#this is unironically one of the best things i’ve ever drawn

[megamindsfreshmintycum]

‘femboy freddy’ as requested by my brother

[katagawajr]

10 Characters | 10 Fandoms | 10 Tags!

(tagged by @babeoffrontiers thank you!!! 🫶)

i think other than the number one spot, none of these are in any particular order. but yes let's begin.

Caleb Widogast (Critical Role). undisputed favorite character in any piece of media, he’s my entire world. literally a perfect narrative story, an emotional character exploration of grief and found family and time itself. profoundly sad man but also filled with so much silly sweetness that makes the sadness even MORE painful. he's a friend, he's a lover, he's a pining man, he's of the empire but not a friend to the empire. he's MY boy, he's a magic man, he's trying to be the man his parents believed he could be. i can cry (and have cried) about him for hours on end but i’m not making this list any longer. ("hi caleb... how are you doing today?" AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH)

Gale Dekarios (Baldur’s Gate 3). omg another sad wizard? sorry i have a type. wyll also belongs on this list but i’m hopelessly drawn to gale so i have to pick him. mama’s boy? cat dad? big wet eyes, a little suicidal and extremely devoted? i don’t know that i’ve clutched my heart harder than when i saw his act 2 romance scene for the first time. i think it also just pulls at my heartstrings that his relationship with tav is so showing of his kindness regardless of whether or not you romance him. even platonic gale is so ;-;

Ann Takamaki (Persona 5). i fought about putting yusuke or ryuji or even zenkichi but this spot has to go to ann because she's just so. perfect. the first arc of p5 is the BEST hands down and she's literally one of the biggest reasons why. the writers end up ruining her but the way she grows even in that first arc... her confidant scene with the line "i'm just a lonely, scared girl..." BREAKS ME. she's a treasure, she's strong and kind and wants to be a light for others while not giving up on the things that make her 'girly.' and her love for ryuji as best friends is one of my favorite dynamics ever.

Artemis (Hades). i love artemis in general, i grew an attachment during my greek mythology kid phase and never let go so i'm obsessed with every iteration of her in media. but artemis in hades has my favorite visual design in the game combined with her quiet sweetness :') and her willingness to have a family bond with zagreus because she's also an outcast who's overwhelmed by her other family members. and then to be a total badass of a goddess, ugh love her.

Katagawa Jr. (Borderlands). okay this one is funny because i honestly love katagawa as an OC more than canon... like canon treated him pretty badly and if it was based on that alone then august tftbl would be in this spot. but the POTENTIAL... ohhh the potential... youngest son born into the highest echelon of one of the most powerful companies in the galaxy, but to CEO parents who see them only as property?? and puts barcodes on the back of their necks?? and katagawa jr being the desperately lonely, attention-seeking son? don't get me started on him and naoko... genuinely my OC now. i took him from canon.

Julian Devorak (The Arcana). this one always embarrasses me to talk about because it's like a romance visual novel game. so let's make it quick. but julian is unironically such a good character, i'm a sucker for the way he loves his little sister more than anything in the world. also for being a silly pirate plague doctor who wants to help people, blames himself for a past he can't even remember, and trips over his own heels being so madly in love. the outfit and eyepatch too, 10/10.

Crona Gorgon (Soul Eater). the definition of 'nonbinary baby' LMAO- but seriously, i instantly fell in love with their design when i first watched. one of the best ever, including ragnarok's design being a part of them. being so powerful but so pained, just such a sad soul and it's so interesting to watch them on screen. i love a character that seems silly and awkward and then also can turn very scary/cool. brief shoutout to stein though, i almost put him on here instead because his design and fighting style are just peak >>

Mad Maggie (Apex Legends). my first ever apex love was horizon, but idk when maggie came out i just fell in love with her personality? she's SO funny to me. i also love her and fuse's backstory, and i think her tough attitude but capability of being kinda sweet as well is cute (although i genuinely just adore her as a mean character too. let women be meaner. she's funny and hot about it). her kit is also very fun even though i'm bad with it, i love riot drilling halfway across the map when i play her. her voice is 10/10 and even her theme music is banger.

Undyne (Undertale). undertale still has one of the greatest narratives in all of gaming history and i will die happily on that hill. sorry. undyne was always my girl, her being the badass knight (that everyone assumes is some scary guy), her theme music is still one of THE best video game songs ever. her design is amazing, finding out that she's papyrus's friend and that she's in love with alphys, her backstory with asgore. all amazing character beats. and that's not even mentioning the genocide run... "for the sake of the whole world... I, UNDYNE, WILL STRIKE YOU DOWN." ugh.

Prince Canute (Vinland Saga). gah i haven't even watched season 2 yet because i'm terribly behind. BUT. oh my god, i think canute's monologue in the snow in season 1 actually fundamentally changed my brain???? and the way that i think??? like i felt something crack within me. i actually gave a talk about that exact scene in an animation class i had once. anyways i loved watching him on screen and watching him change... watching him be so sad... not to mention his design is just very very pretty. can't wait to see my best friend canute in s2 i'm sure nothing bad will happen right.

tagging: @magnuficentwo @aliensmoothie and anyone else who wants to do it if you feel like it, no obligation :) i'm bad at the tagging part of tag games sorry!

[sj0228]

astro notes for fun lol

HEY! this is my first astro observations post so don't be too hard on me lol unless u wanna then sure maybe i can improve them somehow BUTANYWAYZ this is for entertainment purposes only!! obviously these are just my own observations so if they don't resonate with you don't get offended or you're a big ol' 🅱️uss so here they are!! also SHOUTOUT TO MY AMAZING FRIENDS fyi i got sum help from them by asking them billions of questions to confirm my suspicions so uh hope that makes the observations more accurate LOL ANYWAYS HERE THEY ARE!! i'll probably make more in the future cuz i think they're super fun to make :D also if u couldnt tell uhm this isnt very professional im not professional BUT I TRIED TO MAKE IT PRETTY so pls dont be bothered lol im just doing this for fun i didnt even wanna make an astro page so yea </3pretty unreliable LMAOOO

👩🏻‍🦲 the house your mars is in is what pisses you off the most!! (eg. 1st - people assuming things about you, 5th - people beating around the bush, 7th - things that disrupt the harmony of your environment, 9th - the need to hold back your opinions because others get bothered by them being "offensive")

👩🏻‍🦲 cancers are true ambiverts and i've truly never ever seen a cancer who wouldn't be both introverted and extroverted at times. they are always either social introverts or quiet extroverts lol. or both!! (somehow 0_0) they enjoy people's attention, whether it's wanting to be noticed or appreciated or generally cared for, and they need their alone time. they tend to be very productive at those times, too.

👩🏻‍🦲 ok i have a lot of notes for cancers so it's gonna be a lot lmao sorry anyways!! i've also noticed they LOVEEE breaking loose every once in a while, if not every time they're given the opportunity! thing is, it's usually only if someone else is there to convince them or do it with them. they don't like taking risks alone! they are very impressed and fond of the 'wild child' persona people because they bring out the cancer's wild side!

👩🏻‍🦲 libra moons are absolutely loved by people, it's so crazy! like, no matter what they do they always have attention on them. this can manifest badly if the moon person is actually pretty horrible, things they do tend to be overlooked and others move on pretty quickly from their mistakes, letting them do whatever they want. i wanted to give an example but uh,,,,, i shall.. refrain😳

👩🏻‍🦲 libra suns with water moons are so scary when they're angry..

👩🏻‍🦲 cancer moon is what i deem as the zodiac sign cute-ifyer lol. literally any "tough" sign like capricorn, scorpio or aquarius becomes a super cute goofball with this moon. WEIRDEST THING EVER THOUGH is that it doesn't work for cancer suns?! like if a cancer sun has a cancer moon this just makes the person very confusing but very funny. they can brighten anybody's day without trying!

👩🏻‍🦲 okay uh this isn't an astro note as much as it is me being a phucken simp but uh..... I HAVE AN UNDYING LOVE FOR ARIES SUNS I WILL MARRY EVERY EACHAND ONE OF YOU ISTG. ARIES SUNS ARE THE NICEST AND FUNNIEST PEOPEL I'VE EVER SEEN YOU HAVE THE BEST HUMOR EVER AND YOU'RE SO KIND TO EVERYBODY YOU'RE SO KIND I LOVE YOU YOU'RE TOO GOOD FOR THIS PLANET I WANT TO HUG YOU FOREVER okay jbshxhjn but fr aries are the best people ever?!?!?!?!?!?! pls

👩🏻‍🦲 okay JUST SO THIS WHOLE ARIES MENTION ISN'T JUST A POINTLESS LOVE CONFESSION - i've noticed a lot of ♥aries♥ people use the laughing crying face emojis (😂,🤣) unironically and it's honestly.....the best thing ever

👩🏻‍🦲 taurus suns do this sometimes as well

👩🏻‍🦲 THE MOST UNHEALTHY PERCEPTIONS OF ZODIAC SIGNS ARE PUT ON FIRE SIGNS, NOT THE WATER SIGNS AND THIS IS COMING FROM A PISCES!!!!!!1 every stereotype is always showing fire signs as those sunshine of the group people, the baddies, and the ones with the biggest 'idgaf' attitude. and while this can totally be true sometimes, most of the time it's super different! sad fire signs break my heart pls i just wanna hug you guys T-T they have it the hardest because unlike water signs who are already expected to be emotional, they often repress their emotions for the sake of others and because of the fear of betrayal or judgement, or just generally the idea of "it's better to have fake friends than to have zero friends". YOU GUYS PLEASE. cut these people off from your life you deserve soo much better i know it can be super hard to open up for you u just need a hug omg EVERYONE PLEASE CHECK UP ON YOUR FIRE SIGN FRIENDS ASK THEM ABOUT THEIR DAY N STUFF THEY WILL APPRECIATE YOU CARING FOR THEM! pls stay best and take care sweethearts ily!!!

👩🏻‍🦲 i've also noticed that some of the signs tend to show their sadness through anger - this is not just astrology though so if your friend has been jumpy lately please just check on them they are probably going thru sth😳 anyways the signs i mostly saw this in are pisces, aries and libra.

👩🏻‍🦲 cancers with feminine moons (earth and water) tend to be pretty introspective. they often think they're the ones being mistreated, and while this of course might be true, in reality it usually goes a lonnng way back lol. they often pay very little attention to others!! (masculine moon sign cancers (fire and air) can often be too focused on others more than themselves) this can be good because they don't snoop in other people's business but oh my god, guys, please pay attention to your friends, too! this WILL lead to lost friendships because, let's be real, nobody wants a one-sided friendship with someone who only cares about themselves! i don't want to target anybody here but this is just a pattern i've noticed wayyyy too often, so you might want to look into it and if you think this is you all you need is just to enlargen your perspective and it will all be okay. but please, PLEASE. think about your friends

👩🏻‍🦲 i needed to get this^ out because people often put this on leo placements but tbh i notice that leo placements are THE MOST generous of the entire zodiac and they always think of others first and that's what really makes them so popular. they very rarely are as egocentric as everybody says, they're just really loving and that makes them very lovable!

👩🏻‍🦲 scorpio risings are the prettiest people i've ever seen. not even kidding bruh i could stare at them for EVER their eyes are absolutely gorgeous and their mannerisms are just perfect pls marry me

👩🏻‍🦲 gemini and taurus placements make an individual soooo chill to the point where it often makes them lazy and a biig procrastinator lol. tho i love how they make light of it by using their amazing humor!

👩🏻‍🦲 you most definitely have your IC be one of your family members' sun sign or one of their personal planets. i have a taurus ic and my sister is a taurus sun!

👩🏻‍🦲 sagittarius suns are the best huggers cause THEY REALLY NEED A HUG SO GO HUG THEM RIGHT NOW. pls guys why r u so sad..

👩🏻‍🦲 scorpio mars aren't even as sexual as everybody says tbh. but they definitely do have some interesting.....interests ;)

👩🏻‍🦲 pluto aspects to personal planets are very prominent, but very hidden. if you have them, most likely you will be the only person to know about this side of you and it can be pretty dark..

👩🏻‍🦲 planets conjunct your sun will be the people you attract most in your life (venus conjunct sun - taurus and libra, jupiter - sagittarius and pisces, mars - aries and scorpio EVERYWHERE)

👩🏻‍🦲 your moon sign will be the sun sign of most of your friends

👩🏻‍🦲 if you don't quite relate to your ascendant, look at the sign you have in your 3rd house and at your mercury sign. this is how you communicate, convey your ideas etc. and will often be a major factor in people's first impressions of you :)

👩🏻‍🦲 lilith aspecting your sun may mean there's a side of you nobody knows.. 👁👁 you're also probably very convincing and people can be very drawn to you and they can't explain why. this also goes for lilith in 7th, especially in girls!

👩🏻‍🦲 you and your friends probably have each other's sun signs as your personal planets!!

👩🏻‍🦲 the kindest person you know is probably either a virgo or an aries.. and the meanest person you know is also probably a virgo or aries LOL

👩🏻‍🦲 capricorn suns & risings are THE hardest to read!! if they don't say what they mean people will just assume and they're never going to be right it's wild 👩🏻‍🦲 also capricorns definitely have the most dad energy, while sagittariuses are more like actual dads jdbshxcvb

OKAY THAT'S ALL!!!! im sure i have more but its 2 am i have school tomorrow or actually its today now so bye uh anyways there will most likely be more so if u liked these stay tuned!! oh and let me know if they were true witchu :o thats it love u stay awesome and super cool i love u byebye!!

