#that i'll be satisfied with 8 episodes

[tawaifeddiediaz]

and if heaven and hell decide that they both are satisfied illuminate the no's on their vacancy signs if there's no one beside you when your soul embarks then I'll follow you into the dark

(for @eddiediaaz)

[Image ID: nine gifs of Arthur Pendragon and Merlin from Merlin episode 4.02, "The Darkest Hour, pt 2". Merlin has been injured and Arthur is strapping him to a horse.

GIF 1: Arthur, a furrow between his brows as he straps Merlin to the horse. He looks guilty as he says, "This is my fault, and I'm sorry."

GIF 2: Merlin, pale and shaking, out of breath, begs Arthur, "Take me with you, please."

GIF 3: Arthur glances up briefly as he says flatly, "you'll die, Merlin."

GIF 4: Merlin continues to plead, "You don't understand. Please, Arthur."

GIF 5: Arthur's jaw working as he keeps his eyes on the strap. He says, "Do you ever do as you're told?"

GIF 6: Merlin insists, "I have to go with you." Off-screen, Arthur says sharply, "Merlin."

GIF 7: A shot of Merlin, looking like death warmed over. Off-screen, Lancelot says, "We need to leave." Arthur turns to look at him.

GIF 8: Arthur looking at Lancelot before his gaze returns to Merlin.

GIF 9: Arthur squeezing Merlin's shoulder briefly.

/end ID]

bonus:

[bonus ID: two gifs of Arthur, slightly teary-eyed, watching Lancelot and Merlin depart, looking lost in thought as he lets out a slow breath, his jaw working through the emotion before his lips press together. /end ID]

[foreverfangirllove]

Healthy Relationship kdrama recommendations!

1. Hometown Cha Cha Cha

Has a great plot line and wraps everything up in such a satisfying way! The main couple has so much chemistry, whether it be bickering or romance and it portrays the most realistic healthy relationship I've seen in a kdrama!

10/10 enemies to friends to lovers with a balanced attraction to each other and great chemistry

2. King the Land

The main couple is the power couple of healthy relationships and circumvent all the traditional tropes in a way that makes you launch your fist in the air with delight! I could not stop squealing at how cute they were! The chemistry was so good and it's the fluffiest kdrama I've ever seen with pretty much no conflict, making it the best drama to just cuddle up to.

10/10 ultimate comfort drama where the guy is whipped and the girl reciprocates perfectly with great chemistry

3. Touch Your Heart

She is the ultimate sunshine character and is so sweet that you'll fall for her (I was ready to protect her with my life) so imagine how deep the male lead falls for her. It's so adorable with both of them navigating a relationship for essentially the first time and they're really cute! The most trust I've ever seen in a kdrama relationship, it's amazing! There is one hard episode but it only happens because of external factors.

10/10 sunshine/grumpy who softens up and loves her adorably, with a trusting healthy relationship and great chemistry

4. Love to Hate You

Short, sweet and to the point, perfect for binge watching over a weekend since it's 10 episodes. Main couple has a realistic healthy relationship and great communication between them. No skippable parts and you can see how they both grow on each other in a really sweet way.

10/10 bingeworthy drama where the guy falls first and the girl is a feminist icon with a healthy relationship and good chemistry

5. Run On

Slice of life type kdrama that focuses on two couples. The main couple starts out awkwardly but grows to have more chemistry, they're pretty lowkey and subtle about their relationship. Second couple is peak sunshine/grumpy pairing with the guy being the sunshine one. It follows everyone through their lives so you can see the characters grow and change over the course of the drama and the romance is simply a part of the bigger picture. Main couple has a really realistic healthy relationship.

10/10 in general as a kdrama since the characters really grow on you

9/10 in terms of romance since it's not the main point of the drama but does portray a really healthy relationship with pretty good chemistry

---------Other Dramas that are good but don't fall under the umbrella of Healthy Relationship---------

6. Because This Is My First Life

Follows three couples so the relationships range. Not necessarily healthy relationships (they get there in the end) but realistic and probably something relatable for everyone across the three couples. The character growth is satisfying to see by the end and the plot is good.

8/10 in terms of romance since it's spread across three couples so but overall it's pretty cute with pretty good chemistry with all three

7. Business Proposal

Cute kdrama with more comedy than romance points. Main couple is cute with the guy whipped but the girl resists too much for me to really love them as a couple. Second couple is super cute though and I really liked their chemistry!

7/10 in terms of romance for what felt like an unbalanced relationship with the main couple but a good relationship with the second couple

(I'll continue to update this list as I watch more)

[beastabyss666]

The Season 2 Episode 8 of Helluva Boss recently was published quite spontaneously, so I'm writing the review while being very sleepy. First of all... It was weird to start the episode with some cheap musical. Blitzo's solo was especially... fair to middling. I'm sorry, but I think Brandon Rogers can't sing, his voice isn't actually made for singing(that's just my opinion tho). And also hey, they remembered the cherubs! Wow. Though they made them some utter idiots, much like the other characters, I mean.. So the plot is about Blitzo going shopping for a sex toy which(in his opinion) will really rejoice Stolas. Meanwhile, the cherubs are seen living on Earth and robbing humans to "redeem themselves and return to heaven"(I won't ask how it's supposed to work). They get caught by the D.H.O.R.K.S. folk(wow, you also remembered them too, nice work Vivzie), where the agents tell the cherubs that they built a portal to Hell and made high-tech robotic suits imitating the main IMP gang. The cherubs wear them and enter the portal, ending up in the Lust Ring, where Blitzo goes shopping. The main gang attacks them(though it wasn't shown that they even were there), and OF COURSE defeats the cherubs, throwing them through the portal. The episode ends with Blitzo finally visiting Stolas and talking to him. But I'll mention it later. So... I found this episode quite weird, nothing much to say about the visuals, though some frames look like they're from another show. How some characters(especially humans) are drawn looks like they're also from another show. But I guess they don't really organise anything normally, so it just is. I also find the tone of the episode too chaotic, but the whole show switches rapidly from "Edgy black comedy" to "Unserious absurd trash comedy" to "Drama/whining/'we care about characters and their development'" stuff. Another weird thing I found about visuals is that the creators put many overly cartoonish expressions to characters, to the point that it look just ridiculous, not even saying it's out of the general style.

Some of these expressions look kinda crooked, and the other are cartoonly, but not in a way that fits the whole show. It's not a slapstick comedy, and I don't understand why the writers pretend it is. Most of the time(and it's seen in this episode) it's just lazy and poor attempts at satire on our stupid and hypocritical society, but it just doesn't work mainly because the protagonists don't seem to have more brain cells than usual humans in this universe. Earth here, although, really seem to be a thing to relieve Vivzie's malice at... everything, I guess. There is no exact satire/mocking of someone or something, so I guess Vivzie just hates every living thing in general(especially kids, for some reason). That's why the humour in this episode also seems odd in a bad way. I don't like that HB sometimes pretends to be South Park, or Family Guy, or... a typical CN show, perhaps? It just doesn't look right, it's like the writers try to copy other better works instead of making their own vibes/special tone.

Also they could use some more imagination

And about the ending... Stolas doesn't seem satisfied by Blitzo's behaviour(who acts overly sexual towards him which seems OOC), and starts... basically complaining about him being too sexual and not sensual. Guys... do you remember how it all started? Does Vivzie remember it? Literally in the 1 episode of 1 season it's shown that Stolas only uses Blitzo for his sexual pleasure, not caring about his comfort etc. He even calls him while he's on a dangerous mission. And there are lots of other moments where Stolas practically h*rasses Blitzo and makes him uncomfortable with his comments. And even since pilot doesn't seem to be canon(so Stolas didn't threaten Blitzo with r*pe), there are enough red flags about this mf. Yet in this episode he literally complains about receiving not so much love and care? That's... idk, that's shitty to say the least, and I don't know how the writers even managed. A literal abuser complaining about their partner being "not affectionate enough", that's fuckin' hilarious(sarcasm), and I say it as someone who had few abusers in my life. I still remember the previous episodes so I kinda don't buy it, but many people do, and that's sad. After that Blitzo [rightfully] angers at Stolas for complaining about lack of love while disrespecting him for being a lower class and using him as some object. Stolas only answers with "I think so very highly of you, I didn't realise you think so low of me", and kicks Blitzo out of his palace.

So... that's the episode. I have nothing much to say about it more, but I'm genuinely wondering does Vivzie even understand what she's doing and where she'll push the whole Stolas x Blitzo pairing(not that I fucking care, lol). These two are obviously in an abusive relationship, and the more they try to understand what even happened between them, the more confused they become. I personally think there's nothing to talk about with a guy like Stolas(though Blitzo too is a huge red flag), but idk, maybe Vivzie thinks that r*pists and abusers are changeable and are good deep down. Anyways, it was surely an odd episode, and I didn't really like it.

[lilliths-httyd-blog]

Summarising every single HTTYD movie, short and episode in roughly one sentence:

HTTYD 1:

ADHD incarnate befriends Death: The Dragon and with the power of friendship they OH GODS OH FUCK OH HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT

Legend of the Boneknapper:

Gobber likes to tell campfire stories

Book of Dragons:

DreamWorks attempts to write a reader POV fanfiction

Gift of the Night Fury:

Critical series lore in a Christmas special?? Yeah seems normal for this franchise

Riders of Berk:

1. Mildew tries to get a bunch of teenagers executed or some shit

2. Solidifying Gobber as a total madlad: The episode

3. Hot take: You can skip this episode, it's arguably the worst one in the franchise, but you WILL miss a penis joke so there's that going for it.

4. Toothless develops an Older Sibling complex over Beyblade: The Dragon™ and HOLY FUCK WHAT IS THAT???

5. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU, MILDEW?? I mean I knew you were an ass but I didn't expect THIS??

6. "The films aren't anything like the books!" UM, ACTUALLY- (aka the episode where Hiccup goes full-on Book!Hiccup mode and Alvin is nothing like his book counterpart but the rest of the outcasts are)

7. "Look at this super dangerous dragon I found! I'M GONNA WRESTLE IT!!"

8. Hiccup has body image issues

9. Mildew gets bitten in the ass (SATISFYING)

10. The Mary Sue: Part One

11. The Mary Sue: Part Two

12. Oh yeah Snotlout's dad is an abusive cuck who can go fuck himself I'm not even joking. Love Snotlout tho I gotta say.

13. "IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT?! STRIKE ME DOWN, ZEUS!! YOU DON'T HAVE THE BA-"

14. Toothless has a mortal enemy apparently and it is fucked up

15. (Dagur fanboys start screaming in the distance)

16. Snotlout fixes his mistakes (they were very big mistakes)

17. VALKA??? VALKA MENTION??? HICCUP HAS A DRAGON PLUSHIE??? (silently weeping by the end of the episode)

18. Fishlegs and Snotlout piss off some helicopter parents who are also Invisible Acid Dragons™ (ohhhhhh no)

19. Are there... other Night Furies????

20. Lol no BUT I'LL TELL YOU WHAT THERE IS-

Defenders of Berk:

1. Fight Club reference

2. That one time Meatlug became magnetic and almost died

3. Dagur is gay for Hiccup but like in a yandere way

4. Whoever designed the Screaming Death must have been on a particularly fucked up slice of magic mushroom because I've never seen something more in need of holy water than that dragon (my childhood favourite :D )

5. Snotlout's dad is a fucking asshole but I never thought he'd stoop that low

6. Behold: My second favourite dragon who canonically killed Astrid's uncle

7. They tried to train Terrible Terrors in this episode, guess how that went lmaooo

8. (grabs more holy water) IT'S BACK.

9. Hey remember Tiny Beyblade Dragon? Yeah now he's kinda sorta the size of a house. Meanwhile everything is on fire (twin's fault)

10. Behold: My favourite dragon's frozen carcass preserved in ice- I mean my favourite dragon is hibernating in ice- I mean OH SHIT OH FUCK HOLY FUCKING SHIT OH NO-

11. Dagur subjugates my favourite dragon and then karma bites him in the ass

12. Snotlout and Gustav are an anxiety/adhd wombo-combo

13. Ruffnut cuts her hair short to save the life of a really cute dragon and Dreamworks was too pussy to keep it like that for the rest of the season.

14. (darude sandstorm plays)

15. The dragons get high and try to kill each other

16. Toothless is on drugs (I'm not even joking, during the Toothless POV shots you can literally hear stoner music playing)

17. Dagur with helmet hair Dagur with helmet hair Dagur with helmet hair

18. THORNADO NOOOOOOOOO T-T

19. ALVIN, DAGUR, SNOTLOUT AND THE SCREAMING DEATH. HOW IS THIS SUPPOSED TO GET BETTER THAN IT ALREADY IS???

20. IT GOT BETTERRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!

Dawn of the Dragon Racers:

The gang got new fits and invented a sport

Race to the Edge S1:

1. Oh shit, Dagur's out of prison, better go chase him down and OOOH, SHINY TELESCOPE THINGY?? (Hiccup is a magpie apparently)

2. Gothi once again proving herself to be an absolute madlad

3. Hiccup and the gang move out of home because telescopy thingy told them to. What could possibly go wrong? (GONE WRONG)

4. Welcome to our new home on Dragon's Edge! It's been years since we've been able to function effectively as a team, and Tuffnut's been smoking way too many hallucinogens lately OH FUCK HE WASN'T HALLUCINATING OH FUCK ME

5. Snotlout is gay for Fishlegs

6. NOT GUSTAV NOOOOOOOO

7. Basically what happens when you put me in charge of anything

8. "Look at this super dangerous dragon I found! I'M GONNA WRESTLE IT!!"

9. Fishlegs and Snotlout are gay

10. THE MARY SUE IS BACK AND I LOVE HER SO MUCH

11. WELL THAT PLOT TWIST CAME OUTTA NOWHERE

12. (darude sandstorm vocoded to running in the 90s plays)

13. they made girl dragon pink

Race to the Edge S2:

1. Astrid becomes that "SHOW ME YOUR WAR FACE" guy basically

2. SCOTLAND FOREVER!!! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 (new villain alert and he is AWESOME)

3. MARY SUE IS WORKING FOR THE VILLAINS NOW???

4. Dreamworks introduces Dragon Werewolfism and does NOTHING with this concept after this episode?? What a ripoff!

5. Fuck Snotlout's dad so much

6. Hiccup punches Snotlout in the face and knocks him out which is no surprise considering he is God of Dragons

7. MARY SUE WAS SPYING ON THE VILLAINS ALL ALONG NOW???

8. Two people and a singular dragon try to fight off an entire armada

9. They succeed somehow

10. Oh hey it's a HTTYD 2 dragon (Free Willy parody? You couldn't have done anything more original?)

11. SKRILL!! SKRILL!! SKRILL!! SKRILL!! SKRILL!! SKRILL!!

12. Prepare to thirst in 3... 2... 1: (Viggo appears)

13. If you thought Dagur was homosexual, you aren't prepared for how gay Viggo gets

Race to the Edge S3:

1. Dagur did WHAT NOW???

2. Fuck Cavern Crashers so much but SNOTLOUT SNOUTLOUT OI OI OI!!!

3. Sword in the Stone parody?? Are all the Fishlegs episodes story parodies now??

4. Did... Did they try to portray Snotlout's dad as being in the right in this episode?? Ew fuck that.

5. Viggo almost caused Covid-19

6. Hiccup forgets that not everyone has ADHD and the dragons go completely fucking feral

7. This show loves to force romances, doesn't it?

8. I think these people took HTTYD/Pokemon crossover fics a bit too far

9. A musical episode which has a reason to exist. Sarah Z was right all along?

10. Favourite Fishlegs episode :)

11. DAGUR DID WHAT NOW???

12. My go-to introductory episode for non-fans. It's got everything. Including Viggo.

13. OKAY BUT THAT CLIFFHANGER WAS METAL

Race to the Edge S4:

1. OH THAT FINALE WAS METAL MALA IS JUST SO METAL I LOVE DEFENDERS OF THE WING

2. If you listen closely you can hear TJ Miller in absolute hysterics in the recording booth

3. At this point in time Viggo only values Hiccup as being worth 1000 gold coins

4. I love Snotlout so much... Spitelout can go suck a bag of rocks

5. Oh fuck yes Dagur's back

6. Viggo throws a hissy fit and kisses a man and Toothless is willing to die just so Hiccup doesn't have to die alone (sobbing)

7. Everyone is high in this episode

8. "You didn't think after all we've been through I'd expose myself without some... added protection?"

9. Jumping into a volcano on purpose: The episode

10. Viggo takes a sip of water in this episode (very important)

11. It took Hiccup and Astrid over four years since their first kiss to officially start dating, but they finally did it and it was one of the best episodes in the whole show

12. Ryker has had enough

13. Viggo confesses his love for Hiccup and then fucking dies (or did he?)

Race to the Edge S5:

1. "The volcano on Dragon's Edge is a dormant volcano" THINK THE FUCK AGAIN, FISHLEGS

2. How the fuck did Gen Z: The Dragon get ahold of Viggo's sword?

3. Savage needs therapy

4. Snotlout's casual sexism almost gets him killed: Lesbian Island edition

5. If you've ever watched an elderly person try to escape a nursing home then you've seen this episode before. Just without as many bones and corpses

6. The Gays Are Back In Town ft. Gay Snotlout, Gay Fishlegs and Gay Viggo

7. "my city now" - Krogan

8. You cannot watch this episode and tell me that Viggo isn't in love with Hiccup

9. Krogan insulted Viggo's hobby and Viggo got mega salty about it

10. Astrid punches a dragon with poisonous scales and almost dies because Save Stormfly Make Anditode™, turns out she did this for no reason whatsoever because Stormfly Wasn't Dying

11. Tuffnut fakes his own death in order to make Ruffnut happy

12. Dagur not-so-casually finding his fathers dead body

13. Rage.

Race to the Edge S6:

1. My blood has never boiled so hard as it did watching this episode

2. Stoick gets played like a cheap kazzoo and regresses back to how he acted in HTTYD 1 out of sheer stress

3. THIS SHOW LOVES TO FORCE ROMANCES, DOESN'T IT?

4. Fishlegs can't believe that his ancestors were Dragon Hunters as if he wasn't once enrolled in Dragon Killing School

5. Nothing solves a sibling rivalry like teaming up to kill the annoying cousin

6. THIS EPISODE GOT AGE RESTRICTED ON NETFLIX BECAUSE ASTRID SHOOK HER TITS AT HICCUP AND DAGUR AND MALA HAVE A MUTUAL PAIN KINK

7. The twins are just. So ride or die for each other it's not even funny.

8. Viggo confesses his love for Hiccup and then fucking dies for real this time (Viggo fans start sobbing as The Winner Takes It All by ABBA starts playing in the distance)

9. Snotlout writes a book

10. What if the gang had never left Berk? What if Hiccup never shot down Toothless at the start of HTTYD 1? What if Spitelout actually loved his son?

11. Protecting an island filled with a bunch of dead dragons

12. The satisfied smirk on my face knowing what the characters don't

13. The most satisfying death in the history of mankind.

HTTYD 2:

Way to straight up ruin Hiccup's life, am I right?

HTTYD 3:

Ruining every character and spitting in the face of all that I love

Homecoming:

20 minutes of my life that I'll never get back

Snoggletog Log:

Half an hour of a fireplace and the wrong voice actors. This shit plays like a DVD menu.

[jeonsolar]

I can't believe I just watched an 8 hour long Nikolina, Kanej, Wesper fanfiction of Shadow and Bone/Six of Crows.

