#somewhat unrelated to those points but I can definitely see now why people like to make them connected in some way

[quibbs126]

So I talked about Frost Queen getting into the main story, and that a possible solution I could come up with being her just joining Dark Cacao in a story to recruit the dragons of his kingdom (assuming they do that), and my brain just kind of took that idea and started running with it, and it culminated in this

I personally like to read the text in a dramatic narrator voice

Also I don’t really know where the “Ice Cold Squad” bit came from, I just thought their names were too long and needed something else, and that’s what I did

Also my first time drawing Frost Queen. Her outfit wasn’t too bad, and I liked drawing her hair, but I did not like that crown. Also as to why Dark Cacao’s in that outfit and with no crown, well I thought since he’s going on a dragon recruiting trip, he probably wouldn’t bring his crown. And as for the outfit, well to be honest I just sort of started subconsciously drawing it. Also I thought “hey, Hollyberry’s got a different outfit than her normal one, give Dark Cacao one too (even though I just drew a pre-existing outfit)”, even though as I write this I realize that Dark Cacao’s outfit is a literal suit of armor and would probably be more suited for fighting than this one. The one excuse I can come up with for a new outfit is that the dragons’ domain is incredibly cold and he needs something better suited for it, as metal isn’t exactly going to keep him warm

But I mean honestly, maybe it’s because my brain has decided it’s interested in Frost Queen, and Dark Cacao is one of my hyperfixation characters, and/or it’s because I’ve recently seen quite a bit of content with Frost Queen and Dark Cacao, but I really want to see Frost Queen and Dark Cacao interact, and specifically the way I want them most to interact is just in a story where they have to work together, and it’s just them. I need to see how they interact, mostly because they both seem pretty similar in terms of personality, and that they both seem relatively antisocial and also dramatic. There’s some comedy potential with these two, along with dramatic potential

But yeah, enjoy them

[thatgirl4815]

Not to be a total Ray apologist (especially now at all times!) but I am somewhat irked at the way Top and some online opinions talk about Ray "dragging" Mew into his destructive lifestyle as if Mew is an innocent lamb being led astray. Mew is an adult who knows exactly what he's getting into with Ray - he's spent the past couple of years chastising him over said lifestyle, and he knows it's driven by Ray's substance abuse and mental health issues. Yes he's heartbroken so isn't making the best choices, but he is still responsible for those choices . Ray, however is an addict. We know this, Mew knows this, Ray denies knowing this. The idea that the addict is more responsible than his non-addict friend (who is very much cognizant of addict's addiction) when said friend decides to dip his toes into the self-destructive world of said addict...well, that's something. People rightly criticised Ray for demonstrating a type of 'poverty tourism' during ep 5 and as far as I can see, Mew's actions seem to be something similar, because we all know it's not going to stick - he's going to try on the unhealthy hedonism shoes cos he's pissed and heartsick, but he can take them off whenever he wants, whereas for Ray those shoes are cement blocks made from childhood trauma which are dragging him down to an early death (as Mew himself prophesied only an ep ago!).

On an entirely unrelated note, my two favourite First moments in this ep were 1) the adorable little noise he made after Ray asked him to help him/pulled out the 'na?' and 2) after Ray asks if he really doesn't want to talk to his dad, there's a second where you can see him imagining it before he sort of shakes himself out of it - it's such a lovely and subtle moment. And I think it's a pattern that repeats in his interactions with Ray - we see him allow himself to fall under his spell, or live in the moment, imagine what his life could be, and we also frequently see him give a little shake of the head and a rueful smile as if to gently knock some sense back into himself. Like we saw in ep 5, his life follows a routine necessitated by his financial situation and the emotional walls he's built up as a result of this and perhaps his romantic history, and he acts like he's fine with it, but then little cracks sneak in now and then that serve to remind him he's just surviving, not thriving. And I do think he's okay with not knowing his dad, and of course he's right about families not having to be mum/dad/child, but still, there's that wistful moment of 'what if' that seems to be a recurring theme throughout his story.

That's a great point about Mew being able to live Ray's addictive lifestyle with none of the longterm consequences; it's definitely a nice callback to Ray's poverty tourism and the ways in which these characters are adapting to other characters' lifestyles and being let into their world. Ray got to see Sand's world and became more empathetic towards him in the process. Maybe this foray into the world of drugs, alcohol, and hard partying will show Mew something similar about Ray? Specifically regarding his own criticisms.

I want Mew to open his eyes to his own errors when chastising Ray about drugs and alcohol. I want Mew to understand that simply lecturing someone and looking down on them isn't enough to make them quit. I want him to see why Ray has turned to these methods of release, and why even if he tried, he wouldn't be able to get himself out easily. This could be a groundbreaking moment for Mew to get to experience a fraction of what Ray is going through (not on a psychological level exactly, but as far as the addictiveness of drugs and alcohol). And yeah, Top's anger over Ray corrupting Mew is frustrating, because he acts as if Mew is a little puppy on a leash, going whichever way Ray pulls him. We know for a fact that Mew is capable of making his own decisions, and whether or not he's going through a heartbreak doesn't change that. He's letting himself fall, and he can ultimately only blame himself; he knows what he's getting himself into with Ray.

(Sidenote, but this is such a big blow to Ray--agreeing to be with him only when you're at the lowest of the low and your judgement is impaired. Mew is winning friend of the year once again...)

First! I agree--he does a great job with subtlety as far as making us aware that he is curious about what it would be like to know his dad. One of the reasons I think First is so good in this role is that he's excellent at portraying the little cracks in Sand's facade, whether it's about Ray or his father. He's good at acting one way but clueing the audience in that he really feels another way. I'm not an actor, but I suspect executing all of those emotions would be really hard to do.

Speaking of Sand though, I just. Want to wrap him up in a hug and tell him that he deserves better. (But also, SandRay endgame PLEASE.)

[fumifooms]

Kimbliza crumbs in canon

The ship of Solf Kimblee and Riza Hawkeye (kimbliza) is a rarepair, unsurprising since they share only one interaction and scene. That’s not to say the ship has 0 canon basis, however, and this masterpost is me just compiling things that makes me go “oh yeah, kimbliza”. I go over the iconic scene they have together first, but then I delve into more obscure bits and details that I haven’t seen others point out. This is meant to act as a masterpost of sorts. Under a cut bc this’ll be decently long. These keep me up at night 

Manga

Let’s first of all go over said scene they have together. Very similar in Brotherhood and the manga, but the manga is much easier to showcase here.

Nothing short of Kimblee’s most iconic quotes being addressed to her! Their first and only interaction, quite the icebreaker. The first thing to notice is that he’s quite directly answering a question she asked, definitely didn’t ask him, but he all the same heard and wanted to tell her what he thought about it. Second is that he singled her out, even if he had been addressing his speech to the whole group. Third is how he was able to read her, it’s one thing to guess she dislikes her “job”, but another to assume a part of her would take pride in her skills which we’ll assume is at least partially right due to her reaction (It’s mostly simple philosophy/logic rather than him reading her well specifically, but still fun to point out). Most importantly is how impactful this interaction was for Riza. This interaction is clearly one that she remembers even now still (which can be assumed, for one, by how the Ishval scenes are contextualized by Riza talking to Ed about her experiences in Ishval) and that affected her a lot, both in the moment as seen with her frequent and intense panels in the scene and later on through the wake-up call she needed. It’s honestly not something you can say every day, that a character changed another’s perspective on such a topic like this.

Moving on, this impact can be seen quite clearly here.

Kimblee spoke of orders, and where blame should be held, in the one who orders or who obeys. Riza in the first scene was horrified at the war she was participating in, no doubt feeling extremely guilty, but she was still somewhat talking about it like some tragedy happening around her instead of something she was actively and willfully participating in. Of course Riza’s retrospective and growth on the topic can’t all be attributed to what Kimblee said to her, but it’s a direct link drawn that Kimblee made them all question themselves and shift their perspective. She went from “How is this all so messed up… Why is the military like this?” to “but we were the ones who carried it out” and wow, way to say Kimblee’s words have left a deep impact on her omg. (These scenes are like 1 chapter apart btw so like mentioned, the link drawn between them isn’t hard to miss at all) 

Now! Unrelated but oh so relevant: Kimblee liking/being interested in people with strong wills is an ongoing theme and big trait of his character, constantly praising and respecting those who he deems to have strong convictions they stand by, and his whole interest in battling and conflict being framed by wanting to see “a battle between strong wills”. This bit is one such moment:

(manga cap taken from @everykimblee​ ) 

He is here talking about Winry (next panel is him saying she’s too young for him at Edward’s judgy gaze, no worries), but. His type is one that works hard and is serious/passionate about her work?? HMM GEE I WONDER WHO FITS THAT BILL!

Last but not least story-wise… Isn’t it kinda weird that Kimblee received a fatal would to the left side of his neck… Like Riza later received a fatal wound to the left side of her neck? If not character foils then how come their deaths directly parallel each other hm? I’m kinda joking but that is such a specific thing, how even…

Alas this is it for the manga portion, the veterans don’t ever mention Kimblee and Kimblee likewise never talks about them, and they don’t have other interactions together. 😔 The rest of this post is all about details and less plot points/character analysis

Anime

If there’s one thing Riza and Kimblee share beyond this sort of composed and regal air, it’s fashion sense. I MEAN EXCUSE ME??

(One of her few Brotherhood out-of-uniform outfits, as seen in the scene where she meets up with Rebecca at a cafe. Also depicted in other scenes and official artworks, often with some minor variations)

White + lavender is Kimblee’s whole scheme in the anime, and Riza is sporting that? White coat??? With lavender accessories?? Now now, this isn’t at all a point you can make for the manga verse, and the Brotherhood artists sure do seem to love their purple for some reason, but omfg. Do I truly need more to consider this a crumb? No.

Official art

(For Brotherhood. She’s wearing lavender 🥰)

(For the 2003 anime. Still a white coat :] )

End

Listen. I could try and analyze what their dynamic would be like based on canon. Do I want to? Not really, so the post ends here until I find more to add onto it. But the crumbs sure are yummy!

[haleigh-sloth]

Hi 🙋‍♀️ my friend thinks that Dabi is going to be put down(killed) and Endeavor will be the one who’s going to do it as an act of atone. I told her that it was a horrific take because that would be a horrible way to atone and two your essentially saying that Endeavor should re-kill the son he failed and basically killed by his actions of neglect/abuse as a parent which would not be a good path to take! I also stated that three villains are being set up to be saved. She still doesn’t believe me, and asked if I could get a better perspective. So I’m here begging 🙏🏻 🥺 for your input please? Your definitely a lot more perspective and have a better eye than I!

Hey! So I’m going to answer everything, but first ask your friend to provide evidence of this, and to also explain how any of that would be even remotely acceptable to portray in a story that is aimed toward a very large, young, impressionable audience, in which a portion has undoubtedly experienced abuse in their own lives. How would those people feel reading that? What kind of message does that send? Horikoshi isn’t like a writing genius or anything, but he is not THAT incompetent. I mean...do give him credit where it’s due. He’s been building up their redemptions for a long time and he’s already established that as the next narrative challenge for Shouto, Ochaco, and Midoriya. I’m not going to say anything about your friend’s way of thinking because I can’t tell by the way your ask is worded if she believes that’s how it SHOULD go (which is....not good) or if she just has no faith in the writing (which is understandable but I’m gonna try to relieve some of those anxieties). In order to remain polite and civil I’m gonna go with the ladder and assume she just has no faith in Horikoshi, which is understandable, but not necessary! I hope you’re comfortable because this is probably going to be longer than I am anticipating, but oh well. 

Anyway, I’ll start with establishing what is deemed acceptable in the world of BNHA as far as killing goes.

*clears throat* It’s not fucking acceptable. Never was, never will be.

Look, please pinpoint to me where a pro-hero in the story has killed a villain and it was viewed as acceptable. And before you point at Hawks, I’m going to direct you here, here, and here. And there are so so SO many more posts I could find and link you to that explain my point further on that matter, but I won’t do that unless it’s asked of me. Regardless, Hawks murdering Twice was not acceptable, it was not portrayed as such, it was not viewed as such by the characters within the story. Therefore, it was not acceptable. And I’m fairly certain Hawks has a really rough road ahead of him because of his terrible choice, so prepare yourself for that.  But where was I? Oh yeah, establishing whether or not it’s acceptable to kill:

I mean there are more, but I don’t have all the time in the world. Tell her to read the story from the beginning and pay attention to what the story is telling its readers  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Now, we’ve established that heroes in BNHA do NOT kill. That is not what being a hero means in THIS story. Now, what else is something important in BNHA that has repeatedly gotten focus?

Family.

To me personally, the most important callout to the importance of protecting your family is here:

He’s calling out all heroes, but he’s saying this in front of Endeavor. Important. Note that. There’s an entire subplot dedicated to the importance of portraying that putting your family first is the utmost responsibility of a parent. Outside of that subplot, we are shown the very dire consequences of what happens when parents abandon and reject their children.

Exhibit A: Toga

Exhibit B: Toya, or Dabi

Exhibit C: Tenko, or Tomura

These adults are the result of parents who failed their families.

Look, regardless of what people want to say the story is about: whether it’s about heroes vs. villains (it’s not), or about Midoriya graduating UA and becoming the number 1 hero (it’s not), or about Midoriya mastering his quirk (it’s not), there is no denying that BNHA is about heroes SAVING others and parents protecting their FAMILY. 

Horikoshi made it a point to establish a clear difference between the adults and the children in BNHA. He also made a point to show ALL THREE VILLAINS’ origin stories and showed us that all it took was ONE BAD DAY when they were CHILDREN. There is literally a chapter titled “All it takes is one bad day” specifically to drill this into your head. Toga’s life went downhill after attacking that boy in middle school from suppressing her biological nature for so long. Toya’s life went downhill when his flames nearly killed him. Tenko’s life went downhill when his quirk activated and killed his whole family. All it took was one bad day in these children’s lives to completely ruin their futures and take any and every chance away from them at a normal life. 

So with the strong focus on heroes saving people and parents failing their children, why why WHY would it ever be acceptable for Enji to KILL his SON? That not only repeats the first mistake made (Toya’s death), but also negates ALL of the narrative focuses of the entire story. I just...that’s a very very deep disconnect that I can’t force closed unless your friend chooses to look deeper than surface level reading. And it’s not just BNHA that has narrative themes and focuses throughout the story. That’s ANY story you read. Well, any good story at least. I’m not a writer by any means but even I know the basic rules of story telling: 

Leave a message for your readers. Give your story a goal. 

Otherwise it’s just words and pictures on paper that don’t mean anything. 

So I gave you the basics of what BNHA is about, now I’ll give the specific moments that directly tell you that Toya, Toga, and Tomura are going to be saved and redeemed. 

Toya:

Toga:

Tomura:

Now....does your friend really think these panels up here just mean nothing? Because that’s not how manga works. The panels have meaning, especially the ones given the most attention to drawing detail, the ones given the most space on a page. All of these were given their own big moments in their respective chapters. Toga is going to be saved by Ochaco, Toya is going to be saved by his baby brother, and Shigaraki is going to be saved by our main character Midoriya. It’s clear as day right there. 

Now I want to take it back to the Todoroki family for just a bit once more. Their entire subplot revolves around reunification. That has been the established endgame since Shouto’s origin chapters. And honestly? You don’t even have to be smart to figure this out. Like when you see Rei in the hospital, you already assume that she’s going to get out and come home at some point within the story, making the family whole again. THEN you learn about Toya and you learn that he’s ALIVE after ten years of being presumed dead. You really think HE isn’t going to be brought home just like his mother was??? Fam, that is the established goal of the Todoroki Family Subplot. There is no denying this, it is there in the text, and it is not even a little bit subtle. Horikoshi is not subtle. At all. With anything. Ever.  

However, no matter how much textual evidence we are given, there are still people living in denial because it’s either A. Not the direction they want, or B. They really just aren’t grasping the writing. Either way, the redemption set ups are there, whether they like it or not. At this point I’m convinced that the only way to shut villain-haters down is to wait til the last chapter has come out and the villains are fine, Toya is reunited with his family, Toga is alive and well and finds community with the other kids (at least that’s what I predict), and Shigaraki is alive and well and surrounded by people who care about him, a family if you will. Other than just waiting for that moment, idk what else it’s gonna take for the bad takes to stop. 

Now here’s my reality check disclaimer:

Horikoshi could screw us all and just kill the villains off. But that would be bad writing and also ruin the ENTIRE STORY. And believe me I will bitch and bitch until I am six feet under and I will continue to bitch about it in whatever afterlife awaits me. But seriously..he won’t do that. Not to mention I have a million other reasons somewhat unrelated to the writing but more so to Horikoshi himself as to why I believe with all of my being that the three villains are going to get a happy ending, but that’s a different discussion for a different time. This post is already long as shit. 

I hope your friend will look a little deeper at the story so she can enjoy it for what it is. The story has flaws, the Todoroki subplot is definitely a MESS right now because of the focus on Endeavor 🤢, but I believe it will clean itself up and be great in the end. The redemption arcs of the villains are the most interesting thing about BNHA and I know I speak for a lot of others and not just myself when I say this but, the villains are the only reason a LOT of people are still even invested in the story to begin with. If it weren’t for them? We’d all be ghost. So, do with that what you will. I hope this helps ease your anxieties a little bit and helps your friend understand what to pay attention to in the writing.

[libraford]

We interrupt the feral celebration of ousting an oligarch to bring you a story about Yeehaw and his Branch of Mystery.

  It has been a while since we last had some co-worker drama, but man- has it been a weird summer. I mean... we all had a weird summer in 2020, but I don't think I was really expecting this particular... flavor of weird?

