Fuyumi, I want to be with Dad. Why is he ignoring me? Why won't he train me anymore?"

What Touya learned from this is he only has value in his father's eyes as a hero. So he began training himself to be a hero because he was desperate to get that love and affection back. When Endeavor discovers the fact he's been training and burning himself, Touya never apologizes for disobeying him. He just repeatedly says variations of, "I can do this, then maybe you'll finally be proud of me."

Fuck, dude, just tell the poor kid you're already proud of him. That's all he needed to hear.

And Rei does call Touya out on this. She asks him, "Do you want to be a hero because you want to be a hero or are you doing this because it's what your father wants?"

In order words: "Are you doing this because you think it will make your father love you?"

And we come full circle to the 'death' of Touya where he realized, "I was never a son. I was a product."

...

Endeavor never addresses the problem going on under his roof. He handed the problem off to Rei. He didn't know what to say, he didn't know (and still doesn't) how to be a parent, and instead of confronting that lapse in his character, he instead made a coward's retreat back into the safe and familiar territory of being a hero.

This was the catalyst for his violence to his family.

Being a hero means fighting villains.

Fighting villains is often solving problems with violence.

Because he never knows what to say, he didn't know how to properly navigate a complex emotional situation, so he resorted to the only method he knew that worked:

Beat it into submission.

And since we have the previously mentioned signs they were once a happy, normal family, I have a feeling the violence began very suddenly and without warning.

...

To back this up, I'm gonna give a little personal insight here. I used to work in an orthopedic clinic and a lot of injuries that came through were hand injuries due to someone punching a wall out of anger/frustration.  You may think this is fine since they didn’t hit another person and only hurt themselves, but the issue with taking your aggression out on even an inanimate object is you are unwittingly training your brain to associate anger with violence and make it all the more likely for you to lash out violently against another person.

Throughout his career, Endeavor has conditioned himself into this same mindset of repeatedly forging and reinforcing the physical connection of violence with the mental/emotional connection of anger.

Look at this scene from Arcane.

If you haven't seen this series yet, 1.) Get on that. You're missing out. (Don't worry, there's not too many spoilers below.) and 2.) This is Vi and this screenshot is from a scene where she, in a moment of anger and grief, strikes her little sister hard enough in the face to knock her to the ground.

Look at the horror in her eyes when she realizes what she’s done.

Now before and after this moment, we see Vi undoubtedly loves her sister and would die for her. (Season 2 pending...) The first thing she does when they're reunited is hug her and tell her how sorry she is. But Vi has also been a fighter all her life. The sisters grew up in the rough part of town, they had to fight to survive, and they've experienced a violent atmosphere from a young age. We also see that when Vi gets frustrated or angry, she punches/slaps inanimate objects, so she too subconsciously associated violence with intense emotions, and in a moment of blind rage/grief, she failed to dissociate and she hurt her sister.

It wasn't a conscious decision, but it happened nonetheless.

What follows is she walks away from Powder. She doesn't go far, she just puts some distance between herself and her sister to calm down and process what's happened and hopefully find a way to move forward. Only, for unrelated reasons that don't pertain to this topic, she is apprehended by authorities and spends the next 6-7 years in prison, obsessing over her regrets and finding her way back to Powder.

She is never going to forgive herself for this.

I bring this scene up because as far as fiction is concerned, we as the audience do often excuse a character losing their temper and hitting a loved one once. What Vi did was not okay, but because it only happened that one time, nobody is labeling Vi as 'abusive.'

...

So consider the first time Endeavor hit Rei. We don't see it in canon, but with all the indicators of a relatively happy home, I believe that first act of violence was the culmination of these factors:

Endeavor's ongoing inferiority complex with All Might and the frustration in his inability to surpass him, and then projecting that frustration onto his family.

The career of solving problems with violence.

The subconscious association of anger with violence resulting from that career.

I'm also going to throw out the possibility of multiple head injuries incurred from his career playing a role. Traumatic brain injuries can and often do lead to behavioral changes where an individual has trouble managing emotional responses, experiences anxiety, has a shorter temper, etc.

Obviously, none of the above should be treated as excuses (not even the TBI possibility because there's therapy options for that), but they are potential contributors to the pivotal moment of frustration and impatience where Endeavor, like Vi, failed to dissociate and did something he couldn't take back.

Striking Rei is his tea kettle incident. Think back to the awkward moron who didn't have a clue what to say to her when they first met. That young man never thought he would do something like this. That first moment when he hit Rei, I really don't think it was a conscious decision and it may have taken him off guard as much as it did Rei. Like Vi, he probably acted out of blind anger and may have been just as horrified by what he'd done, and I can imagine Endeavor walking away from that to calm down and process that he crossed a line he thought he would never cross.

Unlike Vi, who was going to return to Powder after calming down so she could apologize, beg forgiveness, and move forward, Endeavor is an emotional coward who never knows what to say or how to confront a complex emotional hurtle. So he did the same thing he did with Touya: He retreated from the problem and pretended it didn't exist, and because it was never addressed and he was never held accountable, it only got worse. The lid was off and there was no getting it back on.

I'm not saying there was a definite chance he could have come back from that (that ball was in Rei's court as much as it was Powder's) but Endeavor had a choice:

He could have addressed what he'd done and made amends by submitting to whatever consequence Rei set down for him.

Or he could have rationalized his own twisted justifications for what he did.

He chose wrong.

For another comparison of the violence aspect, I’m also going to bring up Shizuo Heiwajima from Durarara!!, a character who I think flies off the handle far more frequently than Endeavor does.

If you haven't seen Durarara!!, same as above with Arcane.

The nuance of Shizuo is the intense rage he experiences, the violence that follows, and his own inner turmoil. He associates violence with anger, but these are traits that he fully recognizes as detrimental to himself and his personal relationships with other people. He has a temper, he gets violent, he lashes out with abnormal strength and has seriously injured many people.

But the people he's attacked are usually people who provoked him, whether it's thugs who opted to harass him on the street or he heard that a friend was in trouble and rushed off to help them. Not that violence is the answer, but they were people who arguably deserved a beating. More importantly, though, is the way Shizuo treats his relationships with caution. He's a loner by choice. He does want to connect with other people, but he keeps his distance because he legitimately fears harming someone he cares about. Because of his caution and self-awareness, he is a complicated and likable character that I think anyone with a short temper who has said or done things they regret can relate to.

If he didn’t have that level of control on himself and was violent with everyone regardless of who they were to him, he would be despised by the fandom as much as Endeavor is.

This is how Durarara!! can get away with presenting a violent character in a comedic fashion. Shizuo, despite his temper, is an absurdly strong guy, a little bit of an idiot, and fiercely loyal to his friends. All three of those are endearing qualities.

And in the right framing, Endeavor's violence is also presented as comedic.

This scene is funny, but grabbing Hawks like that and lifting him off the ground is technically assault and it is intimidation. Replace Hawks with Rei and this scene changes drastically from funny to very unsettling. Replace him with Touya and it's a fight.

...

Where Endeavor really differentiates from Vi and Shizuo is marked by two important factors:

Shizuo, for all his claims at being unable to control his anger, has it very much under control around the people he cares about. He really only lets loose against a perceived threat.

Vi mostly has that same control even though she lost it for a moment, but she was also separated from her sister in an indirect punishment for her actions.

Endeavor does not have Shizuo's restraint nor did he face any immediate consequences like Vi.

Which brings us to Rei.

I have mixed feelings when it comes to Rei, and the absolute harshest opinion I have of her is that she is pathetic and she failed her children. And I know that's a very black and white, cold-hearted view, but hear me out because it's a lot more complicated than that.

Endeavor is ultimately responsible for his own actions, but Rei also had the option to deal with the problem when it started. When he started hitting her, she could and should and have taken the kids and run as fast as she was able and not looked back. No amount of financial security, family appearance, or whatever justification one finds in this scenario is worth it. She should not have tolerated that abuse against herself and she definitely should not have subjected her children to that. While there's nothing conclusive to say Endeavor was physically harming any of the kids aside from Shouto, not fighting for her autonomy/safety was inadvertently teaching all four of them this is how men treat their wives, women are supposed to tolerate this treatment, and a marriage like this is 'normal.'