Tags: canon divergence, Major Character death, Slowburn, But no slowburn if you know who I mean, Darkling’s evil AmPlIfIeD, 😉, Baghra is good in this one cuz I say so, Malina will be the main focus but I can assure you this is Nikolina, Just wait, Speedrun books 2 and 3, I have a whole new plot written post the Canon divergence, Darkling will NOT take his shirt off for that scene of the book, but I'll give you some Darklina choking to satisfy you Darklina freaks, Marriage of Covenience, Author skimmed the books and picked only a few things that they cared about, Like heavily laying undertones for Nikolina, Mathias is there sometimes, Sometimes, Like for real there will be episode where you straight up forget he's a character, Past Darklina, Current Malina, Future Nikolina, Zoya Genya and Alina are Bffs!, David my beloved 😔

Tell me if I missed anything that is not spoilers.

[ladyluscinia]

I think they were so worried about not getting a season 3 they ruined both the viewers expecting one and the viewers who would've liked it to end there. they've created an easily destroyable status quo because of course something needs to happen to get everyone back together for season 3. so it's not even a happy ending; it's so fragile, it's designed to fall apart the second that anyone learns that the show is back on. i get not wanting to bank on having a third season and wrapping it up but like. Galavant did that and did it better. WITH THE HEROES RETIRING AND THE TWO MINUTE MARRIAGE CEREMONY TO BOOT. But it gave an outline of where the plot might go from there and how the adventure will continue if it gets to. And it never got to, and season 2's ending is good because it's not /fragile/--it's not a cliffhanger, but you get the idea that they could keep going from there still. whereas this one didn't want to be a cliffhanger so much that they created the most breakable new status quo in history and if there is a season 3 it'll immediately be undone and I'll probably still watch it but like I'll /know/, y'know? They could fix everything in the first episode of season 3 and I'd still have to know that at one point, this was considered an acceptable outcome.

The thing that is driving me absolutely insane is they DID NOT HAVE TO DO THIS!

There's so many people looking at it like "well it's a shame that 2x08 clearly had to cram several episodes into one for budget reasons and it made the development weaker but that's the situation MAX put them in" and I cannot emphasize enough how much that is not true.

MAX did not break it to them after episodes 2x01 - 2x07 were written and half filmed that they would have to wrap up the whole plot in 30 minutes. Like absolute worst case scenario they had 10 eps mostly written and budget came back 20% over and they had to reduce to 8 total. More likely they knew they were getting 8 from the start.

It is absolutely nobody's fuck up except David Jenkins and his writers' room if they were unrealistic about what character beats were needed and would fit in the timeframe to reach a satisfying wrap up.

Worries about no S3 were on the table the moment it took until JUNE to get confirmation of S2. This wasn't sprung on them. If they wanted their story to have a "just in case" happy ending and then a "fully realized arc" happy ending, they should have fucking acted like it???

I was shocked when the first three episodes that dropped were so hardcore on destroying Edward's relationships and laying bare exactly how deep his issues went. It only made sense to me if they were going all in on getting a S3 and prepared to spend all of S2 focused on the implications of all that, and then the not-even two week in-universe timeline of the season reinforced my understanding that was happening.

"Shame we don't have time for our main couple to even start addressing their relationship or having moments of self-realization and sharing their issues," says guy who decided to make the first half of S2 about adding more problems on top of well established ones from S1 and the second half of S2 about throwing in a second breakup cycle instead of dealing with the fallout from the first.

Want Edward to end on a beat of feeling part of the found family? Well maybe adding a timeskip after 2x05 and then a crew chat in 2x06 where you make it clear he did an apology tour offscreen could help, but you also could have just not focused hard on him poisoning his relationship with every single one of them in the first place???

There's multiple different ways you can do Act 2 of a three act structure, and they did not have to choose one that ends on another dark cliffhanger beat or right at the open ended turning point toward growth? Like they didn't even do the one they picked in a way they could fit in their season. I feel like by the end of a struggles Act 2 both your protagonists need to have self-realized their issues and maybe had one conversation about it? Edward still wasn't talking about his guilt, and Stede wasn't talking about anything.

They aren't even at the turning point of growth and out of the backsliding / lessons learned era yet, that's why potential S3 will start on another backslide when status quo breaks and Stede starts "that's nice, dear"-ing Edward during the day and slipping out at night to vicariously listen to pirate stories or whatever (and they frame it like he's cheating).

We have two out of three seasons in a show that might only get two, and I feel like the characters have barely moved from their starting position.

Like idk maybe they are really good at coming up with character flaws - ex: Stede is repressed and bottles up his traumas until he mentally checks out / runs away - and just drawing blanks on how to believably "fix" them, but just going "well what if we just used this flaw to throw another miscommunication roadblock in their relationship?" is not getting them where they want to be.

The season was fundamentally designed against their stated goal and did not make what seem to be necessary writing concessions to the reduced screentime if they wanted their finale to land as an even plausibly happy ending. It's hollow.

And possibly not even salvageable in S3 since they aren't demonstrating the skills to salvage it.

[1moreff-creator]

Everything We Know About Mai Akasaki + So Many Theories

AKA, me going insane over a character with exactly nine seconds of main series screen time so far. I checked.

At this point, it's probably fair to say that Mai Akasaki is by far the most mysterious aspect of DRDT. A character we only learn about in short, cryptic bouts of information, yet one which seems intrinsically linked with the series' plot and characters. We know extremely little about her, and what we do know, it's usually speculative.

However, it's still really interesting to talk about this funky little woman, and try to figure out what exactly her deal is. Join me in insanity land, as I compile everything I could find about her, and speculate on her story! I can practically guarantee that you'll learn something new.

WARNING: Insanely long post. I reached the 30 image limit, to give you an idea of how crazy this is.

Wait, Who?

Her! <3

(A lot of what I'm about to say come from this post by despairing-disaster and this one by akemiai, huge shout out to them!)

For the uninitiated, Mai Akasaki is the secret seventeenth student of the DRDT cast, hidden somehwere in this school wait no that's Mukuro. Her name can be found in the hidden quote in MonoTV's character profile, which itself is found by doing "inspect element" on said page.

Her name is Mai Akasaki

(I am such a hacker)

Typing in https://danganronpadespairtime.tumblr.com/maiakasaki (or clicking there) takes you to a pretty empty page, with this text:

All you have to do is ask for my hand, and I'll give it to you. Ask for my life, and I'll give it to you as well. Don't apologize for asking, I'll give you my forgiveness too.

As you'll see later, this quote is probably something Mai would say.

And this hidden quote:

"Are you still searching for a secret? For some explanation that will satisfy you? There's no answer I can give you that will make you happy. Maybe I should have lied instead. I'm sorry."

Note the quotes, which as far as I can tell, aren't in any of the other hidden phrases. That said, spoilers, I don’t have any idea what this means.

You may aso have noticed some highlighted letters in that first quote. Typing those in, https://danganronpadespairtime.tumblr.com/aoaviepkro, takes you to the most important page for our purposes:

(Also, you can just look it up on google nowadays)

Mai Akasaki's character profile. And yes, it's the girl Teruko remembers after being stabbed by Xander, in episode 6 of chapter 1. After that memory, Teruko thinks:

It's strange I would remember her now, of all times. What was her name again? It's on the tip of my tongue, but I can't remember. Xander always reminded me of that girl. Perhaps that's why I'm thinking about her now. They looked similar, with that same red hair and smile. And... they both wanted to help, didn't they?

Teruko and her clearly have something going on, but we'll get to it later (take a shot every time I say something like that). For now, we have to dive into the profile.

Profile of Someone Dearly Loved

Basic Info

She's listed as the "Ultimate ???", likes phone charms and dislikes silence. She's 5'8'' tall, weighing 124 lbs and with a chest sie of 30 in. I doubt anyone cares about the latter. Her birthday is February first, which you may want to keep in mind for later.

The Subtitle Quote

As every character does, Mai has a quote right under her name. In her case, "There's a way for you to be happy". Keep in mind these quotes are usually things the characters would say, and as you'll see in a moment, that fits.

However, what's interesting is that this quote was not the one originally there when Mai's page was first found. It changed. It used to be, apparently, "Anything, anything at all..."

What I don't know is when it changed, or why. The earliest reference I can find to the change is this post by stfu-sage, the 20th of March, 2023. This is just three days after the release of Ch 2 Ep 8, but that feels like quite a strange time for it to change, especially since we don’t know how many days passed without anyone checking the profile. I feel it makes more sense if it had changed either with the release of Ch 2 or with the BDA on chapter 7. Regardless, the exact time doesn’t matter much.

What do these lines mean, though? Well, starting with “Anything, anything at all”, I believe it’s related to line from the Mai Akasaki URL. You know, “All you have to do is ask for my hand, and I’ll give it to you…”, that one. When you read them together, it makes sense:

All you have to do is ask for my hand, and I'll give it to you. Ask for my life, and I’ll give it to you as well. […] [You can ask for] Anything, anything at all.

Considering the code for Mai’s profile is in the “ask for my hand” line, I think it makes sense.

Then, the changed quote, “There’s a way for you to be happy”. Considering the general time for the change, is it possible this is something Mai said to Arei, during their time at Hope's Peak? It's the best I have for now, but I feel we may need more context to know what this is about.

In any case, I can't gather much more from the subtitle quote. Although I do feel like pointing out, Mai’s quote is somewhat unique in that none of the words are highlighted. All the other characters have one or a few words highlighted (eg: Arei - secret, Teruko - no matter what), except MonoTV and Mai. Don’t think it means anything, but it’s there.

Hidden Quotes

And here we have it. The most important part of Mai theorizing. Whenever you refresh the page, a new body of text appears, which is related to a specific character via the code of the website. You can see in the screenshot I took, it says “A girl with many friends”. But here’s a full list of all the possibilities:

Teruko: Some years ago, she was searching for someone named ‘Teruko Tawaki.’ Charles: A girl who loves her family. Rose: She remembers everything that is important to others. Arturo: A girl who sees the beauty in everyone. Levi: A girl with a floral tattoo on her arm. Whit: A girl with many friends. Eden: She kept calling the number, even though no one picked it up. J: She kept it a secret, and told no one. Hu: A girl who wanted to keep everyone safe. Nico: Everyone confided in her. Ace: A girl who had a bright future. Arei: She doesn’t like it when her friends fight. Min: An average girl with nothing special at all about her. Xander: She couldn’t stand to do nothing. Veronika: A girl who didn’t foresee the consequences. David: She forgives everyone. MonoTV: It’s all your fault.

You may notice the order is somewhat peculiar, and it's for a good reason. It's the order the "bios" (name of the variable in the source code... I think that's how that works) are laid out in the source code of Mai's page.

... I know you can barely see and not all of them are on frame, but just trust me. If you want to check for yourself, you can go to the profile's source code (Ctrl U), and either scroll to almost the bottom, or just search (Ctrl F) for a word like "average" or "confided" which only shows up in the "bios". There's probably easier ways to go about it, but this is how I got there. I'm telling you this because it took me like an hour to find out where the hell the order came from. I am not good at computers.

However, for now, let's just ignore the order (and the tenses of the sentences, I swear I'll get there) and focus on the main points for now.

+Mai is extremely well-liked by the other members of the cast. In particular, some of the quotes compliment her based on faults the character attached to them has.

>Arturo is extremely judgemental based on ugliness, but Mai "sees the beauty in everyone".

>Charles forgot his dead brother, but Mai "loves her family".

>Rose is absentminded and often forgets things if she doesn't see them, but Mai "remembers everything that is important to others".

>The hidden quote on Ace's page has him saying "I don't know what to do with myself anymore", suggesting a lack of control over his future, but Mai "had a bright future".

>Arei constantly causes altercations between the cast, but Mai "doesn't like it when her friends fight".

However, plenty of quotes are simply good qualities, such as Hu's "A girl who wanted to keep everyone safe". The point is, everyone seemingly adored this girl.

+Mai is good at keeping secrets, as implied by J's and Nico's quotes ("She kept it a secret, and told no one" and "Everyone confided in her", respectively). Those same quotes actually seem to imply Mai likely knew those two's secrets, and possibly a lot of the others.

+Among other things, Mai is compassionate, forgiving, friendly, and generally a positive presence.

+Mai and Teruko have a particularly strange relationship. We'll come back to this.

+Mai seemingly did... something, and it brought consequences. This is implied by the quotes of Xander ("she couldn't stand to do nothing") and Veronika ("A girl who didn't foresee the consequences"). But, what was it? Well, to get a better idea, we need to take a look at... the Bonus Episodes.

A Not-So-Unnamed-Classmate

Technically-a-Theory: Mai is the Unnamed Classmate

I say "technically" because I'm pretty sure no one actually disagrees with this. Yes, technically it's never been confirmed, but it seems likely Mai is the Unnamed Classmate who shows up in both of the Bonus Episodes we have so far. The PoV character in both of those episodes has the same voice, which sounds like a girl's, and their personality seems to fit with the very little we know of Mai.

Additionally, as you’ll see, the text boxes in the Bonus Episodes are surrounded by flowers which look very similar to the ones in Mai’s tattoo, further connecting them.

It's not much, but since we don't know anyone else who could be Unnamed Classmate, they and Mai are likely the same person.

With this clarified, let's talk about Unnamed Classmate.

Bonus Episode #1

This episode is mostly focused on Min and the history of Hope's Peak, but we can still start to grasp a bit of Mai's personality. She seems generally upbeat and somewhat bubbly, and we can see glimpses of her kind and caring qualities when she comforts Min near the end of the episode.

There's also a few lines which actually tell us a few more concrete things about her, though. I won't post them in chronological order, btw.

Min: Hey! Put your textbook away! Don’t cheat!

Seemingly an insignificant joke, but it does help establish Mai as slightly mischievous/cheeky, which will be expanded upon later. Other indications of this cheekiness include Mai comlimenting Min and trying to distract her by talking about the sky and her backstory, presumably to procrastinate. I may be reading too much into it, but I really don't think Mai is as easily distracted as she makes herself out to be.

Mai: Auughh, the test is too soon, there’s no way I’ll have enough time! I’m totally going to fail!

Mai: I'm sorry. I shouldn't have bothered you to help me study--

Mai: I see. That's how you got your talent. I'm ashamed that I'm only now learning something so important. I'm sorry.

(Yes, I had to bunch a few of these images together because I ran into the Tumblr 30 image limit)

A few lines which seem innocuous at first, but when paired together, they hint at something. Essentially, I believe this implies Mai doubts her abilities and actions, and may even have a self-deprecating streak. She's at the very least much harsher on herself than she is on others. It sounds like a stretch, but I swear it's not as farfetched as it seems.

Mai: You're somebody who buys fish-shaped pastries and saves the chocolate-filled ones for me, because you know that those are my favorite.

Mai likes chocolate-filled pastries. Hey, when I said “everything we know about Mai”, I meant everything (that I could find).

Min: I suppose for someone like you who doesn't care too much about Hope's Peak and who, no offense, would never be eligible for the [Ultimate Contest for Eminent Students] with such average grades...

Min: You might not do very well in school, but you're quite sharp.

Put simply, Mai has average grades, but is still considered smart by Min. Her intelligence is visible throughout the episodes, mainly in the form of emotional intelligence and a hint of deception (that's where the mischieviousness comes in).

However, perhaps it’s the first phrase which is most interesting. Mai “doesn’t care too much about Hope’s Peak”. Which is only reiterated by the following lines.

Min: Maybe someone like you who never cared about Hope’s Peak Academy wouldn’t understand. But it’s everyone else’s dream to be an Ultimate.

Mai: Ultimates aren’t everything. As if I’m only friends with you because of your talent. There’s more to you than that.

Mai seems to have a much more laissez-faire approach to the concept of Hope’s Peak and Ultimates than what Min considers normal. By itself, this isn’t too strange, as we know there’s other people not too attached to their status as Ultimates. However, this actually may have something to do with the incident implied in Xander’s and Veronika’s quotes. I’ll get to it later (overused phrase of the day), but for now, keep this in mind.

Nevertheless, there is one more theory affected by this nonchalance towards Hope’s Peak. Except, it’s a theory I believe is actually harmed by this attitude.

Good Theory I Don’t Believe: Mai is a Reserve Course Student

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a cool theory! I just don’t think it works all the way.

Essentially, this theory is what it says in the tin. Mai is the Ultimate ??? because she’s actually a Reserve Course student, a la Hajime Hinata. There are many good posts on this theory, like this one by delightfullydiscordant, and I recommend you read them since they’re well put together! Some of the main points of this theory include:

>Min’s quote for Mai is “An average girl with nothing special at all about her.”, which could imply she doesn’t have a talent. However, there are other interpretations for this line, so it’s far from conclusive.

>Mai seems to be wearing a Japanese Hope’s Peak uniform (check out this post by laly-481), but the jacket around Mai’s waist is darker than the one worn by Ultimates in DR 3. Instead, it seems closer to a Reserve Course jacket. The issue I have with this is that… well, we know very little about what the Japanese Hope’s Peak in the DRDT universe looks like, so this feels a bit vague.

>

Mai: You’re not nobody. Even if I pretend that you’re not an Ultimate and that we’re not both students in Hope’s Peak Academy, you’re still somebody to me.

I’ll ask you to ignore the lesbians for a moment and focus on the beginning of the quote. If you look at it closely, it seems to imply both Mai and Min are Hope’s Peak alumni, but they’re not both Ultimates. Thereby, Mai must be a Reserve Course student.

However, I actually have a different interpretation of that quote, one which, you guessed it, I’ll get to later. But for now, if we’re going to get involved in semantics, we also have to look at this line:

Mai: The US Hope's Peak Academy takes in college-age students, and there's two of them, and we have this really weird curriculum, and there's a bunch of other things, and...

Min: Remember that we’re East Class 27, so that means that Hope’s Peak is how many years old?

Min: Look at what our classmates are doing now. They're Ultimates too. They're all doing things relevant to their career, if not actually out working.

Min saying “we're class 27" could be interpreted as her simply referring to herself and the other Ultimates, but even then, referring to "our classmates" while talking to Mai implies they're in the same class. Also, Mai saying "we have" a weird curriculum feels odd unless both she and Min have the same curriculum, meaning both of them likely attend the same classes, thus again, both are Ultimates.

But that’s only a minor problem. In truth, there are other reasons I believe Mai has a talent, and I even have a guess of what that talent may be. But the main one is what we just established: Mai never really cared about Hope’s Peak.

I admittedly may be missing some context, since I’ve never watched DR 3, but from what I know, Reserve Course students are usually characterized as people who desperately want to be Ultimates and are obsessed with Hope’s Peak, which doesn’t fit Mai at all. You could argue maybe she went to Hope's Peak to search for Teruko as Teruko's quote implies, but the problem with that is that Teruko remembers Mai, at least a little bit (see: dream sequence), which means they should have reunited before Hope's Peak, since the last thing Teruko remembers before the "amnesia zone" is going to Hope's Peak's entrance ceremony.

Not to mention, we… can’t even be sure the Reserve Course exists. For as much info as we got from the Bonus Episode #1, that course was never even mentioned. And seeing this is a post-Tragedy world, the Reserve Course may not even exist. Especially when Min also says that actually being an Ultimate is considered more important than going to Hope’s Peak in the US.

So, final verdict on this theory? While it’s quite interesting and I definitely think it’s more plausible than many of the other things I’ll bring up, I don’t find it to be the most likely, again because Mai’s disinterest in Hope’s Peak pushes her away from the standard Reserve Course student, and because I prefer a different theory about her talent.

And with that, we’re done with the first Bonus Episode for now! Let’s see what the second one brings.