[corpsentry]

january: an art retrospective

i did some stuff last month (but it’s a lot of stuff and there’s a photodump + some Serious Fucking Reflection, so it’s all below the cut)

so ok, let’s start with this. here are some heads. each head has a red arrow. that red arrow is what i call the red line of the devil. it’s the slope of the face from the side of the eye to the cheekbone and then down towards the chin. up until like 2 weeks ago, i couldn’t draw it. i couldn’t fucking draw it. i would edit over that part of the face over and over again until i was frustrated and tired and i had a raging homosexual headache and it still never looked right. notice that each head is different. notice that each head looks wrong.

at the start of 2021 i finally admitted to myself, as per the image above, that i was deeply, deeply unhappy with my art. what was the problem? i dunno. but i decided i was going to fix it and i was going to do so via another one scribble a day event wherein for every day of january i would find a photo of a human head, and i would draw it.

january 1st, 2021. i was embarrassed to tweet this even on my private account where like 5 friends and a rock would see it. in retrospect, you can also see all of my bad habits emerging like dicks from a hole in the ground. it’s disproportionate. the brows look flat. the eyes are slanting upwards. the entire drawing looks flat, like this isn’t a 3d person but a caricature of one.

january 2nd, 3rd, 4th:

on the 2nd i decided to start a separate thread for doodles and applied learning. here’s the first set of tests

the rest of the week is kind of uneventful so we’re going to skip those. fast forward to january 11th

this one is especially bad. i am acutely aware, suddenly, that i am not changing anything at all. i’m stressed and miserable about it because i’m still trying to see people as people and trying to draw people that look attractive and proportionate and hot. my friend, leny, reminds me that i need to think about faces in terms of planes. i have a moment. my other friend masha sends me some links to anatomy tutorials. i have another moment.

january 11th. applied sketch

january 13th is when i start the troubleshooting process. the link above drives me mad because i’m pretty happy with the face but then i realize that there’s something very fucking wrong with the shape of the head LOL and then i realize that i’ve never had any idea what the proportion of the face to the rest of the skull is so i grit my teeth and i open a new canvas and i

bald studies. it seemed like the right thing to do. can’t draw heads? ok draw some heads. look at some photographs. i traced each photo but tried to stick to straight lines so that i could replicate the shapes more easily. i broke each face down into shapes. i thought about airplanes

i got really excited. i started doing studies, then applied studies, then stylized studies.

sketches. i’m not sure what’s going on (as always) and it’s very rough, but they look different from the sketches i did on january 2nd. that’s a start

january 16th’s daily study. looks more like a person now. juuuuuust a bit

more applied studies

on the 18th i take a break and go stare at some lips because i don’t understand how the fuck they work. again, i focus on shapes, on volume, on the fact that these things exist in 3d. holy fuck lips exist in 3d. holy fuck we are real

january 19th. i’m working on it.

january 22nd. some sketches + a daily study. it has finally occurred to me that heads can tilt up and down and that things look different accordingly. yes i was not aware of this before. yes i have been drawing for over a decade.

january 23rd. by this point after doing my daily sketch i almost always go back and do an applied study which is basically to say i drew a lot of fucking links. this one looks kind of okay. i’m kind of proud

january 25th. links. trying to make sense of everything i’ve learned

26th, 27th, 28th. daily studies

january 1st. january 31st

The End Of The Photo Dump (dab)

ok NOW i get to talk about what i discovered while studying the shit out of human beings

FIRST OF ALL, there is something precious and magical about drawing shit without the explicit knowledge that you’re going to tweet that shit out to 45 people later. it takes the burden of perception off your shoulders and that does something to you, or at least that’s my theory. i told myself i wouldn’t post any of this stuff until the end of the month (if i wanted to post it at all) and kept everything off my public social media accounts and that meant i could draw ugly as hell without worrying about who would point and laugh, which i absolutely fucking did. a lot of these are fucking trainwrecks. most of these are fucking trainwrecks. why do they look like that?? why??? this doesn’t look like the work of someone who’s allegedly been drawing since they were in kindergarten, does it?????

here’s why: because that person took a huge motherfucking swing at everything they’d ever known about art and spent a month building something new in its place. the abstract explanation is that i grew up on shoujo and weird old anime and my understanding of anatomy was unironically kamichama karin and while i love kamichama karin, when kamichama karin is your rule even if you try to break it, you’re going to end up going nowhere. “you have to know the rules to break them”, yeah? well i didn’t know shit. the abstract explanation is i’ve been miserable about my art for a few years now because i saw other people doing things effortlessly which i couldn’t and instead of going back to the basics, i tried to do what they did (not plagiarism, mind you, i mean i literally tried to copy the red line of the devil i mentioned above because i couldn’t even make that happen) and then i fucking failed.

the simple explanation is this. i had to unlearn everything, and relearn it again (like some kind of new renaissance clown, what the fuck is this?)

take this for example. all my life i’ve drawn faces in the order: eyes, nose, mouth, face shape, head. this works for some people, im aware, but it was something central to how i had always drawn, so i decentralized it. i said fuck you to the old me and changed the order up. now i start with the nose, then the eyes, mouth, the chin line, and the sides of the face. now i force myself to think about the human head as a series of parts interacting with each other instead of a bunch of disparate features which i want to look pretty.

or let’s use this zelda from last year. something about this looked wrong last october, the way something about all of my drawings looked wrong, but i couldn’t pinpoint it for hell the way i couldn’t articulate Any of my feelings about the visual arts. now, looking back, here’s what i see. that nose is sticking out far too much given how she’s not really facing very far away from the camera. that ear at the back shouldn’t be there. her forehead is too big. she doesn’t have a forehead. what the fuck is up with the shape of her head?

so apparently reject modernity embrace tradition has its roots in alt-right terminology and i’m not very horny for the alt-right (you understand), but the spirit survives here. you know sometimes you have to admit that you have no idea what the fuck you’re doing and draw people for 31 days. i’ve spent my whole life drawing stylized people and while again there are artists who have no issue with this, i veered off the track of the Good and the Holy and couldn’t get back on. i had no point of reference because i’d never thought about what an actual human being looks like, so i had no way to fix what i knew in my gut looked wrong but wouldn’t come out better.

this was hard. this was like oikawa tooru swallowing his worthless pride and admitting that ushijima wakatoshi had gotten the best of him for the last time in his high school career, but in haikyuu!! by furudate haruichi oikawa tooru fucks off to argentina and then joins the argentinean national team, and you know what, i think i’ve made it to argentina (not the team just the country). as per the golden rule of dont fucking move until you’re at least two thirds of the way through the month, i only started trying to draw Shit shit on like the 22nd or something, but i was happy with that i created. i am happy with what i’ve done. i’ve posted like 2 things this month that involve people with what i now call ~applied Knowledge~~ and they’re, like, not perfect obviously (perfection is an unattainable ideal), but i’m fucking proud of them. i didn’t spend 5 hours hunched over my laptop adjusting the red line of the devil because it’s not a devil’s line anymore. because i finally sorta get how people work. because i sat down and i said ‘we are not going to fuck with this misery shit anymore’ and then i did that. it’s just a line now.

here are 2 collages tracking my painstakingly carved out progress from january 2nd to february 2nd because i’m a slut for collages

and here’s what i’ve done to my art! the same person drew these but also Not Really! you know! for the first time in a year i don’t immediately hate what i’ve drawn. you know what guys? art is fucking fun. zelda’s forehead doesn’t scare me anymore because i know how foreheads fucking work now, and i don’t know everything, and i’m going to keep troubleshooting stuff as i go (i want to draw a skeleton. like a. i want to draw a goddamn skeleton guys) but i’m honestly and genuinely proud of what i’ve done in the span of a month, and i’m also in disbelief. i started this month-long challenge out as a last ditch effort to make peace with my art because i’ve been tired for a long time and i was ready to kick the bucket on drawing people altogether. i didn’t think anything would happen. nothing’s happened for years. i’ve been miserable for years.

this was the caption for january 1st, 2021. i was super, super fucking embarrassed and it looks like super fucking shit, but you know what, i think i did in fact triumph over the bullshit. surprisingly enough, when you put in consistent effort into something, You Will See Results. didn’t see that coming, did you? i know i didn’t.

this isn’t a success story. it’s a happiness story. i never gave a shit damn about the institute of art or whatever, i was just mad at myself because what i saw in my head didn’t match up with what was on the canvas. and now it’s getting better. now i’m calibrating the compass. now drawing not just backgrounds but also people is exciting to me, and i can stick my links in your face and tell you ‘they hot’. i’m going to keep doing that. i’m going to keep going until i drop off the side of the earth and then spiral towards mars like some kind of fairy, and then i’m going to create something beautiful.

thanks for reading. here’s a pr department link for sticking around until the end

[cupidlakes]

What's your favorite and least favorite thing about gogy?

idk why this isn’t framed like an ask like it looks like i just typed the above stuff out omg i don’t know what you did op but sure i’ll answer this!

edit: anon i’m so sorry and i didn’t realise you said “thing” and this is very lengthy

i’ll start with my least favourite, george can be really stubborn sometimes and when he won’t easily give into something it’ll kind of ruin the mood/make others really frustrated and it can be tense to watch

it’s like sometimes he knows when to concede and back down and other times he’ll just argue for ages and want it his way it’s usually over very silly stuff related to minecraft, then again it also doesn’t ruin entire streams because him and his friends are quick to get over stuff it’s just something he does which can be awkward to watch in the moment

on a more serious note george being aggressively apolitical is also not my favourite thing i get it and i largely appreciate how he tries to stay unproblematic and he has a good track record but his radio silence sometimes on things is not a good look and it’s something that can personally bother me

but also it’s not like i can or want people to force him to make statements on stuff he doesn’t know enough about but a little allyship couldn’t hurt when it’s a cause everyone is rallying behind and most of the time it’s only ever george who hasn’t said anything even sapnap and dream have had things they stood for or at least when it mattered and george just hasn’t, ever

it’s worth it to note i don’t think he’s secretly a bad person or has really awful views i just think he doesn’t get/care about politics and it’s okay to admit that comes from a place of privilege no one is above this

my favourite george things include (because i cant pick just one):

how he instantly vibes with people he sometimes straight up doesn’t know there’s so many examples of this and i always love watching his mcc povs because it’s nice to see people instantly warm to him, he just has that effect and it means i never fear him being in calls with people he doesn’t talk to/know that well because it’s never awkward he’s always pleasant and he’ll match their energy and it’s a really nice time! bbh was right yesterday about george having a bright personality that people are drawn to

his non-competitiveness and ability to not take stuff toxically seriously is really nice and refreshing like again, it’s why i’ll always pick stuff like his mcc pov to watch because he’s just there for the ride and to have fun and be entertaining for his viewers and obviously he’ll try his best and if he wins it’s so exciting but if he doesn’t it was still a really really good time and the vibes would always be good regardless

i love his respect for his own privacy unironically i think it’s cool that he doesn’t want to share every detail about his life and he shouldn’t have to i like that he clearly separates the content and his online persona from his real life some stuff is just personal to him and he should be allowed his things that he doesn’t want to share with the world but i like when he does and it always feels special when he wants to :)

i like that he’s kind to his viewers and always wants to make us happy and it’s in the little things he does, like i was rewatching an old stream and someone asked him to turn on the subtitles in minecraft because they were hard of hearing and he did it immediately he also writes down peoples names to check out what they’ve sent to him and seems to make an effort to check

i’ve mentioned this before but he tells off people for spending too much money on him genuinely and it’s funny i remember him once saying something along the lines of “it’s not reverse psychology when i tell you to stop like i seriously don’t want you spending that much on me” and it was just nice to hear and he always wants to satisfy his viewers and make us happy and give us the best content he can offer and i really appreciate it

i also love how he genuinely engages with people he’ll do it by pointing out peoples funny twitch names and expands on their donos when he wouldn’t have to and starts discussions w his chat and i just like that when someone says something to him he takes it in considers it and replies honestly and starts talking about it generally i don’t know how to explain it but george doesn’t brush off donos the same way i see a lot of other people do he genuinely thinks about his answers and what he’ll say back

would it be silly to mention how i love how he interacts with his pets/animals he seems to melt down into a softer version of himself whispering and being really gentle it’s a nice side of him to get to see sometimes he seems like genuinely such a kind person

and my god this is getting so long but the last thing i’ll point out and i talk about this a lot so i’m sorry but it’s how i love when george has these little moments where you can see he really pays attention to and appreciates the smallest details in life whether it’s him fawning over dogs in minecraft or simplistically describing the frogs he’d catch as a kid as “slimy” or appreciating a good sunset it’s like, i just like how he looks at things and decides he likes them and wants to be happy over them, this world is so chaotic and busy there’s smth beautiful to me in someone who can stop and appreciate the simple wonders in it for a moment and it’s weirdly grounding

alright i’m so sorry this was an essay long response i’m so bad at condensing my george feelings but i hope this came across well if you’re still here thanks for reading

[river-bottom-nightmare]

same anon of earlier , so we all agree that achilles calm down is a superior song , like wts is it gifted by appollo or something , btw i meant by circus music the music we play in the circus

hiya babe!

we most certainly agree. achilles calm down is the superior song and i love it beyond words. just,,,,,,the singing the music the violin the french parts the way his voice goes light in some parts and deep and heavy and drawn out in others and just all of it. god i love that song.

and dick listening to circus music? unironically? just because he likes it? and it brings back happy memories? y e s. and the fact that it gets annoying real quick to literally everybody else is just a plus. 

you know what i’d like to see? dick’s circus history leaving a mark on him. dick being absolutely unfazed by all this clown stuff. and yea the joker is included in that but also the movie it! comes out and dick is far from afraid, he’s excited, and he genuinely enjoys it. not bc he likes horror movies necessarily, but because the clown was so cool. dick having a pretty healthy diet, a requirement for both a vigilante and an acrobat and also just something his parents taught him, but he has a sweet tooth for the worst things. him just eating cone after cone of candy floss, the sickly sticky-sweetness not bothering him at all. nuts absolutely drenched in honey and butter. candied fruits that are more sugar syrup and caramel than fruit, and being able to eat more than one. yet he turns his nose up at bubblegum or chocolate. its confusing. dick always likes to stay busy, keep himself occupied, but its not because of his workaholic nature. (okay, it’s not only because of his workaholic nature). in the circus, there’s always work to be done, and everyone had a job they could pick up. everything from setting up tents and rigs to sorting the money box to organizing the prizes at the booths, dick rarely ever had free time. and this childhood of constantly working and making himself useful was hard to wash away. damian may love animals, but he didn’t have much experience around them. dick, on the other hand, knew how to coax a stray dog to eat from his hand and knew how to keep an elephants toes clean and healthy. so give me dick teaching damian about animals. dick never once complaining at bruce’s harsh training schedule, and bruce’s high standards when it came to physical evaluations and combat, because dick’s parents had been the best acrobats in the world. rigorous training and discipline had always been a part of his life, no matter how much softer his parents were than bruce. he and bruce often clashed, but the intense training was something they could usually agree on, and it was one of the few things dick would follow bruce’s orders on without complaint. dick barely even registering camera lights from vapid paparazzi, because the spotlights in the circus were so much brighter. dick always preferring to wear shoes whenever he could, because who knows where you’d find a stray nail or sharp object on the ground leftover from setting up the travelling circus. just,,,,,,dick’s circus heritage showing, in small, everyday ways.

(keep in mind i don’t actually know much about living in a travelling circus. i’ve performed with one a couple times, but i’ve never actually been a part of one.)

this ask got way out of hand anon. i’m sorry i’ll shut up now. but your idea was incredible i loved it.

[officialleotolstoy]

Oh Dolokhov/Hélène Brainrot We’re Really In It Now, aka Dolokhov/Hélène playlist annotations!

I stole several songs from a playlist my friends have and I’m not gonna put those on this list, I won’t pretend I came up with those

The ship playlists (since they aren’t for canon couples) are very much based on my headcanons. We don’t get to see them interact literally ever so I’ve just extrapolated what I can. Several of these songs are at least alluding to sex, I don’t really think they actually slept together for various reasons I can enumerate if someone asks, but it’s more about the vibes of the song.

Casual Affair - Panic! At The Disco

It’s literally in the title. Bestie how much more explanation do you need? I don’t even like this song but it’s got the right energy

Those Nights - Bastille

“Aren’t we all just looking for a little bit of hope these days? Looking for somebody you can wake up with?”

Being drawn to each other because of mutual loneliness is a Thing in my interpretation of their relationship, and this hits the nail on the head.

But It’s Better If You Do - Panic! At The Disco

“Praying for love and paying in naïveté”

Again, mutual loneliness and desperation for anything resembling love. Also the “isn’t this exactly where you like me” bit fits because they won’t admit to liking each other outside of their weird intimate moments.

Hurricane - Panic! At The Disco

“Drop our anchors in a storm”

The circumstances of their lives arent super fun at the moment so they find refuge in each other but in a very weird kind of unhealthy way! “We are a hurricane” sort of alludes to knowing that you’re causing problems/your relationship isn’t great.

Almost (Sweet Music) - Hozier

“I’m almost me again, she’s almost you”

It’s about not really being In Love but kind of convincing yourself you are because it makes you feel better in the circumstances. I don’t think either of them were fully into their relationship for various reasons. Not as in they didn’t want the other, more that they were both too aware it would never work for long.

Hall & Oates - Satchmode

“I want to be in love again, with you”

This one’s about wanting the idea of love and companionship more than you actually like the other person, which I feel like kind of fits. This song is framed as one person in love with the other and one hesitating, but i think this works for both of them to hesitate.

Feel Something - Jaymes Young

“Touch me, someone, I’m too young to feel so numb”

The I have tried like six times and I can’t word why I think this song works. I don’t even like it, I skip it every time, but I think it’s got something to do with loneliness and desperation for love driving them to look for it in places they wouldn’t normally? Who knows. Send me an ask if u do.

Another Place - Bastille

“Don’t make promises to me that you’re gonna break”

They could never actually be together for SO many reasons and I think they’re both pretty aware of that. They have no desire to pretend that their relationship is anything other than what it is (“we only ever wanted one thing from this”).