And in the end, she straight up abandoned her children. We see from Shouto's point of view right before she attacked him with the tea kettle. She's talking to her mother on the phone, saying she 'can't take it anymore' and she just wants to 'run away from this life.' Well...considering she goes on to spend the next ten years in a psych ward and left her children to her abusive husband...she did get what she wanted. Ten years and she really didn't put any more effort in trying to get back to them? She knew Endeavor was hurting her youngest. Going home and protecting her babies should have been her priority. For a long time, I legitimately thought she was in Fujiya because she was considered unsafe to rejoin society whether she was a danger to herself or to others. When she shows up in Endeavor's hospital room, I stared at the screen and thought, "The fuck? She could discharge herself at any point?"

All right, now that I've gone over my hard-line point of view, let me dial back the judgment and consider what else is going on here:

Rei is a refrigerated character.

She has very little characterization beyond her abuse and being the victimized mother in Shouto's story, so we don't know all that much about her. In all fairness, her oldest son suddenly dying while she was hospitalized certainly would have contributed to her downward spiral and account for her prolonged hospitalization.

She tolerated her abuse longer than she should have, but it is possible:

She learned that from her own parents. Tolerating abuse is often a byproduct of generational trauma. Maybe her father treated her mother the same way and she grew up thinking this was normal.

Maybe the first time Endeavor hit her, she rationalized it into a point of acceptance where she told herself that everything was fine and that it was only the 'one time' and it wouldn't happen again, a sentiment she kept repeating every time it happened.

Maybe she was raised to believe ‘the man of the house is always right,’ and that is a mindset that is hard to break if instilled from childhood.

Her parents certainly didn’t seem all that supportive with what was going on, but we also don’t know how much she told them. We don't even know if that one phone call she had with her mom was the first time she reached out for help after years of pretending everything was fine or if this was was something she was repeatedly updating her parents about and those parents chose to be aloof to it.

Maybe she really did grow up in a loving home and just didn't know what to do when confronted with the violent relationship she found herself in.

Maybe she was gaslit into believing it wasn't abuse.

Maybe she really did report the abuse and the godforsaken, root-of-all-evil Safety Commission told her, "Your husband's a hero. Stay quiet and don't ruin that public image." Basically told her to suck it up. That is also a possibility, and one I think could be the most likely, but the series doesn't really go into just how corrupt the Commission was, so we're in headcanon territory.

Maybe she did try to take the kids and run but failed to get away. (Unlikely since it’s never mentioned in canon.)

Not everyone is fortunate enough to have an upbringing that instills the belief, 'if your partner hurts you, they are dead to you' and not everyone has the good fortune of a reliable support network that can help them recognize a bad situation and get them out of it.

Given how well-known Endeavor is to the public, maybe Rei was afraid no one would believe her about the abuse. "A hero would never do such a thing. She's making it up for attention. Her family was poor, so she must be a gold-digger trying to screw over her hero husband in the divorce proceedings."

There is also the important fact that Japan has a social stigma against divorce. Persevering for the sake of family stability and maintaining an ideal appearance is a deeply ingrained cultural norm, which does introduce a troubling power imbalance between a husband who works and a housewife who doesn't have her own independent income. We also have to remember that Rei and her family were financially dependent on Endeavor, so she may have feared the monetary fallout at the prospect of leaving him. Also, with the popularity of the hero ranking system, the No. 2 Hero's wife divorcing him would have been very public and potentially humiliating for all involved.

And we can’t ignore the fact that Endeavor systematically broke her down into a shell of a person who couldn't see a way out of her situation and was tormented to the point she had a psychotic episode and attacked Shouto, the very child she tried to protect. And this too could have contributed to her prolonged hospitalization if this was the final straw and she viewed herself as a failure of a mother.

Maybe it was a combination of two or several of the above factors.

At the end of the day, abuse is a multi-faceted beast, and just as the abuse comes in many forms, the victim can have any number of reasons for staying in their situation.

So even though I have my harsh opinion of Rei and I think she should have done more to protect her children, I do 100% sympathize with her. She is a victim and she in no way deserved what she went through.

But while her inaction wasn't the cause of the crisis in her family, it was definitely a contributor to how badly it got out of hand because whatever the reason Rei didn't expose Endeavor or try to take the children and leave him, that lack of accountability opened up the opportunity for him to rationalize his own twisted justifications for his actions.  “It’s fine. She deserved it because ______. She was 'acting out.' She was overreacting. She doesn't know what she's talking about.”  Whatever he needed to tell himself to believe he didn’t do anything wrong even though he knew he wasn’t fooling himself or anyone.

She didn't stand up to him. Their children couldn't stand up to him.

So he continued the physical abuse unchecked.

...

Moving on into the redemption arc.

After the Kamino Incident, Endeavor finally, finally, finally got that vaunted No 1. Hero spot he'd been chasing for two decades. But he didn't earn it the way he wanted to by proving he's the best of the best. All Might retired, so he won by default.

And then he finds it's just one spot further up on a ranking system that means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. So he looks back at what's really important and he sees the charred skeleton frame of a house he burned down.

One institutionalized wife

One dead son

One daughter who clings to the memories of a happier home

One estranged son

One son who only has a use for him as a teacher and not a parent and will probably drop him the second he no longer needs him

In spite of everything, I do genuinely think the man deserves some credit for at least being willing to make an attempt at reconciliation. Not a lot since he dug that hole himself, but let's face it, a lot of lesser people would have looked at that mess and thought, "Fuck it, no going back now," and continued business as usual. So the question becomes:

Is Endeavor trying to redeem himself out of a need to make himself feel better about everything he's done or is he truly doing it for the benefit of the people he's hurt?

I tentatively think/hope could be a mix of both--I believe there is a part of him that cares about his children--but it definitely skews more toward making himself feel better because there's never a moment before the redemption arc begins where he's isolated, thinking back on everything, and just has the appropriate, "What have I done?" revelation. If his remorse was genuinely all about his family, we would have had that 'crying in the hospital scene' a whole lot sooner.

I think if Horikoshi wanted to portray Endeavor's redemption as genuine remorse for what he did to his family, I think he would have put more of a focus on Endeavor actually seeing the impact of what he'd done and feeling the inner turmoil and regret. Not just Natsuo's anger but also seeing firsthand Shouto's isolation and complete lack of social skills as a result of his training or having a conversation with Fuyumi where she admits she never wants to marry or have children because she doesn't 'want to risk ending up like Mom.' Seeing the effects of his behavior, realizing it's his fault.

So no. While there may be a part of Endeavor that loves his children (or he tells himself that he does), his wanting to atone is inspired mainly by his self-worth. He realized the ends did not justify the means and he tries to fix it.

But either way, how does he go about it?

The biggest change he makes toward earning forgiveness is to his hero career, which tracks with his character. That's familiar territory, so it's easier for him to navigate. He takes a significantly gentler method of teaching/mentorship with Shouto and he tries a kinder approach with his fans. That's progress, but it's still avoidance of the main issue that is the rift he caused with the other members of the family.

His relationship with Fuyumi doesn't have much friction. Fuyumi clings to their family's happier memories. With Touya gone, she was the only child who could remember a childhood without fighting parents, abuse, and suffering siblings. In a twisted way, this is something she and Touya have in common. So it makes sense that she would be the one who's the most receptive to Endeavor's attempts to be a better father. She sees this change as their best chance at being a normal family again. Like Touya, she wanted her father back.

Natsuo is different. He was 3-4 years old when the toxicity in their household really began to spike and when the violence started. Incidentally, this is also when memory cells in the brain start to fully develop and form concrete memories. Compared to his older siblings, the abuse is all he knows and that is why he's the child who left and went low-contact. The only thing Natsuo's really done wrong is start family drama when there's company over for dinner. I mean, c'mon. That's just rude. Don't do that in front of guests.

While Endeavor makes attempts to better his training methods/fan interaction, what he doesn't do is call a family meeting to discuss things, not that this would have resolved anything by a long shot, but it would have established a baseline of where everyone in the family was at and whether or not forgiveness was even on the table at all. It is an extremely arrogant thought for Endeavor to think forgiveness for something of this magnitude is possible, and if he wanted to seek forgiveness (or to atone, whatever the hell that means) for the lifelong mistreatment of family, he should have been more prepared for the most abject, humble groveling to the people he wronged that he could manage.

