bettermove

[noxious-fennec]

Local divorcee spending his 10 year wedding anniversary gnawing on the homewrecker's back

[fumifooms]

Chilchuck, family & alcoholism

Collection of thoughts and speculation on Chil’s upbringing, his dynamic with his family and how alcoholism ties into it all. If you want the groundwork info on Chil’s background I recommend my masterpost on his family, here beyond a summary of the facts it’s really just me speculating from the crumbs we get of his parents and siblings, how it’s all affected him and in turn affected his own wife and kids etc etc.

There’s nothing more I’d like on mother’s day than to speculate about Chilchuck’s maladaptive attachment style. I’m fascinated by how distant everyone is and how much he’s been devoted to them all despite having been so absent. Intergenerational trauma get over here

Actually it’ll be easier if I make a rundown here too, it’s just stuff I reiterate from my masterpost tho.

Tiny table of contents: 1- rundown: family facts 2- rundown: alcoholism 3- dad 4- parenting 5- daughters 6- wife

^ Every time his dad gets mentioned. His mom never gets mentioned. His siblings I think are only ever mentioned in this extra, and then there are more ambiguous relatives cameos.

We know is hometown isn’t Kahka Brud, but we’re not sure wether he moved there upon getting his own house (presumably around when he got married at 13), or if it’s only after his wife when he rented out his place to relatives then rented the place in Kahka Brud.

If he rented it out to relatives, maybe that meant it was in his hometown? Especially if he and his siblings are "almost strangers" so presumably he doesn’t really keep in touch with his family. And I mean, he hasn’t seen his wife or daughter in 4 years so you can imagine how he’s like with his more distant family…

Additionally half-foots and Chil are very coded to be from an impoverished opressed working class people. So that’s the context.

I’ll say that I mentioned intergenerational trauma at the beginning, and I def think the distrust of elves is part of that, but here I want to focus on the interpersonal effects rather.

Copy pasting my masterpost thoughts overall: Chilchuck is hinted to have had a rather dysfunctional family himself (alcoholic father, distant siblings, etc). So he doesn’t really have the best model on how to raise someone and such. I imagine it was a sort of neglectful home situation, where the kids are encouraged to be independent. If they didn’t have to work or help around much, then a free range parenting sort of thing.

We do see how the family has full and warm feasts, where someone cleans his mouth with a rag, so it’s not like he didn’t have caring people or had a tragic childhood though! I don’t remember if it’s explicitely stated but he’s heavily implied to having grown up poor, as most half-foots, and I just think it’s the hardened hardworking family type of childhood where just like he does with others, they instilled somewhat harsh life lessons in him, which in turn encourages him to indulge in the simple pleasures of life like alcohol and sex, or at least women’s beauty and crass jokes. We do see he seems more optimistic when he’s younger in flashbacks, so a bunch of his harsh view on the world is still likely learned and earned rather than taught.

I still think he inherited many flawed views from how his father acted, like his attitude about excessive drinking not being a big deal, it being worth it. That work hard play hard, enjoy life die young mentality he has, shown mostly in the “alcohol” section of his Adventurer’s Bible profile, could very well be partly a result of the general poverty half-foot communities are that he grew in as well, like how he doesn’t hope for things to be as best as they could be and contends with good enough.  As far as I remember, his mother is never mentioned, but I doubt it implies she was out of the picture. She was probably a regular sort of mother that took care of the home and was still around when his father died, not unlike how Chil’s wife was implied to be a housewife. It looks like there’s a good age gap between one sibling to the next, that could be interesting to speculate about too. Mostly though I think it’s big family because it’s just sorta what happens when you regularly have sex and you don’t have contraception, being poor often makes family planning harder for various reasons and leads to more children.

Alcoholism context rundown:

Good Chilchuck analysis baseline here. Alcohol seems to be his main stress reliever/coping mechanism, especially for how emotionally constipated he is, and his job is being stressed about his party’s safety. Then he also mentions as a changeling that having his senses dulled feels relaxing to him, further confirming alcohol, as a drug that dulls senses, is something that he likes for the intoxication aspect and feels it’s relaxing. Alcohol also acts as a hunger suppressant, so it for sure has played a role in his dieting and unhealthy eating/diet habits, especially since he shows the instinct to drink to soothe hunger, all of that about how going hungry for 3 days used to feel manageable. Chil dieting info compiled here.

Chilchuck is at his most effortlessly cheerful when drunk or drinking. Compilation of every time he was drunk here.

And to be clear, a cheerful drunk is still a drunk. He literally will drink anytime he gets the opportunity to even if he’s aware overdrinking leads to health problems and death. Like canonically. He does NOT see how drinking should be a problem and does not seek to show restraint with it.

Dad of the dad

Marcille and Chilchuck having a talk on how losing a dad be like "You lost your dad young too…? I know how it is, it must have hit you hard…" "No not really tbh. Do you want lasagna or chicken for dinner?" <- either genuinely doesn’t feel much about his dad’s death or has 10 layers of repression, idk which is worse

I think Chil not making a big deal out of his dad’s death, not having worries in following into his footsteps that way in the least, is super interesting.

As a buddy @saccharineomens puts it: " I kinda imagine chilchuck and his dad didn't have a bad relationship, but in general chilchuck is so blase about drinking (he sees it as a delightful time, a wonderful thing! he wouldn't mind dying doing something he loved!) that he's not very upset about his dad's passing? like "yeah, he died, but i was already an adult, he was an adult, he made his choices, i make my choices, it's cool" " And I’ll nitpick that we don’t know how old he was when his dad died, I always assumed it was pretty early since Chil left home when he got married, and like I’ve gone into he doesn’t seem to be the keep in touch type. It’s on the table though, and he could have learned about it through letter if nothing else and that contributes to the "meh" reaction.

And that is very Chilchuck, the whole "we made our choices, it is how it is, he died doing something he loved", and you can totally believe that that’s the crux of it, but I do think the nonchalance hints at the family overall being distant and not only the siblings, that there’s dysfunctional shenanigans going on in there more than just… Healthy coping and having moved on.

I wonder when Chil first drank… And I wonder how he came to realize he liked alcohol a lot. His father probably gave him sips… Or he stole them

No because, with how disaffected he is about his father and siblings I could definitely see him having started to kind of numb himself/dissociate with the help of alcohol in that home environment that felt so… Either devoid of feelings or too messy to get attached. I can totally see his family being one that encourages dealing with feelings by bottling them up.

Because too… We saw him have a family/community feast of some sort presumably when he was a kid, in that chapter cover, so it’s not like there’s no warmth or sense of family at all, but then like… What went wrong? If as I theorize that girl with short black hair in that panel is his future wife, since she’s his childhood friend and all, what if his family/home life was always kind of cold and distant, even when gathered and cheery or despite those occasions? So then it’s like, at the family gatherings, she’s the most important person there to him, the one he actually connects to the most, the warmest presence he has…….. Someone he jokes around with that feels on the same speed as him, that doesn’t have the same connotations as everyone else present, a bit of a haven, someone different, a breath of fresh hair and a regained sense of childhood… Spitballing of course of course

I feel like they had a pretty big family and they were poor and such so there were always chores to be done etc, so their household might have operated like a mini busiess of sorts where everyone’s too busy, always has this and that to do and the mother asks them to go do tasks. I used to think it might be more of a neglect situation, where the kids are expected to provide for themselves and so cook their own meals and whatnot, both parents distant, but I don’t think so with the feast illustration. Chil at the beginning of canon used to see eating as a practical thing more than anything, you have to eat to live but don’t eat much or your weight will make your job more dangerous, might as well skip meals and have beer instead, etc etc. So the thought that he doesn’t know how to cook all that well despite this speculated background where he cooked for himself and keeps cooking minimalistic, since he does tell Senshi he taught him about cooking, is fair, but still… There could definitely be a situation where his older siblings were pushed into a parental role too, where they helped with the food and raising the younger siblings etc etc. As mentioned, the age gap between siblings may play into the dynamic as well. But on this front I have less ideas…

So yes my general take on Chil’s family is that everyone was too busy to emotionally connect as much as is normal, the parenting leaving things to be desired with alcoholism and emotional neglect.

Fathering

And I think that’s especially interesting considering he hasn’t been keeping in touch with his daughters either. It’s "they’re independent now" and that’s kinda it. His daughters haven’t sent him letters or visited him or tried to make him talk to their mom again. It does feel like with his own parents and siblings to me, where people are almost strangers, where relationships grow apart and everyone shrugs and goes ‘that’s how things are’. Is it that everyone including all his daughters gave up on trying to keep in touch, or is it that they all went "well divorced or not he’s absent, this is our normal tbh", and which is worse?

So yes, I think his relationship with his daughters is probably similar to his relationship with his parents, sort of hands off. Chil's dad was probably not a good dad but probably not quite a bad dad. A definitive He Was There, to quote another friend heh

Imo the thing with Chil is that he was pretty absent bc of work travels to dungeon dive, right. He’s working hard to provide for his family but in the process he’s not spending much time with them, slowly making a gap grow between him and them as they drift apart and change as people. He’s a career dad who never realized spending time with his family was more important and threw his pager into the ocean— But also here’s the thing!! You want to say being his family is more important, but money is arguably more important! They’re poor, they don’t have the privilege of free time as much. Sure he’s not there, but he is providing for them what they need to keep living and growing healthily. Similarly, you want to say Chil should stop doing harsh dieting for weight management, but, he has a point, maybe starving is still preferable than dying in traps. Of course the ideal would be to change jobs, but again, life is a struggle and that’s not always an option.

^ Truly the classic "if you don’t listen to me, your parent, a cryptid is gonna kidnap you!" international experience………

He is so so so the "What? My way of parenting is kinda bad? But my father raised me like that, and look how great I turned out!" <- emotionally dysfunctional…….. "Pshhh what do you mean having an alcoholic parent negatively affects you? My father was an alcoholic too and look at me"  🤡

All of it was behavior normalized to him. And listen, I’m saying this but not as like, shirking of his part in it. This isn’t a teen or young adult, he’s middle aged, he’s become the one giving and not receiving the generational trauma. He’s chosen to never think deeper on the topic.

And like, he himself is so indifferent to his father and what their relationship was like, of course he wouldn’t notice if a parenting choice wasn’t great for his daughters. He doesn’t have a relationship with his dad, he’s not (at least not consciously) traumatized by him, so from his perspective it’s mission success! He got raised decent enough 👍⭐️ Except he doesn’t realize that like, not particularly caring if he died is sign of a problem between them in itself… And this even as he remains somewhat of an important figure in his life, especially since that’s who he sees on the other side of the life river in the ghost chapter. It’s implicitly the biggest instance of loss through death Chilchuck has in his life I think.

But despite it all he obviously does love his family a lot, right. So I do believe that like, while he has imperfect standards when it comes to parenting he still tries to be better than his dad was, that even if it’s necessary that he has a lot of long work travels, he spends time with them. And there’s sort of this dissonance that he’s both "it doesn’t matter wether i’m here or not, they’ll live, they’re tough girls. Oh they didn’t like my scolding earlier? It’s just how kids are" dismissive and "I love them so much and I want them to have a good life. I want to do my best by them" devoted and so so caring. And like that’s why he works so damn hard, he does it for them, but also that’s why the girls grew up with an absentee father and aughhhh AUGHHHH the unsolvable dilemma of it all Chilchuck in Dunmeshi truly represents like, the harshness of reality & the world and how sometimes things will just suck no matter what, and then of course balancing that with Marcille in their shared arc where she tacks on "And despite that there is beauty everywhere even in the small and menial things, despite that your flawed relationships and dreams are still worth fighting for" ie giving reconciling with his wife a shot, etc.

All that said I think the very strict "you’re gonna grow up to have a stable job by god, young miss" attitude, those strong work ethics he highly values and focuses on and no doubt tried to instill in is own kids, is something he somewhat inherited from his own upbringing and parents.

In my masterpost bit on his parenting, I said I don’t think he’d do any kind of corporeal punishment, but. I do wonder about spanking aftee all. It can be so so easy to rationalize it… Sigh

Daughter pov

Again, my general interpretations for the daughters are written in my masterpost. I think Patti knows her father the least and is the one least worried about jobs and stability and least settled down as a result. Flertom is the more social one who I imagine tended to be the one worried about her parents’ couple and their emotions the most. And Meijack… Ohh Meijack.

When your father tried his best to provide for you but he worked all the time and even when he was home he was either tired or stressed and he’s always liked to get drunk to relax and cheer up. When you know he values work ethics and respectability so you grew up to be capable and quiet. And when he says you’re like him you’re sort of puzzled, does he really know you so little, or does he know himself so little? But you like the feeling of your father ruffling your hair so you accept it and still you stand next to your mother just as quiet and just as stoic during family gatherings. He leaves again and again and when your mother leaves him nothing changes, really. You wonder if it’s more telling that you know him better than he seems to himself or that you don’t know him as much as you wish you did, or that you don’t think about him all that much these days. Out of sight out of mind

Thinking of those posts about how kids never forget and during the "draw your family!" things at school, some of the kids draw their working parents seperate from the rest of them...

Absent father and when he’s at home you get the crumbs of him that you get and you’re grateful for it and that’s that <333

She doesn’t know how much he loves them bc he hasn’t showed them in a long time </3

The horror of drunk Chil in my fics is often about what in this state he can’t do rather than what he could do, how someone who’s as proud of his skills and work ethics as he is has truly changed, not comprehending how he could become so sloppy or how he could allow himself to get like this, marred the values he preaches above all else. It’s in the way that he fumbles with doorknobs, that he could never lockpick a door if you were to lock it, and it both being your salvation and bringing you extreme distress at the thought of it all. His footsteps usually featherlight now sound heavy as stone, like a troll’s.

You know the thing that gets me so bad with alcoholism angst is when people describe the drunk person as a stranger. Often making a metaphor that they’re monsters, have some monster they shapeshift into uncontrollably once in a while, as a way to split the unreconciliable halves of the person sober and drunk in your vision of them……. It gets me soooo bad Little Puckpatti growing up on tales of trolls kidnapping disobedient kids and replacing them with doubles so no one even knows they’re gone… Coming face to face with a drunk Chilchuck that roams the halls of the house with heavy steps in the night, because she wanted to go drink a glass of water, too thirsty to sleep………..

And this is where I reveal that I wrote a fic about just that!! Trolls that thump and tiptoe through the night Mei @ Chil, You made me of stone and still every day you wear me down and chip away at me bit by bit

In the end notes I describe my takes and interpretations: With Mei I tried to give the sense of a kid who sacrifices some parts of childhood to feel closer to her parent, like not playing games to spend more time with him no matter how empty, or wanting to be worthy in his eyes. With Fler, since she was the one in canon to take in their mother and write Chil a letter explaining the situation, I feel like she’s always been the one most involved and aware of the problems in their family. The one most there to emotionally support or to understand what the vibes in a room meant. Puckpatti I think knows her father the least, since with time I think Chilchuck was more and more away from work and more and more cynical like the flashbacks of younger him dungeon diving. I think because of her not minding unstable odd jobs that she’s the most passive, that she’s the most go with the flow. I do also love when Mei is the one most aware of her parents’ flaws and most critical as the eldest, but not in this fic. Meijack grows up to never touch a drop of alcohol, what people joke is the one difference between her and her father. Flertom drinks, too much sometimes, but she considers drinking should be a social activity rather than a habit. Puckpatti only drinks on special occasions when she has the chance.

