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nightswithkookmin · 4 years

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JIKOOK AND THEIR SHENANIGANS-pt1

Disclaimer:

This is my opinion and perspective of Jikook. I do not intend nor imply malice by my choice of words or by my interpretations of BTS' contents. Nor do I intend to be disrespectful of any member herein mentioned.

Do not take my words out of context in furtherance of your own agenda. You are the author of your own intentions and interpretations. If you do hold yourself accountable first.

PREFACE

I am done with with Jikook. Lol

I swear to God by the time they officially come out as a couple, if they ever do, I'm going to be left with severe PTSD.

Pray for me.

A lot has happened with Jikook these past few weeks. A devastating lot. Everything was going great and smooth and boom- we were hit with yet another anomaly in their dynamics. It was usual given us most of the things that had happened were entirely new to their dynamics yet not at all surprising in the grand scheme of things simply because unpredictability is Jikook's schtik and as I've come to terms with, part of their dynamics- you'll get used to it if you are new. Welcome to the club. Lol

I have shared snippets of my thoughts here and there on this whole development as and when it unfolded and said I wasn't going to deliver a comprehensive commentary until later so here it is- grab a glass of wine or coffee. It's gonna be long. Bless.

WHY I WAS HOLDING BACK

Contrary to what some people say and assume about me, I don't pull my opinions on Jikook from my ass- a dollar to the jar. Lol. I don't base my perspective on Jikook's relationship and dynamics on puff and nada. Where is the fun in that? I may be delusional about somethings but... Anywho.

I have said time and again how when it comes to Jikook moments there's always context and subtexts we are missing- it's a challenge trying to fill in the gaps. Probably part of the reason I'm obsessed with their dynamics. Lol.

Most of the theories I share with you on here are based on my observations of Jikooks interactions over a period of time. My objective has always been to try and understand the motivations (context) behind their moments and interactions, some of which I find fit a pattern while others- I never want to tackle or even think about without several pain killers and depressants until years later when a piece of content is released to provide better insights into their dynamics.

Jimin's birthday is one such moment for me. While I understood and even predicted JM's use of 5/8 in May this year was going to be a substitute for May 13 because I felt Jikook were not in a good place, were under heavy scrutiny in SK within that time period- starting with that March 30th VLive which I believe had led to a ban on Jikook using the platform on their own(especially Jimin- JK was already under ban but we will get into it later) given as BTS's content had changed drastically with heavy VLive supervision and the pg 13 contents they were made to make post that JM's VLive; then there was rumors of Dispatch's alleged conflict with BigHit, BigHit's IPO, Jungkook's Itaewon scandal- which of course were all confirmed later on that month, I felt the prospect wasn't looking good for Jikook to Jikook as wildly and as openly as they did.

Now you all know about my wild assumption about JM taking space out of their relationship due to JK coming on strong around that time so I'll spare the details.

Contrastingly, post BigHit's IPO, post Soop since Stay Gold era I felt things were looking great for Jikook. They were back to Jikooking. I felt they weren't being monitored as much by their bandmates and had a new found freedom within BigHit to do their own things as it appeared BigHit had begun 'managing' and presenting them as a brand- which I have written dissertations upon dissertations on so I won't get into.

JK and JM had started their online flirty banter thingy, even Dispatch seemed good with Bighit posting BTS official photos etc. Jimin too posted for JK on his birthday, JK came out on social media to gear up for JM's birthday and then puff- ashes. We hit a wall.

Now I know some people are speculating there was too much attention on Jikook within this time frame which is why JK didn't post- uhhmm, I don't buy it that view. There's always attention on Jikook. It's usually the negative attention like around March-June that holds them back from Jikooking. In opinion. I wouldn't call the attention they are or were getting within that time period negative.

Then there were some who speculated JK wasn't going to post because he hadn't posted for any of the members since Jin's birthday last year which again I didn't buy into. Jk is fearless and doesn't shy aware from making bold expressions of his love for Jimin. Him posting for Jimin would have been a bold move but nothing exactly new.

We've seen his GCFs. Enough said.

Personally, I felt he had showed up on social media a few days to JM's birthday to promote his music but to also prepare the grounds for when he posts on Jimin's birthday.

I genuinely felt he was gonna 'out' Jimin with that post and have people raising all kinds of brows like they did with GCF Tokyo, Saipan and Helsinki. Lol

Why did I think he was going to do this?

DECEMBER 4TH 2019

Jin's birthday. Now I have given y'all the back ground to this timeline and so I will just hit the highlights- Rosebowl, New Jersey VLive, JK getting drunk on his Jun VLive which I felt led to a ban on him from making solo live on VApp since 2019 to date- his recent Solo live was on YouTube mind you.

Prior to this I felt he and JM had earned a ban from making a VLive together until their 2020 VLive which was heavily monitored as I have speculated in past posts- again this is just my opinion.

JK, I felt, was being 'reckless' within this period. He was making bold moves and pushing the boundaries of his relationship with Jimin and even teasing the gates of the glass closet they are in. It certainly didn't help that the You too movement in S.K and the whole Idol sex abuse scandals in Kpop was on going as I've mentioned before-which had led to August's issues. Again you know my theory on the whole tattoo girl scandal so skipping.

October we had the whole cancel Jikook hashtag trending after Jikook's performance of I still want you and the whole you are me, I am you schtick.

In all of this I felt Jikook were fine.

November is when I noticed Jikook having 'issues' in their relationship (rolling my eyes at Silver) lol. Now again I won't go into all of that but you can check the real time contents/ behind scenes content on BTS around the time period and draw your own conclusions on that.

Then came the December ups and downs, JM flinching and dropping his face when JK went to sit by him in Jin's VLive- JK's awkwardness around Jimim. Now I know some people interpret this Live as that they were fighting? I won't call it fight fight perse. Lol. Issues, perhaps?Just seemed to me JM wanted to keep a low profile because again they were under heavy public scrutiny around the time which was what I feel was causing RM to keep an eye on them throughout that period- by keeping an eye on them I mean he was invoking the spirit of Jesus between them Pentecostal style. Bless him.

But seems JK wasn't having none of that, clearly. Lmho. There were already alot of restrictions on him since June in the way he used social media(Vapp) he and JM were not allowed to VLive together, he couldn't solo Vlive no more and now he couldn't even sit right with his man- I approve of the frying pans Jk. I APPROVE. Lol.

All this is my opinion of course.

But I think that is what he meant when he kept saying it's been a while he did a solo live and didn't even know how to do one anymore in his recent YouTube live- Jk can be passive aggressive in that way but we will get into that YouTube live in a bit. Hang in there.

So with all this going on I felt I understood him when he missed Jin's birthday on Twitter. Felt like a silent protest to me. But then again I thought perhaps it was just an impulsive act on his part.

Then he missed Tae's Birthday too and I thought hold on- this man is up to something. He was gonna a statement with that in retaliation to all the ban and sanctions and interferences with his personal life.

I was just following this whole drama with anxious glee towards a big reveal and then- cricket's ass ass deadass. Chilee. This man is cruel! Lol. I'm gonna need therapy to process this one on god! Lol JK!

My Right brain said perhaps, others had been right after all and he hadn't done all of that missed birthdays on purpose at all but had only acted impulsively in the heat of the moment given everything that had been going on with the group in around Jin's birthday- Mama 2019, we all know what had happened.

I felt perhaps, the moment he missed Jin's then he had to miss everyone's because if he wished any other person a happy birthday people were going to ask questions. People were going to assume he hated whoever he didn't wish a happy birthday.

But then my left brain- the crazy delulu side, also thought otherwise. I had a funny feeling that JK really intended to post only for Jimin on his birthday since he had been gearing up for it and that the only reason he wouldn't go through with it was if JM had asked him not to.

Why would JM do that? Because he enjoys the glass closet- he loves to flex his bond with JK, tease their relationship, claim his man, he wants people to know JK is his man because he is happy with him and proud of the man that he is but that doesn't mean he is ready to come out as LGBTQ plus. In my opinion.

JK I feel was done hiding the moment he posted GCF in Saipan- he gets right with us. Bless him.

JK often weaponizes their 'secret' against Jimin and hold's it over his head sometimes- so often when Jimin is on his Kumbaya agenda with the group taking their sides on things relating to their relationship JK switches on him and tries to expose Jimin- if you're just gonna help them burn us, I'm just gonna blow the whole operation out in the open and we are all going down. Chilee!

God, I felt Jk was going to expose Jikook for real! 🤣 Don't mess with JK and his Jimin- even Jimin himself gets burns sometimes.

Remember when JK threatened to expose a picture of himself with a hickey if JM didn't stay and do a VLive with him? Remember that? JK scares me for real when he is on his Jikook agenda! Lol

I felt he knew exactly what he was doing just as he knew exactly what he was doing with Saipan and editing of Helsinki. He just reiterated it in his recent live- which we will get into soon. He pointed out how he had gone to ask the members to describe the feelings they wanted to express through the MV he directed.

He admitted yet again in that live how he expresses his feelings, HIS FEELINGS, through his art and music- for all those who keep saying you can't tell JK loves JM just because he doesn't do the things JM does. Lmho.

And so I was heavily confused by these two conflicting theories in my brain. Which is why I kept saying I didn't want to jump into conclusions, that I was going to need more content yadda yadda yadda.

Which brings me to my resolution for JM's birthday saga.

POST JIMIN'S BIRTHDAY

Jimin enjoys been treated special. It's part of his love language. Jk has always treated him like he is special to him. And I know people claim it's just a birthday post- sure. But I understand also that Jimin doesn't Joke with his birthday. His father doesn't Joke with his birthday and clearly neither does JK- given as even before they all started the exchanging of gifts culture that he was giving presents to JM and JM alone within the group.

Besides, he's said he reads the members birthday messages to him on social media and have gone ahead to read some of them on his birthday Vlives in the past. So I can't say JK not posting was nothing.

My resolution was simple. I was going to examine their interactions post Jimin's birthday to see if their dynamics had flipped to see if JK not posting for JM's birthday had in anyway affected their relationship.

If JM's birthday meant something to him. Jk was going to make it up to him- openly. Deadass but in my opinion. Lol.

That's one aspect of Jikook's dynamics you can always count on- hopefully. Lol.

They have a way of reassuring eachother of their love and affection. And I don't know what happened to put the fear of God in both of them but lord are they both scared of pissing the other off! Jesus! Not sure if it's the whippery but damn- they are both crazy for that.

For instance, take JinMin's VLive right before the New Jersey Vlive. JM posted immediately after their live had ended to say he is sorry and loves JK on Twitter. And y'all saw him when JK panned to him on the bed? I've never seen a man so terrified of another man in my entire shipping life- Manila must have put the fear of JK in him, which THANK GOD! lol. Jimin plays too much. Lmho.

Never knew a hyung needed permission from a dongsaeng to leave a room until that day. Chileee! Jin had pulled a prank on JK too but I didn't see him wetting his pants and blowing kithes to JK- come at me with Jinkook is real, see what happens. Lol

Then GCF in Tokyo! I know to some it seemed like a random act of confession on JK's part but boy did he have motivation! He don stressed JM out to the ends of the world with those weird ass rumors (again not gonna mention it because it's very controversial 'saesangs' nature) if you know good for you but chilee you didn't hear it here. Lol

Then there was that whole photoshoot and JM looking like he wanted to kill JK lol right around August 2017. Which I have discussed in one of my blog posts. I think it's in a lot of jeonlous. I'll link it later- if I find it.

Then the almighty 2019 Tattoo Girl scandal, I'm not talking about the August scandal. I'm talking about the one on JM's birthday last year which launched the severe 'I am sorry' hashtags in JK's post on JM's birthday. In my opinion definitely.

The Tattoo girl's shop had wanted until Jimin's birthday, almost a month after the incident, to release a statement which blew up the incident again and almost overshadowed JM's birthday.

Chilee, the delulu in me felt that was intentional. They just wanted to hurt JK by ruining his man's birthday for him- never let him forget. Lol. These evil masterminds. Chilee!

In my opinion. Please.

My point is, JM and JK do make out in efforts to fix their relationship. And usually, I find whoever is in the wrong takes the most initiatives- not to say all the GCFs was because of a fight. Personally I take Saipan and Helsinki more seriously than Tokyo. Just saying.

And of course we all saw JM fly all the way from Paris on JK's birthday- talk of grand gestures and extending Olive branches. Chilee, I'm single!

I was going to wait till I could see who was reassuring who after JM's birthday to see who was in the 'wrong' know what I mean? Like who is putting in more effort to let us know they are a thing?

After their March/May shenanigans that was JK with the thirst traps and shit on Weverse, which brought JM around and he started opening up taking initiatives of his own like in the Dynamite MV reaction VLive.

Afterwards it all seemed pretty mutual to me and they were vibing. Jikook was a Vibe. Sigh.

THE PHOTOSHOOT SAGA

Now I know some people assert they don't see the 'tensions' in that behind the scenes photoshoot but we would have to agree to disagree on that because I saw that as tension between Jikook as I explained in my last post.

Jk walked right past and around Jimin without a word- chileee. JM was 'extroverted' with everyone but Jk- chilee chileee. This is weird as fuck. Lmho.

Prior to this shoot I had my eyes on Tae, RM Jk due to the Twitter war that I felt was going on between them in the days leading up to the concert. If they had anything to do with JK not posting on JM's birthday it was gonna leave trails.

Jk loves everyone but fuck with his relationship with his man and you're- poor Namjoon. Lol.

I refrained from discussing the photoshoot video or conceptualizing a theory around it because for the love of me I couldn't tell who was mad at who in that footage.

They all seemed equally mad to me. Jk had his usual don't fuck with my man mood on with that glare he gave RM causing RM to back away from JM and that attitude he gave Jin right after- which I have already speculated on in my last post.

The stare down contest between him and JM was equally nerve wracking and reminded me of that interview stare down contest between Jikook around Manila.

And I know I mentioned the 'elite' squad backing up Jimin in that moment. Chilee, I was too tired to explain that term because I had been writing for a whole day nonstop but that is the term I give to RM, Hobi, Jin as the hyungs/ elders who enable JM's shenanigans most often in the group.

JK usually pans them down when he and JM are going at it.

I feel Tae, JK, Suga are the ones that stay on JM's neck and calls his bull the most out of all the boys- Y'all don't wanna know what I call them. Lol. Perhaps, I should call them Silver? Chilee, girl don stayed my neck, put the fear of Moses in me! Lol

It felt as if, whatever the problem was, they both had an interest at stake in that moment in my opinion and they were battling it out. Besides, 5 days had gone by and for the love of me I had no idea why that mood was still persisting especially if it had anything to do with Jimin's birthday.

But I understand JM had been away with his family after the concert and had spent his birthday with his family so perhaps they couldn't resolve things within that time period. And JK it seemed had also thrown himself into work from what he said on his YouTube Live, filming and directing and shit- good for him. JM's wedding suit won't buy itself. Lol

So now the Jikook Solo lives.

JIKOOK SOLO LIVES

Now y'all know I was waiting for this one. I told y'all I was waiting to see how BTS interacted with the VApp post Soop. Y'all know my conspiracy theory on this- the whole Jikook were banned from using it, JK was banned after his last VLive in June last year and how JM was banned in March this year after JK intercepted Jin's call and asked him on a date and said the whole I love you kithes thingy- they are trouble.

Then I talked about how JK had been trying to rebel in retaliation, the whole team up with Tae to expose BigHit on Weverse after their live.

I don't think much has changed in that regard. He still didn't do his Live on the VApp and through out his YouTube live he kept hinting at how BigHit had sabotaged his passion- he claimed he had lost his passion for GCF( at least that's how I took it) and that GCF felt more like work than something he did out of passion.

He threw jabs here and there at BigHit complaining about how he didn't even know how to do them Live logs anymore because it had been a while he did them- the lies Jeon Jungkook ne spilling! You was on a live with RM not too long ago what do you mean it's been long! *smirk.

Jimin did the same thing too but in a more subtle way I feel. He kept saying how he didn't know his way around the app, how the staff had set it up for him and JK said the same thing-but more aggressively. Lol.

It seems JK was just going to turn on the Live, keep it business and yeet himself out of there- just like people want him to do(to be professional and not expose his relationship- chileee, JK is that too much to ask? Sigh.

JK is really passive aggressive like the Silver Squad- see what I did there? Lol. Tae and Suga have taught him well. It's that control thingy, I feel. He hates it. He hates when he is controlled by anyone- except Jimin apparently.

He really enjoys and wants the freedom to do what he wants- rather dead than cool. Chilee! It's how he was raised I believe. He is a very independent free spirited individual, I keep saying.

All that, "it's awkward' 'it's been awhile I did this' yea he ain't slick. *smirk.

Another interesting thing I noticed is how both him and JM tried to keep the other's name out of their mouths- well Jimin tried. Dude couldn't help himself bless him.

I just think they have been cautioned to keep a really low profile on the app especially in regards to how they use the app, what they share on the app- no eye fucking, no weird tensions staring into eachother's souls, no I love you's in the background and certainly NO BONERS!

All in all, my impression of those two Lives was that- Jimin had baited BigHit when he posted that 'see you soon on VApp.' In my opinion.

I think he did that to force BigHit's hands. Jk did the same with his 'I can't do live logs on my own now' statement.

Jimin had put BigHit in a tight corner when he read that 'I miss Jungkook' comment. And the way he kept it pushing afterwards- the next day BigHit was like, y'all this is Simba. Hair slicked back and all. Take him. Lol.

I keep saying the one thing BigHit is scared of is a scandal. They really don't want people asking certain questions that's going to make them look bad especially towards their artists- in my opinion. BigHit please it's my opinion. Let the records show. Lol.

And as I keep saying, BTS and even Jikook have a way of weaponizing their social media Influence against BigHit- that nearly 9 million viewers Jimin read out on his VLive certainly gave BigHit a push to call out JK. Lol.

Personally, I was curious as I said earlier as to how that VLive was going to be live. Whether it was going to be monitored heavily like their lives were after the March 30th incident.

I was curious to see if he would appear on YouTube or VApp. As it stands, it seems whatever ban was placed on JM from having Solo Lives on the App has been lifted

And it seems he was fighting for his man too in the most kumbaya way possible- Jimin! Lolololol. He is hilarious. Bless him

I just hope JK doesn't call in on JM's future VLives again to ask him on a date- again cos damn that would chaotic. Lol.

It's crazy to me how people still look at JK and ask if he loves JM at all- damn if he isn't carrying their relationship on his back!

It seems for now he still isn't allowed a solo VLive on the App and from the Way he kept saying he couldn't do a log alone it seems he is pushing to have that freedom to have a VLive with JM again- I don't know. I might be delulu. Lol

As to whether JK was the wrong party for not posting on JM's birthday I still don't know. Would have to observe their interactions a bit more.

So far from their lives the only one who was making efforts to feed us was Jimin with the whole 10/13 Mickey Mouse thingy which we all know is reference to Jikook.

If my hypothesis is right, JM would be coming out here with heart eyes, clinging to JK, making all the efforts while JK has the mood he had during the On era again- acting like he not whipped but he whipped- bless him.

Sigh.

All that being said, this is just my opinion. I'm just sharing my thoughts and observations. I am not calling anyone to action. I am not instructing anyone on what to do with my opinion, to hate on BigHit, or any of the members mentioned in here.

If you are not an adult, and can't reason like an adult do not sit at the adult table. Immaturity is not a bar to freedom of expression.

CONCLUSION

When it comes to Jikook, I always feel JK has put in so much effort into his relationship with Jimin to squander all that effort over something as silly as a birthday post.

Jikook have both worked through a lot, come a long way in their love journey to let petty issues undo all the efforts they've both put into eachother.

If JM's birthday is an issue for JM, JK would have made it right by now. All it takes it one simple post to fix it. And he has taken much bolder steps in the past to chicken out now.

And if Jimin is the one holding JK then- dude better prepare another Paris trip to placate his man because JK about to pout him to death. Lol.

As I said I have a feeling things are good between them now. I just want to see more of their interactions.

Keep supporting Jikook.

Signed,

GOLDY

#jikook #jikook analysis #kookmin analysis #jikooktheories #kookmintheories #kookmin #jikook scenarios #jikook is real #goldy blogs #goldy theories #goldy analysis #nightswithkookmin #support Jikook #goldy #bts Jimin #bts Jungkook #bts ships

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tigerkirby215 · 4 years

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5e Skree, the Mechanical Shaman build (Awesomenauts)

(Artwork from the Microsoft Store.)

Reject modernity; embrace indie.

Basically screw you my birthday is on the 28th (🥳) so I wanted to do a build for one of my favorite games of all time. And it was basically either Awesomenauts, an Atlas Reactor build (for a game that’s essentially dead btw check out Atlas Rogues it’s great and I love it), or like... an XCOM build? Unless I wanted to make a Killing Floor character build instead. (Also a possibility.)

Oh also: the game is free, so if you want a new MOBA to try out I highly recommend it. It may not be as popular as it was in its hayday and it may be dated, but the characters and gameplay are still top-notch.

As for why Skree? I had a few mains in Awesomenauts and Skree was my... second most played character. My most played was Chucho but believe it or not Chucho is simultaneously too easy and too difficult to make a build for. Like getting a turret and sticky bombs is easy (Artificer lol) but for the life of me I can’t figure out how to get him to ride Ramona. So you get Skree because he’s easier to make. Also because I get to stick every spell with the word “wall” into this build which is fun.

GOALS

I ascend, inta' da 'eaven! - Awesomenauts isn’t your standard top-down MOBA, which means we’ll need to be able to hover for some advanced movement in a platform fighter!

Uhhh... Dat make a big mess - Skree’s a master of continuous damage, with a lightning wand that will bounce to nearby targets... oh and a giant sawblade.

Dey is after me lucky shrines! - Not a day goes by that you shouldn’t pray to your lord. So set down a massive wall to block your foes!

RACE

The great thing about Awesomenauts (as opposed to League) is that since everyone’s an alien I can choose just about any race I want within reason. The downside of this is that it makes choosing races really hard. There’s only one trait that’s well defined about Skree and it is this: he is small.

So how about we powergame like an asshole? Tasha’s has made Mountain Dwarf one of the strongest races in the game for a number of reasons! You can get a +2 in two ability scores of your choice: Charisma and Intelligence will both be key in this build, so increase both of those to start out. You also get Dwarven Combat Training but seeing as we’ll be using magic a lot more than weapons I opted to take Origin Proficiencies instead: this means you’ll get a ton of different tool proficiencies, on top of Mason’s Tools from Dwarven Tool Proficiency. I’m not going to tell you every tool to take (because my god you get 5 total) but I’d recommend Drums and Carpenter’s Tools as those are some of Skree’s upgrades in Awesomenauts.

Of course on top of all of that you have Dwarven Resilience for advantage against poisons and resistance to poison damage, and Stonecunning for expertise on History checks related to shrines! (Or other stonework.) And finally as a Mountain Dwarf you get Dwarven Armor Training, for Light and Medium armor proficiency!

ABILITY SCORES

15; INTELLIGENCE - Even if Skree doesn’t make it known he built all his tools and weapons out of the scrapped Starstorm station. Accidental genius of turning the entire station on is still genius.

14; DEXTERITY - Skree is known for flying around constantly in a game where you constantly have to move to dodge attacks. Also “something something Medium Armor” from our race.

13; CHARISMA - Weazel’s a good voice actor, and even if Skree is a little... stoned out of his mind he’s still got the lovable 80s cartoon personality that Awesomenauts is famous for.

12; WISDOM - You mostly work with machines and a lot of the Awesomenauts are machines, but you still need Wisdom to read that Book of Medicine or to convince a Skroggle to let you harvest their weedlings.

10; CONSTITUTION - Skree is hardly a tank, focusing on backline damage dealing with magic.

8; STRENGTH - See above. Even if you’re fighting with heavy metal it does all the fighting for you.

BACKGROUND

Religion is still religion, even if it’s not accepted universe-wide. The Acolyte background will let you do whatever crazy ritualistic shaman stuff you wish (within reason.) You get proficiency in Insight and Religion as well as two languages of your choice: there’s tons of languages in the universe so pick whichever ones you think will help you communicate with your allies!

Your feature Shelter of the Faithful will let you find others who believe in the god of the machines. (You should probably pick a god from your DM’s setting instead of just worshiping robots.) You and your party can receive service from others in your faith, and you can lead ceremonies in honor of the mechanical gods!

(Artwork by Katonator on DeviantArt.)

THE BUILD

LEVEL 1 - WIZARD 1

Starting off this build as a Wizard because if there’s one thing I am it’s inconsistent, so of course I’m starting the “easy fun build for my birthday” with one of my least favorite classes to build. But the main reason for the Wizard starting level is to get access to the Medicine skill thanks to your Book of Medicine, as well as the Arcana skill because you understand the spirit in the machines.

Regardless Wizards get access to spellcasting at level 1. You learn 3 cantrips and 6 spells from the Wizard list:

CANTRIPS

For a close-ranged zapping wand Shocking Grasp will let you taser your foes to keep them away.

Mage Hand will let you make sure that you aren’t losing any solar pickups.

If you need to hide in a bush Minor Illusion can make a bush to hide in. Consider it a tiny totem!

SPELLS

You fly around on a floating disk but unfortunately Tenser’s Floating Disk won’t let you do that. It will give you an easy way to carry either loot or your tools around, however.

To launch either a sawblade or some scrap at your foes Catapult will give you the option to do so!

For some damage overtime look no further than Tasha’s Caustic Brew to cover your foes in acidic Skroggle spit that will Gnaw away at them!