He should have admitted to his mistakes and faults, laid out everything he'd done wrong, apologize for that as best he could, then express he wanted to repair their relationship and be a family again while also acknowledging that he understands if that is not possible. Lay down that groundwork, maybe be open to family therapy so that a professional third party can act as a mediator and provide impartial guidance, figure out where the boundaries are, acknowledge he can't give them back their ruined childhoods but he can *insert anything Fuyumi, Natsuo, and Shouto ask as recompense, even if it's just leaving their lives forever*, and listen for once to what his family is saying.

Instead, he tries to have normal conversations with his children as if nothing bad ever happened. He offers to come watch Shouto's remedial training like that's a totally ordinary thing for him to do. He tells Natsuo during the family dinner that he would like to try his cooking some time. That is a good olive branch! There is nothing wrong with saying that, but without that prior baseline conversation, it comes off as contrived and that's how Natsuo interpreted it. He sends flowers to Rei, also a good signal to send, but he should have done the the uncomfortable thing and contacted her through her physician to see if she's open to meeting with him for a conversation or sending her a letter she could choose to open at any time (or send back unopened.) That would have established that same baseline and helped move forward towards the atonement he wanted.

But he does the same thing he always does: He pretends the real issue just doesn't exist and he tries to control the situation to suit him.

Why?

Say it with me: He never knows what to say! He can't navigate complex emotions!

He doesn't try to find out if his family is even willing to forgive him, frankly because he's an emotional coward who doesn't want to hear the answer.

However, we cannot say he has no character development at all.

There is one thing worth noting around this point in the plot that I think is important to recognize. If Endeavor ever had any character development that was in favor of his redemption, it was when Natsuo was kidnapped and nearly killed, and it's not because he ran and hugged him in the street.

In this scene, he admits to Natsuo that his actions might as well have killed Touya.

This is a small thing, but it's also huge because you have to consider that up until this time, Endeavor has been gaslighting himself into believing it was Touya's fault for getting himself killed or Rei's fault for not doing as she was told and watching him. He could even have been irrationally blaming All Might for just being a barrier to his goals. Any warped excuse and justification he could think of to escape the blame.

It's not a lot, but he did finally give voice to the guilt that he is the reason he failed and his child died. He finally acknowledged that the blame lies squarely with him and no one else, and acknowledging he drove Touya to his own death means way more than just talking about his intentions to atone.

He took accountability here, at least within the family.

That is one point he's earned. We as the audience can begrudgingly concede that one.

But this progress is again stalled when Endeavor makes the decision that it would be best for his family if he distances himself from them. He chooses to build another house for them where they can all live together with their mother and away from his shadow.

The initial reaction I had to this decision was, "Okay, your solution is kicking them out of the only home they've ever known?" But then I considered that having those kids leave a house where they lived through a traumatic and stressful childhood was a good call. Natsuo already bailed, after all. And then there's Fuyumi... Yeah, you know what, maybe a conversation would have been appropriate here. Instead of finding out what they want, he goes and decides it for them like he always does.

Touya has a genetic disparity that prevents him from using his Quirk safely? Endeavor decides he shouldn't be a hero, disregarding any possibility of finding a potential workaround.

Shouto finally uses his fire at the Sports Festival? Endeavor has his whole speech that pretty much shows he has Shouto's entire life planned out after graduation.

He wants to do what's best for his family? He decides what's best for them.

And we're back to the big dumbass never knowing what to say and still running away from the main issue by making assumptions and decisions without actually considering the thoughts/opinions of the people around him and controlling the situation to his benefit.

He may have his intention to do better, but he has no idea what he's doing. He doesn't know how to relinquish his authority role.

And then we have Touya with his, "Bitch, you thought!" grenade. Or is it a nuke?

It's important to note is that failure to articulate emotion in a healthy way is a trait that is shared by all of the Todoroki family members.

Endeavor - the emotional coward who resorts to violence when confronted with an uncomfortable situation

Rei - the passive mother

Fuyumi - the peacekeeper and people-pleaser

Shouto - the child who was systematically deprogramed into an angry husk imitating his father that he has only recently started to recover from

Touya and Natsuo are the only two who actually have some pushback against the bullshit in their family. Touya's a whole kettle of insane fish who's warped psyche deserves a character analysis of its own, but the point is, even as a kid, he doesn't creep around his father or try to make peace with him. Natsuo also has no problem calling out Endeavor for everything that went wrong in his childhood, plus he moved out and went to college as soon as he could.

Touya - the unstable sociopath who shares his father's tendency to violently lash out while stuck with the mental fragility of his mother

Natsuo - the traumatized avoidant

Neither of them have a functional way of dealing with their issues. (In fact, Touya is so unhinged about it that the door has peaced out and is halfway down the street.)

Endeavor wanted to atone for what he did...by burying and not actually taking any real accountability until the unavoidable moment Touya is screaming down to him, "Is it because you became No. 1 that you finally paid attention to your family?"

Touya has a warped view of the world brought on by years of trauma, but he hit the nail on the head.

Endeavor's main motivation for atonement is for the self-satisfaction.

So we have the symbolism of Endeavor, who has always used his physical strength to solve his problems by beating them into submission and used his intimidating height to glare down at everyone beneath him, and then we have Touya standing on top of a mountain, shouting down. Endeavor's in a position where he's looking up at his dead child, who is arguably the broken bough, elephant in the room, core unavoidable reason a full atonement was never going to be possible, bringing about a twenty-year overdue reckoning.

And he once again doesn't know what to say.

As the story ends, this is where we leave him: Crippled, looking up at his dying child, and confronted by one of the lives he ruined. By choice, he's going to sit here and face what he did. These talks are not going to be pleasant. I doubt Touya is so burned out and exhausted that he doesn’t have the heart to spit out more of the lifetime of vitriol he’s built up.

I know a lot of fans were disappointed Horikoshi didn’t kill Endeavor off in the end, but I personally prefer to look at it this way:

Some characters deserve death.

But some deserve to live in despair.

...

To revisit Arcane, I think this quote neatly sums up Endeavor.

[animentality]

just to clarify.

it gets a lot of shit, but writing fanfiction is a deeply intellectual activity.

this is media analysis and exercising/developing media literacy. this is examining contemporary narratives and comparing the culture at large with the values of the individual. this is examining the ego of the self with the ego of the professional, and both aligning and misaligning the difference in interests and ideas.

and yes.

sometimes it's just getting yourself off imagining how your favorite character fucks, but so fucking what.

you could jerk off to hentai or normal porn and use exactly -2 brain cells to do that. fanfiction will always be superior to that, whether you're reading it or writing it.

if you jerk off to AO3 stories, you are superior to the porno plebeians you share this planet with. this is a fact. this is not an opinion.

go forth.

[silverview]

⚠️ stage/fright notes + audio below the cut ⚠️ spoilers obviously ⚠️

do not look if you have any intention of seeing the show. this is for those who are not going to see it (or if you've already seen it & want to compare notes). i'm only sharing this because the run is sold out.

if you don't want full spoilers but just want to know about something specific (like a trigger warning etc) feel free to ask :)

first off, you can listen to my full recordings here [edit 20-01-2025: removed the link]. all i've done to these is snipped out some audience chat. they're not great quality but i think you can hear everything alright. if you want clarification on what was happening at any point, just let me know & i'll try to remember!

this ⬇ is just an overview with some personal highlights, so i'm sorry for everything i've missed out or gotten wrong.

i'm mostly refraining from commentary or analysis here, but needless to say i am shrieking and writhing on the ground about it.

the first act is a medley of bits & pieces:

it opens with a sketch set in the audience at a production of hamlet. a man (toby manley) sits down alone & fondly places a woman's scarf on the empty seat next to him. three disruptive audience members sit down near him, including one who describes the play aloud:

[edit 20-01-2025: removed the audio]

one of them's rather pudgy... the other one looks like a homosexual 👁👁

anyway, toby gets up and leaves, & reece takes his place. reece proceeds to murder the three disruptive audience members, then addresses the real audience with a polite request not to misbehave during the show.

from the audio you can't appreciate the way reece looks when he's about to finish off his last victim – towering over her, weapon in hand, while she's slumped down and staring up at him in terror, yay

the theme tune is performed live by two fantastically intense women with violins, up in the boxes, staring at each other throughout.

next, steve & reece address the audience as themselves. they explain that the theatre is supposed to be haunted by a ghost called bloody belle. reece believes in ghosts, steve doesn't, and proves it by having the crowd shout "bloody belle" three times to "summon" her

[edit 20-01-2025: removed the audio]

then bcdr is performed more or less as it appeared on tv. on "does it not tickle," len – passing behind tommy – goes for the arse instead of the arms. :|

part way through, tommy discovers a new sketch among len's things, "the kidnapping sketch" –

we see this performed sort-of by len and tommy, using their own names, (working through their own issues,) only in costume as the characters from a quiet night in. (complete with rachmaninoff.) in this segment steve (or rather len) speaks and acts like barry baggs from tlog.

instead of stealing a painting, the quiet night in guys are on a kidnapping job. they kidnap the wrong person, & we're given to understand this will be different celebrity guests depending on the night. tonight it was jim howick!