They already don’t have that much time together because of his work, I wonder how big of a percentage the amount of memories the daughters have of him are when he’s not himself truly… How they kinda reconcile it all. It’s their normal. 

And the thing that’s gutting too, is that Chil always looks so so much more open, relaxed, cheerful and happier when drunk than he usually is. He doesn't know how to get his defenses down without alcohol

"you're all that's good"

Because we do see how he truly used to not be so closed off and bitter. But distrust and fearing for betrayals from both coworkers and then his wife aka the person who’s supposed to be closest to him (he doesn’t even have close family besides his daughters. Does he even have close friends) turned him into what he is now. He was so cheerful!! Happy and trusting and optimistic.

He leaves and she left

God there’s the whole ‘wife leaving him’ trauma too is the thing… It had to have fucked him up so bad like no wonder he got paranoid and decided not to open up to ANYONE like. He never saw it coming is the scariest thing. He didn’t expect her to just up and leave. He didn’t see the warning signs. He won’t know if it’s coming this time either.

….. But then also, why he didn’t reach out to her (besides hurt) was because it was a petty silence treatment, like "oh she left without saying a word? Fine well I won’t reach out to her either" <- man who is so not fine and collected about it. It’s been FOUR YEARSSSSSSS I wonder if he always was like… "This week she’s gonna send a letter. … Ok fine, this month she’s gonna crack. … Within the year she’ll come crawling back." and it’s a bit why it was allowed to go on for this long unchecked like… Why he still considers her his wife even though functionally she’s more of an ex by that point after 4 years.

I can never stop thinking about him and his wife they’re fucking crazyyy. Him not reaching out to her started as a silent treatment from frustration. She never reached out to him either, she just up and left, didn’t even leave or send one last letter she’s just gone and has left this all behind, the house and everything in it. It’s been 4 years but he still considers her his wife and considers themselves only "estranged", "due to circumstances we haven’t seen each other in years". His face in the panel he said this is interesting too, trying to be casual but defensive and exasperated, already dreading the judgement and questions. He moved out of his house to rent a place in Kahka Brud instead. How much of him not reaching out was avoidance… Guilt, frustration, sadness, confusion, just procrastinating and dread and fear of a rejection more concrete, or something else… Maybe realizing he doesn’t miss her as much as he should, not enough to chase after her or try to get her back, just resigning himself to it… Is he a bad husband, is he a bad person? Should they reconcile?

Not seeing it coming… It’s half trust, that this person who’s so dear to you could never just up and leave and hurt you like that, half entitlement, thinking that she would never think of leaving, and third it’s blinding himself to the warning signs, not wanting to believe or acknowledge them. Because like, there WERE some, he said she "suddenly fell into a bad mood on the way back [from the outing]" and I don’t think he’s too dumb to be aware that something was off, he literally just dismissed it and then went surprised pikachu face when it turned out things were indeed off.

Part of it is definitely, how do you even react if your wife walks out on you without warning. If it happened to me I think that I wouldn’t reach out for a while either, wait for them to reach out to me first, give them space. As I put it in one of my marchil wips, "I respect your right to be rid of me too much to try and shackle you to me if you want to leave". Inaction is easier than admitting he’s scared to check and find out that the worst case scenario is true. It’s been years and he still hasn’t worked it out why she left. Do you think that’s on purpose. That he doesnt want to know for sure. It’s so so so scary to try and do anything about it

He said he didn’t reach out right away when she left because he was petty and wanted to give her the silence treatment back. Ok but is it that he blames her for their marriage falling apart or does he blame himself and he’s just misdirecting the conflicted feelings? Did he not reach out because a part of him was too scared to know why she left or if she would refuse to come back? Did he just think that she’d come back on her own, and things would get fixed while still staying unsaid and unconfronted like they always have, the first month, then the next and the next, until it was a year in and it sunk in that oh, maybe she wasn’t coming back?

He seems genuine here when he says that he was angry about it and gave her the silent treatment, but it is an habit of his to lie to make himself look worse instead of showing vulnerability, so who knows.

He is so so scared of being affected by relationships. Same thing with his compulsive habit to disguise his worry for anger. It’s why he doesn’t want people to have expectations of him, "I’m a coward I’m selfish", because then they can’t be disappointed, they can’t be surprised if he bites, they can’t leave when you lose what they’ve been staying for.

He has avoidant tendencies too. Every time there’s an interpersonal issue he just accepts it’s out of his control immediately. He’s passive when it comes to relationship problems, just like with coworkers, relationships are a ticking time bomb to him, and he just wants to be left out of it and come out unscathed. It comes back to his pessimism. He doesn’t think that like, things could be better. According to him life is tough and cruel, you accept your lot in life and make the best out of it and that’s it. If people are scummy you don’t whine about how unfair it is, you close yourself off and work to not be taken advantage of again and adapt. So then with his wife, when Marcille is like "Have you tried… Talking?" it’s such a crazy idea that it might work at all, that he could have the power to fix things… And that’s why it’s such a big deal when he goes "Alright I’ll try… I don’t know if it’ll go as well as in the stories, but I’ll try". That CRUMB of allowing himself to be hopeful is so huge

Honestly for the longest time I misread this bit, I thought she left in the night like how Marcille framed it, but no she left after he left for work. She left after he left again.

The way it’s told, it really sounds like Chilchuck just came home from work, stayed probably a couple of days in which they went to that outing together, then left for work again right away/soon after and it’s like. Was that outing the most special thing you guys did together. You came home from like a month of work, you had one outing where she ended up having a bad time, y’all didn’t talk about it further and then you left for another couple of weeks. Are you kidding me

Your married life is waiting for your husband to come home, spending mediocre time together, being shut down when you voice discontentment, and things being left unaddressed before he leaves again.

She left when he was gone for work, but did she leave the day of, or did she flip flop on it and took a while before working up the strength to leave? Was she waiting to see if he’d say anything before leaving and when he didn’t that was the last straw?

Chilchuck trying to prove a point that half-foots can make it out there, trying to rely more on himself because that’s the only person he can trust. His wife feeling like he's leaving her behind (because he does. over and over and over and over.) This guy just keeps throwing himself into work because he thinks it's what's best for everyone. Hey sir neglecting emotional needs can be kinda detrimental to everyone involved, I think you might wanna know that ^ quotes courtesy of @soappox

And to come back to alcoholism for a bit, alcoholism is alcoholism, and someone asked why I thought that a Chilchuck with depression would drink and cope through alcohol, since drinking seems to be something cheerful to him. It does puzzle me a bit but it’s worth going over, so… I don’t think him using drinking as a coping mechanism is far fetched at all. Cheerful drunks that are alcoholic still can absolutely use alcohol in ways like that. If something makes you happier, or even just more numb which translates to you feeling more free etc etc, then I definitely think it tracks that he’d keep drinking. Like personally I do think he’d drink a lot after his wife left him, and in rough patches like that. Depression -> not wanting to have to think, the days are blurring together and you either don’t want to be conscious or you want to feel something etc etc -> drinking for the alcohol. Alcoholics tend to be, well, dependent on alcohol. If something bad happens etc they’re usually more likely to go harder on it rather than stop. We can debate on when and why Chilchuck first started to drink but it’s straight up his favorite food now and it’s deeply ingrained in his life, in his favorite outings and activities and priorities and moods and meals. A CHEERFUL DRUNK IS STILL A DRUNK!!! They drink to get happy not drink because they are happy, though obviously the two can have overlap.

Chil represses sooo much. His solution to interpersonal conflict and feelings is just don’t think about it and dull your feelings & senses to everything ✨ I love him. I need to kill him with hammers Like the other day I was thinking about an AU where he might have ran away from his neglectful home or something, but then I remembered he deals with everything including his family by dulling his feelings and senses to things 🫠 He wouldn’t leave

I’d say he doesn’t look troubled by loss through death, moreso loss through mistakes. His nightmare is his daughters dying yes, but moreso them being killed, there’s an axe in the wall etc, it’s about having failed to protect them.

If he can’t fuck something up or if he’s already fucked it up there’s this pacifying sense that he can’t have the rug pulled from under him, because that’s what having connections is, having a wife isn’t an insurance it’s a rug waiting to be pulled. And his brand is sort of Flawed Mr Mistakes Man so he’s kinda been having to cope lol. I do think he throws himself into workaholism, because it’s sort of the only way to live he knows, making yourself capable and useful and spending his days working like that, less time to think, too tired to think. Senses dulled, senses that are usually too sharp, cutting with clarity that he prefers ignoring and avoiding. Work is something he doesn’t have to feel through, something that gives him pride and self-esteem, something through all the danger and life or death risk feels safer, emotionally. No one taught him how to deal with things another way, it’s always been suck it up and work.

Conclusion

Stop smoking we love you and we don’t want you to die

No drinking will not externalize your feelings no it won’t vent them out well please Chilchuck ple-ea-ease…….

</3 They should invent an alcoholism that doesn’t make you dysfunctional and hard to be around

^ Drunk, by The Living Tombstone

I’ve been thinking about enneagrams and Chil is 6w7 highkey. Becomes 3 when stressed, a little 8 but it’s more that he wants security so much that he becomes paranoid rather than having the core of an 8 y’know. I haven’t dug into it for quotes yet but this paper goes hard if you’re curious.

Dropping my relevant Spotify playlists here bc why not: Chilchuck & his wife, marchil angst

[oceanwithouthermoon]

Talking about Saiki and SA here a bit, btw, just a warning~

Thinking about how you said Saiki was a victim of SA and you’re literally so right. I feel like people sometimes just blow right past the fact that Kusuke is like that with his brother, but I think it can add a lot to interpretations of his character. But even if it only goes as far as what is shown in canon — which I almost doubt — it still remains the fact that Kusuke is doing all of that knowing fully well that his brother can hear him. It’s literally sexual harassment.

People point it out more often with Teruhashi and her brother (back to the reasons you said, people think it’s more serious if it happens to women). But the things he does, that’s all sexual harassment. And yet when Kusuke does similar things, it’s often brushed aside. Just,,, a bit crazy to me.

(And that’s not even mentioning when people completely disregard this part of Teruhashi’s story and act like she’s one-dimensional,,, but that’s another story)

But all this to say you’re literally so right. Anyways love you mwah =^•w•^=

THANK YOU SO MUCH. I NEEDD PEOPLE TO ACKNOWLEDGE THIS MORE.

(heed the sa warning + abuse and incest warning before opening, i talk a LOT here.. im mostly just reiterating what happens directly in the manga though.. ALSO EXTREMELY LONG POST WARNING..)

I always viewed kokomi and makoto + kusuo and kusuke as like.. paralleling each other ? not sure if thats the right word, but IMMEDIATELY when i saw both of these dynamics i made the connection.. i guess since it was so clear to me, i assumed that it was so obvious and on purpose that everyone else knew too, but so many people just.. ignore it..

i think most people that read/watch saiki k have recognized the fact that most main characters are meant to parallel or relate to saiki in at least some way, (if anyone who doesnt know what im talking about is reading this, im sure at least someone on here has done a better breakdown on that, i just.. dont know where to find that..) but this particular connection is one i dont see often and i genuinely believe that its almost entirely because of the whole "sexual assault/harassment isnt as serious when it happens to men as when it happens to women" thing.. most of the fandom acknowledge that what makoto does is awful and kokomi is a victim, so why is it different when its kusuke and kusuo ??

its EXACTLY the same.. what we see on screen with the saikis is WORSE, actually.. and what WE see from these two relationships isnt the full extent of what the two victims experience off screen, and i strongly believe that its heavily implied that both kokomi and kusuo have been through much worse with their brothers than whats shown..

we have no idea what kusuke couldve done BEFORE moving away and creating the telepathy canceler (and dont say that he couldnt have done anything cuz they were kids, cocsa [child on child sa] is still a thing and still valid, ESPECIALLY since they were both kid geniuses and kusuke definitely KNEW better.. but yea, kusuo implies that hes been like that for a long time, way before we ever saw them, sooo..) and its highly likely that whatever happened that we didnt see, before or after the move, was WORSE than what he does ON screen (i honestly dont want to think about what a guy with an incestual obsession with his brother does with cameras everywhere in his brothers home..) and what we see him do is already insane..

literally using his brother to get off, manipulating him and forcing him to play the games that give him sexual pleasure.. actually, speaking of, ive seen some people say that what kusuke does isnt really incest because the only reason he uses kusuo is because hes a masochist and kusuo is the only person that can overpower him.. this is a total misfire LOL, his upbringing alongside kusuo and his relationship with him is the REASON that hes a masochist, the ENTIRE REASON why thats what he gets off to.. its not just CONVENIENT that kusuo is there to get him off, he SPECIFICALLY seeks kusuo out and forces him to do things that give him sexual pleasure.. he believes that kusuo is the only person in the world that can ever give him sexual pleasure, what about that doesnt sound incestuous?

and one of the worst parts of it is, kusuo BARELY acknowledges how weird it is.. in fact, he's COMPLACENT in a lot of the games, obedient even, being bribed into them the same way he does with simple things like bringing kuniharu to work.. this is the biggest reason why i believe the off-screen stuff is probably worse, because kusuo is obviously conditioned to think that letting your brother get off to you is just.. fine.. we hardly see him try to get away from this situation beyond simply calling him gross.. theres one moment during the cat tank situation where kusuke tries to get him to grab the limiter off of his crotch specifically so that he can see him in that position and kusuo looks terrified and cant do it, BUT its unclear whether the expression of fear was entirely his concentration because he didnt wanna break the limiter or because he didnt want to let his brother get off to that, and i think its mostly the former ? idk, i dont remember this part that well but im preeeetty sure..

he does acknowledge that MAKOTOS behavior is bad when he sees it, but he never thinks its a big enough deal that he needs to help her or anything, (except for maybe the okinawa situation) which i know is probably just for the sake of not letting the gag manga get too serious, BUT it can also be explained pretty easily by this whole thing.. the way kokomi is treated is literally the same way kusuo lives his life, even down to their incestuous brother being possessive to the point of berating their potential love interests.. (which in this case happened to be each other, kusuo and kokomi..)

so yeah, kusuo just. doesnt really know how bad it actually is ? or maybe he does, but doesnt acknowledge it because he doesnt WANT to.. him barely acknowledging it and being complacent is part of why some people dont really get that its sa and incest, but his complacency obviously plays a big part in how its effected him too, like thats purposeful.. like i said, hes been CONDITIONED not to acknowledge it..

to me, it looks like a classic situation in which kusuo doesn't acknowledge his trauma because he knows that if he did, it would change his outlook on his life, his family, and his childhood FOREVER. he would never be willing to tell anyone or ask for help on his own accord, and accepting that there was anything wrong in the first place means, to him, dealing with that issue by himself for the rest of his life.

why would he ever admit that anything was wrong if nothing would change either way? the only thing that WOULD change is HIM, and why would he want that? isnt it better to be blissfully unaware than to knowingly suffer in silence?

plus, he genuinely does love his brother and knows in the back of his mind that kusukes feelings toward him comes from their unhealthy upbringing and relationship and its more complex than just "hes an evil guy blah blah.." because he isnt really evil and kusuo KNOWS that.. actually, he might be the only person in the world who COULD understand..

so yeahhhh.. kokomi and kusuo are both CANONICALLY victims of sexual harassment.. (and incestual abuse at that..) and, by my interpretation, implied victims of sa as well !! (im not really sure where the line can be when it comes to this sometimes, like when your brother sniffs your bedsheets and rubs himself on them or gets off to you right in front of your face or tries to get you to grab something positioned over his crotch so he can see you in.. THAT position.. but i already said that its pretty likely that both brothers have gone farther than that off-screen..)

anywayyyy.. this is so important to me and i wish people would talk and write about it more instead of pretending it never happened and mischaracterizing every one of these characters, especially for the sake of a ship like i was talking about in my other post.. it sucks that people so often just cast kusuos canon issues aside..

