#usually i still follow people if we share no interests unless their interests start to annoy me lol

[guinevereslancelot]

4071?! How do you do it?! 👀 I follow 562 blogs and I'm REALLY hesitant to follow more!

idk i just follow blogs that post content i like and i've been here for like ten years 😂 i actually hit follow limit a while back and had to go unfollow a bunch of inactive blogs. i do unfollow people from time to time i swear but i follow so many people it doesn't make a noticeable difference in the amount of content on my dash lol

[judesmoonbeauty]

Ghost House Report: A Requiem For You - Jude Jazza Epilogue

Time for a healing ending. Also, I will share a link to one of my favorite artist's who rendered a scene from the epilogue at the very bottom. There are no CW's, therefore, no cut will be included.

Fan translation only. Not 100% accurate. Please expect grammatical errors. Cybird owns everything. Feel free to re-blog, but please do not post my translations elsewhere. If you'd like to be added to my translations tag list, please comment below.Thank you, for you support! ☾.

When I visited the lounge, Jude was there alone.

Jude had been working, when he looked up from the documents he had spread out on the desk, and gazed at me.

(……Just as Victor said. His complexion looked worse than usual.)

Kate: Good evening, Jude.

Jude: …...It's time for the princess to sleep.

Kate: There are times when I feel like I can't sleep. Jude, would you like some tea?

Jude glanced at the tea set I had brought and lowered his eyes.

Jude: ……No need.

Kate: That’s a problem. Jude, if I drink your portion, then my stomach would get bloated.

Jude: Dunno. Let it get bloated.**

I expected it to be flatly rejected. I ignored Jude's reply and prepared tea for the two of us.

Kate: This tea is said to have a sleepiness effect. Here you are.

Jude: ……

Kate: Jude, if you don’t drink it, I'll have to throw it away.

Jude: ……Tch.

As expected, Jude clicked his tongue and accepted the teacup, as if he couldn't tell me to throw it away.

Following Jude, I took a sip from my teacup.

However……

Kate: It’s bitter!

What spread in my mouth was an eye-opening bitterness.

Jude: ……Oi, quit screwin’ around. It’s a commotion rather than a g’night’s sleep.

Kate: I-I’m sorry. It wasn’t on purpose……Was the steep time too long……?

Kate: Let me get my revenge, this is next!

I took out a picture book that I had prepared.

Jude: Oi, no way……

Kate: Once Upon A Time, there was a placed called……

Jude: ……Wait.

Jude confinscates the picture book that I was trying to read aloud.

Jude: Watcha been doin’ all this time?

Kate: I was worried when I heard that you haven’t been sleeping Jude, so I thought I’d do something to help you sleep……

Jude: Ya expect me to fall asleep after ya give me a cup of tea and read me a story?

Kate: You never know unless you try.

Kate: Jude, I don’t know how you usually sleep.

Jude: ……Generally, it’s a case of takin’ care of others.

Jude’s fingertips trace around my eyes.

Jude: .……Ya look horrible.

(I was trying to hide it, but……he found out that I’ve got dark circles.)

Feeling awkward, I averted my gaze and saw the documents that Jude had spread out.

It contained information about the people who had been bought by the owner of the haunted mansion.

Kate: Are you perhaps, ……trying to find the trafficking route to the haunted manision?

Jude: Among the kids sold to the haunted mansion, there are a few whose endin’s ain’t clear.

Jude: Was over 50 years ago, but doesn’t hurt to look into it.

Kate: In this book, there’s something……

I opened the book that Jude had put down, and picked up the bookmark stuck inside it.

The bookmark is made of pressed clover flowers and looks too pretty for Jude to use.

Kate: These are the pressed flowers that Anne made, right?

Jude: It’s a useful marker, so I’m just usin’ it.

(Although I said I wouldn’t forget, Jude has no intention of forgetting either.)

It’s painful when I think about Anne, and I can’t sleep. Still, I don’t want to forget this incident.

I was a little happy that I could share those feelings with Jude.

Kate: Jude, let me help you too!

Jude: ……Ya here to make me sleep, aintcha?

Kate: That’s true, but when I saw the documents, I got interested.

Kate: When you can’t sleep, you can’t sleep no matter what you do, and if that’s the case, it’s better to make the most of your time!

Kate: Now Jude, where do I start?

Jude: ……Heh. You’re makin’ it harder to sleep.

We spent the rest of the night scrutinizing the documents.

The information was finally compiled as the sun rose.

Kate: Finished…..Three shady organizations that seem to be involved in the human-trafficking have come to light.

Kate: All that remains…. is to follow the history of the group’s activities and then……

Jude: ……Kate?

Even though I was in the middle of talking to Jude, I was attacked by severe drowsiness.

(It’d be no good…… to fall asleep in a place like this……)

As my eyelids became heavy, my body tilted to the side……

I ended up leaning on Jude next to me.

(I’m sure Jude will shake me off and wake me up……)

(……Then, I’ll apologize and go to sleep in my room.)

That’s what I thought, but Jude never woke me up. On the contrary......

I opened my eyes slightly as I felt the weight of something leaning on me.

(Huh, Jude is leaning on me to sleep……?!)

I rested my head on Jude’s should and he rested his head on mine, supporting each other as we slept.

Even though we don’t understand each other, we feel the same pain and pursue this case with the same anger……

……Right now, it’s strange that we’re sleeping while sharing the same warmth.

(……But, maybe I’m the strangest one to feel happy about that.)

**In this line, Jude uses the kansai-ben dialect to say: 知らんわ (shiranwan), which means, (I don't know/How should I know.) However, 勝手にちゃぷちゃぷさせとけ(katte ni cha puchapusasetoke), was a beast. From what I can tell, both he and Kate (in the line beforehand), seem to be using a form of onomatopoeia when talking about her stomach bloating. I won't go into the remaining details as to why I chose to translate it this way, but I did.

Link to an epilogue scene as rendered by the OP creator is here. And it just made my heart melt.

This was the sweetest epilogue ever!

[Master Lists] Tag List: @theimaginativelyreticent @sapphire-323 Dividers: @/brokenbard

[piningpebbles]

the dream smp journey: attempting to make the lore of the dream smp more accessible.

so back when i first wanted to get into the dream smp i had absolutely no idea where to start. i asked some people and they told me pretty much “look up dream smp + [insert youtuber name] and start there” and so i did, but i quickly came to realize how much i was missing from the story by not seeing all the different points of view.

so i decided to make my own playlist.

it was just for myself at first, but as i got more obsessed with the story, i also gave the link to some friends of mine so they could have the full experience, and they loved it. so i kept updating it.

my goal was to try and make a capsule of the entirety of the lore on the dream smp across almost every single POV, because while i do appreciate those who make recap videos, they always miss something and it’s usually with peoples’ POV who aren’t considered to be “main characters” which sucks because one of my favorite things about the dream smp was how everyone was their own main character with their own individual storyline you could get invested in.

i’ve seen every single video in the playlist, and did my absolute best to discern what should be included and what didn’t need to be. 

for instance, while i personally enjoyed streams where they’d just goof off, this is a lore-centric playist so i didn’t include all of them unless one of the jokes or such gets mentioned/becomes important later on. or if there is a lore event happening but two people have almost identical streams to one another then i decided between the two of them which one to keep. or if the cc themself made an edited version of their experience, i would decide whether to go with that or keep the original vod

it’s far from perfect. i tried to keep up with it as long as i could I STILL HAVE VIDEOS IN MY WATCH LATER THAT I PLANNED TO ADD but simply put while the dream smp storyline got longer and longer it became harder to keep up with. i watched pretty much all the streams when they happened but failed to update the playlist accordingly so right now it has almost everything up until ”Hitting on 16.”

i always wanted to finish it before i posted it, but i’ve been seeing people talk about how they miss the experience of watching the dream smp and while i obviously can’t provide the full interactive experience that the dream smp offered as it came out, i knew i couldn’t just keep this in my back pocket and thought i could at least offer a good chunk of the experience for you guys to still be able to keep!

here’s the playlist, spanning over 300 videos.

there’s also a semi-canon playlist (not nearly as thorough) for events that get mentioned by the cc’s a lot or are just cool to have and i wanted to include them somewhere so here it is also!!

to go along with it i also made a masterpost (can you tell i love making lists) which is what every single video on the playlist is supposed to be (and was last i checked, but videos get taken down every so often so there might be a couple missing here and there).

i hope to update this one day and have it fully finished, but with my schedule (full-time college student babyyyy) and simply the hundreds of hours of content i’d need to sift through it just seems impossible (and frankly just really intimidating) to challenge alone right now. so i also wanted to give this to the community to maybe be able to do what i couldn’t!

my hope with this is that if someone in a year or two (or whenever really) is interested in the dream smp they won’t have to sit through recap videos and instead can watch the real thing in a single playlist connected to the doc. my dream is for the masterpost and the playlist to go hand-in-hand, being like a guide people can follow that would also link to other moments and lore that is saved but just not avaliable on youtube, so we don’t have all these moments just lost to time.

i want to make this collaborative, i’m hoping this will maybe spark others to share what videos/moments they have saved and stored with each other for the dream smp and maybe together we could complete this thing somehow!! make the playlist and masterpost i dreamed of (the one right now is scuffed, but at least it’s something). the dream smp is one of my absolute favorite pieces of media out there and i want to share this with people but (as you can probably tell) i have no idea what i’m doing!! any step to help make the story more readily accessible is a good one, though!

i know i’ve missed things but i’ve done my best. and while not the perfectly polished thing i hoped it would be when i sent it out to the world maybe it could be a good building block for the community to use. so please share this!! reblog it!! all that jazz!! i want this to be for everyone!!

anyways, this is a long post. but the whole reason i got into the dream smp in the first place was because of the awesome fan content i saw and this crazy and creative community and i want to be able to give back, if i can.

[jokeringcutio]

Open for Halloween Prompts & Updates

Hiya all,

I'm open for Reader insert prompts that are Halloween-themed or set during Halloween. If you want to be inspired, these are my fills from last year. They can be SFW or NSFW. I personally would love to write a few more consensual or more romantic kind of Halloween fics.

I'll accept prompts for fandoms such as: Stranger Things, One Piece, Harry Potter, Blake's 7, Joker (All versions), Peaky Blinders, Supernatural, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Wednesday/Addams Family, Xena Warrior Princess, The Lord of the Rings & Hobbit, Good Omens, Crimson Peak, Dead Boy Detectives, Beetlejuice, Enola Holmes & All Sherlock fandoms, Shakespeare's characters, Many European Movies & of course TRHPS, Five Nights At Freddy's & most Slasher Movies, & Many more so check out my interests or just take plunge and see if I will write your request.

Will I fill all prompts?

Unfortunately, unless I receive just one or two, I probably won't be able to fill them all. I am currently recovering from surgery (Yay, this is a good thing, means we're going to come back babesss) , but still have long-covid weighing me down. So although I'm poking my nose into Tumblr again, I still have limited energy and might have to make choices. But I'll try and fill as many as I can.

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN????

Sorry, I was ill and it became so bad, I couldn't write anymore. Luckily, I've had surgery and got rid of the nasty things so things are looking up. I need a month or two to recover from the surgery. I'll still have my long covid stuff that is weighing me down, but at least I'll be able to write again and slowly return to the living.

WHERE"S THE JOKER FIC????* *Or any other fic I started but haven't finished yet. As said above, I was unable to write and update. The Joker fic: The Man Who Claimed to be Yours is finished, but as a rewritten version that was meant to be an ebook. Because of my health, I've been looking into other ways to make a living and since writing was the only thing I could do (until a few months ago), I decided to explore my options there. I have been working on original tales that I hope to publish in the near future. I WANNA HELP YOU OUT AND COMMISSION Thank you to everyone who kindly donated to my Kofi in the past, or asked me for one of my ebooks or for a commission. I am planning on posting a wishlist in the near future with financial goals I wish to achieve, and setting up a system where I will write a tale for people who donated as a thank you :) I will, however, keep filling prompts when I can, so don't worry about that. I do this for fun and I love sharing with you.