When You Were Young - The Killers

“You sit there in your heartache, waiting on some beautiful boy to save you”

I do not think Hélène expected Dolokhkov to save her from anything except maybe monotony and loneliness, but this song slaps and if I can stretch the lyrics to work, I will

broken - lovelytheband

“I could be lonely with you”

Almost every song on here (including this one) is just. We’re messed up and I know we won’t really find love in each other but we might find solace for a while and be less lonely so uhhhhh wanna kiss me or what

Bleed Magic - I DONT KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME

“You stand up, stand up, before I drag you down”

They are NOT good for each other! Toxic relationships uwu

Sweater Weather - The Neighbourhood

I believe in bi4bi Hélène/Dolokhov

Enemy Fire - Bea Miller

“Sweet words from a serpent’s tongue”

This song is kinda complicated and parts of it don’t fit but the energy of “everything sucks including you but at least we can hide from the suckiness together” is sorta there. Originally I just added it for the soldier vibes because I was testing out songs but I realized i can fit some of the lyrics so on the playlist it goes

Angel of the Small Death and the Codeine Scene - Hozier

“Her sweetened breath and her tongue so mean”

They are horrible and cold to each other as a love language. This song is essentially just “Wow my evil scary gf is so hot” and you’re right Fyodor. She is.

Shut Up and Dance - WALK THE MOON

I won’t lie this one’s mostly a joke, I just think the vibes of telling someone to shut up as (maybe because) you’re falling in love with them is Dolokhov/Hélène energy. Ignore all the parts about wanting to be with her forever and her being his destiny that is not why I added it.

Lone Ranger - Rachel Platten

“I’m just gonna leave, ‘cause baby I’m a lone ranger”

I do not think Dolokhov was intending to stay with her forever at all. Very rude of him. However, she probably also knew it wouldn’t last forever, she’s not stupid.

House of Memories - Panic! At The Disco

“Promise me a place in your house of memories”

This is very much post-duel, their relationship has fizzled out but it was pretty important (do I mean emotionally or to the plot? I’ll never tell) and deserves to be remembered.

American Beauty/American Psycho - Fall Out Boy

“I’m the best worst thing that hasn’t happened to you yet”

SO MANY of these lyrics are so good for them like. Hélène’s beautiful Dolokhov’s a psycho... “you take the full truth and you pour some out” can you imagine them being open and honest with each other? Yeah, me neither. “We were pity sex” They were just sad and lonely! That was what allowed anything to happen at all in my head (not sex but bear with me it’s not my fault those are the lyrics). “All those dirty thoughts of me, they were never yours to keep” because Hélène is married to someone else, they really have no right to think of each other that way.

Sk8er Boi - Avril Lavigne

“He wasn’t good enough for her”

UNIRONICALLY THIS SONG. Hélène’s complaints about Dolokhov staying with them are just the quoted lyric. “They had a problem with his baggy clothes” yeah Dolokhov’s not as rich and bougie and the rest of them and he’s certainly rough around the edges. And then the skater boy ending with a successful music career vs Dolokhov ending with a successful military career and a great reputation and both the women in the songs having sad endings...I’m not wrong.

Headfirst Slide Into Cooperstown On A Bad Bet - Fall Out Boy

“Does your husband know the way that the sunshine gleams from your wedding band?”

The affair vibes. The AFFAIR VIBES. And the concept of “I will never end up like him [the husband]/ behind my back I already am” in reference to using Hélène and deciding he hates her right after deciding she’s hot...okay! I see you kinning Pierre, Dolokhov. You ARE being just like her husband :/

You Give Love A Bad Name - Bon Jovi

“Shot through the heart and you’re to blame”

This is just Dolokhov’s massive I Hate Women monologue condensed. Stop blaming beautiful women for YOUR attraction to them maybe 🔫

Death Valley - Fall Out Boy

“Don’t take love off the table yet”

This is not a table sex joke this is not a table sex joke this is not a table sex joke this is n-

I didnt add it for that reason it was about a vibe but then. I realized. Now the original reason doesn’t even matter.

Nobody Puts Baby In The Corner - Fall Out Boy

“I’ll be your best kept secret and your biggest mistake”

Tell me the quoted lyric does not SCREAM Hélène/Dolokhov. You can’t. Also “I’ll weigh you down I’ll watch you choke/You look so good in blue” really captures hatred as a love language.

This is Love - Air Traffic Controller

Ok I stole this from my friends’ playlist but I did want to explain it because it’s not JUST Dolokhov and Hélène in my mind. The whole jealous fool second verse gives me Pierre around the duel energy as well

Bad Boy - Cascada

“Be my weekend lover but don’t be my friend”

Bernie Sanders voice I am once again asking you to hear me out about the unironic meme songs on my War and Peace character playlists. It’s got the refusal to admit that she actually likes hanging out with him down. The line “after some time you just pushed me aside” referring to Dolokhov teasing Pierre about their affair because he got bored. “I dont need you in my life again”...YEAH I’m fairly sure they dont interact in canon again after that.

Hayloft - Mother Mother

“My daddy’s got a gun”

This song started playing on accident once when I was listening to this playlist and I was like huh. It fits though. The gun thing is twofold: 1) Though he is not her father, Pierre does have a gun in the duel and 2) I think Vassily would happily shoot Dolokhov for his relationships with Vassily’s kids. It’s also just the general forbidden love vibes mixed with the violence vibes.

affection - BETWEEN FRIENDS

“I’m looking for affection in all the wrong places and we’ll keep falling on each other to fill the empty spaces”

Have I been clear enough about my thesis that their relationship is based in mutual loneliness? Also, I like the acknowledgment that this is in fact the wrong place. I think they’re both very aware of that.

Walk Away - Franz Ferdinand

“Yes I’m cold but not as cold as you are”

This song is for them post-duel. Especially the “I cannot stand to see those eyes as apologies may rise/I must be strong, stay an unbeliever” because 1) I hear the word eyes, I think of Dolokhov and 2) I think she’s too smart to believe any apology he would give her, she knows he doesn’t really mean it. The song kinda reads as someone trying to convince themselves they’re happy that the relationship is over, which I think is definitely what happens for both of them.

Van Horn - Saint Motel

“Tell me do you hate me? Or do you wanna date me?”

Obsessed with the dynamic of “I like you but that’s embarrassing for both of us I’m gonna act like I hate you instead”

[d2myg]

yoongi b-day post; this will be incredibly sappy, so read at your own discretion: 

the person in the pictures is min yoongi. i took them in the london o2 arena in october 2018, when i went to a bts concert during their love yourself tour. it was unironically the best day of my life, and not just because i got to see the people i love most do what they love most. i got meet up with my friends, spend the day with them, share food, do sight-seeing, do windowshopping together - little acts of love that i now look back at with fondness. at the venue, we talked to many other people, hugged, laughed and cried, sang and screamed together. before that day, i hadn't realised just how one person - or one unit - can bring a sea of people together, people who are strangers to each other, people who are so different from each other, speak different languages, come from different backgrounds. but on that day, we all gathered together because we shared love for a group of 7 boys who make beautiful music and make us all feel a little bit less alone. on that day, even though we didn't understand the lyrics or some of their comments, we felt welcomed, safe and loved there. we could feel how much they love all of us, and how much effort they put into showing it. at the end of the concert, as the ending credits rolled down, they left a little message - a 'special thank you' to all of us, even though we have loads more to thank them for. i've heard a lot of people say that bts saved their lives. that they were in a dark place, but the hopeful messages in the songs, and the incredible friendship that bts all have with each made them feel less lonely. and i feel this way, too. they make people connect, and i've never seen anything like this with any other music artist; the bond that exists between bts and the fans is thrumming with so much affection for both sides. no matter how high they climb, bts stay humble, and make sure to always thank us for their achievements. what sets them apart from other artists for me is genuity and passion for their work, and personalisation of their music, their continuous efforts to be gentle role models for the youth.

i felt drawn to min yoongi ever since i first watched one of their music videos, back in 2015/16. i've never encountered anyone like him, and learning more things about him over the years of being a fan has been a great pleasure. i've realised that our personalities and habits are a lot alike, and it's painful when people don't see past his stage persona and think he's cold, lazy, and uncaring. he has the kindest soul, and he loves in quiet and subtle ways. he cares so much, and he always puts other people before him. his passion and love for music is unmatched, and it's really inspiring to see that he chose to pursue his dream despite his parents' disapproval or growing up poor. his creative process is very unique, and he has so much knowledge about the thing he's good at, yet he always strives to improve and is self-critical. the music he creates from scratch is stunning. that's actually not the right word - i don't know how to even begin to describe it. min yoongi is good at telling stories through his music;  stories that make you sit and listen, that make you want to listen to them again, want to know how they continue. the method of delivery of these stories is through rapping. i used to not like rap at all. but by listening to min yoongi's rapping, i understood the purpose of it, and learnt what good rap is - to tell stories. min yoongi's lyrics are poems with incredibly clever wordplay, use of metaphors and anecdotes, rhetorical questions, and they ellicit emotions by simply reading them. i never knew music could be like this. even though there is a language barrier and all i have access to are lyric translations, listening to min yoongi's music doesn't require knowledge of korean at all. you understand the message through the changes in flow and speed of the words, through sharp breaths, through the rawness or quietness of his voice. you understand especially when min yoongi is telling you his stories. his stories and their delivery are heart-wrenching, shocking, eye-opening. they speak, sincerely and openly, unafraid of judgement, about his tough childhood, difficulties during debut and the first few years of being part of the group, about his mental health, his feelings, thoughts. they speak about his immense love for music, but also about his worries and anxieties as a global celebrity. they made me realise that for his dream, min yoongi has had to sacrifice a lot. he had to sacrifice living an ordinary life, which is sometimes all he wishes.

loving min yoongi can be bittersweet sometimes, when i listen to his stories, again and again and again, until i've memorised the pronunciation of every foreign word. they often make me sad and hollow, make me cry, because i think that such a lovely and selfless person doesn't deserve the things that he's had to cope with. but loving min yoongi is also good - he makes me feel so inspired, to get off my ass and work on what i'm good at and what i enjoy. it makes me want to be academically successful, even though he's very critical of the education system. his lyrics are enlightening, and i admire his ways of critiquing society and institutions even though he's part of a very strict industry. the way he thinks and shapes his thoughts into words in interviews is incredible and inspirational. his music makes me feel less alone, just as it does to millions of people around the world. i think i couldn't have picked a better role model, a better idol, a better mentor, and it was far from a conscious decision. he's just very endearing and easy to feel drawn to.

i hope he knows just how much everyone is proud of him and all that he's achieved. i love how he remains down to earth and humble, shy about his work, despite having been nominated for a grammy recently, and despite all the other highly prestigious awards of record-breaking album sales he greatly contributed to. i hope his smile never dims, because it's genuinely healing and valuable. i hope he never gets tired of making music, whether that be for the public or privately, for bts or for himself. i hope he stays healthy and recovers well from his shoulder surgery. i hope he takes good care of himself, physically and mentally. i hope he knows that out of all of his stage personas and alter-egos, 28-year old min yoongi (30-year old min yoongi in korean age, which remains confusing to me) is the one that is most important.  i hope we get to meet again, even though i will just be a dot in the crowd, and he will be showing us all the music he wasn't able to show us in person last year. happy birthday, yoongi. you don't know me, but i look up to you and i love you, a lot.

[theshinsun]

KNB for the fandom ask thing if you’d like to!!

(sorry this took forever, work was crazy this week ;;-;;)

send me a fandom and i’ll tell you…

the first character i ever fell in love with:

Kagami. (I know, right?) I started watching the show when I saw the way he was drawn, and came to really love his character throughout seasons 1 and 2. 

Side note: I really only fell in love with Aomine once I saw how he looked in the manga, and got more into his backstory in late season 2/early season 3. 

a character that i used to love/like, but now do not:

Idk I used to like, unironically like Himuro, and subscribe to canon’s endgame portrayal of him as a harmless nice guy (with no personality to speak of). Now I like him, but like... only in the sense that he can be used narratively, and to comedic effect. I also still like his play style, but I don’t like him like, as a person.

a ship that i used to love/like, but now do not:

I don’t really wanna bash any ship in this show, since the characters are loose (read: underdeveloped) enough for their actual ship dynamics to kinda be up for interpretation. 

The one example I can think of, though, for a ship I used to enjoy that now kinda bothers me, is KiKasa. I just don’t see much genuine affection between these two, and yeah I get that people show their love in different ways and all that, and there is definitely something there to work with if you read between the lines, but still... I dunno in canon it mostly seems one-sided at best and antagonistic at worst to me.

my ultimate favorite character™:

...C’mon, you know who it is. The number one spot has to go to Aomine, every time. Someday I’ll write a whole in-depth character study to explain why, but if you want the thesis statement, it’s this: Aomine is the most interesting, developed and multi-faceted character in the entire series, and you can fight me on that.

prettiest character:

If we’re talking manga, then Aomine, but since he looks like a raisin in the anime, I have to give the award to Midorima, with Mibuchi coming in a close second.

my most hated character:

Heh. Uh... funny story, it used to be Hanamiya, or possibly Haizaki, but now I think my hatred for Akashi has actually surpassed them both, because we’re meant to dislike them so at least they serve their most basic function. Whereas Akashi’s arc is so forced and anticlimactic it’s infuriating, and that’s before even getting into his personality.  

my OTP:

You know what, it’s still AoKaga. After six fucking years, they still have my heart. If I can bend the rules and slip in an OT3, I’d say AoKagaKuro, but otherwise, if I had to pick one ship, it’s those two idiots with their rival dynamic, interesting chemistry and essential narrative function of pushing each other to get better. 

my NOTP:

Like I said, I don’t want to bash any ship, but if I have to pick one that just grinds my gears, it’s AkaKuro. I just... don’t get it. I mean, I get it, I know why it exists, but I don’t get it, you know? 

...I dunno, if that’s your cup of tea, more power to ya, but I personally don’t ship it and I don’t think I’m ever going to. 

favorite episode:

Episode 37: I Look Forward To It. 

Ah, the onsen episode... I know this one by heart. 

Okay, I guess I should explain myself, because on the surface this looks like pure empty fan-service (on both sides), but this episode actually has some really great character and plot-related moments. It’s the part I always jump back into when I re-read the manga, because it’s where things really start to kick off. Seirin’s been beaten down and hopeless and finally have their chance at revenge, and they find out in this episode that they’re going to be getting it right away. There’s some really great Seirin and Touou bonding, some more evidence of Momoi being a data-gathering badass (though her actual appearance in this ep bombs the Bechdel test and kinda just rubs me the wrong way). 