[inkblackorchid]

What the hell happened with Crow: an autopsy (Part 2)

Hope you didn't think I'd forgotten about this post yet. Lads, ladies, and other lovely people, here we go. I have more yelling about bird boy to do.

But first, a few disclaimers. For people who may have missed part one, yes, as the title implies, this post is part two of an attempt to analyse Crow's character throughout 5Ds' whole run. You can find part one here. Now, both for people who may not have the time/energy to read my first, huge post about this right now, let me explain what I'm about here before we start again: My analysis is not meant to deter people who like Crow from liking him. It's also not meant to convince Crow haters otherwise, even if I admittedly personally like Crow. All of this stuff is just my personal attempt at dissecting how his character was handled in the show and why that might have been. And because this is part two, and I covered the Fortune Cup and Dark Signers arc in the first post, I'll start with the pre-WRGP arc, then dig into the backstory Crow was given directly before the WRGP begins properly. Also, mind the length of this post. I'm physically incapable of writing short things.

I also feel the need to reiterate another thing before I really get into the meat of things again: If you were hoping to see any old rumours about 5Ds confirmed, this is the wrong post. In fact, thanks to the very thorough work of someone over on Reddit (another shoutout to @mbg159 here, who's the author of those posts), I know for a fact that literally all the big rumours surrounding Crow are one big pile of logistically impossible horseshit, and I think after so, so many years of people citing this nonsense, the fandom as a whole finally deserves to let these go:

No, Crow was not meant to be a dark signer, least of all the final boss of season one, and Blackwings were not the reason he got more screentime later.

No, Aki being sidelined was not the result of her irl voice actress' pregnancy.

Yes, I know these two posts are both a long read each, but I cannot begin to tell you how tired I am of these rumours. So even if you don't have time to read the stuff above, please take away this: The big 5Ds production conspiracy theories are. all. bullshit. Because, to put it in as simple terms as possible, none of them work out logistically. The events people have pretended affected the show's production in a major way all don't line up with the actual production timeline. So just can the rumours already. Please let them die. And no pitting Aki and Crow against each other on his post or because of this post, yes? I beg you, I am so tired. Ok? Ok.

All right, now we can get to the good part. In my previous post, I left off at the end of the DS arc. So, in what position is Crow at the end of the DS arc? He helped save the world by defeating Goodwin and got his very own signer mark after Rudger/Roman Goodwin's death.

And now, where is Crow at the start of the pre-WRGP arc?

(Bam. Delivery bird boy be upon ye.)

This time, Crow wastes absolutely no time coming back on screen. We see him again within the first episode of the second half of the show, and wouldn't you know it! He moved in with Yusei and Jack and the three of them have a funny, brotherly, bickering dynamic between them. Also, as a fun little add-on that is very much in line with his deeply Satellite, down to earth characterisation from the first half, Crow now works as a delivery driver to earn money for the household. That's all very nice and good.

But what is his role in the plot from here on out? Well.

First, a small note about the pre-WRGP arc. Though this arc is fun to watch because it gives us a lot of silly character interactions the show no longer found the time for once the WRGP started, the pre-WRGP arc really can't be said to bother with actual plot much. It's the known filler arc of 5Ds, and as such, Crow is not the only character who gets pretty much nothing plot-related to do during this arc. Thus, I'll only give a quick run-down of what he does get up to, just in case any of these tidbits end up showcasing a relevant aspect of Crow's character I might come back to later.

Furthermore, another thing that's pretty much obvious to everyone who's ever watched the show in its entirety but still bears mentioning: Crow gets a lot more screentime from this point on out. Technically. Why do I say "technically"? I'll get back to that further below. For now, just keep it in mind.

So, how does Bird Boy spend his time during the arc where the plot's on the back burner? To be honest, on the sidelines, mostly. Don't get me wrong, Crow's there. Most of the time. But he gets pretty much only two episodes where he's the focus, and both of those aren't exactly known for being 5Ds' most memorable episodes (even though I still like them both tbh, but I digress): For one, in episode 68, he gets to convince Bashford to move in with Martha so the depressed old man isn't spending his entire retirement living in a scrapyard.

(This episode's comedic moments are actually fairly solid. But those are just my two cents.)

And for two, in episode 85, Crow gets to bond with the boys' somewhat cranky landlady, Zora, by duelling some sense into her son, Lyndon. (Which also introduces us to a duelling tactic only Crow uses that we will later see again: Losing on purpose.)

(And here we can see Crow showing off his skills at dealing with petulant children.)

Now, do these two episodes where he gets to be relevant actually do anything for Crow? As a character? Debatable. If nothing else, they strongly reaffirm the values Crow represents which we were introduced to in the first half of the show, though. They reintroduce us to his stubbornness, to his (in comparison to Jack and Yusei) more playful nature, to his very Yusei-ish dedication to doing the right thing, to his penchant for spite, and to his strong sense of family and community and his belief that these two things shouldn't be abandoned unless you have a damned good reason for it.

You may notice that there's a sizeable gap between these two episodes. That's because those episodes are where we get the only smidgens of plot in this arc. Among them, highlights like Sherry's introduction, the first reveal of accel synchro, Aki's turbo duelling license exam, three separate story beats hinting at the machinations of the emperors of Iliaster (Luciano's little stunt with Rua and Ruka, Placido getting started on building a killer robot army, and the Jack double being unleashed onto NDC), and Bruno's introduction. So, here's the thing: Crow is technically present during most of those episodes, too, but he doesn't actually get to meaningfully interact with the plot-relevant elements. (Which is not to say he doesn't have nice moments here and there. He does get to bounce off the other characters, and, just as one example, helps Yusei and Jack upgrade Aki's duel runner, as well as help Yusei build Rua's duel board. Crucially, he doesn't get to do anything that later becomes plot-relevant, though.) Moreover, not one, but two characters who end up becoming major players in the series' finale are introduced here, which is relevant insofar as that Bruno and Sherry both end up needing a good amount of development before they can impactfully take their later roles. Now, I say this with nothing but genuine appreciation for both these characters, because I do like them, but I feel the need to point out what this means not just for Crow, but for pretty much everyone who isn't Jack or Yusei: Every minute of screentime that was dedicated to Bruno and/or Sherry was one minute less the writers could spend on the rest of the cast. This is not to say that time shouldn't have been spent on them, they needed it, especially because they were introduced so late, but it's something I do want people to keep in mind when talking about who got how much screentime and whether or not that time was well spent. (I also have a larger gripe with the definition of "screentime" in general, but more on that later.)

So when does Crow get to be relevant to the plot again, now that he's even a signer and all? Well, not until episode 94, when the WRGP arc has already started. (Note that I'm using the 5Ds episode list on wikipedia as a general guide for which arc and which season starts where. You can find it here.)

*Deep breath*

So. Episode 94.

(Pictured: One very scruffy dragon. Bird? Dragon-bird. Bird-dragon. You figure this shit out.)

That episode. The episode where Crow, who was awarded with the status of a signer during the finale of the DS arc, finally gets a dragon to match his mark. And the episode where we finally, finally, get some actual backstory for Crow that goes beyond his involvement with the Enforcers and childhood with Jack and Yusei. A backstory that's only Crow's own. Except. How do I put this politely...

This shit doesn't make a lick of sense. Neither the events in the duel between Crow and Bolger in the present resulting in Black-Winged Dragon's appearance, nor the Pearson backstory.

Now, I'm not saying this to step on anyone's toes. From a writing standpoint, I can even make a fairly reasonable guess as to why this episode/mini-arc is here, I think: As I mentioned in part one of this analysis, Crow was not only introduced very late, but also got very little backstory of his own, which set him apart from the other signers. Don't get me wrong, he did get some backstory—we know of his strong connection to Duel Monsters because he learned to read from cards, and we know of his involvement with the Enforcers/Team Satisfaction. Crucially, though, Crow doesn't really get a backstory segment that feels as unique to him as the others. Aki gets her tragic past with her parents and her powers, Jack gets his betrayal of Yusei, which also doubles as part of Yusei's backstory, who as the protagonist understandably gets the most backstory, and even the twins, though they are as always treated as one unit, get their very own segment about the time when Ruka was essentially in a coma. Meanwhile, Crow only has that one-off tear-jerker moment about learning to read from his cards and his being a part of the boys' duel gang, which, and I cannot stress this enough, is treated as more of a Yusei and Kalin/Kiryu backstory by canon than a Crow backstory. Thus, it makes perfect sense from a writing standpoint that the Pearson/Black-Winged Dragon mini-arc would be here. Crow, up until this point, has neither a backstory segment dedicated solely to him, nor a signer dragon to call his own. So, how do we solve this? Give him both in a strategic double-whammy! The math checks out. Unfortunately, the writing of said mini-arc... doesn't.

Now, look. The juicy question of whether Crow would have worked better as a non-signer or not, which I already discussed in part one aside, I personally don't hate what this backstory is trying to do. It's just that the whole Pearson-drama has some very notable, logical holes which I'll get into below. Furthermore, this is not the first time something related to Crow has some unfortunate, logical and/or chronological issues. I already brought up the infamous fridge and Rex Goodwin's rather confusing backstory in part one, both of which raise some serious questions. However, Pearson and everything surrounding him arguably blow that clean out of the water. Let's examine this more closely, shall we.

The long-overdue backstory we get for Crow begins with a mystery: Mikage and Trudge, for a reason that is never given to us, are investigating the death of Robert Pearson (whose death would have been several years ago at this point), whom Crow knew very well, and they're doing it because they found a hint that the person who killed Pearson used an illegal card, Crimson Mefist, to do it.

(Post redemption-arc Trudge actually doing his job instead of bullying random Satellite citizens. Who would have thunk.)

Thing is, here, we already encounter our first, minor problem: Pearson has never been mentioned up until this point, not even as an aside. And this issue is compounded by the fact that not only Crow seems to know him, but Trudge claims to as well, because "Satellite used to be his jurisdiction". So, a named character who's familiar to both one of our protagonists and a notable side character, and we've never seen hide nor hair of him. If we pull our heads out of the story for a second, the irl reason for how this came to be is probably pretty obvious: Pearson was never mentioned before because the writers had nowhere near as solid of a plan for Crow as they did for the other characters, which leads to him being introduced out of nowhere here because we need a backstory and a dragon for Crow and we need those now. Moving on.

The mention of Pearson having been not simply killed in a fire, like Crow previously assumed, but having been murdered through a special, illegal card immediately makes him suspicious. So, he goes to consult Bolger/Bolton, another never-before-seen character who gets introduced in service of this backstory, and who knew Pearson well. And while this guy certainly acts amiable towards Crow at first, implying that the two have a good rapport, at least, he quickly starts acting suspicious when Pearson's murder comes up. Moreover, we as the audience at this point already know Bolger's looking for Black-Winged Dragon so he can use the card essentially as collateral to save his company. And the name "Black-Winged Dragon" already leaves very little to the imagination as to whose deck this monster is supposed to fit into. But, in a small twist, we learn from Crow that this was apparently Pearson's card, and supposedly lost in the fire where said man died, to boot. Then Bolger challenges Crow to a duel, too, offering to tell the truth about Pearson's death if he loses, but demanding Black-Winged Dragon, which he believes Crow to be in possession of, if he wins. So far, so good. We've got a mystery here, and canon is not contradicting itself just yet. Until we get to the actual backstory, which shows us the time Crow spent with Pearson, that is. Before we get into that, I'd like to highlight one theme this mini-arc introduces that actually feels like it fits Crow: Legacy. Over the course of meeting Bolger again and being reminded of his time with Pearson, Crow starts thinking about whether he's taking over his former mentor's/father figure's legacy well enough.

(Crow having some Deep Thoughts TM, featuring one of Yusei's most relaxed, easygoing smiles in the entire show, probably.)

This theme, I would argue, is one of the major things this backstory introduces that really meshes well with the Crow we already had until this point. He's a community-focussed guy and absolutely a family person, if him taking care of Satellite orphans is anything to go by, so leaving behind a good legacy for the people after him (read: the kids he took care of) would absolutely be something he cares about. We see this element of legacy again in his cards during this episode, too, which canon implies he inherited from Pearson. (I'll get to THAT can of worms below.) And on paper, with the themes he's already got going, Crow being the only one to inherit his deck rather than build it all by himself would actually make sense!

However. This is where we have to get into the meat of the backstory. I'll start by listing the barebones information Crow's backstory with Pearson gives us, then going into why several aspects of it are either logistical or chronological nonsense.

So, as canon tells us, Crow met Pearson after Kiryu/Kalin was arrested, when the Enforcers/Team Satisfaction all went their separate ways. During this period, Crow had already set up shop near the original Daedalus Bridge and started out taking care of orphans, but it wasn't all smooth sailing. He was, by his own admission, "living aimlessly". Then, during a pinch, Pearson and Bolger show up, take care of some bad guys for Crow and the kids, and Crow sees a new role model in Pearson. Pearson, who rides the Blackbird, plays a Blackwing deck and owns Black-Winged Dragon. So, he joins up with Pearson, presumably learns how to work on duel runners from him, and also befriends Bolger. Then, one day, a fire breaks out at Pearson's workshop and the man in question dies, but leaves Crow his runner and his duel disk before he does so. End flashback. Because I want to tie this together nicely, we also learn later that Pearson technically left him Black-Winged Dragon, too, by sealing it in his runner. And, of course, that dragon later becomes Crow's very own signer dragon.

Several points to be dissected here. And funnily enough, Bolger's duel with Crow isn't relevant for any of them. Let's start with the big one: The timeline. I want you to remember that as far as canon is concerned, Crow is 17 during the DS arc. Moreover, it's canonically stated that Jack stole Yusei's first duel runner two years before the show's start, at which time Crow would have been 15. And their time together as the Enforcers must have been even before that, because Kiryu/Kalin was already in prison for a while at that point and Crow and Yusei don't reunite until the DS arc is basically in full swing. So, I'll make a vague estimate here and say that during the time of the Enforcers, Crow would have probably been 13-14. (Which is hilarious when you think about the fact that this gang of angry teenagers essentially took over the entire duelling underground of Satellite, but I digress.) Now we add the idea that Crow met Pearson after the Enforcers, but that he died before canon starts into the mix. That means Crow first ran into Pearson sometime around age 15, and that he then died presumably before Crow turned 17. So far, so good, that still slots into canon, even if it makes Crow pretty damn young for some things. He's even missing the personalised Blackbird duel disk he later wears during the Enforcer days, I went back to check. What he is not missing, however, are his Blackwings. And this is where canon may or may not have made an implication that, if intentional, breaks this timeline. See, during the scene where Pearson's workshop is burning down and he's already trapped under debris and has embraced death, he tosses Crow his duel disk and leaves him his runner.

(Two important screenshots, in sequence. One, Pearson with his duel disk still strapped to his arm. His deck is very obviously still in there. Two, Crow with that same duel disk, as made obvious by its distinct shape.)