Knockback is a big thing in Awesomenauts; if you need some space then use Thunderwave!

People don’t really like blinds in ‘nauts but Color Spray is still useful if you’re in a pinch.

Silent Image will let you make a bigger illusion, such as a large totem that your enemies will hesitate to run past. It won’t be solid yet but it’s a good place to start with wall creation.

You also get Arcane Recovery, letting you recover spell slots equal to half your Wizard level. The exact details of how this works are detailed in the ability’s description so read that for more details.

LEVEL 2 - WIZARD 2

Second level Wizards can choose their Arcane Tradition and when in space gravity... is a harness. We’ll be going for the Graviturgy subclass from Wildemount to harness that harness! As a Graviturgy Wizard you can Adjust Density of objects (and creatures!) as long as they’re size Large or smaller. You can make an object either twice as heavy or half as heavy: when a creature is twice as heavy they move 10 feet slower and can’t jump as far but have advantage on Strength checks and saving throws, and the opposite is true if they’re light: 10 feet faster and greater jumps but they’ll have a tough time when it comes to Strength. Using this feature does require Concentration however, and will only last for a minute if you manage to concentrate on it for the full duration.

Yeesh that’s a mouthful to say “you can make things light or heavy.” How about some more spells then? The dunamancy Wizards unlock new spells based on their school, so we should probably grab Magnify Gravity since it’s a subclass-specific spell. You should also probably grab Shield seeing as I didn’t give you any ranged cantrips yet. Oops?

LEVEL 3 - WIZARD 3

Third level Wizards can learn second level spells like Misty Step for Fla... right Flash is a League thing... Well you can also grab Flaming Sphere to finally have a “sawblade” that you can move around! Be careful not to hit your allies though!

LEVEL 4 - WIZARD 4

4th level gives us our first Ability Score Improvement: you may notice that we have two uneven Ability Scores, so increase both your Charisma and your Intelligence by 1 to round those numbers up!

You can also learn another cantrip along with two more spells! For your cantrip Sapping Sting is a dunamancy-specific cantrip that can make you trip! It does very little damage but it knocks people prone, finally giving you a ranged damage option! As for leveled spells Levitate is a good way to start making yourself (or others) hover around, and Immovable Object will allow you to turn a nearby object into an unmovable totem to block your foes!

LEVEL 5 - WARLOCK 1

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(Video by denkles on TikTok. Twitter link.)

What? Did you really not expect it? Warlocks get to choose their subclass at level 1 and to zap with some Magic Sunballs go for none other than The Genie patron. There’s four different Genie Kind you can choose from, which will alter your powers in various ways. Since you’re zapping people go for Djinni, because Thunder damage is the closest we can get to Lightning.

Regardless you get two benefits at level 1 thanks to your Genie’s Vessel. Firstly you carry around a container of some sort that’s meant to contain your patron; I don’t think saying that they’re contained within a little gem atop your staff is too out of the question. Regardless Bottled Respite will let you teleport into your vessel as an action. The inside of the Drop Pod is cozy, if admittedly a little tight. While inside, you can hear the area around your vessel as if you were in its space.

You can remain inside the vessel up to a number of hours equal to twice your proficiency bonus. You exit the vessel early if you use a bonus action to leave, if you die, or if the vessel is destroyed. When you exit the vessel, you appear in the unoccupied space closest to it. Any objects left in the vessel remain there until carried out, and if the vessel is destroyed, every object stored there harmlessly appears in the unoccupied spaces closest to the vessel’s former space. The vessel’s AC equals your spell save DC, and its hit points are equal your warlock level plus your proficiency bonus. Do note that you can only enter the vessel once per Long Rest, even if you only go inside for a few minutes to buy Space Air Max and some Power Pills.

The more important benefit however is Genie’s Wrath. Once on each of your turns when you hit with an attack roll, you can deal extra damage to the target equal to your proficiency bonus. Since you have a Djinni patron the damage type is Thunder.

Speaking of attack rolls: Warlocks get access to Pact Magic! Eldritch Blast is an Eldritch Blast which lets you roll an attack roll for a blast of Eldritch. Since it can hit multiple targets at higher levels you can consider this your lightning bouncing between targets. For a close-range Sawblade Sword Burst will slice up anyone near you, but it isn’t an attack roll so do note that Shocking Grasp will be able to benefit from Genie’s Wrath, even though it’s a Wizard spell.

As for leveled spells Hex is a good way to amp up the damage, and Distort Value from Acquisitions Incorporated can be a good way to get a bit of solar off your next purchase.

LEVEL 6 - WARLOCK 2

Second level Warlocks get Eldritch Invocations like Agonizing Blast to agonize your blasts. You can also get Eldritch Mind because hey we’re multiclassing two spellcasters so advantage on Concentration would be nice; thank you Tasha!

You can also learn another spell like Protection from Evil and Good, because you are still a priest (well, Shaman) who needs to ward off dark spirits.

LEVEL 7 - WARLOCK 3

Third level Warlocks get to choose their Pact Boon and honestly... the only one that makes sense is Pact of the Tome for even more freaking cantrips. To start off Sacred Flame will attack your foes with the light of God, even if they’re hiding behind their turret. Thaumaturgy will let you spook some folk with thunder and lightning as you praise the spirits. And channeling good vibes with Guidance is always helpful.

You can also learn second level spells like Phantasmal Force from the Genie Warlock list, for a totem that only one foe can see. But for that one enemy they’ll believe it to be real!

LEVEL 8 - WARLOCK 4

Level 4 earns you another Ability Score Improvement. Seeing as we’re doing Warlock stuff more Charisma would help.

But even without Charisma you can still cast spells like Mirror Image to keep yourself safe. And you can also cast Prestidigitation for more small magic tricks. "I and I is gonna find ya man!"

LEVEL 9 - WARLOCK 5

5th level Warlocks can learn another invocation. Sitting around in base to chat isn’t a good idea, but you can chat with your allies regardless of where they are thanks to Far Scribe. You can write names in your Book of Shadows, and write messages to those people through Steam Chat to cast Sending on them!

You can also pick up third level spells and we’ll be getting the first of many walls with Wind Wall from the Djinni list to block projectiles!

LEVEL 10 - WARLOCK 6

As a 6th level Genie Warlock you can finally fly! Elemental Gift will let you activate flight for 10 minutes as a Bonus Action. You can fly up to 30 feet and can activate this ability a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus. Oh and you get to resist Thunder damage, which is always nice.

You can also learn more spells: to perform more Shamanistic duties Remove Curse will let your friends help themselves.

(Sun Wukong Skree artwork owned by Ronimo Games.)

LEVEL 11 - WARLOCK 7

7th level Warlocks get another Eldritch Invocation but there honestly isn’t much I want from the 7th level. We’re probably going to swap this out later but for now take Undying Servitude to Animate Dead. Who doesn’t love having a couple of zombies?

But are you sick of your teammates never being around to help you? Then make your own! Summon Aberration will let you summon either Nibbs (Slaad), Max Focus (Beholderkin), or Snork Gunk (Star Spawn) to help you! They’ll stick around as long as you keep your concentration, and have a variety of abilities that you can read in the spell’s description. Just remember that money makes the world go around, and mercenaries don’t fight without being paid in Solar first. (What I mean is you need a 400 gold component.)

LEVEL 12 - WARLOCK 8

Level 8 will get you another Ability Score Improvement, so you should max out that Charisma since the majority of your levels are in Warlock! There actually isn’t much I want from the Warlock spell list anymore, so for now you’ll have to wait until...

LEVEL 13 - WARLOCK 9

Hey would it be redundant to get a 20 foot fly speed when we already have a 30 foot fly speed? Well Ascendant Step lets you cast Levitate on yourself at will. While this can be used an unlimited amount of times it does also require your Concentration, so be mindful of that. I’d also suggest replacing Undying Servitude with Otherworldly Leap, because jumping is easy in low gravity! (Unless you’re on AI 404.)

You can also learn 5th level spells like Creation to make an actual real totem! Though it’ll only be 5 feet tall... You can also pickup Seeming from the Djinni list. Skins for everyone! "Shopping Skree!"

LEVEL 14 - WARLOCK 10

10th level Genie Warlocks can send everyone to the shop in their Sanctuary Vessel. When you use Bottled Respite you can now choose up to five willing creatures that you can see within 30 feet of you, and the chosen creatures are drawn into the vessel with you.

Anyone (including yourself) who remains within the vessel for at least 10 minutes gains the benefit of finishing a short rest, and can add your proficiency bonus to the number of hit points they regain if they spend any Hit Dice as part of a short rest there. You can eject any number of creatures from the vessel as a bonus action, and everyone is ejected if you leave or die or if the vessel is destroyed.

Did you want more spells as well? Too bad; you get the Mind Sliver cantrip. What do you mean we have too many cantrips?

(Skree Announcer artwork owned by Ronimo Games.)

LEVEL 15 - WIZARD 5

Finally hopping back to Wizard to maybe use that Intelligence modifier of yours. 5th level class means third level spell slots, and third level spells in your book! Part of the reason we got rid of Undying Servitude is because you can just get Animate Dead from the Wizard spell list. Other than that I did say I’d grab every spell with “wall” in the title so go take Wall of Sand! People can walk through it, but it blocks vision!

LEVEL 16 - WIZARD 6

6th level Graviturgy Wizards can grab some Pills for the Mind and apply some slows. (Or well, technically knockback.) Gravity Well will cause anyone you affect with a spell to be moved 5 feet wherever you wish! Sure it doesn’t sound that impressive, but this does affect your Warlock spells too!

Speaking of spells: ha ha wall spells go brrrr. Wall of Water is, as the name implies, a wall of water! It slows projectiles, stops fire, and can be frozen solid! If you want to play more with knockback however Pulse Wave is a Dunamancy spell that can either knock enemies away from you or pull them closer!

LEVEL 17 - WIZARD 7

7th level Wizards can get some 4th level spells but I’m going to quickly grab Slow from the third level for a Voodoo Doll... or an Alien Hula Girl. And of course I’m going to take Wall of Fire because... wall.

LEVEL 18 - WIZARD 8

8th level Wizards can get another Ability Score Improvement which means finally you can max out your Intelligence modifier! This means you can prepare more spells like Gravity Sinkhole from the Dunamancy list for a deadly “sawblade” with the pull of a phone booth, and Dimension Door for a quick escape back to base!

LEVEL 19 - WIZARD 9

Hey look at that more spells! 5th level spells too like Wall of Stone and Wall of Force, both of which will be quite a challenge for enemies to get past!

LEVEL 20 - WIZARD 10

Our final level is the 10th level of Graviturgy Wizard for a few things. Firstly your Adjust Density ability from level 2 can now affect Huge objects and creatures, but more importantly you now have Violent Attraction. When another creature you can see in 60 feet hits with a weapon, you can use your reaction to amplify the damage to do an extra 1d10! Alternatively, if someone falls you can actually enable fall damage and make them take 2d10.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Intelligence modifier and regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest. Is this a little weak for a capstone? Maybe, but what we’re really here for are spells! You can learn your final two spells... and one more cantrip! So why not grab Mold Earth, for a tiny totem you can spring from the ground at any time. For leveled spells we’ll be grabbing our last wall: Wall of Light... and the other spell with “wall” in its name: Passwall!

There are other spells at 5th level that are probably stronger but I’m sure you can spend some time consulting the spirits to let you learn more spells... as long as you’ve got the Solar for it.

FINAL BUILD

PROS

Ah, it be time to get Jammin - Do you like having a lot of options? Well with tons of spells you can prepare, plenty of options for movement and utility, and 12 different cantrips you won’t ever be lacking in an option for any situation.

I want to kill you, everyday and every night - You are easily the king of Short Rests. Warlock slots and Arcane Recovery can allow you to get a lot of your magic back whenever you see fit, so you can adjust your magic as needed.

Dat be epic wit da Capital Epic - You’re sturdier than the average spellcaster too. Good saves for all 3 mental saves and good AC thanks to being a Dwarf.

CONS

I don't remember dat being part of the Metal! - You’ve got a rather silly amount of Concentration spells, notably with some at-will abilities like Guidance and Levitate. Options are nice and all but you can only have one wall up at a time.

Dem play a card on me! - Speaking of walls: we took at lot of spells (especially at 5th level) that were more for flavor than actual practicality. Sure you can pick up new Wizard spells as you adventure along but... Look I’m not saying I’d prefer to cast Haste over Wall of Sand; just that Wall of Sand isn’t exactly an impressive spell.

Weakless fools, why ya makin me do everyting alone? - Half your levels being in Wizard plus a 0 Constitution modifier means your health is likely somewhere around 100. One-shots are cheap and Power Word Kill isn’t fun, so maybe buy some Power Pills Turbo before heading out.

But you can bring a great deal of mechanical magic to any adventuring party or band of mercenaries. Consult the spirits and let your foes see the voodoo you do! Put up walls to protect your friends as you cut through your enemies; if battle is what you need, you’d best see da Skree! And happy (soon to be) birthday to me!

(Skreelator promotional artwork from the Microsoft Store. Artwork owned by Ronimo Games.)

#Awesomenauts #is a #video game #that exists #awesomenauts skree #dnd #dnd 5e #dnd build #dnd guide #dnd wizard #dnd warlock

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ipaintwithwords · 4 years

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Inktober 2020 #1

The Tenth Tail

Nightfall came earlier than usual that day. Under the fiery oranges and deep blues of the autumn sky, the murmuring of the woods was beginning to turn silent. The birds of the canopy tucked their heads under their wings and the small rodents of the ground retreated to their burrows, as the crickets woke and reached for their violins right when the moon emerged from behind the clouds. Their song filled the crisp, earthy air of the forest, a soft, endless twitter of hundreds of tiny legs, peaceful and quiet, almost eerie as nothing else made a sound.

No owls hooted, no leaves rustled, no twigs snapped under the hoof of no lost fawn - nothing but the crickets, serenading the stars in neverending verses. At least that was the only thing the boy could hear, besides the ragged, painful breaths of his own.

He was laying on the ground, one hand full of luscious berries bleeding crimson poison on his fingers, the other one digging into the dirt, trying to hold onto it with all that was left inside him. The golden ocean of fallen leaves was warm around him, like the comforting embrace of a blanket, but somehow he still felt the cold creeping up his spine under his sweat-soaked, tattered clothes, digging its way deep into his bones - spreading everywhere, except for his throat and the bitter, scorching flames of hellfire raging under his tongue.

It was way past the point where he was scared. He was scared twenty minutes ago when the berries first started burning his mouth, when the world started spinning and vertigo took over and his legs collapsed under him. He wasn’t scared anymore - he was petrified with fear, and he had no idea what to do.

He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. He could only stare at the night sky and blink, but he couldn’t bring himself to close his eyes, not even for a heartbeat. He couldn’t bring himself to blink, because he was terrified to get lost in the dark, so instead, he stared at the constellations floating right above him, following the playful dance of soft, flickering, yellow lights with his eyes, only to keep himself awake and alive, while he was waiting for a miracle.

But the longer he waited, the more certain it became that no miracle was going to come his way.

That it was only a matter of time until he couldn’t even grasp for air anymore, and that everything was in vain. All those months spent planning his great escape, all the troubles he faced along the way, from the moment he made his decision ‘til the day he bid farewell to the pointy iron gates of the orphanage for the last time; all the time he spent walking until his toes bled and his shoes fell apart, chasing a dream he borrowed from someone else… He suffered and fought and pushed himself through all this only to die from a handful of poisonous berries under the trees of an unfamiliar, cold, dark forest in the dead of night.

“Pathetic”, hissed a hateful voice in the depths of the chaos swarming inside his head. “A useless, homeless, pathetic wreck from no man’s land, that is what you are, boy” crackled the voice with a sour, pitiful laugh, and the boy felt his stomach shrink to the size of a pea. The voice of his cruel, gruesome orphanage matron was the last thing he wanted to hear on his deathbed of fallen leaves - but somehow, it was the only thing he could think of, as angry, miserable tears filled his foggy eyes.

If only he weren’t so restless. So desperate to find his way out of this vast forest, so committed to making it there… Wherever that place he always dreamed of reaching one day might be. If only he stayed put, only for one more night… If only he chose to stargaze at the small clearing instead of wandering off at dusk. If only he had some more of the cheese he stole from that old man with the crooked nose from the market a few days back...

If only he weren’t so lost, so tired, and so very, terribly hungry.

Suddenly, the glimmering starlight grew brighter around him, and the thorns in his throat started to wither. As if the Devil himself commanded them, the raging flames retreated behind the gates of hell, and for a magical moment, the pain almost completely disappeared, leaving nothing but lightweight relief in its place.

Then a firefly brushed his tear-stained cheek, and the boy felt his entire chest harden.

━━━━━━━━━━━━

When the foxes found him, his heart was barely beating.

He was frozen to the marrow, his whole body trembling, poison berries staining his lips dark blue and the cold turning his sunkissed skin pale as porcelain. It was a miracle that he was still breathing. It was a miracle that he was still holding onto life, that his spirit refused to leave him; alone in the dark and in this weary, exhausted, fragile little body in which the boy was born barely ten years ago, in a land far, far away - the body which already ached enough for a lifetime, and yet, was strong enough to keep him alive.

The boy didn’t even flinch when half a dozen jaws locked around his wrists and ankles, pointy fangs sinking into his cold skin to lift him up, onto the back of the biggest, oldest, wisest fox of the pack. The foxes moved without a sound, graceful and swift like the morning breeze, as they carried the boy across the valley, following wayfarer’s mushrooms and the signs of the fae folk along hidden trails and crystal-clear streams, crawling under moss-covered roots and dashing through bushes with an unrelenting, unstoppable, urgent force.

After a while, the foxes reached a small, hidden clearing, illuminated by warm light coming from the windows of an old, cozy-looking cottage. Normally, they would’ve stopped at the door and waited until it opened for them, but this time, they didn’t. They rushed inside with the boy, a flood of orange fur filling up the cottage with alerting sounds and demanding sparks of danger - all of which was met with a pair of piercing, amber eyes of a slightly frightened, slightly confused, slightly furious woman, trying to enjoy her dinner in peace.

“What’s the meaning of this?!” snapped the woman with a disapproving frown that was gone the next moment when she spotted the small child amongst the foxes. Her eyes widened and she jumped to her feet, nearly tripping over them as she ran to the foxes, faster than a fired arrow. “Son...? Dear gods of Shangri-La, is that… Is that you, son…?”

“No, he is not” said the fox who carried the boy on his back, looking at the woman with sad, golden eyes. “But he is one of us, Mistress”, he added softly, as the woman wrapped her arms around the child and carefully turned his head towards her - and when she saw the boy’s face, she couldn’t swallow the hoarse, painful sigh crawling up her throat, filling her chest with disappointment, guilt and grief.

“That he is, my dear friend… He’s one of us indeed” she said after a moment of silence, gently pushing the boy’s ruffled hair back from his forehead, letting her eyes roam the sight and her heart thrive in the feeling of holding a child in her arms - a feeling she yearned so desperately for, ever since she was brutally stripped of it years ago, along with a part of her soul that nothing could replace, fix or heal.

But for the first time since that fateful, nightmarish afternoon, she felt at peace, as she gazed upon the boy, this tiny stranger, someone she knew nothing and everything about at the same time; someone who lived through the same terrors in the same war in the same faraway land as she did, and somehow, years later, found his way to her cottage when she needed him the most. All the walls she built around herself crumbled to dust as she stared at the boy, and she couldn’t help but imagine him in another life, in the arms of another woman - someone who loved him more than anyone else, and who probably gave her own life to protect him. Her heart ached with sorrow as she imagined the mother of the boy, her endless love for this darling little child, the way her face must have lit up whenever she saw him.

His kind face, his adorable, pointy nose, the long, curly lashes framing his eyes, his chubby cheeks and his pouty lips covered in dark stains…

All the color drained from her face as the realization hit her, and she immediately slid her fingers down the child’s neck, just below his ear. The moment she felt the boy’s slow, weak heartbeat, she picked herself up from the floor and stormed across the cottage, laying the child in her bed. Following the magic surging from a single, hasty wave of her hand, all the curtains shut themselves close, and with the next one, the embers in the fireplace ignited with a cloud of fiery sparks, as she grabbed a stool and sat next to the bed, hunching over the boy.

“Quick, there’s no time to waste, he’s fading!” she said, urging both herself and the foxes gathering around her with curious eyes. “You two, go back and get rid of his tracks before anyone notices” she instructed the foxes, two of whom immediately turned around and stormed out of the cottage.

“You go to the garden and dig up some beetroot for me... You two, I need you to guard the door”, she continued as she began to unbutton the child’s shirt, ordering a flock of elixir bottles and herb pouches to her side by twisting her fingers in the air. “And you… I need you to stay by my side in case something goes wrong” she looked at the young vixen still waiting at her feet, digging her hand in the thick, coarse fur of the fox and closing her eyes for a long second.

And when she opened them again, the celestial, ancient magic inside her awakened, pouring its bright, blue light into the world, as the facade of the witch of the woodlands disappeared with nine voluminous, opulent tails covered in golden fur.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Hey! Thank you for reading! ❤ This little snippet is from the book I’m currently working on. If you guys liked it, I might share some more in the future!

Inktober 2020 Writing Challenge #1. Character count: 9673 | Written on October 4th. You can find more of my 2020 Inktober works here.

#story #fiction #writing #writers on tumblr #original fiction #short story #under 10k #autumn #forest #mentions of fae #(to avoid angering them even though they're not the main attraction here but pls don't tell them)#fox #foxes #witch #fantasy #fairy #Inktober #Inktober2020 #Inktober2020IPWW

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minyoongijjangjjangmanboongboong · 6 years

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Ephemera Chapter Fourteen

Ephemera: In art, transitory written and printed matter (receipts, notes, tickets, clippings, etc.) not originally intended to be kept or preserved.

Alternatively, things that exist or are used for only a short time.

Description: Nobody knows who Vante really is. Everything about the popular artist is shrouded in secrecy: from his face to his name to everything in between. After years of working for his art gallery, Y/N feels she may just be the closest thing he has to a friend. Between her success at work and her relationship with campus hot-shot Jeon Jungkook, Y/N’s life has never been better. But is Jungkook truly who he says he is? And who will Y/N protect now that she knows Vante’s livelihood may be on the line?

Genre: Romance, Drama, Fluff, Angst

Pairing: Jungkook x (f) Reader x Taehyung

Word Count: 6.5k

Tags: Non-Idol!Au, Gang!Au, Art History Student!Reader, Film Student!Jungkook, Art Student!Taehyung

Warnings: Swearing and mentions of alcohol, although infrequently

A/N: Hello you guys! I still can’t believe I’m going to see BTS in a few months, whew. If you guys will be at the Rose Bowl concert on May 4th, please let me know! I’d love to meet you guys. I hope you like this chapter! We’re slowly moving towards some resolution, but we’ve still got quite a lot of story left so don’t worry! Anyway, please don’t be shy and send feedback, critique, questions, theories, and comments my way. I’ll be sure to respond to all asks I receive within a day of receiving them! Links will be added later, so for now check my masterlist to find previous chapters!

And again, if you want to follow my Twitter, my username is @/plzpunchmebts. I’m super active over there and hopefully in the future I’ll do some livestreams/chats with you all! And concert videos!!

- Mercury

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Masterlist

Weekly updates: Sunday, 1PM (PST)

Jin squared his eyes with mine, cocking a single brow as he scanned me. It was clear from the set of his jaw that he wasn’t convinced, and when he crossed his arms and leaned back a half-step I knew I’d have more convincing to do. Jungkook simply stared slack-jawed, looking not quite at me but through me at something else, and the only tell that he was even breathing was the arhythmic rise and fall of his chest.

I sighed, leaning over my lap to untie my ankles and rubbed those too. “Did you hear me?” I asked, meeting Seokjin’s eyes as I bent at the waist.

He cleared his throat and nodded. “Heard it,” he said, then cocked his head to the side. “Didn’t believe it though.”

With a nod, I pushed myself to my unsteady feet, using the back of the chair to keep me stable and upright. “I get it,” I said, eyeing him. “Since I’m friends with Taehyung.”

Seokjin shrugged. “Well, yeah,” he said.

I glanced at Yoongi, still focused on his laptop, and realized twice over that he really wasn’t concerned about Seokjin. Whether this was due to Jin’s obvious naivety or his usually gentle temperament, I wasn’t sure. But I knew that the immediate danger wasn’t in front of me.

And that meant that, after all, I could become the danger if I wanted.

I coughed a little, rubbing my sore cheek. “He screwed me over.”

“How?” asked Seokjin.

Jungkook, scanning me, stepped forward. “At the charity event,” he offered, eyeing me like he was uncertain about whether or not to proceed. I simply nodded. “He used her to get to me.”

“And you used her to get to him, so what’s the point?” Seokjin asked with a scowl. “Listen, sweetie, if you’re gonna go after every person who’s used you you’re gonna have a long list. Even just people in this building.”

I shook my head. “It’s different,” I said, letting just a fraction of my real hurt leak into my voice, threading through my words like veins. “Because he was the one who wasn’t supposed to betray me.” I lifted my eyes severely, meeting Jin’s and not so much as blinking as he thought.

I set my jaw, clenched my lips shut, and watched him, crossing my arms and trying to impart every ounce of sincerity I had into my gaze alone. Seokjin’s furrowed brows relaxed by fractions as the seconds ticked on in silence. Jungkook, standing beside him, wouldn’t look away from me. I wasn’t yet sure what I’d do about him. Recruiting him was likely out of the question for many reasons, but did I have to deceive him?

Could I not try to rely on him just a little?