[edit 20-01-2025: removed the audio]

they make a bunch of gags about jim's work. reece's (or rather tommy's) character accidentally shoots and kills him.

then we get the end of bcdr but WITHOUT tears of laughter. (crucially.) bloody belle appears onstage & screams. end of the first act!

the second act is mostly one long piece, essentially a brand new episode about actors rehearsing a horror play.

in the horror play, reece plays an inmate at an asylum, who performs a comedy song and then gets dragged back to his cell. the song didn't record very well i'm afraid but his deranged laughter is good:

[edit 20-01-2025: removed the audio]

steve (having spent the first act in low status town) gets to play a fantastic hammy sadistic brain surgeon and rapist :) he has reece's character brought back in and strapped to a chair (obviously). then he hypnotises him and forces him to mutilate himself. it's great. normal length clip for normal reasons

[edit 20-01-2025: removed the audio]

then we spend time with the actor characters who are performing the horror play. on this level of reality, reece's character is conspiring to scare an actress away from the production using the bloody belle legend. in this section there are some fun references to the 9th circle tv show :)

at one point in this section, steve's demeanour shifts dramatically. he emotionally talks about actors seeing ghosts of loved ones onstage. he walks over and hugs reece, then exits.

reece's character's scheme is successful, but he belittles & sexually harasses his co-conspirator, who snaps his neck. fin.

when the curtain rises, reece's "corpse" has been replaced by toby manley, who gets up and joins the rest of the cast in the bows. steve addresses the audience about reece's recent death, and explains why he chose to go ahead with the play, with toby playing reece's part. he admits that during the performance, he was seeing reece, not toby.

[edit 20-01-2025: removed the audio]

this is the bit where you're gonna think i'm making it up. steve is hit on the head and killed by a falling light.

he wakes up to see reece in a beautiful white tailcoat, offering him coffee, welcoming him to the afterlife, and gloating about how ghosts are real. they bicker gently, but confess to having missed each other, and agree to haunt the theatre together. "every ghost story is really just a love story." [extremely long pause that must be heard to be believed]

[edit 20-01-2025: removed the audio]

reece points out the bcdr performance was incomplete; steve says he couldn't bear to do the song without reece. steve has a costume change to match reece (plus white top hats) so they look like they're getting married, and they perform a big heavenly afterlife version of tears of laughter with the whole cast. FIN FOR REAL. FOR REAL. IT'S REAL.

[edit 20-01-2025: removed the audio]

very VERY brief & incomplete thoughts:

len very clearly putting his real feelings about tommy into the kidnapping sketch. what that implies about reece & steve. screeching and howling

i don't think it's really implied that ghost!reece is responsible for steve's death, but it's a possibility we can't discount. "we're both here now, and that's the main thing." that's true love. maureen & david style

tumblr user bluvlet said something like "grief in this show is like the hare or the number 9." i have a half-finished vid about that idea that i'm impatient to get back to. definitely obsessing over it tonight.

they are obsessed with each other and with rehearsing their own (each other's) deaths.

[lipslikethegardensofbabylon]

#ttpd analysis day fourteen - The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived

i'm gonna be honest with you this was the hardest song to dissect because every time i listen to it the bridge makes me lose my mind. it has the same addictive pull as the bridge of Would've, Could've, Should've, Cruel Summer, Getaway Car. it's SO good, imo one of her best bridges ever written.

i first want to comment on in your Jehovah's Witness suit which is again another lol-lyric moment, but in a big brain connection i saw that @thisisctrying pointed out that he was essentially selling her a religion. i love this bc it continues the religious imagery of Guilty As Sin?

you hung me on your wall, stabbed me with your push pins makes me think of a couple of different things - image wise, it makes me think of pinning a map up on a wall, marking places that you’ve been (also a hint of carve your name into my bedpost ≠ i'm just a notch in your bedpost, but you're just a line in a song (from FOB)). it also makes me think of pierced through the heart but never killed. the other connection that comes up is to “put a pin in it” means to save something for later, typically to postpone something useful but not for immediate use. this meaning feels more likely given the subsequent were you a sleeper cell spy? in fifty years, will all this be declassified?

the bridge just goes so hard, I’m obsessed. there are a few callbacks to previous work but to me this bridge is on mtr echelon:

the betrayal in did you sleep with a gun underneath our bed? is so good. esp given how she historically describes her bed/room as a safe space - turned my bed into a sacred oasis/drew a map on your bedroom ceiling/the warmest bed I’ve ever known

the gun weapon of choice is also interesting to me considering she’s also discussed daggers and poison, and a gun specifically has to be loaded. it makes me think of memories feel like weapons/we gather stones, never knowing what they'll mean, some to throw, some to make a diamond ring

the line were you writing a book? IMMEDIATELTY made me think of so I'll go back to L.A. and the so-called friends who'll write books about me, if I ever make it which is especially painful i think for the narrator. they’ve historically said “I struggle a lot with the idea that my life has become unmanageably sized,” she continued. “Not to sound too dark, but I just struggle with the idea of not feeling like a person.” and this lyric does exactly that - it reduces the person to a product, a story to be sold for a profit.

to end, the lyric and in plain sight you hid but you are what you did and I'll forget you, but I'll never forgive gives me such chills. i saw someone share that they had a history of abuse and that lyric made them feel so validated. there’s just something so haunting and angry but beautiful about it.

[maxdibert]

You have very informative deep-dives in different themes into the HP universe which I really regard highly and always read with great interest! I returned to the hp fandom after almost 10 years of absence, and your analysis on how people in their teens like Sirius and during adulthood feel more drawn to Severus is just so spot on. The way you've brought up the problematic themes especially regarding the marauders' behaviour and the fandoms double standards has really altered my brain cells. Thank you for sharing your thoughts, they are really appreciated and I really admire your patience with the anon hate.

For yall haters, let a woman have their hobbies. There is a lot worse things in which to spend one's time and obsessing about Severus Snape is frankly a very good hobby in my opinion.

Ohhh, thank you so much! ♥️

Honestly, I can understand why Severus is a character designed for kids to fear or dislike—he really embodies a lot of things that, as children or teenagers, we don’t understand or find repellent about adults. Ironically, when you’re an adult, you find those things pretty relatable and even logical. I mean, for a kid who doesn’t know what it’s like to be depressed while also having to pretend to be functional because, as an adult, you’re expected to keep it together even when you’re utterly exhausted—Severus’s attitude seems inexcusable.

But for an adult who’s tired all the damn time, has a job they hate, and has experienced the struggle of wanting to break down and cry but having to keep up the facade of being in control—it’s not just normal; it actually seems like a feat. In the end, kids only hate what they don’t understand because they haven’t experienced it yet—and, unfortunately, it’s what they’ll inevitably become someday.

And yeah, haters gonna hate, as Taylor Swift says, but there’s another quote I really like: “Let them talk bad about me, as long as they’re talking,” or “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” I always think about that when someone spends a good chunk of their free time trying to get under my skin.

[mirrorcatcreditcard]

✨Introduction✨

Name(s):

MirrorCatCreditcard, SleepyBurger, or WhipController depending on the account/platform.

To-knows:

If you're thinking about it, just start the conversation. I came on here to interact with people.

Idc what your political or moral opinions are when we talk. Don't be an arse to me, and I won't be an arse to you.

I share more content than I produce. If you have a request for me to write, please just throw it at me.