 This is a story about Yeehaw, but it starts off with a story about Aggie.

 Aggie was someone we were excited to hire and part of our excitement was that it's rare to find someone with prior floral experience and we'd concluded at this point that it does no one any good to be picky about new hires in the middle of a pandemic. So finding someone who knew the difference between a carnation and a rose was a big deal for us.

 I say that in jest, but saying that we do 'on-the-job training' means that we've had to explain that yes- the flower in my hand that looks like a carnation is a carnation and not some other flower that looks like carnation but is not a carnation. Floristry is a very straightforward practice and for the most part a rose is a rose and a daisy is a daisy and if someone asks for those things, you give it to them.

 The hard part is, as always, making them look good together.

 Which is why we were pleased with Aggie- who previously did weddings for her friends and seemed to have a basic understanding of how to do things with her hands. We were happy to have her aboard.

 ... until you gave her criticism.

 She made her vases embarrassingly short, and if you tried to tell her how to fix it, she'd snap back with "I'm not DONE yet."

 She was done until you said something.

 If you gave her an order for two dozen white roses, she would take it upon herself to mix white and yellow roses together 'because it looks better.'

 It did not.

 Hashtag: #selftaught

 When a client asks for all white roses, there is likely a reason they asked for all white. Given that 90% of our work is funerals, it stands to reason that they are asking for all white because that is a traditional color for mourning. Working with a client means doing exactly what they asked for. Doing a wedding for your friends may get you high praise from people who trust you to work in the same aesthetic as them, but in a shop setting you are being paid to follow things to the letter. Doing so shows that you can follow directions, and they may come back next time.

 You don't know customer entitlement until you've been torn another asshole for leaving out a single rose.

 This seemed to never occur to her, and so criticism was a painful realization that perhaps she wasn't perfect at an art that was exceptionally susceptible to criticism. There were plenty of opportunities to make something in her own aesthetic, it wasn't like she was being stifled. There was a considerable amount of downtime where she filled the front cooler with her own creations- enigmatically giving each of them their own names like "Autumn Walk" or "First Snowfall." (This is not something that we do, on the whole.)

 Not very many of those sold.

 But I think what bugged me the most is that she only ever designed. She didn't take out the trash, she didn't answer phones, she never helped customers. She just... did flowers. Nothing else.

 Oh... and the chatter.

 "Do you travel? Oh, you simply MUST go to Bali sometime! You've never been to Asia? Well, there's nothing like achieving inner peace at a Buddhist temple on a mountaintop in Nepal. They have temples here in Ohio, but it's nothing like the real thing! You say you've never even been off the continent? Well, what are you waiting for? You only live once, you know!"

 Ma'am... we're in the middle of a pandemic. Ma'am... I only get paid so much...

 While trying to relate, I talked about my summer in Montana and she gave me the BIGGEST stank-face. "Montana? Ew, WHY?"

 Look, lady- I lived on a mountaintop next to an active, world-destroying volcano system. If that's not cool, I don't know what is.

 But thankfully, she only worked on weekends. See, this was her fun job. The job she does to stay social during a pandemic and flex her creative muscles while she makes money at her much more lucrative,but boring,HR job. So I only had to see her twice a month when I was manager on duty.

 Then she got fired from her weekday job and went full-time at the flower shop. Poor thing wasn't used to waking up at 7am every day. She was full of suggestions.

 "I think it would be easier for me if we only opened at like... 11am."

"Don't you think we should be taking proper photos of our work? All we would need is a nice camera and a soft lighting setup. Couldn't be much more than $1000."

"Oh I know! We should be doing inventory on tablets instead of writing things down!"

 Okay, you go buy those things then. It took her about a week of making those suggestions to realize that she wasn't real clear on how things worked around here and stopped. She became quiet, less enthusiastic about her 'fun' job now that she wasn't immediately the star of the show.

 Enter Yeehaw.

 We were excited about Yeehaw, too. He didn't just have experience with flowers- he had experience with a flower shop. He gave a good interview, he seemed like he knew what he was doing and was very passionate about flowers. He was definitely an entire hippie, but about 1/3 of all plant people are. Most importantly, we still had like three spots to fill left from our pre-Covid staff.

 Hired.

 There was an overlap of about a week where Aggie and Yeehaw worked at the same time. His work was... immaculate. Just... astonishingly beautiful work. You didn't even have to show him how to make anything. He just... knew.

 Well, Aggie didn't  like that much- we had only nice things to say about this new guy but all she ever got was criticism. And if we complimented him on something he made, he would give a little 'namaste' bow. And I could see her fuming with rage each time he did this.

 One day, she rushed into the back to take a phone call and any time someone went back there for a vase she would lower her voice as if keeping a deep secret. Twenty minutes later, she called Grandpa into the back as well to discuss something. Ten minutes later, Aggie left the building with her Live, Laugh, Love bag, looking pissed.

 "Where did Aggie go," I asked Grandpa.

 "She got a new job," she said. "Doing HR somewhere."

 "She didn't even say good-bye," Blue said, appearing unsurprised.

 And so we went on with out lives without really putting much further thought into Aggie, apart from the occasional 'you simply MUST visit Bali' line thrown in for bougie emphasis.

 Which brings us to the next part of the story, and that is Yeehaw.

 There are some details to know about Yeehaw that are kind of difficult to fit into a story neatly. Here is a brief list that may come in handy to know later.

-He lives with his mother.

-He drives a Tesla.

-He can afford the Tesla because he was in a terrible wreck that had him hospitalized, and a lawsuit was won.

-Because of this, he has two screws in his head at the temples.

-Unrelated, he has hair that goes all the way down to his back.

- And...

 "Grandpa, we need to tell you something," Blue said. "In private."

 Blue and Kali pulled Grandpa aside while Yeehaw slowly put together a funeral order. "Grandpa, there's no polite way to put this: Yeehaw is drunk as fuck."

 "He smells like whiskey," Kali said.

 "He's stumbling everywhere."

 "And he won't stop... burping."

 Grandpa paused. "There's something I need to tell you," she said, and she reached for a manila folder. "Yeehaw has something called... what's it called..." She leafed through the file and produced a paper, reading from it. "Auto-brewery Syndrome. His body actually produces alcohol anytime he eats bread or sugar. If he's drunk, it's because he can't help it."

 We each had a chance to go over the doctor's note, verifying that yes- that sure does look official. Everyone had questions, but it did answer the one I had about why he was sitting in the break room literally drinking peanut butter from the jar.

 So that was incredibly interesting and we no longer asked about the burping or why he was so slow.  

 However, the fact that he was so slow was extremely frustrating. Our average number of orders runs approximately 100 per-day. This can be eased somewhat when we have a full-staff with five designers- an average of 20 designs per person in an 8-hour day, 3 per hour.

 But it's a fine line some days, and if one person cannot keep up it turns into a struggle for all of us.  

 We did our best to accommodate. We gave him all the day-ahead orders so that we wouldn't be behind and he'd have all the time he'd need to make his gorgeous pieces.

 We were willing to make it work.

 A number of factors came into play one day, but most notably: Yeehaw's Tesla wouldn't start and he had to take the bus. So he was late.

 I think I saw him make one entire item in the two hours that we were in the same room. He went to lunch around 12:30, I took mine around 1:00. I saw him stumble back in from lunch, looking... out of it. Just... absolutely incomprehensible- mumbling, barely upright, his hair out of the bun, quite possibly sleepwalking- who knows?

 I saw him for that brief Sasquatch moment... and that was the last that I saw him that day. It was around 4:00 that  Grandpa asked the question:

 "Where's Yeehaw?"

 And no one had an answer. We all had places that we thought we'd seen him: cleaning the cooler, in the break room, heading to the bathroom... but no one had really... seen him since he stumbled back in around 1:30.

 We checked all these places.

 None of them.

 The person who actually managed to find him was Sarge, who noticed his feet sticking out from behind the bushes behind the building.

 "Huh," he said, presumably. He gave the feet a light kick and Yeehaw slowly sat back up. "Hey dude. You... okay, there? They're lookin' for you inside."

 Yeehaw mumbled something to Sarge and got to his feet, stumbling back into the shop without further interaction. He appeared into the workspace, holding a branch in front of his face for mysterious reasons. There were still twigs entangled in his long hair.

 "Where were you at," Grandpa asked, concerned.

 "Oh, I was in the bathroom," he lied from behind the branch of mystery. "I'm pretty tired. Is it okay if I go home?"

 Bewildered, Grandpa gave him permission to leave. It was soon after he left that Scout found his phone in the empty sink. "Who's trying to wash their phone," he asked in the loud manner that is characteristic of old white men. It rang while in his hand and one of our designers snatched it from him. It was his mother.

 "Hello," said the designer. "Yeehaw went home early, but he left his phone behind. Can you bring it home to him?" Mom agreed, she was just over at Trader Joe's anyhow.

 We thought, of course, that we were doing something smart and nice. Yeehaw's mom looks just about what you would expect the mother of a 30-year-old hippie that drives a Tesla to look. Grandpa, in a polite way, explained that he'd fallen asleep in a bush. To which Mom seemed neither surprised nor concerned about his behavior.

 "Okay. I'll be at Hallmark."

 Somewhere between the bus stop and Bexley, Yeehaw must have realized that his phone was not with him and so he came back looking for it. Despite his mother being literally in the same strip mall as we were, he seemed irritated that we'd taken the initiative to make sure his phone got to him.

 "Well, I bet if you just went down to Hallmark she'd give you your phone and probably give you a ride home."

 He mumbled something and then left.

 This seems like a decent place to pause, because him leaving the second time in the day should be the end of the story. However... at 5:00 in the evening there was still two hours left in the work day and from past experience... that is plenty of time for a lot of things to happen.

 The thing to happen was a phone call.

 "Hi, this is Jade from the main store. We've gotten... some... interesting phone calls. Is there... a... hmm... is there a dead body out in front of your store?"

 Pause.

 "We'll take care of it, bye."

 Who wants to be the one to poke the cadaver on the sidewalk? A volunteer from the audience! Ms Crowe: won't you come down?!

 I have had it planted firmly in my mind that Crowe certainly understands the concept of fear but does not recognize it. Apart from being one of our most reliable drivers, she is also a performer, a street medic, an activist, and most notably... a fire-breather.

 You have your hobbies.

 Point is- she's brave enough to check to see if the person laying on the sidewalk was dead or simply overdosed.

 As it turns out, it was Yeehaw- curled up in the fetal position with his arm covering his face.

 "Hey," Crowe said, poking him with her foot. "Heeeeeeey," she said again but more firmly this time. He moved, blinking in the evening the sun. "Buddy, you can't be laying around on the sidewalk. You gotta move on."

 Again, he slowly got to his feet. At this time, his mother emerged from Hallmark to see him talking with Crowe. A group of four people escorted him into Mom's car while he stopped every few feet to perform another 'namaste' bow.

 You think this is the end. But what have we learned?

 There's always more.

 He came in the next day as if none of this had happened. Conversation was difficult because we both desperately needed to know what the fuck happened and also did not want to trigger something. So we didn't bring it up. He apologized for leaving early: chronic fatigue syndrome, you know.

 Other places would have fired him, but we're a very forgiving workplace. Falling asleep on company time is not, in any way, the worst thing that someone has done at this location while still keeping their job. There was Sugar and her drugs, there was the dude that used the company van to pick up prostitutes (this was before my time), there was the guy that screamed at customers over the phone... it's a long list.

 The primary concern of our employers is whether or not you are a reliable person. If you routinely show up for your job and do the work, you're going to be okay at least for a little bit. And Yeehaw, for all his impeccable fuckery, at least showed up every day.

 We kept this at the back of our minds.

 One day, after the Day We Found Him In a Bush was behind us, one of the designers mentioned that they'd seen where Aggie works now. It was not in HR.

 It was our major competitor.

 Now, Grandpa knows this competitor well. She knows all her competition. It is the nature of a lot of florists to, once they've gotten sick of one place, move on to the next one and spill the beans on their operations there. So Grandpa gets the dirt on everyone.

 This particular shop was very regimented. You don't wing it- you follow the recipe as listed. He's been known to pick discarded flowers up off the floor and tell you exactly how much  money you're costing the company by letting it fall, to the cent. If you get so far as to make casket sprays, he will take your first one and chuck it across the room if it even looks like the stems are in there too loosely.

 This is what I mean about us being an easy place to work.

 Hashtag: #ohfuck.

 People come in and out of your life like that, in little ways. Sometimes you just have to have a little laugh at it. But what I thought was funny was that she felt the need to keep her new employer a secret, as though we would get jealous or tattle. Curious thing.

 Now that the glamour of Yeehaw's arrangements had worn off, we were starting to see more and more odd behaviors that didn't seem completely related to drunkenness.

 "Did you just fart?"

 "No, that was a spider barking."

 Amazing.

 Conversation with him was becoming... difficult. As I sat in the break room with my quick lunch and he drank soup out of a mayonnaise jar, he mentioned his area of study in college.

 "Cognitive Psychology and Hindu Philosophy, huh? That's an interesting combination."

 "Yeah," he said, funneling an amount of squash soup down his throat. "It'll take the rest of the world about 100 years before they catch up to where I am."

 I sat, posed in front of my beef and broccoli which I was eating with a fork, trying to process a logical reason why the rest of the world will be sleeping in a bush in one hundred years. "Uh... huh."

 This was followed by another thirty minutes of silence where I desperately wanted to know what he meant by that but didn't want to be the one to ask him.

 People will tell you that a hippie is generally an ineffective, benign kind of person who chants 'love love, peace peace' in a circle and consider that to be an action for change. But I can say with absolute certainty that I have met some downright egotistical hippies in my life. Those were lessons in bias- which I will have to save for other times.

 Eventually, Grandpa became frustrated with his slowness. We presumed that his speed of choice was a combination of his meticulous nature and his various ailments, but with the Christmas season coming upon us it was becoming much more than a series of symptoms.

 Previous persons who lacked speed were chatty, would play on their phone, or get distracted. But Yeehaw... Yeehaw simply moved like a tranquilized sloth. He slowly picked off each leaf, each thorn, each guard petal and took a minute for each action. He would put in his greens and then contemplate it powerfully for ten minutes before putting any flowers in... slowly.

 In the time spent doing this, I had already made something of a similar size and was starting on the second one.

 It was during one of these times that Grandpa finally said something.

 "Yeehaw, that spray is due in thirty minutes. Is there a way you can go any faster?"

 He looked up from his greens, held one carnation to his face, and said:

 "If you wanted me to move faster, you would pay me better."

 Let me start by saying that we do not get paid well. We don't. Compared to other flower shops in our city, we are probably the lowest-paid. This is something that the company is starting to work on with benefits and raises, but any amount of change takes time. (And its still better paying than when I worked in retail. But that's another book.)

 Yeehaw had been here for exactly one month. I don't know a single workplace that gives you a raise after one month and still lets you sleep on the clock without firing you. He knew what he was getting paid when we hired him.

 So anyways, he slowly grinds down our nerves to a very fine dust- burping, farting, falling asleep on his feet, staring intensely into space, talking about how much he should be making but isn't, bragging about his enlightenment, and generally just slowing down production.

 And then Grandpa had her well-earned vacation week. Blue was in charge for the most part and the week leading up to Halloween is generally pretty slow, so it was a good week for her to have a break with few mishaps.

 Eh... hehe. Yeah.

 Yeehaw... disappeared again. We checked the cooler, we checked the break room, we checked the bushes out back, we checked the sidewalk out front.

 He was in the bathroom.

 So we left it.

 He was still in the bathroom an hour later.

 We had one of the male drivers pound on the door to check on him. When Yeehaw opened the door to the men's room, there was a wad of toilet paper on the floor that he'd been using as a pillow.

 If I may pause here to explain- our men's room is disgusting. I have deep cleaned it several times only for it to become a germ-fest once more in a matter of hours. I don't ask who is peeing all over the floor because, honestly, I have no desire to know what grown man can't aim his willy in the right direction.

 So in order to fall asleep in the bathroom, you have to be willing to sleep in pee. During a pandemic.

 He reappeared in the workroom, put his apron back on, looked around at all of us still working and said: "Wow, it must be really hard to get fired here."

 It was at this point that Blue informed Grandpa.

 "Tell him that he's fired," Grandpa said, clearly 1001% done with this.

 "I'm not going to fire him," Blue said. "I don't think I can fire anyone."

 So she had the driver that found him do it, which was confusing for all of us. He ended up calling Grandpa to clarify. And by 'clarify,' I definitely mean 'beg for his job back.' A synopsis of the 20 minute phone call went like this:

 "What do you mean, I'm fired?"

 "Just that. You're fired. I'm tired of it, Yeehaw. You don't work here anymore."

 "Why?"

 "What do you mean 'why?' You spend all day making a total of three arrangements and then you wander off somewhere and fall asleep."

 "I can't help it if I have chronic fatigue syndrome!"

 "This is a physical job. If your body can't handle an 8-hour shift without falling asleep for two hours, this isn't the job for you. Tell me: where is that fair to the girls that you do 3% of the work while they pick up the slack and you wander off to sleep on the clock?"

 "I simply do not care about them."

 "You don't care that you're shoving all the work on your coworkers, and that's why you're fired."

 "I wish you'd given me a warning."

 "Tell me, Yeehaw: how many employers can you find that will allow you to sleep on the clock for two hours and let you off with a warning?"

 End of discussion.

 Now, you're probably wondering where Aggie comes back into this. Just hold tight, I'll get there.