I swallowed hard. Of course not. He’d lied to me from the beginning, and only when he’d been caught did he begin begging for a chance to explain himself. Seeing him now, despite knowing all this, my heart felt like something was squeezing it from the inside. And that alone was enough to convince me not to tell him the truth. Not for now, at least.

At least…that’s what I told myself.

Seokjin finally yielded with a sigh and let his head dangle a little, rubbing the back of his neck. “Alright,” he said.

Jungkook’s back went stiff and he looked towards his roommate. “Wait, really?” he asked.

Seokjin nodded with a shrug and held out his hand to me. “If I find out you’re double-crossing me, I’ll kill you,” he said, without even a microscopic change in his expression.

A chill crept up my spine because I knew he meant it. It wasn’t worth it. Not really. Nara was smart and could easily get a better job on her own. Not to mention she was working on her major anyway. Only a few more years of shitty work until she could find herself some gainful employment. It was a massive risk to sabotage a gang leader’s master plan, and the reward was comparatively small. I loved Nara with my whole heart, but not to the point of foolishness.

Still, I reached out my hand and clenched Seokjin’s, shaking it twice.

Because I’d realized something as he’d evaluated me like a specimen under a microscope. Maybe I’d realized it a long time ago, when I’d first discovered his involvement at the boys’ apartment.

I wasn’t just doing this for Nara. Not really, anyway. Perhaps it had never really been about her at all.

Looking into his calculating, dark eyes, my head aching with each heartbeat from where it had struck the wall, I felt the inescapable urge to ruin him.

Jungkook spun me around by the crook of my elbow and I turned to face him. It had been about an hour since Seokjin had beckoned me toward the front of the warehouse and down some stairs into a quiet basement, lavishly furnished despite the ground floor’s relative squalor. We’d discussed the particulars of my involvement and — perhaps luckily for me — because of the nature of the business, no contracts were required on either end. Just a handshake and a threat.

But rage had been wakening in me for a while now, and I’d finally given the flames the air they needed to breathe and grow.

Jungkook and I now faced each other with equally wide eyes in the dark night, my body sore and my eyes dry from the lack of sleep. I was sure I looked a mess, and the vain part of me longed to adjust my appearance, splash some water on my dirty face, clean the crusted blood off my knees. But Jungkook and I were past that now, weren’t we? Past the formalities of ego and image.

He sighed and scanned me. “You going to the station like that?” he asked, like he’d read my mind.

I swallowed hard and shrugged. “I guess,” I said, glancing down at my phone, which Seokjin had so graciously returned to me during our tense meeting, and sighed at the time. “Might have to call a taxi instead.”

Jungkook sighed and, without a word, simply let his hand slip into mine and led the way down the unkempt street toward his car, parked by the curb. “Jungkook, I can get home myself-,”

“I know,” he said, eyeing me over his shoulder. “But I’m feeling crazy right now, so I’m not doing it for you.”

I felt flush, and not wanting to risk speaking again and revealing my lingering feelings, I simply sighed and shrugged as he opened the passenger door for me. I ducked inside the car and eased back against the car’s upholstery. So familiar. Even his car smelled like him. Sweet, slightly fruity. Shampoo?

He opened the door and started the engine right away, cranking the heat and turning all the vents toward me. He gripped the steering wheel with both hands, eyes forward. I noticed he was a little sallow, eyes dull and shoulders slumped with fatigue. I opened my mouth to ask if he’d been sleeping, but shut it just as quickly and glanced out the window to my side, sighing into the glass and fogging the cityscape like a vignette.

“I could kill him,” said Jungkook, knuckles bone-white.

I eyed him, but he wouldn’t look my way. “Huh?” I asked.

“Seokjin.”

I set my lips thin and glanced down at my lap, lacing and unlacing my fingers. “Don’t do that,” I said.

He clenched his jaw, his bone straining against the skin. My heart kicked up. “He shouldn’t have touched you.”

“Would you be saying that if it was anyone else?” I asked, but cursed myself for sounding so interested, so probing. I sighed and rubbed my chilly thighs. May as well push while I’m at it. “If it was another innocent person.”

“We don’t deal with innocent people,” he said, shaking his head.

I hummed. “You sure?”

“Why are you doing this?” he asked, like the tension had finally become to much and he’d snapped. He slid his dark eyes toward me and a chill ran through me. Not the bad kind, but the kind I didn’t hate all the way. I swallowed and averted my eyes. “You don’t approve of any of this. I know you didn’t have a change of heart.”

I shrugged. “Like I said, Taehyung hurt me. In a different way than you did,” I said, then sighed. “Maybe it’s worse because it’s him.”

“Why…?” asked Jungkook, voice softer now as he turned on the radio to play gently in the dark cab of the car.

“Because he’s been watching me for two years,” I said, leaning my head back on the headrest. “Because he knows better than anyone that playing me is the worst thing he could’ve done.”

“You’re really mad?”

I nodded.

“Mad enough to ruin his relationship with one of his best friends?”

I set my lips thin and said nothing, just crossed my arms and glanced back out the fogged window.

He sighed. “Listen…you don’t have to tell me,” he said, and at this my body stiffened a little and I eyed him sidelong. He was still looking right ahead like he couldn’t bring himself to look my way. “I don’t have any right to press you to be honest with me.”

I watched my laps, legs shaking. Probably a delayed reaction to the adrenaline, or maybe the chill that even the heaters couldn’t fix. “You’re right,” I said.

He nodded. “I’m not telling you to tell me the truth just…tell me if you’re lying or not,” he said, glancing at me with knit brows and straight lips. “Because I can’t get my hopes up right now.”

Disarmed, I stared at him with wide eyes and parted lips. “I…”

He sighed and looked back toward the road. “I’m trying to be okay with never seeing you again. With you hating me forever,” he said, then shook his head and gripped the steering wheel tighter. “But with you here…is it wrong for me to hope that maybe you’re here for me? That you really left that Taehyung guy behind?”

I inhaled sharply, my heart racing and my skin hot. Such a direct question: it left me breathless. “I…I mean, I…”

“No, right?” he asked with a sigh. “I was stupid, huh? You’d never betray that guy.”

“Jungkook-,” I said, reaching out to grab his forearm but stopping a few centimeters away from his skin.

He noticed, glancing down at my outstretched fingers before meeting my eyes with a sad smile. “Don’t worry. I’m not gonna tell Jin. Or anyone, for that matter.” He clenched his jaw and shook his head. “After what he did tonight, I can’t trust him as far as I can throw him.”

“Really?” I asked, timid.

He glanced at me and nodded. “He knows how much I care about you. And he knows you’ve done nothing wrong to get mixed up in all this. How can I trust someone like that?”

“Do you wanna get out?” I asked, turned toward him halfway, imploring him with my gaze.

It was stupid. So stupid it was almost painful. But I longed more than anything else to have him as my ally again, to have someone as my ally. Someone who I trusted enough to share delicate information with, someone I knew would watch out for me no matter what.

No…

Not just someone, I longed for him.

His skin tinged pink and he cleared his throat, avoiding my eyes and watching the road. “After tonight?” he said, rubbing his neck with his right hand. “Yeah.”

“You mean it?”

“Mhm.”

“Jungkook…,” I began, finally grabbing on to his forearm and holding it tightly, trying desperately to impart even a fraction of my need into my fingertips. He jumped like he’d been shocked by an electric jolt and stared at me with round eyes. “Can I trust you?”

“I…of course,” he said, slowly guiding the car off to the curb, idling on the side of the road as he parked and turned to me properly. There was a severity in his eyes that caught me off guard. “I know my word doesn’t mean much to you, but I mean it with my whole entire body. I won’t ever do anything to hurt you ever again.”

Again…

I scowled. What a stupid qualifier. “You already know I’m not here to trade secrets with Kim Seokjin.”

Jungkook nodded, scanning me. “Yeah. Of course.”

“So there’s no use lying,” I said, rubbing my forehead. “Namjoon offered Nara a job at his company in exchange for proof of who’s been attacking him. I don’t know what he’ll do once he gets it. Suing, retaliation…I really don’t know what he’s capable of, but…”

“For Nara’s sake…?” asked Jungkook with furrowed brows.

I nodded. “Y-Yeah,” I said, but cursed the uncertain waver in my voice.

He cocked his head to the side and pursed his lips. “I was gonna scold you about being too kind, but that reaction was weird.”

I stiffened and glanced away, toward the dashboard, and shrugged. “I dunno what you’re talking about.”

He smirked and leaned toward me, eyeing me. “Y/N, are you looking to get revenge?” he asked.

I flushed and shoved him away, crossing my arms. “Forget I said anything. Just take me home and don’t bother me at the warehouse.”

He laughed and raised his brows. “Really? My Y/N, trying to get even with a shady dirty business leader?”

I pulled my knees to my chest, pouting, and looked away. “Seriously, just drop it.”

He chuckled once more and peered at me with a knowing smile. “Huh,” he said, nodding once. “Seems there are still things I don’t know about you.”

“Of course there are,” I said, sighing. “We were only dating for a few months and it was fake.”

He cleared his throat. “Well…uh…Jin and Yoongi did some background digging on you, so…I know quite a bit, actually. Like, interests and stuff.”

I turned to him, cheeks flaring, and smacked his knee. “What? You guys collected data on me?”

He laughed, nodding. “Yeah! What’d you expect?”

I flushed and crossed my arms again, sulking in my seat as Jungkook eased the car back into the light flow of traffic. “Whatever.”

“I’ll help.”

I sat up straight and stared at him in profile. “What?” I asked, searching his features for any indication of insincerity.

I found only a gentle smile and eyes focused on the road. “Yeah,” he said with a shrug. “Tonight kinda helped me realize that this business isn’t for me. You’d think after everything else, I’d have realized it but…seeing you get hurt…I dunno, it crossed a line for me.”

“It did?”

“Yeah.”

I swallowed hard and stared at him. Wasn't it okay to trust him a little bit? Even though I knew it might bite me, even though I figured it was probably a mistake…wasn’t it okay? He seemed so genuine, smiling and tapping his fingers against the steering wheel, humming along to the pop song on the quiet radio.

“How’d you know to go to the warehouse?” I asked, settling back into my seat with a sigh.

He hummed. “Common sense.”

“So you knew he was keeping me hostage?”

Jungkook shook his head. “He told me today and tried to justify it, but right away I knew it wasn’t okay. I wanted to go to you immediately, but he held me back and we fought a little,” he said, pulling down the collar of his shirt to reveal a myriad of fresh bruises blooming on his skin from his neck down his chest. The closer I looked, the more I realized he was littered with bruises, even on his face. “After a while, he decided he needed to restrain me so he put me in the bathroom at the apartment.”

“He locked you up?!” I asked, shocked.

He laughed and nodded. “Yeah. I guess he was gonna try and use me as bait to extort you for information, and if I came blazing in he knew I’d ruin it.”

“So he locked you in the bathroom?” I shook my head and covered my lips with my fingers.

He smirked at me and shrugged. “After about an hour of trying to find another way out, I eventually just broke down the door,” he said, like it was nothing.

“Jungkook!” I shouted, gaping.

“What? I wasn’t just gonna leave you there!” he yelled back, but he was playful while I was horrified.

“Your landlord’s gonna kill you,” I mumbled, rubbing my jaw.

He smiled. “It was worth it.”

“Hm?”

He chuckled and I noticed that warm blush in his cheeks. “Because I’m here with you now.”

My heart leapt and my stomach dropped like I’d crested the top of a very big hill on a very fast rollercoaster. I swallowed hard and played with my hands, rubbing the palms together and twirling them over one another, trying to ignore the heat in my cheeks.

“It…it’s not wrong…,” I murmured, watching my hands as I smoothed the palms against my thighs, avoiding looking directly at Jungkook.

I saw him glance at me out of my peripheral. “Hm?” he asked.

“For you to hope a little,” I said, glancing up at him almost like a nervous kid. His eyes were wide, lips parted, irises flashing back and forth between my own. I chewed on my cheek and let my gaze drop once more to my lap. “It’s not wrong.”

A quiet enveloped us that I couldn’t quite describe. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything more, having thoroughly embarrassed myself and wiped out my burgeoning street credit in one fell swoop.

But eventually, I heard him release a few breathy chuckles and watched as he lifted his hand to rub the back of his neck, exhaling with a smile. His eyes darted around, not looking at one thing out the windshield too long, and his smile was unwavering, cute front teeth visible.

“Ah,” he said finally with a nod, not looking my way. “Alright then.”

“You’re going to what?!”

I shrugged and stirred my tea with the small spoon Mr. Kim had slid to me with the platter. “I’m gonna get evidence of Seokjin’s involvement and ruin his life.”

Nara sputtered a cough and widened her eyes at me. “Y-You-you can’t just, like, do that!” she said, emphatic as she waved her hands around.

I eyed her. Her complexion was brighter today, eyes clear and free of dark circles. “You’re sleeping better?” I asked.

She nodded. “Yeah, a little bit. For some reason, the boss stopped scheduling me for late shifts,” she said, spitting it out quickly like she was only saying it out of obligation to me. “Anyway, that’s not the point!” she groaned and gripped the bridge of her nose. Mr. Kim continued working without so much as a second glance our way. “The point is you shouldn’t be getting any more involved than you already are.”

“Regardless,” I said with a shrug. “There’s a benefit besides just personal vendetta.”

She opened one eye and peeked at me through her long lashes. “Hm?”

“How would you like to work for Ori Technologies?” I asked, seeing if she’d take the bait.

She hesitated for a moment, clenching and unclenching her jaw, and ran her fingers through her silver hair, the roots growing in black at the top. “I mean…in a perfect world, that’d be awesome.”

“And what if me doing this got you a job there?” I asked, lowering my voice so no eavesdroppers could catch my words.

She inhaled sharply and looked me dead in the eye. She scanned me, perhaps searching for something in my expression, but after a few moments she simply sighed and leaned back, crossing her arms over her chest with a scowl.

“I’d say thanks but no thanks,” she said, nodding her head. “I want it bad, but not at the expense of my best friend’s safety.”

I opened my mouth to rebut, but Mr. Kim leaned over the bar to stare at the two of us, severe eyes set squarely our way. “Gettin’ busy,” he remarked, eyeing the guests as they filed in.

Taking notice of my surroundings for the first time since I’d arrived at the coffee shop, I glanced around. Indeed, customers were filling up the quiet space rather quickly. Milling about in the courtyard admiring the perennial plants or taking up residence at one of the several mismatched tables, guests seemed to be everywhere.

“Any idea why?” I asked, peering over Nara’s head to get a good look at the rest of the shop, still just as packed as the front.

Mr. Kim nodded. “Seems someone endorsed us,” he said, taking a sly glance at me.

I stiffened, pointing to my chest. “Me?” I asked.

He shook his head. “That Taehyung kid,” he said. “Comes by a lot these days and just sits in the corner drawing on a tablet.”

My mouth felt dry. There was so much I was keeping from Taehyung, and yet he still came by this place? Why did I feel so guilty when he was the one who planted the initial seed of dishonesty between us? I crossed my arms and shrugged, watching the steam rise from my teacup.

“So they’re here to see Vante,” said Nara with a knowing nod. “Weird.”

“Well, I won’t turn away paying customers,” said Mr. Kim with a hearty laugh. “Just a bit understaffed.” He looked back at us like he was trying to send us a message with his eyes alone.

Message received.

I took a big sip of my tea and stood to my feet, wandering back around the bar to join Mr. Kim among the coffee machines. “Where are the aprons?” I asked, giving him a smile.

He returned it and jerked his head back towards the kitchen. “Grab one for Nara too,” he said, turning a frown towards his daughter who sat, puzzled, completely still.

Before I took my leave into the kitchen, Mr. Kim glanced back at me and smiled in that fatherly way that made me homesick. His eyes squinted a little, revealing deep crow’s feet, and there was a fondness there that never failed to catch me off guard.

“Looks like Y/N’s nunchi has improved,” he said with a chuckle before returning to the espresso he had brewing.

My back went rigid before a small smile overtook me and I rubbed the back of my neck, turning on my heel into the kitchen.

I guided a coffee cup onto the corner of one of the waiting tables, bowing my head as the patrons thanked me, before turning back toward the bar and gabbing yet another. Such was the rhythm of this sort of work. Back and forth like a tide or something. Every now and again when Mr. Kim would get swamped — usually during university exam season — Nara and I would help out around the shop. But it’d been quite a while since the two of us had worked this way, and with so many new customers needing attention we couldn’t so much as spare a moment to crack a joke or nudge each other with our elbows passing by.

I approached one of the outdoor tables and found an older couple sitting in the sunlight, chatting easily. My arm was aching from the weight of the tray, and I furrowed my brow when I paused to look at its contents. I hadn’t taken their order, likely Nara had while I was off doing something else, but as I looked down at my serving tray I noticed a vast array of food and drink. Puzzled, I walked closer and began unloading the tray one item at a time. A slice of persimmon cake, sautéed pine mushrooms, two chestnut cookies, a caramel latte, roasted sweet potatoes, two cups of green tea, and pumpkin porridge.

“Thank you,” said the woman with a motherly smile. Quickly, I bowed and turned to take my leave, but the woman called after me. “Wait!” she said, and I heard her metal chair scrape against the floor.

I turned around, anticipating a scolding. “Yes, Ma’am?”

“You’re that girl, aren’t you? Y/N?” she asked.

For the first time, I took a proper look at her and noticed to my shock that she was vaguely familiar. Alcohol had dulled my memory, but hearing her voice was enough to conjure an image. Her beside her husband, the two of them chuckling as they sat at a bar in an ornate ballroom.

I snapped my fingers, resting my tray on my hip, and nodded. “Ah! Mrs. Hayoon,” I said, grinning.

The man finally turned to face me and his eyes went wide. Again, the warm rush of familiarity gripped me and I gave him a bow. “Ah! That young girl from the gala!” he laughed, voice as booming as before, and rubbed his strong jaw. “My, isn’t this a surprise.”

I chuckled and rubbed my forearm. “Yes,” I said, a blush rising in my cheeks as I remembered that strange drunken encounter. “What brings you out here?”

“Our son gave this place high praise, so we figured we’d stop by,” said Hayoon with a soft smile.

I nodded. Perhaps he was a fan of Vante. “It’s a really nice shop,” I said with a grin and a thumbs-up.

Hayoon laughed and rested her chin in her hand. “It’s very good to see you again, Y/N,” she said.

It was strange. What would a rich couple like them think of me anyway? To be so happy to meet me again… I smiled. “Well, I’d better get back to serving…,” I began, hinting at an early exit from the conversation.

The man, Jaesun if I remembered correctly, waved his hand a few times with a huff, dismissing my concerns. “No, no. There’s lots for us to discuss anyway,” he said, then patted the extra seat between the couple twice. “Sit, sit!”

I stiffened and glanced over my shoulder at Nara running around like a woman possessed trying to tend to all of the guests. “Ah, we’re actually swamped. I don’t think I can-,”

“We’ll pay your hourly, so give us an hour,” said Jaesun with a laugh as Hayoon furrowed her brow at him, disapproving. The air of the courtyard was beginning to grow quiet, watching our exchange in the peaceful afternoon sun.

I chuckled. “Ah, no. I-I don’t work here or anything,” I said, waving my hand. “I’m just helping out.” I met eyes with a few onlooking patrons over my shoulder, trying to let them know through slight bows that everything was fine.

Jaesun hummed and rubbed his chin, pensive. Quickly, I returned my full attention to him and found him imploring me from below. “Well, when will you be finished?” he asked, eyeing me from his seat.

I glanced away. Those eyes were familiar in a way I couldn’t quite name. “I guess…whenever the rush is over?” I asked.

He laughed and nodded. “Well, how about we come back here tomorrow and we’ll treat you to some steak,” he said, adjusting the sleeves of his sweater as he took a sip of tea.

I shook my head. “Oh! No, Sir, that’s alright. I wouldn’t feel right letting you-,”

“Nonsense,” he said. “We wanted to get to know you anyway.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but Hayoon silenced me, grinning as she sipped her own tea, lashes dusting the high apples of her cheeks. Still, people watched us from about the courtyard. “We’ve been trying to find you since the gala.”

I stiffened. Why on earth would they do something like that? I cleared my throat. “Ah, well I’m really flattered, but I don’t think I can accept. I don’t want to take advantage-,”

“If someone’s offering something to you, then they mean it,” said Jaesun with a curt cough, nodding his head once. Hayoon covered a chuckle with her teacup. “No need to turn people down when they wanna do something for you.”

I swallowed hard. How did these people not see this was strange? A foggy memory resurfaced of the two of them comparing me to someone. Hwayoung? Could that perhaps be a daughter of theirs? I scanned them, idling just beside their table, and tried to discern anything from their faces alone. Weathered and greying, the two looked like any other middle-aged couple in Korea. They didn’t seem the type to be overtly generous this way, but they also didn’t seem the type to seek a surrogate daughter while their’s was missing.

“Y/N! I need your help in here!” called Nara, practically begging, from inside the shop.

I clamped my mouth shut and looked back toward the couple. “Um…I guess I’ll meet you here tomorrow then,” I said, feeling not only Nara’s eyes but the eyes of numerous patrons boring into my back with every second I wasted in indecision.

I was curious anyway.

Hayoon smiled and gave my hand a pat from her seat. “Good, good,” she said, urging me back to work with the flick of her wrist. “We’ll wait right here.”

I nodded and bowed, turning on my heel and rushing back toward where Nara stood in the doorway.

“Wanna stay over with me tonight?” asked Nara as the two of us wandered toward the sidewalk outside Nunchi, sunset ushering us into the empty street. She eyed me from the side, crossing her arms. “Someone in my family ought to repay you for your help today anyway.”

I chuckled. “I’m fine, Nara. Don’t worry,” I said, then sighed. “I won’t do anything reckless on my own.”

“Hard to believe,” she said. She kicked the sidewalk with the tip of her Doc Martens boot and sighed. “You’re doing all sorts of things lately. Feels like you’re getting kinda far away.”

I stiffened, turning to her. “Huh?” I asked.

She sighed and shook her head, turning to me with a smile. “Forget it. I’m just worried about you.”

I felt my expression go sour, worry running through me. Was I being a negligent friend? Pushing Nara away? I wrung my hands and panicked, unplaced guilt running through me.

She laughed and gave my shoulder a light shove. “Forget it, alright? It’s nothing,” she said.

I lifted my eyes and grabbed her hand tightly in mine. “I’ll stay over with you,” I said with a severe nod.

She laughed, trying to free her hand from my grip, and leaned away from me. “God, don’t be so serious!” she shouted, wiggling her arm.

I shook my head. “Let’s go.” I led her by the unwilling hand toward the subway station.

Nara and I sat beside one another on the couch, Hyun perched between us with his head propped on one paw. I leaned into the cushions with a yawn, Train to Busan playing gently on the TV. Nara hadn’t said much, and I remembered that night I’d come over after the gala. How she’d simply let me sit in my silence.

This time, however, I felt stronger.

And for her sake, I was the one who broke the comfortable quiet. “You have more to say, don’t you?” I asked, snuggling into my blanket. “Our conversation got cut off back at Nunchi.”

She glanced at me before shoving her hand into the bowl of popcorn on the coffee table. The living room was entirely dark save for the glow of the television, but even in the low light I could see the trouble in her eyes.

“I don’t like the idea of you putting yourself in danger for me,” she said, then sighed. “Even though I know it’s not just for me. It…just feels kinda bad knowing I’m part of the reason.”

I nodded. “I understand,” I said, then sighed and remembered the swelling hope in Jungkook’s eyes. Frustrated by the thought, I shook my head and ran my fingers through Hyun’s fur. “But…after everything that’s happened…I guess maybe I’m sick of watching people get away with bad things.”

Nara stilled beside me, popcorn half-chewed in her mouth. “That’s kind of out of character…”

“I know,” I said.

Nara was quiet for a beat too long and I looked at her, desperate for some sort of consolation. Instead, she gave me a glance before quickly looking away. “I’m just…not so used to this side of you.”

“Do you dislike it?” I asked quietly, almost timid.

She shook her head. “Just new.”

Was she right? Was I going too far for something that didn’t even matter that much? In the grand scheme of things, getting myself further involved with all of this was likely a mistake. I’d probably regret it. But…something in my gut told me I had to do it. Because, in the end, I might regret not doing it more.

If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on.

The old quote returned to me in a surge of memory and I inhaled sharply. Taehyung had said that. He’d said that, he’d given me the necklace, given me strength. He’d seen this something in me before I had.

But was this something worth compromising my oldest and deepest friendship?

I glanced at Nara, troubled, and a storm brewed in my chest. How long had I been living this way? Terrified of being left behind, being forgotten? So fearful to take a single step out of line that instead of moving at all I stayed still? How long had I allowed my fear of people abandoning me to make me abandon myself?

Nara was a dear friend. Dearer than any other.

But in the end, the one I had to face when I looked in the mirror was me. And the only person I knew I’d always have was myself.

So the only person I had to answer to was me.

“I’m sorry,” I said, twirling a tuft of Hyun’s white hair into a spiral between my fingertips.

She sighed. “Remember when we were kids and Hyuna convinced everyone to leave their classroom duties to you? How you just…did it?”

The memory struck a discordant note with me and, with a scowl, I buried my chin in the plush blankets. “Mhm.”

“You’re different now,” she said with a small nod. “I don’t think you’d do it now.”

I watched the TV without really watching, just listening to the rhythm of my own heartbeat as the two of us sat side-by-side. “You still don’t approve.”

She sighed. “No,” she said, then eyed me. “But I get the feeling that that won’t stop you.”