Bonus Episode #2

This one, surprisingly, has fewer lines which gives us info about Mai. However, what it does give us is arguably some of the most important intel we have so far.

Mai: No, it’s fine. Don’t think you’re making me come with you. I'm here because I want to be here.

Mai: [Xander reimbursing her for the trip]'s silly. I can pay for it myself. Besides, you're letting me stay at your place for a week, so if anything, you're doing me a favor.

The first just reiterates that Mai is compassionate and wants to help whenever she can. As for the second, it seems to imply Mai doesn't struggle too much with money, which is info I guess. However, she also says Xander is doing her a favor by letting her stay over. I think that just means the expenses of living wherever she's living for a week exceed the expenses of the trips? I don't see any other reason that would be considered a favor in that aspect. I considered maybe Mai could have a bad home life, but in the secret quotes:

Charles: A girl who loves her family

So, I don't think that's the case. I think it really is just a money thing, and we don't have to overthink it too much.

Mai: 'Oh, speaking of Hope's Peak. I need to ask Xander if he found that document I asked him to look for.'

Mai: 'I didn't want to unload the work on him, but he's much better at digging up stuff than I am.'

Mai: 'But it's definitely not something I should bring up in a public place. I'll remember to ask him later'.

And here we are. The single biggest Mai-related reveal in the Bonus Episodes. Her and Xander were involved in some sort of secretive operation related to Hope's Peak. In particular, seemingly during their trip to visit the graves of Xander's family, Mai asked Xander to retrieve a document related to the Academy, a document they shouldn't discuss in public. In fact, right after this, Mai changes the subject to Xander's eyes so as to not talk about it, again showing she can be somewhat deceptive when she needs to.

This might be related to Teruko's claim that "[Xander and Mai] both wanted to help", but it seems impossible for her to remember anything which happened during HPA (Hope's Peak Academy, got tired of writing it out) time, so I still don't know what she actually meant by that.

Nevertheless, it's pretty obvious that whatever this is, it would be bad news for HPA. I mean, if Xander's involved, there's no way it's good for an institution. But it also ties back to Mai's critical view of HPA and the Ultimate title.

However, messing with something as powerful as HPA could be pretty dangerous. Thus, I believe this little operation is likely what's being referred to in Xander's and Veronika's quotes.

Xander: She couldn’t stand to do nothing. Veronika: A girl who didn’t foresee the consequences.

(By the way, Xander's quote in particular is why I don't quite believe the theory that the document mentioned here is only to get Teruko into HPA somehow. It's a cool theory, but Xander's quote feels a bit too dramatic for that to be the end goal of Mai's plans)

I mean, for one, it's Xander saying Mai did something, and messing with HPA could have quite drastic consequences, from what we know. Thus, from now on, I will henceforth call this vague action against HPA "the HPA Operation", because saying "that thing Mai did which Xander's and Veronika's quotes allude to" is gonna get tiring.

What exactly the HP Operation was, I obviously don't know, we're on chapter 2 of the series and this is quite clearly a mystery which may last until chapter 6 (assuming a standard DR formula).

However, I can tell you one thing. It may not fully be Mai's idea.

Mai: If you set out to do something, then never give up on that, no matter what obstacles may stand in your way. Even if it's risky or against the rules, as long as it's for a good cause...

Mai: I'll trust that you know to do the right thing.

Xander: Yeah, of course (NOT PICTURED)

Xander: That's why I've come to Hope's Peak, isn't it?

The lines about the HPA document appear right after this, although Mai does seem confused at first by Xander's claim that "that's why [he's come] to Hope's Peak". So although Mai is the one who asked Xander to find the document, it's possible the basic idea to go against HPA came from Xander. After all, remember. Mai never cared much about HPA, so it seems unlikely she paid enough attention to it to notice its flaws as quickly as Xander would. Ultimate Rebel, and all that.

However, even if Xander was the one who planted the idea of revolution in Mai's head, she's clearly invested in it. She tells Xander to never give up on anything he sets out to do, even if it's risky or against the rules.

So, there it is. So far, what we know about the HPA Operation is:

>Mai and Xander were heavily involved.

>It may have originally been Xander's idea, but Mai seems to have taken the role of tactician at some point.

>HPA likely wasn't too happy with it.

>It likely had horrible consequences for Mai.

And that's all we had for a while, as Chapter 2 Part 1 didn't add anything to the conversation. Well, except maybe a thought Teruko has when Arei starts crying after her breakdown in the playground:

That pitiful crying... It reminds me of... Of...

That could be about Mai, but I really don't know what it could mean, so I'm sorta ignoring it for now.

So, yeah. Nothing new.

Until it came out.

Going (Literature Girl) Insane

Yeah, the David MV. Mai is listed in the cast list as a secondary character, though her name is crossed out. This likely refers to the portrait of her seen in the background.

The portrait of Mai is labeled "portrait of someone dearly loved", while Teruko's is labeled "portrait of someone dearly unloved", the words flipped. This is one of many things which seem to imply Teruko and Mai are meant to be opposites of each other.

There is also that one image of a girl whose identity is unclear.

It doesn't look like Mai, but maybe that's my prosopagnosiac ass assuming different hair = different person. Generally, people assume this is "Diana Chiem", if she even exists, though I somewhat lean on it possibly being the mysterious name out of frame in the cast list. You know, the name which vaguely looks like "Ms Naegi". However, I'm showing you the image to get a second opinion on something.

You see the hand Mystery Girl is holding? Doesn't it look like it's wearing a glove? Because of the white line in the wrist. Maybe I'm going insane, that could just be a bend of the wrist, but... I kinda don't see it? It makes a bit more sense to me as a glove. And since it doesn't seem to be cut off at the fingers like Xander's, it would have to be Mai's. Other characters also wear this type of glove, but they’re not on the cast list.

The counterpoint is that it looks like you can see the nail of the PoV person's thumb, but I'm not sure that's the case? That part of the sprite is really strange and seems to be different in all three of the Mystery Girl images, so I can't tell. Anywyas, if any of you have ideas, tell me. Again, it's most likely I'm overthinking and that's just a bend of the wrist.

Anyways, enough dillydally, let's get to the big stuff.

The Roman numeral

As you may or may not know, during the MV we’re shown a crossword puzzle which is solved with the characters’ names, and this assigns each character with a different Roman numeral. This numeral later shows up attached to some kind of phrase, which in turn relates that character back to the phrase. I made a post talking about all of them, but I'll go more in detail about Mai's in this post than I did in that post.

Solution by raspbeyes

In the crosswords, Mai intersects Arei and Levi. I don't think this means much by itself, since the way the names intersect doesn't seem to be too important in general. Like, yes, if you squint you can see things like Whit only intersecting Charles, but there's also things like Min only intersecting Arei, Eden only intersecting Rose, Veronika intersecting everyone and their morther... My point is, the exact position in the crosswords doesn't tend to matter much.

What's more important are the numerals. Mai's is XI (11), a number which, from my research, is related to leadership and bringing out the best in others, as well as nobility or higher conciousness and spirituality and knowledge and new beginnings- Okay, the point is, I found mostly inconclusive stuff, but a lot of this sort of relates back to Mai, so we take it.

And the phrase itself:

XI. God is dead

What could this mean? Well, in philosophy, the phrase "God is dead" refers to the breakdown of ethical and sociocultural structures as christianity and religion in general became less universal. So, loss in faith in an institution leads to changes in the status quo. One way to interpret this in the context of this numeral is that Hope's Peak is the "God", and Mai's actions involved a loss on faith on HPA, and everything which comes with it. This could even be related to the phrase which directly follows this numeral in the song, "become brainwashed: go do it!". If HPA's propaganda which makes everyone love Ultimates can be considered brainwashing, anyways.

...

But that's not what any of us first thought when we read that, is it?

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Is Mai Dead?

Yeah, we gotta talk about the elephant in the room.

You'll have noticed, lots of the hidden quotes on Mai's profile speak about her in the past tense. This already had people thinking she was dead since it was first found, but the MV really drove the point home. Considering how the characters think about Mai, it's not impossible to imagine Mai is the "God" here, and "God is dead" has a far more literal meaning.

But, let's hold our horses here, no need to kill her so quickly. There is a chance she's alive.

Coping With the Quotes

Like I said, some of these quotes speak about her as if she's dead, but some of them actually talk about Mai in the present tense. Here, I sorted them out.

Referring to a past event:

Teruko: Some years ago, she was searching for someone named ‘Teruko Tawaki.’ Eden: She kept calling the number, even though no one picked it up. J: She kept it a secret, and told no one. Xander: She couldn’t stand to do nothing. Veronika: A girl who didn’t foresee the consequences.

These are phrases which can't be used to determine Mai's status, since they talk about a specific thing which she did. Even if she's alive, these would still be in the past tense. Teruko's is explicitly talking about years ago; J and Eden are talking about things Mai probably did during her time at HP; and Xander's and Veronika's talk about the HPA Operation. These are inconclusive.

Miscellaneously inconclusive

Whit: A girl with many friends. MonoTV: It’s all your fault.

MonoTV's line doesn't refer to Mai at all, so it's not useful here. And I put Whit here because... frankly, I wouldn't trust him to tell us even if Mai really is dead. "[His] mother is dead, [he] omit[s] this truth", and all that. Though his quote does seem to imply she's alive, for what it's worth.

Present Tense

Charles: A girl who loves her family. Rose: She remembers everything that is important to others. Arturo: A girl who sees the beauty in everyone. Levi: A girl with a floral tattoo on her arm. Arei: She doesn’t like it when her friends fight. Min: An average girl with nothing special at all about her. David: She forgives everyone.

Admittedly, some of these don't actually have verbs, so putting them in "present tense" is a bit of a misnomer. Still, all of these seem to imply Mai's alive. Notably, David's line is right after Xander's and Veronika's in the code, so he might be saying this after the HPA Operation fell through? Take that as you will.

Past Tense

Hu: A girl who wanted to keep everyone safe. Nico: Everyone confided in her. Ace: A girl who had a bright future.

I was surprised by how few of these lines actually speak of Mai strictly as if she's died. They are all together, too, and separated from Xander's and Veronika's by Arei's and Min's in the code. But what's even more important is that these are still inconclusive.

When Hu says Mai "wanted to keep everyone safe", she could be talking specifically about the HPA Operation, and the phrase would be in the past tense even if Mai survived that.

When Nico says "everyone confided in her", that could mean everyone at one point or another told her their secrets, and again, it would be in the past tense even if Mai is alive.

And although Ace says Mai "had a bright future", we don't know why she no longer has one. It's possible the consequences Veronika speaks of only ruined Mai's future, but didn't get her killed.

With all this in mind, it actually seems like the quotes lean on the side of Mai being alive! That's still inconclusive, and MonoTV's quote is a bit too ominous for me to say they definitively confirm her status.

Especially because... well, the quotes aren't the only part of this discussion.

The MV Killed the Hope's Peak Star

Let's start with the biggest issue, the flowers of an unknown species.

As pointed out by delightfullydiscordant in this post, those flowers appear to be the same ones on Mai’s tattoo and Unnamed Classmate’s text boxes. And as the comments point out, they seem to be camellias.

The issue is that the MV confirms they’re white. And white camellias, in Japan, are popular funeral flowers and are associated with death. Yeah.

Now, let’s not bury the girl yet. White camellias also represent adoration and respect in a more platonic way than, say, red camellias, for example. They can also represent purity, beauty, and even hope. Yeah, we’re dropping the H word.

I also tried looking for literary references with white camellias, in the spirit of the MV. However, the only thing I found was that they show up in “To Kill A Mockingbird”, a book which if I recall correctly is never mentioned in the MV. And it’s a good thing, too, since they apparently represent racism in that book. I don’t think that’s related to Mai, frankly.

So, good news! It’s still not conclusive! Well, but there’s more. In particular, take a look at footnote 20.

This shows up directly after Mai's numeral and the brainwashed phrase I mentioned earlier. It’s a definition of the model of the five stages of grief, with the footnote itself simply claiming it is considered by many to be outdated. Also, there’s an emoticon of someone sticking out their tongue. Don’t know what else that would be, and I don’t know what to make of it.

But the fact it’s a model of how people deal with grief, usually related to death, and that it shows up directly after Mai’s numeral, seems to imply Mai’s dead.

And then there’s the problem of her numeral! Mai has one of the only ones numerals which is colored, in this case gray. The others are mostly just white, with the only other exceptions being Xander's (translucid, "(the world of abnormal sentiment dances)") and Min's (pink, stylised as the X of a death portrait, "democratic-ly" and the rules of class trials). It doesn't bode too well for Mai to have something in common with 2/3 of all confirmed dead people, I have to say.

However, it being gray specifically could be a direct reference to her death as well. Color theory (don’t question it for now) connects gray with the depressed persona of David, though, so this isn’t very conclusive.

And finally, edging into more “confirmation bias-y” territory, you remember how I said the position in the crosswords doesn’t really matter? Well, yeah, but. Mai’s name, as it goes over the A in Arei, also happens to cross the Roman numeral IV (4), a number related to death as per footnote four. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s why Arei has it. You know, the third dead person. Nevertheless, again, crosswords positioning is usually not important, so take that with a massive grain of salt.

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So, what’s the conclusion? I think it’s still up for debate, but I lean more on the idea of Mai being dead. The flowers and the model of stages of grief are pretty damning, and I don’t think most of the quotes being in present tense can really be trusted.

Anyways, let me continue a bit with the idea of her being dead.

Sub-Theory: Shot Through the Heart, Xander’s to Blame

You remember how the MV claims there’s six bullets around? But it also tells you it’s impossible to find them all? I made a post about it, where I found the five bullets which I think are the only ones which i can be found.

My conclusion in that post, which I sort of stand by, is that if there’s six bullets, but only five are visible, the last one is likely loaded in the gun. It’s labeled “(not) a prop gun”, so it’s apparently real, but still connected to Xander.

The issue? That gun is sorta pointed directly at Mai’s portrait.

This kinda fits with the pieces I’ve been putting together. Mai (possibly) died because of the HPA Operation, but Xander may have been the one who originally planted that idea in her head. Or at least enabled her plans by finding documents. In that sense, one could argue it’s Xander’s fault Mai died. So, it kinda fits! I’m going with that.

The question now would be who blames Xander for Mai’s death. After all, I sorta doubt he’s the one who actually killed her. My original instinct was David, since that’s the guy the MV is about, but that doesn’t quite fit. David idolizes Xander a fair bit, so it feels odd to think he’d blame him for this.

Instead, if this theory is true, I think it makes more sense for Xander to blame himself for Mai’s death. Survivor’s guilt is a huge part of his character (see: the Bonus Episode and the quote on his page), so if he survived the fallout of the HPA Operation when Mai didn’t, he’d be quite heartbroken by it. And thus, he may end up blaming himself for dragging her into the whole mess.

So, that's about it for what we know about Mai's status. But would you believe it if I told you we're not done with the MV yet?

Color Theory

Color theory in the context of the MV refers to this post and reblog by accirax, where she went over every colored lyric in the MV and assigned each color a character based on the characters' color scheme and the lines themselves. I recommend checking out her whole post, it's really good and I won't talk about everything she brought up.

For our purposes, the important color is Mai's. And I agree with accirax that Mai is likely black (the color, not the skin tone). Although the color doesn't show up much in her color scheme, she's a generally cryptic character with a generally cryptic color. But the lines work with Mai better than practically anyone else:

>"You" x3: As pointed out by accirax, everyone is obssessed with Mai, so it sorta fits.

>"The track to the ideal country ->" The arrow points to a passage from "Utopia", btw. This makes sense with the HPA Operation. It's a vaguely revolutionary operation which seeks to improve the world, so you could consider that "the track to the ideal country."

However, we have to talk about the elephant in the room. Her color scheme would still set her up to be red. Maybe yellow if you count her eyes, but red is an important color for her. It wouldn't be unheard of for an important character to have two colors, since David has two. But red is a special color for color theory... because it's completely nonsensical.

Red is by far the most overrepresented color in the MV, having practically double the amount of lines any other colors do. And considering the color, you'd imagine it would either go to Mai, Xander or Veronika. However, no character fits all the lines that well, as explained by accirax in her posts. I explained in this reblog what I believe about this in detail, but essentially, I believe red is intentionally ambiguos, and any given red line can belong to any of the three characters I mentioned.

I'll quickly go over the way I would assign the red lines, but I'll only explain the Mai lines, since I already went into detail on the other ones in that reblog I linked to before. Keep in mind some may apply to multiple characters.

Unassignable: Aa, ah, isn't it?!

Veronika: whatever; go mad x3; broken; go insane?; won't change; original; you've killed so many; medicine; self-denial confessions; self-delusion.

Xander: are all just idiots (final verdict); Bye x2; Goodbye; escape!; together; are all just idiots!; ignorant; great applause!!!; won't change; original; and disappear!; 1; medicine; revolutionary; idiot; self-delusion

Mai: Bye x2; Goodbye; broken; God; and disappear!; medicine; revolutionary, self-denial confessions

I will mention, you can also give her all the "idiot" lines Xander has, as well as "won't change; self-delusion" and all that, since David (the guy presumably "singing") may be somewhat skeptical about Mai and her revolutionary ideas.

>Bye x2, Goodbye, broken, and disappear!: She's probably dead, so. I also inexplicably think "broken" works with her death, but not Xander's. I have no idea why.

>God: The biggest reason why Mai has to be included, the others just aren't as God-ish as Mai (hey, it's like that song!). Not much to say; it's connected to Mai via numeral XI, and I already explained why she could be "God" here.

>Medicine; revolutionary: She's a revolutionary thanks to the HPA Operation, and you could argue that means she's the "medicine" of society.

>Self-denial confessions: Mai works better with this line's original context (revolutionaries being coerced into going back on their ideals) than Veronika, but it still leaves behind the question of what exactly she's denying. Maybe denying the ideals of Ultimates, when she herself is (probably) an Ultimate? Something like that. I guess that could also work with Xander in hindsight.

So, there we go! Full interpretation of Color Theory as it relates to Mai. Wow, that was a lot for very little new info!

We're almost done with the MV, but first, we have to talk about the man himself.

David's Relation to Mai, and his Potential Involvement in the HPA Operation

But first, a side note.

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Does David remember Mai?

There's a theory floating around that David might remember parts of his time at HPA, including Mai's existence. Check out this post by anderscim and reblog by xmicrophonyx if you want a full explanation, but I'll cover the main points here. It's a really good theory, and it's not any less plausible than some of the other theories I'll mention later in the post, but I don't quite believe it.

See, the main evidence for this theory is that the Literature Girl MV includes Mai's face in the portrait and an image of Xander with two eyes, as well as things like the morse code and possibly tally 5 which seem to reference David and Xander's relationship during HPA time. And that's my first issue with the theory, I just don't think the MV can be used for this.

Of course, it comes down to interpretation, but the way I see the MV is as an abstract form of storytelling, not a completely 1:1 view of David’s mind. Essentially, while a lot of it is spoken from the perspective of David, it’s not actually a reflection of his real mental state, but rather a representation for us the audience. It’s hard to describe :v

The main thing that I want to bring up in support of my interpretation is the youtube comments scene, I hope you know what I’m talking about. There’s no way David would be aware of these comments, such as the one referencing the J and Arei swap theory. In particular, the comment talking about (presumably, the names aren’t explicitly written) Teruko as a protagonist is impossible for David to conceive, since there’s no way he would know we see her as the protag; and the ones that namedrop Byakuya, Nagito and Kokichi are practically impossible as well, as Veronika has claimed not to remember any other killing games before the one in DRDT. Kokichi in particular would be problematic depending on your interpretation of V3.