I DON"T KNOW WHAT TO REQUEST BUT I WANT TO READ

Yay, that is wonderful. You can always follow my account. I usually place warnings and add a 'read more' so the post won't show the entire text. If it's not your cup of tea, you should be fine and able to ignore it and wait for something that is more to your taste. And you can always send in a prompt at a later date, when you come up with something. Or just poke me via chat and we can try and think of something together :)

[dr-futbol-blog]

Sanctuary, Pt. 10

McKay and Weir are with Beckett in the lab where he explains to them how very strange it is that Chaya is physically in such perfect health, impossibly so.

But first, look at McKay's face when Beckett mentions cancer:

His mother definitely died of cancer.

McKay is also not happy that, according to Beckett, she's perfect:

Because how do you compete with perfect? How do you compete with perfect when you genuinely believe that you're the most unlovable person in two galaxies? His only hope was demonstrating that she was somehow even worse.

His reaction to the mention of STDs is also curious:

There are two things I know for certain. The mention of sexually transmitted diseases made him think about sex, as is only natural. And there is only one aspect about her sex life that might even remotely interest him. Like, it's good that she doesn't have STDs, all things considered. He wouldn't want the Major catching anything. Also, as someone that had reached his sexual maturity during the 1980s, being reminded of STDs might have given him pause regardless of orientation but especially so if it was during the crisis years that he discovered his interest in guys.

But what ever the reason, it did make him think about them having sex and that thought is painful to him. Why would he care even a little bit unless it was something he wanted for himself? He's not envious that he has found someone, that they could have a connection. He didn't care about Beckett and Perna getting close. It's not general, it's specific to Sheppard.

But as much as he's suppressing that completely normal and heterosexual thought, he's still right on the money about her:

McKay: But she is human? Beckett: Oh, without a doubt. Weir: So how is that possible?

He doubts that she is human. Then Beckett makes a point that is significant toward the resolution of the episode later:

McKay: You make it sound like some sort of a— Beckett: Paradise? Aye, because it is. Weir: And that's a problem because? Beckett: Because human life, quite simply, Dr. Weir, is more fragile than that. I don't care what galaxy we're in. It's unnatural.

Human life is beautiful because it is fragile and transitory. Their shared humanity was what Sheppard had been using to get her to see things their way. But she is not human. She's a whole different species.

It seems like McKay and Weir are starting to get worried for Sheppard. And the music tells the audience they should be worried for him, as well.

If we witnessed Sheppard starting to lead Chaya on at Proculus, she now appears to be leading him on quite expertly. She is basically allowing him to walk her around her old home while using him to learn everything they know about the Ancients and their war with the wraith. He even explicitly makes reference to now (unlike previously) being truthful with her: "I'd be lying if I said we controlled it all".

From the look on her face as he gets Sheppard talking about the shield, she was there during the siege. There are painful things in her past, as well. In this, too, they are alike.

Something odd happens when they enter the control room. First, Sheppard tells her to call him John. Tells her he would prefer it. Not please, call me John. I would be happy if you called me John. He says "I would prefer it" as though he's saying that he would prefer that she not call him Major. Like he insists but not in the usual coquettish way.

I discussed the reasons why McKay calls Sheppard Major and continues doing it for a very long time in connection with The Defiant One (S01E12) but I will make a note of it here that twice, when Sheppard has told people to call him John, he has ended up kissing them (cf. Conversion, S02E08). And that in the first episode in which McKay finally calls him John, it follows from Sheppard himself referring to making out as a way to stop McKay from talking. So I'm just saying. There's a pattern.

But it's not altogether certain that this is what Sheppard actually wants here, her calling him John. That he's actually inviting her for closer acquaintance by the gesture. Because it's followed by this exchange:

Chaya: John… how did you make enemies of the Wraith? Sheppard: That was my fault. Chaya: Yours? Sheppard: I basically woke them up trying to rescue some people they'd captured. They didn't take too kindly to that.

He looks real fucking odd when he's telling her all this. We saw previously that he let Teyla do the explanation related to the wraith while he seemed all kinds of uneasy back on Proculus. This is a thing that is not easy for him. He is carrying such guilt for letting this happen, putting "untold thousands, maybe millions" of people's lives in danger, that it's crushing him at the best of times. And here, he's discussing it breezily, like it's no big deal. He makes odd faces like he can't believe this shit is actually coming out of his mouth, especially in this nonchalant tone.

So, placing a hand over the heart can signify sincerity, to be sure. But he's not being sincere here, he's basically being mind-controlled. Having the hand over his heart can also be a way of subconsciously protecting it from her. It's possible that he tells her to call him John because he doesn't want her calling him Major.

Not because it's so formal and keeps them at a distance. But because she is invading his privacy, his innermost thoughts and beliefs, in a way that leaves him exposed and there are things he doesn't want to share with her. Things that he has only started to want to share with someone else that isn't her. He would rather she call him something else. In addition to being a common designation for a trick for the turning, John is actually also the most impersonal of all of the things you can call him. Because it's not him telling her these things. He would never.

The one time we see him turn his body toward her while walking, which he frequently does with McKay, he covers his heart. He sets up a barrier between them. Even here, as they come to a stop, his head indicates that he would rather not be facing her.

She continues prodding:

Chaya: But you saved your people? Sheppard: Most of them.

Again, he says this casually. Like it's not a big deal. The thing that he tells Col. Everett not a night goes by that he doesn't think about it, he just brushes over it. This is not John Sheppard. This is not Sheppard acting casual, not Sheppard pretending everything is fine, not Sheppard putting on a charming persona to game someone. He's clearly not driving this baby. He's not in control.

It's not that he trusts her so much for no reason. It's not because they have some special connection that makes him want to open himself up for her. The faces he keeps making after each one of these comments tells us that he does not want to be saying these things. Even he doesn't know why he's saying these things.

Orlin told Carter that reading someone's mind was an invasion of privacy. This is technically not that. But she's far from innocent. Maybe the Others imprisoned her for a reason. We're asked to sympathize with her due to her loneliness but she is a convict, a prisoner on her planet. Perhaps she was jailed for a reason.

Sheppard leads her through the control room, showing her each and every one of their systems. Note that he doesn't introduce them by saying something like "And these are..." or "And here you can see..." He just lists them out for her.

Sheppard: Main control console, environmental support systems, communications. And this…this is… Grodin: Sorry, Major. We haven't the faintest idea what it—

We are again shown that McKay was right. Earlier on, they had this exchange:

McKay: Maybe I should tag along, in case you have any questions—Sheppard: I think I've got it handled, Rodney. McKay: There are a lot of systems you know absolutely— Sheppard: Got it covered.

He predicted that Sheppard would come across systems he knows nothing about and there would be questions related to them. But the thing is, Sheppard had never intended for this to happen. He dismissed McKay because he was never going to show her any systems, let alone their most central, essential systems. He is the head of security of this operation, he is not stupid but a brilliant tactician and a strategic thinker. She's not the chief inspector of Atlantis, he has no reason to want to show her these things.

She initializes a new piece of Ancient technology only recently discovered. She plays innocent but clearly does it on purpose. But at the same time, we are shown again that her touch has a tangible effect on things. Her touch basically has magical qualities. Her touch made the machine come alive, made it brighter. Her effect on people is something similar.

Grodin sure seems to clock something about their interaction as odd:

Sheppard seems excited about the possibility that she too possesses the ATA gene, and this seems like the first genuine reaction from him ever since she touched him. He had been emphasizing their similarity in an attempt to use her sympathy to get their help, so he may have seen this is as something that might work in their favour.

He seems entirely himself as he tells her: "The Atlantians were good at lots of things, but writing instruction manuals wasn't one of them." He seems happy, he almost smiles, glancing at Grodin fiddling with the machine twice as he does. One might venture a guess that he has watched someone figure out how Ancient technology works up real close more than a little, and might even be quoting said person verbatim here (as a matter of fact, his exact words in Hide and Seek (S01E03) were "Oh, yeah, there were some explicit instructions, which I chose to completely ignore"). He's mostly looking at Grodin while he's telling her this so we can assume that he's thinking about something or someone else. His mind is not on her while he talks about the instruction manuals.

But this is a short respite. The weirdness continues:

Sheppard: We should probably wrap this tour up. I know Dr. Weir is anxious to talk to you. Chaya: Will I see you afterwards? Sheppard: And during!

He almost stutters when he tells her that Dr. Weir is anxious to talk to her. Clearly, she's not the only one that's anxious. But why would he be anxious about that?

Is he expecting Weir to notice that something is wrong? Hoping that she would? Trying to protect someone that might be there?

Whether or not he (or McKay) was supposed to be at this meeting of Weir with Chaya, whether he had been invited or not, Sheppard is making sure that he is going to be there. Again, this might be her influence--she does not want him to leave her alone, so he's forced to tag along. Or, again, he could be inserting himself into the meeting in order to protect the others, whether consciously or subconsciously. But it certainly doesn't seem like he's going to the meeting with her because he wants to be with her so much.

He is clearly starting to internally freak out about what ever this is that's going on. His face here, at the very end:

He gives her another one of his fake smiles. And then, where she doesn't see, he draws in a breath through his teeth. Compare his expression with McKay's at the beginning of this entry, where he's thinking about cancer.

John Sheppard is not alright.

Continued in Pt. 11

[zorosdimples]

I definitely get your point but the toxicity in fandom spaces really does make it difficult to enjoy it now especially on here. I’ve seen so much discourse in the last 24 hours in the jjk fandom and I know you say you’re trying to curate a safe space or positive space without someone looking through the tags to find new content to reblog so others can reblog in your circles it’s almost impossible to keep that ideal going? Because how would new non-toxic people ever get their work seen if it isn’t found through main tags? And it sounds like you don’t bother looking for or reading new writers work either if you said there’s no point with tags

i will answer this even though you ended it on—what sounds to me like—a passive-aggressive note. maybe you didn’t intend for it to come across that way, but it did.

i would like to start by saying that i am not a timeworn, well-established blog; i’ve been here since july 2023, which is about 10 and a half months at this point, and never shared fanfic or actively participated in the animanga community until then. a lot of people that i’ve met have been on tumblr for years. so relatively speaking, i’m a “new writer” in fandom.

i’m not going to talk about discourse or the abuse of the tagging system because i think this is an issue on any and every social media platform. unless there are mods who go through and ensure that all posts are relevant to the tags they’re under, there will always be irrelevant content in certain tags; many people are more interested in their work being seen than in abiding by any sort of organizational standards.

that said, tumblr has a unique issue. sometimes, tagging simply doesn’t work on here. it has happened to myself and countless others on multiple occasions: you tag your post currently and it doesn’t show up in the tags. it can be related to images/banners/dividers or words you use in the tags (i.e. using the word “horny” or putting “tw choking”). but other times nothing is “wrong” but your post still won’t show up! and there’s nothing to do about it except to 1. delete the post and wait it out or 2. keep the post up and let it not show up in the tags.

of course it would be nice if the tags worked and if people would keep relevant posts under the correct tags, but that’s a not realistic option currently, so there are other ways to go about sharing work. also i would like to say that while the tags aren’t a complete loss, they aren’t a reliable way to find new work. i never said there was “no point with the tags.”

this was the crux of my post that you saw: the best way to find artists and writers and individuals is through community. you can search tags and see which specific blogs are popular for those tags, and work your way from there. but writers don’t blow up and get noticed because their works are in the tags; they gain traction once they find a place in the community.

i’ve said this in private before—never on my blog—but in my opinion, there are 3 components to a “viral” post:

it’s about something that’s currently popular

it looks pleasing to the eye (to draw people’s interest)

it’s shared by the right blogs

a new writer will never be popular if they only rely on the tags; they must do digging and groundwork to find blogs that they relate to and enjoy. it’s not an overnight process. it takes time and effort. and the same goes for readers! it starts small: by finding one or two blogs that you adore. and then seeing who those blogs interact with, and working your way outward. again: it takes time and energy. but it’s so worth it.

new writers (and artists) are constantly joining our community, and we usually find them when they follow us or follow blogs that we follow. so, to address your last point: no, i don’t often sift through the tags. but i do look at every single blog that follows me, and i do follow new writers. and i do see what the people i follow are reblogging, and find new writers that way, too.

also you can filter and block words and tags that you don’t want to see, like “discourse” and whatnot. the beautiful thing about tumblr is you can curate your space to best suit you!