My favorite part, though, is Aomine and Kuroko’s confrontation in the bath house. I’ve heard someone say once (and I agree) that this episode shows a whole team of naked men (and two naked women) and yet the scene with the most sexual tension has everyone fully clothed. It’s also just a super emotionally-charged moment, full of saying things without saying them, and Kagami showing up to declare Seirin’s intentions of victory is the cherry on top. I love this episode, I’ve probably watched it about a hundred times, but I’d gladly watch it a hundred more and that tells me it’s my favorite.  

saddest death:

Himuro’s character development. I mean uh... Kiyoshi’s leg breaking, yeah, that’s totally it. Actually, him leaving at the end of season 3 is really sad, we don’t get many third years retiring in this show but that hit just as hard.

favorite season:

Season 2. It’s where the show kicks into high gear, and the plot really gets rolling. It’s well-paced and exciting up until the middle of the Yousen game, and shows so much awesome development for the characters it introduced in the previous season. Everyone gets some new abilities, but my favorite reveals have to be Kuroko’s Vanishing Drive and Overflow (that moment when Izuki gets “erased” in the Seirin/Touou game lives in my head rent free), and of course the Zone. Season 1 is nice and season 3 has some really iconic moments, but season 2 is great from start to (almost) finish, and that makes it the strongest of the bunch.

least favorite season:

As I said, it has some iconic moments, but KNB’s weakest season by far is its finale. For one thing, it focuses almost entirely on a single game, and so that game drags on forever, beyond the realm of enjoyment until it becomes tedious to get through. Besides that, though, it goes out of its way to introduce plot threads and characters that don’t really go anywhere (Haizaki and Ogiwara come to mind...) the animation budget takes a noticeable beating, and so do the trajectories of two of Season 2′s most interesting antagonists (Himuro and Akashi). The main saving grace of this season is the Teiko arc, but, enjoyable as it is, under a critical eye it’s still a lengthy, pretty unnecessary detour that stops the main narrative dead in its tracks and all but kills the tension for the final game.  

character that everyone else in the fandom loves, but i hate:

Would it be gratuitous to say Akashi, at this point? It’s funny, because I never really liked him, and didn’t understand why so many people did, but I never had any strong opinions about him until recently, when I started looking at his character up close bc I’ve run out of reasons not to. Again, if you like him, that’s totally fine, but I just can’t agree.

my ‘you’re piece of trash, but you’re still a fave’ fave:

Uhh... Imayoshi, I think. I don’t know what it is about this guy, but I love him so much. He’s a shit, and he knows it, but he’s also smart, and funny, and kind of just a big dork? Severely underrated character, with a really unique look (I don’t care if he doesn’t have eyes except when he’s pissed, it’s good character design, you guys are just mean). 

my ‘beautiful cinnamon roll who deserves better than this’ fave:

Oh, Kuroko... sidelined in your own damn show. I’ve heard people argue that Kuroko is not the protagonist of KNB, and in fact it’s Kagami, and just... whether that’s true or not technically, it just makes me sad for Kuroko bc once again he’s being overlooked in favor of other, more flashy characters on screen. Maybe that’s the point, but still, I don’t see this guy get nearly enough attention considering his name is in the fucking title. Kuroko is every bit as valid and interesting as the other GoM, and the other members of Seirin, often even more so, and he deserves all the love.

my ‘this ship is wrong, nasty, and makes me want to cleanse my soul, but i still love it’ ship:

Pretty much anything with Haizaki, but because this is me we’re talking about... AoHai. I used to be interested purely from a hatefucking standpoint, but recently I’ve seen some art and short little ficlets, and... have started to maybe ship it... unironically? Um. Yeah, so that happened.

my ‘they’re kind of cute, and i lowkey ship them, but i’m not too invested’ ship:

KiKuro. I don’t think I’ve really talked about them before, I love their backstory and dynamic, and I tend to write them together off on the sidelines, but I’m not very passionate about this one. Maybe because it is often used as a background ship, maybe because they both work better with other people (side tangent: their dynamic instantly becomes more interesting the second you throw a third person in the mix... doesn’t matter who it is either, KiKuroKaga? AoKiKuro? KiKuroMomo? I could go on) Idk. It’s sweet, but I don’t often give this pairing a whole lot of thought on its own, maybe I ought to...

[ramblings-of-a-mad-cat]

Tulip x Merula Head-canons

(I had someone on Anon ask me about this. But the answer ended up being so long that I didn’t want to risk Tumblr crashing and eating the message. So I made it a full post.) 

You have come to the right place, my friend. 

I do like Tulula. They’re easily my OTP for this game. The only question is where to begin?

How they met. I feel like Tulip had a personal goal in mind when she arrived at Hogwarts. She wanted to prank every single person in her year. Had a little list. I also think that from the moment she saw Merula, she could see something special. Saw someone who would be a challenge. So she saved her for last. But out of all thirty-some odd students in Tulip’s year, the only one who saw her coming and stopped her, successfully pranking her back instead, was Merula. The ultimate uno reverse. All this time, Merula has been hearing rumors about a pranking menace and resolved to prove her superiority, as Merula is wanton to do. If we want, we can tie this in with the “You are a [House!]” quests. To me, the one that feels the most canon is Slytheirn pranking Gryffindor, but imagine if Tulip helped people prank Slytherin (even if MC wasn’t in Ravenclaw) and Merula caught her in the act. Just imagine Merula shoving Tulip into the lake. Tulip surfacing, spitting water, flabbergasted that she’s been bested, looking up at Merula and thinking that she was right. Merula really is something else. Tulip doesn’t react the way most people do when Merula “defeats” them. She’s charmed and impressed and wants to talk to her more. This is a surprise for Merula, but she accepts the attention and the two of them start talking. I like to imagine that the Slytherin prank on Gryffindor occurred later in the year, and that Merula participated after being inspired by Tulip. 

Okay, we need to talk about something important. Parents. I strongly believe that Tulip and Merula’s parents are foils to each other, and to their kids. They couldn’t be greater opposites. But while Merula is a lot like her parents and wants to gravitate to their lifestyle so much to the point that it’s unhealthy...Tulip is in the reverse. She completely rejects the lifestyle of her parents because they make no attempt to understand her nature or meet her halfway. I feel like she doesn’t talk to them much at all, even during the summers. Tulip tries to change herself to be more like Merula, if that makes sense, and Merula welcomes this change. She’s never had someone like Tulip before, and isn’t even sure what to call it. Are they friends now? Or...are they…?  But there’s another major secret that I strongly believe in. I like to imagine that Tulip’s parents played no small part in the arrest of Merula’s parents. I don’t know if they’re Aurors exactly (If they are, and the Rotfang Theory is true...then yikes.) But they would almost certainly work for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. I like to imagine that Merula was furious when she found out, possibly at the start of second year. Pushing Tulip away. But here’s the thing - Tulip was just as upset by this news. She entirely took the side of Merula’s parents and told her as much. Merula softened, and they reconciled, with Tulip accepting that Merula would (justifiably) always hate her parents. I don’t think Tulip’s relationship with them ever recovered from this. 

I think Tulip and Merula learned each other’s love languages rather quickly. I think Merula began to realize that all she needed to do was involve Tulip in all of her crazy schemes, her moves against MC, or her ongoing quest for glory. If she just did that, Tulip would be overjoyed, because it was all so much mayhem, and it was a journey they were embarking together. Meanwhile, Tulip deduced early on that Merula had a taste for power and that her ego was very fragile. She knew how to console Merula and knew what to say to ease her insecurities and anger, without appearing to do so on purpose. She wasn’t intimidated, but she knew to pick her battles and that there was a time and place to just let Merula win. I strongly believe that no one at Hogwarts has ever understood Merula the way Tulip does. There’s a reason she instantly picked up on Merula’s saving face and pretending to have manipulated MC if they give her the Frog Choir spot. She knows her grumpy bae. This is a relationship of mutual manipulation, but not always to an unhealthy extent. Because Merula genuinely grew to care for Tulip, and Tulip knew how to use manipulation to help Merula feel better about everything. In short, their adventures, interests and goals all coincided well, and they both planned to be Curse-Breakers after Hogwarts, and travel together. They also resolved to keep their friendship a secret because of Merula’s reputation, hence Merula never referring to her “associate” by name. It made things a lot easier because people were more likely to trust Tulip if they didn’t know she was friendly with the “best witch at Hogwarts.” Plus, y’know, secrets create a unique bond that builds the emotional connection...oh and also, that excellent closested lesbian subtext, even if the Potterverse doesn’t have homophobia. 

The Room of Requirement. Okay, I’ve had this head-canon for a while that the Room is alive and was always meant to function as a sanctuary. That’s what it became for the D.A. in OOTP, that’s really what it became for Draco in HBP, and that’s what it became in DH for the entire resistance. I also like the idea of two people who are both outcasts yet drawn to each other, finding it together and discovering it as a place that is just built for the two of them. (Or more than two. This can apply to poly-ships, and non-romantic ships.) This is what I imagine happened between Tulip and Merula. While investigating Vaults, they found this room, and figured out how it was sometimes there and sometimes not. That it would change shape. Eventually, they ruled it out as being a Cursed Vault. But not before it became a sanctuary for them. Time for a little overlap. It had previously become a sanctuary for Jacob, Duncan Ashe, and perhaps Olivia Green - before or after she suffered her fate. It was in this Room that Merula found a clue to where Jacob’s Room was hidden. It was also in this room that Tulip and Merula did most of their plotting before they found Jacob’s Room. They chose to migrate there, however, because the Room of Requirement was so unpredictable. But every now and then, when they needed it most, when the wind stood fair, that sanctuary would show up again, and they’d go there to talk and probably fall asleep together. I dunno, I just like the idea that they (innocently) shared a bed and it’s recycled from my fanfic. In that same sense, I feel like they never told anyone else about this Room and were never able to trigger it unless they were together. 

I believe that both Tulip and Merula rubbed off on each other a little. The moment that comes to mind for me is during the Creatures TLSQ. Merula supersizes a Niffler to let it run amok across the castle and she’s laughing like it’s the dandiest thing in the world. That seem a bit odd to anyone else? Feels like the kind of thing Tonks would do if she got drunk or something, not a Merula Snyde scheme. No, I think Merula was either trying to make Tulip happy (and definitely succeeding) or else she had just acquired a bit of a taste for chaos as well, having spent so much time with Tulip in all of her crazy pranks. I dunno, it just reminds me so much of Tulip’s stunt from Year 5 with the army of nifflers. Her unironic joy at what she’s done, how pleased she is with herself...these two incidents bear a striking resemblance. Similarly, looking back on Tulip’s character...does it strike anyone else as a bit out of sorts for her to betray Merula for the sake of glory? Not saying Tulip is perfect or that she wouldn’t do this, because it’s a crucial part of her character that she would, but...for glory? Since when does Tulip care about glory? All she’s ever wanted is to cause chaos. Well, I feel as though a taste for power rubbed off on her from spending so much time with Merula and appreciating her talents when no one else did. 

Okay, let’s talk about the falling-out. I believe Tulip tried to embody Merula’s ideology so much, and it overlapped with her own flaws, that it created a stew that was destined to be rotten. I think Tulip, having grown up with the family she did, has always been the kind of person who will turn on someone and go no-contact if she doesn’t mesh with them. I also think that by this point, she had alienated most of the other Hogwarts’ students. Either because she had pranked them, or because they had worked out that she was spending time with Merula. I also feel like Tulip may have resented Merula for this, because that’s just human nature. Now, Merula doesn’t develop loyalty for people very often. But it’s an absolute soul-crusher if someone she was loyal to betrays her, and I think to a degree that started with her parents, but it really fleshed out with this incident. Tulip’s upbringing led her to the mindset of, “If I have to cut you off, I will.” and Merula’s upbringing was just the opposite. It was more like “Only a few people truly matter, so you better not leave me.” And Tulip did. I think she convinced herself that she didn’t need Merula, that Merula was holding her back. Kept thinking about Merula’s flaws and toxic qualities, figured she could carry on with the Cursed Vault quest on her own. Jacob’s Sibling was proof enough that one didn’t need Merula to be a budding Curse-Breaker. So she ditched Merula. And everything fell apart for both of them. 

I want to say that Tulip immediately, and I mean immediately regretted this decision, but also knew that she could never take it back. The damage had been done, and there was no way she could ever hope to apologize to Merula or ask to be taken back. That just was not a language that Merula knew how to speak. She only knew how to translate things in terms of power and strength. She had been burned by Tulip, humiliated. Hurt. That was something that Merula surely wouldn’t ever forgive, at least not from Tulip’s perspective. And from Merula’s? Well, Tulip was just using her. Never cared about her. Was always going to stab her in the back. And it was her own fault for not seeing it sooner. Anger. Resentment. Betrayal. The angst, my friend. But it gets worse, because then Tulip was approached by Jacob’s Sibling, Merula’s own nemesis, who proposed that they join forces. As crazy as it may sound, Tulip was itching to get back into adventuring and questing. She also knew this was her greatest chance to cross paths with Merula again. By competing against her. Again, it sounds ridiculous, but this is Merula that we’re talking about. Of course, though she was right, it didn’t erase the added insult to injury. Merula was forced to deal not only with Tulip abandoning her, but also her going over to side with Jacob’s Sibling. It made her more determined than ever to stick it to Tulip. Seriously, have you noticed that Merula defaults to anger and “revenge” when people she had grown to love stab her in the pact? It’s a depressing pattern in her life. 

Adding onto that, the question becomes - when did Tulip and Merula know that they loved each other? Of course, there may have been moments of open infatuation during their first two years at Hogwarts. I envision them being each other’s valentines (because who else would be?) cuddling a lot whenever they’d crash together. Perhaps they shared a kiss at some point. Who knows. But while they may have expressed feelings to each other, I feel like they weren’t ever officially a couple. I mean, they were still preteens and whatnot. So their falling-out wasn’t a “break-up” but it had elements of that. It had that tone. Even so, the ambiguity and lack of a label almost makes it that much worse. What I’m driving at is - they definitely hadn’t exchanged the “I love you” bomb before they parted ways. I believe Tulip knew the moment that she had betrayed Merula that she had make a mistake. That from that point, it hit her just how much she had given up. How much she missed Merula. How much she regretted losing her, how it was never about glory - just about her. In that moment, Tulip knew. It wasn’t just friendship. It wasn’t even just a crush. She was in love with the Best Witch at Hogwarts. Contrasting that, I think that while Tulip had a moment of realization after the falling-out, Merula went very much into denial. Telling herself she never liked Tulip. That she was always just dead-weight, and Merula was stupid for having thought she would be useful. But that was all she had ever been. Just...potentially  useful. That was all. She told herself this lie, all the way up to finding Tulip and Jacob’s Sibling together. That broke her. It definitely made her realize how much it hurt to have lost Tulip. To say that she was jealous would be putting it lightly. Merula did what she always does, which was to default to anger and the illusion of pride, but don’t think for one second that it didn’t kill her inside to see Tulip with Jacob’s Sibling. The hurting. The yearning. She was in love with Tulip, and she hated herself for it. I feel like that could be why she lost to Jacob’s Sibling so easily in that duel. She was distracted. When she warned MC that Tulip would betray them, and ran off...I feel like she ran off to go cry. 

From that point on, Tulip and Merula were on opposite sides, but they still saw each other. I think that, however much Merula went to head off Jacob’s Sibling to the Vault of Fear, she also knew there was a chance that she would see Tulip again. Though she’d never admit it to herself, she was hoping that she would. When she and Ismelda were defeated - through the efforts, no less, of another former friend who had left her for MC - Merula was forced to retreat. And fume. And sob. If she had only known the form of Tulip’s Boggart, she might have understood. Speaking of that, I don’t think Tulip knew what her Boggart would be ahead of time, but when she saw it - she wasn’t surprised at all. Jacob’s Sibling was, however. I like to think that this was the moment Jacob’s Sibling deduced what was truly going on between their new friend and their old enemy. I also like to think that they became a low-key shipper on deck for Tulula. Assuming that they didn’t have romantic tension with either of these characters them-self, but this isn’t about MC. On an unrelated note, can you imagine Tulip’s reaction to post-Riddikulus Merula? I feel like it was either a sense of revulsion for it being such “wrong” version of her, or an awkward moment of  “...Okay that’s actually an attractive look for her.” Or perhaps both. Feelings can be complicated after all. 

Tulip clearly wanted Merula back. This is obvious from the multiple times she defended Merula when MC would trash her, and the multiple times she invited Merula to join their cause, both after that duel I mentioned earlier and during Year 4. Let’s talk about that incident. We don’t ever see the two of them interact. We don’t witness Tulip asking Merula, and she clearly did it behind MC’s back. At first, I feel like Merula told Tulip to go stuff it, until she mentioned that MC had no idea Tulip came to her. I think that would have made all the difference, and perked Merula’s interest. She was definitely insecure about Tulip and MC’s friendship, I can tell you that much. I think letting Merula back into Jacob’s Room was an olive branch extended by Tulip. A baby step toward reconciliation. Even if Merula only accepted it for her own needs and purposes, it was still a baby step. Sorry, but I just can’t get over how gleeful Merula was about getting to blindside MC with the surprise that she and Tulip were waiting for them in Jacob’s Room. I also feel like Tulip wanted to reconnect with Merula before she got too close to Madam Rakepick. Because as we can all remember well, Tulip, like Snape, saw through Rakepick immediately. Saw her for what she was. So do you think she was in any way comfortable with Merula talking to her? Of course not. 