I met her eyes. A charge of energy passed between us, like we finally understood one another after a long time of silence. I nodded. “Probably not.”

Finally, she cracked a smile, easing back against the couch with a chuckle and a knowing nod. She returned her attention to the movie. “That’s what makes you different now.”

It was one in the morning when I got a frantic phone call. Drowsy after having fallen asleep leaning against Hyun’s pillowy side, I strained at the sound of my cell buzzing on the floor beside one of Nara’s mismatched socks. As far as I remembered, I’d fallen asleep first but with the TV still playing, I saw Nara was now passed out, snoring slightly as a little bit of drool dried on her cheek. She groaned a little as I moved away from her side, her head lolling back against the couch cushion, her laptop still open on the coffee table. When had she brought that thing out to the living room?

Groaning, I leaned down and grabbed the phone, pressing it to my ear without so much as opening my eyes properly for fear of the TV light burning my sensitive retinas. “Hello?” I mumbled.

“Y/N!”

My face scrunched up and I rolled back onto the couch, resting my head on Hyun’s back once more. “Jungkook?” I asked. There was no mistaking his voice, the honey-sweet but somehow mischievous tone. I hummed a little, still half-asleep, and pressed the phone closer to my ear. “It’s nice to hear your voice.”

“I…,” he began, then cleared his throat. “Y/N, are you playing around with me?”

I stiffened, my senses slowly returning, and sat upright. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and shook my head. “What? What do you mean by that?”

He sighed, clearly frustrated, and took a moment before speaking. “Are you saying that because you genuinely don’t know or because you’re playing dumb?”

“If I was playing dumb why would I tell you?” I asked, then shook my head. “Anyway, no. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He was quiet. “Really?” he asked, voice softer now, gentler.

“Really,” I repeated, feeling my cheeks flush at the tenderness that had taken over the empty space between us.

He exhaled slowly. “It must be a misunderstanding then,” he said. “Sorry about it. I didn’t mean to wake you up or anything.”

“What’s a misunderstanding?”

“Huh? Oh…well, just…there’s this article that came out, like, an hour ago and-,”

“Article?” I asked, shaking my head. I fell onto the floor and crossed my legs, tapping the space bar on Nara’s computer. “What article?”

“Uh…just talking about this ‘mystery girl’ and Vante,” he said, then scoffed. “The state of journalism in Korea really is shameful.”

I furrowed my brow as the computer slowly roused to life. “Mystery girl? Me again?”

He cleared his throat. “Um…yeah, looks like it,” he said, then sighed. “I didn’t wanna ask or anything, but that first article with you and that Taehyung guy…was it-,”

“Wasn’t true,” I said, then paused and shook my head. “I mean, yeah I did give him a hug, but it wasn’t like that.”

“You hugged him?” asked Jungkook quietly.

I snapped my mouth shut and keyed in Nara’s password: hyunnie101. “I…yeah. It was…really complicated,” I said. Like I was confessing something to a lover…

Wasn’t I though?

I shook my head, disgruntled, and opened up a web browser, surprised to see she’d left her last session open to view. “I mean, I’m not really the jealous type, but…I don’t really like it when the girl I like is hugging other guys, you know? Not that you can’t! You can do whatever you want. But I just-,”

“Jungkook, hold on,” I said, stunned as I looked at the open browser.

“Huh? Oh, yeah of course,” he said, supplementing the silence with a laugh.

There, in full color, was a photo of me standing beside Hayoon and Jaesun’s table at the coffee shop, my serving tray carefully obscured by my right thigh and my face blurred by a tasteful pixelated square. The two of them beamed up at me as I apparently spoke without looking their way. I couldn’t wrap my mind around how that couple could possibly be related to Taehyung. Confused, I scrolled up to the top of the browser. Why hadn’t Nara woken me up to tell me about this? Was she really mad at me?

“Shit…,” I mumbled as I saw the title.

Vante’s Mystery Girl Meets the Parents?! Seoul’s New Mysterious ‘It’ Couple Is Getting Serious!

#jungkook fluff #jungkook angst #jungkook fanfiction #jungkook fanfic #taehyung fanfic #taehyung fluff #taehyung angst #bts fanfic #bts fanfiction #bts imagines #bts reactions #bts reader insert #taehyung fanfiction #bts series

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unt-nonbinary · 5 years

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Hey this blog is going to be inactive because I graduated but just in case more incoming students find this blog I would like to note for your sake:

1) UNT is not really the best at being lgbt+ inclusive or proactive - their student groups are alright but can be prone to still misgendering some of their own members and are also not really as involved with making concrete changes to school policy or climate. In other words there is very little meaningful activism, although there is some.

2) UNT does not have a published list of its available gender neutral bathroooms such like other schools have. If you search on google “UNT gender neutral bathroom” you are going to find simply a bunch of news articles reporting to brag on UNT’s behalf how they were putting in less than 10 neutral bathrooms scattered across the entirety of campus - and to no surprise - not a one of these articles shares a map or plan from UNT of where to actually find them. I had a suspicion that at least one would be in the Union and when I looked at the Union building’s website I found I was right. It was on the 4th floor. Not easily accessible to most students, and also I had to scroll all the way down the Union’s page on floor plan rooms to even discover it existed. How are most students supposed to know?

3) UNT is in violation of its own nondiscrimination policies on the basis of gender. The Office of Equal Opportunity is supposed to ensure that the school’s non-discrimination policies are being adhered to but have not fulfilled that. Do not expect UNT to be proactive about non-discrimination unless the offense is something they feel will catch other people’s attention. If it affects few people, or few people have noticed so far, there is no incentive for them to actually prioritize non-discrimination over “expressive activities” even if those activities are explicitly expressing discrimination. The situation was as follows:

On April 4th - on both their Facebook and twitter - “College Republicans” posted a meme that even at face value - is expressly mocking those with trans identities. There are other genuine issues, but what is important is the comment that accompanies the posts that condescendingly states there are only two genders. There are not. And this is a well known transphobic stance to purport on behalf of a student organization. UNT has a nondiscrimination policy both for itself and its student orgs concerning not to discriminate the basis of gender or gender expression. Allowing their organizations to express resentment of transgender students, especially nonbinary transgender students, is an explicit violation of this. And the posts were reported to the Office of Equal Opportunity with the only intent that they be taken down. That is all. Since leaving them up not only violates the school’s policies but also actively dissuades transgender students from joining the organization - and all organizations are supposed to be welcoming of everyone regardless of gender. So this would potentially benefit their organization as well.

The report form reads: “ On April 4th of this semester (Spring 2019), UNT College Republicans posted to their facebook and twitter pages a post which openly mocks gender diversity and trans students - specifically nonbinary trans students. This post as well contained in its description, the mocking and misuse of the word "triggered" used to describe the reaction of those who are misgendered or react to transphobic jokes. This post directly contradicts Article 3 of a student organization's nondiscrimmination and harrasment policy, and also violates the similar policy of UNT. Link to twitter post: https://twitter.com/UNTRepublicans/status/1113799657623302144 ; Link to Facbook post: https://www.facebook.com/UNTRepublicans/photos/a.162485057147083/2292902477438653/?type=3&theater”

As per each report, it was followed by a mandatory meeting in which it was explained in even more patient detail why this is expressly in violation of a the school’s policies not to discriminate based on gender, as well as what the active harm is to transgender students who have to face a campus that can actively voice discriminating against them. The follow up email to the meeting was as follows:

Please note that UNT’s “Policy 16.004″ is the following:

And that all student organizations are required to fall in line with this policy as per UNT’s Policy 7.019 Article 4:

Thereby UNT failed to enforce its own rules even in the simplest and most explicit of cases simply because in practice it does not actually value its own policies or the specific groups of students it was authored to protect.

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If you are coming here, as so many of us do, simply to get in and out of a program and get a degree - and campus climate is not a particularly important factor for you - then UNT is fine. Its large and can help you make professional connections if you know where to look and who to talk to. But if you are someone who is particularly anxious about how their identity may impact their ability to make these connections, or to participate in student activities and be active, or whether you can feel safe coming out - then I recommend looking for other schools. There are plenty of other really great schools with superior campus climate and commitment to acceptance and non-discrimination. UNT is old, and so has a large alumni pool that will vouch for it simply because it is the place they went and their grandparents went - but it is far from the only option and in fact - its age makes it prone to several and various conservative decisions. And its size makes it prone to being impersonal and functioning more akin to a business manufacturing alumni than a place to always get meaningful or deep peer or mentor relations.

There are other options, and especially as a queer person it is important to explore those options. Denton has a brilliant but small queer community that is active outside of school jurisdiction - but Denton as a whole is still conservative and thus UNT should be working extra hard to ensure its student body is welcomed and treated fairly within its own walls. But it does not. It satisfies itself frequently with performing the minimum - and for many vulnerable students this is not enough.

And so I simply had to leave with a summary of what my final take away is in case this can help inform others. I wish all of you luck.

#UNT #University of North Texas #denton #discrimination #college decisions #unt freshmen #unt transfer student #transfer student #lgbt student #lgbt campus #queer studyblr

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metalandmagi · 6 years

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December End of the Year Media Madness!

It’s a new month and a new year! And what a crazy month it was what with Tumblr imploding and all. But I’ll still throw this on here just because I’ll be on this site until it literally boots me out. But I do have a twitter now…@metalandmagi where I’m also barely active at all.

Anyway, why make top 10 lists for the entire year when I can just ramble about all the media I consumed this month? There’s only a marginal amount of holiday things on here by my standards!

November media

Movies!

Give me some credit there’s only four Christmas movies on here.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?: A documentary about Mr. Rogers starting with the birth of the television show to his death. This is the fluffiest most heartwarming thing I could have possibly picked to watch on Christmas, and I encourage everyone, even people who hate documentaries and/or never grew up with Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, to watch it. There’s a lot of important messages about acceptance, dealing with tragedy, and mental health that people can learn from and feel good about. Not to mention how he completely revolutionized children’s television. So yeah, he was awesome.10/10

Spider-man Into the Spider-verse: When a rip between dimensions is opened, a bunch of different spider themed superheroes from every comic fan’s wet dreams all get together to close it. Guys I’m not that big of a Spider-man fan, but dang this movie was a ton of fun. I came for the amazing visual effects and stayed for the amazing...everything else. The music, the performances, and the story were all top notch. Also I now have a new favorite Nick Cage role. If you thought the trailer made the animation look interesting, it was just the tip of the iceberg because it is the most visually interesting movie I’ve seen in the last three years. I strongly suggest any fan of animation...or even any fan of great stories and movies in general go see it even if you’re not that big on Spider-Man. Now I’m demanding a Spider-verse Aunt May movie because I have so many questions! And the post credits scene was the best out of any Marvel movie. Period. 10,000/10

The Wiz (2015 musical): I should start making a section for musicals or plays instead of just lumping it in with the movies. It’s the Wizard of Oz...but cool. I’ve never seen any iteration of The Wiz and it seems like I’m constantly hearing about it. So I watched the 2015 version of the 1975 Broadway musical that NBC aired. And yeah it’s good. There were some great performances. But I wasn’t very impressed with the songs themselves, and it’s not really the same without a dog along for the ride, but whatever. 7.5/10

Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle: The surprisingly fun reboot/sequel thing of Jumanji where four teenagers get stuck in a video game that follows every “stuck in a video game” trope you can imagine but actually does it well. It’s a sweet, funny romp through the jungle with some great comedic performances. I really don’t have much to say about it except that this movie is better than it has any right to be. 8/10

The Christmas Chronicles: Two children stow away on Kurt Russell’s, I mean Santa’s sleigh and go on a dangerous, balls to the wall adventure throughout Chicago trying to save Christmas or something. After everyone started talking about how crazy this Netflix movie is I had to watch it to verify if it is indeed as wild as they said. And yes...yes it is. It is so laughably ridiculous and questionable that it’s impossible to actually hate. The elves are some unholy mixture of minions and gremlins, one of the children is a literal felon that no one is concerned about, and Kurt Russell is super into the role but has some sort of thing about fat-shaming Santa. I just...have so many questions! But it was certainly a trip, so I’d have to recommend it just so you too can witness the insanity. -10 “savvy, straight-talking St. Nicks”/10

Arthur Christmas: No, it’s not a Christmas special related to the aardvark cartoon! This is the 2011 animated movie that no one remembers exists. Santa’s clumsy but enthusiastic son Arthur must deliver a forgotten present in less than two hours while the rest of his family deals with some Arrested Development style family drama. This is by far the most underrated Christmas movie of all time; even I didn’t realize it was actually good until I watched it for the first time in 2016! The fun road-trip style plot and the entertaining characters were victims of bad marketing. Arthur is hilariously endearing, and there was so much heart and effort put into it that I can find new things to notice every time I watch it. Not to mention the amazingly animated opening spy sequence! And also Mrs. Claus is secretly a total badass and Bryony the elf is the coolest female character in a Christmas movie ever. The movie’s message of old vs new is nothing we haven’t seen before, but I really don’t care because at the heart of it all, it’s about making people happy on Christmas. If you’re like me and just assumed this movie would suck...or didn’t know it exists, please give it a chance. It’s not perfect, but it’s worth seeing. 9/10

Neo Yokio Pink Christmas: Yes, it’s the Christmas special for Neo Yokio. No I cannot accurately describe it with mere words. There’s a rich bachelor gift exchange, demon possession, and pompous French aunts slinging insults at each other. It is unironically my favorite holiday episode of a show ever, and to me it’s the best Christmas special ever made. I thought I was prepared for the absolute bat-shit ride I would go on, but no...I wasn’t even close. At this point I don’t know if it’s written like this on purpose or if some divine twist of fate made the executives believe this is truly brilliant television. Either way, it is a masterpiece in its own right. There’s even a somewhat intriguing plot and a message about gift giving and capitalism under all the crazy! If you haven’t jumped down the rabbit hole yet, I implore you to watch the insanity that is Neo Yokio and follow it up with Pink Christmas because it will truly make your holiday season. 100,000 demon DNA drugs out of 100,000!

Die Hard: Nothing says Christmas like terrorists taking over a skyscraper and Bruce Willis having to take them all down by himself. Yeah...so I’ve never seen Die Hard before, but this is one of those movies that is so famous that I felt like I’d already absorbed everything important through cultural osmosis. And even though it’s pretty good, I would have liked it better if I didn’t know what was going to happen. My only real complaint is that I think it goes on way too long. More than anything it just made me sad to remember that Alan Rickman is gone. And it bothers me so much that John McClane goes through this building that’s under construction WITHOUT SHOES! 8/10

Books!

The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis: The 4th/6th book in the Chronicles of Narnia, in which Eustace Scrubb and his classmate Jill Pole go to the underworld to find King Caspian’s long lost son. Even though my children- the Pevensies aren’t in it, I actually think this book is my favorite of the series so far. Jill and Eustace are both sassy enough to play off each other, Puddleglum absolutely hilarious, and the book actually has a clear cut plot! It reads much more like a Greek myth than a children’s fairy tale since there aren’t nearly as many of Lewis’s trademark author interjections, and you know...it’s a literal journey to the underworld. And can I just say that it’s super refreshing to have an author write two main characters WITH ZERO ROMANTIC INTENTIONS! Especially since they’re freaking children! Now I just wish Disney had continued the movies even more! 9/10

Queen of Air and Darkness by Cassandra Clare: I’m going to do this with only minor spoilers. It’s the final book in The Dark Artifices trilogy. Will Emma and Julian break the parabatai bond? Will the reflection of the modern day American government- I mean the Cohort/ the Clave fuck up the relationships between Shadowhunters and Downworlders forever? You’ll have to suffer like the rest of us to find out! In my opinion, 99% of this book is amazing, but in the last 50 pages there are some...bullshit ways of solving problems. Like everything that went down with the Cohort in Idris. Not to mention we’ve been so invested in the parabatai curse and how Julian and Emma’s bond would go down and...let’s just say the resolution was way too easy. And if you thought Clare’s other finales were jam packed, you ain't seen nothin’ yet. My copy is 880 pages and there was still more stuff that I wanted to happen...like any sort of scene between Dru and Ash...or an ending between Kit and Ty that doesn’t make me want to cry (the Wicked Powers is going to be brutal). But the rest of that 99% is mind-blowing! There’s so much good I can say that it mostly outranks anything I didn’t like...I mean we finally got a Malec wedding and a proper polyamorous relationship for the Angel’s sake! It may be my least favorite of her finales by default but it was still a fun ride! 9/10

TV shows!

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018): An elite soldier finds a sword that can transform her into a super buff magical girl who helps princesses take down the forces of evil. It’s a reboot of the 1980s cartoon, and holy crap it’s AMAZING! I have a whole new group of children to adopt, each episode is entertaining in its own way, and there’s so...many...good...ships! And it gives Steven Universe a run for its money with the care that went into making every character a different kind of warrior, which I love because the cast is 99% female. My only real complaint is that I never warmed up to Catra because she wasn’t particularly sympathetic to me from the beginning. But I understand why some people love her. If you love well crafted adventurous character driven cartoons and haven’t watched it yet WHAT ARE YOU DOING!? 10/10

Nailed It Holiday: Yes, my favorite baking show (and by that I mean the only baking show I watch) has a holiday season out on Netflix, in which newbie bakers are tasked with making incredibly professional desserts with a very short time limit. And whoever makes the best treat gets 10,000 dollars. I’ve talked about this show before in my June media madness, and I don’t know what it is but I’m so addicted to it. 10/10

Brooklyn nine-nine (season 5): Come on we all know the cop sitcom. It’s the best sitcom. Just in general it’s the best. Great characters that subvert expectations, great humor, and a lot of heart. I’ve known that this show is supposed to be amazing for years, but I only started watching it a few months ago. And since I couldn’t find season 5 anywhere...I got a Hulu subscription just to watch it before season 6 comes out. That’s how good this show is. 10/10

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (season 2): Our favorite underdog comedian is back, and she’s slowly gaining popularity and doing...stuff. Like going on tour. And hanging out with Zachary Levi. Yes, this season is great, but my problem with this series is that every character aside from Midge and Susie are the fucking worst, especially the parents. Midge’s parents suck, Joel’s parents suck, Midge and Joel are appropriately neglectful parents for the time period...I could go on. And it’s not even in a funny way; like it’s just disgusting to watch these power dynamics. Not to mention how old the comedic bits for the parents get (how many times can we hear about Joel needing to date or Midge needing to get married?!) Yes, I realize that we’re supposed to be annoyed AND YES I realize that this is a product of culture and how society was, but none of the parents have any redeeming qualities. In episode one, we’re led to believe that Midge’s parents will grow and change through the season and they never do! At least there are moments where Joel can kind of be redeeming and expand on his actual character before he reverts back to being an asshole. Anyway, my thoughts are pretty much the same as the first season. It’s funny and interesting to watch, but it can be ridiculously frustrating when you hate almost all the characters! 8/10

Fuller House (season 4): Yes I do watch the ridiculous Netflix reboot of Full House. And yes, it is absolutely terrible! I really really hate it! But will I stop watching it? Let’s just say you can pry this pile of garbage from my cold dead hands. I don’t know if I’d call this a guilty pleasure or a hate watch type of show... it’s certainly not so bad it’s good territory like Neo Yokio...but Full House was pretty much my entire childhood. And yes, the original show is also not great. I loved it as a kid, and it was my first real exposure to a non-traditional family in live action, but yeah it doesn’t age well. What I’m trying to say is...I have no good reason for watching this.

I don’t mean to say that there’s nothing good about it, especially this season. They really back off on the more cringe-worthy catch phrases, Stephanie being aware of how stupid the writing is and constantly pointing it out is actually funny, their Christmas episode was surprisingly genuine, and they impressed me by actually make two female characters try and work through their difficulties instead of pitting them against each other for laughs. It has its moments, just like the original but definitely not enough to make up for the worst of it. Maybe this generation of children will like it the way lots of my generation used to like Full House...but yeah it’s awful, I hate it so much. -1 missing Tanner child out of 3

Voltron Legendary Defender (season 8) SPOILERS: It’s the final season of Netflix’s Voltron, and boy it was...something. I didn’t want to make this a big rant/defense of the show...but I feel like I have to highlight some things because this fandom is a shithole that refuses to see the good in anything.

There is so much good and so much...not good I can say about it, so here’s a couple things. I know this show didn’t go the direction anyone wanted, but that doesn’t make it bad. In addition to the stunning fight scenes and music, the performances this season were just amazing! I literally wanted to cry every other episode even though sometimes I didn’t know why the fuck something was happening. I don’t know how I feel about Honerva’s plan. I understand her motivation, but I was constantly questioning how we got from point A to point B... so yeah the plot and writing could be...weird at times. Also everyone seemed to have super pointy chins this season...

Spoiler alert: Not many of us wanted Lance and Allura to happen, but I truly believe it wasn’t done in a half assed way. At the very least, I appreciate that they had a genuine bond that developed over so many seasons. BECAUSE YES IT DID! Anyone who says they had no development or that it felt forced never paid attention. I wanted it to stay platonic; I wanted Klance to happen, but...I can’t be too mad at the writers because they at least tried. I still believe that Klance was endgame and the creators were forced to change the outcome of the show later on. AND YES LANCE DID GET A CHARACTER ARC! It may not have been the one we wanted to see, but I’m baffled that people think Lance living with his family, surrounded by people he loves-which is what he wanted all along- is not a happy ending. I just wish his relationship with Keith wasn’t pretty much ignored all season. But I believe Allura is his past that taught him to genuinely love and Keith is his future who will make Lance his “first choice”. And I’m not even gonna try to explain how I feel about Shiro and Allura’s endings because everything I feel is so complicated and layered. There is good and there is bad.

TLDR: This show teaches us that we’re stronger together, and I think the “fandom” completely missed the point because they do nothing but tear others down and refuse to look at things from other perspectives. YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO NOT LIKE IT, BUT YOU DON’T HAVE THE RIGHT TO TAKE AWAY OTHER PEOPLE’S ENJOYMENT AND BE A DICK ABOUT IT. It may not have been everything I wanted, but I’m glad I went on this ride. Besides, there are canonically infinite realities so there’s got to be a reality where all your dreams for the show come true. As a season, I’d say it’s a 7.5/10.

Honorable Mentions

I watched Avengers: Infinity War again. And yes it’s still great.

I’m watching Superstore because when another sitcom comes on before The Good Place, why not? Also since I finished season 5 of Brooklyn 99 I had to use my Hulu subscription for something.

Camp Camp has a holiday episode...so naturally I watched it...several times. Please watch Camp Camp.

Hellsing Ultimate Abridged finally ended, and I feel obligated to shout this out because, hey when you put out one episode a year it’s a big accomplishment to finish it!

Super Smash Bros Ultimate is finally here!!!!!!!!!!!

ALL THE WINTER ANIME IS ENDING!!! They were all so amazing! So shout out to Iroduku-The world in colors, Bloom into You, Hinomaru Sumo, Dakaichi, Banana Fish, Jingai no Yomen, Golden Kamuy, Skull-faced Bookseller Honda-san, Tsurune, AND RUN WITH THE WIND even though they’re not finished yet.

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justasmallbloginabigklainefandom · 6 years

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Great OMGCP fanfics

All the Sights of Paris by writingonpostcards

Eric and Jack meet atop the Eiffel Tower. It's the beginning of a few whirlwind days together, but Eric's leaving soon. How much can really happen between them in just a few days?

Jack holds out his hand and Eric takes it. Instead of shaking it like Eric was expecting, Jack pulls him in gently, and kisses him once on both cheeks. “See you around,” Jack says with confidence.

Like breathing was easy by lillaseptember (part 7 of a series)

Jack has a panic attack. Bitty (and the kids) help him through it.

“We have seven kids downstairs who all think you’re their hero. And it’s not because of the reasons you think it is. It’s because you pick them up from practice with the same terrible puns every Tuesday, actually listen to what they know is their ridiculous teenage gossip, let them win wrestling matches in the most dramatic way imaginable, watch Aristocats with them 17 times in a row, kiss their injuries better, memorize presidents with them, make that godawful mac ‘n’ cheese for ‘em.”

Set Your Old Heart Free by IBoatedHere*

Jack doesn’t find Bitty after graduation. They don’t kiss. Jack doesn't go to Madison for the 4th. They still fall in love.

falling into place by furyofthetimelords

Your soulmark doesn’t settle until you’ve met your soulmate.

Neither Jack or Eric notice when it happens.

Irreplaceable by JustLookFrightenedAndScuttle

Bitty gets too wrapped up in his worry that his relationship with Jack could cost Jack too much.

Breakaway by AntarcticBird

The first time Jack sees him is at the beginning of his sophomore year at Samwell, a completely normal Monday night, and at first he thinks he has gone insane.

Excuse Me While I Kiss This Guy by PorcupineGirl

Jesse Snowden knows all the best restaurants and gourmet food shops in Providence, so when Jack Zimmermann starts bringing in incredible baked goods, he's eager to find out where the new bakery is. When he meets the man behind the pies, he decides that there's no way Jack could really appreciate this guy's talent the way he does, even if they are friends. He starts hiring Jack's chef on the side, in the hopes that maybe once Bitty's done with college he'll come work for Jesse.

Good thing there is absolutely no way whatsoever that Jesse could possibly be misinterpreting this situation.