 The Sunday after he was fired, he came in to pick up his paycheck. I was busy handling a minor emergency where one of our funeral homes forgot to order a spray and I had to make one as fast as I could. We held a brief conversation while I made the spray in a hurry.

 "I'm here to pick up my check," he said while I greened the spray and leafed through the paychecks simultaneously.

 "Here you go," I said, handing it to him without much fanfare. I presumed that he was looking for sympathy or some kind of followup or... I don't know. Sorry you suddenly care about your job?

 "So what are your next plans," one of the designers asked, trying to coax more information out of him while I did the work of three people.

 "It's kind of funny," he said slowly... as he did all things. "I've only ever been fired from flower shops." He paused, thoughtfully. "I think I'm going to go apply to the shop in Bexley that Aggie went to."

[i-love-side-characters]

hot take for the aoas fandom but i don’t ship curaday. not bc i just don’t like the ship but bc i don’t like how faraday was curie’s previous mentor. idk... it just seems manipulative and predatory to me that they ended up together with the power dynamic so unbalanced.

hmm i definitely see where you're coming with that. and don't worry its fine that you don't ship them!!! that's perfectly acceptable!!!

i have to say a few things first on the predatory aspect, if that's alright. also disclaimer this is quite rambly, i'm sorry i'm just very tired.

additional notes:

important points/things i want to stress in bold

quotes are italicized

thunderhead + the toll quote used!!! not really spoilers, but careful if you haven't read books 2 and 3!!!

if you're not a coward here's my askbox

now in my opinion, there are a few things that might make it seem as though curaday is a very predatory relationship. one, the mentor/apprentice problem. two, the age gap. three, the essence of their romantic relationship. because you didn't state why you felt it was predatory, i'll adress those issues.

1) the nature of their relationship during the mentor years

the "original" curaday as such wasn't really a romantic relationship. there was no hint of the relationship between the two while faraday was mentoring curie. at the time when their relationship was only mentor/apprentice and indeed adult/minor, there were no requited feelings from faraday.

"....then tore [the journal entry] out the next day, when i broke down and confessed my love with eyeball-rolling melodrama. [...] [scythe faraday], on the other hand, was a gentleman [...] and let me down as easily as he could." ― scythe curie, (page 347, scythe)

just to be thorough, here are several definitions of "let down." all links in sources.

convey bad or disappointing news in a considerate way, so as to spare the person's self-respect. ― idioms free dictionary

to try to give someone bad news in a way that does not upset them too much. ― macmillan dictionary

an unrelated expression is let someone down easy. this phrase refers to breaking up with someone in a relationship in such a way that they are not devastated of overly sad. ― writing explained

so it's clearly implied that faraday said no to her. after curie confesses her feelings, she describes what happen after that.

"i lived in [scythe faraday's] house, and remained his apprentice, for two more awkward months." ― scythe curie (page 347, scythe)

note that there is no mention of there ever being a romantic relationship between the two scythes during the remainder of the mentorship. this shows that no adult/minor predatory behaviour had occurred between the two scythes.

just to add on, some thoughts from my friend ref. ( @jam-is-my-food )

"if their romance took place when or anytime around when curie was his apprentice, yes. absolutely that would be a tilted power dynamic and uncomfortable and Not Good."

this, as well as the quotes, removes the "predatory" aspect of your concern. but that's just my opinion!!! you can still believe that is an unhealthy and wrong relationship. but personally i don't think the mentor/apprentice concern is a factor, since the romantic aspect took place much later.

2) the age gap during the years of their romantic relationship

there is a 5 year age gap between the two scythes. according to the wiki, at the start of scythe, curie is 219 years old, and faraday is 224. during scythe curie's explanation of her crush on faraday, she pinpoints their exact ages.

"i was seventeen and full of righteous indignation at a world that was still heaving in the throes of transformation." ― scythe curie (page 345, scythe)

"i was seventeen, remember. childish in so many ways. i thought myself in love." ― scythe curie (page 346, scythe)

"but at twenty-two, [scythe faraday] was just as inexperienced in such matters as i was." ― scythe curie, (page 346, scythe)

the five year age gap during the mentorship would have made it an adult/minor relationship, but as they grew older that simply isn't the case.

"then, nearly fifty years later, when we both had turned our first corner and were seeing the world through youthful eyes once more―but this time with the wisdom of age on our side―we became lovers." ― scythe curie (page 347, scythe)

they became romantically involved until fifty years had passed. which would put curie at around 67, and faraday at around 72. curie even outright says that they had "the wisdom of age on [their] side." this shows that curie believed that both parties were mature in their starting of a romantic connection.

here is some more input from ref. ( @/jam-is-my-food )

"and, adding on to [the earlier statement], if faraday was the one who had liked marie when she was his apprentice. even if a lot of years had passed, that would i think still make it inherently predatory and yikes.

but the thing is, that's not what happened. all that happened when she apprenticed for him was that marie had a crush on michael.

and he turned her down. because she was a kid. and that's the end of it."

this, i would say, addresses the general complaint of the age gap between the two. most often people believe that because faraday apprenticed curie that he was a lot older but that's not true. the gap is only 5 years. now that absolutely does not make their relationship "not predatory", but it does show that both parties were mature in their decisions.

3) after their romantic relationship + friendship

now this part is less technical than the others. this is mostly my opinions. but just to start off, i want to look at their relationship after the 7 deaths and 70 years.

your feeling of their relationship is that it is "manipulative and predatory". now i've never been in an unhealthy relationship before, but i don't believe this is one (please correct me if i'm wrong! i am not speaking from experience here and could easily make a mistake!).

out of everything, their treatment of one another after the romantic relationship stands out to me the most. personally if their romantic had been unhealthy in that sense, i don't believe they would have stayed friends as they did.

i had written an essay a while about curie and faraday together. if you could read it that would be great! however i'm linking my friend nisha's ( @genyyasafin ) reblog of it, as she adds in a small bit at the end about how faraday humanizes curie. [ here ] is the link.

as i was saying, i don't think this is a predatory and manipulative relationship simply from the way they act afterwards. they are described as old friends constantly, and that friendship seems natural, to me at least. now you could be saying that this is a manipulative relationship and neither of them notice, but i don't think that's true.

“seven deaths, and seventy years later, many things had changed. we remained old friends after that, but nothing more.” ― scythe curie (page 348, scythe)

"i have observed the rise and fall of the romantic relationship between [scythe curie and scythe faraday], as well as the many years of devoted friendship that has followed." ― the thunderhead (page 383, thunderhead)

these two show that even the thunderhead, which is an incredibly knowledgeable force, does not seem to be troubled by their relationship.

not to mention this quote:

"other scythes―the ones i'm friendly with―will call me marie." ― scythe curie (page 235, scythe)

and through that quote it is shown that both curie and faraday are comfortable around each other. this isn't every instance in the books, but the ones i found quickly.

"marie―scythe curie that is―...." ― scythe faraday (page 371, scythe)

"and you, marie." ― scythe faraday (page 383, thunderhead)

"where are you my dear marie?" ― (page 102, the toll)

i didn't add in any quotes where its the reverse and she calls him michael, because he never mentioned his policy for first-name-basis, but this shows how comfortable curie is around faraday. not to mention it is implied that curie and faraday talk often, as curie knows about an event that only faraday, citra, and rowan know about.

"didn't you already attend a family wedding?"

citra wondered how scythe curie knew that, but wasn't about to let herself be derailed. ― scythe curie - dialogue, citra terranova - narraration (page 231, scythe)

the comfort in which they speak to and reference one another suggests to me, at least, that there is not a manipulative intent or feeling in the relationship.

4) conclusion i suppose

if you read all the way here, then i applaud you for your dedication and i thank you very much. that seriously means so much to me.

to anon: this essay was a whole 1,429 words. i am so sorry. however i do disagree with your opinion but i hope i've voiced mine in a somewhat coherent manner. thank you so much for reading all this way!!!

5) sources:

scythe curie wiki

scythe faraday wiki

arc of a scythe - book one: scythe

arc of a scythe - book two: thunderhead

arc of a scythe - book three: the toll

let down - idioms by the free dictionary

let down - macmillan dictionary

let down - writing explained

[i-dont-know-how-this-site-works]

do tony stans not get that the whole point of yelena is that she wants to be free? why the hell would she let an old ass talk to her let alone adopt her. she wants to have the life she didn’t have because of the red room. like did no one see how happy she was to get the vest? no way wild tony even get close to adopting her

(also that take is just weird as in general but sadly not the worse i’ve seen for her)

(Please keep in mind my points here might be a little bit far-fetched, but those are my subjective observations and you can see the whole thing differently. Also, if anything sounds clunky or unclear, then I am sorry. Not a native English speaker.)

I honestly think that they don't. They just see a young woman (important point! I will get to it later) that was abused and is traumatised by her past and it's like this light is going off in their brain- "If I headcanon my fave as a good parental figure that takes care of a vulnerable person, that means he is overall a good person and I can ignore the negative aspects of their personality".

Now, let's take a look at both Yelena and Nebula. Like you said, the whole point of Yelena is that she wants to break free of the Red Room, leave her past behind, forget the abuse she experienced at the hands of Dreikov and develop into being her own person, with agency and free will. Nebula on the other hand wants to break free from Thanos, leave her past behind, get revenge on her abusive POS adoptive papa and develop into being her own person, with agency and free will. Now you see how these two characters overlap and that their stories and circumstances are somewhat similar.

So knowing that Nebula was headcanoned (or even fanoned since a lot of people in this fandom adopted(hehe) this headcanon) as T0ny's adopted kid, it was fairly easy to predict that Yelena was going to get the same treatment.

Alas!

There is another young woman in this universe that is a) young and b)traumatised.

There is a difference between the three though. You see, taking care of someone who hates your guts might pose a bit of a challenge. Wanda did not get infantilised and "adopted" into the stork family because she is antagonistic towards the stans' object of admiration. The very first thing we learn about her in AoU is that she hates the dude (bless her heart) and sticks the middle finger to him in the first like, 5 minutes of this finest Whedon Mess-Fest™. She also reminds everyone of T0ny's past mistakes and I guess it hurts??

Both Yelena and Nebula started out either not knowing T0ny even existed or he never affected them personally. Which might also be why they seem adamant on lumping Shuri in with these women.

Shuri has never interacted with T0ny and as far as I remember, she also never even mentioned him. So, again, no bad relation/memories/whatever to spoil the headcanon. However, she is different from the women mentioned above- no tragic or abusive backstory (I think at least), supportive ALIVE family and a teenager, a person actually in need of guidance and oversight, as opposed to a woman approaching her 30s. Along with the other teenagers that have ALIVE family members like Peter and Harley.

So, two categories of "kids"- adult people in their 20s with issues and teens.

Adult people in their 20s with issues, huh?

Steve and Thor are definitely not welcome into the adopted child circle, even though they are young and they have issues. So adoptable *snorts*. And yes, I know, they are technically way older than T0ny, but mentally and physically they are in their mid-twenties when they meet him. So, what gives?

Ahh right! How could I forget! They are men. All the people in the first "category" are women.

Take away what you will from this.

Alas^2!

So far, we have 5 "kids"- Nebula, Yelena, Harley, Peter and Shuri. However, as my staunchly Christian auntie from a catholic-alcoholic denomination always says, the more kids, the merrier! Ho ho ho! Let's throw some bio kids under the tree too!

But wait a minute, Mr. Santa. Bio children? No one wants to play with those!

So, I noticed that T0ny stans always put Morgan on the backburner, rarely if ever mention Vision (technically not bio, but you know what I mean) and totally forget Ultron, although with Ultron I get the sentiment, if my child turned genocidal I would want to forget about them too.

And again, far-fetched, but I think what is happening here is that well, if you decide to have a kid, you kind of have an obligation to take care of them, but when you decide to take a completely unrelated person under your wing and tutelage and guidance and care, it's like, looked upon as honorable, I guess???? I mean, take a look at other characters that assume a parental role over an unrelated child. Din Djarin, Hunter, Kanan, Obi-Wan, hell, even Anakin can squeeze in there. They are darlings of the SW fandom, mostly because of the Raw Daddy Energy™

Also, Found Family fecking slaps and is regarded by many as the tastiest snack out there, but with bio kids you can't really "find" them, you DIY them into existance.

To sum it all up: This whole thing flew off the rails faster than my future plans do and I feel like I made some pretty moot points, but that's how I would explain this strange addiction of t0ny stans.

Also, anon, sorry if that's not the answer you were expecting, but I felt like your ask was a perfect jumping point to make this post, since I've been thinking about the whole "kid adopting" thing for a few days now.

[scandeniall]

story of us

pairing: suna x reader

the story of ur relationship <3; alternatively (more) dating sunarin headcanons but this time is somewhat of an order and talks good and bad 2K+ worth lol

a/n: i had more planned but half of these have been sitting in my notes for months and its kinda fucking long already bc he lives rent free!!!

warnings: uh the usual aged up (in ur 20s time skip type beat), language, yeah

Meeting

Now when y’all met suna was not looking to love at all. That man was just living his life and so where you. The two of you pretty much meet through komori. You’re a friend and it’s his birthday so him and a few of his friends go out for drinks bc why not. Young hot pretty financially stable v-ball players. Nah no ones there for any type of hookups literally just there celebrating a great guy.

They rent out a section at a relatively nice bar tbh. Not the cheapest and you can actually hear conversation. But also not a super expensive one where the patrons are middle aged with jazz music and the occasional track to relive “youth.” Komori’s a sweetie and will come outside to get you when you text that you’re there. You’ve met washio and ofc sakusa Before so you greet them casually then you turn and there’s Suna and a few others you haven’t met.

That greeting isn’t anything special I promise. Just “hey I’m so and so” and vice versa. It’s one of those meetings where you just think “he’s cute” but it’s such a fleeting thought. Y’all don’t even really talk that first night tbh. At the next practice Suna mentions offhandedly that he didn’t know komori was dating someone and komori is like: huh? Yeah sorry. I love (Y/N) and all but were just friends. Suna just shrugs not really caring to be honest until Komori just asks what did he think of you.

“Don’t really remember much man. Seemed cool though” he didn’t think he’d really see you again. Yeah you were close enough to have been at Komori’s birthday but if that was his first time ever meeting you, he figured you weren’t from around there are present very much. Yeah he was wrong.

Suddenly you were on Komori’s snap story more often, or maybe he’d just been noticing more. Too bad he couldn’t even remember your name 💀. Then it turned into you occasionally popping up where he was. He’d been told your name at least 5 times already but wouldn’t remember it the next day. Whenever he’d see you again he’d get a strained look like: “what is this mf name again” just laugh and tell him again bby.

That changed at some random house party by another mutual friend you two apparently had? You two were the only people just around the fire pit trying to catch some warmth in the chilly night. He’s probably just on his phone head bobbing his head to the muffled music from inside. And you’re just like “remember my name yet?” All jokingly. This sparks the tiniest bit of interest in him and he lets out a low chuckle and just admits “not at all.” I also feel like this is the first time he really looks at you and he’s like 🤨, wait you’re actually kinda cute.

That night y’all just kinda talk and vibe. The conversation comes easy as you two jump back and forth from talking about the music playing to sneakers which he brings up to stuff that you like. He’s actually really easy to talk to. So easy that u can forget about him not remembering your name despite meeting several times. You mention that you’d hung around komori before while they were gaming and that he seemed pretty cool. That leads him to asking “how do you know him anyways?”

“I used to date Sakusa”

Mentally he’s just like— ‘yeah I’m not getting involved in this. Time to go.’ Until you just start laughing.

“I’m kidding. He’s not really my type. We met after being paired together for a project in school.”

The two of you spend quite a bit of time just talking that night until you are joined again by some friends and it’s deadass like y’all weren’t just talking for almost an hour straight.

Getting Together

The process of getting together is like a cat and mouse game. You two start getting closer than friends and then something happens and you’re not talking for weeks. Whether it be life just getting busy, and then someone ending up on some random tinder date or so be it. Definitely one of those things were somehow someway y’all end up just hanging on one of your couches watching a movie. At some point there’s definitely a hint of sexual tension but neither of y’all act on it (later on you find on his finsta that he used to post several “i wont you 😔” memes  Folks can’t tell if hes joking or not (hes not))

You probably gotta tell that man you like him so if that ain’t you I’m sorry. Y’all not dating 😹. It’s something casual, y’all going to pick up some snacks for a movie night and why this mf keep looking at you out the side of his eyes instead of the road. You def texting the groupchat asking if you should confess. They tell you to boss up and just do it baby.

You literally end up confessing in that parking lot. Like right when he shuts the car off and starts swinging his keys on his finger and you kinda just blurt “I like you. Like like you.” He just kinda nods before his eyes widen. “Wait are you fr?” Like no you’re joking tf. It gets a lil awkward so you just go to get out the car and he’s like “I like like you too.”

I definitely don’t think either of you ever officially asked the other out it’s just at some point the understanding that you two are a couple. Like when you’re hanging out just you two hes more touchy, and then y’all start kissing and holding hands at some point. Then when you’re with friends he almost exclusively sits next to you and your friends notice the whispers in one another’s ears at the loud bar that seem just a hint too intimate for ppl who are just friends. Then y’all start arriving and leaving places together and people just at some point get the message (it’s later confirmed by you tweeting some shit like: I hate Rin why is that mf my boyfriend)

As far as anniversaries y’all draw straws to pick a day in the ballpark of the time y’all both think you became official. That’s the day you stick with even if it’s not true.

Relationship Flaws

A fault in the relationship is sunas kinda poor communication when it comes to things that matter. How he feels. Arguments. Love sure as hell don’t come east with anyone but when your partner won’t let you in? Yeah that’s like hell. That’s something you struggle with. And then on your end, it’s the impatience with him not letting you in. You try to wrongfully rush it.