I’d also be remiss not to talk more in depth about the Frog Choir TLSQ. Goodness gracious me, that incident is one big Tulula ship-tease. Like I said before, Tulip clearly still cares about Merula and while Merula defaults to anger whenever she sees Tulip and MC...as I’ve said before, I think her anger is a mask for pain. And her pain is the result of missing Tulip and feeling jealous that she “chose” Jacob’s Sibling. I feel like Tulip and Merula had fond memories shared during the first two years where they would try to sing to each other. Trade laughs about how abysmal Tulip was at singing, and then when it was Merula’s turn...well, Tulip might have planned to feed her ego and say that she was skilled no matter what...but she didn’t need to sugarcoat anything. Merula was a beautiful singer and Tulip was captivated. So was Dennis. By the way, Merula definitely would pet-sit Dennis from time to time, perhaps over the winter holidays when Tulip was forced to come home. She might have feared that her parents would try to get rid of Dennis, and she trusted Merula like no one else, to take care of him. All of these background details are important because they’re the foundation for this quest. Tulip already knowing about Merula’s mother and that she’ll want to join the Frog Choir. Dennis liking Merula, and the whole idea of Merula and Dennis joining the Choir together. I really like the ending where MC gives up their spot to let this idea go through. Whether you’re a Merula fan, a Tulip x Merula shipper, or both...it’s just the happiest ending, and I think Jacob’s Sibling, as I said, could pick up on the vibes going on between these two. 

Let’s talk about Rakepick. Always a fun subject, right? Alright but for real, it’s important because both Tulip and Merula had very keen opinions about her. During Year 5, Merula grew a lot closer to Jacob’s Sibling. Setting aside the ship-tease between those two characters, I believe she thoroughly enjoyed the idea of “stealing” MC from Tulip and letting her see how it felt to have someone she cares about choose someone else - bonus points because MC “chose” Merula. Of course, this is all because the two of them spent most of their time with Bill and Rakepick. I think Merula neglected all other relationships in her life, including Ismelda, during that year. I think Tulip felt more isolated than ever, and I think she felt like she was on the outside. She was lonely, and scared too. Because she never trusted Rakepick, and probably feared what Merula was learning from her. Having all of her worst impulses and instincts groomed. It only got worse during that big fight scene in the library, when she realized that Bill was extremely loyal to Rakepick as well. Bill, the unofficial “mom friend” of the group. But why did Tulip mistrust her so thoroughly, and what does it have to do with her ultimate betrayal? I’ve talked about this before, but Merula has a pattern in her life of starting to trust people and then being betrayed by them. What’s more...Tulip and Rakepick actually have a lot in common. They do. They’re both lawless adventurers who laugh in authority’s face and do whatever the hell they want. They’re crafty and resourceful and Rakepick is probably everything that Tulip tried to be during her friendship with Merula. She is the mindset that led to her stabbing Merula in the back. And sure enough, Tulip’s anxieties came true. Rakepick tortured the girl she loved, the girl she had betrayed...I’m telling you, Tulip fears becoming like Rakepick. She probably associates, even unconsciously, her own betrayal of Merula with what happened in the Portrait Vault. All of this to say that Tulip and Merula wouldn’t be in a comfortable place in Year 6. Tulip would be more desperate than ever for reconciliation, but Merula would shove her away as she is doing to everyone...and then she starts fawning over Jacob? Oh, catch Tulip slipping off to her dormitory to cry about that…

But that doesn’t mean reconciliation is impossible. They still have history together. The sanctuary still exists. Perhaps they’ll find it again. Year 7 is still in our future. And I want to believe that they’ll find their way back to each other.

[nat-roman0ff]

v. the last 45 seconds of your life

a series of blurbs // a certain time and place

(read the full series in my masterlist!)

v. the last 45 seconds of your life

the one where everything comes to a screeching halt.

wc: 3,273

warnings: unironic love of oasis, some bad words, & that feeling when your heart breaks

---

“Oh my god please don’t tell me he’s singing Champagne Supernova, again?” She groans as those familiar first notes blare through the speakers. 

 Shawn shrugs and turns his attention back to Brian who is taking his spot on the dingy little stage in the dingy little karaoke bar Shawn had brought the lot of them to.

 “This is really what you wanted to do before you go back on tour?” She asks, folding her arms across her chest, “Karaoke?” 

 He snakes his arm behind her shoulders and pulls her closer, “yes, karaoke. But I also wanted to spend some time with my two best friends before leaving again.” 

 She steps on his foot, marring the white of his Adidas, “but Brian is going with you, dickweed. I’m the only one who gets to stay behind.” She crunches her heel into his foot a little more.

Shawn winces and puts his head on her shoulder, “only by your own choice,” he singsongs, “I’ve given you more than enough chances to come with us.” 

 “I have a job,” she starts. 

 “That you hate,” he finishes. 

 “I have responsibilities.” 

 “Masturbation and remembering to water your plants aren’t responsibilities.” 

 “I have an apartment.” 

 “...that sucks.” 

 “Hey!” She jabs his ribs with her elbow, this only causes Shawn to squeeze her tighter and more into him. He feels this weird sense of instant calm when their bodies are pressed together. It can be in any stage (although he was partial to when they were horizontal), no matter what, when, or under whatever circumstances, they just fit together.

 “I have a life here,” she begins, her voice more somber, softer. She’s trying to put him at ease, “I can’t just pick up and leave that to be able to hang out with you all the time.” 

 Shawn lets go. He has to constantly remind himself that he’s the one that’s in love with her. She’s right, she does have her own life at home in Toronto. He wishes so terribly that he can whisk her away for all his own but he also realizes how incredibly selfish that is. Someone like her needs to be shared with the world, the world needs someone like her. She doesn’t get to be his world.

 “However that doesn’t mean you can’t, like, fly me out to all these really cool places,” she eases the sudden tension and turns to him. 

 Shawn’s face is drawn and she knows that look. It’s the one that makes her believe he feels the same way she does, the one that gives her the tiniest glimmer of hope at the end of this tunnel, that all this wading around in bullshit isn’t just for sport. 

 “Yeah,” is all he can manage, “I’m gonna get a drink I’ll be right back.” 

 Except he doesn’t go to the bar to order a drink. Shawn diverts past Old Man Mellino in the corner bar stool and heads straight for the bathroom. By the time he reaches the stall he’s already crying. He’s thankful he’s alone, because Shawn has always been a loud and ugly cryer. It just sort of all bubbles up in his chest and he ends up choking on air. His chest and heart feel like they’re caving in, and he can feel every single hairline fracture in his heart just before it shatters once and for all. 

 How could he expect her to give it all up for him when he doesn’t even have the balls to tell her how he feels? How could he expect her to put her life on hold just to be with him. It’s simple - he can’t. 

 It takes Shawn a good ten minutes before his hands stop shaking. He wipes away the smear of tears on his face with the backs of his hands. He feels like a child, sitting in a bathroom stall and crying. This was like third grade all over again. But he couldn’t help it anymore. It was almost becoming intolerable to be around her without her knowing the truth, but in the same breath he couldn’t bare to not be around her. He’d usually been confident with girls and his feelings, if they didn’t feel the same way or just wanted an easy fuck he’d get over it with a pint of ice cream and move on. 

 She was different (but aren’t they always?).

 Shawn’s feelings for her were catastrophic. It scared him every day of his goddamn life. He never thought in his mere twenty years of existence that he could ever be so hopelessly hopeless for someone. His emotions manifested physically for her. He felt pain when she was away and a lightness that nothing else could ever measure up to when she was around. 

 The days were getting harder, the tides seem to crash harder and time felt like it was running out. He was exhausted, and not from the months of travelling or touring. It was her, it was this big gaping hole in his chest that was her. It was this secret that he’d been carrying with him for almost two years now that ate him up at an excruciatingly quickening pace.

 Her rejection was his greatest fear; the response of “I love you too, but I just don’t love you in that way”. He knows it would gnaw at him for a lifetime, because he’d spent a lifetime trying to find her. Shawn didn’t believe that your missing pieces would be filled by another human being, he believed that certain people were brought into your life to help you mend those broken pieces. She did that for him, in all the ways he couldn’t even place but knew existed. He couldn’t explain it; he felt whole with her, and not because she completed him but because she helped fix what had been broken.

 It’s been some time now and Shawn supposes he should get off his ass and go back out there. He leaves the stall and looks at his sorry face in the dirty bathroom mirror. He looks worse for wear, with his eyes all puffy and red, cheeks blotchy and the collar of his shirt damp from cleaning up his face. The bathroom door opens and Old Man Mellino stumbles to the sink beside Shawn. He smells like well liquor and adult diapers.

 “Those are woman tears,” he slurs, his breath toxic with booze.

 Shawn furrows his brows, “excuse me?” 

 The old man slings an arm around Shawn’s shoulders, “the tears you cry over a woman. Recognize them anywhere. What’s this dame done to yah?”

 Shawn recockens if this guy gets any closer he’ll barf from the stench, “nothing, that’s the problem,” he says, wanting to get out of this conversation as quickly as possible. 

 “Does she know how you feel?” Mellino mutters.

 Silence.

 He chuckles, “I’ll take that as a no then. Look at you! Young, bright, handsome, the whole world ahead of yah! What’d yah got to lose?” 

 Shawn shrugs, “her.” 

 “Now you look at me, boy,” he grabs Shawn’s shoulders and turns his body to face him, “I’ve lived a thousand lifetimes in my years and if there’s one thing I’ll always do over and over again, it’s telling the woman that you love just that. Nothing more, and nothing less. You don’t have to be showy or make some grand romantic gesture. Just be honest, be you.” 

 Shawn sighs, but not too deeply as the reek of the old man is really starting to burn his nostrils, “I suppose you’re right.” 

 “Well I am. Now go get her!” He says, slapping Shawn’s ass and then stepping into one of the stalls. 

 Shawn leaves with a new found confidence. He guesses he has about forty-five more seconds before it wears off so he plows through the crowd and back to her. She spots him immediately and waves her hand over towards him. 

 “HeyI’veGottaTalkToYou,” he says quickly in one breath. 

 She laughs, “yeah? What’s the rush? And where are our drinks?” 

 “No time, ran to the bathroom -” 

 “Was it the Taco Bell we had for lunch? I know sometimes it upsets your tummy.” 

 Twenty more seconds.

 “No I just really need to tell you something,” Shawn blurts. 

 His heart is racing, and he’s almost sure he’s going to pass out. The ringing in his ears is so loud it almost drowns out Brian’s sloppy rendition of Wonderwall. 

 Ten more seconds.

 “Damn, okay. Sounds serious. Did you have an epiphany while on the shitter?” 

 Five more seconds.

 “No, I just. I really have to tell you something important.” 

 Shawn’s vision blurs and all he can see is her. 

 “Well, get on with it then if it’s so important.” 

 Three.

 Two.

 He takes a deep breath.

 One.

 “I’m in love you.” 

 ---

 She’s pretty sure if she has to listen to Brian sing another Oasis song she’s going to scream. Liam and Noel Gallagher do not deserve such disrespect. 

 “Get off the stage, loser!” Someone yells, and she has to stifle her laughter by biting her bottom lip. 

 Shawn’s acting weird tonight, she thinks. Well, weirder than usual. He’s distant but clingy; won’t talk to her but won’t bloody let go of her either. He’s never usually this way before he leaves for tour. It’s the last leg at barely two months. It’s not the longest they’ve ever been apart, not by a long shot. She watches him walk away and disappear into the sea of people crowding the bar area. She turns back to Brian on the stage, who is full on air guitaring along to Champagne Supernova, and even throwing on his best Northern accent to sing along with. 

 She has this gnawing feeling in her stomach. This sort of nauseous anxiety that builds and builds the longer that time passes. She can feel it in her heart too, in the way that it rapidly beats and causes her to miss a breath or two. It’s not a panic attack, at least not the ones she’s used to. Her hands get clammy and she scans the room over and over for Shawn but doesn’t see him. 

 Brian finally finishes his song with a round of boos and hops off the stage and towards her. 

 “What’s got you so sweaty?” He asks, dabbing at the clammy skin at her hairline and wiping her sweat on his jeans.

 She shakes out her arms and hands, “I don’t know - I just have this weird feeling?” 

 Brian raises an eyebrow, “o...kay. Do you mind elaborating? I’m not Shawn, I can’t read your mind.” 

 She glares, “forget it.” 

 He grabs her by the shoulders and shakes her a little, “tell meeeee!” 

 “It’s stupid.” 

 “You’re stupid.” 

 She eyes him. 

 “Sorry, force of habit,” Brian replies, “But seriously, what’s got you so shaken up?” He puts a reassuring hand on her arm. 

 She thinks about all the ways she can list out what’s got her going;

  It started this morning when she woke up in Shawn’s arms and accidentally on purpose snuck a glance at his phone. There was a text from some LA model with the message ‘excited to see you this week!’. She’d wiggled out and stalked off to the bathroom, making sure to slam the door on her way out.

 Then Shawn suggested they go out for breakfast instead of staying in like usual on Sunday mornings. They had a tradition of making waffles in her Death Star (despite never actually seeing any of the Star Wars movies) waffle maker and eating almost an entire pound of bacon between the two of them. It was always one of her favorite days of the week. When they’d gotten to the Diner, she counted exactly fifty words spoken to her the entire time, despite the fact he played footsies with her throughout their meal. He just stared blankly at his phone. She wondered if he was talking to some LA model. 

 By the time afternoon hit she had been sufficiently annoyed with Shawn. She kept tripping over his feet when they walked around the city and bumping into him, once even spilling her coffee on her new shoes. They weren’t in sync like they usually were. Something was catastrophically off. 

 At dinner with friends he was just as weird and distant, and she spent most of the time chatting and laughing with Brian while Shawn still stayed glued to goddamn phone. She was past the point where it annoyed her and was well on her way to just being plain old pissed off. It wasn’t that she was jealous about another girl (she was) or cared if they were screwing around (they weren’t), she just hated feeling like there was something he wasn’t telling her. Which is fucking rich consindering the secret she’s been holding from him. 

 It didn’t take her long to realize after they met that Shawn was going to be that person for her. She tried to tell herself that she would feel this for someone else one day, that maybe if she packed it down for long enough it would go away. And sometimes it did, she didn’t spend every waking moment of her life weeping about being in love with Shawn. She had mostly good days, days where she thought about him fondly and missed his warmth. Most of her time was spent avoiding diving in any deeper, sitting at just the edge and sometimes dangling her feet to test the waters. They were always too cold to dive in. 

 “It’s nothing, really Bri. Just getting emotional about him leaving again, that’s all,” she sighs, “about both of you leaving, actually. What’s a girl to do with herself?” 

 “Do you really want me to answer that question?” Brian raises an eyebrow. 

 She shakes her head, “absolutely not.” 

 He swings an arm around her, “whatever you’re feeling, just let it go.” 

 She supposes she takes too much time to think about it and it makes her heart race. She knows full and well that she’d never be able to live the same lifestyle Shawn will. She’s the here and now and it’s convenient. She’ll never be the one who goes to premieres and parties and events with him. He’ll save that for some LA model. She’s accepted that a long time ago - that she’ll never fit in with his lifestyle. She’ll only ever be the here and now. 

 Letting go is such a hard concept. It sounds so fucking easy but is so fucking not. It’s not like dropping a coin into a fountain, it’ll come in waves and some days will be better and easier than others. Letting go is something you have to do slowly, but once you make the decision to do it you can’t go back, you just can’t. 