Mother’s Weekend by rosepetals42*

Hello there! Long time, no see (my bad I know) but, here: an Alicia Zimmermann-centric piece as she goes to Parents’ Weekend during Jack’s freshmen year. [focus on Alicia, Jack, and Shitty] 6k

Imagine being a tadpole though by rosepetals42

Outsider POV, zimbits, canon-compliant, 2nd person, 4k ish, yes this got way longer than expected

when it’s over (you’re the start) by onawingandaswear

Jack goes to sleep in Providence next to his boyfriend and wakes up in Montréal to discover he’s been in a coma since 2009. Refusing to believe Samwell, Bitty, and the Falconers were all a dream, Jack tracks down the real Shitty, Lardo, Ransom, and Holster to find they’ve shared the same group hallucination for years. Now, they’re on a mission to find Bitty, the love of Jack’s non-existent life, and the only member of SMH they can’t seem to get in contact with.

ABC by alphardhy

effort, n.

It is worth it.

Jack and Bitty's relationship told through short dictionary entries. (The title is quite self-explanatory, really.)

Ice Crew Please! by rosepetals42*

Jack Zimmermann was drafted first by the Providence Falconers when he was eighteen years old. He is good at hockey. Very good. His team won the Cup his second year and now, in his third year, they are looking good. Jack should be on top of the world. And some days, he manages to convince himself he is.

He’s not, of course.

Enter the Ice Crew.

a tale of love and how it finds you by nightswatch

Bitty sees Jack Zimmermann almost every morning, but he’s never said a single word to him. Honestly, Jack Zimmermann probably doesn’t even know that he exists.

Revenge is best served @ by Perpetual Motion (perpetfic)

The ESPN hockey anchors take a cheap shot. Bitty takes one back.

i'll see you with your laughter lines by the_one_that_fell*

Eric Bittle was fourteen when his soulmate died.

They'd never even gotten to meet.

Hold on Forever by an orphan account (part 2 of a series)

Eric Bittle doesn't think he's going to be standing at his boyfriend's sledge hockey game holding a sign that says, "Yo, Go To Prom With Me Jack Zimmermann," at almost thirty years old and yet...here he is.

these hands are meant to hold by worth_the_risk (part 1 of a series)

There are a select few times over the course of Jack and Shitty’s friendship when Jack, frozen like the Pond in January, has to be told to move.

Plans For The Future by ticktockclockwork

Contrary to popular belief, when Jack was spiraling, things did not move in slow motion. The frantic beating of his heart was anything but slow; the rapid fire thoughts pinballing around his mind almost incomprehensible in their speed.

In therapy, he'd often heard people describe their attacks as a slow motion train crash, a suffering drawn out experience that they were helpless to stop.

But for Jack, while ’train crash’ was definitely apt for what he felt, it was anything but slow and, in fact, he was usually the one at the controls.

All this to say, Jack was in a very bad place.

The Little Things That Give You Away by annathaema (moony)

"S'fine," says Jack, trying to keep it hidden from Shitty. "I wasn't really doing anything, just-"

"Knitting!"

Jack has an unusual hobby, but it helps.

Alive and Loved by Piehead

Bitty has depression. He lives with it.

Love Is To Be Made by DoubleNegative

“Jack turns in a slow, aimless circle in the middle of his living room. Blank white walls. Bare floor. A sofa, a TV, a coffee table: just the basics, really. Well, no wonder it doesn’t look like home; he can’t blame his apartment’s sudden coldness and its empty echoing spaces solely on the absence of one Eric R. Bittle. It just… doesn’t look like anyone lives here. It doesn’t feel like anyone lives here. He has no idea how to change that.”

(Or… Jack comes home from Madison to an apartment that doesn’t smell like cinnamon, and teammates who don’t know what he means he says ‘swawesome. It feels like it should be easier, turning the place he lives into a home and the people he plays hockey with into teammates. But even ‘easy’ things have always felt harder than they should.)

Puck Aversion: The Birth of A Goalie Superstition by Betweenthepies (Reikiari)

Every hockey player has their thing. Goalies? Even more so. So what is Chris Chow's? He will never touch a puck with his bare hands. (Five times Chris Chow won't touch a puck and one time he does.)

one of the gays by heyfightme

Bitty isn’t even sure whether he wasn’t meant to hear. It’s a party, and they’re all public, and it’s Bitty’s Haus too. More than that, it’s Bitty’s kitchen. There’s no discernible secrecy in operation.

“I mean, Bitty’s gay. One of my best friends; he put these curtains up.” The girl Holster is talking to – brown curls, white jeans, suntanned shoulders – looks to the curtains and coos, “Aww, that’s so cute.”

Bitty’s neck twinges.

—

in which bitty and jack are like: [sarcastic laughter] straight people

Wizarding sports by prongsyouignoramus and awfullyruby (not really a fic)

so @prongsyouignoramus and I had a convo that spun into a full blown hc so I thought I’d share this in the hopes it will one day inspire a fanfic author *nudge nudge, wink wink* or just for funsies, I guess

just two kids without their jackets by the_one_that_fell (3 part series)*

Jack makes a difficult decision and finds a new calling.

and not waving but drowning by the_one_that_fell (part 1 of a series)

Jack considered himself an Icarus of sorts. He never thought he’d learn to love the sun.

like a handprint on my heart by the_one_that_fell*

“Dude, we’ve got an over-competitive golf dad, a badass art freak, a pre-med lax bro on the verge of a breakdown, a chronically naked rugby player, a beat-boxing giant, and an itty-bitty, baking figure skater - there’s no way we came together accidentally. This wasfate.”

“Or it’s the normal progression of human beings making friends. Chill out, bro.”

(Or, the one where no one plays hockey, but it still manages to bring them all together.)

the messes of men by decinq (4 part series)

His first year in the NHL isn't easy, but Jack has spent his entire life playing through the hurt.

My Words on Your Skin by There_Once_Was_A_Girl (no. 1 in a 6 part series of standalones)*

Jack and Bitty have a unique soul connection, they can write back and forth to each other by writing on their own skin. They know each other long before they've ever met. But when Jack overdoses Bitty thinks he's lost the love of his life forever.

Your Fake Name is Good Enough by DoubleNegative

Eventually Jack came back to himself, as he always did, shaky and exhausted but alive, and Shitty wrapped up his rambling story. “Anyway, man, that’s why if you ever have kids you shouldn’t make bets with your hedge fund buddies on their names. You’ll end up with a son named Barnaby Sylvester Knight, and trust me, that is no way to start a father-son relationship.”

“That’s a pretty awful name,” Jack whispered. “Thanks, man.”

Shitty just squeezed him tighter and didn’t protest at all when Jack finally drifted off, drooling a little on his pillow.

you’ve got my number by ambrosius*

It’s not as if Jack was totally inept when it came to technology. He could handle his Tweeter (Tweety? Twits? Twitter? Did it really matter?) just fine and if he’s honest, he much preferred texting to calling most days. So when he gets added to a group chat full of strangers, well, he’s pretty sure he can handle whatever comes next.

Graduation Day by IBoatedHere

It takes Jack 50 days to finally see what's been right in front of him for the past two years.

Will Wonders Never Cease by PorcupineGirl*

Eric has landed his dream job: social media manager for the Providence Falconers! Not only does he get paid to tweet, for an NHL team at that, but it’s a job where he’ll be able to make good use of his magic - when nobody’s looking, of course. Everyone on the Falconers is a joy to work with… with the notable exception of Jack Zimmermann. Eric understands that Jack doesn’t like social media, but he could certainly be a little more polite about it.

Luckily, Eric has support from his Samwell buddies, as well as his best friend - a man whose face he’s never seen, and whose name he doesn’t know. They met on an online forum where witches can gather anonymously, since it isn’t safe for them to advertise their existence in a world where magic isn’t trusted. They’ve been friends for years now, but Eric is only just starting to realize that he might have deeper feelings for someone he can never meet face-to-face.

i didn't know i was lonely til i saw your face by dharmainitiative*

Still rebounding from a breakup, Derek Nurse moves into a loft in downtown LA and attempts to navigate living with five former college hockey players.

Or, a New Girl AU.

if you're going through hell (keep going) by onawingandaswear*

Eighteen years ago, Samwell suffered the tragic loss of one of their most promising young athletes. Ever since rumors have circulated that the school is haunted by the ghost of Eric Bittle. At least, that’s the only way anyone can seem to explain why the locker rooms smell like freshly baked apple pie on game days instead of the usual, omnipresent hockey funk.

Now in the twilight of his career, Jack Zimmermann is facing his own mortality and the last item on his bucket list?

Return to Samwell and disprove the rumor that his long-dead boyfriend is haunting Faber Memorial Rink.

And you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here? by RabbitRunnah

Bitty goes to bed after his "lucky shot" having made a decision. When he wakes up he ... is not where he expected to be. He has a career, and a baby, and -- this is the biggest surprise of all -- a husband who looks a lot like Jack Zimmermann.

And you may say to yourself, my god, what have I done? by RabbitRunnah

The last thing Jack Zimmermann remembers saying to Eric Bittle is "lucky shot." That doesn’t explain, at all, why he just woke up in Bittle’s bed.

A companion piece -- this time it's Jack's turn to get a peek at his future -- to And you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?

Inertia by foryouandbits

At the age of seven, Eric Bittle is tackled so hard in peewee football, it feels as though he's been knocked into another dimension. At the encouragement of his father, he avoids contact sports until he receives a scholarship to play hockey at Samwell University. The result is the same: every check on the ice hurts so much that Eric hallucinates another world. Eric spends the rest of his freshman year attempting to prove himself to his captain and his coaches. He questions his worth, his talent, and his sanity, and in his search for answers, he uncovers long-hidden secrets that change everything he has ever known.

Merry Christmas, I'm Yours by RabbitRunnah

It takes Jack only a couple months after graduation to realize he's in love with Bitty.

It takes him almost 20 years to actually do something about it.

(Or, five Christmases Jack and Bitty spend together.)

right as things grow by wit

Loving and longing, one thousand miles apart: the summer of 2015, in which Jack realizes what he wants just in time for it to get on a plane and leave for Georgia.

#lb 2018 #THERE ARE OBVS MORE #omgcp #omgcp fics #list #this is basically another #fichof

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spaceorphan18 · 7 years

Text

Changed For the Better 11 [Klaine Advent Day 11]

Rating: SF for Shenanigans and 4th wall breaking Word Count: 3451 Summary: AU - Kurt’s a struggling actor living in New York, and is currently working on a Made-for-TV movie starring Cooper Anderson.

A/N: Written for Klaine Advent Day 11: Key

Thank you do the supremely suburb @snarkyhag for taking a look at this <3

LINK TO A03

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6] [Part 7] [Part 8] [Part 9] [Part 10]

///

Changed for the Better - Part 11/24: Thriller or Heads Will Roll

“So, the whole thing lasted about an hour, I was asked, like, three questions, and that was it,” Kurt said. He and Blaine were getting coffee at the local shop down the street from the theater; the same ritual they’ve had for the past few weeks.

“Wait - so this whole big press thing, wasn’t really a press thing?” Blaine asked, as he paid the barista. He had also bought a couple of sugar cookies, and without a word, handed one over to Kurt.

“Not really,” Kurt said. “I’m guessing the little clips will air during commercial breaks? The whole thing is kind of depressing. I mean, they’re going to air this in a few days -- in August! Not even for the whole Christmas in July thing. And then it’ll be swept under the rug and forgotten, not even dragged out for those holiday marathons the network does every year in December.”

They sat at their usual table, in their usual spots across from one another. Blaine tilted his head and watched as Kurt played with the plastic lid on his coffee.

“I thought that’s what you wanted?” Blaine asked. “I mean, for the movie to be buried and forgotten about. It’s not like you’ve been exactly raving about it. Even Cooper has managed to forget about its existence. Mostly. Though Cooper does have a hard time focusing on anything other than what’s right in front of him.”

Kurt gave a little shrug. “I know, but I guess I can’t help but think that all I’m doing is going from one absolute failure to the next. Maybe I should be buried and forgotten about, too.”

“Hey,” Blaine reached out his hand and grabbed it. “I don’t think you’re a failure.”

Kurt gave him a smile, happy for the reassurance, even if he didn’t fully believe it himself.

“Ku-urt!” A familiar voice rang through the coffeeshop. It was Rachel, with Jesse following not far behind. She promptly sat down at the table, squishing herself to Kurt’s left as Jesse sat next to Blaine. “I knew I’d find you here. I’ve been wanting to come here for ages and, oh my god, this is so much lovelier than I thought it would be - you never know with these places. Sometimes a cute little cafe, all rustic and inspirational, sometimes a front for the mafia. Remember the time I tried to use that barber shop and almost wound up murdered? Oh, hey is that sugar cookie? Kurt - I told you that you should cut out cookies or else you’ll get back the baby fat in your cheeks you had during high school.”

Kurt took a deliberate large bite out of his cookie. “Hello, Rachel, what brings you here at this exact moment in time?”

Rachel lit up. “Oh, now that it’s official I can finally tell you. I’ve been cast in a one-woman show! And everything about it sounds amazing! It’s this tear-jerking, gut-wrenching play written by this first time writer who’s had accolades from professors at NYU, and she asked me, after seeing me in my pivotal portrayal of Janet in Rocky Horror, to do the honors of portraying her mother in this play. We’re going live in just a few months!”

“So, looks like your little boyhood boarding school play is going to have some competition this fall,” Jesse said. “Because Rachel’s really going to shine.”

“Well,” Blaine said, “say what you want about my little play...our well funded, Broadway acclaimed cast and crew, which includes having the one of the best up-and-coming stars I’ve ever seen,” he gave a wink to Kurt, “is going to rock the Broadway world. But please, tell me about your show.” Jesse and Rachel sat stunned as Blaine went back to finishing his cookie.

Kurt smirked. “Rachel, this is Blaine. Blaine, Rachel.”

Well,” Rachel said, obviously in competition mode now. “We already have a marketing strategy ready. I’ve barely seen a poster related to your show.” She dug through her purse and fetched out her phone, quickly shoving it into Kurt’s face. “We’re on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Snap-Chat, Reddit - well Jesse’s running a Reddit thread but there’s just a lot of foul-mouthed weirdos on there, and we have three interviews set up with prestigious Broadway sites.”

“Oh my god, Rachel, you’re naked!” Kurt said, as he flipped through the photogallery she had pulled up on her phone. It’s not like he’s seen Rachel nude before - she had a tendency to be pretty open about her body when they were roommates - but he had never seen her like this, on a public website no less.

Rachel seemed unphased. “Well, yes, most of the show I’m naked.”

“It’s classy,” Jesse added. “And Rachel has a fantastic ass and perky boobs.” Kurt cringed, Blaine looked away. “And should not be ashamed of how amazing she is. The show is about being open - on the inside and on the outside.”

“Really?” Kurt asked sarcastically.

“Look - see, we already have a million followers on this one,” Rachel said, pointing to the number on the screen.

“That’s because you’re naked,” Kurt shot back.

Rachel pouted, grabbing her phone back.

In the meantime, Mercedes and Sam had come into the coffeeshop, ordered coffee, and were coming up to the table, Mercedes pulling up a chair to Kurt’s right, while Sam slid into an empty chair next to Blaine.

“Hey guys! I thought we’d find you here,” Mercedes said. “Hope you don’t mind that we joined you. I could hear Kurt and Rachel arguing from the line.”

Rachel rolled her eyes as they all got snug around the table, which was now getting too small for their crowd.

“Anyway,” Kurt said, deliberately changing the subject. “What are you up to, Mercedes?”

“Oh, Sam and I were just out,” she said, looking adoringly at Sam.

“Yeah, Mercedes is helping me get all of these modeling auditions,” Sam said excitedly. “I actually have this one I’m excited about. I’d be doing ads for sports stores - most likely football since the season starts soon.”

“Ooh, I love football,” Kurt said.

“Kurt,” Blaine said “the only thing you like about football is that the guys wear pants tight enough appreciate all their assets.” Blaine gave him a wink and a smirk, a flirtatious smirk if Kurt didn’t know better, before taking a sip of his coffee.

Kurt looked at him suspiciously. Then underneath the table, Kurt stretched out his leg, and daringly ran his foot up Blaine’s calf. Blaine, however, didn’t seem to notice.

“Kurt, is there a reason you are using your foot to caress my leg?” Jesse asked.

“Nope, just a cramp.”

Mercedes laughed into her coffee.

“Hey, look, it’s all my special friends.” This time it was Brittany who was joining them. She bounced up to Kurt, and gave him a huge hug from behind. “Hello, favorite unicorn.”

“Uh, hey Brit,” Kurt replied. “Let me introduce-”

“No need,” Brittany said, pulling a chair from another table to push her way in-between Kurt and Rachel. “Obviously, you’re my favorite unicorn friend. And there’s your boyfriend,” she said pointing to Sam, who gave her a weird look. “And your other boyfriend.” She pointed to Blaine.

“Oh, no, Kurt and I are just friends,” Blaine said.

Kurt’s face fell, crestfallen. He brought his previously roaming foot next to the other, feeling foolish for trying to flirt. What was he even doing?

“Your snapchats would say otherwise,” Brittany said without explanation. “And that’s the next Beyonce over there.” Mercedes smiled at the compliment. “And this is the loud girl, who Santana says needs a boob job if she’s going to try to make it as a porn star.”

“It’s not a porno!”

Brittany ignored Rachel. “And the guy over there is my old choir director’s illegitimate son.”

Jesse gave her a strange look.

“Brittany, how do you know all of this?” Kurt asked, not sure if he liked the idea of Brittany knowing so much about all of his friends.

“Lord Tubbington stalks all of you,” Brittany said, as if not sure what the problem was. “He just wanted to make sure you were all safe before I invite you to my webshow Fondue for Two.”

“That’s it,” Blaine said suddenly. “Kurt, that’s the key - if you want people to see your movie, let’s flood all the online possibilities. We can get the word out on all those social media sites. If it’s already working for Rachel, there’s no reason it won’t work for you. You guys need to do something big.”

“I am not taking off my clothes for this,” Kurt said, which made Blaine chuckled and Rachel groan.

“Is it strange that we should worry Cooper might?” Blaine asked.

“I’m not shooting myself out of a cannon again,” Brittany said, to everyone’s confusion.

“I meant,” Blaine continued, “maybe you guys can do a live premiere party or something. If your network won’t put in the leg work, why don’t you guys.”

“Blaine, that’s brilliant,” Kurt replied.

“You know, Blaine gets all his brilliance from me.” And that was when Cooper arrived, all toothy grins, and his arm around a blonde woman with glasses that he had never seen before. Blaine rolled his eyes and sunk a little lower in his chair. Kurt wondered why he and Blaine’s normally quiet morning coffee time was continually being interrupted.

“Coop, what are you doing here?” Blaine asked.

Cooper beamed - as if waiting for an opening to start his act. “Hello, little brother. Best friend. Best friend’s boyfriend. Fake girlfriend. And other people I don’t know, but I know will make a fantastic audience. I know what you’re thinking - why would such a renowned actor of my status be found in a Friends-knock-off coffee lounge. Well, I’ll tell you. I, Cooper J. Anderson, am in love. And when I saw you through the window, Blainey, I needed to tell you straight away that I have found the most wonderful person on the planet.” The woman let out a delighted little squeal. “Her name is Arby.”

“Like the restaurant?” Mercedes asked, confused.

“You see, this morning, I was walking to my agent’s to see if they had any new work for me, and pondered some new poses for updated headshots,” Cooper paused to pose. There was scattered and uneasy applause. “And then, I saw her. This woman, protesting in a church’s parking lot. I’ve never seen anyone who pointed with such intensity. I had to compliment her. And then our eyes met and it was like lightning. I felt it. She felt it. We both felt it as we made passionate love in the back of that car. I know now that I have found the person that I am supposed to be with.”

“God, isn’t he amazing?!?” Arby shrieked.

Cooper began to kiss her face. Everyone else groaned.

“So, Brittany,” Kurt said doing his best to ignore them. “Tell me about this webshow you have.”

Cooper pulled off his new girlfriend. “Did you say webshow? Will it be live?”

///

Brittany: Hello! And welcome back to our very special live edition of Fondue For Two. We are getting you all psyched up to watch my new, brilliant, TV-movie, as well as doing interviews with the cast. With me now is Sam Evans. Sam, the viewers want to be know, how do you feel to officially come out on this movie?

Sam: Um, Brittany - I’m not actually gay. I mean, I’m totally cool with it - and I’m trying to be a good ally. I just play gay on TV. And on stage.

Brittany: Are you sure? Because Santana says those lips were definitely made for sucking on balls…

Sam: What?!

Brittany: Personally, I think they’re like two big pillows to rest your lips on…

Sam: I don’t...I’ve never had... uh, shout out to my wonderful girlfriend, Mercedes Jones!

Kurt was running just a little behind. It was hard to decide what exactly to wear to a live screening of a made-for-TV-movie-slash-web-show interview. He chose his favorite pair of skinny jeans with a black vest and red button down, and arriving at the banquet hall just as Brittany was wrapping up her interview with Sam.

“Trying to be fashionably late to your own show?” Blaine met him near the entrance and handed him a glass of wine. And if Kurt wasn’t mistaken, Blaine took a long moment to notice what he was wearing.

“Well, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from your brother, it’s always make an entrance,” Kurt said. Blaine laughed. “Wow, this place… Santana really out did herself, didn’t she?”

Brittany’s girlfriend took charge on the whole ‘do a live show’ thing. The banquet hall was decked out with Christmas decorations, a fake tree near where Brittany was filming her web show, Christmas lights hung from the ceiling, and all of the chairs facing the large screen where they’d be watching the TV-movie that night had red and green garland taped to the back of them. There were a ton of people, too, most of them mingling near the buffet on the far side of the room. Kurt didn’t know who they were, but suspected that many of them might be reporters… or an odd hodgepodge of Brittany’s friends. It was hard to say. But there were plenty of people from production there as well -- crew members, extras, and a few of the supporting cast. It was a mini-reunion.

“I think it’s sweet,” Blaine said. “Brittany’s girlfriend wanting to support her by putting this all together.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,” Kurt said, taking a sip of his wine. “Santana’s job is public relations. I’m sure she got some kind of compensation from the network for doing it.”

“I saw them chatting earlier, Brittany and Santana,” Blaine said. “And Santana seemed to have nothing but adoration for Brittany. You know, I like to think that some people do things for others just for the sake of doing something nice.”

“You really haven’t met Santana, have you.”

“Where’s your sense of romanticism?”

“I used it all up in this performance,” Kurt joked. “And what’s left is this old cynic.”

“I don’t believe that,” Blaine said, giving him a tiny nudge in the arm.

Not a moment later, Kurt was being summoned over to the corner to do his interview with Brittany. Brittany grasped at him quickly the moment she was in reach, excited about the interview, and the atmosphere in general. She was in her zone, and it made her glow in a way Kurt had never seen before.

“Hello, viewers out there,” she told the camera. “I have a very special guest for you now. He’s one of my favorite people that I met on set, even if he doesn’t know his own place in the story -- Kurt Hummel.” Brittany applauded for him.

“Uh, thank you?” He gave a little wave to the camera. The bored tech guy behind it yawned.

“So, Kurt, tell us what it’s like to be in love?”

“...You mean on the show or…”

“On the show obviously,” Brittany said, rolling her eyes. “I mean, in real life you’re a stick in the mud who doesn’t believe in love.”

“I have never said that.”

Brittany clicked her tongue. “Well, if you were in love, you wouldn’t be single. You’d have a tiny, compact boyfriend who smells like raspberries, and who believes in his own magic the way you don’t believe in yours.”

“Well, I…love is…” Kurt looked up, past the bored tech guy and the camera, across the room, to where Blaine was standing, chatting with Brittany’s girlfriend. Santana was actually smiling, as if enjoying his company. Kurt didn’t think he had ever seen Santana genuinely smile that. Of course, Blaine could charm anyone…

“Love is what, Kurt?” Brittany’s question hung in the air.

“Love is…” -- unexpected?

Kurt wasn’t sure he had felt quite like this before, as he watched Blaine warmly work his way around the room.

There was so much he liked about Blaine - the way he was so kind to others, the way he laughed so easily, the way they could talk or text until 2am, the way Blaine always had a drink ready for him, or the way he put his hand on the small of Kurt’s back as they walked into a new room. Or the way their voices sounded when they sang together. He didn’t just like Blaine. He was falling in love with Blaine.

But his past experiences with love had always been so hard. And everything about Blaine felt so easy. Was that really what love was?

Blaine, almost instinctively, looked in his direction, and from across the room, their eyes locked. And Blaine held on, almost as if reading Kurt’s mind.

Kurt wanted to chase that look. And suddenly he felt very nervous - but in a good way. They didn’t really need to see this movie, right? Even if it was Blaine’s idea, and his movie, and Blaine’s brother’s show, and he said he’d be there. He and Blaine could just be alone. Why were they never just alone?

“Kurt…?”

“Sorry, Brittany, there’s something I’ve got to do.”

Kurt abruptly stopped the interview, though Brittany didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she almost looked excited. But Kurt didn’t pay her much attention as he made his way across the room.

It was time - time to ask Blaine out on a real date. Time to let these feelings be more than bottled up inside him. Time to see if Blaine really did feel the same way.

“Hey, Blaine-” Kurt’s heart fluttered.

Blaine looked at him eagerly - waiting. “Yes?”

“There’s something I wanted to ask you about, but, uh…”

“Hey, Kurt, I’m glad I found you.” Elliott arrived, guitar in hand, and band in tow. He threw an easy arm around Kurt’s shoulders. “You will not believe how lost we got trying to get here. I texted you. Dude, you need to check your phone more often. We’re still singing tonight, right? Where am I supposed to set up?”

