#was gonna post a whole rant on my side account but ultimately my point was there is just massive disrespect all around

[boundinparchment]

breaking in for a second to say that a lot of the recent stuff going on for writers in particular boils down inherently to a lack of respect.

for one another.

for ourselves.

for our hobby.

from readers who passively just assume that a like is enough. that you don’t need to or want to engage meaningfully.

social media trained you all to be passive consumers and let a computer make decisions for you.

change that shit. reblog. comment. tell people you like their stuff. saying “I liked this” is better than a single fucking like on a post that is lost in the void.

and for those who write based on trends and find themselves constantly burning out: respect yourself and the characters you enjoy more. cherish them. stop chasing so much. this hobby isn’t about notes and being popular, it’s about the love (and sometimes the hate) for canon. not everyone is gonna be the next Cassy Claire or Ali Hazlewood or BNF, just be yourself and stop saying something flopped. maybe just make something you love and embrace happiness.

for those who get into the weird nonsense about ship politics and dark content and other shit: see above about changing behavior and stop engaging with shit you don’t want to see. change your filters. block tags. like you’re capable of using tools given to you instead of harassing people off the face of the internet and being a faceless bully.

[orionsangel86]

SPN Conspiracies - Applying Logic to Chaos

Its been over 2 months now since the Supernatural finale aired. I am still so angry, hurt, and confused by it and I don’t think I will ever get closure unless someone like Andrew Dabb, or Jensen Ackles, actually opens up and gives us an explanation that makes sense.

What annoys me most right now is people trying to gaslight fans into believing that we should accept the narrative we have been given at face value: That the finale was always planned to be that way, that Destiel was never on the cards, that there was no Network interference, that the only changes made were due to covid and were minor at best.

This harmful gaslighting is FALSE.

NO ONE KNOWS THE TRUTH OF WHAT HAPPENED.

Look, I don’t agree with some of the crazier conspiracy theories. I don’t believe that there was some huge campaign among the CW Network execs to remove anything remotely gay out of homophobia. I don’t believe that the finale was changed because of some desire to make it into a Walker promo. I don’t believe that the finale was really bad on purpose in protest by Dabb for not getting to do an ending he truly wanted. I don’t believe that Dabb left us smart fans a bunch of secret messages in the finale to hint that he was on our side all along and that everything was fake.

I do, however, believe that all of these conspiracy theories have some elements in them that are plausible. At least, more plausible than the bullshit narrative mentioned above that some people are pushing in some desperate attempt to defend the Network (which imo is really strange behaviour anyway - why would anyone care about a TV network with a history of terrible behaviour?!?)

We have facts, based on information provided before the covid lockdown, which for some reason, people like Misha have since backpeddled on. So let me try to outline some of the information that makes no sense.

Below the cut I go on a deep dive into the conspiracies and statements I have heard about the SPN finale and try to make some sense of this whole fucked up situation. It gets long.

1. “Cas was never gonna be in the finale”.

False: We have many fan accounts of Misha confirming that he was filming the finale. We have video evidence of Misha confirming he was going back to film the finale after the lockdown. We have confirmation from fans in Misha M&Gs from March that he had about 5 days of filming left.

We also had fan accounts of discussions with Alex Calvert (I think) where he confirmed the final shot of the final episode was all four of them though I would LOVE if someone can find a source for this.

2. Okay, Misha was gonna be in the finale, but only as Jimmy Novak

False: I heavily side eyed Misha when he said this. But I think I can come up with a plausible explanation for it. Per above, Misha was supposed to film for 5 days. This does not align with the half a day he described of filming as Jimmy Novak. My own belief is that after Cas was cut from the finale (for whatever reason we don’t know) someone (probably Jensen Ackles) put up a fight and complained that Misha should be there for the final episode. The writers probably tried to come up with a way to bring Misha back without having to deal with Cas, and pitched the idea of Jimmy Novak being in Heaven. Misha, obviously annoyed about this, turned this stupid pitch down.

3. Destiel was never a thing, never planned, never part of Dabb’s ending. Bobo and Misha pushing the confession was the part of the season that was Wrong.

False: We have a SPN writer on record saying that Castiel’s confession was the first thing written for Season 15 when the writers returned to the writers room. If it wasn’t planned, why was it the first thing written, why does it align so well with the rest of season 15? Look I know some people either a. hate destiel and refuse to see it even if it slaps them in the face, or b. have major heteronormative goggles on, or c. are just homophobes in denial, but 15x18 fits in perfectly with the narrative of season 15. Everything Cas says, everything that happened in that scene was so in character it just works. It fit. If you just rewatch the season whilst applying some critical thinking skills and pay attention to the narrative and character arcs, trust me, the confession fits in with pretty much every other plot point, and character story in the season.