 There’s definitely been arguments that stem from him just being upset about something unrelated to the relationship then coming to you for comfort without actually telling you what’s wrong. He kinda just wants to lay with his head on his chest but at some point that’s not enough. Y’all are in a relationship and should be able to talk about your bad days too.

You’re not innocent in this issue either because sometimes it comes off too pushy. Yes it’s from a place of care but sometimes that silent comfort is necessary. The walls will break in due time and y’all both know that deep in the back of your minds But then there’s a part that’s like— yeah we can’t let this become the norm

“Rin, can you please talk to me”

He will have literally told you “whatever” and that he “can’t deal with this rn” several times as he just shrugs and is like yeah “I’m gonna just go home. I’ll text you later” with an awkward ass pat on your shoulder if it really ruined his mood. If he’s leaving before he gets super upset and uncomfortable just some half assed kiss in your cheek

Another thing is I feel like he could be passive aggressive and let’s be real other folks doing it causes you to do it to. Y’all probably drag eachother on your finstas where you can both see it lol

But when it comes to making up he cracks first and apologizes when he started it. Or as y’all get more comfy with communication. If it’s not anything major he’ll just hit you with a text like “I’m bored come hang”

More Relationship Things

I feel like he love/hates driving. Likes the ride not always driving though. So if you ever proposed a late night drive he’d be down (if you offer to drive). He does let y’all take his car though. He reclines the seat pretty far back. Alternates between just closing his eyes vibing w/ the music or kinda just looking at you (he the type of bf that makes u nervous no matter how long y’all been together)The way he looks at you makes you nervous cause that man is fine as hell and you can just feel his eyes on you.

He films you on Snapchat and sends the video to you like “you look hot”

If he’s not ‘resting his eyes’ he’s mumbling along to the music because he has the aux. if y’all music tastes are different he occasionally throws in something you really like bc he likes how you perk up at one of your fav songs

Moving on. Y’all dap eachother up after s3x because it’s “modern romance” (boy stfu). You two came up with a sex playlist together and it’s on both of your phones. Sometimes one of you will add a troll song that the other doesn’t know and put it in the lineup. (Stole my heart by 1D has definitely played before and you were practically in tears laughing at his reaction. That was one of those songs he was like ‘yeah alright i think we’re done).

At some point you two develop your own handshake and it’s cute. Whenever either of you have to travel without the other that’s always the last thing you do before you leave eachother. There’s vids of your friends daring y’all to do your elaborate ass handshake drunk and doesn’t matter what’s in your system, you both know it like the back of your hand.

I think he values quality time a lot so there’s so many nights where you’re both just chilling in his room just doing your own things. He could just be at his desk watching some game highlights and you’re just doing hw on his bed with your own earbuds in work all spread out and he’s content. He’s also attentive so if he calculates that you’ve been working too long he’ll just take ur earbud like “hey let’s go get something to eat.”

People definitely think he’s the lazy one in the relationship but it’s 100% not true. Like stated above, he’s very attentive and can pretty much gauge how you’re feeling in the blink of an eye. He knows when you need alone time but won’t go without reassuring you that he’s here whenever you’re ready. When you do just need him he’s there without a second thought. If you’re more touchy he’ll have your head in his lap his arm running up and down your as you tell him what’s wrong. He knows when to joke about a minor inconvenience and over the course of your relationship knows when to cut the jokes and be serious with you.

He’d never admit it but he knows your coffee order by heart (he keeps up his image my asking wtf do you get everytime. Just let him LOL). He the type to peek at what you plan on wearing and ‘accidentally’ color coordinate then pull some shit like “why are you copying me”

Y’all def shit talk together. See someone doing something completely out of pocket in public— straight to ur phones you go (pack it up shade room). To the public it just looks like you aren’t paying any attention to one another on your dates but y’all are. Just over the phone so u don’t piss off ur target 😌

Y’all are very comfy in your relationship that you just say stuff. Y’all don’t even think.

“Rin, what if i crashed us in this car rn 😹”

“Do it. Might be fun”

When you two finally move in together it’s almost like how your relationship starts. Slowly more and more spares of stuff for you end up at his. He does sorta make the move near the end of your lease and is just like “you’re here more than me anyways.” (hes nervous but swears he’s not. Bby you’re literally shaking). Him moving you in is like hell. This mf takes sooooo long to help with boxes. Picks up 1 then sits for like 15 minutes. You ask for help the first few times and he’s just like “I got you” while continuing to scroll his phone.

Sleepy Shoulder kisses in the mornings. Only form a greeting you get but it’s ok

this is like my 100th dating suna hc and im still going this is SICK. it was so hard to not drop old refs bc i still believe in them 100% yes i do!!!!

[renegadewangs]

Van Zieks - the Examination, part 6

Warnings: SPOILERS for The Great Ace Attorney: Chronicles. Additional warning for racist sentiments uttered by fictional characters (and screencaps to show these sentiments).

Disclaimer: (see Part 1 for the more detailed disclaimer.) - These posts are not meant to be taken as fact. Everything I’m outlining stems from my own views and experiences. If you believe that I’ve missed or misinterpreted something, please let me know so I can edit the post accordingly. -The purpose of these posts is an analysis, nothing more. Please do not come into these posts expecting me to either defend Barok van Zieks from haters, nor expecting me to encourage the hatred. - I’m using the Western release of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles for these posts, but may refer to the original Japanese dialogue of Dai Gyakuten Saiban if needed to compare what’s said. This also means I’m using the localized names and localized romanization of the names to stay consistent. -It doesn’t matter one bit to me whether you like Barok van Zieks or dislike him. However, I will ask that everyone who comments refrains from attacking real, actual people.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

And here we have the second half of The Unspeakable Story, because the case was so long I had to split it into two.

Episode 5: The Unspeakable Story – Part 2

When we last left off, Gina was allowed to testify about the omnibus murder two months ago. Sure enough, she talks about what really happened and how she was threatened into lying in court of law. The judge realizes that he made a grave error in letting McGilded walk. Again, I'm not sure why he's only realizing this now when that trial ended in disarray, with the entire gallery shouting about whether it was or wasn't a gross miscarriage of justice.

I'm giving Van Zieks an additional scumbag point for this remark, since Ryu had already admitted to his wrongdoing and, despite Van Zieks's repeated warnings of 'are you sure about this', brought the details of the falsified testimony up himself. Don't pretend to be understanding about the position this puts Ryu in if you're going to be a jerk about it afterwards, Van Zieks.

Some shenanigans and Gregson whispering to Graydon later, Scotland Yard returns with the small box! Turns out it's a music box! When suggested that the court should listen to the music on the disc, Gregson interjects and unconvincingly claims the music box and disc are unrelated to the case. Ryu objects to say that the disc is fundamentally important for understanding the motives of the crime and Van Zieks, on his own accord, chimes in that the prosecution has no objections. When Gregson continues to stammer that the disc is police property, Van Zieks says:

“But it is policy of this prosecutor to leave no avenues unexplored. And you, Inspector, have no jurisdiction here to prevent that from happening.”

So Gregson and Van Zieks are definitely not buddies. Since Gregson is a key player in this case (and I mean that in a negative way, since Gregson is actively hiding important knowledge from the court), the fact that Van Zieks is turning a deaf ear to his pleas does in fact make Van Zieks an accomplice of ours in a roundabout way. Only for this particular context, though. The point is, so long as the prosecution continues to agree with the defense about unveiling key pieces of evidence, Van Zieks is helping Ryu achieve his ultimate goal. Also it's just plain fun to watch Gregson panic. We're having a jolly old time in this courtroom!

Unfortunately, when the box is played, there's no music. It's just weird tones. So Ryu is confronted with the question of whether the music box's sounds are relevant to the case or not. Naturally, I chose that they aren't relevant to see what would happen. I don't know why I expected any different than this:

“When you speak, you must mean what you say. ...Or be prepared to suffer the consequences.”

Penalty from Van Zieks! He's right though, I never learn. Okay, so let's say the tones are relevant. Van Zieks jumps onto that like a cat pouncing on a mouse toy, of course. He wants to know just what that relevance is. Ryu says that the chimes aren't necessarily music, and Van Zieks pursues relentlessly. “Well, now that you've told us what they are not, I'm sure the court would like to hear what they are. Do enlighten us, my Nipponese friend.” This is all very standard fare, of course. In any Ace Attorney game, the player has to outline their reasoning in steps, which means the prosecution and/or the judge will continue to ask for elaboration until all the details are out in the open. Of course, Van Zieks has to be a jerk about it as he follows it up with the words “Surely you have an idea in mind? Because if not... It will be the death of your ill-formed argument!” Eesh. Harsh wording for such a simple concept of 'your argument is void if you don't tell us exactly what you mean'. What's bothersome about these moments is that often, the player already has an exact idea in mind, but the game's dialogue will beat around the bush a bit more and really rub it in. (example: Iris telling Ryu at this very moment that the music box isn't broken at all and it's meant to play these particular chimes.) But because the player isn't given the option to just figure this out for themselves and then gets scolded by the prosecution for 'taking too long', naturally the player may get frustrated.

I'm getting there! SHEESH! It's not my fault Iris is distracting me! I had the evidence ready to present like two minutes ago!

Anyway, Ryu finally links the chimes to government messages being intercepted and leaked to other countries. These messages are usually telegraphed in morse code, so it should be obvious where Ryu's going with this. Van Zieks looks horrified at the notion of the disc containing secrets in morse code. Still, alongside Ryu he works through the logic of what happened and how McGilded would've been involved in this. Graydon, who works at a telegraph office, is of course the prime suspect for intercepting those secrets and that's the reason why he broke into the pawn shop to recover the disc. Graydon is outraged by the accusation, saying “I've had to stand here in silence while that pretentious foreign lawyer has been prattling away!”, but Van Zieks cuts him off with an objection.

“The prosecution demands the witness testifies... in response to the accusations brought by the defense!”

It's Mrs. Garrideb all over again! Yes! So just to reiterate, the prosecution has nothing to gain by doing this, the way I see it. Ryu can't actively prove any of his theories, he's got no hard evidence. The only thing Ryu can do at this point is have Graydon testify and hope that he'll slip up; and Van Zieks is supporting this notion instead of demanding to see this currently non-existent evidence. So Graydon testifies, the topic of morse code comes up again, and we get a lesson in the basics of how it works with the dots and the dashes.

Surely it can't be that a prosecutor in an Ace Attorney game is being passive aggressive again? Anyway, turns out the music box doesn't play morse code at all because instead of dots and dashes, there's only one of the two. The testimony continues on to address that Graydon's last name used to be Milverton, a fact which causes Graydon to react very heavily and attempt to deny it. Van Zieks subtly reminds him that this effort is futile, since Graydon is a communications officer attached to civil service. His personal details would've been thoroughly checked when he was appointed to his position.

I enjoy it when Van Zieks finally gets turned around to point his sharp finger and sharp words towards people who actually deserve it. Yes, he's ferocious and a somewhat horrible person, but Graydon had this coming for being, y'know, a literal murderer who tried to frame a teenage girl. Van Zieks even reminds Graydon of the same sentiment (“it would really take no time at all for the court to subpoena those records”) later when Graydon continues to deny that Mason Milverton was his father. Good boy, Van Zieks. You're learning that not all British citizens are upstanding and it's okay to accuse some of them of wrongdoing. Because remember, in earlier trials when Ryu would indirectly accuse witnesses (or juror no 4) of lying or criminal activity, Van Zieks would overreact with an “HOW DARE YOU, SIR” of sorts. But not this time, oh no. How dared Graydon?

So with the relation between Graydon and the victim of the omnibus murder proven, we've made headway, but still not enough. So long as the music box chimes seem irrelevant, we don't have the full story to pin Graydon down for anything. For this reason, Ryu gets back on that topic and insists it's very much possible for the disc to contain secret messages. Van Zieks is still not quite convinced.

Covering his insecurities with fancy speech, I see. Van Zieks can act as smart as he wants, but the brutal truth of the matter will always be that he's not smart enough to take evidence in his own two hands and flip it over or open it up. Ryu's the only one who takes the practical approach, opens the bottom and finds out that the music box can actually play two discs at the same time. One for dots and one for dashes, which means there's a second disc out there. So with this out in the open, it's time for everyone's favorite type of Ace Attorney tennis: The back and forth truth reveal! Ryu and Van Zieks take turns in detailing the chronology of Graydon's illegal dealings with McGilded, with negotiations apparently turning sour in the omnibus two months ago, and thus the brickmaker met his end. McGilded attempted to hide the stolen disc by sticking it in his coat and pawning it at the pawnshop, but Graydon found out about this, etc. We've all played the case, we all know the story.

Graydon ultimately admits to having been at the crime scene that night, but still refuses to admit he worked with McGilded or stole government secrets. (Okay okay, ALBA, your denial is too powerful to let this game end, have it your way.) Ryu surmises that only Graydon could have shot Windibank, as he would've been the third intruder holding a third gun. Graydon flips this logic around; now that he's admitted he was at the crime scene that night, he can also admit to 'what he saw' as a 'key witness'. He claims that he saw the moment Windibank was shot by the pickpocket and he took the third gun afterwards, and he's ready to testify about it. Van Zieks, who should technically be jumping at the opportunity to hear decisive testimony for his precious guilty verdict, is instead not amused at all.

“If it is shown that your claim is false, you will have incriminated yourself as the killer.”

And these are some very telling lines once again. Why would he warn Graydon about this if he didn't have reason to believe those claims would be proven false? Why would he think Graydon could incriminate himself as the killer if he were 100% convinced that Gina is the culprit? He must know by now there's a strong chance that Gina is innocent and Graydon is the real killer. But sure enough, Graydon testifies about watching through a peephole and seeing blood spatter over the coat. Blood which he couldn't know is there unless he saw the murder happen. So the judge wonders whether the coat can be tested for blood and indeed, Van Zieks confirms that it can. A German scientist discovered that test 'very recently' and it's already being used in several courts around the globe because this test was actually, y'know, verified in the field of science.

“Ideas are no use to us here. In science, as in law, theories must be proven before they stand.” “We could shatter all vestiges of doubt within minutes!”

rip. To be clear, it doesn't seem as if Van Zieks actually knows for certain there's blood on the coat, because how could he? His insistence on the blood test doesn't seem to be motivated by hope of 'cornering Gina because the blood will definitely be there'. Rather, I think he just wants to either prove or disprove Graydon's testimony so we can all get on with our lives. Plus, I think he may want to flaunt these 'official methods' just to diss (S)Holmes's methods some more. While waiting for the results, Ryu is allowed to cross-examine the very suspicious peephole testimony. Despite Ryu being the one to press Graydon at every statement, Van Zieks will occasionally chime in with questions of his own to get some clarification. Which is funny, because the prosecution isn't the one who has to cross-examine witnesses. Van Zieks should technically be staying out of it. The fact that he's butting in to needle Graydon some more is just... I don't know, it's another one of those very telling moments, I suppose. Again, he probably already suspects that Graydon is the real killer.

The cross-examination is put on hold when the test results finally come back, confirming the blood on Gina's coat. Ryu still tries to save his case by saying the blood actually belonged to Mason Milverton, but that's obviously a very dangerous route to take.

“Did you not argue fervently for McGilded's innocence? And yet now that the man is dead... You brand him as a murderer? Your conduct shatters any shred of respect you may have earnt for yourself in this country!”

We all know he was a murderer for real. Van Zieks knows this more than anyone in the courtroom (well, except maybe Graydon). Besides, Gina testified about this like fifteen minutes earlier. To be frank, the fact that Ryu is admitting to this openly should actually warrant more respect as opposed to breaking it down. Because, remember, Van Zieks gave Ryu several options two months ago to blindly defend McGilded and instead of taking those opportunities, Ryu instead admitted he couldn't say for certain whether there was foul play happening. I think what's going on here may be that Van Zieks is emotionally conflicted. He was already buying into the theory that Gina is innocent and Graydon is the real killer, but the blood on the coat threw a wrench into it all. Graydon hypothetically could only have the coat knowledge if he'd seen it happen, which makes Gina the real killer after all. With something so conclusive, any belief he might've invested into Ryu's integrity has just been 'betrayed' and indeed, if Ryu's integrity is in doubt, anything else to come from him will also be relentlessly drawn into question. That doesn't just apply to Van Zieks; all the jury members who were on Ryu's side before immediately, unanimously vote guilty. Van Zieks assumes that there will be another Summation Examination, as has become the norm.

Ryu grows desperate, because changing the jury's minds is going to be exceptionally difficult now. Thankfully, our hero (S)Holmes appears! That mischievous scamp!

“Detective (derogatory)”. I think it would've been an interesting plotline if (S)Holmes actively investigated the Professor case back then, perhaps even at Van Zieks's request, and failed to find the killer in time to prevent Klint's death. That would explain why Barok now thinks so badly of (S)Holmes and the amazing detective he's described as in the novels. Unfortunately, the second game never really addresses whether (S)Holmes played a part in the Professor investigation and if so, why it ultimately came down Genshin's duel and Gregson forging evidence to 'close the case'. You'd think that if (S)Holmes investigated the deaths, he and his partner would've tracked down the real killer long before things could escalate that badly.

Anyway, (S)Holmes asks for five minutes of the court's time to pass some evidence on to the defense. Van Zieks begins by saying that the trial has already taken up many hours of the court's time. So 'having spent that long already...' Gregson cuts him off to agree, saying that since they've spent so long already, they don't want to waste even more time. Unfortunately for him, that's not what Van Zieks was about to say at all.