What this implies is that Pearson also left Crow his deck. Which, yeah, fair enough, if I were dying in a fire I'd probably also think "fuck it, not like I'll need my cards in the afterlife". What this (and Crow's look the first time he sees Pearson's monsters) implies, though, is that Crow didn't start playing Blackwings until Pearson left him his deck. Which is factually untrue, because there is literal evidence in the show that Crow already had Blackwings during his time as part of the duel gang, before ever meeting Pearson. (The exact episode, if you want to check for yourself, is 33, where Crow summons both Bora the Spear and Blackwing Armor Master during a flashback.) However, I will concede that the show never actually states this is the case, it's just implied by what we see on screen, so perhaps the idea here was that Crow already played Blackwings before Pearson, but grew to love them even more through his mentor/father figure, and so later happily integrated the deck he inherited into his own. Crucially, canon never states this outright, either, though, so the option remains on the table. But, to give the benefit of the doubt here, the possibility that this could still slot in with canon and that it was just handled poorly is there. The same cannot be said for the Blackbird, however.

(Uh oh. So much for canon continuity.)

The above two screenshots directly contradict each other. First we have Yusei, upon reuniting with Crow in Satellite during the DS arc, casually remarking that Crow finished his duel runner. Which means that canon at this point suggests to the audience that one, Crow built this duel runner by himself, for himself, and two, that Yusei knew about it for a while already. Then there's the second screenshot, from the Pearson backstory episode, where Crow outright claims the Blackbird was left to him when Pearson died. I don't think I need to tell anyone that these two things can't be true at the same time. And again, I think this is where Crow fell victim to the writers not having a clear outline for him. At first, he was supposed to be this scrappy guy who also built a duel runner for himself, just like Yusei. But now, he's a signer, needs a backstory and a dragon, and because a theme of legacy is introduced alongside Pearson, the runner suddenly needs to be inherited, as well as (possibly) Crow's cards. Now, a crafty fanfic writer could probably reconcile the above contradiction somehow, and I know some stories that accomplished that. But the point isn't that we, as the audience/fandom could make this work, the point is that canon didn't make it work. What canon, sadly, also didn't get to work was Black-Winged Dragon.

(We meet again, bird-dragon.)

Here comes the next elephant in the room: Everyone and their mother who has watched 5Ds knows that Black-Winged Dragon was never implied to be a signer dragon up until the duel where Crow acquires it. In fact, an entirely different dragon is teased so heavily long before BWD ever shows up that it to this day is one of many people's major gripes with the show's writing.

(Why, hello, Life Stream Dragon! Fancy seeing you here.)

And yet, Black-Winged Dragon is turned into a signer dragon before Life Stream Dragon, who was teased more than sixty (!!!) episodes before BWD was ever even mentioned. Why? Simple: Because Crow became a signer and Rua/Leo didn't, because the signers all need dragons (or else the "5Ds" part kind of doesn't work), and because Life Stream Dragon thematically doesn't fit Crow.

Now, I've seen people post theories to reconcile this weird hitch in canon, hell, I've even posted an idea for how it could be reconciled myself. But, again, that isn't the point here. The point is that as far as good old, barebones canon is concerned, it isn't reconciled. Canon at first states there are five signers, suggesting that there are also five dragons. But then, the fifth dragon never shows up, and one of the signers dies, to boot. Only for canon to then teach us, oh, no, look, the signer marks can wander from one person to the next. And to add insult to injury (at least where the show's writing and internal consistency is concerned), the signer mark that was "freed up" by Roman/Rudger's death doesn't wander to Rua/Leo, who any attentive watcher would have expected to become a signer because it was heavily teased during the DS arc, but to Crow. Frankly, I'm not surprised many people were angry about this, but in case my disclaimer didn't make it clear, I don't think it's productive to pin this on Crow by claiming his cards became super popular irl. There was definitely an out-of-left-field writing choice made here, but the only answers as to "why" were left in the 5Ds' writer's room, I believe. At a guess, if you want me to throw out a non-sugarcoated theory as to why, though? They probably thought Crow would be a more interesting character for their target audience. He's a scrappy guy who sticks it to authority, he's brave, he's funny, he plays a cool deck, and most of all, unlike Rua, he never embarrasses himself in a duel on screen. Why am I highlighting that last part? Because I feel like people sometimes forget that the target audience for this show, at the time of its creation, were about twelve year-old boys. And you can feel free to contradict me on this, but most twelve year-old boys I've known and know don't want to project themselves onto a chracter who loses and gets his butt kicked a lot, and who's a bit awkward and steps in it sometimes, which is much closer to how actual twelve year-olds are—but that's exactly why they prefer the cooler characters. And Crow is the cooler character, by average twelve year-old boy logic, regardless of what the grownups of this fandom think.

So Crow gets a dragon and the writing doesn't bother explaining the how or why of it, let alone tackles any of the implications made by Black-Winged Dragon's existence as a signer dragon. (Like what does this mean for the larger worldbuilding? Does the Crimson Dragon actually have more than five servants, but chooses to only ever bestow five marks at a time? Can any "dragon" the Crimson Dragon chooses be a signer dragon, and it just so happens that the constellation of signer dragons is nearly the same as the original one in present-time 5Ds canon? Did the Crimson Dragon specifically elevate BWD to a signer dragon because it felt like it? Was BWD always supposed to be a signer dragon? Was Pearson supposed to be a signer, but died too early before the dark signer prophecy was set into motion? Am I overthinking this? (Yes.)) He also obtains his dragon in what feels like the weirdest way possible to me, because it suddenly??? Just decides to appear in his runner????? Out of nowhere??????

(Why is that here. How did it get there. Why did Pearson even put it in there. And HOW. Is it just wedged between the machinery or what???? And how on earth did Yusei, Bruno, and/or Crow never find it before this point considering how often someone tinkered on the Blackbird on screen???)

(This scenario, of course, also raises the question how the other signers even got their dragons. But like many other, interesting questions, this episode chooses not to interact with that one whatsoever.)

In short, this backstory is a bit of a mess, to say the least. For as much good as it tries to do by contextualising Crow's character and giving him something that sets him apart from the rest of the protag group, it feels like a rough draft of an episode was given the green light to be produced without any editing, judging by the contradictions and weird implications. As such, it harms Crow's character as much as it builds it, as evidenced by how much fandom backlash he still receives years later for the things that were bungled in this backstory and also in different aspects of his character writing.

Now, you may notice this post has gotten stupidly long due to just how convoluted the specific hangups of Crow's backstory are. I originally meant to cover the WRGP and even the Ark Cradle arc for Crow in this post, too, but due to how much there was to say about canon's attempt to finally make Crow a "proper" signer, I've decided that trying to force another two whole arcs in here would be a disservice to the analysis and the character, and also make this agonisingly long, so I'll close this part out here and write a part three, perhaps even a part four depending on how much material the WRGP gives me to work with.

There's one more thing I need to get back to before I finish up this part, though: The "screentime" discussion. I mentioned far above that I take issue with how some people seem to be using the word screentime, and now I can explain why. First, I want you to take a look back at the episodes I covered here, those being 65-95, essentially. Now, as anyone who usually dislikes Crow will tell you, Crow is present in most, if not all of these episodes. He's on screen. He's getting screentime, and, according to many people, hogging it, even. Okay. Now, I want you to look back up at the analysis. How many episodes did I cover where Crow actually gets something to do? As in, where he's either the focus of the plot or gets to contribute to it in a significant way? There's the old man Bashford episode. There's the Poppo Time clock episode. There's his two backstory episodes. That's four. Four episodes. If you're generous, you might add in the episode where he gets to narrate Yusei's backstory alongside Jack and the two fake Jack episodes where he gets to have an emotional moment or two with his foster-brother. If you're less generous, you'll note that none of these episodes have Crow actually interacting with the main antagonists in a meaningful way or set up anything important that pays off later. (Hell, he doesn't even get any, and I really mean, any meaningful setup interactions with Sherry, who ends up being his final-boss-level opponent during the final episodes! Aki gets more meaningful interactions with Sherry than him, not that this ever gets a payoff.) And this is why I take an issue with people claiming Crow gets so much "screentime" post DS arc. Because to me, "screentime" should be time spent letting a character act meaningfully within the story, which most of the pre-WRGP episodes aren't for Crow. He's on screen, yes, but in many episodes, it wouldn't matter one whit whether you replaced him with a nameless side character, which isn't exactly a great look for a supposed third of a protagonist trifecta. Perhaps I'm being too strict with my definition of "screentime" here, fair enough! But the claim that Crow hogs screentime already rubs the wrong way during this comparably unimportant arc, so I can't leave it alone. It feels very decidedly malicious to claim a character who during some episodes seems to only be there to provide exposition or make whatever jokes Yusei and Jack's personalities aren't suited to is stealing screentime from other characters. As for the WRGP duels and whether he's "hogging" anyone's screentime there, I'll dig into that nonsense in the next part, please be patient with me.

...Phew. Okay.

Now, before I leave you to wonder whether I'm every finishing my Crow analysis in full again, I want to attempt to do the same thing I did in part one—propose some changes that could have been made to the writing for Crow's character in order to make things slot in better with the rest of canon. With a small disclaimer, of course: These are just my suggestions as to how Crow's character could have fit into canon more smoothly and been done less of a disservice by his own backstory.

So. First, a quick-fire thing about the pre-WRGP, to get that out of the way: Crow, alongside Aki, is the only signer who didn't get his own confrontation with either Iliaster or their minions. (Yusei had Ghost, Jack had fake Jack, Rua and Ruka had Luciano.) Instead of having him confront a cranky old man in a scrapyard or Zora's son, they could have easily given him a very short side-story where he gets to experience the threat of Iliaster up close and personal, too. Hell, they could have very nicely cut the recap episode where Crow and Jack lie in the mess of Jack's terribly built coffee table and philosophise about Yusei's backstory for this, too. (As funny as their interaction about the coffee table and Jack lying on the floor with a perfectly intact coffee cup are.)

(Pictured: Two idiots (affectionate) contemplating life among the scraps of a shitty, broken coffee table.)

Then, there's the Pearson backstory, of course. So, here's the thing, I think two very different kinds of "fixes" could have worked here. Crucially, they both depend on Crow's status as a signer. I argued in part one that Crow might have worked better as a character if he hadn't actually become a signer, so I'll give both versions here. Let's go.

Option A: We try not to touch canon too much and Crow stays a signer.

How to do this? Frankly, I think what Crow's mark and Black-Winged Dragon were majorly missing was setup. The mark is the smaller offence here, since, fair enough, the idea that signer marks can wander from person to person isn't too out there for 5Ds canon. However, the lack of a dragon despite the alleged 5Ds stands out, and Life Stream Dragon's wasted setup only makes it worse. Thus, making Black-Winged Dragon make sense would have required giving him the same amount of foreshadowing as Life Stream Dragon, at the very least. And you know who could have been great for that? Sweet, ever-forgotten-by-canon Ruka. She was already shown having flashback dreams to the signer dragons' first battle against the dark signers, so who's to say she couldn't have gotten dreams about a shadowy, new dragon she's never seen before? Perhaps even dreams where she's not sure if the dragon is good or bad at first! It could have provided intrigue, it could have made the audience curious. To strengthen that, canon could have also bothered taking the question "hey why are there only four dragons now" seriously. No character in canon ever questions why there are five marks, but only four dragons. Even Rua, who was previously hopeful that he might secretly be a signer, never brings it up. If canon had bothered to actually point this mystery out, they could have used it not only to foreshadow Black-Winged Dragon, but to aid Life Stream Dragon's setup, too. What the fuck am I talking about, I hear you ask. Hear me out: Life Stream Dragon is shown way, way later down the line, long after the audience probably already accepted that it was simply never going to show up, literally bursting out of Power Tool Dragon's armour. We are not provided with an explanation as to why. Imagine if they had sprinkled in another dream Ruka could have had about the ancient past here. Imagine if they had used the opportunity to show something like, oh, during the battle, Life Stream Dragon got injured so badly they had to protect its wounded body with a suit of armour, in the hopes that it would heal. And with one original signer dragon out of commission, the Crimson Dragon sadly had to choose a replacement in between, because the Earthbound Immortals were sure to return. Bam. Black-Winged Dragon. Two signer dragons, set up simultaneously, without forcing the canon lore to do somersaults. Furthermore, to actually explain why Pearson had the dragon but wasn't a signer, they could have easily sprinkled in a flashback between him and Crow. Maybe Pearson could have mentioned how the dragon always feels like it's never really his, as a joking aside. It would have been enough for me to suspend my disbelief, you know? And then the rest of canon could have played out exactly as we know it. Crow could have confronted Bolger, could have obtained Black-Winged Dragon because maybe the dragon finally decided he was worth throwing its weight behind. The mystery behind the missing fifth dragon could have been solved, and it would have made for satisfying payoff without kneecapping Life Stream Dragon's setup or conjuring an extra dragon out of thin air. And really, stuff like the runner thing could have so easily been solved by simply picking one version (did he build it himself or inherit it?) and sticking with it. All it took was a little more care.

Option B: We assume Crow didn't actually become a signer, but try to keep his backstory intact.

Okay, this version works under the assumption that Crow, despite partaking in the final battle against Goodwin during the DS arc, didn't receive a signer mark. To make this work, I would, bluntly put, simply make it so that Black-Winged Dragon doesn't exist. Pearson can still play a powerful Blackwing monster during his flashback that Bolger wants to find and sell later, but it simply isn't that dragon. Really, Blackwings have enough to choose from there. If the backstory episodes had been placed a little later, say, during the pause in the middle of the WRGP, he could have even received something like Blackwing Full Armor Master here. (Yes, I know that card didn't exist at the time, but my point is that he could have simply received a powerup like Yusei and Jack did, instead of a completely new monster.) With this setup, they could have still added the intrigue of taking the question why there are only four signers now seriously. They could have still set up a mystery about why no one ever saw the fifth dragon outside of dreams. And it could have made Rua becoming a signer later, and in this version getting the tail mark instead of a completely new one, that much more satisfying. And Crow could have kept his "fuck destiny, I'm trying to save the world here"-attitude from the DS arc, providing a nice, amusing counterweight to our heroes chosen by an ancient Incan dragon deity. All it would have taken would have been not giving him a mark and switching out Black-Winged Dragon for something else.

So, take your pick, I guess. In the meantime, I'll try my best to work on part three faster than I did part two, lmao.

See you next time!

[curry-and-gunpowder]

Okay so I have some stuff to get off my chest, might get a bit heated, but I mean no disrespect to anyone, just expressing my genuine confusion and frustration and trying to make my stance on some matters clear.

Clearly I ship Odazai. But that does not mean I reject other interpretations of their relationship. Be it platonic, queerplatonic, brotherly, it's all lovely to me - I genuinely just enjoy their unique dynamic.

However, I am constantly on the brink of losing it over hearing them referred to as a father/son pair by so many people in the fandom. And I'm gonna attempt to break down why this interpretation bothers me so much.

Firstly, it just flies in the face of my personal experience of intergenerational friendships - I'm a young-ish Millennial with many Gen Z friends. And I find it completely incomprehensible to try and force people who are relatively close in age into such a dynamic. I'm aware that a lot of bsd fans are teens or young adults who maybe don't have much social contact with people outside their age range. But as a 30+ person on the Internet, let me tell you, five years? That's nothing. The plain truth is, the older you get, the less age starts to matter. Once you get out of school, you will interact with people of all ages regularly and you will have friends who are older or younger than you and nobody fucking cares. The thought of seeing any of my younger friends as my children is, pardon my french, fucking ridiculous.