"sksksksksks" is a choppy hissing noise that I make; it has no deeper meaning than being a noise

I would be fine if you asked me random questions about myself to help you write your story

Special interest(s):

my spouse, canines (especially dogs and wolves), humans, history, literature, Obey Me, languages, philosophy, the omegaverse, disabilities, Luka (Alien Stage), Paw Patrol

Current hyperfixation(s):

Not a hyper-fix, but my brain is sucking on Epic: My fanfic "The Madness of Magic"

Fanfiction Masterlist (linked here)

Obey Me

Little Mizzi Muffet And The Spider King

The Promised Neverland

Bungou Stray Dogs

Death Note

Alien Stage (ALNST)

Cells At Work!!

Epic: The Musical

Personal tag list and uses: (they will be linked underneath)

#mirr's rambles/#mirr rambles — I yapped excessively or did an analysis

#mirr's personal favs/#mirr's favs — whether my own or another's work, it's just stuff I really liked

#mirr's honesty — I spoke what I believe is truth

#mirr answers — I answered an ask or replied to a question via reblog

#mirr speaks — just a regular post of mine with no particular tag needed

#mirr writes — my fanfic discuss

Fandoms/things I read/watch and will participate in discussion about (in no particularly ranked order):

Demon Slayer

Obey Me (video game)

Death Note

Bungou Stray Dogs

Yuukoku no Moriarty/Moriarty the Patriot

Brutal: Satsujin Keisatsukan no Kokuhaku/Brutal: Confessions of a Homicide Investigator

Genshin Impact

Among Us

Undertale

Spy x Family

Jujutsu Kaisen

Kaguya-sama: Love is War

Noragami

The Ancient Magus' Bride

The Misfit of Demon Academy

Mo Dao Zu Shi/The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation

Happily Ever Afterwards (manhwa)

King's Maker (manhwa)

The Promised Neverland

Weak Hero (manhwa)

any series by Idolomantises (ex: Monsters and Girls, Bugtopia, etc.)

Aporia

Black Butler

Eleceed

Dr. Frost (Webtoon)

Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto

I Don't Want This Kind of Hero

I Failed to Oust the Villain!/I Failed to Abandon the Villain

Akuyaku Reijou desu ga Kouryaku Taishou no Yousu ga Ijousugiru/I Was Reincarnated as the Villainess in an Otome Game but the Boys Love Me Anyway!

It's Mine (Webtoon)

Killer Crush (manhwa)

Killing Stalking

Like Wind on a Dry Branch (Webtoon)

Lookism

Mob Psycho 100

My S-Class Hunters/The S Classes I Raised

Navillera: Like A Butterfly (manhwa)

Noblesse (Webtoon)

Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint

Payback (manhwa)

Roxana (manhwa)

Solo Leveling/Only I Level Up

Steel Under Silk (manhwa)

Teenage Mercenary

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime

The Boxer (Webtoon)

The Case Study of Vanitas/Vanitas no Carte

The Crow's Prince

The Falcon Princess

Kininatteru Hito ga Otoko ja Nakatta/The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn't a Guy at All

Hametsu no Oukoku/The Kingdoms of Ruin

The Knight and Her Emperor (manhwa)

The Lady and the Beast (manhwa)

The Legendary Moonlight Sculptor

The Newlywed Diary of a Witch and a Dragon

The Makeup Remover

The Remarried Empress

The Tyrant's Sister

The Villainess Is Retiring

The Villainess Is a Marionette

Death Is the Only End For the Villain/Villains Are Destined to Die

Saijaku Tamer wa Gomi Hiroi no Tabi wo Hajimemashita/The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick Up Trash

The World After the Fall

Tomb Raider King

Under the Greenlight

Tower of God

What's Wrong with You, Duke?

any series by Obelis (ex: War and Tea, Meow Are You?, etc.)

Who Made Me a Princess

(The Reason) Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Duke's Mansion

Empress Cesia Wears Knickerbockers

Roses and Champagne

any series by Brothers Without a Tomorrow (manhwa)

Endless Night Encore

Another Typical Fantasy Romance

Hunter x Hunter

Alien Stage

Low Tide in Twilight/Waterside Night

One Punch Man

Bendy and the Ink Machine

Doki Doki Literature Club

Hell Neighbor

The Stickbot Show

Subnautica

Five Nights At Freddy's

Monster School (Minecraft)

In the Doghouse (manhwa)

Mr. Beta

The Villain That Embraces the Light

Stalker x Stalker (Webtoon)

The Apothecary Diaries/Kusuriya no Hitorigoto

Epic: The Musical

Lore Rekindled (LO retelling)

Hataraku Saibou!!/Cells at Work!!

Toaster Dude

Stray Souls (webtoon)

Vampire Husband

Marvel universe

DC universe

Boyfriend of the Dead

Hand Jumper (webtoon)

Extras(?):

My former pinned post

My Luka analysis post

Luka enjoyers on this site

(not my document) Mori isn't a pedo

[bcacstuff]

This is the data from the app I use shows

Cait has gained +27,900 followers during the last 30 days and daily +930 but for Sam is daily +432 and during the Last 30 days +12,960 followers

What you see is a snapshot from the last month with the average number of new followers. It's a nice indication, but for marketeers not really interesting as it doesn't break the numbers down to daily growth in real time that can be connected and explained to a certain event happening.

Number are one thing, the other thing is to try and find an explanation for it. That is what marketeers do to adjust and imporve a marketing strategy.

If we take for instant the numbers of Cait's IG. We know she doesn't post much, is not a real influencer of anything. Just sometimes a post of a product, something she endorses.

Now we have seen her wrap posts on 25th October, the video has 279k likes, almost 2M870k views, and 11k comments, the slides post has 307k likes and 7k comments, which both are outstanding compared to the other posts

Note, the other posts are all accepted posts, originally posted by the OL_Starz account, (and one by Paleyfest) the top one and the bottome one are on SH's IG accepted as a post as well. This is important, as the likes and comments are coming from more accounts, not only her IG. But the wrap video and post with slides are on her IG and not on others, so these likes and comments are solely hers.

This all translates very obviously in her followers growth.

you are correct about the gain of almost 28k new followers over the month, but as you can see the biggest amount are gained starting on the day she posted the wrap video and slides. Which not only gained likes and comments but followers as well.

I think this is crystal clear, and I think anyone with a couple of brain cells can understand how marketeers would/could use these analytics if this is about a product, or say an influencer on IG.

This isn't really the case for Cait's IG, as she is not an active influencer, not even an active social media user. She occasionally posts about the projects she has worked on and work events.

Her growth for the next month will most likely be a lot lower, unless there is some big news she can share. We've seen f.i the last big growth when she was promoting her movie with Orlando Bloom in Toronto (I shared those numbers at some point). So all I can conclude from this analysis is that to me this looks normal and completely organic.

As for Sam, what we've been talking about in the other post is the huge fluctuation within 10-15 hours. That is not normal. Sure you can come up with all kind of explanations. Fact is that along all the time that I have watched his followers growth over quite some years now, I have never seen this huge fluctuations within such a short time interval and it is a weird phenomena. I do not see this on other accounts I've watched. Note that his follower growth is more interesting (to him) from a marketing pov as he is actively advertising his product (at nausea).

So that is why analytics are interesting, and why I find it interesting. [and for the people in the back, no you don't have to watch it 24/7 to get the numbers and educate yourself about what they mean or not, or when one sees a striking change which is interesting to watch as well as try to find a good reason for it, not just put a wet finger in the air, or google for 10 minutes and then claim you educated yourself!] (I suggest try to ask Google who is Caitriona's husband for a change)

[eliza-and-her-monsters]

hello i am here with questions…. rubs my grubby little hands

i’ll start off easy :3

1. assign one song to each of your faves !

2. any fun selfship facts to share? 🎤

ALRIGHT NINI LISTEN UP!! you done fucked up by asking me anything music related because you just earned yourself a one-way ticket to yap city and i fear i cannot let you leave SO- let’s get to work, shall we? we’re gonna be here a while.

i will certainly try and pick just one song but the music encyclopedia in my brain is pretty broad so we might stretch the rules a little bit in the sense that i might give you a couple!

okay so first up, let’s start with our lovely ladies in kn8 who seem to be taking up the most real estate in my brain.