So he's fully on our side again! Hurray! All well and good, but he does still fling one of his chalices later to signify the five minutes are up. (S)Holmes thanks Van Zieks for allowing the brief recess, the reply being that he needs no thanks, since “the die is cast”. In other words, they've already reached a point of no return here. At first this seems like a very cryptic dismissal of gratitude, but what Van Zieks is actually saying is that the jurors have already made up their minds and settled on guilty. “Any attempt to alter the verdict now would be utterly futile.” Which still doesn't say much about whether Van Zieks believes they're headed in the right direction, it only says that he doesn't believe Ryu can convince them to change their minds this time.

Surprise! Ryu doesn't have to! When (S)Holmes came into the room in disguise to deliver the lab results of the coat, the cross-examination of Graydon was actually suspended. This means that, by law, Ryu has the right to continue that cross-examination instead of turning to the jurors for the Summation Examination. Van Zieks suffers through his damage animation (which has been rarely seen by this point in the game and honestly, it's a delight to watch), calling the whole matter absurd. This is the law, Ziekie boy! Deal with it! So with this final chance granted, Ryu presents the catflap device to debunk Graydon's testimony about the peephole. Susato tampered with the crime scene and made that cat flap mere minutes after Windibank was shot. So if the cat flap wasn't there before, how could Graydon possibly have witnesses what he claims to have witnessed?

Oh, he's thrown off now. He's got no idea what to believe anymore. I can't blame him; who would expect a trial to take a turn like this? We're getting close, but Van Zieks has one more obstacle to throw our way, as all prosecutors do. How can we prove that the peephole flap was made after the crime as opposed to before it? “When was the peephole cut? The prosecution demands proof of your answer!” Again, this is par for the course. This is what any prosecutor would demand. Evidence is law in Ace Attorney world and Van Zieks needs tangible proof that Ryu isn't just a 'lying traitor' like Genshin was. Naturally, we have proof and Van Zieks is the one we have to thank for that.

Considering Van Zieks is the one who showed up to court that day with a big stack of photographs from that very same 'infernal camera', this line will never stop cracking me up.  So now we know for sure the peephole was made after Windibank was shot! Unfortunately, in submitting evidence we now also know one other thing.

To be fair, Susato didn't know it was a legit murder scene until the cat flap was created and they could see the body. Up until that point, it was just a scene for breaking-and-entering, along with (S)Holmes shooting. I'm sure that was taken into account when discussing the punishment later on, though. Anyway, we've proven Graydon's perjury, but Van Zieks insists we still haven't quite proven that he's a killer. Luckily, Ryu's already two steps ahead of Van Zieks here. Since we've proven that Graydon was lying about what he saw, the question is now how he knows about these things to begin with. He couldn't possibly have seen the peephole with his own eyes, so how did he know it was there? And how did he know about the blood on the coat? Gregson once again decides to interject, asking Van Zieks for 'a word, please'. He wants to leave the courtroom and return to the station to put in his report.

“You will remain exactly where you are until this trial concludes.”

Heeheeh. Brutal. So with Gregson forced to stay, Ryu is free to insinuate that information about the crime scene must've been leaked to Graydon. And since Graydon had no idea he'd be summoned to court to testify on the murder, he could only have received the information after arriving at the Old Bailey. The only person with the opportunity to pass that information to him (in the middle of a trial, I might add) was Gregson. Gregson immediately barks that he had no reason to leak information about the investigation to someone like Graydon, but we know that's not true. Ryu suggests there was a deal.

I really enjoy this particular expression on Van Zieks, and it fits especially well in this context. While he usually looks very calm and cold on the surface, he now looks outwardly ferocious, slightly unhinged. Perhaps even in pain. This is the face of betrayal and humiliation. We learn in the second game that Van Zieks had already suspected Gregson of having dirty hands when it comes to the Reaper, so I expect this insinuation hits extra hard now. It's confirming to Van Zieks that Gregson is indeed not above dirty tactics. He doesn't take it lightly, of course. “With the stakes so high, the prosecution is not prepared to listen to baseless charges. It is incumbent on the defense now to present evidence in support of this diabolical claim.”

So let's do it. It all comes down to the music box disc and the stolen government secrets, of course. Gregson admits that he was ordered to retrieve the stolen information and do it “on the q.t.” Top secret mission, this one, though earlier on it was implied to have been ordered by Stronghart. Van Zieks concludes that Gregson objected so heavily to the disc being used as evidence because he knew of the information on it. Gregson replies that he realized there was a possibility of it. Since we know the music box plays two discs, the deal must've involved this second disc. Van Zieks is now thinking ahead very quickly, here. He asserts that since Gregson is a Scotland Yard detective, he would've approached this deal with extreme caution and not simply taken Graydon's word for it. He would have asked for the article in question to be handed to him immediately and so, it stands to reason the second disc is in the courtroom at that very moment. Gregson doesn't take lightly to the accusations and when Ryu suggests a cavity- sorry, I mean body search, Gregson agrees to it without so much as a flinch. Suspicious behavior, to say the least. But this means the body search is allowed and everything rests on the outcome.

“If, following the search of the inspector's personal effects, no disk is found... You will be deemed unfit for court service, this trial will end and my country's government will formally demand of yours that you are severely reprimanded.”

But Van Zieks, if Ryu were deemed unfit for court service, who would you face in hectic turnabout trials? He's your one true nemesis now, remember? The judge agrees with Van Zieks's sentiments, but Iris has some very interesting insight: “You're just threatening Runo because you're scared!” Since Iris is one of the most clever characters in the games, we have to examine this statement further. If he's scared, then what's he scared of? My guess would be the firm, undeniable confirmation that Gregson is willing to screw with a fair trial and let a killer walk free. Yes, he was ordered to do this by his superiors (STRONGHART), but it doesn't change that Gregson is throwing an innocent girl under the omnibus to get what he wants. And again, keep this in mind, Van Zieks already held suspicions that Gregson had something to do with the Reaper curse. But they were friends once; Gregson was Klint's friend. There's a difference between suspecting an old buddy of being up to no good and hard evidence that it's true. What adds credence to this being the reason of Van Zieks's fear is one of the game's recurring themes: You mustn't look away from the truth, no matter how blinding it is. No matter how painful, it needs to be acknowledged.

So the game asks whether Ryu still insists on the search, knowing there'll be grave consequences if nothing is found. By this point I was so tired that I didn't choose any of the other options and went straight for the correct answer: Search someone else! Gregson's being so cool about it that we can already surmise he doesn't have the disc on him, but he did have the perfect opportunity to hide it on the taller Skulkin brother earlier in the trial. So Ryu insists on there being a search, and Van Zieks says:

“But your typical Nipponese stubbornness may well land you in hot water this time. Perhaps the lesson will do you some good.”

This sort of implies to me that Van Zieks has also realized the disc isn't on Gregson's person. He's known the guy for a very long time, and so, he'd also know that Gregson is easily flustered with zero poker face skills. There's no way he could look so cool if there was a chance of the disc being found in his pocket. So this is the point where Ryu reveals that he doesn't want the search done on Gregson, which does succeed in ruffling our dear old inspector. Gregson starts accusing Ryu of having lost his mind and the court shouldn't have to put up with this nonsense, with the gallery also erupting into chatter. Iris snaps and tells everyone to be quiet. Ryu's just doing what he was told to do and having the courage of his convictions, so they should all respect that and listen to what he has to say. The judge admits that the court is in awe of the defense's convictions and I could write an entirely different essay here about Ryunosuke's growth throughout the games, but I won't. Point is, the cavity- sorry, I mean body search of Nash Skulkin is allowed. Gregson absolutey has zero poker face without a doubt, as he tries to object to the search in the name of Scotland Yard.

“In this courtroom, only the prosecution and the defence have the authority to object.”

Gregson tries to sputter his way out of this, but Van Zieks says: “I have no idea what forces are in play that might influence your actions, but personally I have no intention of obstructing the course of this trial.” (Gregson literally said that Van Zieks needed “Stronghart's paw print” to get more details on the top-secret investigation into McGilded's shady activities, but sure. No idea what forces are in play. Okay.)

Pin 'im down and use the rubber glove, bailiff! The missing second music box disc is pulled out of Nash's jacket and Ryu explains why he knew it'd be found there.

Uhhhhhhhhhh. I think what Ryu's trying to say is that Gregson would rarely fly into such a rage that he'd assault someone physically, but... This man absolutely loses his composure all the dang time. Just ask the fish n chips he keeps aggressively chomping down or scattering over his shoulder. He doesn't strike me as a composed character at all, so to say he behaved “extremely out of character” is kind of off to me. But whatever, it proved our point so I'll let it slide. When the judge asks why Gregson didn't just submit the second disc as evidence the second he got his hands on it, Van Zieks surmises that if the information on the disc were revealed in court, it'd be problematic. Gregson once again confirms he's working under direct orders from the ministry (STRONGHART) to keep the stolen info on the down low. But now we've got a problem. Neither Graydon nor Gregson will admit that they made a deal for the disc (it just magically appeared in Gregson's possession then, sure) and so long as they don't admit to that deal, we still can't prove Graydon lied about his testimony in regards to Gina being the shooter. The judge is ready to turn the matter over to the jury for their final learnings, and if these people had any common sense they'd all vote not-guilty because Graydon is getting away with his nonsense through a sheer technicality. Even so, Ryu intends to put the squeeze on Gregson by playing the second disc along with the first to determine whether there's truly morse code involved. Either Gregson admits to unlawful dealings with a witness to protect state secrets, or those state secrets get played out loud for everyone to hear. Gregson warns him he'll be making an enemy of the entire British government if he lets those secrets out into the world. Ryu insists he'll stop at nothing to do his job and protect his client, no matter who he makes an enemy out of. Van Zieks pours himself another glass of wine in silence.

Yeah, a real shrewd, calculating man. Uhuh. Again, I want to take a second here to point to the symbiosis we usually have between prosecutor and lead detective. Even in the case of Fulbright and Blackquill, with their unique circumstances, they still worked in tandem. You'd never catch them bickering about whether or not to present a certain piece of evidence. It's fascinating to watch Van Zieks consistently ignore Gregson's pleas. Speaking of which, let's have a leg slam to shut Gregson up.

“I'm a prosecutor. ...I'm no Scotland Yard puppet. In this courtroom, my duty is to the law. So let me propose a toast. To uncovering the truth... by fair means or foul.”

YOOO!!! Get him, Zieks! There's absolutely no denying now that Van Zieks is 100% on Ryu's side. He knows that playing the secret message will cause Gregson to cave and admit to his shady deal. And once we know for certain Graydon's testimony is one huge sham... Well, as Van Zieks already said earlier, Graydon will be incriminated as the real killer.

So the box plays for about ten seconds with actual morse code this time and Gregson cracks like cheap porcelain. When Ryu confronts him with how this dealing would lead to the defendant being wrongfully accused of murder, Gregson just kind of shrugs it off. On its own, you might be thinking Gregson is a scummy asshole for this, but there's some very important factors to keep in mind here from the second game. First of all, very simply, Stronghart ordered Gregson to retrieve the info 'no matter what' and Gregson isn't in any position to refuse at this point. But then there's the Reaper's curse, which is way more important. Even if Gina were found not guilty, she'd still have to die. Not just die; Gregson would have to arrange for her death. I doubt he enjoys being in that position, so it's easier for him to just willfully sabotage the trial and have Gina be executed by the government. Some of the blood would still be on his hands, but at least he wouldn't have had to orchestrate some elaborate death trap himself, leading to all the blood on his hands. (Cool justification, still second-hand murder.)

Uh, wait, this is a Van Zieks essay, not a Gregson essay. So anyway, after Gregson gets choked by Graydon and nobody steps in to help him, we finally get the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Graydon has a semi tragic backstory and he was the one who cause the omnibus fire.

I guess Graydon wasn't too familiar with the Reaper's curse. Either that, or he didn't believe it was real. So now, to reiterate, we're told several times that anyone prosecuted by Van Zieks is doomed, but only one of the defendants Ryu's had so far has died a tragic death and it wasn't even because of the Reaper's curse. It was because someone else sought revenge, so even if Van Zieks hadn't been the prosecutor, McGilded still would've died. Graydon then goes on to talk about what happened in the pawnbrokery and how he shot Windibank without even thinking about it. Van Zieks has something to say about this.

“A man who used his wealth and influence to distort the facts and escape justice for the crime of murder. What tragic irony... For what you have done... is exactly the same. You've become the very monster you saw, and despised so deeply, in McGilded.”

I feel like this is even more elaborate setup to the fact that Van Zieks's brother, a wealthy and influential man, was actually a mass murderer. For bonus points: 'someone realized the wealthy man was a murderer, knew he wouldn't be confronted with his crimes and therefore took matters into his own hands with vigilante justice'. Does that sound familiar too? Gosh, I love foreshadowing. The judge tells Gregson he'll have to face charges as well, with Van Zieks chiming in that even if it was in the line of duty, Gregson's crime is a serious and inexcusable one. With that, the attention is turned to the defense. The judge says that the morse code thing was an unexpected revelation (and this is said in a complimenting sort of way), with Van Zieks unable to stay silent on this:

“In fact, I think we should applaud my learned friend's courage here today. I propose a toast. To demanding that government secrets be disseminated before the entire courtroom!”

Hee hee... Well, Gregson did warn him beforehand that he'd be making an enemy of the British government if he played those music discs. Ryu becomes very flustered and apologizes, but the telegraph juror interjects here to say that the dots and dashes weren't really morse code. Rather, it was just gibberish to her. So despite Iris looking thoughtful, it seems we didn't spill any beans after all and the matter is dropped. We move on to our verdict, a unanimous not-guilty for Gina Lestrade. Hurray!

Now there's a very clumsy scene transition of Ryu and Van Zieks standing in the abandoned courtroom, facing one another. I suppose Van Zieks made some sort of gesture for Ryu to hang back so they could speak in private? It's odd for them to still be standing behind their respective benches, though. Since court's dismissed, it'd be easy for them to just walk up to one another instead of shouting across an empty room. It may be symbolism that there's still a gaping void between the two of them; the Professor incident. Or maybe I'm giving the game too much credit there and they just couldn't be bothered to animate new backgrounds for this single scene. So here we have a very important conversation. I'll type it out:

“I must say you've surprised me, my Far Eastern friend. Despite being a Nipponese, you saw through the pretence to the malice that festered within that Englishman. And at the same time, you saw through the grime to the surprising heart of your English client. You have a curious talent for judging character, especially considering our very different cultures.”

So here we have a telltale problem with racial prejudice. Van Zieks assumed that because Ryu has a different background, especially culturally, he wouldn't be able to understand or relate to English citizens. We've seen this sentiment before in case 1-4, where Van Zieks is shocked that Ryu would understand the mind of an English policeman. Ryu says that he doesn't think there's anything curious about it at all, because whether people are from Britain or from Japan, they're all human beings. They're not so different on the inside. Ryu is effectively saying that Van Zieks needs to stop categorizing people based on their nationality because that doesn't work. Human beings are human beings; some of them are good and some of them are bad. Van Zieks doesn't directly reply to this, instead confirming what we already suspected.

“You know, I took this case for one very simple reason. To lock swords with you once again here in the courtroom. When I encountered you for the first time two months ago, it reminded me... of toasting friendship and trust with another Nipponese... only to find my trust betrayed. Through you, I hoped to look into the eyes of the man I once knew... and try to understand.”

So remember in the previous essay when I surmised that the torrid look of hatred in Van Zieks's eyes was directed at someone who died ten years ago? Well, it's confirmed here. Van Zieks didn't see a fresh newbie whenever he looked at Ryu; he saw Genshin Asogi. The betrayal which took place ten years ago was never given closure. Sure, Van Zieks managed to send Asogi to the gallows to exact 'justice' and get some form of payback, but he was never given Asogi's motives. He never got to confront this man with the emotional turmoil or the hurt, because he wouldn't have been given the opportunity to do so and even if he'd tried, he wouldn't have gotten satisfactory responses. Asogi was abruptly executed and Van Zieks never learned just what possessed a dear friend to murder his brother. He was left with boiling hatred, grief and a whole lot of questions. So indeed, now he hoped to 'understand' Asogi through Ryu, but that was never an option to begin with. Ryu has no relation to that man, so Van Zieks might as well have tried to grasp that understanding by 'locking swords' with Beppo. It's about the same level of futility. Van Zieks's misguided attacks appear to be born from the assumption that it must've been a cultural thing; that perhaps betrayal is something which comes naturally to people from Japan. It's an incredibly stupid, naive way of thinking, because by simplifying Genshin's motives down to his race and cultural upbringing, it takes away the option that there's a far darker truth to be found. Quite frankly, I think Van Zieks is afraid of that truth, just as he was afraid of confirmation that Gregson's not above dirtying his hands. To affirm that Genshin Asogi's friendship was genuine and he truly was an honorable man would imply that he'd had a reason to take Klint's life. I'm not saying it was a good reason! I'm just saying... a reason. When Ryu asks for more details on what happened back then, Van Zieks won't reply.

“Coming to be known as the Reaper of the Bailey, and my retirement from service five years ago... It gives me cause to wonder if our meeting has some deeper purpose. So... Farewell, my learned Nipponese fellow. Until we meet again.”

(He crushes another chalice in the process of saying this, because of course.) The deeper purpose alluded to here, along with the earlier line that Ryu may one day learn the answer, can only mean that Van Zieks foresees something of a journey here. A path to walk down together with Ryu in which, eventually, the Professor case will once again surface. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing for Van Zieks, we don't know. I'm not sure he knows. But he did admit to having been pleasantly surprised by Ryu and he had a civil conversation with him just now, so the sentiment here is that Van Zieks is slowly letting go of some of his earlier grudges. He doesn't outright admit that he was wrong to be a scumbag to Ryu, nor does he apologize, but by admitting he was only attacking Ryu to make sense of something that happened in his past, he's basically admitting to his behavior being irrational. He's softened up a little, and with a second game on the way, it means at the very least the option of further character development is there.