Secondly, and I've spoken about this before, the fandom's tendency to parentify Odasaku way beyond what the text ever implies. It's easy to put him into the role, considering the way he cares for his orphans. In that way, he has some parental traits - but it's only a facet of his personality, and, i would argue, one that the fandom puts way too much emphasis on, imho. I'll gladly write some more meta on that at a later time, but doing that here would make the post even longer than it already is. Just to quickly reiterate, for anyone who hasn't read the dark era lightnovel - Oda does explicitly NOT treat the kids like his children. Why then would he treat Dazai like one? Dazai, whom he explicitly invites to go drinking with him in TDIPUD? How does that track? Is he supposed to be just a shitty parent? Or could it maybe indicate that he sees Dazai as his equal more than anything?

(Tangentially, I would argue that Oda's perception of what constitutes a child/an adult is horrendously skewed, considering his own past.)

Thirdly, and this is probably gonna be the one that might get me into hot water with some people, the thing I like to call the Cope. The tendency in fandom to manifest a hard line between groups of characters that somehow should never be crossed when shipping, otherwise that makes the ship badwrongtoxic. This is a phenomenon I've observed developing more and more in recent years, and it's ngl pretty worrying, because it's generally used to present one's own ship as "superior", and all "rival ships" as less than/bad. Ships with "significant" age gaps tend to fall into that category relatively often, but I suspect very few people actually genuinely care about the characters' ages, but rather use it as a shield to justify why these relationships are To Be Avoided. Odazai is an absolute stellar example of such a ship - by all means it should be way more popular than it is, considering the themes that surround it and the way its absolutely center to the nareative of bsd. But without fail, when I look up media for the ship, be it YouTube videos or simply browsing the tag on tumblr or pinterest, I see the same mantra repeated over and over - "how can you ship them, they're like father and son!"

(I'm concerned about the relationship you have with your parents, I say to myself in response.)

And its, quite frankly, just not the case. I cannot for the life of me find any indication of this so-called parental relationship anywhere in the text. All I can see is two people who are friends who have a deep and sincere love for each other.

In conclusion, not every relationship has to fall into the category of familial or romantic. Sometimes... people are just friends. Sometimes friends are some years apart in age. It's not shocking or special or anything, it literally happens all the time.

Just let them be friends. It's fine, really, it's allowed.

[asoulwithadream]

hear me out here because i have this idea, and i've been thinking about it for only hour now, and it's almost midnight and i have two major assignments due tomorrow morning but this takes precedence

so buckle up guys, cos sherlock bbc......... but doctor who bbc (this will all make sense in a moment)

I. the characters are absolutely perfect for all the relevant roles, and im sure there are tons of others which i just haven't thought of yet:

sherlock as the doctor: he has the intelligence, the deduction, the spontaneity, the trauma, and some of the humour (current work in progress). i'll admit his charisma can be better but we've seen a few awkward reiterations of the doctor in the past, so i'll let it slide. it'll give him character. his little quirk of knowing the most useless stuff about the most useless things to solve the most important cases but in space could be such an interesting perspective to see, and look at what the writers come up with surrounding the details of the galactic environments. and to be honest, the doctor themselves are already essentially a consulting detective, the only difference being that they hire themselves. plus, i feel like he would be oddly extremely attached to his tardis, and maybe his screwdriver could have like a collapsable magnifying glass at the other end, just for shits and giggles. he'd also remind me of twelve a bit, and not just because of the cheekbones.dr

john watson as the companion: he has the morals which the doctor sometimes lacks, the rational thinking, he's the emotional support for the over-the-top doctor, he essentially fulfils every role of a companion. we can see how it fits in with his sherlock bbc character too: as many of the doctor's companions, he learns over time and actually becomes higher-than-averagely adept at working out solutions for problems. hes so wonderfully human, and it would fit well with the alien/human dynamic between the doctor and his companion. and i feel like john would have big rory energy. we haven't even taken in the consideration of the "the doctor. which one?" jokes.

jim moriarty as the master: don't tell me you can't see it, because you know deep down that i am right. both the master and moriarty are chaos loving antagonistic figures, charming and charismatic, full of ambition to control whatever they can and whoever they want, yet they focus on what they may consider their homoerotic arch-rival. plus, they're commonly referred to with a name beginning with the letter "m" (which is literally just bonus points!) and just imagine the possibilities of a female moriarty. like fuck off that's too much for my blood pressure. (eurus?????)

irene adler as river song: it's the vibe, it's the attitude, it's the intelligence. irene would be such a good river: she's independent, a borderline criminal, and witty beyond anyones comprehension. however, in this case irene would be a mix of both the irene from the book and from the show, since she's substantially smarter in terms of "who has the biggest brains" in the books rather than the tv series. nevertheless, i would still like to have her as not a love-interest but a love possibility, edging on that with the maximum being flirts, and obviously john in the background going full rory mode (as mentioned earlier). i just think it would be so neat.

greg lestrade as kate stewart: police/chief officer on earth, usually the one to contact the doctor when the planet is in danger? has some form of kind of stale yet wholesome but confusing friendship with the doctor, where they know both a lot and absolutely nothing about him? i think it fits the criteria for greg lestrade perfectly, and i love that it adds the possibility of banter between sherlock's doctor and chief greg of unit.

mycroft holmes as a member of the high gallifreyan council: what could the doctor consider to be the greatest nuisance, and what has recordedly tampered with his relationships and plans and life in the past? the council of his home planet, which could realistically allow for one of the doctor's brothers to be part of the council, and possibly even be it's leader. however, a cool dynamic which i think could be explored is that mycroft wouldn't be the head of the council but rather a side yet very important member, who can slightly interefere with the council's plan to assist his brother sometimes, only sticking by the rules if he disagrees entirely with the doctor. what his time-lord name could be? the officer, the official (something like that), though i'd appreciate name ideas

mrs hudson as sarah jane smith: this was a bit hard to decide on, but i think this is by far the most interesting idea i've had for mrs hudson after a solid 5 minutes of looking up characters. i can see mrs hudson, or martha as she'd be called then, act as a companion for the doctor in a previous reincarnation many years ago, like in the 70s or 80s, otherwise staying at home at 221a baker street, working on a computer and serving cuppas should the doctor and john ever stop by. could give a more alien context to her drug dealing husband; maybe he was caught up in an otherwordly drug scandal, and that's how the doctor and mrs hudson ended up meeting. additionally, i think that she'd also have k9, but he'd be shaped a bit like a bull-dog after the bull pup which john has in the books.

II. the tardis. there are so many ideas for the tardis itself, and i can imagine that she'd kind of resemble a hybrid child of eleven's tardis and the interior of the 221b flat. plus, she could have an address this time: 221b, anywhere. i know it sounds a bit corny, but i wanted to find a way to weave in the famous address into this narrative.

III. wholock.

i just think this is a super neat idea. do reblog with ideas

[anamazingangie]

Is every fandom this petty or just this one? My god. This is the second time someone has implied I've plagiarized the majority of my fics and i'm just...sick of it.

Both times this has come from the HEAD MODS of the daemyra, helaemond, and rhaegon discords and it makes me really sad that they might treat other people like this too.

Can I prove these tweets are about me? No. But the dates line up with when my fics were published, the accusations are very similar to ones I received from their friend. Come to your own conclusion.

I don't have a twitter so I'm posting this here:

I HAVE READ TWO OF YOUR FICS. TWO.

I didn't know about your work until I had written hundreds of thousands of words for the Daemyra fandom (which you haven't written any content for, btw).

I liked them! But I'm just baffled how it could extrapolated that they inspired all my fics. The only remotely similar fic is my OT3 fic which also features pet names and BDSM.

But where yours is an extremely abusive/unhealthy/dub-con dynamic mine is a soft consensual agreement with different characters.

Like:

and

I'm not hating. I really enjoyed your fic. It's just gross to ownership over an entire lifestyle and multitude of kinks within a fandom because you feature some aspects of it in one fic. And then use that to claim you inspired *all* of an authors work.

It's really frustrating as an author not to mention highly inaccurate (let me reiterate, I've read two of her fics).

Before this I was a reader and I can't tell you how many BDSM Reylo or Darklina fics I read. Was this pettiness happening behind the scenes? Or is it JUST this fandom where big fish act entitled over common tropes?

Let me say again: THIS IS A MOD OF THE BIGGEST FANDOM SERVERS.

Like fuck, how many writers are you discouraging and turning away from the fandom with this? Because you feel possessive over tropes that have tens of thousands of results on A03. Just be better.

edit:

I guess I do have an only fans inspired fic too but I wrote it before I knew theirs existed. You don't have to believe me, but it was published back in December.

Here is me finding out their username in February. At this point I hadn't read ANY fics for the HotD fandom outside of Daemyra (which as of now I still don't think they've written for?) so I didn't know who they were until they talked about expanding the AU to include Daemyra.

I guess i'll ALSO say that T accused me of stealing my idea for Gauche from Cor because it was published the same day as a discussion about Cor writing a petwife Daemyra fic...which is true.

But T brought this up as a response to MY idea for a fic with this concept.

Also for the record, in my fic, she is a magical human that can literally turn into a cat so I don't see the cause for comparison to begin with but OK.

edit 2: still bitter, adding more.

So I originally left the Daemyra discord because of the main mod, T.

I was part of a discussion about a prompt someone else had submitted to the prompt thread in march. Several people seemed enthused about the idea of a tattoo AU and the topic was on my mind since I just got one.

I wrote the fic using the major plot points I came up with in the conversation.

I credited the convo as inspiring me because we were all brainstorming, right? I guess not. About six people accused me of copying all her ideas and shared screen shots of my fic alongside her "plot points" which were like..."the existence of gloves", despite this being against the rules.

This was all instigated by T who publicly called me out for it. I was originally confused, and then apologetic because I thought it was a conversation and I used the ideas *i* contributed as well as the original prompt that she was not the author of.

Not to mention "Tattoo AU" is a trope with 10k+ fics on A03. It isn't an original idea.

During this pile on she:

-Said I had done this many times before, mentioning the kitten!fic by name and implying there were others.

-Mocked me for not having a life/writing quickly before other people could use ideas.

-Claimed I didn't *really* get a tattoo or have the idea because I hadn't mentioned it before....on a HotD discord?

(is this proof enough? i didn't think i needed a fucking alibi)

Anyway. It all got deleted so I have no evidence, but you can see her tweets about it.

The other day, I gather another author was bullied off the server. And this is how they responded. THE IRONY.

"This type of attitude is what drives active and creative members of our community away."

Since when is that your concern??

"I want you all to read t’s message and really reflect on it."

I want T to read and reflect on it!!

Again: These are the head mods and creators of the community servers for these ships. Maybe practice what you fucking preach?

....

adding this is an edit so there is no link back to them;

They claim the tweets aren't about me. Maybe I’m wrong and this isn’t about me. But from my perspective: 

This was tweeted by Cor the day her friend (T) accused me of copying her plot line and idea for a fic, as well as doing this ‘many times before’ including with Cor’s pet wife AU.

Cor made a tweet accusing people of stealing ideas the same day as I reposted my fic that was, according to T, copied from Cor. 

To be clear, Cor NEVER said she felt this way to me. But given her lack of participation in the conversation where I was directly accused, and support of her friend after the fact, I thought It was implied.

So given the date of this tweet and that, I assumed this was about me.

Cor's tweet implying an author stole all their ideas from her was posted the same day as my bdsm AU. Given the context and date, it kind of seemed like that could be about me too?

Cor sent me 32 messages this morning. In them she (among other things) insisted they were about someone who was line-by-line copying her fics. Despite the many messages, no proof of that was shown. 

Maybe it is a big fucking coincidence but it sure felt targeted to me, which is why I made the post in the first place.

edit: I said she could send me screen shots of the plagiarism since she mentioned many times that she had them, and she blocked me so. Idk man.

Most of the messages were her calling me names and accusing me of outing her for writing a kink fic by mentioning it in the same post as her twitter.

For the record the account that fic is on was linked in her twitter bio while she was making those claims. The account has multiple fics co-authored by her other account that also has her full name.

The only thing that wasn't public was the discord convo which had no identifying information.

I didn't tag anyone in this post. I didn't want to start a witch hunt. I would LOVE for these tweets not to be about me.

But I thought they were (based on other experiences where they *confirmed* were about me) and wanted to share my side of things.

I now know multiple people who have had really bad experiences while writing for this fandom and it fucking sucks to be bullied out it.

[quibbs126]

By the way, yes I’m still taking fankid requests, that never closed, so if you want to request feel free

I’m just reiterating this because some of my asks have people wondering if they can still request, and I want to answer them saying “yeah of course they’re still open, feel free”, but the answers are where I post the drawings, and I still have a backlog so I can’t just draw the fankid and answer there, that’s unfair to the people who asked first

Edit: well, since someone suggested making a pinned post to get things down, I should probably use this post to establish some general rules/guidelines as well

The only things I won’t take are incest or adult/minor ships. No one’s suggested them yet, but I should at least state them. Oh and I guess crossover ships. I didn’t really expect to get any, but I did so I should mention. I kind of just want to stick with Cookie Run characters, yeah?

Edit: Oc x Canon is fine, just please have info about the characters so I know who they are. And a transparent image if you can

I post around 1-3 a day, it’s usually on the lower end, and I tend not to do many during breaks or weekends. So it’s at lowest 5 a week. My backlog is I think over 40. While I do skip around from time to time and do ones higher up on my list, don’t expect newly submitted ones to be done anytime soon. Also I’m considering taking a break at some point, so just be aware if that happens. I’ll do them, it just might take a while

Edit: the above post is very untrue. For starters my backlog is now over 90, though I also skip around a lot more so there’s no guarantee when I’ll have them done compared to when they get requested. But most importantly, I have become much slower in my drawings, posting 1 or 2 a week at best if even that. I do still take requests but know that it can be a very long time until your request is done

This isn’t necessarily needed, but if you could, maybe tell me how you interpret the ship and the dynamics that come from it. I may have a lot of the Cookies, but I don’t know all of them inside and out and I may not understand the ship dynamic, so 9 times out of 10, I’m just going off of visuals and what I can guess. Telling me their dynamics could give me more of an idea of what I should be going for and perhaps lead to more creative outcomes. You don’t need to, but I would like it if you can

Edit edit: so now I’ve decided to take on a new type of request, that being parent requests, where basically you can request for me to draw parents of a character or characters. Sort of the opposite of the fankid requests but still similar. I’ll just put some notes about it down here

You only need to request one character, you don’t have to do two or more. If the characters are related, or you want to make it known to me that you headcanon multiple characters as siblings/being related, that’s perfectly fine, and I might need those headcanons so I know what I’m working with

There’s a lot less rules here since this is family headcanons, not romantic in any way

This is just a general note, but I’m aware of the possibility that I will get parent requests for characters that I’ve done or will do fankid requests for. As I assume that these are different people asking for each, I’m fine with doing that for one of each, since different people have different interpretations (unless that pair violates the rules of the fankid requests, then I won’t do a fankid request for it)

[theskee]

The fact that I'm still being tag suppressed for no definable reason and therefore unable to properly connect with the people who also frequent those tags or share things like my art or fic has been so deeply frustrating. Four months after my last appeal to have this wrongful suppression of my account lifted, they finally got back to me again.