[femivi]

uhmm would it be rllie insane of me to ask you to answer ﾉ all ﾉ those selfship questions for haimi . . ? ૮꒰ྀི⊃⸝ ⸝ ⸝⊂꒱ྀིა i just rllie wanma know more about you two wehh 🥺 but if it is too much hehe , then i would be overjoyed to learn your answers to lace + zzz + cosmic 💌

oh my sweetest coco how do i ever thank u for this haha. . . i got all giddy nd happy to talk abt him nd me :3 im sorry this took sooo long to answer, i was quite busy :")) forgiv me if it's a bit incoherent . . i tried my best to give shorter answers ! ☘️

raspberry ౨ৎ how did the two of you meet?

– our ‘first meeting’ was at the akademiya's library, where i was chatting with tighnari, who introduced me to haitham. it was a bit awkward though . . me having the wrong impression of him being cold n harsh nd it didn't rly help with us later having to cooperate on our inter-darshan research project ! ! hmph ! ! ㌥(ง ⸝⸝ ᵕ⌓ᵕ)ว㌥

wine ౨ৎ how did your first date go?

– i don't know if study dates really count, but other than that, we didn't really have an official ‘first date’. we often spent a lot of time chatting in razan gardens, trying to find some peace and quiet around the akademiya. . . and then he would offer to tutor me in that cute gazebo at pardis dhyai :3 which i take as a sort of ‘first date’ - it was very cute ! but still a little awkward to be completely honest . . we talked about the classes we're taking, our interests and just were nerds together for a while . . but it started raining on our way back to sumeru city and he hold his coat over both of us so we don't get soaked by the rain . . 🌧️ ( we totally did )

vanilla bean ౨ৎ what does a day off with your lover look like?

– depends on the weather, really! we're usually home, just taking it slow and enjoying each other's company quietly. if it's colder ﾉ rainy we stay in and i either clean or nap . . haithie is reading, or maybe exercising ! and if it's warm we go out for a stroll along port ormos, maybe a picnic in mawtiyama !!! and sometimes go for a swim :–)

ballet slipper ౨ৎ do you have any pets?

– we don't :”–( sadly i'm allergic to both cats and dogs, nd i don't think either of us would have the time to take care of any other animal . . but i love seeing & feeding the rainbow parrots around sumeru ♡

coconut ౨ৎ relaxing bubble baths or refreshing showers?

– we both prefer the shower ! ! :–)

teacup ౨ৎ are the two of you morning people or night owls?

– for me, it really depends on how i feel, but once the sun sets i'm already getting sleepy, waking up early too. meanwhile al haitham has a strict routine he follows, going to bed around 11pm and then waking up slightly later than me. i think that makes us both morning birds, i suppose? neither of us would voluntarily stay up long into the night unless necessary.

bubblegum ౨ৎ any hobbies the two of you share?

– aside from the obvious, which is reading– we like to exercise or do yoga together, spending time in the kitchen . . cooking, baking etc :3 nd he often teaches me some new words in the languages he's studying at the moment ! !

wedding cake ౨ৎ what was your wedding like?

– . . we had a very small ceremony in the cute gazebo at pardis dhyai, but the wedding itself took place close to vanarana . . ( with the approval of nahida and aranara, of course ! ) it was small, and private, nothing grand– whimsical and quaint, very cozy :–) !! we wore our traditional wear for the ceremony ♡

honeymoon ౨ৎ where did the two of you travel? and how was it?

– we travelled to fontaine !! rented one of the small cottages on the countryside, staying there for a week . . relaxing, taking morning swims in the river . . amongst other . . naughty stuff

crêpe ౨ৎ what are your breakfast orders?

– for me, i don't have breakfasts very often, unless i wake up late ( ironic, i know ) i'll have some tea and fruit or something very light . . haitham views breakfast as very important and would often encourage me to eat with him . . he'd have some kind of bread with sarsheer ﾉ paneer and also fresh cut veggies like cucumber or tomatoes.

lipstick stain ౨ৎ where do you love to kiss them? where do they love to kiss you?

– i really luv to kiss his fingetips and the tip of his nose . . though haitham is usually a bit timid about physical affection he likes to kiss the top ﾉ the temple of my head.

rose petal ౨ৎ what does your home look like?

– our home is very cozy, to say the least. i imagine we asked kaveh to help with the interior design ? ( bc we both knew he wouldn't visit if he didn't like it . . ﾉhj ) making it a small mix of art nouveau & middle eastern furniture, cluttered, a lot of book piles and greenery, breezy curtains, overall very soft & quaint atmosphere . . and of course a small porch with a cushion swing in the front !

champagne ౨ৎ how do you celebrate new years?

– i don't like drinking nor fireworks ( stereotypical new year celebration ) nd i think haitham is not very enthusiastic abt it either. but we would- either meet up with closest friends during evening, or visit mawtiyama to sit on top of those big mushrooms, watch sumeru city fireworks from afar, lighting sparklers nd maybe even kiss under the stars hehe ♥︎

lace ౨ৎ what’s their favorite outfit of yours?

– tbh he likes when i wear the most homeless looking outfits hahaha . or something like a small tee ﾉ tank top and shorts, with a thin dupatta over it ! loose nd frilly shirts nd dresses with big ﾉ low back window haha . . it's not rly an outfit but i also wear indian anklets with bells nd he really likes the soft ringing around the house . . .

cupcake ౨ৎ do you and your lover frequent parties/clubs/social gatherings often?

– neither. we're both on the introverted side and don't like crowds or anything of that sort. we enjoy planned meetings with friends, though :3

zzz ౨ৎ what are your sleeping positions like?

– i get warm ﾉ overwhelmed by touch quickly sometimes, so we don't rly spoon a lot . . alhaitham prefers to sleep on his back, like a true victorian child, meanwhile i am always sleeping on either side, curled up under the sheets ( . . usually with one leg out haha ) often just touching his chest with my forehead, or just having my hand placed on his arm.

cosmic ౨ৎ who said i love you first? and how did that go?

– al haitham >_< it was rly awkward ﾉ accidental but in an endearing way ? i got back from an expedition in fontaine, and he invited me out for an evening stroll at razan gardens. we sat down under those beautiful gazebos, talked for a bit, and somehow it slipped him . . he quickly apologised for it :( . . but i said yes hehe ♥︎ nd surprised both him and myself with this.

wistful ౨ৎ what’s your sex life like?

– err next question ! ! ! just kidding . . well um overall, we're not intimate much – at least not before moving in together – after that . . we keep it slow and gentle, not too often. we prefer to show our affection through different ways, but ofc enjoy being intimate with each other ‘every now and then’ :3 ( ← liar. like twice a week cough. cough. what. )

sorbet ౨ৎ what does aftercare look like for you and your lover?

– i have really bad stamina, so there's a high chance that i'll just fall asleep afterwards ( skill issue tbh . . ) but mostly we just cuddle or massage our bodies :3 which is not smth we do very often, so it's always a nice treat ♥︎

love letter ౨ৎ what are your love languages? and how do the two of you execute them?

– both of our "main" love languages are acts of service and quality time. he is very thoughtful and often does things without me asking to do so ( like cutting fruit for me, reminding me to drink or doing something i've mentioned off handedly ) he would be reading with me sitting in between his legs crotcheting or drawing . . sometimes, i also give words of affirmation like “you're doing well..” or saying something i sense he needs to hear at that moment ৎ୭ ₊ ˙ .

[olderthannetfic]

/728286197798076416/ - this is me. Before tumblr the sites I hung out in are socmed sites that have a friend system and not a follow one. I got a bunch of friends through those sites forums and seeing how some people interact with their mutuals here reminded me of those times so I thought that's how they become "friends" on this site when there's no friend system (and by that I meant like an online acquaintance you'd interact with a lot and not actual friend-friend unless you two actually got close).

It's also just been at least a year since they followed back. I have interacted with their posts with mostly likes and some reblogs (sometimes with added commentary since I like their posts) but aside from a like or two when they followed back, they haven't done anything else. A random follower who hasn't liked or reblogged anything from me even from the start doesn't bother me but I've seen people here make a big deal of being "mutuals" with someone and some of them have made posts about how their mutuals are important to them/their friends which fits how they talk to their other mutuals on posts but doesn't apply to me. It's what confuses and bothers me about why they decide to follow back cause it doesn't make sense based from these stuff.

I read the replies on my original ask and I guess I really just shouldn't think much about this. It's just so strange to me so it bothers me.

--

...

Nonnie, I was there for the whole Livejournal era, starting in 2002 before most of fandom was even on it.

I can say with certainty that calling the following function "friends" led to plenty of wank but no actual increase in how much it meant that you were a friendly acquaintance.

Some people have always used sites this way. Some just follow you because they meant to keep track of your account and go check it later. Did they actually go check it later? Questionable.

Most likely, these people talking about "mutuals" in that manner don't derive the friendship from being mutuals. They follow back people they're already friends with for other reasons. They may also be thinking only of the mutuals who talk to them a lot in ways they find amusing or notable.

One thing we cannot control is whether other people like our writing.

I get more than the usual share of replies. Some commenters stand out to me because I like how they phrase things. It's usually the people who sound like they read a wide variety of genres and as though they have a similar vibe to mine. I'll usually notice the Spanish speakers (if they mention it) because that's of interest to me, but I'll still probably only click with the ones who are pretty good at English in a way that sounds nice to my ear. Honestly, that's hard to quantify because it's different form how native someone's grammar is. I have a bunch of regular rebloggers coming from a variety of languages who are a pleasure to read despite copious grammatical errors because they're funny or sound colloquial despite that or because their content is so interesting. Some people sound stiff or convoluted despite having zero technical errors. (And that's true regardless of native language.)

If I find you painful to read for EFL reasons or bad writing skill reasons or humor that reads as tryhard instead of funny to me or excessive hostility or some other thing, we won't click.

Neither I nor the other person has any significant control over those reactions.

Now, I haven't observed your mutuals and have no idea what kinds of things you guys post, but I have observed a common pattern, both on tumblr and back in the day on LJ, where someone interacts a little but not enough and their comments are okay but nothing special. If the people they're interacting with are busy or already have a zillion friends, sometimes, they just get missed.

I also think performative posts about ~my mutuals~ tend to be hollow bragging about being popular. When they aren't, there's an implicit sense that they're talking about a particular subset of mutuals.

There's not really that much of a contradiction here. You were just taking those posts at face value, and you shouldn't.

[rey-jake-therapist]

Hob Gadling's wives and girlfriends, the forgotten women of The Sandman

DISCLAIMER: the following posts contains major spoilers for Season of Mists, World's Ends, The Kindly Ones and The Wake.

A couple of weeks I told @writing-for-life my next meta would be about the women who shared Hob's life. There's not much to work on in the comics for most of them, but the fact remains that they exist and that Hob probably loved them all. And his second wife in particular, Margaret/Peggy aka Jim, had a story dedicated to her journey, in World's Ends.

Hob's canon romances always interested me because these women were all mortals, while he was not. We know he had at least one kid who died, and he saw almost all his lovers/wives die while knowing he would never follow them in the grave unless he wanted it. We didn't see it happen with Gwen, but it will, eventually.