The conversation ends and in the defendant lobby, Gina is reminded she's not in the clear yet. There's the curse, after all. Gina's not afraid, because he say she sees it, “the Reaper is a bit like Him upstairs.” Sort of funny to equate the Reaper to God, but what she's basically talking about is karmic retribution. Rotten coves like McGilded get what's coming to them, but she knows she's a good person deep down and so, she thinks she'll escape the curse just fine. Which doesn't say much about all those other victims who came before McGilded, mind. We can't say for certain they were all rotten too. Well, the second game will tell us whether she escapes with her life or not. And normally I would also take a look at the little 'bit' that characters have in the end credits, but Van Zieks didn't get his own bit for whatever reason. He's only briefly mentioned by Pat and Roly Beate, so that's it when it comes to his character in the first game.

Next up, we're moving on to case three of the second game, taking place six months after The Unspeakable Story!

[macgyvertape]

Castlevania kinda had a pacing problem

spoilers for all of Netflix’s Castlevania. I haven’t seen much analysis for the show on tumblr, im honestly curious if discussions I had with irl friends mirror what fandom talks about

tldr: Castlevania seems inconsistently paced from season to season, and within season as well, leads to a lot of characters motivations feeling unclear so characters repeatedly explain why they are doing something while they’re doing it

overview of the seasons:

S1 I know somewhat of a test for Netflix but it has good main trio character establishment and sets the scale of the conflict

s2: pretty complete emotional arc for most characters and resolves the plot of killing Dracula while setting up additional characters to continue the story. Isaac, Hector, Carmilla all established with the audience as characters whose story would continue

honestly I would bet this is the most popular season

S3: s2 did a bit of worldbuilding, but this season really fleshed out the world with both a wide range of locations and exploring the question of “what now, Dracula is dead but vampires and night creatures remain”.

There were basically 4 plot threads: 1) Sypha/Trevor investigating the cult & Saint Germain; 2) Hector & Carmilla (also introducing Lenore, Striga, Morana); 3) Isaac’s journey of revenge & self discovery; 4) Alucard sits around the castle and is betrayed.

overall characters roughly feel like they are in the same place if not worse. A big criticism I saw at the time, which hold up after rewatching this before s4 is nothing felt resolved for the main characters

I would say this season is where the pacing issues start to become apparent, juggling 4 plot threads that lack a central theme or even mutual character connection. If there was a central theme it would be “humans are awful to each other”. The Judge doing Hot Fuzz style murders, The Wizard in the tower, Sumi & Taka

S4: it starts with the same 4 plot threads, though upfront it is made clear that the plot theme is “people are trying to resurrect Dracula”, and the progression of the plot works to resolve unrelated plot threads until the main trio reunites for the boss fights. To me and my friends watching it was obvious that the show would reunite the main trio, the question was how and how far into the run time.

Season 4 is why I’m writing this essay, for the past 2 days I’ve been like, yeah that character sure explained their motives repeatedly maybe with some philosophical discussion, but it’s just such a weird place considering where they were in s3

Alucard’s arc:

Where he was left in season 3, it was after killing people he had trusted in self defense and impaling their corpses. It was clearly meant to parallel Dracula’s dislike of humanity. However overall his character lacked a proactive motivating force.

Honestly the most interesting thing I found in s3 was Alucard clearly misses Sypha and Trevor, however they don’t miss him or refer to him

One reason Sumi & Taka betray Alucard is for the secrets and power of Castlevania. After inviting the village including St Germain who Alucard was warned of into the Castle, Alucard makes 0 effort to secure anything, not even his personal childhood room. Guess he really learned nothing

Discussing St Germain, I think it’s funny that they had a several minute flashback sequence for his lost girlfriend (who doesn’t have a name or a voice actor), to remind the viewer of who he is, and to justify how he’s suddenly back and down for murder.

In s4 there is the call to help the village, and the walk back to the castle is a montage of Alucard opening up to Greta and becoming friendly literally overnight. He laughs off the impaling, and basically all of the darker things he went through in season 3, which has me asking what was the point of his season 3 arc then? 

Honestly writing this I realize the biggest parallel he has with Dracula is the call to action from a bold woman with a dramatic entrance speech which then leads to a romance

Isaac’s arc:

in s3, with all the other themes of “humanity sucks” I was always unsure if the townspeople were meant to appear irrational while attacking a larger force instead of letting him pass through an leave, or him not caring about how he’s provoking them is meant to show his insanity

ive seen the discussion elsewhere, curious about the Discourse here

is s4 Isaac has the whole monologue about how he now has agency but him gaining that agency was his s3 arc. In s4 he’s already at the point of accepting it. By the end of s4 he’s one of those who comes the furthest from his first character appearance to his last.

s4e5 where of Isaac attacking Carmilla in Isaac’s 2nd appearance had him resolving like 4 plot threads at once (Carmilla, Striga& Morana, Hector, and Isaac himself).

but i do wonder if Trevor, Sypha, or Alucard even know any of these people exist. I think not

I was honestly confused if I missed a scene from his dialogue about building something and what is inherent nature, to “My plan has evolved, my plan is now conquest” because he only conquests the one castle and the rest is left unclear

Upon rewatch the connection there is “killing [the wizard] felt just ... I liked that feeling”, so the show says that Isaac in the end attacked Carmilla for the sake of justice and not revenge.

Isaac in his last conversation expresses the theme of s4 “build something new on these old bones, where people can live for the future”

however, his arc honestly feel scenes were cut, and then dialogue was written around it. He’s the only living character who doesn’t show up in the epilogue and the sentient night creature “what if I could empty hell” dialogue was some of the most interesting worldbuilding. Night creatures with sentience and possibility of regaining memories!!!!

The Council of Sisters & Hector’s arc:

oh I’ve already seen s4 discourse about Lenore/Hector while searching for character analysis, a chunk of it seems to be rationalizing the absolute difference between how s3 ended with these characters and s4. It was extremely confusing for me and my friends; wondering if 1) was Hector showing more emotional intelligence than before and putting on a facade to cover up hatred? Nope 2) did more time pass than 6 weeks for there to be some kind stockholm syndrome? No, Hector seems fine to let Lenore kill herself

The slave control ring: played up in the climax of s3 and easily solved s4. s3 Lenore says if he tries to harm them, flee, or take it off it would cause crippling pain, in s4 Hector just easily cuts off his own finger.

for a control ring that they take time to show a version being on the Rebus, it doesn’t do much controlling of Hector

also guess the definition of “do harm” just refers to direct action

Lenore in s4: has no purpose in conquest, has that useless remarked on by multiple characters, is imprisoned, then kills herself after a genre aware philosophical discussion. This essay is long enough, but what the fuck happened to this character who ended s3 clearly physically and sexually abusive? Seriously this was one of the biggest writing changes to the point where she was treating Hector as an equal. Compare her last words in s3 “shh the real people [vampires] are talking”. The change in the relationship is actually something I would have taken being shown, or atleast told of what exactly caused this change other than the vague “you adopted him”

Striga&Morana get the best arc of the Council. 3 scenes: the tent argument, Daybreak armor fight & argument resolution, declaration of feelings and turning away. You could argue Castlevania is plot to be connective tissue between fight scenes, but for all the dialogue about human resistance in different seasons it was nice to see it. Overall the scenes were short but had a lot of showing what their relationship is not just telling,

unlike Carmilla. For as much hyping up as they did with her, and as much power as she had, she only appeared in 2 episodes and no other group except Isaac knew about her military conquest.

the map scene where she states her motive for conquest of wanting to take things from old men is the key example of how characterization became tell not show. How interesting was that monologue compared to the past seasons flashback to her murmuring the old vampire lord, or all her repeated insults of men/man-children that shows how she judges people??

That monologue had to carry the weight of justifying the Sisterhood bonds falling apart as well as why her motivation changed from building a human pen from Styria to Braila to world conquest. I think it did so poorly

Sypha & Trevor

really Sypha & Trevor have the main plot in the show. I checked and post season 1 the only episode they don’t appear in is s4e6, which is entirely devoted to the Isaac, Hector, and Council of Sisterhood arc. Their partnership and adventures are the main plot of the show.

Its easy to see what Trevor’s arc was over the show: coming to peace with the deaths of his family, taking up the mantle of being a Belmont, and starting a new family with Sypha.

With Sypha I actually had to scroll through tv tropes for what is her character arc, and I guess hers is disillusionment from adventure and life outside the speakers? My friends joke that Sypha’s magic is what the plot demands to look cool in a fight, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Tangent: the ending of their arc was easy to guess: as soon as Trevor went to fight the final boss alone I literally said “oh i bet Sypha’s pregnant, Trevor’s doing a heroic sacrifice, theyll use the unexplained magical dagger mcguffin, and 60/40 odds that he goes through an infinite corridor to outright come back vs just the implication he might come back”

I guess my final thought of the show, was overall the SUPER Final Boss got my by surprise. It was a good twist I enjoyed. Not that Death appeared, I had guessed that from the heavy foreshadowing, but I was surprised by who it was, because I had thought I thought the characters involved feeling shoehorned into the plot was just more bad writing. The Alchemist who put St Germain on the path or murder for no discernible motive for helping? Sure gotta move the plot along. New Dracula court member Varney who has a whole introduction with almost every character he meets and banter about his smell? Sure thats basically how all characters talk with a snarky and acerbic voice.

[jjheejz]

Im sorry to crash the party this late(?) but on your fate saga post 3 you mention a the untamed saga, just what happened?? >>

Although this is a JunZhe account, this post is focused on Xiao Zhan and Wang Yi Bo for awhile. :)

//

Hello anon,

No you're not late :)

Before I get to it, have to admit that I've only witnessed this saga in bits and pieces so the information may not 100% depict the whole story/cause.

However, the general takeaway is that, Xiao Zhan (XZ) solo fans, Wang Yi Bo (WYB) solo fans and BoJunYiXiao (BJYX as short form, cpname) cpfans don't get along. The latter is seen as the lowest level. They are viewed as feeding on fantasies and unrealistic ideals because these 2 actors are definitely not together as a couple in real life. There is "no future". (Despite this, on weibo, BJYX is still on a competitive position with JunZhe in the cp chart till now, rotating between top 1 and 2 - tbh, I somewhat only understand that BJYX hardcore fans does the tedious fan chart votes or sth daily rather hardworkingly).

Today (10 August screenshot): No.1 - BJYX, No.2 - LLD. Bonus below, No.11 - JunZhe

Of course, internationally, we dont think being a cpfan is a problem. Sometimes we just like both actors interactions, doesnt matter if they are real or not, but in the Chinese (hardcore) solo fans fandom, to them it's somewhat on this kind of perspective:

1. These 2 are actors = bound to have competition with each other (brand endorsements, sales, roles, show appearances etc), therefore, in order to build their future career, many choose to side one of them rather than both (not sure of the rationale of siding one rather than both). So most cpfans end up diverting to become solo stans. It's a realistic, long-term kind of thing. Some just end up preferring one over another, and some as we all know exists - prefer one of them as their own ideal fantasy boyfriend (the chinese term is 梦女 meng nv - 'dreaming girl'). These are also apparent in Gong Jun and Zhang Zhe Han solo fans.

2. XZ's AO3 saga: In brief, basically this was an extremely huge issue in 2020 (referred to as "227" - the date of seriousness) and was blown up very badly because it innocently involved those who doesnt know XZ and WYB, to a bad end. AO3 is a famous fanfic site, even internationally, but because of a BJYX fanfic, a group of extremely toxic XZ fans blew it up to the point this site was banned in China. Frequent Chinese writers and readers used this site for all kinds of fanfics (drama, anime, general writing etc) had their works and account gone overnight, so this grew an immense emotionally intense hatred on onlookers/passerbys/unrelated to them AO3 users to XZ and his fans.

This technically had something to do with cpfans since the fic was written by one of them, so yea. Imagine the hatred Chinese AO3 users have on XZ. Even now, I still see people hating on him for it despite it being the toxic fans fault. And obviously that group of XZ extremely toxic fans ain't going to self-reflect but push the blame, and they emerged even more hardcore...This saga's magnitude is beyond how my words can express so feel free to look it up - 227. It was just a mega large hurricane.

So, if XZ and WYB are in the same frame/drama again, the media is going to go wild in their articles. Solo fans are going to create even bigger fanwars with each other and it's really damaging to XZ's reputation for onlookers and passer-bys. WYB as well.

//

In the novel and drama, WangXian is always a couple.

But in real life, the actors are only temporarily Wei Wu Xian, and Lan Zhan. The real them is Xiao Zhan, and Wang Yi Bo, of which BJYX is unlike JunZhe.

Note: If anyone has anything to add/amend please feel free to do so! As mentioned, I've only witnessed in bits and pieces but because the magnitude was so big, everyone more or less had an idea about it, just that what I mentioned may not be the full picture.

Bonus: Just last month - July 2021, BJYX toxic fans started a war with JunZhe/LLD (to know the scale, let's just say, it involved photoshopping on to funeral portraits). So this further grew hatred on both XZ and WYB as some of them were AO3 users/onlookers of the 227 incident. Both cpfandom became straight up enemies. 🤦‍♀️

To them XZ knew this 227 issue blew up but he had never made a public apology or addressed it at all [this is going to be another post if I were to state my stand on why - subjectively]. As a general fan of BJYX, was apparently suspected of being a spy and toxic fan of them, entering LLD to create war - simply by following BJYX. So they grew tight on security and because of that last month, was kicked out of 4 LLD groups (not entirely due to following BJYX but somewhat related). 🥲

Anyway, no matter what, BJYX, XZ and WYB is a sensitive topic on weibo. They go by initial references there: XZ, WYB and last month's war, XZ's toxic fan is referred as 🦐 (idk the reason).

BJYX saga is just a prevalent childish hardcore fan issue + non-fans but brainwash lurkers creating chaos and watching this all (they get paid well to do this). The good Chinese weibo fans are really nice but sometimes I feel it's some kind of underground love story for cpfans of both JunZhe and BJYX on weibo.

I believe XZ and WYB themselves are in good terms, just cut apart by their own fandom. No matter what, both actors are hard workers and are nice people, please continue to support them if you are a fan of them too ^-^

Hope you gain some generic insights :)

Bonus bonus images:

Post update record:

[Edited an error, pointed out by Farrowuk] - Thank you :)

[razieltwelve]

My Origin Story

I’m often asked about how I got into self-publishing. It’s something I’ve talked about in previous posts, but I want to talk about it again. It’s been years since I started, and I think time has given me something of a different perspective.

I’ve wanted to be a writer for a long time. However, I first began to take my writing more seriously in high school. I started posting my writing on the internet under various pseudonyms, and I gradually honed my skills. I won’t say I was good back then, but I steadily became less horrible. It still wasn’t something I showed to people I knew in my everyday life, not even to my family. My writing was, in my opinion, still too rough and raw to present to others, except via the anonymity of the internet.

Fast forward to university. I continued to improve my writing as best I could. In fact, I devoted most of my spare time to writing. It was at this point that I began to write fan fiction. Now, I can already tell what some of you are thinking, but writing fan fiction was honestly the best decision I could have made at the time. Fan communities are wonderful things. You don’t have to be the best writer to be welcomed, and you can get access to a far larger amount of critique and advice than you would get as some random lone writer on the internet.

My writing improved markedly during this time since I was now getting regular feedback. Now, obviously, it’s true that most fan fiction readers aren’t professional writers or critics. Sometimes, all you get is “I like the bit where people got stabbed”. Yet amongst all of the one word reviews, random hate messages, and simple but welcome words of encouragement, you do meet people who are genuinely interested in helping you improve. I’m talking about detailed reviews that can be pages long, covering everything from sentence construction to overarching plot critiques.

In my Honours year, I finished my first novel. Before you ask, it’s not something that I’ve published although I do intend to go back and fix it up one day. What mattered wasn’t how good it was. No. What mattered was that I actually finished a novel-length story. It was a bit of mess at times, but it was 100,000 words of original fiction. Sure, it wasn’t great, but it was mine. I actually printed it out and had it bound in a manner similar to my Honours thesis.

During my PhD years, I continued to write, and I began to submit my short stories to fiction magazines while sending out inquiry letters to agents and publishers about my longer stories. Over the four years of my PhD I wrote three novels and many short stories.

And this is where my origin story takes a bit of a dark turn.

Do you want to know how many short stories I got published?

Zero.

Do you want to know how much interest I got from publishers and agents about my longer stories?

Zero.

That’s right. I got absolutely zero interest from anyone about my original fiction.

That’s not a good feeling, let me tell you. It can be very disheartening. I might have thrown myself into fan fiction with a bit more enthusiasm then because at least there, in those communities, people liked what I wrote. Despite all the rejections from publishers and agents, I could at least say that in certain communities, my writing was well-loved and respected.

After bashing my head into the proverbial wall for a couple of years, I began to look into self-publishing. If my writing was genuinely good, then surely I’d be able to sell at least a few copies if I self-published. I wasn’t going to get ahead of myself and predict best-seller status or anything, but I had to be able to sell something, right?

I spent the next few months studying the market and learning how to make eBooks and design covers. Finally, I was ready. The very first book I self-published was The Last Huntress. That book was a labour of love. I pored over every sentence. I obsessed about the characters and the setting. I promoted it as best I could via the communities I was a part of, and then I sat back and waited for the magic to happen.