To ask me to tell them why they should lift it AGAIN.

It has now been 5 days since I responded and reiterated once again why this was bullshit. And silence yet again despite saying they'd give the issue priority.

"If you would still like to appeal the previous moderation action on your Tumblr account, please reply to this email to let us know why you believe our decision was a mistake, and we’ll review the situation with priority."

I cannot stress enough how many times I've already told them this and they have done nothing and said nothing and quite frankly, I'm so close to making a new fucking account because this is utterly asinine. I don't know what else I can possibly do other than that. Because they're not gonna make this right. They couldn't even tell me why I got suppressed beyond "you used some tags frequently used in spam/abuse/harassment". Mother fuckers WHICH TAGS?? Where. Show me. I'm calling bullshit. Show me.

Silence.

My account probably got auto flagged incorrectly, the suppression was applied, and they're just not gonna fix it because fuck anyone who has a problem with being silenced.

I have been on this account with tumblr for 13 years. I have *never* had a problem. Never been in trouble. Never been reported. Never had my ability to use the platform restricted due to violating the guidelines. After the porn purge I removed all disallowed content from my account as directed. I've gone through my entire blog from the very first post until now and checked my tags, checked my posts, made sure I didn't miss anything. I spent days upon days doing this with no real direction from them as to what I should even be looking for to know specifically what I did wrong and the only logical conclusion here is that I didn't do anything wrong.

The post I gave them as an example for my suppression had the tags "family dynamics" "parenting" and "personal" on it and that was it so which fucking tag of those violates the terms. Make it make sense. It doesn't. I feel like these emails aren't even coming from real people. I find it hard to believe I've actually spoken to a real life human being even once because an actual person would probably at least answer my damn question or understand why this is so deeply frustrating.

Goddamnit tumblr. Come the fuck on.

[bestworstcase]

Do you think part of the series going forward will be Oz recognizing that he was wrong in some cases when it came to Salem? Bc I don’t think the story will end with just a big fight bc, Ruby as our simple soul protagonist does like to try to talk things out. I can see a scene where she and Salem are in a void space and it’s a lot of talking. It a redemption bc in her quest to free herself Salem did eventually… start killing people on purpose which we can’t really talk away haah. But there can be more than one victim in this kind of situation. While many of Oz were plagued with Salem, your post reiterates that she didn’t start as this evil person. She was trapped and used whatever she could to free herself. It’s hard to call someone pure evil at the time of them being abused which is why I love this show. Bc Salem is the villain of their story but the victim of her own and parts of Oz and all of this can be true at once. I don’t think Oz and Salem will get back together in the end but I wonder how it Will end. Peace for Oz would be Evil Dalem no longer being in the world so his mission to Stop Her would be fulfilled. (A shitty mission considering the god of light didn’t say at the time she was an Evil Immortal bc they literally made her immortal). But what does Salem want. What does Oz Actually want outside of what has been driving him? If Salem came to him eons ago and swore to not hurt anyone would that be enough? Bc he’s trapped here by magical curse to so years of Salem being dormant didn’t lift the curse. What does peace look like for them I wonder. And will the show explore Salem’s side of things and what she’s hoping to do

so

hot take

i don’t think ruby is going to be the inciting force behind any character’s villain -> hero arc, and especially not cinder’s or salem’s; ruby does try to talk things out when she believes her opponent is reasonable, but a) she’s never succeeded, b) she categorically does not engage with salem or salem’s allies as if they are reasonable people, and c) knowing the painful histories that shaped them into the people they are now does not change ruby’s outlook whatsoever, because she’s now had months to think about what jinn showed them and the only conclusion she’s come to is that salem can be stopped because she’s failed before.

i do expect ruby to undergo a shift in her thinking here over the course of v9, but i don’t think it will be as profound as ruby losing her pragmatism altogether. i think she’s just going to come out of this more willing to reserve judgment about whether or not someone needs to be put down by force.

what interests me so much about the potential for both salem and cinder turning around is that all the set-up for it is happening in-house, so to speak, in the changing dynamic of their relationship with each other and the untenable tension between their external goals and inner motivations; moreover rwby has been very clear and very consistent about portraying destruction as a force for change and creation without destruction as static to its own detriment, so thematically there’s solid grounds for thinking the first overture of peace will actually come from SALEM, not ruby or ozma or anyone else on the heroic side. and perhaps worth noting in that regard is that salem has been shown to be much more flexible strategically and operationally and tactically than anyone on the heroic side—so if she gets to a point where negotiating with her opponents looks like a more viable method of pursuing what she wants she’s going to be a lot more willing to scrap her original plans and take a risk on reaching out than they are.

(also i think for ozma there’s a lot more at stake, emotionally, in challenging his basic perceptions of salem—because if she is reasonable, if she is just a person, then he has to start reckoning with questions like “did she actually lie and manipulate me or did i take advantage of her trust?” and “does she maybe have a point about the god i’ve been loyally serving for thousands of years?” and—well just look at how he reacted when confronted after the lost fable. for ozma reconciling with salem means shattering some pretty fundamental beliefs about himself, and i don’t think that’s true for salem. so there’s less of an emotional barrier for her to make the first move.)

there’s also

this beat from 6.4 which i circle back around to a lot because 1. a lot of what happens in the salem half of this episode is a coda or counterpoint to the way jinn told her story in the preceding episode, and this moment of tangible regret and weariness when the mask drops pretty directly contradicts ozma’s perception (as relayed by jinn) of who salem is; and 2. salem is not happy about the choices she makes. performing for her inner circle the way she does before this beat happens emotionally exhausts her, and she expressly keeps going only because she can’t imagine an alternative path forward and the idea of giving up is intolerable; “and so we must… press on.”

this matters because it suggests the obstacle preventing the resolution of conflict is not that salem is an unreasonable egomaniac or drunk on her own power and acting out violent impulses of pure destruction, as her opponents (and most of the fandom 🙄) believe; it’s that she doesn’t believe she has any other choice, and if we put that into context with everything else we know about her—from the girl who threw pleas for help out of her window and then watched helplessly as hundreds of people died in her name, to being made the divine scapegoat and blamed for the murder of the planet, to her own partner rejecting her without even giving her a chance to explain herself, to thousands of years on the margins of civilization because everyone who knows of her believes she’s either a monster or a god or an unstoppable force of nature—it feels pretty obvious that the reason salem believes that is because no one has ever really listened to her or been there for her, ultimately not even ozma.

and that’s not a problem that any of her opponents are anywhere close to being able to grasp—whereas there is a character standing in the perfect position with the perfect mindset to rekindle salem’s hope, and that character is cinder, and in v8 a major narrative focus was on the… shifting dynamic between salem and cinder… so the set up feels to me very much like it’s headed in that direction.

also something something “even the smallest spark of hope is enough to ignite change, breathe fire into the hearts of the weary,” something something cinder is the key to salem’s victory, something something, uh, a cinder is a spark and—

—the writing is on the wall yeah?

anyway rwby’s approach to villain -> hero arcs generally is not redemptive in nature but rather centered around atonement, and within that framework it is obviously more important to allow salem (and cinder) to be in situations where they are no longer killing people than it is to punish or forgive them for having killed people in the past; the dead cannot be saved but the future can be made better and safer for the living. emerald has also killed people but when she jumped ship the trajectory was towards integrating her into the group as an ally, not on interrogating her past misdeeds. (that said i half expect for salem’s villain -> hero arc to involve some revelations that she is not, in fact, as heinous as she has been made out to be—specifically i think summer is alive and working for salem fully in possession of her free will and that salem’s attention and efforts since the murderdivorce have largely been focused on working out a viable plan to tackle the gods rather than 24/7 conspiring against ozma.)

which is to say i think that once the immediate problem of salem’s resignation is overcome the turnaround will occur pretty fast, and likewise on the heroic side once initial reservations about whether they can trust her offer of truce are overcome the narrative focus will move swiftly to making the new alliance work vs redressing all of the bloodshed.

i do also want to highlight though that ozma’s mandate is not to stop salem—that’s something he began to fixate on as a goal, but what he’s actually supposed to be doing is uniting humanity in service of the god of light and then ushering in the day of judgment so that humankind can be either restored to wholeness in the eyes of the gods or exterminated once and for all. irrespective of whether or not salem made an oath of pacifism or not, she would still stand in the way of the mandate because she hates the gods. her violence isn’t the problem for ozma’s agenda—her defiance is. in the course of negotiating peace he will have to finally confront that and reject the divine mandate altogether, and i’m quite certain that that’s what will happen because rwby has, um, not been subtle about the god of light being the true villain of the piece. i’ve said this before but salem’s villain -> hero arc is also an ozma apostasy arc, you can’t have one without the other.

(my read on ozma generally is that he… knows that, deep down, and he’s been trying desperately not to look at it for thousands of years because he’s terrified of what it would mean to admit that salem is right in her view of the god he serves.)

as for what he actually wants… i mean, we know that. he wants to be with salem. that’s the whole reason he came back, and then he felt obligated to keep his word and tried for years to do both by deceiving salem about what he truly intended to accomplish, with catastrophic results, and… since then he’s spent lifetimes convincing himself that everything bad that happens to him is because salem is pulling the strings and the school he built was an exact replica of the castle he rescued her from when they first met and his office was in her bedroom akdhfnsg like he is completely obsessed with her. whether he still wants to be with her romantically is an open question but given the tone of until the end i wouldn’t exactly be surprised; at the very least i think in his heart of hearts he wants to be at peace with her and freed from the burden of the mandate (+reincarnation curse) preventing that from happening.

[daveinediting]

You can, I can, we can... through the sheer force of imagination, conjure from thin air music, lyrics, experience, and emotion in the service of something greater.

Wait. Greater?

For example, I've been giving a considerable amount of thought to solo acts. Not bands but performances that are centered on a single individual who, through technical prowess, conjures a fully arranged and orchestrated sound. 

Unfortunately, such solo acts always feel like a DJ. When you see them on stage, you think...

DJ.

So the question is: how do you not?

If that's you on stage delivering a highly produced musical performance on your own...

How do you avoid coming across like a DJ?

The obvious answer to me is that this can't be a performance structured as if this was a band instead of a single individual. It can't be the usual audience experience because it's not the usual audience experience unless the dynamic of a full band's involved.

It also can't look like or feel like a DJ. So it can't just be someone introducing songs and then performing them.

Hmmmmmm. Isn't that the heart of a solo performance with full arrangement and orchestration?

Sure. But solo performances only work as such when one instrument's involved. Once we delve into a number of sounds and instruments that a single individual cannot produce in real time... that's when we're in DJ territory.

So then what?

Then we have to reach for something bands typically don't or can't do. We have to reach for another category of performance that makes sense. That it makes sense the experience is being guided by a lone individual.

"Guided" is a good word, by the way. "Personal", a word implied by the idea of a single individual, is also a good word.

So that's where we begin: a personal, guided tour.

Of what, though?

We'll get to that in a moment. Why? Because we've not satisfied the idea of something full band's either don't or can't do. Of course I'm sure that's a category of many possibilities for a multitude of reasons.

Here's what pops for me, though:

Spoken word.

And multimedia.

What?

Lemme reiterate. A single musician producing more sounds and instruments than is possible in real time comes off as a DJ. Or worse: someone engaged in Karaoke.

Therefore.

The challenge becomes one of elevating the reality of being a solo performer in command of a whole arsenal of instruments, sound design, vocal effects and layering... into something that can only be done by a single individual with access to actual and virtual instruments, prerecorded individual music tracks, and sound effects.

The challenge is to create a performance that should only be done but a so-equipped individual.

How?

By treating the entire performance as if it's a single performance. Stand-up comedy comes to mind here. Dramatic monologues come to mind. As do one-person shows like Carrie Fisher's "Wishful Drinking" in 2009 or Whoopie Goldberg's "Direct from Broadway" in 1985.

Since tech makes it possible, the spoken word can play against sound design moving underneath. Of course words can also play against both still and motion imagery. As can the actual music performances. So when I said earlier "in the service of something greater", this is what I had in mind: reaching for a higher level of performance.

This isn't all about tech, though. It's guided... by the personal. The tech serves an experiential, emotional narrative with a beginning, middle, and end. Even before the actual start of show, where audience members are taking their seats, even that experience can be underscored with sound design much like Pink Floyd's 1977 tour in support of their newly released album "Animals". Which brings to mind all the sound design and dialogue baked into "The Wall" and baked into "The Final Cut".

It's a balancing act, all these elements. For sure. Definitely it's easy to be overwhelmed by the possibilities. But only those possibilities that serve the experiential and emotional story arc, the spine of the entire performance... are the ones we care about.

Everything else?

We ignore.

We absolutely ignore.

That being the case, it's natural to start easy even if it's just determining the sound design while the audience is taking their seats. It's a straight up exercise of imagination to think about what the sound design should be and why. And the ideas that arise from that thinking inevitably act as a hand-off to what comes next.

Songwriting, like many forms of writing and performance, is a merging of the fictional and non-fictional. At the very least it's a dramatization of human experience with certain liberties taken for the sake of rhythm and reason and emotion. Which means we can exert a tremendous amount of control of what happens and how it lands. Which also means that, from an audience's point of view, the measure of their experience isn't in whether a thing is fiction or non-fiction... but how it plays, how it hits, and where it hits.

Think of "Hamilton" for example.

So yeah.

There are a lot of ways to approach creative challenges. There are lots of ways to create something from nothing. Mostly, I employ variations centered on my own point of view. Recently, though, I've been thinking about the role, what role the audience should play in that process.

After all, we're crafting this experience for them.

🤔

[youngshiney]

how i would run sm: NCT edition

this may be the longest post in this series, if only bc of how large the group is. i think instead of breaking things up year by year, it'll be in two parts. first part is the overarching structure and lore and the second will be more of a speculative section about what units i would make. that said: let's get into it

part one, the concept: neo tech is actually an interesting concept and theres a lot you can do with futurism, cyber aesthetic, etc. its a topic that can cover aesthetic, musical direction, album visuals, pretty much every aspect of the dynamic. now that being said, if you want to have lore with this kind of thing, i think it needs to be simple-ish. what i mean by simple is having a setting that is unique but not too complicated while also leaving room for the integration into a larger story (ie smcu/kwangya in this case). so keeping that in mind, and reiterating the idea of nct members being anyone anywhere at any time, i propose that the overarching nct world be a digital one.

so jumping ahead to the first song temporarily, i would have had 7th Sense serve as sort of an intro video to the nct world, not just the members. itd be sort of like a vcr where theres a lot of storytelling and the plot would go something like this: the members in the song are going about their daily lives missing something, finding clues to the NCity, and it ends with them meeting up in the digital world. some examples of what kind of story i mean include the SuperM SuperOne personal teasers, Cravity intro vcrs with the comet, the Loona Butterfly mv, and the Chuang 2020 theme song mv. we'll get into more specifics when the unit section starts

i think most of the nct content and mvs taking place in this digital world would be a good way to have the experimental music and mvs sm wants while also allowing for some kind of story and lore to take place in the background. this will especially come in handy for tying the groups together in a larger framework

second part, the units: this will be controversial perhaps, and has definitely been unpopular in the past, but there should be no fixed units of nct. hear me out.

the idea of anyone anywhere anytime should mean that we dont have a rigid structure for the group and honestly it probably is a negative for their careers that they are in such a set group. if youre going to have a group with this many members (speaking as the current 22 members), having set units doesnt allow for every member to shine and gain recognition. i think nct would benefit more from having smaller groups (2-5) doing more content than trying to push out 1/2 albums each year for all three units. these small groups would allow for more diversity in sound, more members to have an impact, more creativity and member input on the music, and better resting times/better pay for everyone involved.