 She’s so tired of the emotional push and pull; the fullness of feeling so fucking amazing when she’s with him, almost immediately followed by the emptiness of longing and wanting something she’ll never have. Her emotions are a constant change of the tides rolling in and out and her sea is tired. It’s self induced, too. She has no one to blame but herself for feeling this way and she’s pretty sure she’s finally accepted that at this point. She doesn’t hold any ill-tidings for Shawn for not feeling the same way she does. He’s never once used her, or put his needs in front of her own. She supposes that’s why this whole letting go thing is so fucking hard. That plus literally everything else about Shawn’s personality that screams at her to stay, to keep maybe-ing, makes it so fucking hard to let go.

 “Thanks Brian,” she hugs him tight, “I’ll work on it.” 

 He gives her a squeeze, “wow, for once I actually said the right thing.” 

 She slaps his chest, “just something I think I needed to hear someone say out loud.” 

 “I’m going to pretend I know what that means and go pick out another song.” 

 “Please don’t make it an Oasis one!” She yells after him.

 “No promises!” 

 She laughs to herself and sighs, picking at her thumbnail. She knows going into this head strong that it’s going to be a hard one. She knows that it’s going to take days, weeks and maybe even months of pain before she reaches the other side of that tunnel of letting go. Him being away will help, it means he won’t randomly show up on her doorstep late at night with a box of cupcakes and a sappy look on his face, it means she won’t get text messages all day long at work of him complaining about how bored he was. She was thankful for the upcoming distance in her quest of ridding herself of the feelings. 

 She didn’t want to find it in someone else. No, that wouldn’t be fair. Because what she felt was real, that much she knew, and she didn’t want to dishonor that by trying to project those feelings onto another person. She looks around the bar and spots all the couples and for the first time in a long time her heart doesn’t sink, instead, it’s relieved. She doesn’t feel the tugging weight of longing to have that with Shawn, at least in this one fleeting moment.

 The music starts and Brian is singing Wonderwall. She groans, and continues to wait for Shawn to come back. She spots him and waves a hand for him to come over. He looks...stressed. And her heart sinks when she sees the red rimming his eyes and just knows he’s been crying. That’s the thing about her, she just always knows. She also knows he doesn’t like when she calls him out on such things, so she lets it be.

 “HeyI’veGottaTalkToYou,” Shawn states in a single breath. 

 She chuckles, “yeah?” She can see his breath coming out in small pants, “What’s the rush? And where are our drinks?” 

 He shakes his head like he’s trying to clear something out of it, “no time, ran to the bathroom -” 

 “Was it the Taco Bell we had for lunch? I know sometimes it upsets your tummy,” she interrupts, placing a hand on his abdomen, she can feel the muscles clench beneath her palm.

 He clenches his fists and she starts to worry, “no I just really need to tell you something.”

 Shawn is pale and for someone who is already only two shades darker than an eggshell, that’s saying something. His pupils are blown out wide and he’s visibly shaking, but trying to hide it by clenching and unclenching his fists. She’s never seen him this way before and she’s terrified of what he’s about to say. 

 “Damn, okay. Sounds serious,” she says as calmly as she can, trying to dampen her own rising nerves, “did you have an epiphany while on the shitter?” 

 “No, I just. I really have to tell you something important.” 

 She can feel her heart in her throat. It’s amazing, she thinks, for as out of tune as they’ve been all day, now is the moment that they realign. She places her hand over his heart and feels it beat along with hers - perfect synchrony once again. But she drops her palm and remembers let go, let go, let go.

 “Well, get on with it then if it’s so important.” 

 Something flashes in his eyes and his pupils contract just to blow out again and she swears she’s watching his entire existence flash before his eyes as he takes a final breath and finally fucking works up the strength to say;

 “I’m in love you.” 

---

and she’s done! i hope everyone enjoyed this lil ride on my first shawn series. i doooooo have a sequel planned if it’s wanted, let me know! :)

[knifeonmars]

Capsule Reviews - May 2020 - The Cape Stuff

I read a lot of comics in May. Here’s what I thought of some of the superhero and superhero-adjacent comics I read.

Arms of the Octopus

A nostalgia pick, the collection of several annual issues containing a crossover between Superior Spider-Man, The Invincible Hulk, and the All-New X-Men. It is an artifact of a very specific and bizarre time in Marvel Comics, when Doc Ock was Spider-Man, the Hulk worked for SHIELD, and the original five teen X-Men were stranded in their own future. For a pure, relatively straightforward crossover romp, it's quite enjoyable. Spider-Man is a jerk, the Hulk fights a robot, the X-Men are befuddled by the present, all of the major beats for that particular moment in the Marvel Universe are there, and it's got some really great art. Jake Wyatt, during his regrettably short-lived stint with Marvel and the great Kris Anka unfortunately overshadow the other contributors, but it's all very good, if not the most accessible comic.

Maxwell's Demons

I came to Maxwell's Demons having heard a lot of critical buzz and with my expectations set rather high. I did not care for this book at all. Ambitious is the best word for this series, and that's not a bad thing. It's got ideas, about the craft, about the genre, about philosophy in general. It never quite manages to carry things off though; it's not as smart as it wants to be, and the high-minded ideas are never incorporated in particularly elegant ways. Three of the story's five chapters are essentially extended monologues in which the main character rambles on about some glorified shower thought for 20-plus pages. The first and second chapters are the exceptions to this pattern, and are quite solid as far as pointedly derivative superhero riffs go, even if the second chapter's riff on "What if Miracleman #17 was significantly less intelligent" is more than a little shameless in its lack of originality. The fourth chapter, by contrast, is the nadir of the series, easily the most embarrassing Manic Pixie Dream Girl tripe I've seen played straight in literal years. I'm reminded a lot of Translucid, another superhero pastiche, which essentially sought to do for Batman what Maxwell's Demons seeks to do for Lex Luthor. I warmed to Translucid significantly on my second read and I wonder if the same will end up being true for Maxwell's Demons, but I find that Translucid simply did a better job of incorporating original ideas and stating its themes in ways less stupefyingly clunky than Maxwell's Demon's ever manages. I hate to call a book pretentious, especially an ambitious one, but at present that's how I feel about this book.

Twilight

Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Howard Chaykin's Watchmen-for-mid-century-space-heroes epic. It's good. Fabulous art, some really interesting ideas and a great premise. It's also more than a little Chaykin-y, with most of the male characters having fraught but amiable relationships with their much-too-good-for-them-and-they-both-know-it ex-wives. It has this particular brand of low grade misogyny that idealizes women but in doing so denies them interiority and, ultimately, humanity. Leaving that aside, though it is a major point to leave aside, it’s story of humanity rotting over eons of immortality, mad space gods, and humanity’s proclivity towards colonialism and genocide, it's great. It’s not an altogether pleasant book, it can be nasty and strange, in ways both intentional and unintentional, but it’s original and engaging and decidedly well made. Something of an overlooked classic of that era’s DC output.    

Green Lantern: Earth One

Literally the only one of DC's Earth One graphic novels that's worth a damn. Where most of the other Earth One books choose to start things off in a world resembling our own, Green Lantern starts off in a scifi future resembling something along the lines of Ad Astra or The Expanse, with Earth controlled by an only alluded to totalitarian government, humanity colonizing and mining the solar system, and Hal Jordan as a spacefaring roughneck who dreads the prospect of returning to Earth. Earth One is the rare Green Lantern story that manages to make Earth as interesting as the rest of the universe. The bulk of the action leaves this behind to focus on unearth the lost legacy of the Green Lanterns and refits their mythology in a clean way which will be unsurprising for anyone with a passing familiarity with the original comics but is still satisfying ad fresh. Fabulous art, fun take on the mythology, I'm left both wanting more and being satisfied with what we got.

Spider-Man: Life Story

In a just world, Chip Zdarksy, one of Marvel’s best writers these days, would be writing both Spider-Man and Fantastic Four, instead of having been relegated to shortlived spinoffs. Because life just isn’t fair sometimes, instead he was given this admittedly ambitious project, his all-encompassing take on the Spider-Man story as played out in real time. In the end it’s bold and engaging, but more than a little clipped in execution. Each issue is a snippet of Peter Parker's life as we catch up to him in a new decade so readers only get a quick glimpse of the action and are left to fill in the substantial gaps by drawing on our knowledge of continuity. The obvious comparison is John Byrne's Superman/Batman: Generations, but where that story really only took the broad strokes of those characters' continuity into account in writing its decades spanning story, Spider-Man: Life Story is dedicated to the remixing of Spider-Man's publishing canon. So it can’t just take an archetypal view of Spider-Man and play that out to its logical conclusion, instead it’s stuck trying to incorporate version of prominent Spider-Man stories like Kraven's Last Hunt, Venom, and Civil War. The result means that there’s a ton of exposition in each issue, and frequent use of shorthand to gloss over things which have happened since the previous issue, and it never manages to explore the series’ original ideas in detail. Also, I'll die mad that Michel Fiffe, the genius behind COPRA and one of my favorite cartoonists, public pitched basically this exact story a year or so before this project was announced, and even if Marvel didn't actually steal the idea, I'll forever pine for Fiffe's take on this premise.

Star Wars: The Crimson Empire Saga

Long before the Disney's take on Star Wars, with their codified takes on the mythology and careful curation of the franchise, there was the old Star Wars Expanded Universe, where seemingly anyone could tell any story they wanted using the mythology of Star Wars. While it resulted in some good stuff, like Timothy Zahn's fondly remembered Thrawn books, the vast majority of it was workmanlike or even bad. Crimson Empire falls firmly into the category of bad, a dumber than dirt story about an extremely cool space guy and his code of honor. It's the kind of story where multiple characters say "He's just one man!" right before or right after seeing their legion of anonymous flunkies getting demolished by the hero. It's got an inexplicable and bad love story. In the three miniseries collected here it spends about two pages total dealing with the idea that maybe, just maybe, the fact that it's main character is dedicated to the lost honor of Emperor Palpatine, a space fascist, maybe his code of honor is completely fucked. Of those three miniseries, only the first story is anywhere near something that could be called good. I wouldn’t called Crimson Empire utterly abysmal, but it’s not unironically good. If the name Kyle Katarn means anything to you, you might get something out of this as a nostalgia trip, but otherwise it has no redeeming qualities.

Deathstroke: Legacy

The first of the New 52 Deathstroke stories, which was never well regarded until Christopher Priest took it over with Deathstroke: Rebirth, I was driven to read this by a conceptual fondness for this era's Deathstroke basically looking and acting like an action figure. Through that lens, it's quite enjoyable. It's not as obviously in on the joke in the way that the classic Taskmaster: Unthinkable is, but it's over the top, has fun designs and baddies, and Joe Bennett (years before his career best heights in Immortal Hulk) provides consistently good art. As a pure action comic, it's good.

Wolverine MAX: Permanent Rage

Here's the thing about Wolverine: There are very few good Wolverine solo stories. Wolverine is a genuinely good character, but most of his solo stories are dumb action affairs, and there's literally never been a Wolverine comic that's even halfway as good as the Logan movie. Permanent Rage, the first storyline from the Wolverine MAX series though, is actually pretty decent. It plays out a lot like you might imagine a Wolverine movie made around 2004, with no superheroes, a Japanese setting that allows for some distracting orientalism, unrelenting violence, and a noir-inspired storyline. The present day storyline is all well and good, not great, but solid and relatively low-key, but what makes the book is the presence of Sabretooth as the main villain. His relationship with Wolverine, fleshed out through flashbacks drawn by some really talented artists, is probably one of the best takes on that relationship that Marvel has ever put out. The casting of Wolverine and Sabretooth as two lonely immortals, bound together by hate and the knowledge that they are each other's only true companions, absolutely makes this book. Is it great? No, but it's got enough interesting things going on that fans of dark superheroes stories would probably find something to enjoy. Subsequent volumes of Wolverine MAX moved even further from the character’s superhero trappings and supporting characters, which is a pity, but this one remains readable and enjoyable on its own.

Marshal Law Omnibus

A collection all of the non-licensed and non-text-only Marshal Law stories. It's weird, it's punk, it's violent, it's sick of superheroes but self-aware about it own silliness in a way that Garth Ennis' work like The Boys has never been (Incidentally, the fifth story contained here, Super Babylon, is just every self-righteous complaint Ennis made about superheroes in The Boys but presented with a modicum of good humor). It's quite fun as a mean-spirited anti-superhero romp, but anyone who is particularly invested in the moral rectitude of, like, the Flash, might find it an unpleasant read so I would advise avoiding it if that's you. It's also not perfect, even for what it is: it's approach to sex work and kink is very dated, it relies on sexual violence a little too much, and by the time you get to the final story, Secret Tribunal, it's come to revel in its previously ironic fascist and misogynist imagery and characters just a little too much. The third installment, Kingdom of the Blind, is for my money, the strongest of the lot, featuring both the most straightforward premise and the most incisive satire the collection has to offer.

[goddamnwebcomics]

Legacy of Dominic Deegan: Part 2

See my original first impression here.

Last time, our hero, Snout, rudely picked up some weed from a giant animal thingy. Turns out it’s one of the many ingredients he needs, as he also takes a giant leaf, steals web from a spider, and with that he gives himself a shirt. You would think that in Deegan world, people would actually herd sheep more to get wool, unless Mookie believes PETA propaganda. Of course he does.

Turns out Snout is looking for a new home, and he finds a cave, as well as a talking...piece of paper? Pagefinder, or essentially, medieval Siri. Cool. Wait, what happened to the orc frenspeak? I guess Mookie realized it was kind of stupid so he just returned to making orcs write like humans again. Pagefinder is a spell that finds lost pages, and even he gets edgy, but at least his edginess is played for laughs. Speaking of playing edginess for laughs, Snout has to go to the Blood Horror Canyon to get the first lost page. I suppose it’s a bit funny, but if Mookie unironically creates another Chosen Superform in this comic then it’s just gonna be dumber in hindsight. Another joke that i find kind of funny occurs with the signs. Turns out Snout is being followed by...evil demon cthulhu thing, but he accidentally stabs him in the eye with a falling spire.

An exciting battle occurs with the weirdo thingy, and Snout tries using Pagefinder as a shield, and as a result we get the first F bomb in Dominic Deegan, if Mookie didn’t include dicks earlier i’d congratulate him on graduating from middle school. Turns out Pagefinder’s ink just killed the beast. Huh, i’m amazed, you CAN kill something in this universe without turning into a superform! Anyways, Snout finds the first lost page but it has a hole in the middle of it, rendering it mostly incomprehensible. Wah wah. Eyeroll face occurs, which is...i suppose the traditional version of the punchline face? Snout asks Pagefinder for help but he can’t, and he messes up Snout’s face again in his self-pity. I mean, even if it’s a repeated punchline i still think it’s way better than butt-less chaps and Spark’s alliterations.

Snout goes back to the weird eye thing’s library. I suppose the frenspeak earlier was actually the way the owner of the library, Bort, types. We’re shown a twist that Pagefinders actually can’t communicate in other languages so WHO REALLY IS THIS PAGEFINDER?? Pagefinder says he explains everything once Snout has found the last two missing pages. I have a theory, Pagefinder is Trapped Deegan. Of course, it’s a Mookie’s signature SHOCK TWIST that you totally can’t expect. The biggest evidence against it however is that Pagefinder is actually a likable character. No wait, turns out Snout’s theory is that Ink Witch is communicating with him through pagefinder. He needs to find a gruesome, evil tree and we get another eyeroll face. Fuck it, i’m just gonna call it the Modern Punchline Face (MPF) as opposed to Classic Punchline Face (CPF) because i know that’s gonna be common now.