That last part, the bit about the magic? That was sarcasm.

There was no magic.

In that first month, I sold something like 17 copies.

All told, that translated to around $6.50 for me.

Staring at that result was not the happiest moment of my life. I did the mental arithmetic. Even if I increased my sales a hundred fold, it still wouldn’t be enough for me to make a living via writing. Heck, I could increase my sales three hundred fold and it still wouldn’t be enough.

Luckily, my years of unrelenting failure had somewhat numbed me to this latest failure. I decided to try again. The sequel and some other stories actually managed to do a little better, but that was hardly saying anything. It’s kind of like how if your leg has been cut off, you probably won’t feel the pain of a broken finger all that much.

After a full year of massive failure, my knee decided to explode because of course it did.

Cue surgery.

Cue misery.

Cue six weeks with my leg locked straight in a brace.

Sitting on my couch with my leg propped up beside me, I decided that I wanted to write something different. No more serious fantasy. No more high fantasy. My humorous fan fiction was what had first endeared me to readers, so maybe it was time to write something funny. Besides, it might take my mind off the fact that I had weeks of my leg in a brace to look forward to along with months of physiotherapy.

And don’t even me started on how awkward it was to have a bath or use the toilet.

I was throwing around ideas for what kind of story I could write when a scene came to mind: a necromancer being forced to beat his own wayward creation to death. All I really had was that one scene. It sounded pretty funny to me, so I started writing just to see where it would go.

Two Necromancers, a Bureaucrat, and an Elf is what that idea became.

That book sold more copies in a month than all of my previous books combined had managed in a year. In fact, it managed to outdo all of my previous books combined several times over.

I can’t tell you how much it meant to me to see those numbers rolling in. It wasn’t a bestseller by any means, but it was the first time that I began to think that maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t wasting my time, that maybe I could actually do this.

Things have changed a lot since then.

I’ve written more books, and although they’ve had varying degrees of success, they’ve all done so much better than I could ever have imagined during the doldrums of that first year. Humour, it seems, is what I’m best suited to, along with slice of life, and I’m more than happy to embrace that. I’ve even been lucky enough to have some of my books turned into audiobooks.

So there’s my origin story.

It’s easy, I think, to only remember the things that worked, but it’s important to remember the failures too. Writing isn’t an easy thing to do, especially if you’re aiming to make a living out of it. People can be cruel. You’re going to get reviews from people saying that you’re awful, that your story sucks, and that you should quit writing. But you’re also going to get reviews telling you that your story made someone’s day, that you made someone smile, that they can’t wait for the next book.

I wouldn��t be the writer I am today without those years of failure and disappointment. One of the most important qualities to have if you’re going to write humour is the ability to laugh at yourself and to make light of both the very strange and the very mundane. Moreover, a writer should be honest with themselves if they want to improve.

You can argue with reviewers. You can argue with critics. But you can’t argue with $6.50 worth of sales in a month.

I suppose that’s why I tend to be quite sympathetic to the underdog in my writing. I am one. I know what it’s like to put your heart into something and come up empty handed. I had that happen to me for years. I also know how important it is to celebrate the little wins and the small triumphs. Sometimes, they lead to bigger things, and sometimes, they’re all you have.

Well, that’s it. That’s my origin story.

It’s not exactly glorious. It’s filled with more than its fair share of failures. But it is my story. Mine. And that matters. Anyone who tells you that there isn’t some luck involved in the writing business is crazy. Luck is definitely a thing. But just being lucky isn’t enough. It takes years of hard work to become good enough to make the most of that luck, and it takes a certain level of idiocy/stubbornness to keep going despite everyone slamming doors in your face.

It’s a good thing, then, that I’m a lucky, stubborn idiot.

If you’re interested in my thoughts on writing and other topics, you can find those here.

I also write original fiction, which you can find on Amazon here or on Audible here. Also, just in case you missed it… The Sheep Dragon is out on Audible now! Get it here. It’s 26 and a half hours of fun, humour, and adventure!

[highkeyweeb]

Debunking Edens Zero Misconceptions

With the recent announcement of the Edens Zero anime I keep seeing the same questions, confusions, and common misconceptions on absolutely every platform I go on. I thought it’d be helpful to compile them all in one place and try to clear up some things people genuinely seem to be confused about. With Edens Zero being the third work from Mashima, it’s subject to some... opinionated responses. I wanted to create a list of actual facts and information because it’s important for others to be able to learn about it without the individual biases of internet haters / supporters being involved.

If there are any questions you yourself have, or others that you’ve seen commonly asked or given incorrect responses to, feel free to leave a reply and I’ll try to update the list when I get the chance. Also, feel free to share this with anyone you know who might be confused or need clarification, the more factual information we can spread the better.

Lastly, I’ll be staying as spoiler free with this as possible, so if you’ve never seen Edens Zero, or are contemplating watching it, this won’t spoil anything plot wise whatsoever. If anything, I think it would be helpful to read this before getting into the series so you’ll be somewhat prepared for what you’ll see, but that’s up to you.

This is gonna be a monster of a post, so check it out under the cut below!

[Updated: Jan 20, 2021]

Just a tiny disclaimer: I’m not going to be answering questions such as “is this as good as Fairy Tail?” or “is the story writing better than Fairy Tail’s?” because that is extremely subjective. I can make a post similar to this one about my feelings about the series in response to questions like that if anyone is interested, but at least here, I’m aiming to be as factual as possible.

Why does this look like Fairy Tail?

I’ll be honest, it was hard to choose a first question to start this out with. But I believe that this is the best possible place to start.

The reason that Edens Zero looks similar to Fairy Tail (in terms of art style) is because the authors of both series’ are the same guy: Hiro Mashima. Just by looking at Edens Zero, there are notable similarities stylistically and character design wise in relation to some of his older works. So that’s where that familiar feeling is coming from when you look at Edens Zero.

Why are some of the characters in Edens Zero the same as characters in Fairy Tail?

Short answer: They’re not.

Long answer: There are characters in Edens Zero that are specifically designed to resemble characters from Fairy Tail. It’s not coincidence, or even a lack of creativity. Mashima would like people to be able to make connections and draw similarities between the characters of all his works. That being said, he makes sure to include differences between them so that his audience knows they are not the same characters.

If you’re concerned about the personalities of the characters in Edens Zero closely relating to those of Fairy Tail characters, then the series has already given us little to no need to worry. Where a character may fall short of a completely unique design, they often make up for it with their distinct personality and their backstory. A character that has a striking resemblance to one you already know might be an entirely different person in Edens Zero.

So when you look at the protagonists of the series, and they remind you of some familiar faces, those familiar faces are exactly who Mashima wants you to think about. But that isn’t to say they are mere “clones” of the people who came before them. And that goes for more than just the protagonists actually, but they’re the most notable similarities early on.

Is the Happy in Edens Zero the same Happy as the one in Fairy Tail?

No, the Happy in Edens Zero is NOT the same Happy as the one in Fairy Tail. Yes they have the same name and similar designs, but they are different people (cats?) with different backstories and different companions.

Why is Happy even in Edens Zero?

He’s the companion character. Mashima dabbled with making him a different species, but ended up settling on a classic fan favorite design. He sees Happy sort of like his mascot, since he has now represented both Fairy Tail and Edens Zero.

If you look closely, there are other non human characters who pop up from Fairy Tail, as well as Mashima’s eldest animated series, Rave Master.

Does Edens Zero happen in the same universe as Fairy Tail? Alternate universe? (Fairy Tail in space? Fairy Tail in the future?)

The Fairy Tail and Edens Zero universes are completely separate. Edens Zero is not a Fairy Tail time skip, nor are any of the characters in any way related to Fairy Tail characters. (If me hinting at it wasn’t enough: Eden’s Zero is not Fairy Tail Next Generation)

Alas, that would mean that the male protagonist is not the secret love child of Natsu and Gray, but you’re free to write as much fanfiction about that as you like!

Is Edens Zero a continuation/spin-off/reboot/sequel to Fairy Tail?

Edens Zero is a fully original work, unrelated to the story of Fairy Tail. (Does it feel like the millionth time I’ve said that, because it should). So no, it’s not a continuation. Edens Zero also doesn’t qualify to be a spin off because it’s not a subset of Fairy Tail; it isn’t the Fairy Tail story or world twisted / changed in any way because Edens Zero is a standalone piece. 

It also stands to reason that based on everything I’ve already said, it isn’t a Fairy Tail reboot either. Edens Zero will take you on a completely different story, because the two series’ aren’t linked. And finally, no, Edens Zero is not a sequel to Fairy Tail because guess what? Fairy Tail actually has a canon sequel! It’s a biweekly manga series that goes by the name ‘Fairy Tail 100 Years Quest’. So logically, Edens Zero can’t be a Fairy Tail sequel when one already exists.

(Also, per the dictionary definition of the word “ripoff” – an act or instance of stealing off of another – Edens Zero doesn’t qualify. You can’t really steal something you already own.) 

End Note:

Edens Zero is the third work from Hiro Mashima getting an anime, and it’s understandable that there’s a lot of confusion around it. Especially after the PV dropped and it was clear that the art style was very similar. And not to mention everyone losing their minds when they saw Happy in this strange new world. All of a sudden it raises these questions and there isn’t really a definitive place to get answers. 

At this point I’m sure I sound like a broken record. But I’ll repeat these things as many times as needed to clear up the misconceptions and misinformation being spread around. As new people get introduced to Edens Zero, they will likely be asking these same questions for years to come. So I found it useful to just try and catch the problem now while it’s still new.

If the day ever does come where Mashima tells us it was all a hoax, everything was a lie, and he was playing us like an instrument the entire time... then I’ll be sure to update this.

Again, there are probably plenty of questions that I never touched on so feel free to comment anything else you or others need clarification on! I was doing some research for this and wow, Google really isn’t spoiler free, is it? Which is obvious, because it’s just a machine, but I hate that even if someone wants more information on something, looking it up is out of the question because that would give them spoilers about some pretty crucial plot details. That makes me feel awful, as a person who absolutely hates spoilers. So I want this to be a compact, spoiler free, factually based post about a lot of the common questions in the Edens Zero fandom.

Thanks for reading!! 

[huacheng-zhu]

ok so 2ha. vague spoilers ahead (important spoilers are warned but watch out)

that’s a solid 4.5/5 for me. this novel RUINED me and I loved it for it. it made me feel like very few novels (and even stories in general) did. today I’m STILL shaken over a part of it that I read two days ago, despite the happy ending. I have A Lot of thoughts (shout-out to @whateverwuxian​ who can testify that I couldn’t shut up about it, love you buddy!!) so I just went ahead and [gestures below]

starting with the negative so we can enjoy all the positive later. feel free to discuss but I’m extra sensitive and these are only my personal feelings so they probably won’t change anyway, so be nice please!

what I didn't like:

too many r*pe scenes. I get that the non-con """makes sense""" narratively and thematically but like. they didn't have to be explicit. at the very least not all of them. sorry but too much is too much. there are more non-con sex scenes/flashbacks than consensual sex scenes! stop! we get it! enough now!

not a fan of a 26yo falling in love with a 16yo. if cwn had initiated Anything I would’ve thrown the novel out the window. but thankfully it didn’t happen, I got invested, and nothing mutual happened until mo ran was 22, so I mostly got over it, but I’m still somewhat uncomfortable with it for very personal reasons.

their first time putting it in. it felt so unfair and I was very upset over it. it could’ve worked without going There? why. was that necessary. and it's heartbreaking for both of them, because mo ran didn't want to do it either. he wanted them to take all their time. he wanted to go step by step. all he wanted was to make sure cwn would be happy and comfortable and never hurt again in bed. for their first time that way he wanted it to be special. but it was just. taken away from them, and for what? for nothing there’s absolutely no reason for it. I get there’s the metaphorical foreshadowing of the upcoming reveal aspect (spoilers) both of them not consenting, mo ran being horrified -> the reveal that mo ran was cursed and so would’ve never wanted to treat cwn like this in the past either if he’d had control (end spoilers) but still?? and it’s never brought up again? I know they don’t get the time until the very end but hhhh. yeah I have Feelings over this

some plot twists hit good emotionally but had no point? thinking of the one about xue meng here.

there’s horny, and then there’s mo ran. it’s not a bad thing, it’s just not the kind of stuff I like reading about and book 1 and 2 are A Lot on that side so in book 2 after a while ME, THE BIGGEST ASEXUAL WHO COULDN’T CARE LESS ABOUT SEX SCENES, WAS LIKE, “oh my god have mercy please just fuck already I beg of you” and indeed they chilled a bit after that. like they were still horny but. less intensely and less all the fucking time. thank god (I still think the farm arc was hilarious to witness though, and I did love it)

kinda wish their reunion at the end was longer and more emotional but that’s just because I love that shit

(spoilers) kinda wish we got to see shi mei again before he went off doing his blind wandering doctor stuff. a talk with ranwan would’ve been very interesting. (end spoilers)

xue meng didn’t get a hug

that one thing at the end you know the one. maybe I'd be more into it if it'd been given time to be explored seriously and wasn't played off as a joke. it kinda ruined the mood of their last scene for me. (spoilers spoilers spoilers this is the end of this section if you don’t want to get spoiled) in that scene I wanted chu wanning to ride off into the sunset with mo ran, not txj. like, txj is the alternate world’s “if there had been no transmigration” version of mo ran 2.0. the whole point is that mo ran IS txj in book 1, but changes and becomes mo ran 2.0. mo ran 2.0, who by the end of the novel has already done all the redemption and deconstruction of his dubious habits. who he was as txj is long behind him. at this point txj will always be a part of who he was, but they are pretty much two 'different' people now. txj disappearing into dust after everything that happens at the end was beautiful symbolism. it meant something. to me there was no point keeping txj around after all that other than for “haha split personalities fighting over cwn’s attention uwu” THAT SAID the fact I'm not a fan of the idea doesn't mean I don't like txj. I care txj a lot and have Emotions over him, and I will definitely eventually explore this in my writing

(still spoilers) the demonic blood reveal was a bit.... deus ex machina? plus I personally would've preferred mo ran staying a regular person (end spoilers)

alright what I liked now:

the themes, both regarding the characters and the various plot elements. this novel really challenges your morals and what you think is right or wrong, what’s redeemable, what’s punishable, and how much one relies on first impressions, amongst other things. this novel is the definition of “don’t judge a book by its cover” but also “look further than the first page” in so many ways

the romance. like I don’t need to say anything there. just, the slow burn, the longing, the yearning, the romance [clutches heart]

the plot twists/reveals. I’m so glad I was barely spoiled (I was spoiled two Big things but very vaguely so I was still surprised) because pretty much all of them had me shouting “WHAT” and/or gaping and/or various “what the fuck!!!”/”holy SHIT”/“NO” reactions

the way a lot of those reveals just completely change your view on things/characters?? that’s my jam

wontons. that was the first time I cried and my first very physical reaction to an event in this novel. I literally felt like time froze. I heard my heart beating. it was painful but AMAZING.

might be nothing in the grand scheme of things but honestly, all the food! I love that mo ran is an excellent cook and can make all those delicious dishes for cwn. as someone who loves to cook for their loved ones I think it’s so lovely that he gets to do that

the character growth. for everyone, but mo ran in particular? like I just. I started off not liking mo ran very much, straight up despising him at times, and in the end I was fucking sobbing over him and cried myself to sleep only to wake up in the middle of the night to cry some more so there’s that

chu wanning? there were aspects of him that I related to heavily, and that felt both like the Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known and very special because it doesn’t happen to me that often

the whole deaging arc. that was deaging done right and it had a purpose in the narrative and their relationship growth, I was “!!!!”

I LOVE how they took their time with EVERYTHING once they got together? that it spanned over several weeks? that it started with the confession, then just holding hands, then kissing, then making out, then sex, and even the sex was step by step! it said A LOT about mo ran’s character growth and it respected SO MUCH the fact that cwn is a 32yo (unrelated but (spoilers) I like to argue that yeah he’s been alive for 32 years but when you’ve been asleep and not aging physically nor growing mentally for five years in a way that makes you a 27yo. so when he calls his body “mature and old” and compares himself to shi mei I’m just. buddy your body is just three years older than shi mei’s there’s barely any difference in maturity right there. I know it’s your lack of self-worth speaking, and believe me I get it, but don’t be so hard on yourself. (end spoilers) anyway, this is an unimportant and unrelevant thought that I had during the mirror scene) who has no experience in any of these things whatsoever. he's not pushed into sex like he's going to be comfortable right off the bat and like it isn’t such a big change in a life that’s been ascetic so far. mo ran is aware of that! and when they have their first time mo ran, who’s been maybe even more horny than cwn all this time - seriously horny is that guy’s middle name, who initiated the sex, what does he say!!! "don't worry about me, tonight, I just want to make you feel good"??? mo ran?? your character development??? I appreciated that so much.

the pain. I’m still bleeding on the floor despite the happy ending but yeah. I like angst and I was not disappointed. it didn’t feel that gratuitious to me, more like, brutally honest? I don’t cry that easily but by the end I think I’d cried, what, close to ten times??

quite a few excellent quotes [lies down] “I realized - I had grown into the you in my heart”?? “hell is too cold”??? I highlighted more but those two are the ones that always come to my mind first

most of the time the flashbacks were perfectly inserted for maximum emotional damage and I respect that skill

xue zhengyong. like he’s not my favourite, my favourites are xue meng, nangong si and ye wangxi but? I just adored him so he gets a special mention

the side characters? like, I legit loved Everyone? when I cry over side characters you know it’s serious

THE CONFESSION SCENE. LIKE. HOLY SHIT MY HEART. it comes reaaally close to the vocal one (because hua cheng confesses so many times without words) at the end of tgcf for me. it was beautiful. I was so emotional. the fact that cwn can't say it no matter how much he feels it. like it's always been plain and clear just how much he loves mo ran. but he can't say the words yet and I just. the fact that mo ran gets it? that he doesn't need the words, just that squeeze of fingers, just what cwn is, at that moment, able to give him, and it doesn't mean less to him than words would? it hit home real hard

unless I think of something else, that’s about it! I can’t recommend 2ha enough, that said, I beg of you, heed the warnings. they are NOT overstated. and even if there were no warnings, take care anyways. the angst is serious, it haunts you. angst always makes me feel like my chest is being squeezed and that’s precisely the feeling I’m looking for when I choose to read angst. I have good tolerance to it, so despite not doing entirely well lately, I thought I was tough and went for it, but I’m a CLOWN. the way it’s written ruins you. this morning despite reading the hardest part of the angst on saturday evening, I still had some physical chest pain. so I recommend it with all my heart, but take care of yourselves. 2ha doesn’t fuck around.