It makes me wonder: how does he do it? How does he manage to be completely invested in a relationship knowing that the people he loves will all grow old and die, while he will stay the same and live forever? I would have loved it if the comics had him discussing that, and I still hope in the show he will. We never saw what his last conversation with Hob was, after all... I like to think that Dream stayed a bit longer than usual with Hob, and that they opened up about their respective lives and experiences with love. Audrey is still alive and probably in Hob's life at this point, it would be nice if she showed up, met Dreams and asked him embarrassing questions... but I digress haha

Before I continue I'd like to confess that not being a shipper, I don't read Dreamling fics - I rarely read fics revolving a ship in general... I prefer Morpheus x oc or non romantic fics -, so any comment I can make about the fandom is based on what I see on social media, and not on fanfic contents. I'm sure that Hob's wives and girlfriends are often evoked and maybe sometimes, even more developed there than they are in canon.

Hob's first wife: Eleanor

Eleanor's just a portrait, we don't know much about her except that Hob probably cared about her since in the show he still calls her "my Eleanor" long after she died.

She exists only to show that Hob's situation stabilized after he started making money. Also, their son's death and hers may have been the first time that it hit Hob in the head that while he could live forever, he couldn't prevent his loved ones from dying. The loss of his family affected him very much and yet, he still wanted to live. I'll probably write a meta later about how his situation purposely mirrors Morpheus', about how they both lost everything they loved at some point but reacted in a completely different manner.

Hob's second wife: Peggy/Jim

We meet Margaret/Peggy/Jim in World's End. She pretends to be a man hence why she calls herself Jim, as she did during all the trip during which she met Hob Gadling. It's quite obvious that she did it for safety issues, as she would have probably not been allowed to travel on a boat let alone work on one if she had revealed as girl without a chaperon, and she clearly enjoyed the freedom and advantages she got as passing for a man. It's good to emphasize how brave she was to do that, as if her secret had gone out it could have put her in great danger.

Hob was the only one who saw through her, but he protected her secret. He also confirmed her doubts that he was much older than he seemed, a secret she protected as well. It seems she never believed he was immortal though - see the part about Audrey - .They bonded over having secrets they could possibly not reveal to anyone else, so it's a really sweet love story.

Later, in The Kindly Ones, we learn that Peggy died in his arms, during the Blitz. If they had kids, he doesn't say, but it's obvious he loved her very much and was deeply affected by her death, as he says on Audrey's grave, in The Kindly Ones, that Audrey's the first woman he was with since Peggy died.

Now I know that certain fans want Peggy to be trans or non-binary because she disguises as a man and asks to be called Jim. It's generally not as much because they care about her character or representation,than because it would make Hob canonically queer. Now I have no problem with anyone's headcanons: there are no right or wrong headcanon, no stupid or offensive ones - as long as they're not hateful, homophobic, racist, transphobic etc. - and whatever makes people feel represented and happy is fine by me. That said, I personally believe it's a bit simplistic to reduce a woman's refusal to follow societal norms to her being a man or non-binary, but again, whatever floats your boat guys.

I personally think that Peggy/Jim was written as a strong young woman who wanted to travel and see the world, knew she couldn't do that if she was seen as a woman, so she disguised as a man, took a man's name and enjoyed the role because let's be honest: the life for white men during this period was wayyyyyy funnier and easier than for women. What do you mean, it still is? I don't understand, are you saying institutional patriarchy is still very much a thing? *pretends to be shocked*.

You can find many stories like Peggy/Jim's in modern literature, and of course, in real life!

As for Hob, he knew Peggy was a woman quite early, and when he talks about her on Audrey's grave he says "Peg' ", not "Jim", which tells me he kept seeing her as a woman. But again, that's my headcanon and I won't argue about that, I just feel like Peggy/Jim deserves better than being discussed solely regarding Hob's sexuality. Her story is one of my favorite in the comics :)

Talking about the particular subject of Hob's sexuality is immortal and even though the comics doesn't mention any male boyfriend, he seems open minded and hedonistic enough to have at least tried... I always headcanoned Hob Gadling as pansexual, because it doesn't make sense to me that a man who lived for hundred of years would be straight, simply.

I really hope that the show will give us Peggy/Jim's story on screen, she highly deserves it. I love this character, I just wish it would be clearer in the comics that she's the future Mrs Gadling... I learned through social media that the Peg' he mentioned on Audrey's grave was the Peggy he met in World's Ends. It's very confusing, the way it's written.

Hob Gadling's girlfriends

We of course don't know every girlfriend that Hob had, in the comics we're just introduced to two: Audrey, and Gwen. We learn a couple of other names in The Kindly Ones though: Lisabet and Anne.

Audrey

Audrey's another woman who's never part of the conversations, yet the panel dedicated to Hob's reaction to her death is the first panel that made Hob sympathetic to me. But whenever this panel is discussed, everything that's related to Audrey is ignored so the focus is entirely on Hob's concern for Morpheus. Before I read the comics, I had no idea that Hob had just buried his lover, and begged Morpheus to resurrect her because the pain of losing her was too hard to handle.

A bit like for Margaret/Peggy/Jim, it's not clear at all that in Season of Mists, the woman we see with Hob in bed is Audrey, the woman whose grave he visits in The Kindly Ones.

It's really in The Kindly Ones that we can see how much he cared for Audrey, as he cared for all the lovers he had before but died. The reaction he has, he admits it himself, responds to a question we probably all asked: does he ever get used to it? Become insensitive, with time?

The answer's no:

I always wondered why Morpheus visited him at this moment: was it because he felt his pain and wanted to be here for him? Or was it because he wanted to say one last goodbye and it happened to coincide with the moment Hob was drowning in his grief? Was it because he himself needed a friend, more than ever?

Anyway he certainly didn't expect Hob's request. For the first time that we know of, Hob asked Dream to use his supernatural powers. Hob, the immortal who saw all the people he knew die, not only wasn't used to it but asked Dream basically the same thing as Orpheus asked him: help him to get his lover back. It must have been very painful for Dream, but poor Hob couldn't know that. I doubt he even knew that Dream had once been married and had a son.

So yeah, afterwards he runs after Morpheus and tries to make him confide in him, he even feels his friend's death is imminent and he shows a deep concern, but that's not all that this panel is about. I think it's about saying that no matter how old you are, how many lives you lived, how many people you loved and loved you.... The death of a loved one is always painful.

2. Gwen

Gwen is Hob's last girlfriend that we know of. She's also, in his own admission, the first Black woman he dates. Considering that Hob used to be an enthusiastic slave trader who needed an ethereal entity to tell him that slavery was wrong to think that he should find another way to become rich, I find this information.... interesting. After 600 years, it was about time... did he refuse to date Black women because of guilt for what he did? Or because he remained racist for a long time and didn't think Black women were worth his attention?

I feel very protective of Gwen, first because I dislike how she was written as a moral caution for Hob, as she absolves him for his sins but without knowing the extent of his sins - she has no idea he's immortal and was a slave trader - . When she appears in the show - and I really hope she will! - , I hope she'll be written in a way that she doesn't exist solely for Hob to express his guilt while being too coward to tell her the truth about what he did.

I was going to say something very personal about me, but I'm not sure the comparison I want to make would work, so I prefer keeping it for me, finally. If anyone's interested in knowing me better they can join me in private though :)

The second reason why I'm very protective of her is that as Audrey, on social media she's generally treated as non existent by the fandom - who focuses entirely on Hob's grief regarding Morpheus' death - . I recently saw a wish regarding Gwen that made my blood boil and almost made me hit the 'deactivate' button, but I'm not here to start a war, let alone to point fingers. I just really wish some people paid more attention to what they wrote, because some stuff I've read these last days came off as very insensitive.

And I'll conclude with one last panel featuring the gorgeous Gwen:

Also tagging @violetoftheendless and @tickldpnk8 , in case you're interested in discussing this subject :)

[a-student-out-of-time]

Danganronpa and the Mean Girl Problem

Hello, everyone! I’ve come to once again share my thoughts on something.

With the (as of writing this) recent release of Despair Time Chapter 2, I felt this was an appropriate time to discuss some things. First off, I am very interested to see where this fangan is going from here on out, and even from the first episode, I’m hooked.

I really enjoyed the character moments in the first episode, from Eden to Levi to Teruko to J to one of the subjects of my discussion today: Arei.

Now, I have to admit, Arei’s one of the most interesting characters in DRDT to me. She’s not my favorite- that honor goes to Hu- but she’s the one who I think has the most potential for character development within the narrative of DRDT. And that’s also something that concerns me.

See, that brings us to the point I want to address here is in the title. It’s something I’ve noticed across both the canon games and some fangans, which I’ll call the “Mean Girl Problem.”

(Spoilers for the canon games, DR3, the Another series, Despair Time, DR Antebellum, etc. will follow. You have been warned.)

(Also, this became a long-ass post. You’ve also been warned on that.)

As I’m sure many of us are aware at this point, Danganronpa is a very formulaic series. While we see different stories and character arcs play out, we nevertheless see similar archetypes and story beats across them. Sometimes these are broken in unique ways, but we often have very similar starting points.

Oftentimes, these repeated tropes have been deconstructed and explored in different ways, either in the games themselves or among fan games that seek to go beyond the formulaic writing. Even then, however, there tends to be repetition with a lot of them, mostly in terms of things like my least favorite trope, the double murder in Chapter 3.

What I want to focus on here is an archetype I’ve seen a lot and one that often leaves me thoroughly disappointed every time: the eponymous mean girl.

These tend to be female characters who are presented as bullies, either toward one character in particular or members of their group as a whole. I feel this archetype really got its start with Hiyoko in DR2, and it understandably became a point of contention with a lot of people. And it was later repeated with a lot of characters.

I can’t speak for all fangans, so I’ll stick to the ones I’ve seen. Among them, we’ve got Hiyoko, Ruruka, Natsumi and Miu in canon; Rei, Kizuna and Hibiki in the Another series, Mitsuba in Brave DR, Emilia in Antebellum, and Arei in Despair Time. I’ll leave Mitsuba out of this discussion, since Brave DR hasn’t made it quite as far as other fangans, but we still have a lot we can talk about here.

The Mean Girl Problem is a writing trend I’ve seen where these characters end up not receiving much narrative importance or opportunities for development, particularly in comparison to their male counterparts. And when they do, it’s usually squandered hard.

If you already have objections to this, I understand, but allow me to explain what I mean, character by character.

Now, DR1 didn’t really have a Mean Girl character, which is interesting. There were no female characters who were really openly malicious or antagonistic, unless one wants to include Celeste. However, she isn’t really an example of what I’m talking about. The problem really started in DR2:

________________________________________________

Hiyoko Saionji

As I said, this archetype began with Hiyoko. Her introduction had her crushing ants, making her creepy face and then calling Haime a wuss. From there, she spends most of her time complaining, manipulating and insulting everyone, aside from Mahiru who’s the only one that really puts up with her. Her worst insults are saved for Mikan, which...grr, but I’ll move on.

Now, Hiyoko being a selfish bratty girl is by design. She’s a member of the prestigious Saionji Clan and thus sees herself as superior to everyone else, so it’s at least understandable why she’d feel this way. Even if she plays it off in her Free Time Events that she’d been the subject of “assassination attempts,” which some of my friends have attributed to others getting back at her for her bullying, it’s clear she’s not well-liked in-story.

My point here isn’t that Hiyoko is a bad character. Quite to the contrary. Many people who defend her point out that she does have a lot more going on than just being a bully, and I fully agree. I like how much she loves her nation’s culture, how much she misses her dad and her belief that protecting something is a sign of love. That’s interesting.

The MGP stemmed from me asking a simple question: what purpose does she serve in the story?

It’s a serious question: what does her being a bully contribute to the narrative? What role does she serve, either thematically or in the plot itself other than being a member of Ultimate Despair? How does she actually change as a result of the story?

To all of this, I have to say “Not much.”

Now, I’m not going to say she didn’t have any purpose. Again, there were good moments with her. I like how she tried to make a memorial for Mahiru, but it came off as ominous and creepy to everyone, and she admits she’s not good at anything but dancing.