Also: We have known for a while that the network did market research into Destiel, wanting to know if it would go down well or not. They were well aware of its popularity and considering it. Where would this have come from if not pitched by the showrunner? Dabb must have at least been considering it. If you take all of Dabb era into consideration, starting with mid season 11, all the way through the season 12 build up, season 13 grief arc, and then Bobo’s Destiel break up arc in late season 14, early season 15, it is clear that there was some toing and froing on the issue of Destiel, but ultimately, I still believe that Dabb was on board. He wrote 13x01 for christs sake. No way he wasn’t taking it seriously.

 4. It’s always been about the brothers. The finale just stays true to what Supernatural is all about.

*rubs temples* Fundamentally FALSE: The show has time and again reasserted the message of “Family don’t end with blood”, as well as the messages of AKF and YANA. Sam and Dean may be at the heart of the show, but a heart can’t exist without a body to support it. Without bones, and lungs, and blood, and muscles, and a BRAIN. The finale abandons the shows core messages. It forces the characters back into their season 1 characterisations and the whole thing becomes hollow and souless. But I’m not here to complain, I’m here to lay down the facts. Dean’s heaven was supposed to be surrounded by loved ones right? We know OG Charlie Bradbury was gonna be in his Heaven, we also know CAS was gonna be in there. So this idea that the finale as it currently stands was how it was meant to be is wrong. Dean was supposed to die and reunite with his found family and loved ones. This alone would have been a far better ending than the one given. Do I think this was solely a covid issue? Fuck no.

The randoms that WERE in the finale are proof alone that they could have got people in and quarantined. We also have several actors on record saying that they WOULD have quarantined for the finale had they been asked to return but they WEREN’T.

Lies have been told. Samantha Ferris and Chad Limberg have confirmed that we have been lied to about the original plans for the finale.

This alone is proof enough that there is more plausibility in some of the conspiracy theories than any bullshit narrative some people are pushing in defence of the barbaric mess of a finale we were given.

So lets address some of the conspiracy theories now:

Conspiracy No.1: The CW Network reviewed Supernatural during the covid break, and due to homophobia, refused any Destiel arc that wasn’t already filmed, shut down any potential reciprocation from Dean, and forced Dabb to change his finale.

I don’t think this is entirely what happened. But I do think it is very strange how there is a such a huge disconnect particularly in Dean’s characterisations between what had come before the lockdown, and what came after. The one fact we have here, and please someone provide a source if you can find it because I know there is one, the finale script was still going through changes up to only 2 weeks before it was filmed. We know that there was some weird editing in 15x18 (which was still in post and uncompleted before lockdown) and we know from Jensen’s own mouth that there was more to the confession scene on Dean’s side that was cut. We also know that this isn’t the first time that Destiel heavy moments have been changed in post - the prayer scene is another big scene that went through a lot of changes and Bobo fought to have his script play out the way he wanted it.

There are certain things that in my own opinions, are basically true of SPN which I have put together from years of keeping one eye on the writers room, the network, and all the various comments made. My opinion is this:

The writers room has always been split on Destiel. Some writers heavily supported making it canon, others did not care, or were against it.

The Network considered it over the course of several years, did market research, green lit it, then changed their minds, possibly several times over the course of Dabb’s era. Destiel was pitched to the Network early in Dabb era.

The crew on set were also split. Some people heavily supported it, and worked to assist the reading, whereas others did not care/did not support it. The same can be said for the editing room.

Bob Singer supported the subtextual homoeroticism, but never supported bringing it into text (this is an opinion, but I think it aligns with everything we know about him.) IMO Bob Singer also supported subtextual homoeroticism between Sam and Dean - the guy is gross is what I’m saying. He isn’t exactly a progressive person.

Fun fact - a while back our old enemy Sera Gamble went on a Twitter rant about writers rooms and the ways a script goes through changes. I don’t think this was in relation to the SPN finale wank but she basically inadvertantly confirmed that the Network can step in and make sweeping changes to a script if they want to and if they decide they don’t like the direction of a story. Sera Gamble confirmed this as a fact.

Now. I’m not saying that this is what the CW did with Destiel. I just think its very strange how pre lockdown, the last thing filmed is a heartfelt homosexual declaration of love between Dean and Cas, and we have a finale script that Misha had not seen, but knew that he was meant to film as Castiel for 5 days (5 days on set is over half of an episode as far as I know). Then all of a sudden, Covid happens, and Cas is cut from the finale completely, a desperate attempt to bring Misha back only as Jimmy Novak takes place, which Misha rightly refuses, leading to a finale which makes zero sense narratively and appears in every way completely and utterly butchered.