SO let’s talk about my current main f/o who, in my brain of lore, was essentially a situationship turned into whatever tf this is, Rin Shinonome. girlypop was NOT wanting to commit at first but i am indeed powerful enough to escape the cages of a homoerotic situationship (i can’t tell you how though because i can’t let you in on my secrets.) i’m going to give her two songs because the current one quite literally JUST came out and i want to be fair, so i’m going to assign Emergence by Sleep Token to her first because in terms of figuring out what kind of music i think my faves would listen to, not only do i think she would be a metalhead, she would also be a supreme stan of Sleep Token. she will also tell you and make sure you never forget that she started listening to them before they blew up as well.

second song i’m going to assign her though which i think i’ve chosen as our official song and just the supreme song you’d want your f/os to dedicate to you is All That I Can Give by The Plot in You. i could go into an entire lyrical analysis of this song but i have already yapped so excessively so i will let myself move on and we can do that a different day if you’re interested.

now for MY OTHER WIFE, who was kind of the epitome of a uhaul lesbian because WE WENT FAST. Mina Ashiro wasted ZERO time whatsoever. i’m talking INSTA insta love. and because i seem to dedicate this song to every intense romance i write i’m going to assign Dancing With Our Hands Tied by Taylor Swift. do i need to explain?? honestly i don’t even think i do. in fact i could probably sign most of the reputation album to mina because it is just the epitome of being SO INTENSELY DOWN BAD. once again, i could also go on an entire lyrical analysis but in order to keep me from falling down a hole- i won’t do that.

NOW let’s switch universes for a bit- i haven’t fleshed out any lore for these f/os yet so i’m going to try and keep this short n sweet like sabrina carpenter.

diving into the arcane universe we of course have me and every other bitch down bad for Vi because have YOU SEEN HER?? THE MUSCLES?? THE TATTOOS?? the way she [REDACTED] her girl in a prison cell WITHOUT A SECOND THOUGHT. oh LOOOOOORD i must be ovulating. but anyways, because you didn’t ask for my horny escapades i’m going to flip on over to our other fave horny metal band and i’m going to assign Concrete Jungle by Bad Omens to my favorite butch lesbian muscle mommy and the whole reason my account took such a flip flop. i feel like i relate to this song to her a lot as well whenever i think about her character in arcane in terms of her transition from zaun to piltover.

now next up, also in the arcane universe we have the other half of the sandwich i have forced my way into, Caitlyn Kiramman. i frankly get all sorts of violent in my brain whenever i see her portrayed as the little femme princess- not because that’s a bad thing to be- BUT BECAUSE I AM HER FEMME PRINCESS. she is MY prince charming. MY knight in shining armor. my 6’1 super hero who i’m frankly going to cling to like a damn koala any chance i can get. now this one was hard, i’ll admit, because i had no idea where i wanted to go with this one but for some reason the first song my brain landed on was Ankles by Lucy Dacus. in a way Caitlyn also reminds me a lot of Mina, so maybe my brain went to authority like, YES dom me please- but also snuggle me and hold me and be domestic with me afterwards.

i think i’m going to cut it there in terms of faves even though i could probably keep going BUT- holy fuck this is already way too long and i sincerely apologize 😭

now in terms of question two i do feel i’ve given you a ton of selfship facts and lore but because i am still shy about talking about my f/os i’m going to smash some more specific things at the bottom:

SO- rin and i actually met at a show (think 2022 i prevail’s tour with pierce the veil- i’m choosing that one because that’s whenever i feel like my life REALLY had a transition after that and it was probably one of the most special shows i have ever gone to- i could also go on and on about that show but LATER- AND NOT ON MAIN). i ended up getting sucked into the edges of a mosh pit and almost fell and probably would’ve gotten trampled because that pit was nuts but she ended up catching me and scooping me off to the side essentially so i could get out of the danger zone.

she was INSANELY suave and charismatic though and ending up saying something like, ‘well i can’t have you getting hurt at another show so why don’t i come with you to your next concert??’ from then on we became concert buddies essentially and she absolutely kept her promise because the second anyone started getting too rough and too close her death stare was enough to get them to back off. she was also really good at sneaking her way up to the front in which she, of course, brought me with her 💁‍♀️

anyways- damn- i wrote you a book. i’m sorry but also not at the same time. however if you did manage to get all the way through this: 🖤 you baddie and you deserve the best life with kashima!

[fangirlonfilm]

“mom said i’m only allowed to go if my siblings can tag along”: are the New Jersey Devils’ and the Vancouver Canucks scoreboards connected by the force of brotherly love?

it goes without saying that this is for FUN, i don’t know how to properly handle data but i tried my best and that’s enough for now and for me. english is not my first language so mistakes are due to be seen, you are welcome to correct me or ask me anything if doubts are presented. 

hi. so first things first, let me introduce myself. i’m cassie, 23, a hardcore fangirl for 10+ years now and new to the hockey world (got into it late october). i’m a devils fan first and foremost, but i do occasionally watch some canucks and habs games (and that’s on me being in love with cole caufield and quinn hughes, because even though i love the game (#LGD), i also loOoOove the players <3). 

i actually wrote three huge paragraphs explaining how i had this idea but i sound bsc so long story short let’s just say that it’s something that i’ve been noticing since late november: 

whenever the devils and the canucks have games on the same day (or night, whatever you call it), they end up having the same outcome (as in W or L) more often than not. fast forward to mid january/2025, this analysis idea came to me in a dream. or, more specifically, that one moment before you go to bed where you start making up fake scenarios in your head but they get progressively worse and unhinged cause you’re tired af and on the brink of hallucinating. so here i am trying to find out if there’s a ‘bro code’ type of trend behind the nhl.

out of their 26 shared game days, eighteen ended with the same result for both teams. they also won and lost an equal number of games: 9 each. coincidence? maybe. entertaining? absolutely. not safe to say that there’s a 69-ish% chance that they’re connected by the force of family in some way.

out of those games:

five were away for both of them - AA;

five were home for both of them - HH;

four were away (njd) and home (van) - AH;

four were home (njd) and away (van) - HA.

pretty consistent i’d say.

on the AA games we had:

oct. 17: NJD x OTT (3-1) & VAN x FLA (3-1)

nov. 23: NJD x WSH (3-2) & VAN x OTT (4-3)

nov. 29: NJD x DET (5-4) & VAN x BUF (4-3 OTW)

dec. 12: NJD x CBJ (4-2 L) & VAN x VGK (3-1 L)

dec. 31: NJD x ANA (3-2 L) & VAN x CGY (3-1 L)

but when it starts to sound like “this our place, we make the rules”, it looks a little like this (HH):

dec. 6: NJD x SEA (3-2) & VAN x CBJ (5-2)

dec. 8: NJD x COL (4-0 L) & VAN x TBL (4-2 L)

dec. 10: NJD x TOR (2-1 OTL) & VAN x STL (4-3 OTL)

dec. 12: NJD x LAK (3-1) & VAN x FLA (4-0)

dec. 23: NJD x NYR (5-0) & VAN x SJS (4-3)

and when your siblings get to travel around the US and Canada, but you’re stuck in Vancouver (AH):

oct. 15: NJD x CAR (4-2) & VAN x TBL (4-1)

nov. 12: NJD x FLA (4-1) & VAN x CGY (3-1)

dec. 28: NJD x CAR (5-2 L) & VAN x SEA (5-4 OTL)

jan. 16: NJD x TOR (4-3 OTL) & VAN x LAK (5-1 L)

but the world moves on and now you’re the one on a plane (HA):

nov. 7:  NJD x MTL (5-3) & VAN x LAK (4-2)

nov. 27:  NJD x STL (3-0 L) & VAN x PIT (5-4 L)

jan. 11: NJD x TBL (3-2 OTW) & VAN x TOR (3-0)

jan. 14:  NJD x FLA (2-1 SO/L) & VAN x WPG (6-1 L)

that being said, when they are both away, their final results are pretty similar. in almost all of the games listed they had the same results or goal difference.