We get another recycled gag with the signs which reveals Skori Trees can shoot branches. Snout makes it into Skori territory and is bombarded with branch bullets yet avoids every single one??? What is he using? Magic? He manages to make it out of Skori’s grasp without a single scratch. Okay so far that’s the first really dumb thing in this comic, because Snout apparently is either using dodging magic or extremely athletic. He tells Pagefinder he hopes to get the berries Ink Witch may have used instead.

Pagefinder gets a piece of dat berry, and suddenly a giant arrow pops up and she drags Snout to the next page...which is Skori Tree. MPF Number 3 occurs. Snout tries to make friends with the tree, but Skori wants nothing to fucking do with the orc. I wonder if Siggy hung that orc family from a Skori tree, just to bury him some more? So Snout’s next plan is to fly to the tree by using the Pagefinder. He makes it but Skori begins to make his plan impossible. Skori gives him the finger but Snout gives him one back. Then...the tree just gives up? Snout gets the missing piece, and we find out the ol’ Dullminic went to Asinoteph, where dreams become visions, and apparently he tried to see the future, but instead he saw...oh boy, next page will unveil the twist. Did he see the past? the present? the winter of his discontent? the apocalypse? the Chosen? Whatever it is, it’s probably dumb.

Snout gets ready to sleep, and even Pagefinders need to sleep. We don’t get reprise of the orc dick this time. No wait, we do, as we see Snout in a dream, where an ink vortex...happens. What? No blood? No gore? No horror? Hmm, maybe Dominic saw THE INK? Snout makes his dream diary, and presents his questions about the last page, that basically ask readers to think about these questions too. I actually like this. It makes our hero look more huma...er, orc, and being used to Gene Catlow mystery exposition it also helps recapping the ongoing mysteries of the comic without pretentious third person pronouning and vague vagueness.

Snout goes to last missing page, which is held by an orc with a beard. Is that a male crone? Old Stoneraper? How come Snout does not have tusks? Honestly, i like him way more without the damn tusks. The old bastard smiles kindly when he sees Snout and gives him the page. Holy shit? An orc being nice to another orc? That’s like...a fucking fever dream. The orc then commits magic disappearance thing. Yup, i’m sure it was Old Stoneraper. Turns out, Deegan did actually see the end of all prophecy, and beginning of his legacy. Um, what? So does this mean that the visions are now gone forever? Thank fucking god, because it got so fucking confusing in the original comic. But wait, if he’s looking for his legacy, is he talking about Snout? Or is he like, looking for someone with good legacy in a talent show? I dunno, lay your theories on me Snout. But before that, the old orc comes. But the Pagefinder warns him that he is in a TERRIBLE DANGER. Oh boy, never mind orcs being nice. All orcs are still assholes to eachother, thanks Siggy.

Snout tells the old orc he was one of the few who didn’t hurt him, if he only kneeeew. Snout asks Old Orc what happened to him, and he falls to...visionscape, sigh. He runs towards a strange ink cube before returning to reality. Turns out Old Orc took all the pages. Oh hey, our protagonist does mistakes, and he actually suffers from them. That’s the first time EVER i’ve seen that in this blog, and then...Pagefinder dismantles. Not gonna lie, it is competing with Sleeve in terms of saddest inanimate object death in a webcomic. Snout wonders what is he gonna do, when he remembers his strange dream. Turns out Dominic Deegan recorded a song called “The Day i Dreamed Again”? No wait, a poem. Turns out Dominic learned to see visions again, and wrote a book about lucid dreams. Bort does not have it, so he has to go into another library. We reach the page i saw in my last Webcomic Check, where poor ol’ Snout is afraid of leaving his new home, and even makes a full list of pros and cons of leaving his home. Not gonna lie, Mookie does actually explore a lot of things he can do with a deaf mute protagonist, as opposed to having a deaf mute protagonist for the sake of having a deaf mute protagonist.

Snout begins his quest the next day, believing he might lose so much if he stays in his homeplace, and the mysteries on his mind keep him up at night. He sees...a lot of things, but thankfully does not bump into any werewolves, dragons or four armed naga things. He finally finds a place called...Mongreltown, but is immediately followed by something. That something is the spaceship that destroyed his home. Mongreltown can wait as he sees the spaceship has crashed. Out of it comes...the Ink Witch, who looks way more adult than any other character Mookie has drawn. Ink Witch is happy to see Snout but remembers he is deaf so she talks in form of ink, and that’s where we leave our story.

So far, i really really like this. The only problems i had were the increased usage of cheap punchline pages and MPF, as well as the rather cheap ways the spaceship arc and the battle with Skori Tree were resolved, but on the contrast there was a LOT of stuff i enjoyed, and i can’t believe i’m saying that about a Mookie comic. Snout is actually a very likable character, and his design has grown on me, his unique status as a deaf mute protagonist was explored, without turning him into a stupid exposition machine, as he only writes when it’s necessary. Pagefinder (RIP) was a very likable character and Mookie seems to be mocking himself with some of the jokes in the comic. The mystery of Dominic Deegan’s fate didn’t really get me invested yet as it’s still an actual mystery that’s important and not just a side thing that’s resolved through third person pronouns and “unseen” reveals. Also we’re shown so many new creatures and species on this comic, none of which are hideous furrybait. It really helps upgrading this setting to an actual fantastic setting and not just “modern setting with fantasy textures applied” that the original comic’s Dominion was. Also, the comedy was actually kind of funny even with the occasional repetition and the MPF.

It’s not the best comic i’ve read ever, but it is the best comic i’ve ever read on this blog. There is a little bit of dread in me though that this comic might go downhill sooner or later. This is still Mookie writing this.

[bigskydreaming]

Pet peeve in Batfics or comics: jokes about Dick’s horrible sense of fashion, based on his original Robin or Nightwing costumes. ESPECIALLY jokes made by his family, the other Robins most of all.

.......gee, why would a grieving circus orphan design his superhero costumes to look like....something worn by circus performers?

Like, no shit those designs look ‘terrible’ by most characters’ or fans’ fashion standards, but they were never MEANT to be conventionally fashionable from an in character OR behind the scenes perspective. ‘Conventional’ fashion standards could disapprove all they want, they were irrelevant to the aims of the kid designing the costumes as something that would look and feel like the best and happiest times of his life. Dick was never TRYING to design something that would look ‘fashionable,’ he was trying to design something that looked like what he’d worn and would have kept wearing all his life as a circus performer. If he’d ever been given the OPTION of staying as one, of having control over which direction his life took, instead of being ripped away from it whether he liked it or not. Which, y’know. He did not.

Tbh, this is a pretty big blindspot in most writings about Dick’s character IMO, because like, his ‘terrible fashion sense’ is basically both a canon and fanon trope at this point.....but.....he doesn’t have a terrible fashion sense? There’s literally NO other instance in the comics of him not being able to dress fashionably? In fact, in both canon AND fanon, Dick’s civilian persona, his version of Bruce’s ‘Brucie’ act, is him being a pretty famous celebrity socialite in his teenage years and early twenties? One who was constantly in the papers while dating Starfire - a famous superheroine slash supermodel - in his civilian persona?

......ummm....but sure, the famous supermodel dating celebrity doesn’t know how to dress himself or what looks good. That makes sense.

Dick’s never had a bad fashion sense, his first, self-designed costumes as both Robin and Nightwing were only ever ‘unfashionable’ because HE DIDN’T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THEM BEING FASHIONABLE LOL THAT WASN’T REMOTELY HIS PRIORITY. HE WAS HOLDING ONTO HIS HERITAGE AND TYING IT TO HIS SUPERHEROICS IN DEFIANCE OF AN UNCARING SYSTEM AND SOCIETY WHO HAD NO RESPECT FOR IT OR WHAT IT MEANT TO HIM.

So, making his brothers guilty of the exact same thing, for an easy laugh that doesn’t actually make sense given literally ANYTHING else about his character, feels....meh. Always pulls me out of a story and throws me into headcanons about how shitty it must make Dick feel that later Robins gave no fucks before altering the designs to their own preferences without ever bother asking or caring WHY Dick would have designed them with ‘short pants and pixie boots’ in the first place. Why do those interpretations of those characters care so much about being ROBIN if you don’t have them ever care about what being Robin MEANT to the guy who conceived of it and made it what it was - something they aspired to be themselves - in the first place?

Also I know a lot of people point to the mullet Dick had in the 80′s as their other proof of his terrible fashion sense, and like, I know it is by modern standards, and it doesn’t transition well to writing a modern Dick who was only 18 or 19 five years ago or so, our time, but uh....it WAS fashionable according to the sensibilities of the time he was shown having it....which was like....kinda why he was drawn having it. Yeah, it doesn’t make sense for him to have had one five years ago, but if its only ever brought up now as something he had five years ago in order to prove how unfashionable he is, again, it just....doesn’t fit? Sometimes things in comics can’t hold up over time, and that’s just one of those things. 

My point with this post is kinda like.....literally EVERY superhero has had shitty, unfashionable costume designs at some point in history, when judged by modern standards, but ONLY Dick’s costumes have a time-honored tradition of being called out and laughed at - usually by his own successors - when the irony is, ONLY Dick’s costumes have an origin and explanation for how they look that DOES manage to stand the test of time and changing fashion trends.....BECAUSE THEY WEREN’T DESIGNED TO FIT A SPECIFIC ERA’S FASHION STANDARDS LOLOL.

Ngl, this one bugs me a lot, because I will never not be annoyed by how entitled most people make the later Robins towards the mantle and its legacy, and how rarely they’re written as giving a shit about Dick’s feelings on the matter or the history and heritage and traditions the Robin persona was meant to embody when Dick first made it, with no expectation that anyone BUT him would ever hold it.

It ESPECIALLY annoys, given how much deference most writers and fans give towards Jason, Tim and Damian’s origins, and how respectful and protective they are of where each of them come from and their early lives and histories.

Like, if you’ve got Jason bristling over insults about him growing up in the poor parts of Gotham, you shouldn’t be unironically writing Jason mocking his older brother’s origins, y’know? I’ve read so many fics that are like “poor Jason, who had it so rough at fancy galas growing up with Bruce, where everybody looked down on him, unlike Dick who everybody loved” and its kinda like.....dudes, think about how you all write Dick’s own FAMILY treating his circus origins and upbringing, and then ask yourself seriously. Is it REALLY likely that all those rich Gotham snobs at those events didn’t look down their noses at Dick every bit as much? That they weren’t laughing WITH him so much as AT him, and that Dick, who grew up in a circus that traveled the world and brought him into contact with so many people, probably always knew damn well how to tell the difference between people genuinely entertained by him and people just entertained by the amusing anecdote of his existence, ‘that adorable little circus boy Wayne took in?’ 

Yeah, Dick probably always knew how to work a crowd at those events and make it LOOK like he was having a good time, but that’s because that used to be his JOB, even as a kid. Doesn’t mean he ever actually enjoyed it when stuck attending events where he knew damn well how little respect people had for him or where he came from.

(Tbh, I consider this to be one more thing Dick and Jason have in common with each other more than the others, and I also headcanon its why Jason never tried to change the Robin costume or even thought about it as far as we ever saw. And its also why I will always always write Dick as having told Jason stuff about the circus and why he made Robin the way he did, after he first gave Jason his own costume, and why I always write Jason as having seen Dick as an ally and someone to vent to about that stuff, knowing he’d get it where Bruce wouldn’t have a clue. Because it doesn’t make SENSE for Jason not to know or understand this about Dick, and for Dick not to have seen this common ground between them after he already extended the olive branch of giving Jason his blessing as Robin. Jason Todd is many things, but entitled is NOT one of them, and IMO he would never ever ever stomp all over someone else’s humble origins in the same ways he’s used to people doing with him. I headcanon that Jason was the Robin who altered the Robin persona as little as possible, because he knew what it was like to have so little left to hold onto, and he wanted to honor and respect what Robin meant to Dick, as much as what it’d come to mean to him. I will always always see it being more natural for Dick and Jason to be natural allies against the wealthy of Gotham and even Bruce’s own entitlement issues.)

[btsybrkr]

Please Come Dine With Me

In today’s world of Netflix originals, glossy reality series and big budget drama, it’s easy to forget about TV’s old reliables. You know, the programmes with nothing to say, but so much to give. They’re the television equivalent of an ex that you can’t help but miss, despite having brought absolutely nothing to each other’s lives. The absolute king of this brand of TV can only be Come Dine With Me, the dinner party contest that began broadcasting in 1892 and has been playing simultaneously, on all 26 branches of Channel 4, at every hour of every day ever since. Seriously, flick through the channels, I can almost guarantee it’s on right now.

Come Dine With Me, now in its 37th series (I’m actually not making that bit up), must unironically be one of the best things to ever air in this country. During a casual viewing, it seems that nothing much happens, but a quick Google search unearths an absolute goldmine of unforgettable moments. Some have already been cemented into pop culture history, destined to be repeated on ‘100 Greatest...’ clip shows until the sun swallows the Earth whole - like the man who decided to sample a sauce he was making by nonchalantly shoving the whole whisk into his mouth, or sore loser Peter Marsh’s ‘you won, Jane’ speech, which is, in my opinion, a hundred times more brutal than anything Ricky Gervais could or would ever come out with whilst presenting an awards ceremony. Others are unfortunately never spoken about, but remain a vivid memory in the consciousness of the lucky viewers who caught them, such as the moment a particularly eccentric contestant, known only as DJ Dom, drafted in indie musician Badly Drawn Boy to help him cook for his ‘Madchester’ themed dinner party, before telling the viewers “All done, just got to go and change me kecks!” and coming back downstairs in the exact same outfit, right down to the bucket hat. Or the iconic Preston week from series 7, in which we were introduced to so-posh-it-hurts Valerie Holliday, whose pronunciation of the word ‘pheasant’ (or fezzaaaunt, as she might say) is superglued to the insides of my brain, where it will stay for the rest of my days. I wouldn’t have it any other way. 

I’m sure we’ve all, at some point, had the ‘who would be invited to your dream dinner party?’ conversation with our friends or family, but what we should really be asking each other is “who would be on your dream episode of Come Dine With Me?”. If you think about it, they’re two very different questions, with very different answers. Of course, I’d love the chance to sit and speak with Tom Hanks, Mac Demarco and Phoebe Waller-Bridge over a glass of wine and a really good burger, but do I think it would make entertaining TV? Well, yeah, probably. But not on Come Dine With Me. That’s a horse of a very different colour.

Anyway, here’s what my dream episode of Come Dine With Me might look like. Narrated in your brain by Dave Lamb, probably.

Today, we’re in Blackpool, where our first contestant, 23-year-old chronic timewaster Betsy (that’s me!), is gearing up to host the opening night of the week, and we’re sure it’s going to be an absolute belter. Let’s see what her fellow dinner party guests make of the menu.

“A cheeseboard? As a starter? What’s that about?”, asks living soundbite and reality TV icon, Gemma Collins. She’s unimpressed with the menu, largely on the basis that it pales in comparison to the sort of luxury she’s used to, such as the gourmet camel penis she could have been tucking into on I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! In 2014, had she not packed it in after three days. Actually, I think the celebrity version of Come Dine With Me might be the only reality programme that Gemma Collins is yet to appear in. Maybe we should be writing to the powers-that-be at Channel 4 and getting them to sort that out, since I’ll surely be making a strong case for her appearance here. Anyway, who’s next?

Our third contestant is equally disappointed with the offerings. “I don’t fuck with stilton”, states the self-proclaimed second coming of Jesus, Kanye West. Yes, he’s an odd choice for a daytime cookery/popularity contest, especially since I’m almost 100% sure he doesn’t cook for himself under any circumstances, and is probably only popular among people who’ve never had to try and sit through an actual conversation with him, but who cares? Kanye does what Kanye wants. And if Kanye wants to appear on Come Dine With Me, then that’s his business, and he’ll shit in the Yeezys of anybody who disagrees. Or pay someone else to do it for him, obviously. Anyway, onto contestant number four, who can surely only be disappointing after that… can’t they?