[advernia]

What do you think would happen if Alice had fallen into Cradle with her child? I’m particularly curious about Sirius and Luka OwO

in general i’d say the presence of the mother-child combination in cradle would (rather, should) raise the tension higher because two people from the land of reason = two people who can repel magic, yeehaw. i think that gives the magic tower more incentive to be aggressive point blank bc 1) two magic repellers = greater chances of world domination plans being thwarted, 2) on the other hand they will make excellent test subjects, 3) them being blood-related + different ages (and possibly genders) opens more avenues for varied forms of experimentation, and 4) more ways to enter the land of reason, hella rad.

there’s probably more but morbid thoughts aside... here’s some general scenarios!

sirius:

he grew up having lotsa siblings + if you count the black army as the whole he’s raised a lot of brats lmao, so alice having a kid doesn’t faze him the slightest!

in the prologue where ray ends up catching alice, sirius ends up catching her kid instead. thinks the kid’s five years old or something. sirius is about to ask the child some basic questions, but the kid suddenly points to a running blanc so whoops. before the strange pair go rushing after blanc, kid says a thank you, mister! and that earns immediate brownie points because the! kid! called! me! mister! and sirius proceeds to make that veeeery clear to ray lol. maybe to fenrir and seth too, later.

so after all the prologue drama, alice & the kid formally introduce themselves as mother & child to the black army. there’s a few murmurs of reallys and awwws because tbh alice looked rather young to be a mother but oh well. it doesn’t change sirius’ welcoming and accommodating approach, though he keeps more tabs on the child because honestly...

a young child in the barracks... where there’s a stocked armory + shiny magic crystals... ridiculous brats - ehem, grown men prone to showing off + creating trouble... yeah. though it’s really not a hassle on sirius’ part to somewhat act like a babysitter, he gets to suffer being teased about nonsense like paternal instincts coming to life in full force lol!

though seriously speaking, he’s very careful not to ask / bring up the biggest subject of them all: alice’s husband (if there’s even one to speak of, ooh). on the kiddo’s side of course, it’s already hard enough that someone so young suddenly ends up in a strange place + gets their mother and themselves threatened by a whole goddamn army (sirius, to lancelot: i stg what are u doing???) + has to live out a whole month in a new environment all of a sudden, so he believes the least that he & the black army can do is keep the child comfortable enough so that the feeling of fear would be lessened, get a sense of comfort going on. sirius definitely can’t blame the kiddo if they start crying out for their father/home though - though he knows it’s not his fault + can’t do anything much, he’ll feel bad about the fact that he can’t do much for the child’s homesickness.

he’s not going to broach the topic on alice either - if alice wanted to talk, then he’d do his best to listen. if she didn’t then he wouldn’t dare ask, it’s a very personal topic after all. who was he to pry into her personal matters when she + her child would be leaving in a month???

so picture this: he did say he’ll help watching over the kid, but there’s not much to do bc her child is good enough. what a little angel, polite and curious and quiet. maybe a little too quiet, withdrawn??? hmmm. either way, the child didn’t seem too (pro)active. or was playful the term sirius was looking for?

like sure, there’s the loud laughs for stupid antics, answers when talked to, smiles and walks around the barracks on their own but... more often than not, the child keeps close to alice or is just around her general line of sight. separation anxiety, maybe??? that’s natural, so okay. or maybe it’s alice who’s always hovering around her child??? either way, there’s nothing odd about that, but upon longer observation...

the kid is just... really responsible / really loves their mom??? alice watering the plants??? quickly looks for another watering can / gets a bucket of water to refill the can with. general cleaning or laundry??? puts a hold on whatever they were doing, rolls up sleeves, gets ready to do some work. prep work for dinner??? peeling’s a bit wonky, but they’re doing their best while trying not to cut themselves...

this strikes off as a bit funny to sirius, because wow, they really are related. where alice is quick to offer her help on all sorts of tasks in the barracks, her child is just a step behind her, little hands willing to do some work. on some tasks, alice does tell her kid that she’ll be alright doing it on her own, but her kid insists doing it alongside her anyway. and that there, that’s a very alice thing to do, too. sirius - heck, maybe the black army would know that by now as well, lol, considering how alice flutters around the barracks looking for something to do if she’s not having some alone time + private time with her child.

though, as much as the help was appreciated... it doesn’t sit well with sirius that the mother & child are spending most of their hours working rather than enjoying themselves in cradle. he thinks it’s a shame, especially for the kid. back when sirius was younger, he would...... then he’d go to....... and then sometimes he’d.............

.... right. if the guests wouldn’t relax themselves, then sirius would take it upon himself to show them a good time. it doesn’t have to be through big events, it doesn’t have to be everyday, it doesn’t need to be through fancy or expensive gifts either...... if only just to see both of them smile more often, then it’s definitely worth the time thinking about.

more bonus points if he’d get to see alice’s kid start acting like... well, a child! while there’s nothing wrong with being responsible or wanting to help, a kid should definitely experience all sorts of things, explore what they can, and most of all, enjoy themselves.

that’s what it means to be young, and alice should do the same as well... being in cradle is their adventure, after all! they’re not completely unrelated to the war but..... if anything else, sirius wants to fulfill the black army’s promise of precting them until the full moon comes around, and when that day comes.... he hopes the two have made a ton of good memories of their stay in cradle.

......... funny that this guy’s thinking about how make the two relax when he can’t even stop and do that for himself lmaooooo 

luka:

lol he starts off the same as he’s always been in most routes: shying away + nothing much to say to the parent/child combo now suddenly under their wing.

though, he does keep watch of their eating habits on the first days of their stay: alice eats anything + everything so that’s a relief, she’s adjusting. now if only he can say the same for her child....

imagine alice’s kid still being uncomfortable & cranky a few days in cradle + black army company, refuses to eat much even though his mom’s urging him to. breaks into a tantrum one day, saying that i wanna eat mama’s cooking instead! or something similar for everyone in the dining room to hear before storming out. ooh. there’s a brief silence - most stares land on luka, who isn’t really offended.

..... well, okay, so maybe it did sting a little bit. alice apologizes to luka before going away to calm her kid down. fenrir + ray tell him not to worry about it, seth + sirius muse about the kid feeling all homesick / sensitive. cue other soldiers saying something about puberty (whut lol). or y’know, kids being kids.

luka tries thinking about the kid’s situation for a bit. away from home, living in a whole new environment, surrounded by a whole lot of other people with attitudes and faces way different from those around at home... huh. that kinda sounds like himself in a way, except that the away from home bit on luka’s part was a voluntary choice.

having realized that, luka has a better guess of what the kid might be feeling. overwhelmed, definitely. from a very hostile welcome with handcuffs + the red army carrying the threat of death, suddenly being surrounded by the kindness of the black army is a total 360. must feel unreal, suspicious, even. the sight of real weapons around, the existence of magic and all that, unknowingly having a power so strong the whole country fears it. sounds like too much too process for a child.

..... alright, but looking at alice’s kid being unfriendly + clingy to alice 24/7 + being such a crybaby also reminds luka of... uh, himself, when he was younger. not to his own mother, but to... well, jonah, ugh. it’s not an easy pill to swallow (it takes grudging acceptance), but at least luka gets to know why he always felt some pang of irritation looking at the child.

so the next time the kid starts crying over something/causes trouble for alice, luka surprises everyone in the room by taking the initiative to scold the kid for acting so selfish. tough call, by the way - the child is wow, stubborn as hell + likes to keep the waterworks going while screaming; luka’s got a pretty good idea of what he wants to say but is having trouble getting it across properly and in a less menancing manner, so in short its a mess. witnesses ray blackwell + fenrir godspeed find the whole scene sorta funny though, much support lol.

alice wants to cut in, but sirius + seth tell her to leave it to luka, who seems to be winning since her kid’s running out of energy from crying & shouting at the same time. luka seems to be calming down too, because his tone + volume + facial expression is getting less stern. this seemed like a good time to mosey out of the scene so sirius ushers the audience to go away lmao, even the worried mother (who, decides to eavesdrop instead. no one has the heart to pull her away... so they hover around the doorway with her too.)

not arguing with luka anymore, the upset kid starts to babble of nightmares about the scary men in red with their sharp swords, not wanting to sleep because maybe when they close their eyes mama might suddenly be gone and they’re all alone, the scary feeling of losing mama to strangers, and the list goes on and on. its a collection of fears + worries of a child, and luka’s patient enough to listen. in fact, he smiles wryly when there’s mentions of monsters under the bed: it’s embarrasing, but luka used to cry over that too.

... seeing the kid bawl their eyes out like this, luka really is reminded of his younger self. the clinginess, sudden outbursts, the fear of maybe one day, they’ll be left behind and will be all alone. luka might be speculating the kid’s feelings, but more than anyone else, luka would be the closest one who could relate to what the kid was going through because.......... he acted that way towards jonah, back when they were younger.

he wonders if they’ve mentioned any of this to alice, even if just the smallest of their fears. he wonders how long they’ve been bothered over those fears, if they’ve been sleeping well at night. with all those questions in his mind, luka’s not so sure what to say; how to comfort the child.

he still tries though, even if his words come out a bit clumsy, even if the kid’s still sniffling all the way through the process. it’s a quiet moment, one that lasts till the child has cried themselves to sleep. they just stay that way for awhile, the kid resting their head on luka’s arm, until luka decides to carry the child back to their room........ alice must be worried.

..... she is, actually. when she and luka talk, she keeps quiet of her eavesdropping. luka doesn’t tell her everything either, because he believed that some of the things they talked about are better said by the kid themselves rather than him relaying the message to alice.

there’s nothing much to say after that, so luka goes on his way. alice says a very sincere thank you before he goes. she... has a lot of other things to say other than just that, but.... maybe another time. maybe when she’s plucked up the courage.

anyway, after all that alice’s kid seems to have gotten off their... spoiled phase, lol. still a little clingy to alice, but is getting less prickly + talking to others now. most notable development though, is if the child isn’t around their mother......... they could be seen hanging around luka.

.......... cue comments on how heartwarming it is to see a young child tottering around luka like a little duckling. luka does not appreciate the teasing. especially when it comes from seth + fenrir because why are their grins so big??????? but he doesn’t say anything against the kid following him around lol.

[hearthandhomemagick]

Cottage Witch Journal Entry - Post Yule & Christmas

Okay, so far this forum of mine has discussed some very off the wall topics that invade my head throughout the day. Some very self destructive thoughts, and some self awareness thoughts. Thoughts on religion, video games, spirituality. Hell, I may even choose to discuss sexual exploration in the future. Who knows? All I know is that after looking back at some of my posts, I’m starting to realize how chaotic one individuals thoughts can be. How genuinely complex a humans life and mind can truly be. 

Think about it, if you’ve read my posts in the past, regarding witchcraft, self care, self love, eating awareness, hyperawareness, overthinking, and so on and so forth, then you would think you’d be able to point me out in a crowd. 

The truth is, you wouldn’t. A great deal of my writing is simply the regurgitation of my persistent, sometimes unrelenting, thoughts. I’m noticing the complexities of humanity, and it’s beautiful and tragic all at once.

Last time we spoke, I discussed in a mini post that Judy Alvarez was mine for the taking a staple of independence and power to me and that getting my power back was of high priority to me. It’s been a few days, but this still remains a significant thought in my head. I find myself becoming more and more enthralled by her character and persona, drawn into why I relate to her as much as I do. Then, I noticed the underwater life she loves so much, and am reminded of the blue jellyfish behind my left ear. I see her whale tattoo and think of the same one I have under my left boob. I think of how I wanted to shave the right side of my head similar to Judy’s hair back in High School and my mom telling me it wouldn’t look good. And finally, I think of her selflessness, and her need to help a traumatized soul, and how I used to be a Sexual Violence Outreach Advocate, just trying to help a traumatized soul. I relate to her in more ways than one, as silly and stupid as it sounds, and these may be extremely minute to notice, but important for me. 

My boyfriend and I had a few conversations this weekend, all separate times, that really pinned me to myself. One conversation, he asked me what exactly I believed, in that moment, when it came to religion and spirituality. From there we got into a lengthy discussion (mostly my fault) where I explained my thoughts in detail. One quote I said stood out (I was also stoned so when I said it, it came out as a surprise to me as well), for I digress from the want to overexplain myself. 

As I told my boyfriend, Hyperawareness will destroy a man before it enlightens him. And this year, Hyperawareness seemed to be the proprietor of my mind, for it most definitely would have destroyed me had I continued.

Another conversation we had, which we both agreed to, was the power of our physical bodies directly correlating to past experiences we’ve had with other humans. Also, our relationship with unsustainable lifestyles.

Example, my body issues are founded on the idea that I wasn’t allowed to be a tomboy and play sports or take karate or MMA Fighting classes, but I also wasn’t perceived as delicate and pretty because of my weight/I was bigger than other girls. I was discouraged from doing the physical things I was interested in, and gave up as a result.

Those experiences have perpetuated in many areas of my life as well. In High School, I chose Shop as my number one elective and Weight Training as my second. They chose to put me in Theatre and Intensive Reading instead (Intensive Reading is a class kids take when they make below average on state wide tests). Now, my first choices were classes I felt would develop my character and reflect the life I wanted to live, and I was told it was a bit manly for me to choose those classes. Now, as an adult, I don’t go out of my way to work on mechanics, even though it’s an interest of mine and I haven’t done weight lifting because I thought I’d look like a man. False ideas.

When you are denied your own personality as a child, and don’t realize that is what is happening because it is still happening, it becomes a spiral of what options do you actually have? You become an open book for others influences to freely write in, because you want to be your own independent self but you don’t even know who or how that person is. So, for a while when I got out of High School I was clinging to others personalities in an attempt to find myself. That’s not a good way of doing it, either. 

I lived to please, so when people called me Sunshine, I figured the Sun didn’t wear a lot of black and didn’t act like a man. 

Reality check, I was overthinking it.

I should dress and live how I see fit, regardless of the typical aesthetic. Fuck the idea that I have to subscribe to one aesthetic anyways. If I want to own a Bee Hive, a Cottage in the Mountains by the river with a tiny self sustaining garden, all while wearing black alternative outfits that somewhat line the aesthetic of post apocalyptical,  then fuck yes I’m going to be a gentle, bright, motorcycle loving, knife wielding, MMA Fighting, Yoga and Meditation doing, soft spoken bad bitch. 

Here’s the thing, I haven’t even bought myself clothes this year, because people were literally buying clothes for me. WHICH I AM EXTREMELY GRATEFUL FOR!!!! But, over the weekend I got rid of a lot of those clothes because they restrict my personality, I never wear them or they don’t fit anymore.

After the lengthy conversations, we both agreed that our youthful selves are not finished being fully alive. We didn’t stop being young once we got out of High School, we stopped being young when we started saying we were too old. So, we are starting to set goals together. Getting rid of old clothes was the first step, and we took into consideration that we are still individuals just helping each other accomplish a common goal, so the next step is our physical selves. 

The plan is to clean out our storage room and transform it into a self-care/training area. Together, we will start the P90X after work on some days, while I try to keep up with yoga on my off days. This month, being aware of what I eat without the focus of losing weight has helped me actually lose weight. Now, focusing on my workout regime is the goal. Not to lose weight, but to be able to start MMA Fighting Classes. 

MMA Fighting is something I started in High School right before going to college, but never finished. It’s something I want to commit to so as to release anger while Yoga will help me process my anger. So, healthy eating to support energy, and healthy workouts! I have also been having more endometriosis pain than usual, so avoiding my health won’t help me!

Spiritual wise, I want to focus on my better self. I want to put more effort into me rather than letting myself go in a world of people who don’t care if my personality exists or not. I want to be open, strong and powerful in what I believe. I want to own my shit, and fuck anyone who wants to stop that type of Sunshine. In the words of Meghan Thee Stallion, “Fuck being good, I’m a bad bitch. I’m sick of motherfuckers tryna tell me how to live.”

I’m inconvenient, and I’m happy with that. I’m not perfect, but I’m a process. I’m not weak and quiet, I’m strong and silent. 

This specific post is a reclamation of my power. Somewhere along the road of this shitty adult life, I forgot the beauty in my own power. I’m equal, not less than.

Thank you for reading, if you did. This is, again, one of those things where I am journaling my thoughts, and trying to go over everything in my head without going crazy. If you thought this was annoying, just remember I deleted 5 paragraphs before posting, because I was overthinking and didn’t want to overexplain. (I do everything in copious quantities). If it bothered you, look past my post. If you related, let’s talk about it. All in all, thank you for being alive, darling. I’ll see you later!