What does this mean? This means that the MV isn’t beyond showing us the audience things outside of David’s own mind, for the sake of storytelling. It’s not hard to imagine, then, that the scene with Xander having two eyes is meant to show us that they had a good relationship in HPA, even if David doesn’t remember it. Same with calling Mai “someone dearly loved.”

There’s also a few things about other characters which don’t quite match what David would know about them in the killing game. For example, Rose’s numeral: II. Ego cogito ergo (turbatus) sum. (I think therefore I am disturbed). This only really makes sense in the context of Rose’s conversation with Teruko and Nico, where she admits to having trouble separating reality from her memory and her dreams. But David wasn’t there for that. Another example is Teruko’s: XIII. or not to be? Which seems to reference her suicidal tendencies, implied in that one thing she said to Arei. Again, that’s not something David would be aware of during the killing game. 

Either David remembers way more about HPA than implied in the theory, or those are also examples of the MV going beyond David’s mind to continue telling us things about the story.

In xmicrophonyx’s reblog, she also brings up the pre-chapter dialogue as possibly being David’s. I… don’t see it, frankly. The pre-chapter 1 dialogue seems to fit Teruko more, imo.

“Half-remembering is worse than forgetting. Her name, his face…”

We know Teruko doesn’t remember Mai’s name based on the CH 1 EP 6 dream sequence from before, and the “he” could be her brother. Prosopagnosia, and all that. 

And while the chapter 2 dialogue could fit David and his feelings towards Xander  better, there’s nothing which explicitly implies he remembers anything about HPA before the killing game.

I still miss you. I miss you so much that I wish you had never been part of my life. The worst part is, even though you left me like this, there’s nothing I can blame you for.

Also I think that’s Eden but that’s besides the point.

And finally, now that you understand why I don’t think the evidence for isn’t very good, we have to address the evidence against. Mainly, the fact that David doesn’t seem to recognize Xander during his introduction. At all. He even explicitly says, “... I don’t believe we’ve met before”, and calls Xander “sir”. There was no indication at that point that they’d be missing memories, so David has no reason to pretend he doesn’t know who Xander is. In fact, I imagine that if he did remember Xander as having two eyes, and he sees him with an eyepatch, he would react to it in some way, right?

In conclusion, although I like the theory, I don’t think it’s very likely that David’s kept any memories from HPA time.

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Anyways, back to my speculation. There is relatively little reference to Mai in the MV, so it's not like we can get much here, but there is still one thing I want to talk about. And that's the morse code at the end of the MV. As translated by dav-suburbiia:

“YOU STILL BELIEVED IN ME DESPITE EVERYTHING I’VE DONE.” “BUT THAT’S JUST FANTASY, ISN’T IT?” “I SIMPLY CHOSE TO BELIEVE THAT YOU DID.” “AFTER ALL, I’M INCAPABLE OF BEING SOMEONE WITHOUT YOU.”

Now, most people assume this is about Xander, which is perfectly understandable seeing the context of the MV. However, I think there's an argument to be made that this is actually about Mai.

The main thing here is the apparent contradiction which rises if we assume this is about Xander. The "you" in this code knows what David "has done", but they also seemingly aren't around anymore. If we assume the first is referring to David's "manipulation" thing, then this would have to be about HPA Xanvid, since we've never heard of David confessing his issues to killing game Xander. However, if the "you" really isn't around anymore, this would have to be for killing game Xanvid, since Xander only died in the killing game. Am I making sense?

This isn't conclusive, mind you. You could say the code never explicitly says the "you" is actually gone, just that David can't be someone without them. Or, alternatively, that David did reveal "everything [he's] done" during the killing gmae. But it's still an odd way to phrase all this.

So, is there any evidence this is actually about Mai instead? Well, if you squint. The code is directly followed by footnote 22: "The rest is silence". Silence is the dislike stated in Mai's profile. Word association coming in clutch.

But perhaps more interesting is the phrase "You still believed in me despite everything I've done", combined with:

David: She forgives everyone.

The "you" in the code forgave David, and Mai evidently forgave him as well. It's not conclusive either, but it could be a connection.

Under the interpretation that this is about Mai, it would be related to HPA time. Mai still believed in David, or at least, at one point David believed Mai believed in him, and apparently gave him a purpose in life.

The worrying part about this code is actually the middle. "But that's just fantasy, isn't it? I simply chose to believe that you did". Apparently, it's possible Mai never actually trusted or forgave David, another reason I believe it's possible this isn't actually talking about Xander. As established, Mai can be deceptive when she wants, so it could work. We're missing a lot of information, so what exactly this all would mean is up in the air.

But in any case, it's possible that if David was given purpose by Mai or Xander, he would be involved in the HPA Operation, though how exactly is obviously impossible to know. I know this is really weak, but...

Okay, can we talk about Tally 5 yet? I kinda have to talk about Tally 5. Don't worry, I won't actually post the image.

!!!TALLY 5 SPOILERS (NO IMAGE)!!! SCROLL IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ ABOUT THE CONTENTS OF TALLY 5!!!

If you've been living under a rock under the past month or so, Tally 5 refers to an image you get to by solving a code related to the "correct/incorrect" code in the David MV and inputting it into a webpage accessed via the QR Code in the MV's books. I won't talk about the puzzle itself here, so if you want to solve it, maybe go do that or just scroll past this part of the post.

Anyways, as I imagine you know by now, Tally 5 shows David holding Xander's jacket with the following quotes under it:

I became a villain in pursuit of your dream.

I threw away my humanity for an ideal that I couldn't understand.

But I don't regret it. To "regret" is to imply that I could have done anything else.

I never told you, but the truth is, I wasn't capable of ever becoming human in the first place.

So in the end, you're always-

Listen, I'm not gonna pretend I have some sort of infallible exaplanation of what this means. I have several theories about it, and to give you an idea of how insane it is, one of my theories involves quote 3, the one about regret, being said by MonoTV. Don't ask. I might have to do a completely different post about all this, but I'm sorta waiting until I can read some other peoples' thoughts about it.

But for the purposes of this post, this, to me, heavily implies David was involved in the HPA Operation. He's probably talking about Xander here, and Xander's dream would be the HPA Operation, since as I said, it may have been his idea in the first place. That's the ideal David can't understand: an ideal to change a world David sees as immutable.

Now, the lone jacket would imply this isn't the case. It would seem David is saying this in the killing game, after Xander's death, as holding his jacket seems to imply he's gone. However, I don't know what the dream would be in that case. Killing Teruko? It's possible, but I find that unlikely.

So, yeah. Combined with the morse code, here's a full interpretation of what this could mean in relation to Mai:

Mai or Xander somehow learnt of David's true feelings and the way he sees his own actions. She/he forgave him, or at least pretended to forgive him, and this gave David hope. Mai/Xander then introduced David to the HPA Operation, and asked him to do something which would turn him into a villain, asking him to throw away his humanity for an ideal he couldn't understand. What exactly that would be is obviously impossible to know. David accepts, and even when the plan fell through, he doesn't regret doing what he did, because he feels he couldn't have done anything else.

Am I confident in this interpretation? Not really, but it's a plausible interpretation which is related to Mai and the HPA Operation, so I wanted to bring it up. There's a lot there which is probably wrong, but it's what I have for now.

!!!TALLY 5 SPOILERS OVER!!! YOU CAN START READING AGAIN IF YOU WERE AVOIDING THEM!!!

And with that, we’re officially done with the MV! I mean, I may reference it later, but now the bulk of it is gone. Surely this means we can get to some lighter theorizing and-

Teruko Tawaki

Yeah, we gotta talk about the other elephant in the room. Mai and Teruko are clearly connected in an important way.

The first thing to note with them is that they’re generally set up as opposites. Of course, the most straightforward thing is the “dearly loved/dearly unloved” portraits in the MV, but it goes much deeper. Also in the MV, Teruko’s numeral appears right after Mai’s, if that counts for anything.

Another thing is their color scheme. Teruko is mainly associated with green, while Mai is mainly associated with red. And these colors are complimentary; they’re opposite in the color wheel. Not to mention, taking Teruko’s redesign into account, one could associate her with black and Mai, thanks to her uniform and the white camellias, to white. In particular, it’s notable white camellias actually have a white flower, but a black stem. They’re even the same height, at 5’8”! It’s so they can kiss each other in the lips more easily

Additionally, their attitudes from what we’re seeing are also opposite. Mai “forgives everyone”, which means she’s really trusting, while Teruko is (for now) very distrustful. That one’s a bit looser, but eh. May I even go so far, as to say that right now, Teruko represents despair while Mai represents hope? Alright, now I’m reaching, but it fits. Teruko is someone resigned to her horrible fate (luck), while Mai constantly fought for a better world. In fact, Xander, someone Teruko associates with Mai, calls our protag out on her hopeless view of fate… right before stabbing her.

Hell, practically all good things said about Mai? Not true of Teruko (at the moment).

Charles: A girl who loves her family.

Teruko’s an orphan, and doesn’t remember her brother.

Rose: She remembers everything that is important to others.

Well, you could consider people’s faces something important to them, but Teruko has prosopagnosia.

Arturo: A girl who sees the beauty in everyone.

If you watched chapter 2, you know this isn’t true of Teruko.

Honestly, I could keep going like this, but I feel you get the point. There’s no reason for me to dwell on this further when you can just read the quotes and figure out how Teruko isn’t described by most of them.

Well, one possible exception is Levi.

Levi: A girl with a floral tattoo on her arm.

Yeah, time to talk about this theory.

Theory I Absolutely Believe: Teruko and Mai are Tattoo ‘Bud’dies

(Get it? Because flowers and buds- Yeah, no)

So shoutout to cider-est for first pointing this out in this post, but it’s true. Teruko’s left arm is always fully covered, either by bandages or by her jacket sleeve. Which is especially odd, considering her right jacket sleeve is always rolled up.

And it’s especially odd, because her left arm is covered even in the jacket-off reference picture.

And yes, there is a suspicious question mark next to Teruko’s left arm. It ain’t even subtle.

But if there’s still any doubt left in your mind, let skulemojee dispel it in this post, where they point out this image from Ch 2 Ep 2:

Yep, you’re seeing that right. Those black lines on Teruko’s left arm look a suspicious lot like the stems of Mai’s tattoo. It's not perfect, since we can't see any flowers and that may just be scars, but we never get a good enough look at the back of Mai's left arm to know if the flowers are tattooed on the forearm, or if only the stems reach that far.

(Also, Teruko in this scene says she doesn’t remember that scar in her back. Part of me thinks it’s related to Mai and the time of the missing memories, but the more rational side of me tells me I need to chill and stop seeing Mai everywhere)

It's also worth noting this would explain the choice of camellias for the tattoo. Remember, although they represent death in Japan, they mainly represent platonic adoration and respect. A very pretty thing to get matching tattoos with your bestie. But since they're not colored they could be interpreted as red and thus romantic for the shippers

So, yeah. I believe they share a tattoo. Which gives a whole lot of context to the quote.

Teruko: Some years ago, she was looking for someone named 'Teruko Tawaki'

In case it wasn’t clear before with the way Mai smiled at Teruko in that dream sequence, or the way Teruko associated Xander with Mai before she got stabbed by him, the fact they possibly share a tattoo implies they knew each other for a while and had a good relationship with each other. Another indication is that Teruko's favorite color, in the latest Q&A, is stated to be red by association. Sorry Xanruko shippers, that's clearly about Mai, since Teruko associates Xander with Mai in the first place.

What exactly the timeline of this mess is, is... complicated if the tattoo thing is true. Because that would require Teruko and Mai to have gotten the tattoo when at least Teruko was 18, both in Japan and the US. In some states of the US, she would be able to get it at a younger age if she got parental consent, but... what parents? She's an orphan.

In fact, when does that dream sequence take place? Is it Hope's Peak time? Can't be, because Teruko wouldn't remember it. Actually, why doesn't Teruko remember Mai's name is Mai had been searching for her for a while?

Yeah, I can't pin down anything specific about their relationship. Obviously I can't, this is a big mystery and we're only in Chapter 2. The best I can give you is that their relationship was clearly very positive, even before HPA.

...

Which is what makes this line so weird.

Mai: Hang on, "real Ultimate talent?" You're the Ultimate Student! I mean, it's not like you're a "Lucky Student" who was picked by lottery.

This line is really odd, isn't it? It seems uncharacteristically mean for Mai, to dismiss someone else's talent so readily. And Teruko's in particular, when again, they clearly liked each other well enough before HPA. This almost reads more like something Mai would say about herself rather than someone else...

Huh.

Theory: Mai, the Second Ultimate Lucky Student

As established before, Mai has a slight self-depricative streak, where she says things about herself she would never say about one of her friends. So, the fact she's so quick to dismiss the Ultimate Lucky Student as a concept could imply she is the Ultimate Lucky Student. (ULS)

Of course, the first question is how this would work with Teruko. A HPA class only has one ULS, and Teruko's there. I've seen others suggest perhaps Mai was the ULS at Japan's HPA, which is apparently still a high school, so it's possible for her to go there and then go to US HPA, which is more like college.

However, I actually think there's an easier explanation. Mai and Teruko both went to US' HPA at the same time. They just went to different ones.

Mai: The US Hope's Peak Academy takes in college-age students, and there's two of them, and we have this really weird curriculum, and there's a bunch of other things, and...

Yeah! Did you forget there's two HPAs in the US?! Because I sure did! I swear, I rewatched that Bonus Episode like 5 times before I caught that. How does this thing keep spawning in information?

I believe this is why Min specifically calls their class East Class 27. Seeing as this is in the US, I imagine there's likely an East Coast HPA and a West Coast HPA. But what would be the point of splitting the school like this? There's no reason the dev couldn't just keep them as just one HPA... unless there's a reason.

Because with two classes of the same age, there has to be two ULS of the same age.

Now, of course, it's possible West Class 27 is completely irrelevant to the story, but if you assume Mai is East Class 27's ULS and Teruko went to west coast HPA, a lot of things start to make sense. Have you ever wondered how Mai could have been in the same class as everyone else, when HPA usually only have 16 students? Well, it's because one (or more, possibly) just went to another class.

This also explains why we have to get this particular detail from a Bonus Episode. Although all the characters have talked about going to HPA, no one ever mentions which HPA they were invited to. It seems like a weirdly specific detail to omit, unless there’s a reason for it. Because if most of them were part of East Coast HPA, and one of them wasn’t, it would immediately stand out as strange to the cast.

And Mai does have some connections to luck. I mean, of course she does, her story is closelly intertwined with Teruko. For example, remember her birthday? February 1st? I told it'd be relevant, right? Well, as pointed out by fuji-iri in this post, on that day, there's 333 days left of the year. 3 is a number associated with bad luck, but there's also associations to "parting ways" and the three stages of life (birth-marriage apparently-death), again explained in the post I linked. That works with Mai and Teruko splitting up... whenever that happened, as well as Mai possbly dying, but the luck thing in particular is notable.

Now, the main reason I believed this before was just that "it's not like you're a 'Lucky Student' line", but as I researched this, I may have found something else? Except, it may just be me being horrible at code and getting really confused. If anyone can confirm or deny this, it'd be great.

Here's what happened. I noticed that when you look up Mai's name in Google, the text under the link to her page had Teruko's hidden quote: "It is an equal failing to trust everybody, and to trust no one at all." So I went into the code again.

First, I right-clicked on the title (Mai's name) and clicked "inspect". I expanded the "<head>" section (God I'm bad at this), and found this under <meta name>.

meta name="descripttion" content="Mai Akasaki Ultimate ??? "There's a way for you to be happy." It is an equal failing to trust everybody, and to trust no one at all. The protagonist. Despite having the Ultimate title of "Lucky..."

Now, at first, I assumed this was just a coding quirk where for some reason, I was seeing the text of the next character or something.

But, I checked some the other characters, and none of the ones I checked have the same style of text. Look, I'll transcribe some.

Teruko:

meta name="descripttion" content="Teruko Tawaki Ultimate Lucky Student “I will survive this, no matter what!” The protagonist. Despite having the Ultimate title of “Lucky Student,” it seems like the only luck Teruko has is bad luck..."

Xander:

meta name="descripttion" content="Xander Matthews Ultimate Rebel “Screw the rules!” Loud in both voice and personality, Alexander “Xander” Matthews earned the title of Ultimate Rebel through his consistent tendency to go against the..."

MonoTV:

meta name="descripttion" content="MonoTV “Ultimate TV Show Host” “I’m the most beloved character in the cast!” A strange robot with a television for a head. MonoTV claims to be the “Ultimate TV Show Host” who is in charge of an..."

I also checked Veronika, Whit and Nico, but didn't check any more since the pattern's easy to see.

As you can see, usually this section of the code just has the name, the subtitle quote, and part of the body text. None of them have the secret quote, unlike Mai's, which has the quote which is supposed to be Teruko's. But Teruko's name or subtitle quote is never brought up in Mai's "meta name" thing.

Again, maybe I'm missing something, but it really looks like that is meant to be some kind of description of Mai.

It sort of fits. Teruko's quote about trust can fit Mai, hell, is completed by Mai. Teruko usually shows the failing of trusting no one, but Mai may be meant to show the failing of trusting everybody. Mai is also important enough that calling her "the protagonist" is fitting enough.

And, if that really is about Mai, then the final portion is confirmation. "Despite having the Ultimate title of "Lucky..." If this is about Mai, then Mai is unequivocally an ULS.

Again, I don't consider this conclusive because I am an idiot and could very easily be wrong. The wording is exactly the same's as Teruko's, so again, it may be a coding oddity. But with all the other stuff I mentioned, I can at least say this is the theory for Mai's talent I believe the most: She's East Class 27's ULS, while Teruko went to West Coast HPA as their ULS.

Anyways, anything else about Teruko? Oh, yeah, a final sub-theory on her.

Sub-Theory: Shot Through the Heart, Teruko's to Blame

Take a look at the 2nd Anniversary picture.

[The three frames of the 2 year anniversary "video"]

Okay, I know you can't see shit here, but I'm running out of the 30 image limit. Check out lacunasweven's post where she discovered this (to my knowledge), and stfu-sage's reblog where he solved the code.

When solved, that code translates to “It’s all your fault”, which you may remember as MonoTV’s line about Mai.

So, Teruko reaches out for Mai, then “it’s all your fault” appears for a frame or two, and then suddenly Mai’s gone. It’s not exactly hard to imagine that this means Teruko is at fault for Mai’s death, or at least whatever consequences the HPA Operation had. How exactly is impossible to know, because again, it’s a mystery we’re not meant to solve yet. I have a gut feeling it’s probably related to Teruko’s luck, but that’s all it is, a gut feeling.

This doesn’t conflict the “Xander’s at fault” idea, if you’re curious. It’s possible for multiple people to consider themselves at fault for Mai’s death. Xander for bringing her into the HPA Operation, Teruko for her luck or whatever else happened.

Although… yeah, we gotta talk about that right? The scene before the prologue.

I can’t say anything definitive, because again, not something we’re meant to figure out at the moment. But I can tell you what I think.

First, the PoV character is probably Xander. There’s a bloody fork there, and while I’m not the one who came up with the idea, (see: anderscim's post about this) that’s likely the weapon which was used to take out his eye. His wounds do look suspiciously fork-like, though I struggle to explain it without images, and I’m already stretching thin to make the image limit. I’ll have to ask you to look it up yourself.