...Of course, then she turns right around and insults Mikan again.

And this brings me to another point about her: nobody in the story really seems to actually acknowledge Hiyoko’s cruel moments. Sure, they get annoyed with her, but nobody takes her aside and tries to explain why it’s wrong. Hajime makes some snarky comments about in her her behavior FTEs, but all he really seems to do is tolerate her.

Her bullying never really seems to factor that much into the plot, other than it just being something she does. Hell, even her being killed by Mikan had nothing to do with her bullying, but simply because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her being a bully was basically irrelevant to everything that ultimately happened with her in the story.

But here’s the part that really gets me: this moment in Chapter 3 where Hajime claims she’s changing:

Which, I guess I understand. It’s not the same thing as earlier, when she basically raged that Teruteru deserved to die horribly for committing murder, and that she wished she could’ve spat on his corpse.

Like, I guess that’s progress, going from “He deserved what he got” to “We’re only working together to escape because we don’t have a choice.” Still though, jeez.

And what comes off this? Again, basically nothing. Hiyoko can’t get her kimono on, Sonia suggests she use the full-body mirror at the music venue and that’s where she gets shanked by Mikan. Not because she was mad about the bullying and nobody doing anything to help, not because Hiyoko confronted her or she confronted Hiyoko.

No, she just walked in and Mikan went “No witnesses.”

And later on, DR3 confirmed that Hiyoko more or less acted the exact same during her time in Hope’s Peak. The only real progress we can really say she got was the fact that she acts more like a platonic tsundere toward Mikan in Side Hope.

Overall, it really seems like being a bully was the focus of Hiyoko’s character, when the game clearly wanted to acknowledge there was more going on with her. Yet most of the deeper elements with her were relegated to her FTEs.

And if she was bad, Ruruka was even worse.

________________________________________________

Ruruka Ando

Probably the biggest contender for the most hated DR3 character, Ruruka is, in a word, a self-centered bitch. Now, again, that isn’t to say that’s a problem and that there isn’t anything deeper going on with her character.

It genuinely seems like she has trouble with empathy, something that was shown when she and Seiko first met and she didn’t even really address that Seiko was crying over the dog she couldn’t save.

One could attribute that to her being a child, but throughout Seiko and Ruruka’s friendship, it becomes quite clear Ruruka asks her for more and more favors, going from medicines she needs to basic things she could probably just buy herself. This is acknowledged and addressed by the story.

What the story doesn’t do a great job of addressing is Seiko’s side of things, where it kinda seems to blame her for constantly accepting Ruruka’s requests and acts as if this is a “both sides are wrong” situation. I don’t think the story presented it well, and just made Ruruka look incredibly toxic and manipulative toward someone who has trouble saying no. Not quite the same as bullying, but more than enough to meet the standards of a Mean Girl.

The manga actually did one better and worse at the same time, where it brings up the idea that Seiko can’t eat Ruruka’s candies and addresses why she doesn’t make sugar-free ones: she refuses to acknowledge that Seiko even has an allergy and that she’s making it up to spite her. Sounds shallow and petty, but it’s a real thing that’s happened with some people.

If you don’t believe me, look up the woman whose in-laws fed her mushroom soup because she didn’t believe her when she said she had a mushroom allergy.

But again, the story wants there to be something deeper with these two. In the Future arc, Ruruka internally admits that she always saw Seiko as her hero, as someone with the talent and skill to do anything, and she was jealous because all she could do was make sweets. That’s an interesting motivation.

And the story doesn’t do all that much with it. Once again, the way it’s framed, Ruruka is a toxic and manipulative friend who wanted to use Seiko’s talents to cheat in her practical exam, and it was largely Nagito’s fault that things went south, then they had a falling out and were expelled.

There is a good story buried in this narrative. The problem is that Ruruka is presented in far too much of a negative light to really come off as someone with a valid point, while Seiko didn’t really do anything wrong. Izayoi is also barely a character and just follows her around everywhere, when maybe he could’ve been the mediator between the two of them.

But instead, after Seiko and Izayoi die, Ruruka nearly kills Kyoko and gets Koichi killed thanks to her bullshit. Granted, she was under threat of her Forbidden Action, but it was still framed as her being a villainous character, with her glaring evily.

This is not the face of someone who was forced into committing evil for the sake of her own survival.

And what happens after all this? What role does she have in the story? Nothing.

She wanders off on her own, rambling to herself about how she’ll survive, and then she gets killed by the hypnosis monitor thing- very graphically and excessively, I have to say- and then nobody even acknowledges her existence again.

I’ve heard speculation that the story of Ruruka, Seiko and Izayoi is meant to show why it’s important to trust your friends, but she had so few good qualities to her and so little going on within the narrative beyond just fighting with a roided-up Seiko that I could barely glean something like that.

She really just feels like she’s there to be an antagonistic force for a while, and when she’s not needed anymore, she’s shoved off to die. And if the story wanted us to at least feel for her, why kill her off in such a mean-spirited and graphic manner? Were we supposed to feel bad or feel like it was karmic?

Either way, it’s not a good look.

_________________________________________________________ 

Natsumi Kuzuryu

Here’s what turned out to be a retroactive example of the MGP: Natsumi, the girl who was originally only known through flashbacks and Twilight Syndrome Murder Case, in SDR2, who was originally just Fuyuhiko’s unnamed sister

DR3 came along and gave us a better look at her, though in a way I doubt we were expecting. From what Fuyuhiko had told Hajime, it seemed as if Natsumi was an Ultimate. Hell, he was sure she deserved the title of Ultimate Yakuza far more than him:

But what DR3 gave us was a girl who joined the Reserve Course, and just called herself the Ultimate Little Sister.

She certainly lives up to what Fuyuhiko was talking about, at least in how she was self-centered and arrogant. Even so, it’s obvious the two of them were very close, especially with how Natsumi looks up to him and dreams of joining the Main Course so she can stand by him as an equal.

The problem is, though, her intense rivalry with Mahiru and Sato, who she’s been in conflict with since Middle School. Once again, a character who we were lead to believe was an Ultimate turned out to also be in the Reserve Course.

Regardless, the two of them had an absolutely bitter rivalry, which as we’d learn would eventually lead to Sato murdering Natsumi, then Fuyuhiko murdering Sato in retaliation. DR3 had the opportunity to tell us a little bit more about Natsumi’s side of things.

And what we learn is that Natsumi fears being left behind with her brother in the Main Course, and wants to be acknowledge not for her talent but to earn a title so the two of them can be equals.

Now, Natsumi’s inclusion this way, while a weird retcon, isn’t pointless. It’s a pretty decent means of reinforcing the idea that talented and talentless people can’t mix, fueling Hajime’s insecurity. But once again, it really seems like it brushes over a lot of things with her cruelty toward Mahiru and Sato, none of which prove relevant for the larger story.

This is especially odd because the anime seemed more than willing to sympathize with Natsumi, while also neglecting to giving Sato a full name. And given that both of them die shortly afterward, it does feel a bit emotionally manipulative.

But once again, no relevance to the larger story. They’re not even mentioned once afterward.

_________________________________________________________

Miu Iruma

Now, Miu’s an interesting case because she has a huge fanbase. I understand why: she’s vulgar as hell, but also confident and hilarious. I call her a Mean Girl because, again, she often goes out of her way to insult and antagonize people for no real reason.

She’s different than the others, however, because she actually does contribute a lot of important details to the plot with her inventions.

It’s thanks to Miu that they get an overhead view of the first crime scene, she’s the reason why Chapter 4 happens, and she’s the one to provide the group with the weapons they need to take on the Exisals and learn the truth about their situation, both the manufactured one and the real one. So overall, she makes a massive impact on the story of V3.

My question is this: does this make her a character or a plot device factory?

Miu has basically no character development through the story, and is mostly just there for either making devices to move the plot forward, for comedy or for fanservice.

We do hits of greater identity and motivation for her in her FTEs and in Chapter 4, where we learn she received her talent after she was in a car accident that left her in a coma, waking up and finding she had a ton of ideas for inventions. And in Chapter 4, just before she attempts to kill Kokichi, she says the world needs her and her inventions.

This suggests either Miu knew what had “happened” to the world as part of the flashback light, or she didn’t but believed this idea in general. That, despite her crude behavior, she has genuinely altruistic motivations. That’s a good character quality for her.

And we don’t get much of that after this moment. The only memory of her anyone really has is of her and her inventions, and everyone except Kiibo basically hates her guts as a whole.

But what makes all of this worse in its own way is that this isn’t even Miu’s real personality, but a fabrication from Team Danganronpa. I can only go off of what we see here, so it’s hard to say what the real her was like, but the version we get here definitely falls victim to the MGP.

_______________________________________________________

Kizuna Tomori

Moving over to the fangan side of things, we have Kizuna Tomori, Class 79′s Ultimate Cheerleader from DRA.

Now, Kizuna is definitely closer to the Mean Girl archetype you might’ve thought of, i.e. a Regina George or Heather Chandler type. She acts all sweet and touchy-feely with Yuki, calling him nicknames and asking if he’ll buy her things when they get out.

And it goes on and on in her FTEs, where Yuki eventually wises up to the fact that she’s incredibly materialistic and she gets mad when he calls her out on it. Then she goes on to reveal that she’s the Queen Bee of her school, having boys do whatever she wants, buying her things and basically pimping out her fellow cheerleaders to them in exchange.

And it really seems like she doesn’t understand that this is a bad thing. Not that she knows and doesn’t care, but that she can’t comprehend that this isn’t supposed to be how things work.

Things get interesting in the last one, where she basically tries to have sex with Yuki, and he demands to know what the hell is going on with her.

She did all of this deliberately. She understands that she’s not a good person, but she’s also scared of guys who are only interested in her for her looks. She basically turned every guy who was interested in her into her servant, but in the process, she ultimately isolated herself from everyone else.

And there’s also the influence of her mother, Minako, who also seems to value her appearance. I can only image what kind of situation Kizuna was in to feel this way, where she was scared of being taken advantage of by guys if she drops this facade. One that’s kept her from even having friends.

In the game itself, Kizuna also isolates herself from everyone thanks to Tsurugi’s tyrannical rule, and also ends up quite lonely. Something Akane goes out of her way to help her with after she and Yuki find her crying.

It’s a really sweet and wholesome moment, where Akane assures her that she does consider Kizuna a friend, never saw her as weak and that they can confide in each other. Something Kizuna never really had before then.

And what happens afterward? Well, turns out she’s a fake bitch.

Which inevitably leads to Kizuna attempting to murder Akane.

The thing is, lying and scheming aside, Kizuna actually kinda has a point here.

The motive in Chapter 2 of DRA is, naturally, secrets. The one she found suggested local normal protag Yuki Maede might actually know the identity of the mastermind, and as we learn in Chapter 6, that turned out to be him.

Not only that, but Akane was actually his colleague and fellow Ultimate Despair. Kizuna unintentionally targeted both masterminds, and had she pulled it off, she may have actually ended the Killing Game early on. True, she was only focused on escaping, but it would’ve been beneficial to a greater number of people.

But what really bothers me is LINUJ’s attitude toward her. He created a pretty sympathetic backstory for her, which doesn’t excuse but explain her behavior, yet he admits in her design document that he made her to be the character everybody would hate and wanted to give her the most painful death possible.

Which he did in the form of a stab would in the stomach that took about thirty minutes to kill her. Like...jeez, dude. It’s also kinda hard for me to hate her not only when she’s actually kinda right on repeat viewings, but she also took the time to try and tell everyone it wasn’t actually Akane who killed her via dying message.

I also don’t want to be that person, but the fact that the character with the most sexualized design, the most overtly flirty and outgoing personality, and a backstory about trying to prevent guys from taking advantage of her weakness, is portrayed as an unrepentant villain?

Maybe it was unintentional, but it doesn’t sit well with me.