Of course not!! Contestant number four is TV’s shouty queen-of-clean Kim Woodburn, who is really excited to get her teeth into some red hot beef. Not the food kind, either. The kind of beef she dished out to Philip Schofield, while he was asking her questions about the beef she dished out in her fondly-remembered ‘chicken-livered bunch’ rant from Celebrity Big Brother. She’ll be glad to know I’m not serving any chicken livers at my dinner party, I’m sure. Not that she’ll be particularly enamoured with my cooking skills overall.

“It all looks terribly common, darling”, she says, as she holds the menu in one Marigold-wearing hand, and a glass of an expensive gin in the other. Suit yourself, then, Kim.

Contestant number five hasn’t bothered to read the menu yet, but that’s because he’s been busy begging the Channel 4 producers on set for another series of Deal Or No Deal now that his hefty I’m A Celebrity paycheck is all but gone. Yes, it’s Noel Edmonds, TV’s favourite bearded arsehole. After Alan Sugar, of course, but I’ve already written a bit about him on here, so there’d be no point in putting him in this one as well. You know, someone I knew a few years back once told me that Noel Edmonds did a guest lecture at his university, in which he offered some lucky students the chance to spend their summer doing a couple of months unpaid work experience on his radio show. Imagine that! Spending day-in-day-out with Noel Edmonds, without even a penny in compensation. I know they say ‘life’s not fair’, but that really would be pushing it. 

Anyway, that’s everyone, and as I anxiously pour boiling water into five chicken and mushroom Pot Noodles, my all-star dinner guests begin to arrive. First at the doorstep is Kim, who I greet with open arms. 

“Wonderful to meet you, luvvie”, she says. The worried glance she gives the camera afterwards tells me otherwise. Perhaps she’s unimpressed by my unshiny door handle. That’s not a euphemism. 

Gemma and Noel arrive soon afterwards, both carrying bottles of champagne that I couldn’t possibly ever afford myself. They’re not to share, of course, they were bought in anticipation that the wine I’m providing wouldn’t be up to standard, which it is, because I’m serving all my courses with a glass of Summer Berries Echo Falls. It’s £5.99 a bottle and gets you absolutely Bankered. 

We mingle in the living room, eagerly anticipating the arrival of my final guest. Just as Gemma, Kim and Noel begin bonding over the trials of being paid many thousands of pounds to sit around and simply exist for the viewing pleasures of mere mortals like myself, Kanye West teleports himself into the room, in a futuristic flash of lightning and to the tune of his 2010 hit Power, blowing a massive hole into the entire left side of my house in the process. It’s true what he says, you know - the man really is a genius.

We take our seats at the dinner table, as soon as the rest of my guests are done with the obligatory search through my knicker drawer (cue a comeback for Kim’s famous How Clean Is Your House? catchphrase, “Oh, you dirty devil!”) that happens on every edition of Come Dine With Me. You know, despite everything else on the programme, that’s the one bit of it that I’ve never really understood. Every single one of the show’s 1,647 episodes includes a bizarre sequence in which the contestants go running around the host’s home, rifling through their personal belongings and mocking them for the cameras. I’m sure the point of it is supposed to be to give the guests a chance to ‘get to know’ the host, but then I’d have thought that spending five nights eating and chatting with them would be a fairly effective way of doing that. Besides, can you imagine catching your guests doing that in real life? I wouldn’t be sitting them down for a meal and rating them for a chance to win £1,000, I’d be throwing them out, maybe even calling the police, depending on what exactly they were doing with the belongings in question. Not that I have time to think about that right now, I’ve got a cheeseboard to prepare!

First topic of conversation is, of course, TV, and as we tuck into our Ritz biscuits and Tesco Value mature cheddar, Noel gives us his opinion.

“My main issue with television these days is that I’m just not on it enough.” A valid viewpoint. We take a moment to collectively long for the days of Noel’s HQ, a drunken nightmare that was somehow harnessed and broadcast to the masses by Sky1, way back in 2008. Noel’s HQ has been mostly lost to time, except for the presence of a video on YouTube entitled ‘Noel Edmonds speaks with passion’, which is well worth a watch if, like me, you enjoy four minute long videos of TV presenters struggling to stifle their own belief that they might just be The Best Person Ever. There’s a great bit in it where he angrily declares to his delighted audience, “I don’t get paid a penny for doing this show”. Noel, I think I speak for everyone when I say thank you for your sacrifice. 

Speaking of The Best Person Ever, Kanye is noticeably quiet. But then, Kanye isn’t here to share his views. Kanye isn’t particularly here to do anything. Kanye is simply here to observe - to greet his subjects, and work out what makes them tick. Kanye can sense our excitement to be sat in his presence, and Kanye enjoys this. It feeds Kanye. Far more than my meager dinner offerings ever could.

I press Gemma for her own opinions on TV, as someone who is literally always on it. Gemma Collins gets where Domestos can’t. It may sound like I’m being flippant, but in all honesty, I love Gemma Collins. I’m not even sure why, I just know I do. She’s famous for the sake of being famous, and she’s bloody good at it. She’s also quite possibly the most quotable public figure since Shakespeare himself. Maybe even more than Shakespeare. Think about it. What inspires you more? “To be or not to be?”, like anyone knows what that actually means, or “Nah, fuck this, I’m out of here. Get that fire exit door. Am off.”, a poetic sentiment, which conveys an emotion we’ve surely all felt at some point in our lives? I know who gets my vote.

Kim misunderstands the question “what do you think of television today?” as “how clean do you think my television is?”, and responds by pulling out a five pack of dusters and a can of Mr Sheen, and getting to work on the flatscreen in the corner of my living room. Oh well, at least all that cleaning will make her hungry in time for the main course. Speaking of which, maybe it’s time I got on with that.

Despite their disappointment with the starters, the main course - Super Noodle sandwiches, with a generous side-helping of curly fries - appears to delight all my guests, except Kim, who mutters under her breath that it all seems very tacky. I won’t let it get me down. It’s my heartfelt belief that anything can be a sandwich filling if you’re brave enough, and my other three guests agree with me. Kanye lets out a satisfied ‘hm’. Excellent. 

We sit down to dessert, and another glass of Echo Falls. The wine is going down surprisingly well, especially with Kim, who has started subtly rolling her eyes at the conversation between myself and Gemma Collins, who are bonding over how much we love Gemma Collins. Kim purses her lips. Her Spidey-senses are tingling. There’s conflict afoot. 

I quiz Noel about an article that I saw in 2015 and have never forgotten. It was featured on The Independent, and was headlined ‘Noel Edmonds says that ‘death doesn’t exist’ and that ‘Electrosmog’ is more deadly than Ebola’. I know that this sounds like something I just came up with, but I regret to tell you that is absolutely something he said. In real life. I’ll give you a minute to take that in.

Noel Edmonds reaffirms this view to me, speaking with the same unnerving passion he did in the YouTube clip I mentioned earlier. I nod politely. I begin to wonder if everyone’s had a little too much Echo Falls, and if I can really handle another four nights with these people. It’s at this moment that, for the first time all night, His Almighty Westness speaks. 

“I really feel what you’re saying right now”, he tells Noel. We wait together for the next part of the statement, but it never comes. Kanye West outstretches his arm to Noel Edmonds. They shake hands. None of us can quite believe it. And for a moment, Noel and Kanye are right. It does feel as though death doesn’t exist. Nothing exists outside of this dinner party. Everything that matters is happening around my dining table at this very second. 

The silence is broken by Kim Woodburn tutting into a wine glass. 

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake,” she drawls, rolling her eyes, “What a load of nonsensical tosh.”

“Excuse me?”, asks Noel, still hand-in-hand with Kanye West, an alliance he is clearly eager to keep going for as long as possible, on the off chance that he fancies funding another series of Noel’s House Party, “I don’t see you bringing anything to the table here, Kim.”

She widens her eyes, taking another generous gulp of Echo Falls - and I know exactly what she’s about to bring to the table. A big old fight. 

Gemma Collins throws in her two cents. 

“I think we should all calm down a little bit, d’ya know what I mean? I’m having a lovely meal at a fan’s house, I can’t be arsed with an argument.” Wise words, as always, Gemma. Wise words.

It all kicks off.

“You can be quiet, you talentless, orange foghorn!”, sneers Kim, “You’ve contributed nothing to the conversation this evening, other than talking about yourself.”

Gemma’s eyes seem to cloud over with anger, as her complexion quickly transitions from Dulux shade Tangerine Twist to Cranberry Crunch. She knocks the rest of her wine back. Everything goes quiet again for a moment, as Noel, Kanye and I watch the two TV divas stare at each other. It’s like a scene from an old Western, but with diamonds and veneers.

With a violent roar, she launches herself across the table, grabbing Kim by her fake ponytail. I jump up to hold her back, as Kanye leaps from his seat to hold Kim from Gemma. There’s a mad blur of acrylic nails and tufts of bleach blonde hair flying between them, some of it landing into the banoffee pie I had worked so hard on. Noel stands back, arms folded, watching the action in dismay. If you could see the whole picture, it might resemble a renaissance painting, the sort that could be hung in a gallery anywhere in the world and analysed for it’s artistic importance. ‘Nous aimons le boeuf’, it might be called. French for ‘we love the beef’. Doesn’t really matter it means, though, to be fair, as long as it sounds clever and artsy.

Noel shakes his head. 

“What the hell am I doing here?”, he asks, frustrated, “I’m a huge TV star.”

Security eventually intervene, somewhat reluctantly, given the fact this is the most action they’ve seen on a shoot for Come Dine With Me, possibly ever. Producers watch back the footage of the fight on an iPad, sat on my sofa, attempting to mask their delight at what they’d caught on camera.

Kanye eventually stands up, soberly taking in the scene in front of him. Is this how Jay-Z felt as he left the elavator?, he wonders.

“I’m gonna take off”, he informs everyone, breaking the silence that had fallen over the room in the aftermath. But before he can teleport out of the room again, possibly blowing a hole in the other side of my house, the producer speaks up.

“Same time tomorrow? It’s Gemma’s night.”

Four more nights of this… four more nights, all for the chance to win £1,000… is it worth it? 

Of course it is. It was a blast. Same time tomorrow, indeed.

To see some highlights from the iconic Preston week of Come Dine With Me, click here. To see Noel Edmonds speak with passion, click here. To follow me on twitter, click here, or here for instagram :)

[loreweaver-universe]

I’ve had a couple of people express confusion about the fact that I hate this kid so much more than the genuinely gross asshole creep Kawazu, so let’s go on a tangent and talk about someone I hate talking about in any way, shape, or form: Christine Weston Chandler.

And boy howdy should you stop reading here if you don’t like hearing about this creep, because--not joking--my autistic ass has nightmares about her.

CWC is the autistic author of the infamously awful webcomic Sonichu, wherein a Sonic/Pikachu OC has adventures in a utopian town populated by other Sonic character/Pokemon fusions.  It’s poorly drawn, even more poorly written, and would have been consigned to the heap of innocently terrible internet fancomics except for two things.

First, Sonichu caught the attention of 4chan.

Second, Sonichu held the attention of 4chan, because Christine is the walking fusion of the worst social stereotypes of autistic people and basement-dwelling neckbeards.

We’re talking about someone who once walked through a crowded mall trailing a paper heart on a string, “fishing” for a true love.  Completely seriously.  Someone who has been banned from several places for creeping on people and given restraining orders multiple times if I recall correctly.  Someone who would sign off the end of Sonichu chapters with a completely serious “Remember, stay straight, kids!”  That’s just a small sampling of her antics--which she completely unironically thought were normal behavior, mind you--and that’s not even getting into her squabbles with 4chan.

4chan mocked CWC, as 4chan is wont to do.  CWC responded directly, attempting to refute their mocking jabs as if you could argue with trolls in any kind of successful manner.  When they ramped up their mockery in return, she ramped up alongside them, eventually culminating in trolling wars with such highlights as tracing her dick to prove it wasn’t weirdly shaped and devoting an entire section of Sonichu to a trial of her biggest and most vocal trolls that ended with their torture and violent deaths.

God, this is just the tip of the iceberg.  I spent a couple nights voraciously reading up everything I could on her back when I stumbled across this walking nightmare in college, and have regretted it ever since.  If this account sounds vague, it’s because I’ve blotted out and aggressively avoided anything to do with CWC in the last five years or so because of what she does to me psychologically.  Talking about her tends to give me panic attacks, actually, but since Paranoia Agent episodes seem to be the Loreweaver Talks About Mental Illness Power Hour, let’s lay this out.

I am autistic.  I was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome at age 21 prior to it being merged with the general autism diagnosis, and that retroactively explained SO much about the way I acted as a child and growing up--the stuff that was in retrospect sensory issues or my having the social skills of a dry clam, for example.  (One of the primary defining traits of autistic folk, as far as I have experienced, is that we simply don’t come packaged with the mental software that absorbs, processes, and replicates subtle, situational, or nonverbal social cues and language that neurotypical people have installed right out of the gate.)  As a child, my only diagnoses were ADHD and Oppositional Defiant Disorder; the doctors at the time didn’t even think to think that somebody as evidently “functional” as me, with a high tested IQ, could be described as autistic.  Medical understanding of autism has come a long way since then, but growing up, all I knew was that other kids thought I was weird, and that I got interesting reactions out of them by playing it up and taunting them about it.

That all changed when I was a little older than Yuichi.

Heading out of middle school, I was upset that people didn’t like me--what wasn’t to like?  I was so much smarter and more fun than any of them--and lamenting the cruelty of the world when I got to thinking.

It’s a long story and this post is already getting long, but the short version is that I figured out the whole “If everyone you meet is an asshole, you’re probably the asshole” principle, and then dedicated my teenage years to mentally beating myself up if I stepped out of line from how I thought a neurotypical person would act.  I didn’t know the words “pass for neurotypical” at the time, of course, but I wrapped myself tighter and tighter around those vague and nebulous rules until I started to crack under the pressure.  I developed chronic depression and an untreated anxiety disorder, and that little voice in the back of your head?  The one that lists out every embarrassing thing you’ve done when it’s three in the morning and you’re begging your body for sleep?   That was on full blast, all the time.

I am who I am today because I forced myself to learn how to understand and appreciate other people, but I did it in such a damaging way that it was essentially chronic self-harm...and when I see other people who don’t understand the lessons I whipped myself with all those years, who act not just in socially clueless ways but in actively creepy ways or condescending narcissistic ways, that voice in the back of my head starts shouting again about how terrible I am and how many mistakes I’ve made.

Every time I come across CWC in a discussion on the internet, this happens.   Every time.  I’m having kind of a rough time typing all of this out, actually.  CWC is the worst timeline version of myself.  She’s emotionally stunted, narcissistic, arrogant in spite of her incompetence, and most importantly, at least when I last looked into her seriously, was completely incurious and unwilling to consider self-improvement.  She is my worst self-loathing made flesh, and my emotional reaction to coming across people that embody the worst aspects of myself, the ones I’ve done my best to purge over the years?  It’s high-strung, turbulent anger.

In the same way that I see a lot of who I could have become in CWC, I see a lot of who I was in Yuichi--the smugness, the arrogance, the self-importance, the condescension, the narcissism.  Unlike Kawazu, who has underdog elements and actually is shown working and struggling for his goals to some extent--and whose job is literally to ask questions and investigate things--Yuichi is just...an ass. THAT is why I react so much more violently to him than to Kawazu.   Kawazu is regular, mundane awfulness; Yuichi is a dark mirror of myself.

Man, that sounds pretentious, doesn’t it.

Anyways. I’m gonna go take a quick break after typing all of this up.  Whoof.   That’s why I dislike the kid so much, emotional reactions, self-loathing, yadda yadda.  See you in a couple minutes for the rest of the session.