“Uh…” Kurt didn’t even know Elliott’s band was playing tonight, let alone what to do with them. “I have no idea - Santana’s running the show somewhere. I’m sure you can find her, there’s something I was doing…”

“Kurt, go ahead and take care of them,” Blaine said, giving a disappointed frown to the floor. “I should probably go any way.”

“What? Blaine, you can’t leave - the movie hasn’t started,” Kurt said. “And Cooper hasn’t even arrived.”

“I know,” Blaine said softly. He was avoiding Kurt’s eyes, and Kurt didn’t understand why. “But I have an early call time. And I wouldn’t want to disrupt your night.”

“But - Blaine.” He reached out for Blaine’s hand, but Blaine took an unexpected step back. What had just happened? He looked up at Elliott, but Elliott only shrugged.

“Night, Kurt. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Blaine proceeded to give him the most awkward hug, before turning to leave.

Kurt wanted to run after him, but before he could he was met by Cooper Anderson entering the room. Cooper insisted Kurt follow him, all but dragging him and a few of the other cast members back over to where Brittany was hosting her show. Cooper then pushed Brittany’s current subject - one of the crew members - out of the way so he could be in full view of the camera.

“Hello my dear, dear audience - made up of friends, colleagues, and people of the internet,” Cooper announced, loud enough that everyone had stopped to watch him. “The time has come for what you’ve all been waiting for. I, Cooper J Anderson, have taken the stage. And I want to thank you, all of you, and especially my new superbly hot girlfriend Arby, for being here.” Cooper took a dramatic pause, and pointed to where his girlfriend was standing on the side of the crowd. “You see - we are here to witness one of the great cinematic pieces of our time. And in order to enhance the experience, I am willing to give back. Some may call this a publicity stunt, but I call it good press. So, my dear audience, you will have not just me - but all of me tonight.”

And with that, in front of the hundred or so people in the room, and the thousand or so people watching live online - Cooper Anderson tore away his shirt and pants until he was wearing only a thong, and proceeded to shake his ass at the camera.

Kurt’s jaw dropped to the floor.

Cooper’s new girlfriend gave a shriek of delight. And then promptly fainted.

#klaine advent 2017 #klaine advent: key #s.o. writes things #see I told you I plan on continuing #sometimes it just takes me a while #;)

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santanuborgohain · 4 years

Text

Oh-ffice!

Episode: 1

For Dikshit it had been quite a habit for a while now. It was already half past three in the morning and the insomnia was still onto it’s play. He kept tossing around on the couch putting an effort to sleep but everything went in vain. After twenty minutes of struggle he got up and sat clumsily stretching his legs on the coffee table. Unwittingly he turned on the TV, put it on mute and stormed off to the kitchen to brew a cup of coffee for him.

He switched to his favorite Pink Floyd track and sat back on the couch again in his living cum bedroom. There was no catching up to do other than checking Donald Trump’s latest tweets, innovative features on Tesla’s Model 3, random updates on last La Liga match and so on. The coffee was good. He sniffed the steam and sipped slowly while scrolling down his Twitter feed.

Eventually he ended up stumbling across Alankrita’s Instagram profile. She had already removed their pictures: the stunning sunsets, weekend-coffee dates, throwback images of their Goa trip with ‘love you to the moon and back’ and other cheesy captions—all of them! He did not feel bad though. Indeed, he barely felt anything these days. By now, he had got an intense urge to have another cup of strong black coffee. But soon he resisted the urge realising he had enough caffeine for the day. Another Sunday successfully wasted, he thought. Wait! Did he say Sunday? His mind started boggling for a while. Technically, it was Monday-morning and already five. Damn it! He turned off the TV, kept his phone aside and laid down on the couch expecting somehow to get at least, well, a nap. Deep down he did not want to go to the office for the day. But he knew he had to. Paying bills is the biggest motivation to work after all!

At nine in the morning he reluctantly took a lazy shower. Dropping the idea of having breakfast was pretty obvious as he was already running late. It took him another half an hour to get ready, book a cab and set off for the day asking the driver to pace up. His phone buzzed. He squinted on the screen with his groggy eyes and witnessed there were already two missed calls from Ayush but didn’t bother to call him back. He reached office on time and walked up to the elevator but soon got disappointed having spotted the board stating that it was under maintenance. He took the stairs and made his entire way to 4th floor. To make it worse, he ended up realizing that he was really having a bad day when the access card did not work. He tried for the third time. Access denied: it kept getting reflected.

“Can I help you?” said a voice behind his shoulder. He turned back and saw Kavya standing right behind him, possibly being a silent spectator, watching him struggling with the access card.

“Hey!” he greeted her with a prodigious smile. Dull moments are always history whenever he encounters her. Even the most boring moment gets enliven with her mere presence. For a moment he forgot all his worries.

“Let me try.” she grabbed the card from him.

“It, uh, doesn’t work sometimes.” he said scratching his forehead, trying so hard not to sound irate.

“That’s okay.” she casually observed both the faces of the card, “here we go.” then swiped the card and it did work at the very first go.

“Well, sometimes, it works as well.” he said apologetically. She said nothing but smirked and passed by through the corridor making a harmonic sound by tapping her stiletto heels against the floor.

He walked up to his cubicle and pulled up his work station. Your password has been expired. Please update your new password now. A pop up window appeared on the screen. Damn!

“Hey Dik..Dik..Dikshit” Rabish stood up from his seat and leaned towards him, “bhai, round table conference” he said in code words about the board meeting which they needed to attend in no time, followed by an HR session. Out of all his colleague Rabish seemed to be an absolute nuisance to him not only because he used to bring all the awry updates to one’s table but also his dreadful stammer made his not-so-filthy name sound like a dick and shit. “After you.” he made a gesture with his arm. Both of them proceeded towards the conference room.

Inside the conference room, he felt like dozing off on his chair watching the pie-chart on the projector screen. It was basically about appreciation for the last month’s turn over and discussion regarding the increments respectively. He wondered even Calculus was less boring, back in school, than one might think, if it’s compared with the first meeting of the session with David, his assistant manager. Nothing was interesting about him apart from the Black Jaguar F-Type which he drove.

“Shout out to my most competent team.” David seemed to speak more like a motivational speaker in a leadership funnel. “Give yourself a big round or applause! All of you!” he announced and everyone around started clapping which woke Dikshit up from his siesta.

“Dikshit, are you okay?” asked David.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” he said as composed as he could sound.

“All right.” he nodded and continued. “So as we were saying— ”

The meeting went for another twenty minutes and once it was over he badly needed a cup of strong black coffee. He occupied back his seat and updated the password watching Kavya attentively working on her desktop. Her dark brown eyes were constantly staring on the screen without even a single blink and her lips were poised between a suppressive smile and silence. It occurred to him that time stood still, and the soul of the world surged within him. But then—

“Hi Dikshit!” Ananya flushed a wide smile standing next to him. She had recently rebonded her hair and was curious whether if Dikshit noticed the change.

“Hey, what’s up?” he flashing his eyebrows.

“I’m good. How’s your weekend?”

“Not bad.” he briefed. She noticed the dark circle beneath his eyes but didn’t felt like bothering him asking if he had a good sleep last night.

“Listen..” she faltered. “I was wondering.. if, uh, we can go out for coffee this evening after work or..” she faltered again “..or may be how about this weekend?”

“That’s really a good idea…” he emphasized.

“Great!”

“But you know what, I gave it up completely you know. Really sorry.” he winched, pretending apologetic.

“You gave up coffee, I mean, seriously?” her eyes flung open in disbelief. More or less, she quite knew his obsessive interest on coffee.

“Yes. That’s unfortunate,” he shrugged. “my doctor’s been warning me since ages and now he’s clearly instructed me to avoid it. Gents problem you know.” he knew how bad he was at cooking stories, but still he tried pondered whether if that made any sense. Her face dropped.

“We can still go for Karim Chacha’s chai though. Shall we?” it was pretty obvious she would refuse to ‘tapri ka chai’ on a crowded footpath right next to their office. Offer them a worse option rather than clearly saying no, that’s what he learnt in his management lessons.

“Let’s see.” she said deadpanned and excused herself.

He quickly finished quarter of his work and whizzed off hunting for Ayush in a different bay.

“Why aren’t you picking up my call, asshole?” Ayush saw him from a distance.

“Bhenchod, isn’t that you who’s pinching that naive girl over and again after me?” he probed.

“Who are you talking about, Ananya?” Ayush laughed out loud. “She likes you bro. It’s an open secret.”

“That’s not the answer to my question. Is it?”

“I was just trying to help you.” he giggled. “On top of that, you need to move on man.”

“Screw you man. Don’t talk like aunties now.” Nobody screws Ayush. Nobody dares to do so. He’s tech-savvy. A Google intern. If anyone messes with him, he messes with his firewall. He used to live, eat, sleep and poo in dark web for most of his time.

“Look at those dark circles, again, aren’t you sleeping well again?”

“No, it’s just—”

“Just what?”

“Nothing. Just leave it! I just need to have—”

“Sex?”

“No, not at the moment. Perhaps, a cigarette will do for me now.”

“Even I think so. C’mon.”

They went to the smoking zone on a short break. That’t what they usually do—exhale the frustration, inhaling a bit of hope and whole lot of courage in each drag of puff ever since they joined this IT firm after getting their H-1B VISA repeatedly rejected. Friends who smoke together, die together —it was quoted on the wall. Ayush told him about some jugaad he’s working on to shift to Toronto later this year and asked him if he was interested. Dikshit replied in negative dragging in a very long puff and left.

Prior to lunch break He had summed up almost half of his work. Kavya was still working as attentively as before. Her work ethic and the elegance was a loud resonance to each other. The moment he thought, she stood up and came towards him.

“Hey, what are you having for lunch today?” she asked. That was quite unusual.

“Huh? Um, actually I didn’t even have breakfast today.” He did not intend to say that but it came out spontaneously.

“Oh my god. Seriously?” she said she had brought some home-cooked delicacy and asked him have it with her.

“I’m starving already.” he said even though he was not hungry at all.

They walked up to the Cafeteria. He ordered one ice latte and one espresso for him from Costa coffee. She offered him a dish of Shahi paneer. It was not the food but mostly the company that exited him much. The coffee was ready and his token number was displayed on the monitor. He went to fetched the coffee settling the bill. The moment he rushed back to his seat, he rammed with someone and the cold coffee flushed out of the cup. “I’m so sorry.” he yelled.

“What the f—”. Ananya yelled back did not even knowing it was him. Half of the people inside the cafeteria turned around. Her white tank top was painted with froth and coffee.

“I’m extremely sorry.” He wished he could disappear.

“No, that’s…that’s—” she faltered with irritation and anger.

“I can clean it. Let me bring some tissue.”

“No, that’s fine.” she said even though it was not.

“I’m sorry, I can clean it wait.” he insisted.

“I said that’s fine. Just leave it!.”

“Well, actually I do have cold coffee only. That’s why I—” he said as awkwardly as shit not sure of knowing what should he do or say.

“Whatever!” she said, clearly climbing the Mount Everest of irritation, and shoved off from the cafeteria. He wished he could undo the whole event. Rabish passed by towards the billing counter and saw him standing there. “What happened Dik…Dik…Shit, a..any problem?” he said. For the first he didn’t get annoyed by Rabish’s stutter for spoiling his not-so-filthy name, making it sound like a bin full of trash. Indeed, he felt completely otherwise.

“Nothing.” he responded unmindfully, feeling like a dick and full of shit.

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sambart93 · 7 years

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2017.09.18 Oushitsu Kyoushi Haine Review!

I was able to go to the Live Viewing of this stage! Which I am thankful for because tickets were impossible! I watched the anime when it first came out and loved the anime and fell in love with Haine and the fact that it's UeChan and Haine himself is adorable just made it all the more 'I must watch this!'

If you want more details about the overall story and plot of this stage then you can go to this blog post I just found here.

Official Website here Official Twitter here Press Coverage 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 Video Coverage 1, 2, 3 PreOrder DVD/BR here, and here

However, my expectations for this musical did drop somewhat when on the Friday, I was outside the theatre (waiting for a trade) when I noticed, everyone that walked out were deadly silent and not smiling or speaking really. I’ve never seen that happen with a stage before! So it really worried me; did people not like it? Was it bad? What went wrong? Did something happen on stage? Did an actor get hurt? All these things went through my mind and ultimately it really pulled down my expectations for it. And then my friend went and was also like ‘before I went in for the night show, none of the afternoon audience were very waiwai (hyper, happy, fangirling) when they left.. and then I saw it; I understand why they weren’t waiwai but I think I’m not waiwai for different reasons’ so then I really had like minus expectations going into this. Which is a shame because thy anime is a amazing, the cast for this is solid, it has a lot of potential and room to grow and have fun and be a really enjoyable stage. But from what me and my friend had seen... it wasn’t promising =/

Anyway lets get down to it:

CAST and CHARACTERS

Ueda Keisuke as Haine Hirose Daisuke as Leonhart/Leonhard Asato Yuya as Kai Aoi Shouta as Rihito / Richi Adachi Yuto as Bruno Tatsuma Hoshi as Maximilian Udagawa Tsukasa as Lugwig Kimisawa Yuki as Rosenberg Nobuo Kyo as Victor Ensemble

NON SPOILER REVIEW Overall: This is going to be really stupid, and I know it, BUT... there was too much singing. I felt like 70% of this is just song after song after song (according to one press release, this musical has over 40 songs) with no plot or scenes of dialogue. Especially the beginning. The first 30 minutes are absolute torture of song after song and I got very agitated and bored of it very easily and felt like ‘get to the story already!’. Luckily the singing simmers down once we get past Leonhart’s arc and get into Kai and Rihito’s story; there’s definitely less singing and actual acting and scenes once that beginning is over. Asato Yuya as Kai was absolute perfection; he couldn’t have done a better job. Rihito’s arc in the stage is VERY good and very enjoyable. I absolutely adored Aoi’s performance as Rihito in this part of the stage and his song in the climax of the arc actually made me cry pretty hard. Kimisawa really surprised me with his singing; his singing is absolutely amazing. I was so impressed! But after a while, what with apparently there being 40 songs in this stage, all his song started to sound the same and repetitive. But his voice is gold. I really enjoyed Nobuo Kyo’s performance and thought he fit Victor pretty well. UeChan was obviously a great Haine and his performance always fascinated and entices me. Although I will say; this musical version of Haine lacked in comedy and lightheartedness which is a shame because they could’ve done so many cute and adorable moments with UeChan as Haine but they didn’t do it so much; only now and again would there be cute Haine moments which I'm sad about. And because of the lack of comedy and lightheartedness, the musical feels very down and dark and it’s actually tiring to watch after about the first 110minutes. I noticed the audience around me in the cinema started to get really fidgety and restless after about 100 minutes, and I started to lose it after the 130 minute mark. I think that’s why so much of the audience is/was so neutral after coming out of the show. Finally, the show ran a bit too long; if they’d cut out some of the musical numbers, this play could’ve been shorter but also much more enjoyable in my opinion. I appreciated the ending change (from the anime to the stage) though - the rest of the stage is a carbon copy of the anime. Although it kind of ends suddenly without any real... climax song.... which also leads to the audience being very ‘ah okay... *walks home*’. The best part of the stage was, in all honesty, the curtain call. Seeing the cast interact with one another and having this massive laugh and fun together as themselves in front of the audience was so much fun xD Rating: 6/10

Now to the nittygritty.

SPOILER REVIEW

To reiterate the non-spoiler section: The first part of this play is just not good. I got very bored straight away because it was just song after song after song and it really bogged me down and I was just like 'hurry up and get to the story already!'. I know it's stupid to complain because this IS a musical but.... there really are TOO many songs in this - 40!... so many songs would've been better as just scenes of dialogue. I really don’t like when a song is put in just for performances sake rather than to help the plot along and I feel this happened a lot. For example, you don’t need to sing to me how many fucking points the princes got on their test; just fucking tell me! What a waste of time. So they really irked me. Also there was one female singer who was just a note too high for my liking in almost every song and it really made me cringe. If you wanna sing that high, go do fucking opera! It really took you out of the story with quite a few of the songs in my opinion. It also felt like it was trying to be ‘west end’ with all the ensemble dancing and the singing and such. It was too much for me. There’s a reason why I hate and avoid west end musicals, and Haine unfortunately was somewhat reminiscent of those musicals so I did not enjoy it. The overall balance in the group singing though was really nice and I fell like almost everyone balanced and bounced off each other well in the singing parts. I get it's a musical so there should be lots of songs, but it just feel the balance between music numbers and scenes with dialogue and actual acting, especially in the beginning, was way off.

This musical is REALLY long too! I think we got about 60% through and people were really starting to shuffle or going to the bathroom without really caring. And at about 80% through, I started to feel 'if we go to the council scene right now I'm gunna fucking scream! I am ready for this to be done', but luckily they changed the ending which made it so much more bearable and worked much better for stage rather than it would've in the anime but I'll get to that later.

It wasn't until we got to Kai's arc that it started to be less about the songs and actually whole scenes of dialogue and acting that I started to enjoy it. Unfortunately this means that I pretty much blocked out Leonhart’s arc because that too was just song after song in my opinion. They even cut out the scene of Haine reading his diary! I love that scene! And we didn’t have any ridiculous Haine chasing Leonhart on a horse while standing ON the horse! I was hoping for some Touken Ranbu Stage horse ridiculousness for that one scene but they cut it out completely =[ Apparently the ensemble in this one are too professional to do something that silly - seriously, I hated the ensemble (most likely the directors fault though), but I just hated them. I feel like all their constant singing and dancing didn’t add anything to the stage either. Just be normal ensemble and do your roles! BUT I will say, their costumes were very, very creative and I liked them xD

As expected, Kai's arc was adorable! Especially as soon as he grabbed UeChan's hand and was like 'funi funi.... your hand... is funi funi...... suki / I like you' and Haine freaked like 'it's still a little too early for that?!-- oh, you mean my hand because it’s soft,' which was so funny! Especially because during that moment Haine was brought to his knees from Kai really locking in on his hand and playing with it >_< Asato was just perfection as Kai; he was absolutely perfect. Seeing him completely switch back to himself at the curtain call was just a great transformation to witness. His acting was so good as Kai! He had some golden moments during Rihito’s arc too.

Rihito's arc was probably the best part in terms of acting and performance. Also it had a hilarious adlib in it! Kai comes in from a side door and into the crowd and is like 'I have to be able to give greetings just like Sensei said... *faces camera, but there’s no spotlight so it’s just this black silhouette of him facing the camera, so we all cracked up laughing* are you my father?! I'll do my best!' And then he tries to talk to a girl but fails so he's like 'I wonder what Haine would do in my situation', and UeChan is just in his seat trying not to crack up. So Kai repeats himself 'I WONDER WHAT HAINE WOULD DO IN MY SITUATION,' so UeChan gave in because the crowd clapped for him to join in. He 'jumped' through the 4th wall and approached a girl 'good evening... your kimono is beautiful.... who do you like in Haine? Oh me? Thank you! ... excluding me who do you like? .... she said only me'. Then he went back on stage and 'jumped' back into the Haine world. So Kai tries 'good evening! Who do you like in Haine? ...... LEOHARTO..... WHO’S NEXT? Me? Oh thank you!' And the adlib scene ends. When Rihito came back into that scene, he's like 'Haine you disappeared for a moment' xD

I really, really loved Rihito's arc. I think Aoi did absolutely amazing in his acting and performance. Especially the music number towards the end of his story where he's crying and he's like 'father doesn't care! He never did!' then his father accepts him and he's crying and breaking down like 'you really do care! And I didn't notice because I was just a stupid kid'. I legit couldn't stop my tears! The performance was amazing and I was so impressed with this part of the stage. Also there's a part where Rihito smacks the cafe owner in the face with the metal serving plate and I burst out into laughter. I thought it was hilarious!

OH! The girl next to me was SO funny! Everytime there was a close up of Aoi or DaiChan, she would smack her hand over her nose and mouth because she’d just cry xD she was adorable and kept me entertained during the less interesting parts of the play.

Then we got to Bruno’s arc. I feel like this one was probably the shortest and most simple to get through. I don’t really remember anything note worthy or different to the anime for this arc. Bruno’s actor is probably the weakest singer. You could tell he was trying but he didn’t have much of a range; it definitely seemed like his voice was going to crack at some points due to being strained. The actor himself is cute though, and I feel like I preferred stage Bruno over anime Bruno.

OH! There was one point! When he decides to call Haine ‘Shisou’ and he starts flailing and shaking his arms around, then Leonhart comes in and joins in on the flailing; that part was funny.

Which reminds me; a lot of the comedy and jokes that should’ve hit and made the audience laugh just didn’t; either the timing was off or they just didn’t express it as a comical moment but it totally should’ve been. Like THIS scene where he decides to call Haine ‘Shisou’ -- it’s hilarious in the anime -- but in the stage he’s just like ‘Ah! I will call you Shisou’ and Haine just walks away ‘I’d appreciate it if you didn’t.’ It SHOULD’VE a funny scene! We should’ve had a funny moment of Haine reacting to being called Shisou like ‘ararara?! Shisou?! *cough* I’d appreciate it if you didn’t.’ but nothing! I think A LOT of my problems for this stage musical from the LACK of comedy in it. There were some hilarious parts don’t get me wrong! Such as the adlib with Kai -- but it’s an adlib, not a planned comedy scene --- and we had some cute Haine moments.

Planned Comedy moments we had:

1. Haine being lifted up when he was captured 2. Maximilian giving Haine brides lift so he can’t enter the kingdom at the beginning. 3. Haine rolling around the floor at and onto Rihito’s feet going ‘goro goro goro’ 4. Haine pulling pufferfish faces and pouting when a Prince is being childish. 5. Rihito smacking the cafe owner in the face with a silver serving plate. 6. Victor joining the cafe and having his butt smacked by the owner after doing a good job. 7. Haine jumping to his knees when he gets called a child. 8. Girls pretending to fall off their chair in the cafe so Rihito can help them up but he ignores them. 9. Haine curled up on the sofa and rocking side to side as he waits for his moment to talk.

But a LOT of this is just ‘story story, oh this prince has troubles, oh now they’re fixed, music number three billion times, story arc done, begin next arc’ without any comedy in it at all! This is HAINE!! The anime was hilarious (AND ADORABLE!)! The manga looks very funny too! But this musical just didn’t have it. Touken Ranbu is MORE funny than this stage! WTF?! That doesn’t add up does it?!

Now that I’ve gone down the road of negatives, I may as well carry on:

I did not like the 'Young Haine' and 'Young Victor' roles. It worked when the two actresses were just acting the scene out while the spotlights were mainly on Victor and Haine. BUT the LV cameraman kept the close ups on the two actresses, and I was like 'you're ruining the magic here!!! Keep the camera on Uechan or Nobuo OR stick to the wide shot you had going on with all 4 of them in shot because that looked FINE!' I did not like the close ups of the Young roles because they weren't even lip-syncing to what UeChan and Nobuo were saying so it just looked stupid in the cinema. Swear to god, these close ups are on the DVD and I'm gunna flip my shit. It just did not work. Continuing my ensemble hate; I HATED the fact that they used the SAME guy to play all the 'Young (insert the prince's name here)' every time,and they didn't even bother to put a wig on him to make him look more like the prince he was supposed to be at the time. Ugh..... that really got on my shit.

Final bad point: I feel like this stage ends really weird... I feel like the climax song was about 3 songs before the actual final song and it’s like ‘Haine please come back!’ and he goes ‘hello I’m your new teacher’ and it just ends, and they suddenly start bowing and I just think it’s really weird and abrupt how the stage ends. Why didn’t they end with like the boys running over to him ‘hey Haine I’m so glad you’re bad! Lets go do this! Let’s try this! Lets--’ and Haine going ‘wait! It’s time for class to start!’ and them all raising their hands and going ‘okay!!’ and then either happy clappy music starts blasting out, or lights cutting out to black before the clapping and bowing starts. That would’ve been a better ending.

BACK to the positives!

UeChan really is the cutest thing to walk this Earth xD whenever he did the little pouty faces or whenever he did something to make himself smaller was just so adorable! I was super surprised to hear that he can actually sing and that he sings so softly compared to his normal, very powerful voice! It's so adorable!! He also made me cry; it was during the Victor and Haine flashback scene and when it got to the Haine going on a fighting rampage, the Young role jumped out of the way and it was UeChan that did all the action and the fighting when he attacked the royal guards and my heart just hurt so much for Haine at that point <3 UeChan’s action choreography and movements were great! I was surprised how high he could kick his leg and everything! I also loved that they did the iconic gun scene when he and Kai are captured and the ‘bang’ sign comes out of the gun rather than a bullet xD UeChan’s action in that scene is good too!

To say it was Tatsuma’s first play, I thought he did great! His Maximilian was adorable! But, I think he needs to eat more; those pants and large jackets weren’t hide the tiny body he obviously has.

Just to reiterate the Non-spoiler section again: Kimisawa really surprised me with his singing; his singing is absolutely amazing. I was so impressed! I also thought he did a great job as Rosenberg and was happy with his performance. I think he made Rosenberg more mischievous. I really liked the scene where he throws the papers on the streets of the town so everyone can hear about Kai’s past. It was a nice moment. But like I said his songs started to sound the same and repetitive after a while. But his voice is gold and was amazing to listen to. AND I really enjoyed Nobuo Kyo’s performance and thought he fit Victor pretty well. Especially the cafe scene where he tries to act cute and does all these cute poses and then gets his butt slapped by the cafe owner and he feels and looks so violated xD I thought he and UeChan bounced off each other very well.