The only explanation provided by anyone involved is that Covid meant changes had to happen - but that covid didn’t change the actual story at all.

But this makes no sense because we know that Cas was cut from the finale. This is FACT. Do not let anyone gaslight you into thinking otherwise. Misha was preparing to quaranting to return to set as Cas post Covid, so whatever happened to cut Cas from the finale, it wasn’t Covid.

I’m gonna have to Occum’s Razor this and say that the most logical explanation here is the one that is most likely true. Someone got cold feet with the Destiel story, and to prevent any possible interpretation that included Dean reciprocating, any hints of Destiel were removed from the finale script, including Castiel’s whole appearance.

Now, this isn’t me saying I think that Dabb’s original finale was full of Destiel love confessions and a homosexual kiss or whatever, but I am asking you all to really think about it and ask yourselves WHY Cas would have been totally cut from an episode he was supposed to be in at LEAST half of? 

We will probably never know the real reason Cas was cut, but he WAS cut. I’m not saying it was all homophobia, but some fuckery went down.

Conspiracy No. 2: The CW Network changed the finale to make it into a Walker promo because they only cared about raising up Jared and not Jensen and Misha as they were losing them anyway.

I don’t agree with this in terms of the finale being butchered solely to make it into a Walker promo. There are however moments in the finale that are clearly supposed to be Walker Easter Eggs and added to excite fans of Jared/Sam in particular such as Sam’s gratuitous and unnecessary topless scene, as well as the call on the “case in Austin”.

I will take this moment to say something pretty damn controversial though.

*Deep breath*

The fact is, Dean Winchester has been the “lead” character of Supernatural’s narrative for years now, with Sam often being sidelined and not given great storylines himself. Even in Season 15, right up until the finale, I myself felt bad for Sam sometimes because so much of this show has become all about Dean. Jensen Ackles is clearly the better actor when it comes to emotional story arcs, so the emotional heart of the story has most often leant on him.

So you can understand my confusion, when this is turned on its head in the final episode, to make Sam carry all the emotional weight, and have the most lines/screentime, and story resolution (even if his story resolution was just as crappy as Dean’s).

If we pretend that Destiel is not a thing, and ignore Cas’s confession, the story change in the finale from Dean focus to Sam focus is still rather suspicious. Again, I’m not saying I completely approve of or agree to the conspiracy theory that Walker influenced the butchering of the script, but I can believe that perhaps a note went down from the CW to someone like Bob Singer, to emphasise Sam/Jared more than they perhaps would normally, because the CW wanted to shine the spotlight on Jared to raise excitement for Walker.

I can also believe this note might have said something like “we wanna cater to fans of Sam/Jared the most - don’t do anything to piss them off.” but now I am getting into my own conspiracy theories so by all means dismiss this as me being bitter.

Conspiracy No.3: Dabb purposely made it bad, as a secret message to Destiel fans that he had been silenced, by layering meta clues into the episode that he knew fans would notice.

I doubt this one is true. Though some of the theories are quite compelling. The old vampire silent movie theory for instance starts off quite well, but loses me the moment it brings up Urban Dictionary slang.

Sometimes I have just had to accept that Supernatural is a bad show that is sometimes accidentally a masterpiece. However, some writers really did go That Deep with their stories - anything by Ben Edlund or Steve Yockey for instance, their episodes are meta masterpieces with a hundred different layers of beautiful subtextual storytelling and are a joy to analyse. Bobo Berens has certainly done some A+++ work especially now we KNOW that he was working hard all this time to bring Destiel to canon text (so any analysis of Destiel in the subtext in his episodes is very accurate). There have been many other key elements analysed over the years which have been confirmed true. Cas’s death in Season 12, Dean’s time as a demon in season 10, Season 11 ending in unity of dark and light, these were all plot points predicted by meta writers just by analysing the narrative. Sometimes the writers really have been very smart and they do add things to the show to aid us in our meta.

Richard Speight Jr for instance, confirmed that SPN has a visual library that the production team use to give clues and hints in the narrative. Pizza, for example, always means a lie has been told. Whenever Pizza is being eaten or even just mentioned on screen, there is dishonesty in that particular moment.

The beers also have a very specific message and the one thing I can’t let go about the finale, was that Dean was drinking El Sol beer. The beer his dad gave him, that was terrible.

El Sol has been used in the show to indicate something being wrong, a fake reality, or another lie, for the longest time. It is the beer of deception.