Really though, once again, I must ask why? What was gained from all this? What does it actually organically add to the story? Is there a lesson to be gleaned with this?

Not really any that I can see. I understand the points LINUJ raises when he talks about how we shouldn’t ignore the wrongdoings of a character because we sympathize with them, but I must also ask if utterly demonizing them for those wrongdoings is a bigger issue.

_______________________________________________________

Hibiki Otonokoji

Oh boy.

I’ve already talked at length about my problems with SDRA2 Chapter 3, but that was mostly me rambling about Kanade and the story. Instead, I’ll keep it short and focus strictly on Hibiki. Because out of all the victims of the MGP, Hibiki got robbed the absolute hardest.

I’ll start by saying that Hibiki isn’t so much a general bully as she is big sister bully. Her ire is mostly directed toward Kanade, who she insults, belittles, orders around, and harasses for her own amusement. At least it seems that way.

As we learn throughout the game, the Otonokoji Twins really have a mutually toxic relationship. Hibiki bullying Kanade is, according to the latter, because Hibiki’s actually a try-hard who’s jealous of Kanade for being better at her in everything: academics, athletics, even music. She hates losing more than anything.

That setup is at least an understandable motivation, and it could’ve made for some decent development opportunities, which the game actually did take at first.

See, because of SDRA2′s unique setup- there being five masterminds in the group- she understandably doesn’t feel safe trusting anyone except her sister at first. It takes a lot of work to get her to even leave her room and hang out with everyone.

Thanks to Setsuka’s encouragement, she admits that, yes, she wants to be friends with everyone. Hibiki is naturally a social butterfly, and even if she’s scared of what might happen because of the Voids, nothing will change if things stay the same.

And that’s a lesson she actually takes to heart afterward.

She genuinely tries to change her attitude and be more of a team-player with everyone, hanging out with them and trying to cheer up the group when they’re down because of their situation.

Because she takes responsibility for the things that happened, be it Yuri’s death at the party and Kokoro’s death due to the concert they held. And she’s doesn’t want there to be a third one.

She knows she’s not very smart, but she doesn’t want to be a burden on everyone and wants to contribute however she can. And the start of Chapter 3 actually shows her practicing what she preaches, even cracking jokes with everyone.

The disappointing thing is that everything that was going on with Hibiki was far, far more interesting to me than what actually ended up happening.

But instead of focusing on her trying to change and grow as a person, we got to spend the rest of the chapter glorifying another serial killer, turning Hibiki into a background extra and then revealing that her life had been literal hell, her parents are dead and her real personality probably doesn’t exist anymore, capped off with her dying a meaningless death.

A chapter that also effectively made her and her sister’s presence completely irrelevant to the actual story. While I complain about the MGP, nobody got it worse than Hibiki.

She deserved so much better than that.

_____________________________________________________

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Rei Mekaru

Danganronpa Another’s original bad bitch, Rei is one of the few mean girl characters who actually managed to not only survive, but also receive development as a result. Good for her!

The thing with Rei is that she’s largely more similar to Byakuya than Hiyoko or Miu, although she dabbles in the Mean Girl archetype on occasion, particularly toward Kizuna. I’ll still include her because it’s an interesting example of slow-burn character development.

Rei starts out as cold, dismissive and condescending toward her classmates, and while she’s clearly intelligent, she’s also more than willing to let everyone try and solve the cases themselves while also insulting them at the same time. This continues on for some time, at least until Chapter 4.

It isn’t until she sees Haruhiko and Satsuki willingly sacrifice themselves, allowing the rest of the group to survive, that ultimately rattles her view on things and gets her to reconsider. She almost seemed baffled when Satsuki gave up any chance she had to escape.

Likewise, in what was a pretty hilarious moment, when everyone basically isolates Yuki when it seems like he might be the traitor, she calls them out on their sense of false righteousness when they talk about the power of friendship. It’s not often you see these sorts of characters touch on something like that : P

Really, Rei’s character development really seems to take place in the second half of the game, which is probably how she manages to avoid falling victim to MGP. SDRA2 hits us with what looks like Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome, only for it to be revealed she survived.

Of course, given that DRA already has Kizuna as a victim of the MGP, it was probably a given. Still sad that, by the end of SDRA2, she and Tsurugi are the only survivors of Class 79.

Emilia Carmine

We now come to what’s probably my favorite fangan thus far: Danganronpa Antebellum, which has its own resident Mean Girl, Emilia. Now, I’m gonna be frank with this: Chapter 3 of Antebellum isn’t finished yet, so I can’t really call this an example of MGP, and I hope I don’t have to.

What I will say is that Emilia does fulfill a lot of the Mean Girl tropes: she insults everyone, antagonizes them, and she’s easily the most foul-mouthed out of everyone. However, in contrast to the previous examples, she also has a genuinely sweet relationship with her best friend Mint, who she considers a brother. She teases him a lot, but it comes off more as teasing than actual bullying.

Even toward Shinku, she gradually goes from mocking him to opening up to him, to enjoying his presence. Emilia herself was raised in a very controlling, heavily restrictive manner by her father, who also kicked out her sister Elodie on account of her being trans. Emilia was very close with her, and would do anything to reunite with her. A motivation that nearly drives her to murder Shinku in Chapter 2, which, if it hadn’t been for Mint and the BDA, she very likely would’ve. Something she regrets immensely.

The sad part is, at the end of Chapter 2, her crime is revealed: burning down her father’s hospital, killing and injuring many people. A revelation that drives a wedge between her and Mint that never ends up resolved. While Emilia wants to make up with him, the group is split in half when the ceiling caves in and Emilia is killed in the game’s double murder, never even getting to see Mint again.

It’s too early to say, but this is feeling more like a genuine tragedy than a case of MGP, and I highly doubt she’s going to be forgotten by the end.

____________________________________________________

And that finally brings me to the subject I brought up at the beginning: Arei Nageishi.

Now, I called Arei the most interesting of the Despair Time cast because she has a quality that makes her a bit different from the other Mean Girl characters: she legitimately values friendship.

That might sound bizarre, given that she still openly insults and antagonizes the group. While she does go out of her way to be cruel to Teruko and Xander in her introduction, it seems like she wants to be included in group activities.

And of course, she falls into a self-pitying session of fake crying to get sympathy, which Hu shuts down immediately. Now, one could easily just write this off as attention-seeking behavior, but it’s the small details that interest me.

They shut her down on that.

Xander is, of course, disbelieving that she could be that oblivious to the situation. However, I think her behavior has less to do with her being oblivious and more to do with her having a skewed perspective.

See, when MonoTV shows up to announce the new motive, he specifies that there might be some bad news about their friends and family. Arei’s reponse?

No jokes, genuine concern over the motive.

And another moment that caught my attention was in the wake of the trial and Min’s execution. It was fucked up and horrifying, and everyone is understandably freaking out, but the reactions differ. Most everyone is freaking out about their situation, wanting to leave and being afraid of dying. Others are genuinely sad for Min, and among them?

Yeah, after the girl she’d previously accused of excluding her gets executed, Arei is genuinely upset to see her go. This was also after she’d spent the trial railing against any potential murders, mostly Teruko. She doesn’t make jokes, she doesn’t say she deserved it, she doesn’t shrug it off like it’s nothing.

She’s genuinely sad to lose Min.

Another insightful bit comes from her FTE with J, where she thinks to herself how fun it is to mess with her, and how she finds her cute.

Yeah, Arei has a system for how she bullies people, ranging from just teasing to wanting to utterly destroy their lives if they’re mean to her. A lot of this stems from the fact that she was the Queen Bee of her school, and like Kizuna, she used her looks and status to get guys to do whatever she wanted.

But the most interesting part to me is when J starts ranting about her mother, and Arei has this to share.

We’ll come back to this, but suffice to say, Arei has a very odd idea of what friendship is. She’s under the impression J likes her because she didn’t leave the situation.

Something else worth bringing up are the characters quotes from the tumblr page, both the public one and hidden ones. For Arei, these are as follows:

Public: “If I tell you a secret, will you promise to keep it?”

Hidden: “Because that’s what friends do”

And then there’s a hidden one in relation to the mysterious Mai Akasaki, who seemed to have been a friend to the entire group:

“She doesn’t like when her friends fight.”

For someone who continuously insults and looks down on the group, Arei sure has a lot of quotes in reference to friendship and trust.

Which brings me to the first part of Chapter 2, where MonoTV distributed the group’s deepest, darkest secrets...to the wrong people. And Arei, who’d previously been complaining about the situation, immediately quiets down.

She’s not making jokes, she’s not making fun of whomever’s secret she got. No, she is horrified.

This might’ve been easy to overlook after everyone is confused about not getting their own secrets, but after Arturo reveals J’s true identity to the group, Arei once again drops the jokes and complaints. She makes some pretty good points about their situation.

To me, this feels like a pretty group-oriented approach, subtly hinting she saw something really concerning and thus it’s better that they all start sharing secrets before things escalate in the four days before everything is revealed.

And the comments about having a famous parent like J are compounded here. I’m starting to get the sense Arei might’ve been neglected by her parents. Bullying and attention-seeing behavior like hers often stems from a lack of self-esteem, difficult home lives, and even being subject to bullying themselves. While Arei certainly has a high opinion of herself, what she really seems to want is attention and companionship.

I feel this makes for an interesting potential arc for her, given Despair Time’s themes of trust and betrayal. If her focus is on making and earning trust, it makes for a nice contrast to Teruko, who’s said she won’t trust anyone again and doesn’t want to leave. Like it or not, though, they’re gonna have to work together if they want to survive.

Of course, as interested as I am to see Arei’s development, it’s also a cause for concern. With how many death flags have already been raised just in part 1, both for her and for others, all we can really do is wait and see.

The True Issues With The Mean Girl Problem

Let me just say upfront what this essay isn’t about. This isn’t about how Mean Girls characters should never be made villains, this isn’t suggesting that anyone who engages in the MGP is inherently sexist or misogynistic and this isn’t about how any of the games or fangans I’ve mentioned are bad. DR3 is bad, but for numerous reasons.

No, this essay is me wanting to touch on the existence of a double standard I’ve noticed and how I feel this limits the works in terms of creativity. This isn’t a call-out post of creators in particular, just the acknowledgment of a writing problem.

Broadly, the MGP can be summarized in four points:

Mean Girl characters have sympathetic qualities to them, but they're very understated or left unexplored in the main story. Their defining feature there is being cruel or antagonistic to others.

Despite that, their bullying is often brushed aside and is simply shrugged off as annoying by the other characters. It has no impact on the story, does not catalyze character development and rarely has anything to do with their actual deaths or the death of any other character.

When they do start to undergo any significant character development, especially before Chapter 3, they tend to die more often than not.

Following their deaths, they're rarely mentioned by the narrative again, highlighting their overall unimportance to the story as a whole.

As I’ve said, a lot of these Mean Girls are much deeper than their portrayals within the main stories tend to want to explore, yet they’re often subject to much harsher criticism both in these stories, from creators and from the fandom.

On the other hand, male characters who present these traits are often given the label of The Rival, and I have to be honest in saying that a lot of Rivals end up doing things that are much worse than simply being bullies. Despite that, they all get a chance to develop:

Byakuya: Has a very condescending, classist view on everyone, and is the one who takes the entire concept of a Killing Game completely seriously. Seriously enough that he tampers with Chihiro’s body in the name of making the game more interesting, exposing Genocider Syo’s presence and figuring out who’s his biggest threat. He doesn’t give a damn about anyone but himself, at least until Chapter 4, when Makoto and Kyoko save him from getting everyone killed because he doesn’t even consider that someone might do something altruistically.

Fuyuhiko: Starts off SDR2 as a loud, antisocial asshole, one who wants nothing to do with the rest of the group (sans Peko) and who also contemplates what he has to do in order to win. He also makes threats, however baseless, like selling Mikan to a whorehouse or selling Hajime’s organs on the black market.