I'm glad they changed the ending. It was getting towards the end, I was getting agitated and thought 'if they go into the council scene, it's gunna be another 20 or 30 minutes, and I am so ready to be done!' But they changed it in that Rosenberg and Haine go back to Haine's old teaching church and Rosenberg tempts him to do something (I didn't catch what) but just before he accepts, the boys turn up and tell him 'you taught us that everyone has a few scars... you taught us we should do what we want' etc and in the end he decides to stay as their teacher. In the anime, the whole council scene works but for Stage I think the council scene would've been too much and I'm glad they changed it to make it all this more simpler and more 'just about Haine and his boys' rather than in the anime where 'the kingdom gets to decide and the boys have to prove their mature enough' etc. I am thankful for this change!

AFTERSHOW

The curtain call was adorable. Everyone did their greetings and UeChan asked them all to hurry up but didn't explain until later that it's because they might get cut off in the LV of they go to long xD Bruno's actor was adorable! He was like 'playing Bruno and a Professor it was so--- wait what did I just say?' And then everyone had a go at him and he was like 'I'm okay' in like the cutest way ever and I absolutely died of laughter. During DaiChan's turn he said nothing mean about Aoi and Aoi ran for him but Bruno held him back while DaiChan just laughed his ass off and UeChan like 'behave!!' XD Nobuo was adorable too; ‘I'm not a father in real life buy I think I now know how fathers feel... look at my sons! I’m so proud of them!’. UeChan's parents were there tonight and he was like 'don't search for them! 探さないで！' to the audience >.<

EDIT: also during the second curtain call Ueda was like ‘thank you all for standing up, but we’re all going to say something so *switches to English* sit down please’ and it was such good pronunciation <3

I’m kinda regretting the fact that I preordered the BluRay (especially because you had to pay 1000yen at the venue just to preorder it) because of how much I ended up not enjoying the musical BUT hopefully on the BluRay they’ll be good backstage stuff which’ll make it worth it, plus it comes with a possible DVD release event ticket so if I hit for that then it’ll make the purchase worth it. If not, I’ll just sell it off to someone. Any takers? xD

GOODS

I’m defo buying his randoms from this stage in the near future; last week they were super cheap at KBooks.

And that’s all! Sorry it wasn’t all happy and smiles like you were probably expecting.. but to be honest; I LOVE complaining, when do I never not complain about a stage?

#ueda keisuke #asato yuya #adachi yuto #hirose daisuke #kimisawa yuki #nobuo kyo #aoi shouta #stage #musical #oushitsu kyoushi haine #haine #王室教師ハイネ #植田圭輔 #review #舞台 #udagawa tsukasa #tatsumi hoshi

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regiqoa · 7 years

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Why Chara Is Evil and You Need To Shut The Fuck Up About Them

So recently I’ve been seeing so many videos, texts, essays and even blogs by the UT Fandom defending Chara, making some of those Character Defense Squads, saying that they’re actually good and that there’s much more to them besides how they’re portrayed in the Genocide Run and it’s honestly becoming a hassle, if not worrying. I am familiar with Tumblr’s habit of going out of its way to look deeper into things just for the sake of erasing an evil character’s traces and dark tendencies and thus turn them into a pure sweetie who did nothing wrong and it’s honestly annoying me. You guys are having sympathy for a character that’s supposed to be a PSYCHOPATH. And before you come saying “Chara is good, the player is responsible for the Genocide Run! The PLAYER is the real villain!”, the hole is a bit lower than that. Just because the player is indeed responsible for the Genocide Run doesn’t mean Chara isn’t evil. Bear with me. Let us begin then. Let’s look into the arguments people use to defend Chara as a “good” character and I will turn them around and, trust me, there’s not much you’ll be able to say to defend them after this because the logic in those arguments are HORRIBLY flawed.

“Chara was only laughing away the pain when Asgore got sick and nearly died after eating that poisoned Butterscotch pie made by them and Asriel!”

While laughing away the pain is a huge theme in Undertale (Hell, Sans does it all the time), I HIGHLY doubt they were laughing at stress. Let’s look into the VHS tape where this situation is mentioned and talked about by Asriel:

Asriel: Howdy, <Name>! Smile for the camera! Ha, this time I got YOU! I left the cap on... ON PURPOSE! Now you're smiling for noooo reason! Hee hee hee. What? Oh, yeah, I remember. When we tried to make butterscotch pie for Dad, right? The recipe asked for cups of butter... But we accidentally put in buttercups instead. Yeah! Those flowers got him really sick. I felt so bad. We made Mom really upset. I should have laughed it off, like you did... Um, anyway, where are you going with this? Huh? Turn off the camera...? OK.

So Asriel playfully tricks Chara, they start laughing and all of a sudden they just remember how they nearly killed their dad along with Asriel, right? In those circumstances and context, it means Chara remembers poisoning Asgore as a prank, something funny to laugh about, the same way purposefully leaving the lens cap on was for Asriel. So, yeah, they weren’t laughing any pain away; they were sadistically laughing at the pain Asgore was in and how probably they were rubbing their hands together while cooking up their little plan to use Asriel to destroy humanity under the guise of “freeing everyone”. This tape also really goes to show how different Asriel and Chara are, as Asriel also mentions how he felt so bad at the incident. I should also mention how Chara smiles creepily at Flowey’s distress when they make him scared of them when he realizes Chara would never hesitate to kill him if he got in their way and they are also shown smiling when we see them for the first time after killing Flowey at the end of the Genocide Run. Also, isn’t it Flowey himself who comments Chara has a "sick sense of humour”? Hell, many many Monsters comment on the protagonist’s “creepy smile” or "strange expression" throughout the Genocide Run, not to mention the =) face that appears instead of the exclamation point (!) atop the protagonist’s head before they fight a monster starting from the Waterfall area is highly associated with Chara. They’re HAPPY to be fighting the Monsters they come across and hunt, they’re happy to kill.

“Chara is clearly uncomfortable with the player the second time they do the Genocide Run”

This argument likely stems from that one line of Chara’s during their monologue if a Genocide Run is done twice:

"But you and I are not the same, are we? This SOUL resonates with a strange feeling. There is a reason you continue to recreate this world. There is a reason you continue to destroy it. You. You are wracked with a perverted sentimentality. Hmm. I cannot understand these feelings anymore."

I’d say “impatient” is the right word, not “uncomfortable”. At this rate, the player’s and Chara’s motives and desires are different. The reason the player continues to recreate and destroy the world is to satisfy their completist desire of wanting to find out every single thing there is to know about Undertale (or any game, for that matter), even if it means traversing the Genocide Run more than once, which is exactly the “perverted sentimentality” Chara is referring to and, considering how much of a real pain in the ass it is to complete it, it’s no surprise that Chara calls such an action “perverted". So they don’t understand you anymore, your desires are not the same anymore. The same is commented by Sans during his fight:

“i know your type. you’re uh, very determined, aren’t you? you’ll never give up, even if there’s uh… absolutely NO benefit to persevering whatsoever. if i can make that clear. no matter what, you’ll just keep going, not out of any desire for good or evil… but just because you think you “can”. and because you “can”… you “have to”…”

Chara on the other hand desires to go out and destroy humanity (and the Monsters, too), which brings me to my next point: The post-Genocide Pacifist Run. Chara is dead and thus lacks a physical body to do anything, so they know the only way to escape the Underground is through Frisk, the character the player controls. Have any of you ever paid attention to what Chara says after what I just put above?

"Despite this. I feel obligated to suggest. Should you choose to recreate this world once more, another path would be better suited."

Chara is suggesting the player “tries another path” and is thus manipulating them into doing the True Pacifist Run so they can go out and destroy both the Humans and the Monsters that now reign the surface.

“Chara didn’t destroy the Humans and Monsters of the surface in a post-Genocide Pacifist Run, they’re bringing justice to the player! They care about the Monsters and is thus punishing the player!”

No, it’s NOT Chara punishing the player, that’s the game itself doing this. One of Undertale’s main messages, especially the Genocide Run, is that your actions have consequences. The only thing that happens at the end of a post-Genocide Pacifist Run (or Soulless Pacifist Run) is that Chara fully possessed Frisk’s body after the player sold them their SOUL and now, with the Barrier separating the Humans from Monsters destroyed, Chara can now go out and destroy both species that live in the Surface. I mean, DAMN, Toby Fox said it himself in his Twitter when asked about the Soulless Pacifist Ending. There is absolutely NO “justice” in Chara’s side. If they were REALLY a good and pure person who loves the Monsters then, well, I’m sure they wouldn’t have to kill them just for rubbing it in the player, right?! Seriously, don’t ANY of you realise how pathetically contradictory this argument is?!

“But Chara is just a child!”

Bitch, have you ever watched two movies called “The Good Son” and “Child of Rage”? Go watch them, your argument is once again invalid. I will also mention how these two children are psychopaths. Also, the youngest arrested and condemned killers of the 20th century were brought to justice when they were both 10 and their names are Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, who kidnapped, tortured and killed 2 year-old James Bulger. So yeah, with real-life evidence, children like Chara are completely capable of being psychopathic murderers.

“Chara is the narrator of Undertale! They nicely narrate every enemy and object to you!”

No, it’s not canon. It’s never said anywhere that they are. The narrator through the ENTIRETY of Undertale is completely up to speculation. Have you ever heard of something called an “omniscient narrator”? Hell, it could be Frisk narrating stuff to you in a Neutral or Pacifist Run. It wouldn’t be that much of a stretch to say it could be the player themselves, considering the amount of 4th Wall Breaks in the game and how Flowey is aware that there’s people that watch gameplays of Undertale out there. The only pieces of narration that are clearly narrated by Chara are the ones in red in New Home in the Genocide Run (which are written in first person). This is also the very same place where Flowey talks about him to Chara the most, should I add. This argument likely exists because the narrator in question is always saying “you did <insert action here>”, in third person as if talking about someone else. Well, the same thing happens in the Genocide Run. There are TONS of entries in the Genocide Run narrated in third person.

“Papyrus is sparing you”

“You punched the dummy at full force. Feels good.”

“Glad Dummy lets you go”

“You took the Snowman Piece”

“You took the key and put it on your phone’s key-chain”

“You feel like you’re gonna have a bad time”

“You feel your sins crawling on your back”

It’s also worth noticing how darker and crueler the narrations both in first and third person get the more the Genocide Run progresses, right? It’s because the more you kill, the more you allow Chara to posses Frisk and the more they can manifest themselves.

“Chara lectures the player when the world is completely destroyed”

Yes, that is true but that still doesn’t make them good, they’re merely acknowledging the reality of the player’s actions. They sound completely cold and stoic saying those words and asking the player if they’re above consequences, which shows they’re neutral about this, not sad or bothered, not to mention it is them who destroy the world REGARDLESS of the player’s choice. I should also remind you that, right after that, the player is left with no choice but to make a literal deal with the devil (as Chara calls themselves “the demon that appears when people call its name”), giving Chara their SOUL as a deal to make them bring the world back. Chara also calls the player a “great partner” if they agree to destroy the world with them so its plausible to think that this is yet another form of manipulation.

“Chara may call themself a demon but Asriel calls himself the ‘God Of Hyperdeath!’"

Exactly. Asriel is the GOD of Hyperdeath. “Of Hyperdeath” is merely a name and a very obvious one, considering Asriel inherited his father’s trait of being terrible at naming things. However, think about this: A God is a creator or recreator, a deity, a divinity. When you look at what he says during his fight, this name makes perfect sense:

“You know, I don’t care about destroying this world anymore. After I defeat you and gain total control of the timeline, I just want to reset everything! Then we can do everything all over again!"

Asriel’s intentions are not remotely bad, even. He does not wish to harm anyone, he only wants to reset the entire timeline and redo what he and Chara did wrong, even if it means killing the protagonist to gain their Determination, for the greater good.

“Chara forgave Asriel for his betrayal!”

Dude, WHERE do people get this from?! Chara clearly DIDN’T forgive Asriel for betraying them and is clearly merciless to him at the end of the Genocide Run. They inclusively mention his betrayal when talking to the player:

“At first, I was so confused. Our plan had failed, hadn’t it?"

When Flowey is talking to Chara in New Home, they make him scared of them the moment he realizes that they would never hesitate to kill him if he got in their way, not to mention Chara is the one to make Flowey realize that his “kill or be killed” philosophy does not work, he knows Chara is much stronger than him. Hell, Chara clearly doesn’t care at all for Asriel as they, not the player, CHARA completely MUTILATES Flowey right when he reveals his true identity as Asriel after killing Asgore in one shot. Also, speaking of which, it is clearly stated on the books in the “Librarby" that the stronger the will to kill a Monster a human has, the more damage their attacks will do. One more thing worth mentioning is this parallel right here which pretty much speaks for itself:

Asriel, in the second True Lab VHS tape: Okay, <Name>, are you ready? Do your creepy face! AHHHHH!! Hee hee hee! Oh! Wait! I had the lens cap on... What!? You're not gonna do it again...? Come on, quit tricking me! Haha!

Flowey, in New Home: S-s-stop making that creepy face! This isn’t funny! You’ve got a SICK sense of humor!

The real thing that goes to show that Chara is evil is their relationship with Asriel/Flowey. Asriel was never comfortable with Chara’s plan, to the point that he cried at the thought of having to hurt or kill anyone. Flowey (who is equally evil), on the other hand, understands and even admires Chara for their murderous genocidal tendencies when he talks to them at the end of the Ruins and in New Home, not to mention Flowey only recognizes the protagonist as Chara if the player is doing the Genocide Run. It’s also worth mentioning that it was because of Chara that Flowey acquired his “kill or be killed” philosophy. Hell, Asriel even comments that Frisk and Chara are completely different from each other despite their very similar fashion choices and that he was only projecting. Hell, he’s the one who admits and recognises that Chara was never the greatest person.

Now on to something to top it all off: The Sociopath Flowey and Psychopath Chara theory. What you’re about to read now is a written adaption of a video in Portuguese explaining that Chara is a psychopath, whereas Flowey is a sociopath.

So, as you’ve probably gathered, there’s not much data about who Chara truly is but the they are just enough for us to understand their mentality and perspectives throughout the game. Chara was the first human to fall down Mount Ebott after the war that separated humans from monsters. Upon falling, they are found by Asriel, Toriel and Asgore’s biological son, and is adopted by the Dreemurr family as a family member. However, when Asgore gets awfully sick after eating a pie prepared by Chara and Asriel, Asriel feels bad about everything that happened, yet Chara LAUGHS in relation to that (I already proved your little “they were laughing away the pain” point wrong so shut the fuck up). Instead of putting “cups of butter” to make the pie, Chara uses Buttercups, poisonous golden flowers in the recipe, causing Asgore to fall horribly sick. Seeing the potency that the flowers have in Monsters, Chara starts to cook up a plan. Chara then gets terminally ill (too) and, before passing away, they ask Asriel to take them to see the golden flowers of their village in the Surface. Throughout the game, it is revealed that Chara had poisoned themself intentionally so that Asriel could absorb their SOUL and thus cross the barrier so that they could kill humans together and harvest their SOULs. So, yeah, Chara INTENTIONALLY poisons themself so that they have the chance to kill humans (which they succeed with the sole exception of Frisk that they posses depending on the ending we achieve in-game). But anyway, upon reaching the Surface, Asriel is attacked by the humans, for they have thought Asriel had attacked and killed Chara. This causes Chara’s desire to kill humans to manifest into their fusion and put it in a state of hatred but Asriel is able to resist that and let the fusion be attacked. Asriel then returns to the underground horribly wounded and both Asriel and Chara thus die. This story takes us to the story of Flowey; when Asriel died, his dust was spread across Asgore’s garden of golden flowers. Later, Alphys, doing experiments with Determination, injected the first flower that bloomed after Toriel left Asgore with Determination. The initial experiments didn’t work, which made Alphys return the flower to Asgore to be replanted in the garden. However, the flower woke up alive in the garden and thanks to Asriel’s essence from his dust in the garden, Flowey retained Asriel’s memories, but he also noticed that he din’t feel any emotions since he didn’t have a SOUL and thus was unable to feel love, joy or compassion. Those, dear readers, are all the information available about these two characters, so now let’s move on the psychological part. All of these informations affirm that both Chara and Flowey suffer from psychological problems, with Chara being a psychopath and Flowey being a sociopath. Now let’s analyse this a bit; many people assume amiss that psychopathy and sociopathy are the same but that’s wrong. Indeed, both disorders are very similar but there are a few details that set them apart so let’s see what psychopathy and sociopathy have in common, first:

Both are “antisocial personality disorders”;

Both lack empathy;

Both despise and disobey rules of social behaviour;

Both do not feel remorse or guilt;

Both are violent and hurt people;

Now that’s where things change. Differing from a sociopath, a psychopath possesses the following symptoms: The origin of their disorder is in the innate condition of their existence. According to a research made by the International Institute of Minnesota, 60% of psychopaths are psychopathic by heredity, meaning they were simply born this way. Now:

A psychopath has GREAT chances of being a nice and well-mannered person with a good professional career;

A psychopath possesses a very controlled temper and behaviour;

A psychopath is highly manipulative;

A psychopath is completely incapable of creating (real) bonds with other people;

A psychopath is generally very smart, intelligent and carefully calculates and plans their actions and risks, leaving the least amount of evidence as possible in their crimes;

Whereas a sociopath is very different. The origin of their disorder has great chances of being generated due to the environment they live in. Researches show that great part of sociopaths have become sociopathic due to their precocious institutionalisation, meaning they were NOT born this way. Now:

A sociopath has difficulty in being polite or well-mannered and generally cannot maintain themselves in a job;

A sociopath has a behaviour of loss of control that generates hate and anger;

A sociopath is impulsive and spontaneous;

A sociopath is capable of creating bonds with other people or an individual group;

A sociopath is spontaneous and thus leaves marks and evidences in their crimes;

Now it’s when we analyse how Chara and Flowey fit in those profiles, starting by Chara. Chara is a psychopath: If we analyze their story enough, we’ll see that their story is indeed based in a frenetic impulse of psychopathy. Like I said above, a psychopath is usually a well-mannered person and gets very well socially. Chara was very well-seen by the Monsters while living in the Underground, so much that they say they “filled the Underground with hope” and therefore had great capacity of interacting with others. However, when we look into the manipulation thing, Chara is an extremely manipulative character, both while living in the Underground and at the end of the Genocide Run. Their attitudes in relation to the player at the end of the Genocide Run testify that: They induce the player to erase the world and is thus manipulating them by doing exactly that. They are intelligent, they know they need you to escape to destroy and kill everyone, so they need you to do their bidding, which is exactly what happens at a potential post-Genocide Pacifist Run. The same way they manipulated Asriel: to take him to the Surface as a SOUL inside him and carry their own dead body so the humans can see and make the mistake that leads them to attack him. Chara is clearly manipulating him by doing that. Chara also does not possess sympathy or empathy for anyone; When Asgore eats the poisoned pie and gets sick, Chara sadistically laughs at what happened and thus does not feel remorse before that. Another example of Chara’s lack of empathy towards anyone is how they didn’t care for how clearly uncomfortable Asriel was with their plan, they literally have to convince him through guilt-tripping and manipulation when he’s CRYING to go along with their plan:

Asriel (fourth True Lab VHS tape): I... I don't like this idea, <Name>. Wh.. what? N-no, I'm not... ... big kids don't cry. Yeah, you're right. No! I'd never doubt you, <Name>. Never! Y... yeah! We'll be strong! We'll free everyone. I'll go get the flowers.

This tape really goes to show how Chara clearly despises weakness, chastising Asriel for being “weak" and only cares about gaining more power, not caring a thing in the world on how other people feel. Remembering that Chara does all of this calculatedly, planning everything step-by-step, the same way a psychopath would do. Now, it is said by Asriel that Chara “hated humanity” and people just assume that this somehow means that they are actually depressed and abused and jumped on Mt. Ebott as an attempt of suicide, right? Well, that’s unfortunately NOT the case. The real reason why Chara “hated humanity and felt very strongly about it” is NEVER stated out loud and Asriel even goes to say that Chara never said why they felt this way. That’s right, Chara has no reason to hate humanity, they do what they do because they want to and because they LIKE hurting and killing. Like I said above, psychopaths are born psychopaths; They just want people to die and suffer by their hands and they leave it as less evident as possible, to the point of using Frisk as a physical vessel for them to kill Monsters and they only reveal their true colors and their plan to erase the timeline at the very end of the Genocide Run. Not to mention the way they fell down Mount Ebott is a bit suspicious to me. The intro of the game shows them tripping on a vine then falling on the hole leading to the Underground so it isn’t really a stretch to say that they’ve been lying to Asriel to gain his sympathy (another form of manipulation). Now on to Flowey. Flowey is a bit more different. Yes, Flowey also has the very same destructive impulses to destroy everything and everyone, but differing from Chara, his attitudes and motives to do that are different. First off, Flowey doesn’t have that much of a good capacity to interact with other monsters, as his explosive temper and his urge to attack everything he comes across turn Flowey VERY distanced from the others. Indeed, Flowey usually resides in an place that’s excluded from the Monster society, the Ruins. Flowey also isn’t very polite, his way of speaking is very different from the others. His signature “Howdy!” is southern slang, the way country people speak, whereas Chara, should I also add, politely greets the player with “Greetings”, a very formal way of saying hello. All of Flowey’s explosive behavior and lack of control towards Frisk, especially at the beginning of the game, shows that he doesn’t calculate his attitudes or his actions and is impulsive, the same way a sociopath acts. Also differing from Chara, Flowey has and had bonds, with Papyrus and possibly many others after he found out about his power to reset, save and load and, of course, with Chara. Flowey constantly feels like he has to do Chara’s bidding and even apologises to them at one point, showing that he is capable of bonding with someone, different from a psychopath. Flowey’s acts of violence are also very clear; he doesn’t do it all in secret like Chara does, he shows it in your face that he is indeed an antagonist. Who else makes crimes leaving marks behind? A sociopath, obviously. And surely, Flowey wasn’t always a sociopath, he became one, he is what Asriel became after being manipulated by Chara, Chara made him a sociopath (if not the boredom he felt after seeing all the Underground has to offer but you get my point). Indeed, Flowey/Asriel only turns evil and sociopathic due to the manipulative influences of Chara, Chara made him this way, Chara was the starting point for Flowey to start having those attitudes of violence in the game. To sum it all up: Chara was born a psychopath, as they have no reason to hate humanity, and Flowey is a sociopath because he was manipulated by Chara as Asriel. He doesn’t do what he does because he wants to, he only wants to satisfy Chara.

Conclusion (Chara=The Player/Character Analysis): Now, it is indeed a bit difficult to explain this line of thinking. Every RPG has in its essence killing and defeating your enemies, getting stronger, winning new equipments, gaining experience to evolve in levels and going to face new challenges. But that’s different in Undertale. This game values every single character it has, from simple enemies to NPCs, killing and defeating is not a necessity. Indeed, the more you kill, the worse your (most precisely Neutral) ending becomes. It really goes to show how being stronger than everyone else doesn’t necessarily make you better than anyone else, and in Undertale, the exact opposite happens, it makes you the worse. It completely goes against the idea that the more you kill, the better you are, without caring about anyone else, without the least bit of remorse, being the very best at every cost even if it means killing everyone around you. Chara is never met in person at all in every other route of Undertale besides the Genocide Run, and that’s because every EXP and every LV you gain gives them power, thus causing them to grow stronger and mentally posses Frisk. Why do you think Chara is the embodiment of the feeling you get every time your statuses increase? Why do you think you’re supposed to name them after yourself as the player (as stated by Toby Fox himself)? That's because completing a Genocide Run would be just like completing an RPG like any other and Chara is that feeling we have inside of us every time we gain more power, when we feel nothing upon seeing people get hurt, upon seeing the news of terrible things happening in the world and feeling nothing at all. They’re that evil voice whispering “kill them, you have the power” when we’re clutching a knife in our hands just about to cause pain and suffering for those who hurt you instead of feeling empathy and learning to forgive. Have you noticed how Chara is the only character in the entire game that we don’t fight? It's because Chara, being the feeling of only wanting more power and feeling no empathy for others at all, can only be defeated by doing good to others, by forgiving, by making friends and not using or manipulating them into doing what only YOU want them to do. Chara only resurrects at the very end of the Genocide Run, when everything and everybody are truly destroyed and only for wanting more power, they tell you that your “human SOUL” and your “Determination" are what brought them back to life, meaning that, upon wanting to become more powerful, you as the player, acquired their traits. HP. ATTACK. GOLD. DEFENCE. EXP. LV. Every time time a number increases, that feeling, that's Chara. With your guidance, Chara has finally resurrected, they could have never done this without you and have finally realised why they’re back to life: power, and that’s exactly what Chara represents. As that old saying says: “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely”. The player needs an equal, a representative in-game to represent their thirst and lust for power, their want to be the best at every cost and to kill everyone in their way if needed. Chara is a separate entity that lives in all of us, our thirst and lust for power that, if one lets it grow, can destroy worlds regardless of one’s choice, because YOU are never in control. Chara takes the game's control away from the player more and more as the Genocide Run progresses and, towards its end, more and more and more Monsters do not recognise Frisk as human anymore. That is because, as you kill, you literally strip yourself of your humanity. Is it really you in control of your actions, or your greed? Are you really the one making the rules, or your selfishness? Is there really anything more than just your ego and your futility that keeps you going? Are you leaving good things to the people around you or are you just an asshole wishing to manipulate everyone and have an easy life? Are you a true true friend or do you manipulate your friends and steal their attention, their empathy and sympathy with lies just so they can all cater to your needs and whims? In other words, you inner Chara? Soulless monster, you have no excuses to say you haven’t been warned, for when there is nothing nor nobody around you, do not complain that you did not know where you were going to.