The fact that in the final episode of this entire show, Dean is in Heaven, supposedly at peace, and then he gets handed an El Sol beer to drink? Thats a HUGE red flag for any meta writer watching who can read SPNs visual library.

If they had given him the Margiekugel beer of family then it would make sense. Dean is in Heaven, with Bobby, his family, at peace. Margiekugel should have been the beer of choice. But nope. El Sol. Something is wrong.

I don’t know if it was Dabb, or Singer, or some disgruntled ADs and crew members who added these elements into the finale, but their very presence confirms some message of Wrongness.

I could go into a huge rant about Vampire Mimes not making sense and the very glaringly obvious symbolism of cutting out peoples tongues too, but that is high school level film analysis. It’s obvious. It means to silence someone. There is validity in interpreting this as Dabb saying he was silenced. I don’t know how true it is, but i can’t 100% dismiss it, because as I said, this is high school analysis levels of obvious subtextual storytelling.

So in summary, whilst I don’t think that Dabb intentionally went out of his way to sabotage his own script, and leave a breadtrail of secret messages for savvy fans to put together to confirm that he was silenced by an evil network into not getting what he wanted... I do think that there is validity in questioning these odd choices for the finale. Cutting out tongues? Vampire Mimes? El Sol beer?

The evidence is somewhat compelling is all I’m saying. I don’t believe the full conspiracy theories, but as I have said many times before, some fuckery went down.

So What Do I Believe?

That some fuckery went down and whatever company line they are pushing is bullshit.

I believe that the original script included Cas (since thats fact). I believe that the original script probably always had Dean dying on a vampire hunt (due to Jensen’s issues with it and in particular, his sarcastic comments about vampires in the past year or so which in hindsight are hilarious and prove he never really came to terms with Dean’s idiotic death). I believe Dabb’s original script was some less crappy version of what we got, which potentially included showing Jack rescuing Cas from the Empty and resolving the outstanding Empty plot points (potentially this was actually a 15x19 plot since Mark P commented that his final scenes were supposed to be with Jack and Cas), had Cas reunite with Dean in Heaven and had them have a discussion about Cas’s confession. I believe that there was probably a lot of back and forth over how to handle that with some people wanting Dean to obviously reciprocate and others believing they should keep it ambiguous. I believe that Dean and Cas would have reunited with Charlie Bradbury, and Bobby Singer, and possibly others (though if this was the case it must have been very early on since no one ever looped in Sam Ferris, Chad Linberg or any other Roadhouse people).

I believe that Sam’s ending probably didn’t change much, but I do feel that initially they were planning on him ending up with Eileen, because it is the only thing that narratively makes sense. Cutting Eileen and giving him a blurry wife is something I won’t ever understand and Jared’s bullshit explanations are quite clearly pulled out of his ass to appease bronly types. I believe the reunion on the bridge would have included Cas and Jack, with a final shot of all four of them together, at peace (as this aligns with Alex’s comments from around a year or so ago that the final shot was all four of them). (I also am not sure it was always supposed to be on a bridge since the foreshadowing in an earlier episode showed Dean, Cas and Sam all in the Roadhouse together).

I believe that script went through countless changes and redrafts, and not even production people or the types that some fandom people claim as their “sources” would even have seen those early scripts, since even Misha never saw it. I believe that these rumours of Dabb never having Cas in his finale and ignoring all Destiel elements likely come from people who only saw later versions, weren’t party to network discussions and felt bitter about the final scripts they did see (being the crappy butchered one that was ultimately filmed). Those “sources” are now spreading rumours to discredit Dabb.

I obviously believe Dabb is a weak ass pushover who either didn’t care enough to fight back, or gave up since he’s been stuck with fucking Bob Singer on his back for years, but I will NEVER believe he didn’t care about the DeanCas love story, because he has been one of the few writers who has championed for it for years. You can’t look back at Dabb’s episodes in earlier seasons and claim he didn’t care. Dabb was a writer whose creative ideas were beaten out of him by an unforgiving Network only concerned about where their future money was coming from. Do I think he gave up too easily? Yes. But I also have one other huge reason for not believing the bullshit about Dabb being this anti-Destiel villain.

Bobo. Because if Bobo truly believed Dabb was gonna fuck that up at the end, I don’t think he would have given us Cas’s love confession to begin with. If he had known it was gonna end like that, I think he would have reconsidered, because had Cas not confessed his love, I don’t think he would have been cut from the finale. Bobo - a gay man, would not have wanted such a horrible message for queer fans being put across in the show he worked so hard on. He started writing that confession scene the day they returned to the writers room. Dabb would have been there, would have seen what he was writing, probably discussed it with him, after all, other episodes were written with the confession in mind. No way was Dabb planning to fuck up the ending knowing what Bobo was giving us. Nope.