Kokichi: The biggest troll in all of V3 at best, and someone who self-identifies as an evil villain. A lot about his character is meant to be ambiguous, but within the confines of the story itself, Kokichi actively antagonizes and even endangers the group, from the Insect Meet-and-Greet to revealing Maki’s identity against her will, to tricking Gonta into killing Miu while believing their situation is a hopeless nightmare in order to save himself, etc.

Tsurugi: Essentially takes a page from Light Yagami in his utter dehumanization of criminals, viewing all those who dissent from his commands as potential criminals as well. His sense of justice is incredibly black and white, where killing for any circumstance whatsoever makes someone human garbage, and he’s happy to say as much. It gets to the point that he’s willing to force the group to commit mass suicide to prevent another murder.

None of this is a complaint about any of them as characters. I happen to enjoy seeing them and the roles they play in the story; Fuyuhiko gets the most development out of them all, Byakuya becomes more of a team player with his fellow survivors, Kokichi dies but is vindicated in that he helped bring an end to the Killing Game, and Tsurugi...well, that’s another matter entirely.

Tsurugi is a prime example of negative character development; not full-on villainization, but progressively becoming worse from his experiences rather than better. He doesn’t become a less violent and morally absolutist figure, but doubles down when he becomes leader of the Kisaragi Foundation, even willing to sacrifice Teruya and work with Syobai to stop Mikado.

The thing is, that’s still a form of development. It still falls in line with the concept of character progression, which the Mean Girls rarely seem to get. For them, their negative qualities aren’t brought on by the circumstances of the game, but are simply part of who they are. They’re rarely even worsened by the game itself, at least not in the same way Tsurugi is. They only seem to exist.

Now, I’ve seen some points raised about this, such as “Some people don’t change” or “They’re meant to serve as a warning about X”, and while I can understand those points, I have to ask why they don’t seem to be applied in the same way to Byakuya, Fuyuhiko or Kokichi, along with what sorts of object lessons rival characters are meant to serve as. Chapter 2 of DR1 has a solid and understandable lesson about the dangers of toxic masculinity, how succumbing to it in different ways ultimately culminated in the tragic deaths of Chihiro and Mondo.

It’s hard to have any sort of object lesson about Hiyoko, given that her death was unrelated to her bullying Mikan. It’s hard to say anything about Kizuna other than “she’s a bitch,” according to LINUJ. The closest you could get to with any sort of object lesson is probably Ruruka, but even then, it was so imbalanced and tried to show there being two sides that it doesn’t work.

Furthermore, if the goal is to show them as awful people, why is it that these characters are given so many sympathetic qualities that get people to like them, only to them cut them down in their prime and tell those audience members they were stupid for getting invested? Are they meant to be characters we hate and whose deaths we should find karmic, or are they meant to be tragic examples of someone not meeting their true potential? You can’t have it both ways, especially when those sympathetic qualities are barely touched on in the actual story.

I can genuinely see both sides of the argument; the ones that don’t like these characters because they’re bullies and the ones who want to see more because they clearly saw potential in them as characters. I completely understand why you might feel one way or the other, and I’m not saying you’re wrong.

If you want to make a character who serves as a foil to another, where both of them have similar flaws and negative qualities but one changes for the better while the other gets worse, you can absolutely do that. You can have characters who are genuinely bad people but who are still engaging. You can have mean girls, you can have rivals, you can have all kinds of wonderful creative characters like we do across this series and its fan entries.

My point with this is to show you why I feel that following the exact same character traits, and then writing them off as bad people simply because they’re bullies, feels not just uncreative, but borders on genuinely toxic and harmful. The idea that people can never change and that only bad people do bad things is not a healthy mindset to hold, especially when we might display these very traits without knowing it.

We can and should always work to be better, both as people and as writers. I love seeing people in stories and the real world learn from their experiences and grow better, hopefully with the benefit of hindsight. That can often come with needing to address the harm that’s done by actions and ideas we regret ever doing or holding, and if we look back and cringe at those moments, we do better for ourselves and others.

So what can we do here? Simple: let the Mean Girls get the same opportunities for development, growth, change and narrative impact as other characters do. As I said, it happens with Rival characters and it also happens with others through the games. Don’t restrict them or yourselves to the archetypical or formulaic writing you’ve experienced. If you don’t want to include a Mean Girl, you absolutely don’t have to.

For those that do, we also need to be willing to acknowledge and accept when mistakes are made by them, realistically approach the problem and see what can be done about it. Do they get better? Are they forgiven? What happens if they’re not? Or only some members of the group forgive them and others are hurt by those that do? Would they change by their own desire or would it be from someone calling them out on their behavior?

I know we love to say things like “X did nothing wrong” as a joke, but sometimes people will jump through mental gymnastics to justify liking a character, inventing stretched-out reasoning for why they’re not really at fault. I’ve never felt that way about any character I like; I fully acknowledge some of my favorite characters of all time have done some horrible things, and I still love them in spite of that.

If we could simply accept the idea that characters we love are and can be fucked-up people, we’d be a lot better off for it. Liking them doesn’t mean you fully support everything they do. Fictional people in fictional settings gives us a chance to explore things we may not be able to in the real world, either as a lesson, out of curiosity or for whatever reason we wish. And doing research for this essay, I can see Mean Girls have that appeal to them too, especially for those who relate to them.

I believe allowing Mean Girls to be more than just bullies is beneficial to both sides: people who want to see them move on from bullying because they don’t like bullies, and those who want to see them grow and have more prominence in the story. The multiverse of DR is rich with story potential for these characters that so rarely gets tapped to its full extent.

After all, in a series with a core theme about the importance of hope, wouldn’t it be best to show that some people do change for the better?

[nihilnothings]

I just recently noticed the similarities between Aqua and Akane's relationship to Hikaru and Ai

This isn't really a new profound theory as I found it on some obscure part of the Internet but I'd like to share some light on it because I just noticed it all of a sudden.

Ruby is usually the go to when people describe someone similar as Ai, after all she is a spitting image of her but blonde, has that similar charisma that draws in people to her, and eventually in traditional Hoshino fashion uses lies as a means to an end.

However, Ruby isn't the only one with similarities to Ai, Aqua too is also similar to his mother, at least when it comes to some aspect of his love life lol but even if they aren't physically similar Aqua too has similarities with his mother, in which they use lies as an expression of their love (The difference being Ai yearns for love while Aqua feels like he doesn't deserved to be loved) wouldn't be her son at all if they don't share anything in common after all!

The parallels so far are mostly on how their love lives are similar:

Both are entertainers who got entangled with Lala Lai Theatre Troupe members for a specific goal in mind

Eventually they started to get romantically involved with one another

They both then experienced a fallout for different reasons (Aqua can't bring himself to have Akane be involved for her safety while Ai started falling out due to the pregnancy, though further details might reveal more on their fallout because ain't no way it's just because of that)

They then started to oppose each other (Akane is actively planning to stop Aqua from self-destructing while REDACTED for reasons unknown went back to murdering again and killed his lover)

That's where the similarities end and where the differences start within this parallel.

In the case of Ai she was the older one, while in the case of Aqua he was the younger one lol (if we don't include his past life that is)

REDACTED opposes Ai but his motives are out of malice (unless Ai did something so bad to him that warrants murder and more murders following that, he is an evil piece of crap for ruining the lives of his children and many others), Akane opposes Aqua but her motives are pure, which is to save him from self-destructing (I personally don't think Akane wants Aqua to not chase after REDACTED as someone as smart as she is knows how dangerous he is, she's probably trying to stop him from destroying himself and find a much "healthier" way to stop him.)

The romance between Ai and REDACTED ended in a very bitter note to the point of Ai getting murdered by him. The fate of Aqua and Akane is still uncertain.

Aqua who is compared to "Ai" is the "bad guy" while Akane who is REDACTED is the "good guy" opposite to how REDACTED and Ai was, though further details of their relationship might shed more light on how they are.

Now the question stand, do these parallels mean anything? Maybe or maybe not, I just found the observation to pique my interest and considering I can't predict the current journey of the story, I'll leave all of this as me speculating.

If it were true though, I suppose these parallels are a way for the author to allude the trajectory of how their relationship might go. A lot of dark things are currently happening within the OnK-verse but I don't see this series to have a downer end, it'll probably be a light after dark ending where after all the shit that the characters have been through, they all will live knowing that they've won against their struggles.

Using this Tokyo Blade panel as a complement to this observation, I suppose if Ai and REDACTED's relationship concluded in a horrible note (but at least Ai managed to die knowing she was capable of "real love) then Aqua and Akane might succeed where their predecessors failed, by making amends and loving for real.

[solar-net]

i'm so sorry for bugging people, but i've been stressing over this since yesterday.

i tried to find reliable sources for ASD symptoms and behaviours, i pulled a few i found to be most in-line with what i remember and recall, also some explinations

again, opinions and help are greatly appreciated, i'll also awnser questions and clarify anything if needed!!

Resists Cuddling & Holding

I don't like touching or hugging unless I give express permisson for the person to do. If someone tries to hug me or touch me, I often move away

Has poor eye contact/Too much eye contact

I usually look around the room or stare straight at the person. If I know them well I'll stare at them, if not I won't. Also if the conversation interests me.

Can't start a conversation

I rarely initiate  conversation, usually having someone else talk to me first. Sometimes I find I difficult to even talk to people, mostly strangers, and I usually go through a script in my head of what I would say.

Repeats words or phrases verbatim

I tend repeat words/phrases either from songs, games or shows. Sometimes even what other people have said to me. This isn't as frequent, but I have repeated several things.

Doesn't appear to understand simple questions or directions

I don't really understand questions, especially when they have a double meaning. Directions are easier to follow, mostly because I ask questions about them, but questions (especially open ended ones) are hard for me to answer.

Inappropriately approches social interaction by being passive, aggressive or disruptive

My tone and body language are usually hard to understand, and sometimes i don't regonise if i'm being rude, indifferent or disruptive. I later find out depending on if the person tells me, or how they react.

Has difficulty regonizing non-verbal cues

Often times i get confused by others as i don't really catch onto the double meaning / non verbal cues. This has resulted in lots of misunderstandings and fights between peers of mine. It isn't until weeks or years later that I finally understand what they meant.

Preforms repetitive movements, such as rocking, spinning or hand flapping

Started to realise I rock back and forth when I'm just sitting down. I don't spin or flap my hands, but sometimes I snap my fingers are shake my head rapidly.

Is fascinated by details of an object

This is mostly when I'm bored or waiting for something, I'll look at something and notice all the details. I've become hyper-aware (I think that's the word?) or textures, details, feelings, noises, etc.

Sensitive to light, sound or touch

This one is really dependent on my enviornment. If I'm alone I'll be blasting music through my headphones, if I'm outside the sun is just too bright. Certain textures on clothes are too rough or too itchy.

Has specific food prefrences, such as eating only a few foods, or refusing foods with certain textures

Mushrooms, tomatoes, cheese, squishy vegtables, are a no go I refuse to eat food if it has these things. I repeatedly eat ramen, sweets, sour treats, sandwiches or chips.

I'll add on anything I figure out more.

Talking at length about a favourite subject

Mostly noticable with my cousin since we share a lot of similar interests. Mostly related to my fandom interests & interests in certain characters.

Having trouble understanding another person's point of view or unable to perdict / understand other people's actions

Very prominent in my Middle School years, when I didn't get what others were saying and it ended up with misunderstandings and fighting. This is also more prominent online, as I don't know how someone will react / respond so I don't even respond to them.

Difficulties adjusting behaviours to social situations

Mostly in my childhood, I started getting somewhat better over the years but it's still a little difficult to rethink and redjust to certain situations. Especially if I haven't been there in awhile or at all.

Becoming upset by slight changes in routine and having difficulty transitioning

I don't get upset at changes in my routine, but if something goes wrong or I miss a step, I don't return to the routine.

I've moved once, and that was a difficult to adjust to the new enviornment. When I got to the school on my first day I cried.