I am open to discussions and will ignore flames.

#chara #undertale #chara undertale #undertale chara #chara is evil #why chara is evil #discourse #essay #by me #arguments #your argument is invalid

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agirlinjapan · 7 years

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Red Data Girl: My Longest Day of School (Week 2)

Red Data Girl: My Longest Day of School By Noriko Ogiwara A Translation

Miss the last piece? Read it here!

Check out the RDG Translation twitter!

Yay! It’s the July 4th weekend and I’m home for most of the week! Things are going well. I graduate from graduate school in less than a month, my birthday’s in about two weeks, and I’m sitting on some big (good) news that I can’t wait to share. I was hoping to have already been able to share it but I have to wait until it’s official.

RDG’s a little short this week and it ends a bit abruptly. Sorry. I couldn’t find a good stop point. Things are definitely beginning to progress though! We’ve made it to the start of the festival!

Notes on this week’s translation:

Tabi socks have come up a bunch of times in RDG before. The tabi Izumiko and the others are wearing with their kuroko costumes are intended to be worn as shoes, not just socks. As you can see in this picture, there’s a thick sole on them.

I’m honestly a little stumped by Manatsu’s reference to Izumiko’s buns as “China girl” hair. Is it a hairstyle? I googled it and I did get the buns but I got a bunch of other hairstyles too.... The term was written in katakana (Japanese English) so it’s a direct translation and a reference to something. Does anyone know? Edit: Readers have reminded me Chun-Li from Street Fighter and Mei Lin from Cardcaptor Sakura both wear buns like Izumiko’s. The style is at least refered to as “China girl” buns in Street Fighter.

Red Data Girl: My Longest Day of School By Noriko Ogiwara Chapter 1: Groundwork Part 1 (2 of 3)

The morning of the first day—

The kuroko outfits were so easy to put on that it was laughable.

After changing into the costume in one of the lounge’s side rooms with Mayura, Izumiko was so comfortable in it that she wanted to dance. The other student government members who had been dreading the experience of wearing unfamiliar period clothing felt more or less the same as she did. It didn’t take them long to get used to wearing the kuroko.

The black pants that made up the lower portion of the costume were not much different from loose fitting sweatpants. The upper portion consisted of a black shirt held tight with a thin cloth belt. There were also black gloves, black arm gaiters, and a hooded hat with a gauzy piece of black fabric that covered their faces. Once they had put all this on, their costumes were complete. The only other thing left was their footwear which were easy to walk in, stiff-soled tabi socks.

Gazing at her reflection in the side room’s mirror, Izumiko abruptly thought of something.

“Hey, these kuroko costumes make us look like ninjas, don’t they?” she said to Mayura who was standing beside her.

“The ones you see in the movies, sure,” Mayura responded wryly. Her family was descended from real ninjas. “But spying in the dark of night and dressing in black clothing is just what everyone expects ninjas to do. We’re grateful for that stereotype because the truth is completely different.”

“It’s different?”

“Real ninjas wouldn’t have such low level skills in the art of escape. If they were seen in the middle of a bright afternoon, black clothes would make them stand out even more.”

“You’re right… That would make them stand out,” Izumiko repeated, realizing this for the first time.

Mayura continued speaking.

“President Kisaragi chose kuroko as a special privilege for all the students overseeing the festival. The rule of kuroko is even though you notice the people wearing them, you’re supposed to pretend you don’t. While that might be the case, it doesn’t mean lots of people won’t be watching us.”

…I see…

When they returned to the lecture hall, Izumiko immediately saw that Mayura’s words had been true. Every black clad member of the student government stood out in the open space. This was mostly due to the fact that the other student volunteers were still working in their gym uniforms.

Once the stage they were building in the lecture hall was mostly complete, the festival committee students began to change into their Warring States era clothing as well. When the student government members were the only ones left gathered in the room, their all-black outfits made them look a bit like a band of robbers. Glancing around at themselves, a peal of laughter bubbled up from everyone.

Izumiko gazed at Mayura, President Jean Hodoka Kisaragi, and the other girls in the student government. She could understand a little better why the festival committee president had said it was a waste for the student government members to be dressed all in black. The only thing showy about their outfits was the fabric hiding their faces. She began to wish she was wearing a more colorful costume.

On the other hand though, the kuroko costumes were so unusual that they were impressive. Manatsu Souda and Miyuki Sagara looked so good in their outfits that even Izumiko surreptitiously glanced their way. Unfortunately for them, they looked even better in kuroko than they did in their school uniforms.

This didn’t have to do with the fact that Manatsu was the descendent of a family of ninjas and Miyuki was the descendent of ascetic monks. Izumiko knew that things like that weren’t easily ascertained through outward appearances anymore.—Manatsu’s father, as well as Miyuki’s father, were the type of people who did not look anything like what they actually were. All the same, the decision to wear the black outfits somehow seemed reflect Manatsu and Miyuki’s place as their sons.

The girls in the student government unabashedly let them know how very cool they looked. This in itself was normal—the two of them had fan clubs. However, when Izumiko thought about how the boys’ popularity had risen during the festival, her stomach clenched uneasily.

Mayura did say that a lot of couples get together during the festival…

The second year boys, Hoshino and Okouchi had been assigned to work with the specialists who had come in for the festival instead of with the rest of the students. Even so, they too were looking sharp in their kuroko. Overall, the outfit probably looked good on any boy.

Honoka stopped smiling and looked around at the student government.

“We’ve made it to the day of the festival. Today, our role is to think about the two military forces that will be in play tomorrow. I want you to keep an eye on where our two home bases will be. Get an idea of how the two teams will move around during the whole school event. Make sure that anything that could become a problem doesn’t. Also, it’s been clearly stated in the visitor pamphlets that anyone with questions should talk to students in kuroko. So be polite when you’re taking care of people. I’m sure you’re all interested in how your own classes are doing but keep a neutral attitude.”

When everyone nodded, Honoka told them that the president of the festival committee, Hayakawa, was standing by in the school building’s second floor broadcasting room.

“If anything bad happens, he’ll make announcements with information from there. Hayakawa will also be in charge announcing the team breakdown for the all school event. Now, we’ll be having student government meetings here at 11:30, 2, and at the end of the day.”

The student government members took the individual time schedules that Okouchi had put together. Once they were stowed inside their shirts, they left the room.

Izumiko was glad to see that she had escaped first patrol. She wanted to visit Class 1-C’s food stand first.

She knew she had to stay neutral but she couldn’t help but be curious about which class’s attraction would win the popularity vote. As a member of the cooking group, she had put a lot of energy into the stand up until today.

Seeing as Manatsu’s patrol hadn’t begun either, they walked together to their classroom.

Manatsu glanced towards Izumiko and said with a laugh, “I didn’t recognized you for a second without your braids. They’re definitely your trademark.”

Izumiko gave a strained smile.

“People have always said that. They only notice my braids.”

“That’s not what I meant. But what did you do with your hair today?”

Izumiko touched the edge of the fabric covering her head. “It’s still in braids but I started them higher up than usual and wound them into buns,” she explained to Manatsu. “Mayura helped me.”

“Like a China girl?”

“That’s what Mayura said too. She said it looked more Chinese than something from the Warring States era.”

“I want to see the buns! Show me!”

Manatsu looked at her expectantly but Izumiko shook her head.

“No. They don’t match the festival theme. I can’t take the hood off until the end of the day.”

It was embarrassing that she couldn’t stop wearing her braids on a day when everyone was in costume but she had to keep her hair bound. They had to lessen the danger of the goddess appearing, even if it was just by a little. Until she knew for sure that her mother’s recommendation to keep her hair braided was no longer valid at all, she didn’t have the courage to stop.

All the same, it was a huge change for her to not have the two braids brushing against the top of her shoulders. That difference was a decent disguise in itself. As soon as she saw the other students passing by in Warring States era costumes, excitement began to grow inside of her.

Anyone who saw the classroom building would know that its atmosphere was completely different from normal.

The walls and windows were covered in traditional looking posters and signs. Here and there, a Warring States era banner was visible as well. The day’s schedule was posted everywhere and students dressed in military uniforms and traveler’s outfits stood around, holding boards advertising the day’s events. The reception table had been set up to look like a tent in a war encampment.

“This is great! Everyone worked so hard!” Manatsu exclaimed.

“The people who come are going to love it,” Izumiko said excitedly but then her expression clouded and she looked at Manatsu. She had just remembered that many of the people who would be in attendance today were involved with the trouble at the school.

It was obvious that a group of diviners had put together a special barrier on the campus. However, the Souda siblings hadn’t definitively said how they were planning to oppose Takayanagi.

“What’s going to happen today? Manatsu, can you feel the effects of the diviners’ barrier now?”

“I don’t really know what’s going to happen but something will. Probably.”

He didn’t deny that he could feel the barrier but he didn’t look worried either.

“With that said though, it’s better not to think something’s going to happen before it does. Let’s have lots of fun at the school festival while we can. At festivals, the people who have the most fun are the ones who win.”

“…I guess you could say that.”

Miyuki would never have said such an easy going thing. Even Manatsu’s sister, Mayura probably wouldn’t have either. Still, Manatsu’s carefree mood was infectious and Izumiko quickly felt herself relaxing.

Before they even arrived in the classroom, it was clear that Class 1-C was fighting hard to win the popularity vote. Izumiko and Manatsu, who hadn’t helped in the classroom the day before, gave a cheer when they saw the fancy sign outside the door.

The giant, two sided board read, “The winds of change are quickly approaching,” and “Peasant uprising.”

The design and color usage had been created to look like a fishing boat with a large haul. After seeing all the austere, traditionally Japanese colors used around the rest of the festival, anyone who saw this sign would think its art was far too blinding with its use of primary colors.

“It’s amazing,” Manatsu said.

When they walked through the door it was as if they were outside. The room had been decorated with theater props, creating a forest of pine trees and bamboo. During the festival planning time, the class had found scenery and props they could rent in a catalogue. It appeared that they had been able to choose what they wanted from there.

No one had bothered to research historical accuracy while building the “winds of change cotton candy” and “coup d’état yakisoba” stands but the torii depicting the entrance to a shrine in one corner of the classroom was unique. The concept had been to make the room look like a shrine festival. The class had constructed a small shrine in the middle of the room, complete with fox statues that faced each other on either side of the entrance. It was an Inari shrine.

Keep reading!

#rdg #red data girl #rdg 5 #rdg my longest day of school #rdg 5 week 2 #translation

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pkreilly · 5 years

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Sandbagged

Did we fall for the largest sandbagged quarter ever?

Intro

On March 8th I sent out series of tweets, https://twitter.com/PeterKReilly/status/1104520804824428544, musing about the sudden drop off in reported operating 4th quarter 2018 earnings margins, basically out of the blue. This really left me perplexed as to what happened as it was unusual relative to normal developments in corporate earnings. This blog post is a follow up now that we have some more clarity on the trajectory of margins through 1Q 2019 with the intent to lay out the logic and the evidence that yes indeed we were had and that this has distorted the markets view of actual earnings power of publicly traded companies.

The issue

When the dust settled on 4thQ 2018 earnings it became clear that something very unusual happened, out of the blue earnings per share and reported margins broke down.

Bears seized on this as evidence, along with other weakness in international and domestic economic statistics, that we were in a recession NOW. What was unusual was that 4Q earnings didn’t increase from the 3rd quarter as is typical due to revenue seasonality and in fact operating margins dropped precipitously from 3rd quarter, which is a strong precursor to secular bear markets. Markets, in part, reacted to this development of weak guidance and downward earnings revisions and duly sold off hard starting from very stretched valuations in October. The S&P 500 registered a nearly 20% decline in under 3 months.

The theory

Jonathan Robinson, a fellow participant in Twitter finance discussions @Robohogs, and I developed an alternate explanation, that would be far less negative for future equity prices, but to some would seem outlandish and certainly would need to see some strong evidence to confirm. The theory goes like this:

1. The timing of the passage of the Tax Cut and Jobs act of 2017, passed by the house only on December 20th and going into effect January 1, 2018 created a very unusual set of incentives for corporations and their leadership and finance professionals that COULD lead to a desire to understate reported earnings in the 4th quarter of 2018. For details on the timing of passage click the link.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Cuts_and_Jobs_Act_of_2017

2. By the time the tax cut was enacted companies had by then long locked down their financial plans, without any tax benefit as you can’t count on speculation as to its passage in financial plans and guidance, had them approved by their boards and had them built into incentive comp (bonus and other equity comp programs) plans for the companies executives. The tax cut represented a massive windfall to these programs. Note that Wall Street sell side analysts massively missed the effect of the tax act in their 2018 estimates as companies did not build it into their guidance.

3. Long Term comp programs (LTC), used by companies to reward executives for financial performance among other items, typically have protections in their structure to cap payouts so that management does not benefit from windfalls outside the control of management. The tax cuts were the mother of all windfalls and management stood to benefit from this, up to a point.

4. The cap to LTC programs upside created the incentive for companies to report conservatively in the 4thQ as many bonus and LTC programs would have already capped out at the maximum payout and management would not benefit from the addition earnings in 2018. The incentive would be to carry earnings over into 2019 to make 2019 targets, which will have been driven by the very good 2018 results to higher earnings levels, more achievable. This would also mean that the windfall from the Tax law changes could be more fully captured in incentive comp over a 2 year period.

5. Accounting standards allow for a fair amount of judgment to be applied that can affect reported earnings IN THE SHORT RUN. Obviously, what that is varies industry by industry, but would include things like revenue recognition, material accounting estimates, including expenses, contract signing timing, etc, but every company and its accountants have latitude that can materially affect reported earnings quarter to quarter. For example, in the insurance industry much of the current quarter earnings is an estimate due to the timing of actually paying claims vs when the exposure in incurred. The longer the tail of the liability the more latitude and leverage of the estimate.

6. This theory does not require any coordination amongst companies just a rational reaction to perverse and unusual incentives.

7. The crux of the theory is companies, acting individually and in reaction to incentives, collectively sandbagged 4th quarter earnings to maximize the 2 year payout from LTC programs. To not have done so would to have left money on the table for management.

Impact on analysts estimates

This type of sandbagging would play havoc with sell side wall street analysts earnings estimates for 2019. The analysts seeing the dramatic drop in margins would build that into estimates moving forward. The problem is that companies would NOT tank their 2019 estimates which then would require higher revenue estimates to be combined with lower margins to get 2019 to hang together. Analysts having seen the 4th Q results would have trimmed the FY year estimates in all likelihood AND the upcoming quarter would have taken the brunt of those cuts. This would lead to the likelihood that as 2019 results unfold that revenue estimates would not be beaten, at least by as much as normal, but margins would outperform as conservatism in 4Q2018 estimates unfolded into 2019 actual results.

Evidence

The evidence to support this theory could come from a number of angles. For example, if

1. 4Q’18 operating cash flows exceeded operating earnings by an unusual amount it would support the theory and commensurately of 2019 cash flows underperform reported earnings.

2. If NIPA corporate profit margins did NOT see the same decline in margins that would be support that reported earnings were sandbagged. The BEA does not rely just on reported earnings but uses tax filings and other data sources, that rely on a different set of accounting standards less subject to manipulation and better represent the actual economic earnings power of corporations. In addition the NIPA data is much broader encompassing but publicly traded and privately held corporations of all sizes. This is why I use this data in my investing models.

3. Finally if reported margins in 1Q’19 bounced right back to prior levels it would strongly imply that the 4thq was an anomaly of some sort and this theory could provide a reasonable explanation

So what do we know? We know that NIPA margins did NOT show the same decline in corporate profits

We now also know that reported 1Q earnings have indeed miraculously recovered and that revenue growth has not been robust relative to estimates. Official S&P data, reflecting a blend of reported and estimated margins, already indicates that operating margins (as depicted above), have rebounded to above 11%. That figure will settle in higher, possibly approaching levels seen in the 1st 3 quarters of 2018. Here is the link to the current Dow Jones S&P 500 data. https://us.spindices.com/documents/additional-material/sp-500-eps-est.xlsx

This evidence strongly supports the thesis that the 4thQ’18 was an anomaly, for what ever reason, and I put forth that this theory is a reasonable and plausible explanation. Unfortunately to many, and I concur, this is a theory that can never really be proven as you would have need to be inside the close processes of all the companies to really know what was happening and how earnings were actually printed.

It is also interesting to note that this process of how earnings get booked is exactly why I don’t use reported earnings in my Longer Term secular trend model. Others have noted that reported profit margins LAG NIPA profit margins. https://seekingalpha.com/article/4249006-eyes-nipa-profit-margins. The mechanics of that are that when the business cycle turns most companies don’t know it’s a broad turn. They attempt to continue to report earnings that are at least close to expectations and in the process they empty out latent conservatism in balance sheet estimates. They can do this for a few quarter and when it becomes plainly obvious that what they are experiencing is a broad end to the business cycle they are forced to report more accurate numbers culminating, usually at the bottom, in a “kitchen sink quarter” where all bad news is recognized and a much more conservative balance sheet is established and the cycle continues.

Looking forward

The way this game works is that companies never let good news out into their earnings in one big chunk if they can help it. In all likelihood there will be a steady tail wind to earnings through the year as the conservatism built into balance sheets in 4q’18 gets bled out into the P&L in 2019. Most notably once we get to 4Q 2019 the Year over year comps are going to benefit substantially from 2018 sandbagging and possibly lead to a smaller repeat where companies that capped out incentive comp plans take a conservative approach to earnings estimates. Mind you this would be far less companies, in all likelihood far less noticeable.

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udaas93 · 8 years

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Please stop with the abuse

Stop this harassment, intolerance, and insults please.

Stop this vile groupthink mentality and bullying/slander over something harmless that goes on in EVERY single fandom. This type of ‘banning’ and bullying over rps in the Shadowhunters fandom would NOT be accepted within other fandoms. RPS is popular and has their free space on tumblr in every single fandom where a person can comment on chemistry, etc with every other pairing. The SH fandom wouldn’t want people to tweet so much about Shumdario or etc but people are abused and attacked so much on tumblr with actual violence/threats with people continuing to make up drama. Shumdario shipping should have had a safe zone on tumblr so people will feel less inclined to express themselves about it on twitter or instagram so the cast won’t see it. Grow up.

Notice the double standard where most Domberto shippers can make their fan blogs, post fan fiction on the Domberto tag, and have their fun on tumblr to an extent where this is not allowed for Shumdario. Obviously, people feel a certain threat to Matthew/Harry and it is so upsetting to witness this hypocrisy from this fandom. Even had somebody tell me that Matt wonders why Domberto is such a thing in this fandom but Shumdario isn’t. Celebs know what comes with the territory and have certain expectations. None of this garbage/harassment against rps would be tolerated in most other fandoms. Most of other fandoms don’t have this kind of hyper-policing when it comes to ships of any kind. Tumblr is supposed to be the safe space for that. The anti’s are making it worse. Nobody can make a single post about Matthew/Harry’s dynamic without adding ugly insults towards Shumdario shipping or bizarre warnings/threats. Matthew and Harry care about one another just like Dom/Alberto and many cast mates do. Dom and Alberto have both had amused reactions to the Domberto shipping. They are not homophobic or insecure about their sexuality/relationships. They would not let something basic like people shipping them ruin their friendship. Stop imposing your closedmindedness onto them and then harassing Shumdarios over it. Why are you so scared? These anti’s are making a lot of exaggerations/projections over persecution of other shippers in other fandoms.

Shumdarios are low key and do not break the 4th wall. Stop projecting your phobia, insecurities, and ugly immaturity on to the cast and other fans please. Shumdario should have been a source of enjoyment for this fandom but instead we have this vile stigma and endless bullying over it. Let people enjoy and perceive their dynamic the way they want to. Having the safe space on tumblr would actually decrease the amount of twitter/instagram posts about it. This is playing out the opposite way that it is supposed to. If the concern is breaking the 4th wall, then let Shumdario make their posts in peace on the Shumdario tag on tumblr so it won’t extend to other social media so it can be low key/less visible to the cast. Shipping is an inherent feeling, you can’t stop people from shipping or loving something.

People generally don’t act like it is ‘wrong’ or ‘crazy’ or ‘disgusting’ to ship two celebrities together for practically everything else. Like I said, rps goes on in every fandom. It is male/male pairings that tend to get this vile reaction only and I see this mainly only applied to Shumdario. This immaturity, intolerance, and misguided hyper-policing in this fandom sickens me.

I can’t tell you how many people secretly tell me in private that they agree with me but are afraid to reblog my posts about it because they are scared of big blogs attacking them or the SH fandom shunning them. I can’t tell you how many people tell me in private, that they low-key ship Shumdario but are hiding it due to bullying/the stigma from this fandom. People are even afraid of simply making gif-sets of moments between Harry and Matthew because inevitably people add their hateful remarks about Shumdario. This is so terrible. Not to mention, you are giving the impression to Matthew/Harry that anything homoerotic ( whether it be fantasy or reality) would not be tolerated for them. We used to get more interaction with them and Harry actually thinks people are against Shumdario or something. The anti’s are making it worse with this policing, abuse, and constant posts from big blogs where they LIE about drama that they ( the antis) actually started.

Shumdario shipping ( even if it is casual to the most minor degree gets the most nastiest reaction whether it be on tumblr or even youtube fan videos). The people in their twenties and thirties who have had experiences in so many fandoms are confounded by this selective sick stupidity from the SH fandom. I wish people would stop their vendetta against Shumdario and Malec as well.

All of this ugliness is triggering and awful. If you only knew…..

Then it is starting to extend to Malec as well where fans are so paranoid/immature that they demand that fans not ask Matthew or Harry questions about Malec in those facebook, twitter chats, and livestreams. They ignore the fact that Harry and especially Matthew love talking about Malec.

Good grief, stop referring to rps as “ fandom grossness” especially since Shumdario shipping barely exists due to this bullying/slanderous movement in the first place. People are respectful and it is very low key yet people are still paranoid, immature to make hate posts. Stop inserting your paranoia/bizarre insecurities regarding Shumdario onto Shumdario shippers or onto Harry or Matt.

Harry and Matt can’t interact without people fabricating drama and imposing their intolerant views. When they interact, people harass others with their anti-Shumdario shipping stance by creating a negative hysteria. If they don’t interact, people harass and blame the Shumdario shippers by making up drama. Real friends would not let shipping of any kind bother them or affect their dynamic. It is beyond insanity at this point. Apparently, Harry and Matt hanging out on New Years Eve is grounds for people to start up the abuse, ignorance, and threats regarding Shumdario shipping again.

I posted various disclaimers about Shumdario shipping. Most people do NOT break the 4th wall and stay in their lane but the anti’s are refusing to respect boundaries. This is literally the only fandom where I have witnessed this ignorant mentality dominate where people keep enabling this bullying. Instead of being happy about Shumdario bonding and hanging out, people are using this as a platform to start up the same ugliness again and again. ENOUGH!!!

Stop persecuting people and stop it with these kind of posts. Tumblr was supposed to be safe space for any kind of shipping especially RPS. Keeping it on tumblr and letting people have that safe space decreases the overlap of it into twitter or other sites so the cast won’t see it. Yet the bullying and restrictive attitude/hostility is so high on tumblr, we get the opposite happening. It is the anti’s who keep inciting negativity and ugliness.

There is a double standard regarding Shumdario and rps in any other fandom. Double standard between Shumdario versus Domberto or Sherdario, the people who ship Kat with Dom, Alberto,and Emeraude, and etc. It is because people are so threatened regarding Harry and Matthew.

I posted many posts on the Shumdario tag regarding this. Many people have been attacked, abused, and slandered unfairly over this. Stop making Shumdario a constant source of negativity for the cast and for other fans. Stop the bullying and vile generalizations. Stop this bizarre panic about Shumdario and shipping.

For the record, Harry and Matthew did their promo separately at NYCC 2016 because they paired off the downworlders separately ( Harry, Isaiah, and Alberto), while the Shadowhunters ( Emeraude, Dom, Matt, and Kat) were off doing separate interviews. Matt and Harry will do separate interviews from time to time especially if they do want to keep intrigue and suspense regarding Malec by not wanting to give too much away. They are not obligated to flaunt their bromance constantly in order to appease the people who have this bizarre paranoia with them. Either way, Shumdario shippers get attacked regardless of how much they interact. Either way, I see the antis’ keep projecting claims of homophobia or discomfort onto Harry regardless of him not showing any. Celebs know that people ship them with other celebrities including their friends and co-workers. Heck, I have seen celebrities be shipped with people they have not met or colleagues they are clearly are not even close to at all. What people ship has no direct bearing on their real life behavior. A person secure in their sexuality and real life relationship would not be flipping out on fans over shipping for pete’s sake. Grow up.

Stop making this is about harassing Shumdario shippers. Fans ship Domberto, Sherdario, and etc with pleasure and I have seen rps scattered across social media for all of the castmembers yet it is only Shumdario that gets this extremist reaction from people projecting their paranoias. It is also an ignorant projection and narrative to claim that rps was responsible for two cast mates not interacting as much as you want outside of work. Harry and Matthew are doing a con in Barcelona this Spring, just the two of them. Harry and Matthew have had nothing but flattered or amused reactions when they hear about Shumdario. They are not immature like some people in this fandom and selectively trying to erase or be abusive towards rps is not acceptable.

Stop projecting this immaturity, intolerance, and insecurities onto the cast and harassing other fans over it. In the majority of other fandoms, people get to have their safe space. Tumblr is supposed to be the secure spot for it in order to prevent people from breaking the 4th wall on social media.

#Shumdario #Hatthew

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