Something went very wrong over lockdown. Someone, somewhere up the chain of power caught wind of the confession scene in 15x18, realised that it demanded a resolution which would make Dean Winchester, their protagonist, queer, and pulled the plug. I believe this did not come from a place of homophobia, but of bad business sense.

The CW is constantly trying to win the approval and attention of the one demo group that they seem to fail at getting the most: young straight men. Supernatural was one of their only remaining shows that appeals to young straight men, and Dean Winchester is more often than not the fave character of those young straight men who project onto him. Making Dean Winchester, established Han Solo of Supernatural, queer and in love with his best friend in the finale would have come across as a betrayal to those young straight men. The CW probably feared they would lose that demo group for good, and with a show like Walker starting soon with Jared at the helm, they couldn’t take the risk.

Hence there was probably a whole bunch of back and forth script redrafts with the Network, with Dabb and Singer fighting to make a finale that would appeal to everyone. There was most likely no way that they could bring Cas back without addressing what had already been filmed, because any resolution of that plot would either a. make Dean queer, or b. address it awkwardly by having Dean reject Cas (this storyline would probably have been slammed by critics worse than the finale because it meant addressing it. It might have got the attention of LGBTQ activist groups and caused a bigger shitstorm than what we got). The best option was therefore C. Bury it and Cas, pretend it never happened. Never address it again and distract Dean with other things. Hope that Destiel fans will accept no answer from Dean as ambiguous enough to imagine a future reunion rather than shutting it down with a rejection, and still keep hold of the blissfully ignorant heteronormative straight boys so they can carry over to Walker when it starts.

I also believe (controversially probably) that there was concern that any resolution of Dean and Cas would have overshadowed network darling Jared Padalecki. If Dean and Cas had come together in the finale, with a very clearly textual homosexual reunion, then that would have been all anyone talked about. The reviewers, the critics, the audience, everyone. It would have been nothing but Dean and Cas (and look, if they did think this, they were right, Destiel trending over the US ELECTION.)

So what is the network to do, when they are losing the two stars who would get the most attention from this storyline? The one star they were holding on to and getting his own show, relegated to third place in the finale of the show where he was first on the call sheet? Nope. That’s pretty unacceptable. Even without Walker I can imagine people at all levels side eyeing the Destiel thing over the years. This IS a show about two brothers, and their relationship should be the core relationship, we can’t have one brother pushed aside in the finale to make way for a queer relationship that will get all the attention instead. It was never gonna get approved for this reason ALONE.

At the end of the day, if I look at it from a business perspective, it makes far more sense that the CW shut down Destiel, rather than “oh Dabb never cared and ruined it because he’s an idiot.” The writers cared, and had built on that story over years. But their mistake was leaving any Destiel resolution to the finale. If they had instead gone and got Dean and Cas together in early season 15, then they could have ended it in a way that satisfied everyone. Destiel wouldn’t have threatened pulling focus away from Sam and Dean, and the show could have gone out on a high.

When I lay out all the conspiracy theories, and line them up next to the cold hard facts, the conspiracy theories in some way or another, make more sense. To believe the company line, the narrative we have been fed, is to ignore your own eyes, ears, and memories pre March 2020.

All I’m asking people to do is take a look at the show, the narrative presented in the show, and the information presented above. I’m not telling you to believe what I’ve written here, half of which is just my own opinion. I’m asking you to ask yourselves if it makes sense to you. Because it sure as hell doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t think I’ll ever be satisfied.

[ben-wisehart]

1/? Thank you so much for your detailed and fast meta-response! You’re truly amazing and gave me more answers than I expected. The thing I’m getting at is, MXTX presumably writes her ships the way that they’re supposed to be the one and only for each other. She even makes them stay virgins till they can be with their partners. And while I absolutely do believe in making soulmates I also believe that there are people who are much more compatible than others.

Following on from this. More Bingqiu ramblings under the cut

2/? Hualian and Wangxian are very compatible personality-wise and their whole relationship isn’t based only on acts of kindness. Or take Mo Ran. CWN reminds him of a past kindness and his mother so he chooses him as his Shizun. That choice is Mo Ran’s. One part why he likes him is that he’s reminded of a kind home but the other is that he genuinely likes and appreciates his personality. You won’t get this with other people or Shizuns he migh have otherwise chosen.