[ccaptain]

SHIPPING INFO. Answer the following for your muse(s) so people know how shipping works on your blog.

What’s your OTP for your Muse(s)?

In case me and @predvestnik roleplaying them from the start wasn't clear enough: CHAEYA. I fell for these two down a well immediately. Unashamedly obsessed with them.

What are you willing to RP when it comes to shipping?

Most things that don't border on the standard taboo/wrong things tbh. I like a lot of dynamics as long as the muses click or develope in a way that click together and flows natural, I'm game to see where they go as long as we don't have to force them together- not like in a room and tossing the keys, I'm talking about forcing the muses to interact with stuff that just doesn't feel natural btw...

I also love fluff. Fluff that goes somewhere, fluff that goes nowhere........ just cute stuff. Fluff after a good development between muses, some introspective threads that I absolutely lose my mind for, and some angst if I'm in the mood and it needs to be planned in a way that doesn't suddendly break the relationship forever. 

How large does the age gap have to be to make it uncomfortable?

Minor/Adult, as a normal person, is completely off the table, and also mentor/mentree makes me uncomfortable. This goes without saying.

I have two old OCs that are 43 and 55 respectively, so I'd say 10 years gap is okayyyyy-ish...? As long as it's a reasonable one (ex. 34 and 44) with both parts as CLEAR adults.

Are you selective when shipping?

HOO BOY. YEAH. I need to be comfortable with someone and definitely have a trial ship period to see if they click, and I only ship with people I have talked OOCly. That's not negotiable, sorry. I like discussing our replies with my partners when we can get around to it or I'll cry (this is a joke).

I'm also very inclined to quietly pull away in case I feel I'm being relegated to the last possible tier of your priority list in terms of threads/asks or if I perceive a big dip of interest without an explanation to why, but I like to think I'm getting better at communicating when I feel this is happening. Doesn't mean I'm always successful in it tho :(

How far do steamy moments have to go before they’re considered NSFW?

HMMMM I'd say as soon as one of the muses involved start feeling aroused- if the thread progresses into doing the horizontal tango, it's all going either on Discord or under the good ol' read more. I'm not super comfortable doing NSFW stuff between muses unless there's trust built up and I'm certaintly not a fan of smut becoming the center of a dynamic once it's brought in.

Who are other muses you ship your muse with?

MY FRIENDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I ship WrioKae with Lauri and SamKae in the H:SR verse with Terios and I'm happy like this <: I'm very comfy where I am now!

Does one have to ask to ship with you?

Ask and perhaps enstabilish a bit of OOC communication with us telling eachother a bit about our muses and sharing some ideas. Otherwise you'll find be screaming and flailing around like a scared hamster made of anxiety. I won't know where to put my foot if we don't. :(

How often do you like to ship?

Not a lot! I usually select a few people I'm comfy with and sit in a corner huddled with them. I didn't had particulary good experiences with ships before making Kaeya, so I'm naturally a big cagey when it comes to that. I also tend to just distance if something happens or I perceive it's happening, but I'm getting better at that.

Are you multiship?

Yessssss but I'm pretty selective... if it clicks and we kinda know eachother, I'll ship it and be happy with it. Most of my verses are closed, ship-wise. Whoopsie.......

Are you ship obsessed or ship more-or-less?

I'm ship-eeeehhh. If it happens, good, and if it doesn't happen it's still okay. As I said, it has to be kinda naturally happening for me to like the dynamic. THOUGH, once our muses click I'm obsessed for real. Ask Terios and the daily 93848383 things I put in the server about these two disasters DKSAFHSJDF

What is your favorite ship in your current fandom?

Every single one I have with my friends. I do wanna say that there are certaint dynamics I would like to try though,,,,,,,,, not naming any names..........

Finally, how does one ship with you?

Throw a dart and hope it sticks to me.

In all seriousess, knowing eachother a little bit without it being overwhelming for us both and then shuriken-ing ideas to eachother and seeing which ones stick and can be developed is a good start and will continue the communication steadily.

Tagged by: @daybreakrising YIPEE Tagging: I'm pretty sure everybody already did this and I'm 4 days late with a starbucks so take it from me, but in case some haven't: @dupliciti, @predvestnik?

[duunswitch]

SHIPPING INFO. Answer the following for your muse(s) so people know how shipping works on your blog.

What’s your OTP for your Muse(s)?

she's an oc so. you know. all ships are otp ships honestly lmao.

What are you willing to RP when it comes to shipping?

as long as there's communication between the writers i'm generally down for anything, unless it's a squick/trigger for me, or it's something the muses themselves aren't into. i'll generally communicate my boundaries if we come up against it in a ship

How large does the age gap have to be to make it uncomfortable?

depends on the characters and the setting for me, mainly; normal humans in a modern verse as adults it's whatever as long as everyone's consenting and no one's a minor tho it might be weird with super large age gaps and i'm not a fan of "this adult watched this kid grow up and then decided they were in love" dynamics just bc i'm not into it as a trope, but in supernatural or non human charas it's more complicated, tho still no minors

Are you selective when shipping?

i'm a chemistry shipper; i'm not selective per say, but whether or not i ship with someone depends on how well the muses click. it often only takes me a couple interactions to see how well a muse gels with another muse (on my end) and if there's any chemistry on my muse's end, as well as what sort of dynamic they're likely to have but i'll usually poke after that if there appears to be interest from your muse, or if it's something we've joked about/you've shown interest in. and obviously even if i think the chemistry's good, you don't have to agree! it's a mutual collab so if one half the ship's not into it then it's fine to say no.

How far do steamy moments have to go before they’re considered NSFW?

naked time, or once hands get under clothes, tho i will usually start readmore'ing/tagging sooner than that just for consideration of other people on the dash bc i know several of my followers check their dash while at work.

Who are other muses you ship your muse with?

i'm very easily swayed! so if there's potential for a ship and the muses gel well in interactions we've had then feel free to just kick in my door and say something, don't feel you have to wait for me to indicate interest lmao.

Does one have to ask to ship with you?

absolutely not lmao; that said i'm stupid so i may not realize that's what you want, so just say something if i haven't caught on. just be aware that if the muse herself isn't interested there's not much i can do about it bc i don't write well when i'm forcing a ship lmao. and be aware that trying to railroad me into it after i declined will result in a block

How often do you like to ship?

if i can ship it i will if there's interest; it's fun to explore the dynamic it brings to the table, but it doesn't have to be the only kind of relationship she has

Are you multiship?

yep!! all ships happen in their own contained verse even when they share the same verse tags, unless everyone involved has agreed otherwise (poly ships and the like)

Are you ship obsessed or ship more-or-less?

50/50? i enjoy dynamics of all kinds and actually i would super love some more antagonistic relationships, and platonic/familial ships are also super fun (holds up akari's mordred muse and arthurian blogs like simba as an example of antag friendships and family bonds!)

What is your favorite ship in your current fandom?

le's an oc from my original novel i will probably never publish lmao so. all of her ships are my favorite ship

Finally, how does one ship with you?

literally just ask if you think there's potential there! if the muses work then i'm down and if they don't then we can figure out other relationships to destroy them with

tagged. @diivineray tagging. whoever wants it

[evakuality]

4 years of Druck S3 - week 4

Things of note in this episode:

First, obviously we all love the end of the episode and there’s really nothing more to say about it after so many people have said so many brilliant things already.  So here, have some of my favourite shots of the end scene:

However, of course there are other things to be said, so here are some thoughts:

1. ‘Why are you religious?  It’s 2019, you’re an intelligent girl’ forcefully reminds me of ‘it’s 2016, get out of the closet’ and it hit me more than usual this time just how grossly ignorant both those statements were.  So, as much as I still think Emma should have apologised to Isak, I also think Matteo definitely needed to apologise to Amira here (like he kind of does later??? But also not really???? Unless I really did forget something).  This statement about her religion is just as shitty as the one about being in the closet and she was 100% in the right to call him out on it.  I get where he’s coming from and why, but yikes.

2.  The start of the in jokes they share with each other - followed up later this episode by Matteo saying he wants cheese toasts again sometime and of course David’s most best social media post ever (not quite this episode, but related!!):

Speaking of these in jokes, I do love that Matteo perks up so much when he gets this stuff from David.  I tend to think of him as someone who overthinks (think of the questions he asks both Jonas and Amira around being gay and how he keeps stepping into trouble because of it when he’s just trying to sort his thoughts out) and after the events at the end of episode 3, his thoughts must have been in a right whirl.  So getting this proof that David is also still in the moment, and calling back to other moments they shared, must have been so relieving for him.

3.  Nothing new here, but I do love how soft his voice goes when he says David’s name.  This guy has it bad!!!! Good thing David is about to show that he’s feeling it all as well :D

4.  Having said that, this whole bit with Sara is so uncomfortable.  Don’t get me wrong, this is super realistic, but it’s still difficult to watch.  First, the way it’s filmed is very clever but also so awkward to watch.  There is a wonderful series of videos which analyses this season which can be found here and goes into detail about how the camera works in this scene so I won’t go into more detail.  But second - Sara’s clearly trying to do silly boyfriend/girlfriend stuff with Matteo but it’s so unnatural and strained/forced.  Of course he isn’t interested in going away together once school finishes!  They’ve only been together a few weeks at most.  And the pregnancy April fool?  Sooooo weird given their relationship and lack of sexual aspects to it.  No wonder his reaction is ????? It’s hard to see her so happy though - she’s trying so hard and wants it so bad that she’s kind of convinced herself that this is something different.

[solottrpgchronicles]

1b. Have You Heard? - Dead Letter Society (Ava)

Toronto, Jan 12, 2024

Well, I finally put an end to my procrastination — I wrote a letter to that Emile, whose address was provided by the Dead Letter Society.

One ought to expect more enthusiasm on my part; after all, he might help with the pressing matter at hand, or even contribute to my primary objective, if I'm lucky.

Nevertheless, having wandered the Earth for so long, I find it difficult to feel hopeful. Though I am associated with the Dead Letter Society, it doesn't mean I automatically trust them.

Above all, I've been preoccupied with the recent events. I now believe that keeping my jewellery store at the Eaton Centre isn't the brightest idea. The seemingly arbitrary transformations of individuals usually happen in close proximity to shops; the transformation is immediately followed by a rampage, as if they're obeying clandestine instructions in search of a specific target.

One of the mutated beings struck me, last week. Fortunately, I managed to run before anyone noticed my lack of blood or the near-immediate healing of my grievous wound.

I'd rather continue my investigation, but remaining in that place poses a threat — if not to me personally, to our shared secret. It might be mere paranoia on my part, but I wonder if this could be an intricate scheme to unveil the existence of vampires. If so, what would the mastermind behind this plot stand to gain from this revelation?

Mr. Finch made an interesting observation, while we were reviewing information about the cases: all those affected had visited Algonquin Park within the past three months. Initially, I dismissed it, thinking it was common for Canadians, especially for residents of Ontario, to visit Algonquin sooner or later.

Also, what about foreigners? If something in Algonquin is triggering sudden mutations, why haven't there been reports of incidents abroad? Unless other countries are keeping them a secret, but that seems somewhat unlikely.

This whole situation doesn't make sense to me.

What's worse, Georgie from the diner has a brother who experienced a mutation. I promised her to do everything in my power to help; except, I don't even know where to start. It's incredibly frustrating.

I don't even know why I, a creature considered monstrous and essentially immortal, concern myself with the existence of other supernatural beings. Do I worry about potential competition? Or is there still a lingering trace of humanity within me, causing my heart to ache for the common people?

Maybe I'm just tired of losing everyone. I've faced a fraction of eternity in solitude already, and it's not an experience I'm eager to repeat.

Signing off,

Ava Bennett

--------------------

This is a playthrough of a solo TTRPG called "Dead Letter Society", by Rori Montford.

You can check it out on itch.io: https://montfordtales.itch.io/dead-letter-society