7th Sense: i think this being the intro song makes the most sense and i do agree with some of the member choices. i think the sound is interesting and gives a unique vibe to the group. for the mv, id do like i said earlier but heres more details. i think it would be interesting to show the members in their daily lives and how different yet similar they are, mirroring the members themselves. i think playing on their specific strengths would be a good way to show the group and their own charms at the same time. for Taeyong, id put the focus on his compassion and love of animals. for Ten, id show off his dancing and his art skills. for Mark, i think showing the contrast between his youth and his skills is the best way to go. for Yuta, id show off his athleticism and his dancing abilities. for Taeil, id focus on his friendly personality and his singing. id also try to show how international the group is through these members, really cementing the anywhere anytime aspect.

the reason i chose those five is partially due to bias but also due to role. Taeyong has to be in the intro to nct bc he IS nct, hes the face of it and the reason it exists as it does today. Ten is easily one of the most talented members in the group in a variety of areas, and represents a multitude of places in the world. Mark is one of, if not the most, skilled rappers in the group and having him showcase the rap talent in the intro makes the most sense (also long ass ride is iconic). here's where my picks come in. i chose Yuta bc he has the smooth and sultry tone that the song needs (and personally, i think hes underutilized which everyone knows bc of how often i rant about him). Taeil is a really great vocal and would be able to do the high parts easily. the reason i swapped out Doyoung and Jaehyun is bc a.) i dont think the song needs both of them and b.) i dont feel like they fit the vibe of the song that much? i think theyre much better suited for the pop Exo vibe of Without You than a darker tone.

since i wouldnt do set units, heres what i would do. i would make the current units, but less often. id have the members focus more on solo, duos, and small groups. they should do what they do during the nct 20xx where they mix things up and make music outside of their usual groups.

some specific units i think would be good: Yuta/Jungwoo/Mark, Chenle/Kun/Renjun, Yuta/Ten/Shotaro, Taeil/Xiaojun, Yangyang/Sungchan/Haechan, Doyoung/Kun/Taeil, Jisung/Johnny/Jungwoo this isn't exhaustive bc you can make units for every member and every combination, just some i think would work well or want to see.

i think having the members pick and chose groups more would be a better move than trying to make set units for the 22 members. i think thats why theres such an overworking problem and a weird pay distribution, on top of opportunities outside of music for the groups and as solo members. Mark and Haechan would get to rest way more if they werent constantly doing music for two groups, which is kinda why they were going to graduate from dream in the first place. i dont agree with graduation concepts, so i think the mix and match concept is a good compromise to that. overall, my priority is fairness and the ability for members to have opportunities which i hope comes across in this post. i think this is everything i think about for the group, but if i have anything else to cover, i'll make a follow up. except for the tie-ins since thats a whole separate post

[peachyqueenly]

Been seeing people say White Lily fans don’t address the academy incident when we say she’s a victim of trauma.

... today I’m gonna address the academy incident, plus my overall feelings on the ancients in general cause honestly I don’t like a lot of interpretations of them.

The first thing I wanna clear up is a bit of misinfo I’ve seen a few times now: no, White Lily NEVER suggested killing anyone. Anyone who says she suggested killing their headmaster to get a part of their soul is either misreading or acting in bad faith. Not much more to add there-- she suggested taking a part of the first headmaster’s soul from the other side which. While you can argue is morally flawed, is not killing someone.

Secondly, I really feel like we need to address how a. the plot doesn’t treat it as the big deal many of the fans do and b. how people are losing their minds over a mistake she made as a child.

Gonna do the second point real quickly cause for some reason there’s a lot of confusion here: it seems very very likely both Lily and Vanilla were intended to be children/teens during their academy days. The CG art we have of them shows them visibly shorter in proportions compared to their final designs. And to hammer the point in more (and something I’m mad they cut), White Lily’s blossom was originally a mere bud in this scene. 

Now, kids should be held to account for their mistakes. But endlessly demonized and acting as if they are the spawn of satan for it? No... just... no.

The first part is more complicated cause the plot does treat it as a mistake. As they should. But... that’s all it was. A mistake.

The professors and the headmaster when Lily was a student don’t... harbor this grudge people seem to think they do against her. All they do is state the facts: White Lily was the cause of the school’s destruction. There. End of story. 

... and in the same breath still praising her. She is, to this day, considered one of the finest students the academy has ever seen. Her single mistake and lasp in judgement doesn’t change this. So people holding it against her when those most directly affected by it don’t is... a bit much.

Also, even if she was the cause... if you are the cause of an accident, you often experience trauma of your own. Trying to assign blame to an accident, esp one done by a child, makes said trauma even worse. White Lily never intended to destroy the school. Period.

None of this is denying what she did was a mistake. And a display of some of her primary character flaws (she cares so much that she can often be blinded by that big heart and desire for knowledge). But it is pointing out that the idea that she can’t be a victim or traumatized or whatever else is wrong and a bold faced lie. 

The ancients are not awful people; they are people with flaws, and this includes White Lily. A character is only as good as their flaws and virtues allow them to be after all. I think everyone hating one ancient to make their own look better (most commonly seen with PureLily shippers hating Cacao and PureCacao shippers hating Lily and viewing her as an obstacle) is just a wrong way of thinking. They’re all friends/could work romantically with one another and disregarding their close dynamic is a disservice to all of their characters. Making Lily and PV’s dynamic unhealthy is. Disregarding how Cacao literally almost killed a man for slandering her is. Trying to make PV out to have manipulated her/others is. Just. Let them be a close group. That’s how they work best.

Also, reiterating here that Lily’s description in the artbook all but confirms her and DE are somehow separate alright bye.

[ink-and-dagger]

Drink With Me: favourite moment countdown✨

Chapter 17🥃

Waaaaaah it’s the last DWM favourite moment post! [Just to reiterate, 18 isn’t ready yet. I will give at least 24 hours warning before posting, if not a little longer.]

Chapter 17 is very dynamic. A lot happens, and there are a lot of moments that I love.

From Astrid being a sassy little nightmare - clowning to her last breath. To Jinx’s entrance. To Silco’s entrance [👀🥵🔥]. To our rat king cashing in on his IOU in desperation.

I’ve gone for two moments again. The first is this entire little segment. It’s not entirely necessary to the plot - I could easily have skipped straight to Singed’s lab. But I’ve had the dialogue about Silco’s coat in my notes since the start, and I just adore this quiet, tender little moment of reconnection between these two so much. ❤️

Lights, overhead.

Moving past. Drifting like dandelion seeds on a breeze. Not stars, that would be silly. There are no stars down here.

Street lanterns, perhaps.

One light moves along with you though. Hanging above like a full moon. Deepest burnt orange. Your favourite colour.

You’re suspended. In more ways than one. Between wakefulness and sleep. Between dream and reality. Between pain and numbness. Between two wiry arms; one beneath your knees, and the other beneath your back.

You’re warm. Your stomach is cold. But you’re warm. You think.

Yes. You’re warm. Because Silco’s got you.

He’s gaunt. Mouth drawn thin, lips as pale as the grey dashes at his temples. Eyes dead ahead, focusing on his path. Moving swiftly, though not as fast as you think he might like to, judging from his tight, pained expression.

Right. Because there’s a knife in your stomach.

Huh.

Your eyes roll downwards. 

So weird. 

You can kinda feel it. The memory of an agony so great that the echoes of it still reverberate through your body. But also… not. As though the part of your brain which registers sensation has short-circuited. Shut down entirely to protect you from having to endure the pain of your insides being sundered.

There’s a knife in your stomach.

Yet your mind decides instead to latch onto the fact that your shirt is ruined. Silco’s shirt. It’s all torn up now. The colourful paint stains have been darkened by blood, and this upsets you more than anything else.

Silco’s fingers tighten their hold as you let out a tiny, sulky whine.

The fabric sticks to your stomach, soaked through. Such a mess. It’s getting all over Silco too.

Your lips part, and you manage to croak.

“Your coat…”

His gaze dips to you and then back up again, “Don’t you worry about my coat, darling,” he hushes gently, a stark contrast to the furious click of his boots.

Everything is too heavy to move, but you manage to twitch a single finger just enough to hook it inside one of his buttonholes.

“Wouldn’t want your fancy clothes to get in a mess,” you breathe, repeating the exact words you’d spoken in his office so many months ago now.

Silco hisses out a pained chuckle, “Seems even a knife in the gut won’t stop you from being a mouthy brat.”

“Only with you.”

His throat bobs, and he speeds up, despite how it shifts the blade.

You wince as the memory of that unbearable pain becomes a little stronger, and you seek comfort from its mounting grip in other ways. You drop your cheek, nestling deeper into the breast of his coat. You ignore the tang of blood, and instead pick out the lingering smell of cigars and cologne that’s woven into the very fibres of the fabric. You sigh happily.

“Missed you.”

“Shh,” he berates, halfway between gentle and annoyed, “You need to save your strength.”

“Where’re we going?”

“To the doctor. Now shut up.”

“So rude.”

Another pained huff, cut short.

But you do as he says, and settle for simply gazing up at him. 

His eyes flick down to you every so often. He appears to regret it each time, and never once returns the small, doting smile that rests upon your lips.

You gaze at him. 

Until the lights overhead fade, and darkness swarms in from the edges of your vision once more.

The second moment for this chapter is another tender one. Astrid finally telling Silco how she feels about him [albeit still without saying the magic word] and laying down some boundaries moving forward [proud of you bb girl 💜]

It’s also another moment [the first being the blackout] in which we see Silco being a real source of support for Astrid. Putting aside his pride, at least for a little while, to offer the comfort she needs.

You’re so very tired. Your mind feels as heavy and lethargic as your limbs, and you stifle your desire to yawn; afraid that if you give into the urge Silco will insist that you sleep before you can say what you wish to say. So you power on a little longer, your voice soft and sincere, but diminishing a little more in volume with each sentence that passes as you battle the weight of your exhaustion.

“I have never expected, nor wanted you to be anything that you’re not. I know you, Silco. I know exactly who you are, and what I’m getting every time I walk into your office,” you huff a small laugh and cock an eyebrow, “At this point I barely expect pleases and thank yous from you, I’m hardly holding out for candles and roses. This isn’t some dumbass Piltie romance novel. What we have is more than that. It’s real. It’s special.”

Silco’s green eye flutters closed with his exhale. He removes your knuckles from his brow to pillow his unmarred cheek against the back of your hand instead. The fingers that aren’t already cradling yours wrap around your wrist, gentle but firm, as though scared you might attempt to pull away.

Dark lashes part once more to reveal green waters to you. You bask in the gentle lap of their waves, and are kept warm by the hearth-fire flicker of his left eye.

Your voice is barely above a whisper anymore, “Do you remember what I told you by the river? Before I gave you the cigarette?”

He nods, and your mouth quirks, “Prove it.”

His lips twist in a small, amused echo of your own. His voice is as low as yours, but contains a reverential gravitas, as though speaking sacred scripture in a house of worship.

“You told me that you like me just the way I am.”

You smile up at him, and nod, “Still stands, you know. Wouldn’t change a thing,” 

You straighten your index finger; uncurling it from around his hand to softly brush the creased lines at the corner of his ocean eye. 

“I adore you.”

You speak it upon a devout breath, and repeat it even softer; little more than simply mouthing the words, “I adore you.”

Silco’s eyes shine, illuminated in sudden, blinding colour by the rush of a hundred different emotions. Each one raw and unfettered. It’s impossible not to marvel at the sheer depth and strength of all that he’s feeling in this moment. Impossible not to experience his joy and pain and turmoil and relief and confusion and happiness and sorrow as though it were your own. Just like the shimmer that had saved your life tonight, bearing witness to all that’s contained within his gaze unmakes you, and reforges you anew.

His eye flutters closed once more, orange iris rolling blissfully downwards as he leans into your touch. His fingers tighten around your wrist and hand as you continue to brush his skin with tender strokes.

And for a moment, he looks peaceful.

Which makes what you have to say next so much harder.

You swallow, and will away the agonising clench of your heart that begs you to hold your tongue.

“But…” 

Silco's brow knots in preemptive pain, mouth twisting and pressing into a tight line. You re-wrap your fingers around his hand once more and squeeze in silent request. He forces himself to open his eye and meet your gaze. 

“We cannot move forward until you figure out what you want. And until you figure out how to be honest about it. With me and yourself. I know your past is complicated. That you’ve been hurt in unspeakable ways by the very people you should have been able to trust unconditionally. I know that there are certain things which are… hard, or even impossible for you to give to another person. And I understand that, and I would never pressure you into something you weren’t ready for… But I have to protect myself too. I can’t keep putting my heart on the line like this.”

You take a second to fight against the constriction of your throat. A hard-won battle when he’s looking at you as though his world is falling apart around him.

“I want you in my life, Silco,” you insist, voice thick and nose buzzing, “Whatever that may look like, as long as it’s amicable I— I can live with it. And I will reciprocate whatever part of yourself you are willing to give… but no more than that.”

You inhale deeply through your nose, and blow out a wobbly breath. Squeezing his hand once more and giving him a small, encouraging smile.

“So. Take some time to figure out exactly what it is you want from me. And more importantly, whether or not you’re willing to offer the same in return. And when you’re ready… you know where to find me.”

An age passes in which he simply gazes into your eyes, and as he does, his expression gradually returns to something more neutral, more familiar, even if his pain lingers like a haze around the edges. He takes a breath so deep it inflates his frame a little, before lowering your joined hands back into his lap on the exhale, and dropping his gaze down with them.

“You should get some sleep,” he murmurs, “The more you rest, the faster you’ll heal.”

You gnaw your lip, “Will you be here when I wake up?”

“It’s unlikely.”

You nod. At least he’s honest.

“Then I’ll stay awake a little while longer.”

He doesn’t argue. Only gives you a mildly stern look that’s completely negated by the way he twines your fingers a little more securely with his.

Silco’s gaze finds its way back to the far wall, and the world seems to reset to the moment you’d first regained consciousness. Except this time the heavy silence which blankets the room is more stifling than peaceful. 

Your lungs struggle to draw breath under the weight of it. And in the oppressive quiet, your mind begins to churn.

You struggle with the enormity of everything that has happened in the past… you don’t even know how long it’s been. Day? Half day? Certainly a scarily short amount of time for you to have quit your job, had your heart broken, been betrayed, kidnapped, and very nearly murdered.

You almost died tonight.

Your breath catches quietly inside your throat, and you press your lips tightly together as they begin to quiver.

You climbed through the ceiling for a man who then shot your heart down the moment it was laid bare before him and then you were kidnapped by a friend and almost tortured—

Your vision swims. You blink, sending a tear rolling over your lashes to trail warmly over your temple, and curl into the shell of your ear.

He followed you. He came for you and saved your life and remained at your bedside and still he cannot bring himself to tell you how he feels—

Your diaphragm contracts with a small, pathetic hiccup as more tears begin to well and spill over your lashes. The noise draws Silco’s attention, and you cannot bear the aching, sympathetic tilt of his brow, or the way his lips part softly in surprise. 