3/? The same goes for Wangxian and Hualian—they see their partner and appreciate what they see. You say that LWJ might fall in love with another troublemaker but that’s some personal characteristics he might find attractive personally but in comparison LBH seems just like a blind man desperately reaching for any kindness from a father figure. That’s what I don’t like about this ship. And it hurts me because I actually like it so much. Yeah, maybe I am a hopeless romantic but look

4/? Wangxian got infatuated with eo because of their personal qualities, remained by eo’s side because of their choices and stayed together because of their compatibility and appreciation for eo. Same goes for Ranwan. With Bingqiu if you think about it, LBH only saw hero worship, which turned into desperate yearning for love from said father figure but you could literally replace SQQ with whomever else no matter what personality or how (in)compatible & I guess that’s why I find this frustrating.

5/? I genuinely think that you couldn’t just replace one partner from other aforementioned ships and they’d just another partner the same way. From SQQ’s part the choice to stay by LBH’s side is because he genuinely sees who LBH is but LBH doesn’t see him, not because of identity reveal but because he just needs someone-anyone to cling onto and I find that sad, mainly for SQQ. It’s something like a puppy

7/? 7/? You take it home and give it shelter and it loves you unconditionally and would love anyone else who’d do the same for it. And I think that in any relationship the most important part is that: "I see you and I appreciate you," which Bingqiu one-sidedly lacks.

8/END Sorry about my terribly long rant and thank you for letting me air my grievances in your askbox. Idk if you’re on twitter as well but ever since my friend introduced me to your meta and fics I come and check out if you’ve posted something new from time to time as I don’t have an account here. So thanks for being awesome!

9/REAL END I forgot to say thank you for your reddit meta links, I'll look forward to checking them out 😊!

Lmao anon you’re killing me, I read these asks at like half past midnight when I was unable to sleep from a caffeine high, spent the next half hour thinking about it and then finally took out my laptop again to start writing a reply at 1am

Okay, so. I don’t know that there’s gonna be some...singular thing I can point out that will make you suddenly like Bingqiu as much as the other ships you’ve mentioned? We all have our preferences and that’s fine. But I also don’t think that’s what you’re asking me to do anyway, so I’m just gonna reply with my thoughts.

I think I understand where you’re coming from a bit better now, and I do understand how MXTX writes relationships in the “one true love” sense. To be honest, I think she probably wouldn’t agree with me saying that her other MLs could just as easily have fallen in love with other people, but ultimately, I disagree with the notion that there is one person out there who is the “right” person for us to be with. I don’t want to rehash any point I’ve already made, so I’ll leave it at that. I don’t think you’re wrong, however, in saying that of course some people can be more suited for us than others.

I think the reason Bingqiu suffers more from this perception you’ve mentioned, that SQQ could be interchangeable with another person without really changing Binghe’s dynamic on his end, is probably due to a couple of factors. Firstly, even though all three MXTX pairings meet when at least one of them is a child, Binghe is unique in that he was both a child and was practically raised by SQQ during his formative years. (The whole parental dynamic and age gap is something for another essay I don’t feel like writing, so I’ll just leave it at that.) Binghe is kind of fucked up due to his trauma and has pretty much built his entire identity around loving Shen Qingqiu. Everything he does in this novel, he does because of him in one way or another. We can argue about the fact that it’s unhealthy but it is what it is.

Secondly, Scum Villain is a shorter novel. It’s also MXTX’s first novel, and it’s largely a parody of danmei, transmigration and stallion novels. MDZS, TGCF and 2HA have a lot of conflict in them that isn’t directly related to the main couple, whereas in Scum Villain, almost all the conflict is specifically about SQQ and LBH in some way. It has fewer chapters and the characters have less room to breathe and develop, I think. Thirdly, but also following on from this, SQQ and LBH have an outside force meddling with their relationship at every turn. SQQ isn’t perfect by any means, but I maintain that he is at his core a good person who just wants a comfortable life for himself and Binghe. However, due to factors outside his control, he’s literally being held at a proverbial gunpoint to act a certain way. Even with the OOC lock disabled, he can’t be his truest, authentic self when his survival is contingent on pleasing the System. Of course he works around it when he can, but like, when he reunites with Binghe after the Abyss, he’s literally presented with a multiple choice question on how he should answer Binghe’s question about regrets! He holds onto Binghe’s jade token for years not because he’s a sociopath that likes withholding a precious possession, but because he knows it might literally save his life if he saves it for the right moment. He’s at the mercy of the System and could get killed or tortured at any moment.