Anyways, that may be Xander, and this may be the incident where Xander lost his eye. The reason I’m bringing it up is that, since Xander is involved, there’s a chance this is somehow related to the HPA Operation. Here’s a full transcript of what’s said:

... Fuck!! Fuck, fuck, fuck, this really hurts... Ouch... I really wasn't expecting her to attack me like that. I made a massive mistake to trust them. I can't rely on anyone. All by myself... I have to end the killing game. And even if I can't do that... I have to kill Teruko Tawaki. No matter what.

So, a woman attacked Xander unexpectedly, managed to overpower him and stab his eyes out with a fork, then presumably ran away. And this all seemingly happened in some form of killing game. And Xander already wanted to kill Teruko.

I doubt Teruko was the one who attacked Xander. Because Xander calls her out by name at the end, and also because, how would Teruko be able to overpower Xander? Unless you “divine luck” your way into an explanation, I just don’t see it. In any case, it’s probably a different woman. Without knowing anything about the previous killing game, we can’t know much about this situation.

However, the fact that Xander already wanted to kill Teruko here is notable because it seems to imply this killing game happened after Mai's death. After all, Mai and Teruko had a good relationship, right? So Xander wouldn't have a grudge against her until after the HPA Operation fell through. The final conclusion here is that Teruko somehow caused Mai's death, which somehow led to the pre-series killing game. I think? Obviously, it's impossible to say anything conclusive here, and I don't even know what exactly the connection would be between Mai's death and the previous killing game.

And with that, we finish discussion of Teruko.

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Quick Side Note: The Mai-stermind Theory

I’m not funny.

So, in case it isn’t clear yet by the fact I keep assuming she's dead, I don’t think Mai is the mastermind of the killing game. I’m aware it’s a possibility, seeing as she’s very mysterious and all that, but frankly, I just have never seen anyone seriously bring up this possibility, since there’s essentially no evidence. It’s also important to note, even if she is a mastermind, she can’t be the only mastermind, since we know one of the participants of the killing game is a mastermind as well.

To be fair, I did notice some connections to MonoTV while researching. Like I mentioned at one point, they’re the only characters without any highlighted words in their subtitle quotes. And the secret quote in MonoTV’s page is “Her name is Mai Akasaki”, but frankly that feels a bit too… unsubtle. Also... no, actually that’s kinda it.

I’ve also seen some people attribute the “teacher” speech to Mai, but I really don’t think that’s her. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s the text in the code of the About page for DRDT on Tumblr. Here’s a post about it by delightfullydiscordant. I won't go into their theory on it, since it's unrelated to Mai. As you'll see, there’s nothing intrinsically relating the speech to our girl, and nothing in the text suggest she’s the one speaking, so I don’t think it’s related.

With what we know of Mai, I don’t think it makes sense to call her the mastermind. I’m only bringing it up now to be thorough, and because I didn’t know where else to put it :v

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Other Characters, Miscellaneous Connections

Essentially just me talking about all the characters I haven’t covered yet, to see if any of them could have a connection to Mai or the HPA Operation than what may seem at first.

Already talked about: Xander, Teruko, David

No Evidence of Connection Beyond ‘Classmates’: Rose, Arturo, Levi, Hu, Nico, Ace, Arei, Min

What this means is that while it’s technically possible these characters are related to Mai and the HPA Operation, right now we don’t have any indication of it. Sorry. That doesn’t mean I don’t have things to say about them.

Arturo is usually so mean that, honestly, the fact he says anything positive about Mai at all makes me wonder if he may actually be related. Reminds me a bit of David’s quote, I guess. But maybe I’m just biased because I want this guy to be plot-relevant.

I guess Levi mentioning the tattoo in his line could be important, but unless he has the tattoo too (which is possible I guess, but I don’t quite see it), I don’t know what it could mean.

I could actually see Hu’s and Ace’s lines implying a connection to the HPA Operation, honestly. Seeing as they’re some of the only people who actually talk about her in the past tense, I think it’s possible they were involved. Hu would want to help Mai if she felt she “wanted to keep everyone safe”, for what it’s worth. I sorta hope Hu is plot-relevant too.

Even if Mai is talking to Arei in her current subtitle quote, I don’t see much evidence Arei would be involved in the HPA Operation.

You may be wondering about my old theory about the Sleepy MV and how it could tie back to Mai, and while I still think it's a possibility, I frankly don't believe it anymore. It requires a very specific reading of the song which I don't think is entirely accurate, and there isn't actually much connecting the MV to Mai. I still think Min's line being so overly insistent on Mai being "an average girl with nothing special at all about her" could imply their relationship may have broken down because of the HPA Operation, which makes sense. If Xander engineered the plan, obviously Min will dislike it on principle. But that's probably me trying to make Min more plot relevant than she actually is.

Only Connected via “Original Killing Game” Theory: Charles, J, possibly Ace and Arei

What the hell am I talking about? In the Color Theory reblog I mentioned earlier, I described a wild theory that quite a few of the characters we know were actually involved in that pre-prologue killing game, and we can learn who those characters are thanks to the word "original". Sound insane? It is. I won't go over the reasoning here, I'll ask you check the reblog I linked.

This is the "Original Killing Game" Theory, and it's one of the most far-fetched theories I've ever enginereed. But since it's sorta connected, I thought I'd mention it. The characters involved are Charles, Veronika or Ace, David, Teruko, J/Arei, Xander, MonoTV, Whit. I’ve already talked about some of these, and don’t think MonoTV is worth talking about, frankly.

So, why am I only bringing up Charles and J for now, as well as potentially Ace and Arei since they could actually be part of the theory depending on how you interpret the colors? Well, these are the only ones in the “original killing game” theory who I don’t think have any evidence of being connected with Mai any further. Since that theory is already insane to start with, and it’s possible Mai was already dead when that killing game started, I don’t think it tells us anything.

Although sometimes I wonder if J’s quote is talking about something other than Mariabella, but at the moment, I have no clue what that would be. So that’s still the likeliest possibility.

Eden: Eden

Eden, huh? In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been sorta dancing around Eden’s line a bit, because… like, what in the actual fuck does it mean.

Eden: She kept calling the number, even though no one picked it up.

It’s such an odd line. It’s nothing like the other ones, which you’d think would make it significant, but it’s just… cryptic. I’m sorry, but while I think this probably means something, I don’t have a good answer of what it could be.

… Well, there is the one thing.

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Crack Theory: Mai the Girl Kisser

This theory states that Mai is the girl mentioned in Eden’s secret, the one the Clockmaker kissed.

See? Theorizing’s easy! Just grab a random character we don’t know anything about, and slap Mai on top of it like a bandaid!

I’m aware the dev has sorta poked fun at people like me who see an unknown face and instantly jump on Mai, but at least this one has a bit more reasoning. Mainly, that I just don’t know what else Eden’s quote could be referring to.

Consider this concept: Eden and Mai kiss at some indeterminate point before HP, and Eden freaks out. She gets extremely worried about how Mai’s going to react, and she runs away. Mai tries to contact her afterwards, but Eden was avoiding her. Still, “[Mai] kept calling the number, even though no one picked it up”.

Is this essentially just fanfiction at this point? Practically, yeah, but I have nothing else.

On the insane off-chance this is true, it would come with certain implications. It would mean Eden and Mai had met before going to HPA, which is… uh, something. If it helps, that would mean their relationship would have a “new beginning” at HPA, and Eden’s character has some themes of new beginnings. Her birthday is on December 31st, so New Years, and her favorite color is daffodil yellow, when daffodils represent new beginnings. It’s small, but it’s there.

(And if you know who I am, you know I believe Eden killed Arei to reunite with the girl of her secret (long story). Mai helps here because of course she would have enough rizz to make a good girl go bad, have you seen how everyone talks about her? She would get all the bitches!)

Anyways, again, this is extremely silly, but it’s sort of the only thing I can think of for Eden’s line, so for now, have it. If anyone’s got better ideas, I’m more than open to hear them.

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A Connection is More Plausible: Veronika, Whit

In no particular order, these are the characters, apart from Xander and Teruko and David, which I think have an actual chance of being involved with Mai and the HPA based on what we know so far. Let’s go a bit more in depth.

Veronika’s Peculiar Problem of Popping Up Fucking Everywhere

It is insane how many times I’ve brought up Veronika in this post without being able to pinpoint why exactly she keeps appearing. She shares the color red with Xander and Mai in my version of Color Theory, though admittedly that may just be her hair. She’s in the “original killing game” under that theory. Hell, she’ll show up again when I talk about Whit.

But by far, the most concerning thing about her is her line in the Mai page.

Veronika: A girl who didn’t foresee the consequences.

I’ve mentioned this line before, of course, because it’s clearly related to the HPA Operation’s fallout. In fact, it’s the only line apart from Xander’s and MonoTV’s which explicitly reference it. This could easily imply she was involved somehow, either as someone helping Mai and Xander, or actually going against them in some way. Whatever is more entertaining for her, I imagine.

There are two issues with this. One, I cannot discount the possibility that Veronika got that creepy and ominous line because she’s the creepy and ominous character, and it doesn’t actually mean anything for Veronika herself. It’s a very real possibility.

Two, even if she is involved, there’s nothing we have which could help narrow down what she did. Again, she’s too unpredictable.

In other words, while I’m putting Veronika here with the vague idea that she could be connected to it all, I don’t have any concrete theories.

Though maybe I should address the one Veronika-Mai theory which exists, for the sake of completion.

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Crack Theory: Veronika Is Mai

To be clear, I don’t believe this. It’s pretty clear to me that Veronika is her own character with her own backstory. But I still want to point out some connections to show you how insane I’m going writing this.

+They’re both the same height (5’8”) and have long red hair. This is enough for my prosopagnosic ass to confuse them if they change hairstyle. Their weights and birthdays are different, but weight can change and birthdays can be lied about. Their chest sizes are different, though, so I’m pretty sure that rules out this theory already.

+Speaking of birthdays, August 7th, Veronika’s birthday, happens to be 7 months away from Teruko’s birthday on January 7th. 7? Lucky number. Lucky Student. Word association -> Mai.

+Veronika covers both her arms, so no tattoo would be visible.

+Veronika asks Teruko if she would recognize her were she to wear contacts, a wig and different clothes. This could imply she is, and would therefore be Mai.

+Her pose in the character profiles is vaguely similar to Mai’s, but flipped. This is interesting because no other character’s pose is even close.

+She wears a small earring given to her by someone named “Alyssa Belyaeva”. This by itself means nothing, but the earring is a small green triangle she considers a good luck charm. Luck?! And triangles have three sides. 3?! That number we said was unlucky and related to Mai before? And green. Green?! Teruko! Auasfruryg- <- short-circuiting from thinking too much.

+Veronika has plain brown eyes. Come on, have you seen this cast’s eyes? Those are absolutely contacts.

+Her hidden quote about people being broken could refer to the hopeful Mai being broken into Veronika as a result of the HPA Operation’s consequences.

Yeah, most of this is pretty silly, but again, I don’t think this theory is very likely, so I’m just poking fun at how suspicious Veronika can be at times.

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Whit and Tetraphobia

At first, it doesn't really seem like Whit is too involved in this. I mean, his quote is pretty inoffensive:

Whit: A girl with many friends.

And sure, he is the Original Killing Game Theory, but even if that's somehow true, it's no guarantee he's involved in the HPA Operation or anything. Nothing really seems to connect him to Mai...

Except the one thing.

XV. Remaining ignorant, isn't that "happiness"¹⁵?

XV is Whit's Roman numeral, and again it isn't too strange on its own. Other than being the only numeral to ever show up alongside another numeral, in this case Veronika's because of course it's Veronika's.

The issue is the background text. It's hard to see, but there's faint pink text saying "subtract 4, due to tetraphobia⁴". Footnote 4 simply defines tetraphobia, which is the practice of avoiding the number 4, as it's considered a number related to death, and is seen as unlucky. Of course, the fours themselves are colored green for Teruko, presumably.

But the important part is, what does this mean? The most straightforward idea is to subtract four from the numerals on screen, or perhaps the footnote?

For the footnote: Subtracting 15 - 4 = 11, quick math, and that's the footnote which talks about being an only child and that (presumably) Diana Chiem never existed. I... don't think that makes too much sense for this scene, frankly.

For Veronika's numeral, subtracting XIV (14) - 4 = 10. That's Min's numeral, which shows up in the part of the MV most directly tied to class trials. This could simply imply she enjoys the trials and the bloodshed, and it also looks somewhat mastermind-y, but that's not really new for Veronika. You could also do this one more literally, taking out 4 from 14 and ending up with 1, connecting her to Xander, and at this point I'm not surprised.

But, of course. The tetraphobia line only shows up when Whit's numeral does, and it's colored in the pink associated to him via Color Theory, though of course, being background text, the tetraphobia line isn't actually included in that theory. That would seem to imply it's about him, right?

Well, in the same vein as before, if you subtract XV (15) - 4 = 11 (XI). And... that's Mai's numeral, attached to the line "God is dead". So, uh-

Sub-Theory: Shot Through the Heart, Whit's to Blame

The idea that maybe Whit was somehow involved in Mai's death. By the end of the series, I'm gonna end up blaming half the cast for this, apparently.

So, the tetraphobia thing is the most straightforward piece of evidence towards this possibility, but there's a bit more. For one, in the recent Q&A, it was stated that Whit's least favorite color is gray because it's boring, and that's the color of Mai's numeral. Remember how I pointed out it's actually one of the only numerals to be colored? Yeah.

Furthermore, Whit's numeral appears right before Mai's, but that may just be the way the song works out, since LGI wasn't made for DRDT. However, remember that "become brainwashed: go do it!" line I said was directly after Mai's numeral? Yeah, the word brainwashed is color coded pink, connecting it to Whit via Color Theory. And, if that wasn't enough, in the section for footnote five, the one with the Japanese characters? The word blood shows up, in pink, as the song speaks about revolutionaries. Yes, DR blood is pink usually, but there is red blood in the MV (near the snake), and the characters canonically see it as dark red (since that's the stated reason why dark red is Xander's and Charles' least favorite color). My point is, the dev could have made the blood red there, and/or just written the symbol for blood in red, but since it's pink, Color Theory ends up connecting it to Whit.

All of this could point to Whit as another culprit of Mai's death, but don't jump to conclusions. For one, since we have no clue about the circumstances, perhaps he only accidentally caused the death. We've seen that Teruko is also likely to blame in some way, probably in a similar fashion. And because it may have been accidental, this also doesn't mean Whit has to be the mastermind. It makes him look oddly suspicious, sure, but nothing too damning.

And of course, there's a huge chance I'm reading too much into things. There are other explanations for brainwashed and blood, and it's still totally possible that the tetraphobia thing refers to Veronika or even the footnote.

A Summary of Her Story, So Far

To end things off, I'll go over everything I've concluded with what we know so far, though of course I know we're missing a lot, and that a ton of this is also probably wrong. Here's how this is going to work.

Regular text means this is something we pretty much know for sure.

Italics means it's a theory I'm quite convinced of.

[Brackets mean I'm relatively unsure about something]

*Asterisks mean the theory is insanely unlikely, and it can probably just be assumed false*

{Braces are for flavor text, you can ignore this for theorizing purposes}

Closing Argument

>Mai was born February 1st, 20--, to a nice family she loved. We know little about her childhood, but [it's possible she was friends with or somehow got interested in a girl named Teruko Tawaki. However, fate kept them apart for years]. But Mai was not easily deterred, she would search for and find Teruko, no matter what.

>*As she searched for Teruko Tawaki, she met a girl named Eden Tobisa. They kissed, but Eden freaked out and ran away. Mai tried contacting her, she kept calling the number, even though no one picked it up.*

>At some point before Hope's Peak, her and Teruko reunited. *Even when Teruko couldn't recognize her and even struggled to remember her name*, Mai still remembered everything that was important for Teruko, as she always did.

>Mai and Teruko, loving each other so much, decided to get matching floral tattos on their arms. White camellias, a symbol of adoration and respect.

>{But fate really didn't like to see them together.} Soon, Teruko received a letter, teling her she was chosen as the Ultimate Lucky Student of Hope's Peak's [West Class 27]. This was uncharacteristically good luck for Teruko, who before had to hop around schools, always stealing uniforms, just to get an education.

>{The problem?} At the same time, Mai received a letter that she was invited to join Hope's Peak's East Class 27 as their Ultimate Lucky Student, on the other side of the country. Mai never really cared much about Ultimates or Hope's Peak, {but Teruko insisted it was too good of an opportunity for either of them to pass up. They decided to keep in contact,} as Mai headed to East Coast Hope's Peak.

>Alexander Matthews is scouted as the Ultimate Rebel. David Chiem is scouted as the Ultimate Inspirational Speaker.

>At Hope's Peak, despite being an average girl with nothing special at all about her, she quickly became a girl with many friends. She saw the beauty in everyone, and everyone agreed she had a bright future. Everyone confided in her, J even telling her about her mother, something which Mai kept secret, and told no one.

(Okay, maybe fitting in all the quotes isn't as easy as I hoped it'd be)

>*She even reunited with Eden, and they decided their relationship would have a new beginning*.

>However, she also met a very interesting boy: Xander Matthews. He had gone to Hope's Peak with one goal in mind: revolution. He confided in her, as they all did, his issues with Hope's Peak and the system it was built upon. Mai was revolted by the truth, and asked what she could do to help. She couldn't stand to do nothing. She wanted to keep everyone safe.

>With that, the HPA Operation started.

>They started small; stealing a few documents here and there. [But their plans grew bolder over time.]

>[Along the way, they discovered something shocking]. David, who always spoke of change and hope, was hiding his true feelings. He didn't see himself as human, not being able to relate to his peers as the others did. He saw himself as a manipulative bastard for lying to all the people he gave speeches to. He hated himself, and expected Mai and Xander to hate him, too.

>[But they didn't. Xander still saw the best in him, and Mai? Well, Mai forgives everyone. And to make him see the good in himself, they asked him to help in the HPA Operation]

>He didn't understand it, not really. The world wouldn't change, no matter what Mai and Xander told him. But even though he didn't understand, he still wanted to help them.

>As the popular Ultimate Inspirational Speaker, David had more connections and influence than a simple Rebel or Lucky Student. That meant he could offer things to the Operation the other two couldn't, even if it was through... less than moral means. But to David, that was no object. He would become a villain in pursuit of their dream, throw away his humanity for this ideal. It's not like he could have ever been human, anyways.

>*Not everyone was as receptive, though. Min in particular, after finding out about the plan somehow, got quite angry with Xander and Mai. It wasn't unusual for the Student and the Rebel to disagree, but Mai still didn't like it when her friends fought*

>Mai knew it was risky, she really did. But nothing could prepare her for what was about to happen. She didn't foresee the consequences.

>[When Teruko was visiting], the HPA Operation faced a huge issue. A plan gone wrong, a variable miscalculated. And, with Teruko to blame, [and possibly Whit] *and Veronika, who got dragged into this mess at some point*, Mai died.

>{Chaos ensued. Mai's death broke the class, reverberating through the students like the rumbling of a fallen god's corpse. "It's all your fault!" Xander screamed at Teruko,} hiding that he felt responsible for her death as well. After all, he was the one who had dragged her along. And now, he was once again left alive to mourn a death he himself narrowly avoided. Talk about survivor's guilt.

>[One thing led to another, and a killing game was set up]. Xander and Teruko got stuck in it, with Xander losing his eye as he tried everything he could to end the game, or at least kill Teruko. *Charles, Veronika/Ace, David, J/Arei and Whit might have also present in this killing game, ran by MonoTV.*

>More stuff happened, and finally, the students all lost their memories and wound up in the killing game we follow throuhout the series.