in HH, both teams scored 17 goals each throughout 5 games (3.4 GPG) in december only. happy hanukkah and merry christmas, i guess! also they lost in OT (dec. 10) to teams that are in the same conference as them, irrelevant, but i do feel the need to point it out. if you wanna know my opinion, jack ‘we are addicted to screen time’ hughes might probably be texting the bros gc “how do we feel about a double L tonight for our family?”. they might as well share one brain cell between the three of them

in AH the stats are the same, 17 goals each. when one of them had a OTL and other an L, the former team’s final scoreboard had a 2+ goals difference. and i just realized that dec 28 was a terrible day for both teams (for njd, it was that game where timo got a major penalty against necas and when van blew the 4-1 lead they had till literally the 5 min before the final whistle). YOLO i guess

literally have nothing to analyse on the NJ!home x VAN!away games besides the fact that they need to get their things together and play like professional athletes once again (opsies)

that all being said, you can’t tell me that those three aren’t a little bit sus. they aren’t triplets, but there might be some telepathic, sixth sense type of thing going on. #connected4lyfe #swag.

are there any other teams in the league that have been going through this or something similar in this season? i get too busy and overwhelmed keeping tabs on the devils (and occasionally van and habs) that i don’t really notice all the other 29 teams. or maybe i’m going insane. if so, let me know cause i’d love to dive into it, who knows what other strange parallels we might uncover till mid april?.

again, this literally means nothing, but i, personally, think it's lowkey funny (like giggling and kicking my feet as I write this) that both teams mirror each other’s results. and that's on hughes your daddy !!

xo,

[autumnmobile12]

My Hero Headcanon: Rei

When I think of Rei’s childhood, I think of Yuki from Wolf Children.

Just not at all being the lady her parents probably wanted her to be and living her best life collecting bugs, feathers, and small animal bones.

And just like Toga, those interests were suppressed because they ‘weren’t appropriate for little girls,’ and she was made to conform.

I mean, look at her expression and tell me she wasn’t told to sit still and be quiet too many times when she was a child.

I think she was a weird kid.

And that's why I play with the snowboarding theme when I do fanworks involving Rei, as well as the idea that Touya’s inability to sit still when he's agitated/excited comes from Rei. It's also why I have the headcanon there was never a point where Rei and Endeavor loved each other. They already have two extremely different personalities in canon, and the high-energy headcanon just highlights a further personality difference.

I’ve already gone into it in more detail with an Endeavor analysis that I made, but here’s an excerpt that illustrates my point:

...what I think shows here is they weren’t really talking all that much. Specifically, he is not ‘talking down to her.’  He is not treating her with any particular disrespect or putting her down as inferior.   He doesn’t have the arrogance he later exhibits. This also isn’t him being aloof and ignoring her either.  Look at his face, specifically his eyes.  That is the same blank, deer in the headlights, “I have one brain cell dinging around in my head that is struggling to find a way to interact with people,” stare he shares with Shouto.

He has no idea what to say to her. 

So finally, Rei turns off to the side to admire the garden, and he asks, “Do you like the flowers?”  It’s a small thing, but it does show that in some capacity, he did show some interest in Rei and making her happy.  He’s just stupidly awkward about it at this point. (Even if his ultimate goal was…well, we’ll get into that.)

...

The long and short of it is if you remove the violence/temper aspect of Endeavor's character, you basically have Shouto: An awkward dork who doesn’t entirely know how to interact with people and he probably doesn’t understand sarcasm or euphemisms either. The main reason we can’t see that side of Endeavor’s character very well is because he’s weaponized intimidation/violence to cover it up. (Dammit, dude, this it not how you patch a character flaw.) So I don’t think Shouto’s isolation and childhood training caused his social ineptitude so much as exacerbated a character trait that was already there. He got it from Dad.

So referring to the earlier pre-kids part of Rei and Endeavor's relationship before the violence actually started, imagine the awkward personality-type paired with a partner who is, by all accounts, weird and has too much energy to be contained. Arranged marriage aside, I like the idea that Rei reverted back to her odd personality after she left her parents’ house. I like to think she danced in the kitchen when there was no one home, hoarded feathers and skulls and other odd keepsakes, and looked for places where she could snowboard. She was a housewife by herself for long periods of time, so who was going to stop her?

There is a short story I absolutely love called Ink, Water, Milk by Catherynne M. Valente. The plot's not relevant to this post, but there is a scene where a bored housewife buys a bunch of those cube-shaped watermelons and just stacks them in her fridge to admire them.

And for some reason, I can picture Rei doing this.

Like Endeavor just comes home to find her sitting cross-legged in front of the open fridge and smiling happily at the nine cubed watermelons stacked neatly inside. (Keep in mind, these things average $100-$200 a piece and are inedible/decorative.) No explanation for why she's done this, she just has a big, ecstatic smile on her face and pointing into the fridge. You know, Touya energy when he's a kid and excited about something. And Endeavor, in true Shouto fashion, is baffled by what she’s done, has no idea why she’s done it, and wondering if there’s a joke he’s not understanding.

I like to mirror this behavior in Touya and Shouto when I can in writing for Ambush Simulation. Underneath the trauma, they are at their core the brother with their mother’s high energy and the brother who is socially awkward and doesn’t quite know how to deal with the unhinged behavior but doing his best.

...

Edit because I just found this gif.

Young Rei:

[notyoureve]

SEND HELP!!!

The girl is too carried away and cannot stop!!

I write about them, I sleep with them, I eat for them..!

This is not my Magnum Opus (which I write in parallel) but I'm so invested in this one it's kinda scary🙀 I’ve been writing this for over a month, and the words keep coming to me — at this rate, I’ll get to the plot of the third game, having written it myself🤪😆

Btw, it’s funny and quite interesting that while I'm in the process of writing this work, several fics came out, and they have such similar moments with mine that I wonder: are we all so smart and we all have one brain cell, or is there a possibility that NT also thought about something similar, but they themselves didn’t get around to it..?

...Or is it generally the fault of only these two that it is so obvious to all of us what they were thinking and what should have happened between them outside of what was shown in the game?😂 Because even the wording of some of the descriptions practically coincides that I even had to correct something to be slightly different😁

The most interesting thing in all this is that for the sake of writing this fic, I have already reviewed the walkthrough of the game 10 times, and each time I discover some new details that seem to have never been talked about or discussed here before🤔

So I’m also eager to create a post with an analysis of what I noticed during my multiple rewatching; I hope yours will be added to my observations when the time comes!

I would really like to share at least something with you, but, perhaps, I’ll keep the intrigue until the release..? In turn, I will try to finish as quickly as possible!

[transpondster]

HOW MUCH BETTER is the world since the arrival of what Nicholas Carr calls our modern “technologies of connection”—cell phones, personal computers, the internet, social media, artificial intelligence? As we watch these systems undermine democracy, flood our lives with misinformation and deepfakes, transform our children into screen-obsessed zombies, and threaten to eradicate us entirely, we might be tempted to respond with a hollow laugh. But to what extent are these bleak scenarios real? What about being able to navigate by GPS almost anywhere in the world, or call for help when stranded in the middle of nowhere, or stream any song we desire? The cost-benefit calculation is complicated and nuanced, requiring us to find a course between apocalyptic visions of civilizational decline and the naive utopianism of Silicon Valley. Carr established himself as an astute commentator on information technology in his 2010 book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, in which he argued that Google and the internet are, in the words of his formative essay in The Atlantic, “making us stupid.” In his new book Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart, he expands that analysis to encompass social media and digital communication technologies, asking how they are changing us individually and collectively. As the book’s subtitle implies, the diagnosis is not promising. But if these systems are indeed tearing us apart, the reasons are neither obvious nor simple. Carr suggests that this isn’t really about the evil behavior of our tech overlords but about how we have “been telling ourselves lies about communication—and about ourselves.” Carr takes his title from an event in 2019, when weather conditions produced an unusually abundant bloom of poppies in a canyon near Los Angeles. When an Instagram and YouTube influencer posted pictures of herself among the flowers, the hashtag #superbloom went viral, and before long, the place was overrun, a traffic officer was injured, online discourse curdled, and the media began speaking of “Flowergeddon.” Carr argues that the #superbloom event exemplifies the problems with these new media. “We spend our days sharing information, connected as never before, but the more we communicate, the worse things seem to get.” Isn’t that just the opposite of what was supposed to happen? “Well before the net came along,” says Carr, “[the] evidence was telling us that flooding the public square with more information from more sources was not going to open people’s minds or engender more thoughtful discussions. It wasn’t even going to make people better informed." “Every new medium,” wrote social theorist John Durham Peters, “is a machine for the production of ghosts.”