So all of this is to say that Luo Binghe doesn’t really seem to have much of a personality outside of loving Shen Qingqiu, and Shen Qingqiu has an incredibly hard time letting his personality shine through the limitations that are placed on him. Stuff for them to work out post-canon, etc. etc. etc.

But even so…it’s not like they have no personality. To use my own example that you mentioned in your ask, why is Wei Wuxian being a troublemaker a personality trait that his husband can be attracted to, but Shen Qingqiu being kind isn’t? I kind of glossed over the fact that you called kindness interchangeable in my first reply, but I strongly disagree with that sentiment. There are a million ways to be kind. Luo Binghe loves Shen Qingqiu in a way that was unfortunately influenced by his trauma and the way the System interfered in their lives, but the things he loves about him are his own. Two people can be kind, but it’s not a universal human trait. Shen Qingqiu is kind, and he’s also intelligent and bashful and a bit ridiculous. And Luo Binghe knows all of this. He is twenty-five at the end of the novel; he’s got some pretty messed up ideas about ideal relationships, but I still think we need to give him more credit than assuming he’s not capable of recognising that SQQ is a complex person with multiple personality traits. It might have started out as hero worship, but he gets to see plenty of SQQ’s true self throughout the novel even in spite of all the limitations imposed by the System. If Shen Jiu had shared all these traits, Luo Binghe might have loved him instead, but you could say that about any character in any relationship at all. If a different reader had transmigrated in SY’s place, I’m not convinced that they would have made the same choices Shen Yuan did. There are plenty of readers that would have been perfectly kind to Binghe but wouldn’t have thought to give him a new cultivation manual so he could improve his cultivation techniques in time for the Endless Abyss. There are plenty of readers that would have been perfectly kind to Binghe, but knowing he would be fine wouldn’t have thrown themselves in front of poison for him or taken a hit for him in the dream world. SQQ readily admits that doing things like this was unnecessary, but SQQ is the sort of person that when you give him a split second to make a decision, he’ll put Binghe’s safety first. Always. Even knowing that Binghe was never in any real danger. These are not the actions of a person who is only motivated by their own survival, no matter what SQQ tries to tell the audience. That’s kindness, and it’s a rare quality that shouldn’t be discounted on the basis that if someone else had done it the same way, it would have had the same effect on Binghe’s affections. You could say that about any personality trait under the sun. Maybe Binghe would have loved someone else just as badly if they’d done all this for him, but we’ll never know, because they didn’t, and Shen Qingqiu is the one Binghe loves. He has no interest in changing that. The puppy doesn’t care about all the other possibilities, and neither does the one who took it in. Their relationship is no less special for it.

Okay I’ve already fucked up my sleep schedule for the entire weekend so I’m gonna call it here. I am on twitter though! My handle is bobby_speeds. Thanks again for your questions!!

[cblgblog]

Sorry I’m advance but one of my other favorite accounts just reblogged a Tony scene and people are talking about Civil War and how it made them Stan Tony, and how when they watch that movie they hate team cap👀 Then someone was all about how he was sleep deprived and how much pressure he was under and couldn’t understand how people didn’t like Tony because. Someone literally said that when someone says they don’t like Tony in Civil War they say “did you watch the same movie as me.” I’m baffled. Oddly enough someone else said, “he just wants to help everyone.” Sorry for the rant but I think people forget about what the accords are and what it would mean for people. Side note, I hope you’re having a great day/night 😀

No sorry needed!

I feel you man, I do. Honestly, I’ve unfollowed people based on similar posts when I was in especially Done moods, so.

Look on the one hand, the movie would’ve been a narrative failure if everyone was in favor of one side or the other, right? The whole point of the damn thing—besides giving the Mouse overlords more money—was to spark discussion, debate. Which, yeah, we’ll call that the tame description for what actually happened. But just, the thing was meant to split the fanbase so in that regard…winning? Thanks, I guess?

Film is also very obviously subjective, different strokes for different folks, so yeah, ten people can watch a movie and none of them are gonna see the exact same film. Let’s try to remember that this is, in theory anyway, a good thing. I just read a professional film review yesterday where I had the same reaction. What film were you watching, dude? Incidentally his reviewing partner said the same thing.

So honestly, no, they weren’t watching the same film as you or I or anyone else, because everyone brings their own biases and experiences and knowledge and interests into a thing, and that’s always going to flavor how it’s viewed. Again, let’s try to remember that this is good. In theory. Heavy on the theory.

That out of the way? Let’s get into Tony specifically so his uber stans can find this and scream at me on anon as though I just shot RDJ with a nuke.