You feel so ashamed and you don’t even know why.

Your chest spasms in your desperate attempt to hold back your sobs, resulting in embarrassing, wretched little noises. Your face crumples, and you turn it away from him, slinging your free arm over your wobbling lip and tear-drowned eyes; a pitiful attempt to hide yourself. But there’s no way to hide the way your body shakes with each hitching breath, or the increasingly miserable noises which force their way out. You can feel the weight of Silco’s gaze, and you wrench your hand free of his and use it to further cover your face.

The first true sob pushes from you, caught and muffled within your palm, tears absorbed by the filthy sleeve of your shirt.

Two more sobs pass, breath catching so loudly that you almost miss the soft wooden creak of the chair.

And then the blankets are flipped back, and large, strong hands slide beneath your back and knees, lifting just enough to shift you over. The mattress dips beside you, and the blankets return to their original position. But the warmth they provide does not come close to that of the arms which gently encourage you to turn, nor the slender body they gather you against.

And how could you ever resist?

You clutch at Silco desperately; one hand clawing at his chest and the other tangling in the leather straps which cross the back of his waistcoat. You press yourself as close as you possibly can against the length of his body, seeking to eradicate even the smallest of gaps that separate you, even going so far as to tangle one of your legs between his. 

He allows it all. Encourages it. Hooking his calf around the back of yours and tightening the wrap of his arms. One hand splays warm and secure at the centre of your spine, and the other cradles your head; fingers weaving themselves carefully through your hair.

You bury your face in Silco’s neck, and allow yourself to cry.

“It’s okay,” his deep murmur rumbles straight from his chest into yours, and his arm snakes further around you, hand sliding from your spine to grip your waist in the gap between your body and the mattress, “I’ve got you.”

He holds you. 

For as long as it takes for your tears to run dry. Until your breaths slow and fall in time with his; navels and chests pressing together with every synchronised inhale. Until you’re lulled by the tiny idle circles his fingertips draw against your scalp. Until your mind discards the lingering stink of explosives and blood and sweat, and all you can smell is rich tobacco and expensive cologne.

Until you feel calm. And safe. And cared for.

Silco holds you. Until you fall asleep in his arms.

[yurtletheturtlehenderson]

i just wanna talk to someone abt this because i trust u and ppl on tumblr actually freak me out and scare me so…hear me out. im not at all opposed to byler and im not homophobic bc i dont particularly ship it as much as others. yes i do ship it some amount, but the only thing that worries me is homophobes. being a queer person in a homophobic family is reallt hard and u have to learn to grow with a fear of them hating u. im just afraid of how ppl will take it if byler is canon. again i am not against the ship. that being said i am a girl who simps over will byers and i adore the y/n x will dynamic they have. just wanted to tell someone bc a lot of ppl on this sight would call me homophobic and stuff over this

Aw honey... of course it's okay. And I'm sorry things have been like this. I totally get it. What's not okay is a fandom getting so protective over their ships they make people of afraid of not shipping something enough. (Long but necessary rant ahead. Sorry, but its worth it)

I'm gonna lose a lot of people here, and likely cause they don't want to read to the end to hear all I have to say, but here goes: I don't particularly ship Byler either. When most people hear this statement they immediately equate it with the statement "I don't think Will is gay and neither is Mike" (I feel like this is true for most queer ships, or just shipping culture in general?).... this could not be more wrong. For one, nobody ever immediately knows why someone ships something (and a lot of times, the person themselves don't understand/realize why they subconsciously pick to a specific pairing and cling to it so tightly) and while it's completely understandable to have become defensive, say, because you feel as though your own identity is under attack, it's so easy—natural even—for people to snap into survival mode and try to defend themselves. But as we've seen, this can, in the right circumstances, also feed the pre-existing cycle of offense and defense that is far too long and philosophical a discussion to dive into here and now.

No, for now I wanna just reiterate that just because someone admits to not being particularly hyper-enthused by a specific ship—yes, like Byler—doesn't mean they automatically hate it. I don't particularly campaign for Mileven either! I've been persuaded by both in the past, but I've never found myself at point where I'm making fan accounts surrounding the ship, pumping out content 24/7, and I certainly haven't felt compelled to bash anyone who ships the other. But ya know what? I will say, and I bet im not alone here, the more I encounter Mileven content/space OR Byler content/space, the more I'm driven away. Why? The fucking shipping wars.

Byler and Mileven shippers, hard-core super-shippers specifically speaking, are some of the most toxic fans I've ever encountered. Is it every one? No!! But most. Most. The most extreme ive heard/seen is horrific. I'm talking death threats, suicide baiting, doxing, constant harassment and just overall borderline cyberterrorism. It's fucking unacceptable. And the underlying theme here and why there's so much fear spreading throughout fandom spaces. Why someone felt the need to limit contact and come to someone they claimed to trust to anonymously admit they aren't frothing at the mouth for one of these aforementioned ships. (Thank u btw for feeling u could trust me) This is not okay!!! People have to see how wrong this is!!! Right?? Right?!

I have no idea how much people will respect all this considering the source: a 21 year old reader insert writer who dedicates most of her time to writing teenagers into the plot of stranger things with Will Byers as their love interest (yes, specifically fem presenting/ she/her pronoun users). So no, I wouldn't blame anyone for hearing me say the words "I'm not a big byler shipper" and assume it has anything to do with that. But I'd hope that anyone who knows me, or is at least willing to hear me out, will understand that I have stated many times (and likely will again cause im a ✨️repetitive bitch✨️) that when I was a teenager, I was going through the absolute worst years of my life. Like, it warmed me up the for 2020s, that's how bad it was for me. And the only thing that got me through (likely without falling into what I believe would have become some incredibly dangerous habits) was falling into a world I could completely disappear into and forget my own shitty world existed.

I found this series called The Maze Runner, fell absolutely in love with the books and the world and bought every copy I could get my hands on. And when that wasn't enough, I looked for every blogspace I could get my hands on. Enter tumblr. Not even five minutes into my new account and searching the maze runner tag do I find a short little story called an "x reader". I literally cried. I was so fucking alone cause, and I'll tell yall, in the span of 15 months, I put down my dog of 11 years, lost my great-grandmother, then my grandpa, then my great grandfather, and then my grandmother. I had reason to believe I would suddenly lose my best friend to depression, and then to top it off my parents got divorced. Granted things have definitely gotten brighter, but little 14 year old me was no where near a healthy state of mind, or body and stumbling across something that not only let me disappear from my collapsing world, but surrounded me in love and encouragement, no matter how corny or silly, by the characters I had fallen in love with was an indescribable experience. This. This is precisely why i write. If theres even a chance i can provide that for you, and God, in the 2020s of all time to be a teenager, than i want to. I want to pay it forward.

That being said, I'd also hope one would understand while things were on the mend, I wasn't fully recovered by the time stranger things came out and i decided to write for it. The grief and trauma was one thing but, another thing you guys might know about me if you've been following me for a while is in the past, I've struggled severely—and still do a great deal—with compulsory heterosexuality. And honestly, a little internalized homophobia I think. It's stuff I work on daily, and it's stuff, I'd be willing to bet, a lot more people deal with than you'd expect. It's for this reason, that I suspect hilariously enough, me a deeply closeted lesbian while planning an x (at the time fem!)reader rewrite for younger kids to escape into, was faced with the choice of a love interest and subconsciously chose one of the only semi-canonically gay male characters available. Yes, essentially, in my own comphet riddled brain, I subconsciously gave both the (fem)reader and Will Byers my own comphet.

But guess what? Characters evolve as the story evolves and that rings true for COSMIC. I wish I had stories back then that casually explored sexuality outside the confines of cisgender heterosexuality in a safe, fun, encouraging way. I also wish I had stories that led you down one story with one character only and suck you in only to change and evolve if needed to say, an opposite sex or nonbinary character as the new love interest and being able to do so cause the love interest was never THE PLOT in the first place. It certainly would have helped speed things along I think, and even if I wasn't its healthy to try things out/consider before saying, ya know I think this still feels right, I'm good! And that's okay!

I deeply deeply appreciate anyone who read this far. I completely understand how much i tend to blather and granted i didnt plan on going into the specifics of my childhood trauma but i felt it necessary info as to why on earth im preaching gay Will while i currently have a Will x fem!reader on my page (Again, dont worry. Im not about to disrespect/erase anything likely to come in s4, nor have is this is a sudden thing in COSMIC) and seemingly shitting on ships. Again, it's the over intense shippers, not the ships themselves and overall lack of byler content that failed to get my attention.

In conclusion, yes, I don't particularly ship Byler much like you dear nonnie, but anyone who automatically thinks that statement makes us homophobic really needs to take a step back and perhaps consider taking a break from public fandom space. If you as a byler OR mileven shipper feel confronted at every corner to a point you're jumping down others throats, you need to take a break from the internet. Draw your ship, write some fanfic if you still want to engage in fandom activities offline but take a break from the internet and prowling for any throat to jump down.

Blech. Rant over. I kinda accidentally combined it with the pre season 4 premiere disclaimer for Cosmic and how and why I have a will x reader with a fem reader copy and how that's going to be affected by s4 so that's prob why it's so long but I don't regret it. The point is, this is and always will be a safe space for fandom enjoyment and just hanging out and the last thing I want here is someone to be feel afraid or threatened in any way. I love you all so much and wish nothing but amazing things for you all. And thank you again, dear nonnie, for trusting me. It means a lot.

💕💕💕 - Yurtle

[hanzajesthanza]

No one asked about Regis? So here: Emiel Regis Rohellec Terzieff-Godefroy

this bingo card is more awash with red than the north when he was arounddddd. ok ok

"they are so cool looking": i'll split this part up into three parts:

his fashion. i'm happy to have a fave character that dresses all in black, because i dress in all black. i have realized that there is a lot of creativity to be explored in all-black outfits, because you can do so much with silhouette, textures, patterns... and how he dresses. aprons? thank you. capes? thank you. velvet jacket? thank you again. i love regis' fashion because it's well done yet not begging for attention - because there was once a time in which he was begging for attention - he's happy to exist without trying to appeal to others...

his looks. i'm happy that he appears middle-aged because - and i have said this before, but will reiterate my theory and opinion - that vampires appear how they feel they exist, and regis coming back from his youth and now appearing as an adult demonstrates what he has learned, how he has changed, and that he has symbolically, personally aged, and that age, learning, and humanness is beautiful.

his powers. come on. he can disappear and hypnotize and fly as a bat... these are insanely cool. emerging from the shadows is sick as fuck. and it looks cooler when you're wearing a cape.

"everyone but me is wrong about them" + "they got done dirty by the fans": i made @burnfalka to address two evils: firstly, n*tflix, as it is everybody's enemy. but secondly, regis' treatment in the games and by the fandom. people who are h*rny about regis because they think drinking blood is hot are my enemies. or people who focus on regis' horrible drama-filled pain from blood & wine... i have most of the fandom blocked i think just because that type of content is insufferable to me. it's confusing, it's not who regis is...???

"not as deep as they seem": regis is very funny and a comic relief character but he is not seen like this by the fandom because of misperceptions that vampires are dramatic and not funny. to the contrary, read baptism of fire, he's very funny. his entire backstory is not that deep, it's just dark comedy and a parody of a human story of alcoholism, there's parody like "fly drunk" instead of "drive drunk," "didn't return to the crypt for three nights" instead of "didn't return home for three nights." he's just a comic relief character in so many circumstances but it's overlooked.

"wasted potential" + "they're deeper than they seem" + "they work better as part of a dynamic": related to how the hansa needs their relationships explored, regis' character arc is completed by existing in the hansa and learning what a family is, because humanity = family, to be part of a human family makes him human. his relationships in the hansa aren't just funny and for fun, they change his character for the better. i don't think this is necessarily "wasted potential," because i do believe it's canon, but it's just something i've decuded from the text and added some imagination to, which isn't apparent upon a first read of the books

i think the entire thing about toussaint being a dream they want to dream but in the end must wake up from is integral to the plot of lady of the lake and all of their characters - toussaint is really deeper than it seems, or how it gets treated - because it's symbolically the dreamland, the fairytale land, the perfect land where everything is ok and they can pretend to be whoever they want and forget about the harsh world of reality and their dark pasts. and i think regis' connection to this is that dreaming a dream and being in a drunken state are symbolically the same thing (which is why toussaint is not only the fairytale land, but the wine land) so he is no stranger to this kind of temptation. i think that part is really interesting, and it's much more deep than him showing a silver fork to the high nobility.

i can't answer this part of the bingo without talking about regis and angouleme but instead of writing an entire new post i will link to the masterpost found in my previous pinned post which is here...

but the sparknotes of it is that angouleme is wild, crazy, young, and fucked up with so many problems, and regis was once exactly like her. because they are like these kindred spirits, he could guide her into discovering peace and humanity, but also, he doesn't fully understand humanity because he's still learning about it, so angouleme could also guide him into humanity by teaching him what it is like to care about a child, which is a very human feature (because human immortality is achieved through raising children which will outlive their parents). basically, they could lift each other's character development up like the troll physics forklift meme. the blind leading the blind, the "never knew humanity" leading the "lost humanity". and also since they are both funny characters they can be funny together and get into hijinks and trouble and regis can get his cape caught in a doorframe . and he's like her dad if dads were not your dads but your teachers and guardian angels and bartenders instead.

"got too much screen time": it's a challenge because he's talkative and thus needs more page space to speak, but in lady of the lake, i feel his page time needs to be balanced with milva's page time, since they balance one another. for example, in baptism of fire, his page time is well-balanced with milva's, milva gets the first and second chapters, regis gets the third and fourth chapters, they unite in the fifth chapter, and divide the seventh chapter between them.

in lady of the lake, regis has too much time that becomes unbalanced by milva due to her physical and emotional injuries taking her out of scenes, i need to have scenes with milva speaking to regis or geralt about her injured ribs and about her turned-down relationship with amadis.

"they are literally me!": i, too, must explain things at length to people and act like an insufferable know-it-all or else i'll die.

regis talks soooo much and what i love about his talking is that most of the time he is talking about his own thoughts or assessments, which ultimately do not matter and have little effect. in dandelion's words, "He had the unnerving habit of announcing allegations and truths with the tone and air of a prophet, to which we soon stopped responding, because the announced allegations either actually were true, or at least seemed to be sound, or they were unable to be verified, which amounted to the same thing."

"i like them enough to project my own issues onto them": the reason i started to like regis in the first place was because i projected my internalized homophobia onto him and worked through some issues... everybody say thank you regis.

now i project my issues onto both him and angouleme so if you add them together, you'd get me.

"i'm mentally ill about them" + "they are like a blorbo to me" + "i want to carry them in a handbag like a tiny dog": i constantly think about regis and angouleme's mentorship-friendship, so for that reason i am mentally ill (or maybe they help me with my mental illness... it's like a chicken or the egg question, which came first?). regis is blorbo from my shows books because i will talk about him incessantly and extrapolate information from passages of the text you had forgotten about or thought were irrelevant. and i do sometimes carry a regis keychain-necklace (i broke the necklace chain last week. yeah that sucked so now i have to get a new one) that i feel like functions as a talisman of protection. you don't have to believe me but read the prelude to chapter 3 in baptism of fire about mandrakes. like the mandrakes, he helps with trials. thank you sir surgeon

send me character opinion bingo now that i'm off hiatus (bingo post)