>A shattered dream, a tragic fate, a broken hope. Though mystery continues to shroud her existence and her role in the story, for now, this is my final conclusion on the story of: Mai Akasaki, the Ultimate ???

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Holy hell this was pain to write. I don't want to make another post this complicated for a while. Jesus. This broke my soul.

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed my insane ramblings, if you really were strong enough to put up with my madness for this long. I still want to hear any thoughts you may have, since this character is really interesting and cool and fun to theorize about.

But for now, I leave. Thanks for reading! If you made it this far, then just know, Mai would be proud of you! And you should know, because you should practically be a scholar on her by now. Take care!

[sawyerslvt]

Two Sides To The Devil - Johnny Slaughter (Episode 8)

Previous Episode ♡ No Next Episode Completed series :)  If you’ve made it all the way to the last episode. I love you dude… so so much. As mentioned, this is the last but also the longest episode. I've written Johnny as vulnerable, sensitive and loving. I can see Johnny potentially show this side to a woman at some point in life but this is really just to satisfy my own freakish needs :) Don’t hesitate to let me know what you think of the series <3 and if you have requests. I'll try to get to them! Enjoy the last episode!!! Summary: Johnny Slaughter kidnaps you and you wake up in his basement. You negotiate your way out of death by offering to lure in male victims with your beauty. Johnny entertains your desperate offer. He ends up having to protect you and slowly starts to fall in love with his victim, and so do you.  Word count: 6,944 Warnings: MDNI, fluff, sex, smut, !super corny love!

You wake up peacefully. You haven't had a good night's sleep quite like this one in what feels like ages. Whether it was due to the fact that you were fearing for your life, gambling with a serial killer, or if it was because you were desperately missing that same serial killer, you didn't know. Regardless, you know, you have found a new purpose in life and you feel like you're on top of the world. You pull your blanket over yourself, it’s freezing and Johnny has not yet explained the hole in the wall. It's been lazily boarded up but the cool night breeze can easily get through it, making it freezing cold during the night. 

You look down and see Johnny sleeping on the floor. He insisted that you not only take the couch, but also the blanket. You fought hard enough to let him keep the pillow and only very, very resultantly did he agree. You look at him on the cold and hard wooden floor, you've never known love like this. A man who was willing to put all his comfort aside to let you sleep like a princess. You would have slept together but the couch is awfully small, and you could barely fit on it yourself. You can't continue watching him on the floor. You sit on the edge of the couch and rub the sleepiness away from your eyes and stretch your body. His back is facing you and you poke the back of his waist with your toes, trying to get him to wake up. He lets out a little grunt to make you stop. “Wake up Johnny, come join me on the couch please” you whisper, trying to not startle him. After a little while of moving around, he finally turns over to look at you. You stretch out both your arms towards him and give him a warm smile, welcoming him to the couch. He looks at you with sleepy eyes, not quite awake yet. He smirks, and the smirk turns into a defeated chuckle. He starts making his way to you and you get up from the couch. “Lay down” you smirk at him.

He obeys but with a raised eyebrow and a smirk plastered on his face, wondering what your next move could be. Once he’s laying down on the couch, you jump on top of him, he lets out a small grunt due to the force of your jump but later chuckles, you giggle and lay your head to his chest, covering both of you with the blanket. You lay there silently. Your palms and ear laying flat against his chest, you hear his regular heartbeat and you feel yourself get hypnotized by the rhythmic pattern. You take a deep sigh, feeling yourself get washed over with a tremendous amount of happiness. “What's wrong, darlin’?” his voice is concerned by your sigh. “Nothing… nothing at all” you reassure him. Because there was nothing wrong, everything was perfect. You look up at him, giving him an endearing smile and a quick peck on the lips. You've never felt this safe and comfortable with anyone.

“Tell me, how my woman sleep?” he looks down to you and you look up at him with your doe eyes. “Not as good as you I bet” you let out a giggle but you feel bad. He lets out a laugh, making your body move around in his arms. “On a serious note, you can't keep sleeping on the floor, Johnny. We have to get a bed to sleep in together” your voice is serious. “I only sleep in here when I feel like it, I have a bed back at the family house”. You’re surprised by the information he’s sharing with you. You find out not only that he doesn't stay here… but he has a family? Are they also like him? You think back to the old man that visited him that one night. He was talking about victims getting loose and Johnny blamed it on a ‘sissy’. You also remember the blonde woman in the house when you first came, she must be his sister, but they didn't share any resemblance. Johnny notices you being deep in thought. “What’s on your mind, doll?”. His voice is gentle and slightly concerned. “Your family… what are they like?” your voice is careful, you don't want to push your boundaries but you were too curious to hold back. A smirk emerges from his face, “oh they are some pains in my ass, nothing to worry about. They will love you. Especially knowing you're one of us”, his voice is proud. Your brows furrow. “...one of you?” you ask curiously. “Of course darlin’, you remember yesterday don't you?”. You had blacked her out, but yeah… suppose that does make you one of them. The worst part wasn't that you killed her, but that you enjoyed it. If given the opportunity, you would do it again. You would do anything to keep Johnny to yourself. “Yeah… I hope she suffers in hell.” your eyes narrowed and mouth pouting. Johnny lets out another laugh, this one more intense than the last. You giggle at his reaction and he grabs your chin with his right hand, wrapping his lips around yours and softly kissing you. And for a while, you lay there, cuddling, kissing and loving each other's presence. 

“I'm starving, Johnny…”. You look at the clock and you've been in each other’s arms for more than an hour. “Come on, I'll take you”. He picks you up and lets your feet find the floor. He gets up and grabs your hand and together, you walk out of the door to his car. 

♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡

The road you're driving down is a long one. You see it stretch all the way over to the horizon. You're surrounded by absolutely nothing. Every now and then you pass by a house that's surrounded by many acres of land. It's very spacious and different from your life in California but it gives you a sense of calm, you like it. You roll down your window and let the wind explore the inside of the car, carrying its fresh scent and filling your nose. “Where are you taking me?” you're eager to finally eat, after the intense night you had yesterday, you craved food like crazy. He doesn't respond but instead you feel his hand grip your thigh. He looks over to you and gives you a smirk. “What are you doing?” your voice is soft and you're feeling the tingles fire back up between your thighs. “shhhh, don't fight back”. He continues dragging his hands from gripping your thigh to slide it between your thighs until you feel his fingertips graze your cunt. 

You’re wearing a white, flowy skirt and while he's still keeping an eye on the road, he lifts your skirt and slides his hand over to your soaked panties. “So wet for me already, doll?” a proud smirk growing on his face. You blush at the fact that you're wet, he had a diffrent type of spell on you. He starts rubbing your clit with all four of his fingers over your wet panties. You gasp and bite your lip, containing moans that would otherwise reveal how good it feels. Johnny sees you holding back and rubs slightly faster and harder, making it impossible to hold back. You let out little moans as you're firmly gripping the seat below you with both hands. He continues using his fingers to rub your sex, not even looking at you. “Take these off for me” he pulls your panties and lets go, letting it slap your pussy and you feel how the cool air grazes your slit. 

You start taking off your panties but leaving the skirt on. You slide them down your thighs and chuck them in the back seat. You position yourself so you're facing him and put your right leg up on the dash and let your other leg fall behind Johnny's seat. He looks over to your beautiful face, then to your glistening cunt, open and ready for him. He lets out a small chuckle and you smirk at him, not saying anything and just letting him watch your spread legs and tight little pussy. “If I wasn't me, I wouldn't know how to handle you darlin’”, a smug smirk plastered on his face. “Lucky me, that you are you then”, you shoot the smirk back at him. 

After admiring your position he finally brings his hand over to you sex, letting his thumb find your clit and create tight circles around your clit. A moan escapes your lips and you lean your head back until your shoulders rest on the open window frame. Your head sticking out of the window and you feel the wind hit the side of your face as he rubs faster and faster. Your moans get increasingly desperate and you crave his fingers inside you. Without much warning, he slides his index and middle finger into you slowly. You gasp and hear Johnny's breathing get heavier as if he also was getting pleasure from fingering you. His left hand stays gripping the steering wheel and his gaze takes turns between looking at the long empty road and to your drenched pussy. He slides his fingers in and out of your cunt, first slow and sensual. He wants you to feel his fingers, feel his presence inside of your tight pussy.

Later he increases the speed and the wind blowing in your ears gets muffled over your own loud moans. His heavy breathing makes you wetter and you feel your walls closing and tightening over his fingers. “Mmh Johnny, I-mm gonna cum” your words are weak. Instead of keeping a steady pace, he increases the speed and intensity. He’s now pounding hard into your pussy that's getting tighter by the second, you're so close to cumming on his fingers. He starts rubbing your aching clit with his thumb and he's curling his fingers, pressing and caressing your g-spot. He rubs it hard and your moans turn into screams as his fingers freely traverse your insides. You look down at your pussy, seeing his fingers deep inside you. Your white cream coating his hands and dripping to the leather seat below you. “Cum on my fingers, princess” he looks into your eyes, giving you permission and it was as if that was required before you could cum. You cum on his fingers and let out a loud moan as you do so. Your walls tighten around his fingers and he slowly pulls his fingers out.

With shaky breaths, you bring your leg back to the front and the foot on the dash returns back to the car floor. You look at him and he meets your gaze and he licks your cum off his own fingers. His eyes are narrowed and you can tell he wasn't done with you. He grabs your face and pulls you closer to him. He looks at your lips, that are pouting due to the grip he has on you. “Now, let’s make that pretty little mouth of yours useful” he lets go of your face and looks back to the road. You continue looking at the side of his head as you unzip his jeans. You feel your mouth salivating and you bring your full attention to his jeans. You see how tight his jeans fit his bulge, he was so big and he was ready for your pretty little mouth. 

You slide his jeans down and he wiggles around, making it easier for you to slide them down a little to reveal his boxers and hard cock. Before you pull his dick out of his underwear, you look up to him, and he looks down to you with a smirk. You pull him close to give him a quick kiss. You couldn't help yourself. You love this man and this was your way of telling him how much you care about him. You see his smirk turn into a smile and he understands your message. 

You pull his hard cock out of his underwear and you hold it with both your hands, just admiring it for a second. You see the tip being wet from the  pre-cum leaking out and you bring your middle finger to it and pull it away. It was sticky and left a string as you pulled away. He looks down to your hyper-focused face and lets out a chuckle seeing your eyes explore his cock. He doesn't rush you and lets you take your time. You scoot back in your seat and lean closer to his member with your face as you lay your left hand on his abs and wrap your right hand around the bottom of his shaft. You lay your head to his thigh and look up to him with your doe eyes. He looks down and you feel his cock twitch, you can feel the hold you have over this man, it was reciprocated. You start by kissing the bottom of his shaft and continue peppering kisses up his dick, slow kisses and you make your way to his tip. He’s confused by this new sensation. He’s used to having his dick shoved down a woman's throat by now. But you're kissing it… making slow and loving work. 

You open your mouth when you reach his tip. You take a couple of breaths and let him feel your hot breath, tingling and teasing his tip. You stick out your tongue and create slow circles around his tip. His breath was already heavy from all your teasing, but now he let out a gasp. You can tell how much he wants you to just suck or stroke it. But for once, he lets you be in control. You continue licking his tip slowly, and eventually increase the speed until you finally, without warning, wrap your lips around his whole peak. He gasps and you moan as your mouth is filling with saliva. You hold your lips around his peak and continue circling your tongue around his tip. You suck slightly, creating pressure around his cock as your circles become faster and harder. “Fuckkkk darlin’ you’re too damn much” his voice is weak for once, and you realize you finally broke through the man’s tough exterior. 

You reward his vulnerability by letting your lips press harder around his cock and with the help of your slippery saliva, you're able to slide up and down his shaft. You're going down half his cock then back to the tip, then down again. You start off slow as you continue salivating, getting your mouth wetter, drenching his cock in your saliva. You moan into his cock and you're pleasured by his deep groans. He puts his right hand over your head, not putting any pressure, but just making his presence known. You start going at a faster pace and focus mainly on sucking his tip, occasionally circling your tongue around it or going a little further down his shaft. It’s sloppy, it’s soaking wet, it’s too damn much. Johnny’s not afraid to let you know with his grunts and moans how amazing it feels, how amazing you feel. 

After taking good care of his tip, you start inching closer and closer to the bottom of his shaft. You prepare yourself for taking his full length and girth in your throat. You've never been with a man with such size and you're slightly nervous whether or not you're able to take it. But you're determined, whether you like it or not, you will have Johnny's cock in your throat. You slide your lips off his dick and he lets out a frustrated sigh, you can tell how desperate he is, like he’s walking on eggshells trying to keep his patience with you. You give his tip a string of kisses. You look up at him and he looks weak, eyes still narrowed and he's biting his lips, containing himself against just push your head and force his length inside you. 

You take a deep breath and slide your lips all the way down to the bottom of his shaft. You feel his hands grip your hair and he lets out a wonderful groan. You feel his tip massage the back of your throat but you push it further. Your eyes start to water but his deep groans give you energy to push further despite your tears. You feel your throat open and swallow his hard cock. Johnny sounds desperate, his groans turn into grunts, grunts turn into loud moans. You've reached his full length and you feel proud over the fact that you were able to do it. You push a little further and you feel his hips buck into you, making his cock fill the walls of your throat. You feel full of him and you love every second of it, tears are streaming down your face. You make gurgling sounds that vibrate and give an unreal sensation for Johnny. But you won't let go and you continue gurgling and shoving his dick down and he continues bucking his hips and letting beautiful groans escape his throat. Only when you’re close to passing out from the lack of oxygen, do you let go and let your lips slide off his big cock. 

You wrap both your hands around his cock to replace your mouth. You use your hands stroking his length, up and down, fast and hard. He looks down at you and you see a smirk wanting to peek through but he is incapable of giving you any expression other than pure euphoria and numbness from how you ravaged his cock. “Fuckkk you’re making me cum, doll” he looks down at you and you continue stroking his cock with both hands, letting your hands stroke and twist his shaft. You look up at him and give him a smile and you pull closer and give him a passionate kiss. “Please cum for me daddy, I want to taste you”. Your voice is sensual and soft, you need to taste him, badly. 

You feel his cock twitch and you quickly bring your mouth to his tip as you continue stroking his shaft. You open your mouth and wrap your lips around his tip. You want to catch every single drop, nothing is allowed to go to waste. You hear him let out a loud grunt as he empties himself in your mouth. With every load, you make sure to swallow and make room for the next. You're moaning into him and he tastes so good. You stroke his cock slowly, milking him to bring out every last drop. His cock jerks between your hands and he grabs your face and forcefully pulls you close to his lips. He kisses you passionately and intensely like he was refraining from kissing you before. You kiss him back with some of his cum still remaining on your tongue, he didn't mind and happily swirled his tongue with yours. 

♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡

You finally arrive at your destination and it’s a cozy little diner. It’s located in the middle of nowhere, similar to everything else around these areas. Despite that, it seemed to have a good amount of cars parked outside. The neon lights were dimmed in the presence of bright and hot morning sun, but the colors shone through regardless. You admire the aesthetics of it for a second longer until Johnny grabs your hand and pulls you into the diner. 

Once you sit down at the diner table, a male server makes his way to your table to get your order. Well, his eyes are solely on you, to the point that you doubt he even saw Johnny sitting right in front of you. “What can I get you, pretty lady?”, he’s holding a little notepad and wearing a massive smirk on his face. You fear for his life when you look over to Johnny and see his clenched jaw and laser focus on the man's face. You put a soft hand on Johnny's thigh to reassure him that you're his and no man could ever steal you away from him. He looks at you and his face softens seeing your warm smile, it calms him down enough. “My woman will have a………” he continues ordering for both of you but his words get completely blacked out after you hear ‘my woman’. You've heard it before, in private, but this felt more official. It was public and he said it like he was proud to show you off. You couldn't help but feel butterflies flutter in your stomach and blush to yourself. The man looks uncomfortable with Johnny's intimidating gaze. Even though you calmed him down, it didn't fully get him off the hook. Soon, he was done writing everything down and damn near stomped away to give the order to the chefs. 

"'My woman'?" you say teasingly and unintentionally feel your cheeks burn once again. You look down but peek up, curious for his answer. He smirks at you and he’s confident in what he said. “Yes doll’, you got a problem with that?”. He’s teasing you and your cheeks get redder. “N-no… I suppose I don't really” you avert your gaze from his, you don't understand how he could make you feel like this. “You suppose?”. He raises an eyebrow and places both his hands on your knees under the table. “Do you, or do you not have a problem with me referring to you as my woman?”. He speaks confidently and you wish it could rub off on you a little, cause god knows you could use some right about now. You muster all the strength and confidence left in your body and meet his gaze. “I don’t”. You look him in his eyes and he leans back, resting both his elbows on the backrest of the booth. “Good, cause you’re my woman and I will continue referring to you as such”. He has a big smug on his face and the butterflies flutter like they are about to dig their way out of your stomach and fill the diner. Once you've calmed down and the butterflies no longer try to kill you, you and Johnny were able to have a normal conversation until your food arrived. 

The food finally arrives and it's a different server. You dont blame him, Johnny's glare would make anyone's knees go weak. She sets the food down on the table and gives you a warm smile. “Here you go! Enjoy your meal!” she scurriers away and you look at what Johnny ordered for you. You look down and it's the same burger from that night. You didn't even realize that the logo outside the diner was the same one on those take-out bags. “You seemed to enjoy them last time so I thought I would let you finish this time”. He seemed genuine and this was a gesture to show that he cared for you, it was an apology. “Well… to be fair i was starving last time” you playfully tease him but he laughs and appreciates you making light of the situation. It wasn't a night you enjoyed thinking about but you’re happy that you got to share a moment like that with him. Thanks to that moment, it brought you closer so you wouldnt change a thing. You both dig in your food and surprisingly, it was just as good as last time. Maybe it wasn't just another greasy, junk food burger after all. 

You watch as he eats his burger, it gets messy and he licks the crumbs away from his lips. You can't help but think about how he was doing the same thing to you last night, but instead of crumbs of a burger, it was the cum from your cunt. You try to not make it obvious by glaring at him. But you really can't help peeking at him innocently eating his food, and thinking very not innocent things. You continue watching him, trying to rub your clit on the edge of the booth to satisfy your needs but you stop yourself from continuing further or Johnny would notice what you were up to- or god forbid, someone else. You redirect your focus back on Johnny and the conversation. 

You ultimately finished your food and it tasted amazing. You still can't quite tell if it was the food, or the scene of Johnny but you digress. “How was it, princess?” he looks over to you. “It was good, I really enjoyed it. Thank you Jo-”, before you were able to finish your sentence, he interrupted you. “I meant the view”. You slightly blush at his insinuation but there was no way he caught you. You were staring right at him, and he wasn't watching you. “I don't know what you mean…”, and it was true, you didn't really know what he meant. “You thought I didnt notice you eye fucking me just now?” he has a massive smirk on his face, he enjoyed your flushed cheeks more than anything and if he saw an opportunity to tease you, he would always take it. You couldn't help but to nervously look around as his words were a little too loud for your liking, you're convinced the whole diner just heard him. “Relax darlin’, you don't think they could connect simple dots? I'm sure they also saw how you were rubbing your pussy against the edge of their chair”.

Your eyes widened and your mouth shot open, you were floored by him talking so loud. Instead of looking around, you just looked down. You're confident at least one person heard him and your cheeks burn hotter than the sun. He lets out a laugh and leans forward to place his elbows on the table and bring his right hand to your chin. You're still looking down, hiding your shame and he bends his head down to meet your gaze from below. He brings your chin up and he’s smiling, he loves seeing you all shy and unable to speak. “J-johnny…”, you don't know the purpose of your words but you need to say something in your defense. “Shhh darlin’, I don't blame you. All you had to do was ask. Come on”. He leaves the trays on the table for the waitresses to pick up and grabs your hand to lead you to the diner bathroom. 

♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡

You walk to the bathrooms and it looks really clean which was lucky. By the way Johnny was looking at you, you knew exactly what was about to happen and your pussy was already soaking wet thinking about him. Before he fully closes the bathroom door behind you, he pushes you up against the wall, kissing you as he lets his hand find and close the door without looking at it. Once he successfully locks the door, he puts both his hands on either side of your hips and deepens the kiss. You wrap your arms around his neck and push your breasts into his chest. With your arched back, he moves his hands to the back of your waist and lets his rough hands travel and stroke all over your body. 

You try to keep quiet but his heavy breathing drives you feral and you want to moan into his mouth to express how you're feeling. You wrap one of your legs up his waist and he lifts you up to press you into the bathroom wall. You continue with your kiss and it gets progressively desperate and heavy, you can't take the tension and try to rub your pussy on his abs to create some form of friction. He balances you against the wall and your legs are wrapped, tight around his waist. He removes his right hand and decides to rub your pussy, it was easy due to the lack of underwear, caused by his own demand. “Fuck darlin’, you’re always this wet for me?” His voice is deep and breathless from the intensity of the kiss. “Yes Johnny… more often than I'm willing to admit”. He lets out a small chuckle. “Good girl”. He say’s simply, his voice deep and masculine.

He brings you over to the sink and lets you sit on it. You flinch at the coldness of the sink touching your bare ass but you're quickly distracted by Johnny’s fingers making their way to your pussy again. You wrap your arms around his neck again so you're only an inch away from his face and you bite your lip. You try your hardest not to moan as he’s rubbing your clit. He wasn't going slow this time, and it only got faster and harder. It was like he was trying to make you moan but you hold back. You look down and see his hard cock wanting to poke out from his jeans. You remove one of your arms from around his neck and slowly slide your hand down his hard chest, to his shredded abs and all the way down until your soft hands reach his bulge and you stroke his member over his jeans. 

Without breaking the kiss, not even once, you unzip his pants and pull out his cock, he rubs all over your body with his rough, calloused hands. You can tell that they're hardworking hands with history and now they're exploring your soft body. He breaks the kiss and looks deep into your eyes. He’s hungry for you and it's the same hunter eyes you've grown to adore. His cock was already hard but he was stroking it, getting it ready to feel your warm softness. You're sitting on the sink and it was the perfect height for his dick to perfectly align with your entrance like two perfect puzzle pieces. You wrap your arms around his neck to support yourself as he rests your knee-creases over his forearm and walks closer to you to have his cock gently touch your pussy lips. He frees his right arm and uses it to massage his cock between your pussy lips. He continues sliding his cock between your folds as he rests his forehead to yours, he wants to see your pretty little mouth twitch holding back moans. You let out small moans without parting your lips. 

*knock* *knock* *knock*. You jump at the sudden knocks banging on the bathroom stall. As you worry if the person heard your moans, Johnny slams his cock into your aching pussy, hard. Before you're able to let out the biggest gasp of the century, he covers your mouth with his big hands and your eyes widen at the series of events. He continues trusting, deep and hard. He holds your mouth with a lot of force and when you try moaning, his hands get rougher to get you to shut up. Your moans are for his ears only but he loved that someone was outside, putting pressure and shame on you. But they’re not allowed the privilege of hearing your sweet moans. His cock is sliding in and out of you. You feel his length poke the back of your cunt and his girth filling you up, pressing against every inch of your walls. His breathing is heavy and he lets small grunts escape his lips with each trust. One after another trust enters and pulls out of you and you feel lightheaded over how good he feels. 

*knock* *knock* *knock*. The banging reminds you once again that someone is outside and you feel embarrassed, there is no way they dont hear the wet, sloppy sounds of Johnny's cock swimming in your pussy or the sound of skin slapping skin echo in the empty bathroom. Even when you leave the bathroom, the smell of sex would be undeniable but fuck, you couldn’t care less. You direct your focus back on Johnny and you feel your pussy tightening. “Hello? Anyone in there?”. The voice of a man can be heard from behind the door and you flinch, feeling exposed but disappointed that he interrupted your orgasm. “It’s occupied, boy!”. Johnny finally snaps and you hear a frustrated cuss and footsteps fading as the man walks away. He removes his hand from your mouth and you let a little giggle escape your lips, and he chuckles as well. “Now that we’re alone, I want to hear my woman’s beautiful moans”. Before you're able to give a proper response, he forces his cock into your hole again and this time you let out a moan. Johnny gets closer to your mouth with his ears. He needs your moans filling his ears and he continues pounding into you, in and out, rough and with a lot of force. You moan and grunt into each other's mouth as you kiss. “Fuckk princess, you're making me cum”. His voice is weak but husky. “Me too, please fill me up Johnny”, he keeps his thrusts steady and powerful until you feel your walls contracting and you chase your orgasm. You feel his cock twitch inside you, and shortly after you feel his warm liquid filling you up as he lets out a wonderful grunt. You cum on his cock as you moan into each other's mouths.

He picks you up and puts you back on the floor, your skirt falling back into its place and you help it further by patting it down. You feel your sensitive pussy still pounding and some cum dripping out of it. You and Johnny help each other clean each other off. As he’s hunched over, cleaning the cum from your inner thighs, you stand above the sink, wetting towels and handing them over to him. He kisses your inner thigh and you giggle over how it tickles. You wet your hand under the running faucet and splash some water on his face to make him stop. He covers his face and laughs at your playfulness, he responds by biting into your thigh before standing up and pulling you closer by the waist and giving you a loving kiss. He’s never known love like this, and neither have you. You feel like you've won at life as you kiss his soft and gentle lips. 

You notice a somewhat big pool of Johnny's cum right below the sink where he drilled into your pussy. You grab a piece of paper and bend over to clean it but Johnny grabs your wrist to stop you. “Leave it, darlin’. Let’s go”. You look at him with a puzzled expression, wondering about the reason behind his command but you don't plan on arguing with him so you grab his hand and together, you exit the bathroom. 

You come out and see that your booth has already been cleaned and is now occupied by another couple. To your surprise, Johnny doesn’t head straight for the exit, but instead he heads over to the counter where the waiter from earlier was standing. He’s still holding your hand and you catch some people staring at the two of you. It was obvious what you were busy doing in the bathroom together. “The bathroom needs cleaning, boy. Make sure you take care of it” he throws a 10 dollar bill as a tip at the man's face who’s just standing there. If this was a cartoon, you're convinced smoke would come out of his ears and nose until his whole head exploded. You couldn't help but giggle to yourself at Johnny’s outrageous display of jealousy and pettiness. He drags you out of the diner and once again, he holds the car door open for you to take a seat before walking over to the other side and seating himself. 

The car rumbles into motion and you smile to yourself, still thinking about the drama from earlier. “Whatchu smiling about, woman?” He's smiling but he’s genuinely curious about what has got you all giddy. “‘The bathroom needs cleaning, boy’”. You make sure to put a mocking voice as you repeat his words from the diner. He laughs at your mocking tone and you laugh with him. “What? I wasn't gonna let no scrub talk to my woman that way, especially to my face, and get away scot-free”. You roll your eyes and laugh at how silly he sounds. It was nice to see this side of him, a less serious and carefree Johnny. 

The sun was setting and the sky looked beautiful. The mixture of colors in the open sky and the fresh air makes you take a deep breath and you find yourself appreciating life more than you've ever done before. And it was all thanks to the man who tried to kill you. You looked at the man driving beside you, there was nothing ‘devil’ about him, like you originally were convinced of. You’re confused by the recent series of events of your life. You continue watching him as he drives, and thinking about how this was your life. Why was he so complicated? or no… more so, complex… There is nothing complicated about him. He’s just like any other man, a man with desires to love and to be loved. At the end of the day, that’s the category any human ends up in, and you feel blessed to be the woman that gets to love him.

As you were deep in thought, you hadn't noticed that the vehicle had come to a halt. Johnny puts his truck in park and walks out. As he’s walking over to your side, you're left looking around at where you could possibly be. It looked to be a mountain and you're confused as to why he’s brought you here. Johnny opens the door and reaches for your hand to help you step out of the car. “Where are we?” your eyebrows raised and you look around. Other than the beautiful sky, you can't find any sign of civilization. “Don’t worry about that, I want to show you something”. You can't tell what expression he’s displaying, he looks happy, but maybe sad? It's difficult to make out. 

After a couple of minutes of walking uphill, you feel your out of shape body hate you for making it endure this hike. You feel the shortness in your breath and look over to Johnny who is completely unfazed. You curse but simultaneously, bless his beautiful, tight and in shape body. You need to be more like him.

You finally reach the top and are immediately met with the most breathtaking view. You watch over the red, orange and sandy colors of the canyon. The sunset adds an extra filter of pink that gently lays over, covering the beautiful rocks. You've never seen the canyons from this perspective and it was hands down the most stunning scenery you've ever come across in your life. With sundown, the air gets lighter and you feel the cool breeze fill your lungs as you continue enjoying the view. “I used to come here a lot when i was a teenager”, Johnny's voice interrupts you and for a second, you almost forgot that he was here with you. “Yeah? I can see why, it's wonderful”. You look over to him and he’s watching over the canyon. “When I couldn't bear being around my family, I would come here and just sit here for hours”. His voice was low, like he didn't want you to hear him but he was talking to you. “I used to think I was cursed. Every woman I tried to get close to, I hurt”. You're standing a bit behind him, you walk closer to his broad back and sneak your hands under his arms and around his body to place them on his shoulders. You rest your head between his shoulder blades and hug him from behind, reassuring him as he speaks. “When I felt myself falling for you, I got scared. I didn't want to hurt you like the ones before you… That's why I told you to leave”. You feel yourself get emotional and a tear falls from your eyes, you squeeze him harder. He turns around to meet your tearfilled eyes. He brings his hand to your face and wipes your tears away. “I love you Mikaela… I love you unlike anything I've ever loved before”. You smile through your tears and look up at him with a tilted head. “Oh, Johnny. I love you so much… More than you’ll ever know”. He pulls you in for a gentle but passionate kiss. You hug him and both of you look over the beautiful canyon together. He rests his chin on your head and lets out a sigh of relief as if he was worried about what your reaction would be. To you it was crystal clear, you love this man and you feel no shame over it whatsoever. You don't expect him to change, you don't want him to change. You love him for exactly who he is. 

You stand there by the edge, looking over the canyon, watching as the sky goes from orange and pink to a velvety, deep blue. He holds you and you hold him back. You feel small and protected in his big arms. If it was up to you, you would never let go. “I’ll take care of you, doll”. He says it like it's a promise and you believe him.

Previous Episode ♡ No Next Episode

[subjectsmile]

Well, I saw this question posted on Reddit, and I really thought it was an interesting question.(Letting it be clear, I'm not doing this to convert anyone, much less to attack, but because I'm tired of reading so many lies just to hide an obvious prejudice on the part of the fan base,and for the Sonadow fan, do you have arguments to refute these fans who take your peace, just search, this post has everything you need to deny these false fan statements)

And I decided to read the reasons why people attacked Sonadow/fans and to the surprise of 0 people, these were the justifications for attacking those who like the ship (I'll just summarize it in sentences)

"They hate each other, they don't even like each other, it doesn't make sense"

"they are both enemies"

"The people who ship this have enemies-to-lovers fetishes"

"there is no chemistry, people ship characters who only fight"

I think it goes without saying that nowadays these excuses have already been killed and buried by their current canons, right? And from what I've seen, this post is at most 7 to 8 months old, that is... is it serious that there are still people who really believe these lies? Or are they just empty excuses for not admitting that prejudice is the real reason for the attacks on this fandom and this ship? Anyway, I'm posting this to clarify what's true and what's not, making it clear I'm not trying to convince anyone, I'm just exposing the lies of uninformed fans

I responded to this person's post and made a point of gathering all the official evidence refuting these false excuses that the fandom gives to say such nonsense about the characters and attack the fandom:

They both don't have Chemical?: Sonic Prime is living proof that the two are incredible as a duo,the voice actors of Sonic and Shadow admitted that they think their ship is really cool (this on Twitter), Ian Flynn and whoever animates Sonic Prime They practically implied that they think it's a good ship too (in Ian's case he made a podcast on his YouTube Talking about how Sonadow would work as a couple during Pride Month, he practically confirmed that the two work well together in Cannon ) Of course, even after all this, depending on your personal taste, you might not like their chemistry, and that's okay, you don't have to, but saying that the two of them don't really resonate it's a lie

Do they both hate each other?: No! It has been denied several times, quite the opposite, if they care about each other it is canonical that they both care about each other

Enemies?: Also a lie! It exists in several products and interviews making it clear that they friends and allies! (Also a lie from an annoying or uninformed fan)

In other words, most of the excuses used to attack this ship have already been officially denied, for me all that remains is the prejudice of the fandom as a justification for attacking those who ship both.

And before someone annoying comes and says I'm lying, I have sources for what I'm talking about!

Proof that the two never hated each other, that is, they don't spread lies around, do some research first (Honorable mention for Sonic Prime, with this series I can dig into the argument that they two don't hate each other, go watch the series) but for those who aren't satisfied with Sonic Prime : https://sonic.sega.jp/SonicChannel/special/sidestory/coverstory/20210628_002603/

https://twitter .com/LadyLoveMoon/status/1737503549842485703

https://x.com/LadyLoveMoon/status/1657854808273965056?s=20

https://youtu.be/yJ8boVrPHEc?si=bCBrhNnsV5C9JJeq

https://www.tumblr.com/pastelspindash/ 735274368949698560/trazendo isso de volta porque não posso parar de pensar? ?source=share https://www.tumblr.com/ratjamtime/730643439809593344?source=share

Scenes from Sonic prime showing Shadow's care for Sonic:

Wow, what a bloodthirsty rivalry the two have, can you see the hatred in both of them? I can:

Are they rivals? They are, but they are friendly rivals, that is VERY CLEAR IN YOUR FACE, even in the Shadow game One scene is enough to prove that "hate" is definitely not what they have:

The voice actors of the two make it clear that they think the ship is cool (they make jokes and interact with the community (they even like things on the ship): Sonic voice actor previews the first release: https://x.com/DevenOClock/status/1631062456205299712?s=20

Even Sonic's former voice actor (Ryan Drummond) doesn't see a problem with the ship: https://www.tumblr.com/pastelspindash/734454772064714752/this-tiktok-driving-me-insane-ngl-they-are-so?source=share

Shadow voice actor:

https://x.com/IanStuartHanlin/status/1723764525843828828?s=20

https://x.com/paracosmicence/status/1736125901211902396?s=20

https://www.tumblr.com/krysissy/736943763953516544/it-was-probably-a-normal-tuesday-for-mr-hanlin?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/niyana-the-ambiguous-mobian/733807770348011520/oh-my-gosh-ian-stop-playing-with-our-emotions-rn?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/nesonkin/727469580436619264/good-evening-everyone?source=share

There is a statement from the two voice actors stating that they had fun dubbing the two of them together:

https://x.com/Drey_Blanc/status/1593535566288547840?s=20

Ian Flynn on Pride Month:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH46JnEUvZw

https://x.com/LadyLoveMoon/status/1676027477682946050?s=20

(The ship is so terrible that it was honored twice because it was so bad) Bonus: https://x.com/nenemyun/status/1703775474089132132?s=20

Sonic prime animators (The ship they referenced is so horrible): https://x.com/MAM_Imaginary_F/status/1679646368485494786?s=20 https://x.com/Lunatyk__/status/1677445528378900480?s=20

The animators hated the two-two scene so much that they posted it on Instagram: https://www.tumblr.com/corffee/734658327775215616/shadow-originally-had-his-eyes-open-i-repeat?source=share

Even Netflix Latinoamérica got into the ship's hype and interacted with the ship's fans (just so you can see how horrible the ship is): https://www.tumblr.com/tailstism/725737231497773056/oh-btw-for-people-who-dont-use-tiktok-i-just?source=share

The ship is so toxic it's bad, that even Jason Griffith paid homage to the ship for a fan,wow what a terrible ship, my god!: https://www.tumblr.com/paracosmicessence/733796577422016512/this-absolute-legend?source=share https://x.com/LadyLoveMoon/status/1723715163436536043?s=20

Even the mascot got in on the fun once: https://www.tumblr.com/shadthemadlad/731770142653136896?source=share

Even Discord doesn't see a problem with that, who knew:

https://x.com/mouseygalore/status/1736922478323106214?s=20

Anyway, turning off sarcasm mode, just stop making up lies and false excuses to hate a ship and attack people who like it just because it's not what you like, don't be a bad fan and above all

(stop creating reasons that don't exist to hide your internal prejudice, let the fans enjoy their ships in peace,If even the big names I mentioned ships sonadow and have normal fun with the ship then why do fans have to be criticized for having this taste for ships too? let everyone be happy in their space )

[otakween]

Digimon Frontier - Episode 45

At first I was enjoying all these callbacks to previous locations but now it's getting kinda old. I feel like it's making the digital world feel really small that the few places they've already been just happen to be the remaining places to save. Oh well, only 5 episodes to go!

Notes:

It feels like LordKnightmon is far more dominant and gets more screen time than Dynasmon. I think they forgot to give Dynasmon an interesting personality lol. When they were first introduced I thought LordKnightmon was going to have more of a side kick role since they were kinda silly, but they're super OP.

The part where Junpei was rotating the city from inside the big furnace building would have been more effective had they explained that the town was set up like that in a previous episode. Like...cool but, why is that a thing?

It was nice to see a Tomoki/Koichi interaction. I feel like we haven't seen them chat much.

They just casually construct a super complex catapult on the spot lol. Who brought that knowledge to the table exactly, the Toucanmon?

I feel like all of the very specific digimon that tried to fight the royal knights were bosses I've fought before. Zanbamon was definitely a boss in DW3 and I think there was a boss fight with 3 Airdramon in one of the other games. I'm not sure if they did that on purpose or not.

The animation was super jank in this episode. They used a lot of animation "cheats" like shaking a still frame and just reused a lot of shots from previous episodes. The 8 years olds probably didn't notice but I sure did! >:l

They finally thought of a way to get the other kids to participate in a battle! It at least worked as a distraction. I'll take it.

The big Koichi plot twist...was unfortunately spoiled for me on MAL (ironically from someone speculating, not from someone who had already seen the show). I wish I could have been completely caught off guard like I usually am :/

I'm not convinced the Koichi is dead...I'm thinking coma, like that one dude from Tamers. We'll see though. That'd be messed up if he was fully dead and stuck in Digital World purgatory 😵 Wait...I'm getting Dot Hack vibes again.

Imagine if this was a JRPG and instead of winning boss fights to progress you lost every time. Wouldn't be very satisfying. I guess the idea is that it doesn't really matter if they lose everything because they can just get it back when they defeat Lucemon. Knowing that, this all feels like a big waste of time tho (like in universe you can't blame them for trying, but still).

I spotted a pretty funny continuity error in the dub. When Insekimon first appeared (on the moon) they just called them Gotsumon, but in the previous episode they called them Meteormon because they couldn't hide the fact it was a digivolution lol. I didn't notice until I heard the recap.

[doxypsychlean]

Hi. Can i request a aegon ii x rhaenyra's daughter. Maybe they marry in secret after the dinner of episode 8.