The Case for Kicking the Stone | Los Angeles Review of Books

[fromkenari]

A mass of fools and knaves

The full email exchange between Alex Claremont Diaz and Prince Henry Fox Mountchristen Windsor from Chapter Nine of Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. Put here for my best friend to read.

A mass of fools and knaves A agcd@eclare45.com                8/10/20 1:04 AM to Henry H, Have you ever read any of Alexander Hamilton’s letters to John Laurens? What am I saying? Of course you haven’t. You’d probably be disinherited for revolutionary sympathies. Well, since I got the boot from the campaign, there is literally nothing for me to do but watch cable news (diligently chipping away at my brain cells by the day) and sort through all my old shit from college. Just looking at papers, thinking: Excellent, yes, I’m so glad I stayed up all night writing this for a 98 in the class, only to get summarily fired from the first job I ever had and exiled to my bedroom! Great job, Alex! Is this how you feel in the palace all the time? It fucking sucks, man. So anyway, I’m going through my college stuff, and I find this analysis I did of Hamilton’s wartime correspondence, and hear me out: I think Hamilton could have been bi. His letters to Laurens are almost as romantic as his letters to his wife. Half of them are signed “Yours” or “Affectionately yrs,” and the last one before Laurens died is signed “Yrs for ever.” I can’t figure out why nobody talks about the possibility of a Founding Father being not straight (outside of Chernow’s biography, which is great btw, see attached bibliography). I mean, I know why, but. Anyway, I found this part of a letter he wrote to Laurens, and it made me think of you. And me, I guess: The truth is I am an unlucky honest man, that speak my sentiments to all and with emphasis. I say this to you because you know it and will not charge me with vanity. I hate Congress—I hate the army—I hate the world—I hate myself. The whole is a mass of fools and knaves; I could almost except you … Thinking about history makes me wonder how I’ll fit into it one day, I guess. And you too. I kinda wish people still wrote like that. History, huh? Bet we could make some. Affectionately yrs, slowly going insane, Alex, First Son of Founding Father Sacrilege

McQuiston, Casey. Red, White & Royal Blue: A Novel (pp. 239-241). St. Martin's Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Re: A mass of fools and knaves Henry hwales@kensingtonemail.com                8/10/20 4:18 AM to A Alex, First Son of Masturbatory Historical Readings: The phrase “see attached bibliography” is the single sexiest thing you have ever written to me. Every time you mention your slow decay inside the White House, I can’t help but feel it’s my fault, and I feel absolutely shit about it. I’m sorry. I should have known better than to turn up at a thing like that. I got carried away; I didn’t think. I know how much that job meant to you. I just want to … you know. Extend the option. If you wanted less of me, and more of that—the work, the uncomplicated things—I would understand. Truly. In any event … Believe it or not, I have actually done a bit of reading on Hamilton, for a number of reasons. First, he was a brilliant writer. Second, I knew you were named after him (the pair of you share an alarming number of traits, by the by: passionate determination, never knowing when to shut up, &c &c). And third, some saucy tart once tried to impugn my virtue against an oil painting of him, and in the halls of memory, some things demand context. Are you angling for a revolutionary soldier role-play scenario? I must inform you, any trace of King George III blood I have would curdle in my very veins and render me useless to you. Or are you suggesting you’d rather exchange passionate letters by candlelight? Should I tell you that when we’re apart, your body comes back to me in dreams? That when I sleep, I see you, the dip of your waist, the freckle above your hip, and when I wake up in the morning, it feels like I’ve just been with you, the phantom touch of your hand on the back of my neck fresh and not imagined? That I can feel your skin against mine, and it makes every bone in my body ache? That, for a few moments, I can hold my breath and be back there with you, in a dream, in a thousand rooms, nowhere at all? I think perhaps Hamilton said it better in a letter to Eliza: You engross my thoughts too intirely to allow me to think of any thing else—you not only employ my mind all day; but you intrude upon my sleep. I meet you in every dream—and when I wake I cannot close my eyes again for ruminating on your sweetness. If you did decide to take the option mentioned at the start of this email, I do hope you haven’t read the rest of this rubbish. Regards, Haplessly Romantic Heretic Prince Henry the Utterly Daft

McQuiston, Casey. Red, White & Royal Blue: A Novel (pp. 241-243). St. Martin's Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Re: A mass of fools and knaves A agcd@eclare45.com                8/10/20 5:36 AM to Henry H, Please don’t be stupid. No part of any of this will ever be uncomplicated. Anyway, you should be a writer. You are a writer. Even after all this, I still always feel like I want to know more of you. Does that sound crazy? I just sit here and wonder, who is this person who knows stuff about Hamilton and writes like this? Where does someone like that even come from? How was I so wrong? It’s weird because I always know things about people, gut feelings that usually lead me in more or less the right direction. I do think I got a gut feeling with you, I just didn’t have what I needed in my head to understand it. But I kind of kept chasing it anyway, like I was just going blindly in a certain direction and hoping for the best. I guess that makes you the North Star? I wanna see you again and soon. I keep reading that one paragraph over and over again. You know which one. I want you back here with me. I want your body and I want the rest of you too. And I want to get the fuck out of this house. Watching June and Nora on TV doing appearances without me is torture. We have this annual thing at my dad’s lake house in Texas. Whole long weekend off the grid. There’s a lake with a pier, and my dad always cooks something fucking amazing. You wanna come? I kind of can’t stop thinking about you all sunburned and pretty sitting out there in the country. It’s the weekend after next. If Shaan can talk to Zahra or somebody about flying you into Austin, we can pick you up from there. Say yes? Yrs, Alex P.S. Allen Ginsberg to Peter Orlovsky—1958: Tho I long for the actual sunlight contact between us I miss you like a home. Shine back honey & think of me.

McQuiston, Casey. Red, White & Royal Blue: A Novel (pp. 243-245). St. Martin's Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Re: A mass of fools and knaves Henry hwales@kensingtonemail.com                8/10/20 8:22 PM to A Alex, If I’m north, I shudder to think where in God’s name we’re going. I’m ruminating on identity and your question about where a person like me comes from, and as best as I can explain it, here’s a story: Once, there was a young prince who was born in a castle. His mother was a princess scholar, and his father was the most handsome, feared knight in all the land. As a boy, people would bring him everything he could ever dream of wanting. The most beautiful silk clothes, ripe fruit from the orangery. At times, he was so happy, he felt he would never grow tired of being a prince. He came from a long, long line of princes, but never before had there been a prince quite like him: born with his heart on the outside of his body. When he was small, his family would smile and laugh and say he would grow out of it one day. But as he grew, it stayed where it was, red and visible and alive. He didn’t mind it very much, but every day, the family’s fear grew that the people of the kingdom would soon notice and turn their backs on the prince. His grandmother, the queen, lived in a high tower, where she spoke only of the other princes, past and present, who were born whole. Then, the prince’s father, the knight, was struck down in battle. The lance tore open his armor and his body and left him bleeding in the dust. And so, when the queen sent new clothes, armor for the prince to parcel his heart away safe, the prince’s mother did not stop her. For she was afraid, now: afraid of her son’s heart torn open too. So the prince wore it, and for many years, he believed it was right. Until he met the most devastatingly gorgeous peasant boy from a nearby village who said absolutely ghastly things to him that made him feel alive for the first time in years and who turned out to be the most mad sort of sorcerer, one who could conjure up things like gold and vodka shots and apricot tarts out of absolutely nothing, and the prince’s whole life went up in a puff of dazzling purple smoke, and the kingdom said, “I can’t believe we’re all so surprised.” I’m in for the lake house. I must admit, I’m glad you’re getting out of the house. I worry you may burn the thing down. Does this mean I’ll be meeting your father? I miss you. x Henry P.S. This is mortifying and maudlin and, honestly, I hope you forget it as soon as you’ve read it. P.P.S. From Henry James to Hendrik C. Andersen, 1899: May the terrific U.S.A. be meanwhile not a brute to you. I feel in you a confidence, dear Boy–which to show is a joy to me. My hopes and desires and sympathies right heartily and most firmly, go with you. So keep up your heart, and tell me, as it shapes itself, your (inevitably, I imagine, more or less weird) American story. May, at any rate, tutta quella gente be good to you.

McQuiston, Casey. Red, White & Royal Blue: A Novel (pp. 245-247). St. Martin's Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.