Of course you can, dear stranger! Hope you like it:)

Marry you|Aegon II Targaryen xTarg!Reader

Warnings: Explicit language

Thou shan't repost/copy/ translate any of my work or I'll sneak into your home late at night and bite your nose off!

A/N: Tumblr decided it'd be funny to mess with me and the first version didn't save. I've learned my lesson but tbh, it huuurt. Anyhoo- for the sake of this whole thing, let's pretend like she's didn't leave with her mother to Dragonstone, but instead stayed in King's Landing. Don't ask, I have no idea of how or why something like that would work either. Oh also, him and Helaena are still married to eachother. However, I didn't make it a point to mention their kids, so... Do with that as you wish. Cheers!

..................

The prince stole a quick glance at his niece as he reached for the wine decanter that just so happened to be placed right in front of her. She didn't even acknowledge him, too busy laughing along with Princess Baela at something her younger brother,Jacaerys, had just said to the two. The jealousy was eating him alive. Why? He had no idea, earlier that day the princess Rhaenys had announced the betrothal of Jacaerys and Baela Velaryon. Not to mention, Aegon himself was a married man. He had no right to feel jealous. Even so, he couldn't stop himself from drumming his fingers on the wooden table in annoyance. His brother was quick to notice, considering he sat not that far from him. Prince Aemond gave his older brother a knowing look, his usual smirk on his face.

"Oh Jace, you haven't changed one bit!" The princess said, hand now resting on her brother's shoulder as she wiped at the happy tears that pricked at her eyes.

His nostrils flared, lungs expanding to their full capacity. His heart was beating so fast, Aegon was afraid it was going to shatter all his ribs in attempt to get out. That damn bastard, he thought to himself.

The silver haired man was quick to pour the contents of his glass down his throat. As he placed his cup back on the table, he looked around. A certain pair of eyes had already been staring at him. A smile flashed on the Rogue Prince's face and dissappeared just as quickly. His attention turned back to his wife, leaving Aegon to drown in jealousy and resentment.

Aegon Targaryen, second of his name, wasn't the type that would get flustered easily. And yet, his hands were starting to sweat. He brushed his palms on the fabric that covered his thighs, then got up. He circled around his niece and nephew that were talking about Gods know what and stopped between Jace and Baela. His hand extended out towards the wine decanter. He poured himself another glass.

"I..." Aegon hesitated for a second there. He was sure he'd get an earful for what he was about to say, from both his mother and niece. "I regret the disappointment you are soon to suffer."

The attention of everyone around the table had turned to him. They could all sense it, he was about to say something extremely idiotic and inappropriate.

"But if you ever wish to know what it is to be well satisfied, all you have to do is ask."

Two pairs of hands slammed down on the table, both brother and sister rising to their feet. A sharp "Jace!" could be heard coming from lady Velaryon. Everyone heard it, except Jace. And his sister. The two stared down the young prince as he went back and took his seat, each for their own reasons.

"Pray tell, Aegon, was any of what you just did out there really necessary!?" She practically yelled as she slammed the doors of his chambers shut.

"I have no idea what you're talking about" He yelled back. Of course he was drunk. Has there ever been a time when he wasn't...

"You brat, I haven't seen my family in ages!" She shoved him hard. "Leave it to you and your brother to ruin everything..."

"I am your family, aren't I?" The prince croaked, his throat had gone as dry as a desert.

"Don't you fucking dare, I refuse to play this little game with you, you-"

"Do you love him?" He interrupted.

The young Targaryen girl in front of him frowned, her face twisting in disgust.

"He's my brother, you arse."

"That doesn't answer my question now, does it?" He was pushing it. Really pushing.

"He's my fucking brother, Aegon! My baby brother! How could you even ask me such a thing with a straight face?!" Her small hands landed a hit after hit to his chest.

"Because I do." The prince caught her hands mid-air, eliciting a shocked gasp out of the girl.

"I love you." His whole body shook as the words spilled out his mouth. " I think I've always loved you..."

His hands went back down to his sides, letting go of her. Aegon was quick to turn his back to her, letting the tears and sweat run down his face freely. He could feel it, he was about to vomit all over the floor.

"Oh, you insufferable twat!"

In the blink of an eye, Prince Aegon found himself facing the woman once more. His whole world melted seconds after.

A pair of soft lips crashed rather violently against his. Two gentle hands gripped each side of his face, still not sure whether or not they should claw his eyes out right where he stood. His found their way around her midsection as they fell, knees slamming into the cold floor.

She pulled back as he tried to deepen the kiss.

"I hate you so,so much...You complete and utter moron." The woman huffed as she brushed the silver locks off of his sweaty forehead.

"Marry me" it was more of a statement that it was a question.

"Huh?"

"You heard." His nose brushed against hers, a smile on his face.

"But...Helaena. And my mother. And your mother-"

"I've made my choice already. And you?"

She kissed him again, this time much softer. She'd made her choice long ago.

[stedelovemail]

just unleashed a lot of General S2 Thoughts on twitter but i'll crosspost them here too. a lot of it is me agreeing with things that have already been said. ineloquent love-fueled criticism in here

i am still on my initial first 3 episodes reaction that everything is too fast; it's unfortunate that there are only 8 episodes this time and they're trying to put so much into them at the cost of good pacing and satisfying arcs because this show deserves better than that. i/we all know it COULD be better and that's exactly what we want for it, but alas: max.

i'd probably have stronger reactions if they had more time to flesh out everything they're trying to do – if i had more time to process everything they're trying to do 😭 there still is a lot i'm enjoying, though. the main relationship of course; most of everything w/ the crew, especially when they aren't separated! bc i'm kind of sad about the swede being apart from everyone, and now buttons too.

and archie: she's definitely likeable but we still really don't know much about her, let alone enough to really feel the connection between her and jim…? meanwhile olu and zheng are indeed a "well they're cute!" situation but i don't understand why they're doing it after how big of A Thing jim and olu were in s1. they were the secondary protagonists. now they have less screentime and importance it seems. and who do we have getting more of that instead… oh boy.

i really wish they didn't embrace the fandom white guy favoritism bc izzy's arc is just. insane. mindboggling. completely different character here, plucked straight from woobie fanon to replace his canon self. they want us to fill in the gaps re: development we didn't actually see, but i can't. it was so annoying watching the fandom push oluwande and jim aside to claim that izzy was the third most important/main character, and now they might as well have just done that. it was annoying to see the fandom apply ed's traits and development to izzy in order to sympathize with him, and now they've kinda done that too.

zero acknowledgment (as of right now) of shit he did and now i have to just remember the silk dressing gown dialogue while izzy comes up to ed wearing another robe in bed with stede and congratulates them on having sex?? being in drag after he was the most femphobic motherfucker throughout s1? getting to sing (and ruin that whole scene) to an admiring crew after the whole 'give us another song eddie!" thing that was torn away from ed in s1e10? i'm so over this. i wish he had just gotten worse bc who's this man being so kind and open and giving RELATIONSHIP ADVICE out of nowhere, he's gone from tolerable to completely unbearable for me which sucks with how much screentime he has now. like, go away already.

anyway there's still the finale to hopefully fix some things. i'm not overly worried about ed and stede since it's already obvious they're gonna reunite, but i am a lil worried about how the VERY end will be. david promised something satisfying though, so….. agh…..

[tenisperfection]

hi just wondering and i know you may have answered this so i haven't seen but you said after episode 5 you were never more confident that buddie is endgame and it's happening, just wondering now that the season has played out if you still feel that way. i think the finale pretty much cemented that buck is going to play a central role in eddie's storyline next season and he's going to be there with him throughout that entire mess and echo what he told Maddie love was in the S5 finale. But just curious to hear your thoughts, hope you're having a nice afternoon

I've gotten a lot of asks about this and this is the only one I'll answer, just this once.

tl;dr: my answer hasn't changed! I still think the show will have these two end up together at some point. The longer answer under the cut has more of my ramblings but this is really it.

I love the way Buck and Eddie's relationship was written this season—I'm not primarily saying in relation to their (maybe eventual) romantic relationship, but just how much the show established them as a family and how they always show up for each other and love each other so fiercely and steadily. I don't think my belief that we will get Buck and Eddie as endgame has wavered in either direction now that the season has ended—I've thought they were going there at least since the shooting (which, ouch, we all were right) and that has not changed.

I do think season 8 is going to be pretty telling in terms of the direction forward though. I'll be interested to see how they develop their relationship in ways we haven't seen before—to your point, I don't think it would be at all surprising at this point to have Buck play a role in Eddie's story line next season—we've seen them established as a family for a long time now, so what else are they adding to it? Will we see Eddie contemplate the shooting further and whatever realization he arguably had as he looked at Buck while bleeding out? Will we see him contemplate his own self more as Christopher is away—his relationship to his faith, to his culture, to masculinity, to his mother, his sexuality? There is so much potential here for the way forward and I do think this has to be Eddie's journey primarily. I'm not saying Buck won't be there, he will be, but these are not necessarily only in service of him getting together with Buck and I think it's a disservice to look at it exclusively through that lens. I think it'll be interesting for him to examine a lot of these especially as a person like Gerard is in command of the 118, when Bobby has always been such a safe space and a mirror in so many ways for Eddie.

As the story stands now, I still think both their individual series-long arcs would only be satisfying if they end up together. But—and here's where I might get crucified—I think they could choose to develop Buck's relationship with Tommy further if they decide to go a different way. I'm not saying they are or they would, and I don't think they're there now, but I personally see the potential for Tommy to be developed into Buck's endgame love interest over the course of the next season or so, should they choose for whatever reason to go that way. Once again, just to spare my inbox from all the screaming anons, I'm not saying this is what they're doing, and I would be disappointed if we don't get to have Buck and Eddie, and I think it would be narratively dissatisfying as the story stands now, even though I really like Bucktommy and have enjoyed seeing them so far. I personally think next season would be an interesting place to see what direction these story lines turn. Ultimately, I think it is highly, highly likely we see Buck and Eddie together and I'm confident, but yeah, these are my thoughts at the end of this season. An obligatory PSA that these are my opinions and you should make up your own mind about it and I'm not saying I'm right or wrong. Folks can leave me asks about what they think but I'm unlikely to discuss this any more apart from talking to mutuals in DMs.

[mylittleredgirl]

20 questions for fic writers

tagged by @geneeste. :) i may have done this one before, but tumblr blog search was traditionally unhelpful and i have several very important things i should be doing, so here we are <3

1. How many works do you have on Ao3? 219

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count? 655,471

3. What fandoms do you write for?

stargate atlantis is the runaway lead, then sg-1, 90s/00s treks, the x-files, and a grab bag of other things. only two fics so far for m*a*s*h but the forecast looks good!

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

no sooner met (star trek voyager, j/c, eight years of friends-to-lovers in 5k or less)

career day (stargate sg-1, clone!sam/jack, damn that sure was a choice to go back to high school amirite)

next chapter (the good place, chidi/eleanor, the intimacy of reading)

first date (star trek voyager, j/c, falling in love again)

occupational hazards (the good place, chidi/eleanor, eleanor would rather not be the architect)

5. Do you respond to comments?

eventually!!!! i tend to keep nice ones on my home page for a while to cheer me up and then sometimes they get buried. i wake up nights like "damn the good place fandom really went all out with amazing comments on that random fic in like 2018 and i never replied," so maybe i need to go through my inbox and belatedly clear my cosmic debts.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

twilight (stargate atlantis, sheppard/weir, what if john didn't break the cycle). strong on style but real weak on comfort.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

weaving loose ends (stargate sg-1, sam/jack) ends with a wedding! in twenty years of writing romance fic, that has maybe only happened once?

8. Do you get hate on fics?

not yet! but the year is young.

a fic of mine did cause a dramatic fandom schism once, in the dancing with the stars fandom no less. a splinter fan group created in exile! a mod claiming to be personal friends with the stars! everybody storming out and then blocking each other! so my fic did cause hate, but somehow i personally escaped unscathed. i didn't even get blocked. (lesson: in some spaces, rpf is encouraged until They Fuck. second lesson: if you start a fire and then stay very quiet, everyone forgets about you.)

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

i do!! i guess!! but i'm struggling with it right now and it's giving me a complex. and "what kind" is like......... vanilla het fic for the most part tbh. gauzy curtain vibes, even. basically, i have to really sit and think about whether to rate something M or E, you know?

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

nope!

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

nope!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? 

yes, but not since the x-files days. rip geocities webrings we salute you for your years of service.

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

no, but i think i'd like to! passing chapters back and forth sleepover style like "haha write your way out of THIS" would be fun. (or collaborating in a more mundane way, i guess....)

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

john sheppard/elizabeth weir (stargate atlantis). first fic in the tag and i'm still fuckin there. three years on tv and a lifetime in my goddamn brain.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

realistically, i'm feeling pretty down on the chances that i'll ever finish ANY wip that's longer than 20k, but the two long ones withering on the vine that i'd like to finish are a sam/jack sg1 episodic soulmate fic and "what if janeway went undercover with the maquis instead of tuvok: the novel."

16. What are your writing strengths?

stealing one of geneeste's answers because "character complexity" is a good one! i don't feel satisfied with any fic unless i feel like i have learned something new about a character, or highlighted it in a new way.

my more specific strength, according to @coraclavia, is missing-scene fics that weave through an entire series canon to make a thesis statement (they are In Love).

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

😭 i can't write anything long 😭 i really wish i were different 😭 i envy those of you with staying power who can return to a story after going to work or writing something else and keep plugging away at it. i used to write sprawling things when i was a teen, but since becoming Adult With Job now many years ago, i've totally lost that skill!!

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

haaaahahahaha. talk about a weakness. i literally couldn't bring myself to write a fic that required dialogue in Ancient from stargate, a language that -- i cannot stress this enough -- is not even real. i'm like "well maybe i'll study latin for three years and then analyze all the episodes where they speak it to reverse engineer the differences so i can write the bastardized space latin correctly" GIRL WHY. JUST FUCK IT UP.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

first completed story that i recall would have been star trek voyager in my early teens, and by the grace of rural internet and some kind of prescient sense of self-preservation, it does not live online. first internet-published fic was several years later, for the x-files. for better or worse, that one can still be found.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

i think pieces (stargate atlantis, sheppard/weir, catharsis through sex pollen) might be the new best, and i had a lot of fun writing erasers on pencils (stargate sg-1, clone!sam/jack, catharsis through truancy).

--

i am sure many of my fic-writer-meme friends have done this already but @ussjellyfish if your answers have changed since whenever you did it last; i'd love to hear how @havocthecat, @anretc, and @coraclavia would answer this; and blowing dandelion meme seeds over the fence to the mash fandom: @remyfire!

[bengiyo]

The Middleman's Love Ep 8 (Finale) Stray Thoughts

Last week, Jade struggled and finally made things clear with Mai, who won by taking King's advice to back off Jade for a while.

Yes! No recap! Straight to boyfriends content!

I'll let them have the little bit of comedy in Jade's reactions since I enjoyed the music track. Still, when will a Yim and Tutor both be ready???

Giving us shirtless in bed but they're still getting comfortable is okay. Just don't end it here.

Yes, King and Uea should get to tease Jade.

Uea looks so comfortable in this sweater.

Oh, I was wondering what we'd do with Jade's insistence that Mai is perfect. I wonder what these two are like once they settle and run into troubles.

"I have the new Conan episode," feels like a Netflix and Chill situation.

Pratfall kiss over a couch is new.

They're moving in together?? That seems a little fast but go off!

King and Uea flashing their rings will never get old.

I like King wanting to tease Jade before realizing he left Uea behind and going back. Meanwhile, Uea just seems content to watch everyone play.

Cheewin does really enjoy these extended couple epilogues.

Okay, Jade's whole family crossing Mai was actually funny.

It's actually such a good sign that Jade's parents are still flirty in front of their kids. Makes the dad's offer to consult them land better.

Aww they made fried chicken for Jade.

You say you don't mind Jade not doing housework now, Mai...

Honestly, the lighting is too bright in this kitchen.

I like the way Jett feels like an eldest sibling.

Oh shit we're getting into Mai's dating history. This conversation is really good, and I like them figuring out some communication and potential hangups early.

I like Jade showing Mai his drawings, but I feel like we're using the theme song too much.

DID HE JUST THROW THOSE GLASSES WITH HIS TEETH??

Okay, I like Jade bringing it back up and saying he wants to do it, and then they have Jade taking the lead.

That was very stylish. I'm satisfied. Good job, Tutor and Yim.

NGERN IS BACK!

This is a sexy family, holy shit.

The brother eye fight was good. I am so glad to have Ngern on our screens again.

I really like that their families are both supportive, and they're all happy to transition into the blending phase.

Oh, again? I see Cheewin heard my complaints. Continue.

Much better use of the glasses!

Final Verdict: 6, There Are Some Good Ideas Here. I like the thing Cheewin does where he's playing with how people see themselves and each other, and how many of us are constantly faking it. I don't really think the comedy with Jade worked out here, so the core angst with him struggling about feeling weird and unwanted felt like it dragged. I'm a fan of the extended epilogue thing Cheewin likes to do and the way it feels like a victory lap, but I'd like to see him write a couple in that transition as a focus of the show. Still, I think it's a show people either know they want to watch or don't almost immediately.

[yeahthatswhatimtolkienabout]

There are some fantastic arguments as to why Izzy won't be the one dying in episode 8, ranging from the fandom backlash, all the way up to some fantastic character and scene analysis. There are some fantastic posts about it happening too – don’t want to diminish that, despite how it makes my heart hurt and my brain very sad.

The key thing to remember is that we still don't really know much about episode 8, other than from a few of the shots we’ve seen from BTS and from the teaser (which I wager, only really shows the first 15 mins or so, if that). I've tried to piece the scenes together into a somewhat cohesive storyline, trying to work out how the crew escapes and why they go back, and how they end up with Ricky (in naval costume), where they're going with him etc and when the funeral scene we’ve seen slots into the episode. It’s so hard, and there may be a multitude of reasons as to why Izzy isn’t in that shot, from a) he is captured still b) he is unable to make it due to the state he's in c) he's lying on a beach somewhere drinking mimosas (which is the headcannon I have)

DJ has said that the season will end on a satisfying note, well enough to be satisfied with if HBO don’t give a 3rd season, which also suggests that maybe Izzy won’t die, or it won’t be left on a 'is he dead?' cliffhanger as that would be as unsatisfying as it comes. He has also said that the opening scene will be incredibly satisfying as well, which may counterargue the above point, but I'm not sure Izzy dying would make that any more satisfying?

Now we've all seen the review that came out, saying that the crew suffers a devastating loss and this gives the 'dying' corner a potential point, but people have also made some real good points about it being the Revenge or someone else entirely.

From my perspective (which has nothing to do with anything really) is that this entire Izzy-dying situation just seems a bit too forced/heavy handed for me - its foreshadowed heavily in the first three episodes (Christ, we think he's dead like 3 times?) and I find it so very hard to believe that they would let a KEY spoiler scene be leaked in their promo footage? I honestly think that all the info we have gotten so far has been fed to us in this way on purpose, so we build it up in our heads, DJ and co know we would analyse everything and by god we have so far, so much - maybe it is all a giant red herring? Maybe someone does die, but it’s a complete 180 from who we think it is?

I dunno, but if he does die I'll be disappointed, not just because I like him, and what that means for him as a character, but because we were able to figure it out mostly from promotional shots and one would think that something as heavy and as big as Izzy’s death would be, would be the furthest thing they'd want to put in there.

I dunno, as we get closer to Thursday, I just have to keep remembering that it will all actually be okay and DJ and co know what they are doing.