Oh yeah, he was stressed. Oh, he was sleep deprived. Yeah, I’ve heard that. And that it’s Pepper’s fault, if she hadn’t left the poor baby, if she was there to rein him in, he’d be fine dammit, leave the baby alone!

Here’s the thing. You know who gets a pass on their shit behavior when they’re upset or tired? Actual babies. Actual babies and toddlers, and children, up to a point. Because they actually cannot always help themselves. Their bodies and brains are different, they have not learned better.

When you’re a 50-year-old man who’s supposedly the world’s bestest superhero, who wants, wants to be in charge of protecting the whole world? You need a little more self-control than that. The sleep deprived excuse works if you snap at someone before you’ve had your coffee, not for this. Roseanne Barr didn’t get to blame Ambien for her racism, Tony doesn’t get to handwave CW away because oops, I was tired.

Really? You’re a superhero, dude. Most of your teammates are tired too, that’s part of the gig. If you crash and burn this badly without your afternoon nap, fucking hang up the armor and go back to your billionaire playboy lifestyle.

Speaking of that, sure, right. It’s Pepper’s fault because she left him. Put aside the argument on whether that was justified or not (cough, it was and she should’ve stayed away even though they are adorable together). It’s not Pepper’s job to keep Tony sane. It’s not any partner’s job to do that for anyone. If she wants out, she has a right to that, without Tony going off the rails and blaming it on her. Seriously, he says part of the reason he backed the Accords was to “split the difference” with Pepper.

Dude. You were an asshole and you lost your girl. You destroyed all your suits, turned an emotional and mental corner in IM 3…and then relapsed 4 minutes later I guess because Whedon. Either way, Tony admits himself that he does not want to stop. So instead of doing that, or finding another partner who can accept that, you back an unjust international law that pits you against your team, your supposed friends? Go to therapy, have a pint of ice cream, cry into your pillow, send her more of those strawberries you sent her in IM 2 that she’s allergic to. You don’t go trying to change international law in ways that could ultimately affect millions of people because your girl left you.

Honestly—and thank God they didn’t do this but—the only way the Pepper excuse works in excusing his behavior in any way is if she’d died. Or been severely injured like Happy in IM 3. Still wouldn’t be okay, but, like Quill messing up their chance to stop Thanos because Gamora died, it would’ve been more understandable. Understandable, not excusable, and the way the MCU treats their women as manpain fodder, we’re probably legit lucky we didn’t get this.

As for him wanting to help everyone. He does in fact want that, I think. The problem is that his need to feel like he’s doing that is stronger than his rational mind, or his want to actually help in a constructive way.

Tony is too smart. He’s dumb as hell in many instances, mostly involving people and relationships, but he’s also too smart, and he’s been told for too long that he’s smart, and he’s bought into it. Ultron. Suit of armor around the world, protects the world, no more alien threats. It’s a simple concept on paper that fails in execution. So there are people with dangerous powers. Okay, we’ll make a set of laws to keep them from being dangerous, problem solved. But again, it isn’t.

Tony is not used to problems he cannot solve. He’s a genius, right? He can fix anything. He should be able to fix anything. That’s how he feels. But not everything is zeros and ones and circuits, things that can be fixed mechanically like his armors can. The people he wants to protect are not built that way. But he needs to feel like he’s doing something, because he’s terrified of what happens to the world if he doesn’t. So he creates these simple solutions to complex problems. The suit of armor, the Accords. They sound good in theory, but the problems they’re trying to solve are bigger than they are. And Tony, way back in IM 1, he sat back for years, clueless that his weapons were being used for bad things. He says it to Cap in CW. When he found out what his weapons were being used for, he went in and stopped it. Whether or not he should’ve known that already is a separate issue here. The point here is that when he found out, too late or not, he went in and did something about it.

Tony needs to do something about it. Again, go back to Cap in AoU, Tony’s nightmare sequence. Steve asks Tony why he didn’t save them. Tony’s ultimate nightmare is that he sits back and does nothing, and his inaction causes everyone to die. Which is where you get Ultron. Something he came up with because of what he saw in space in Avengers 1, then doubled down on in AoU. It’s where you get the Accords. Oops, he caused someone to die, he killed Charles Spencer. Must do something about that right now so it doesn’t happen again, and he won’t have to feel this guilt. He should be collaborating with others to come up with solutions (no Bruce in AoU doesn’t count because Bruce was dumb there), or at the very least, taking more time to think through the repercussions of the things he puts out there. But he doesn’t, because he’s got his savior complex that tells him that he alone can and must fix this, and because he’s too dumb to realize how not-smart he is in certain areas.

“We need to be put in check. Whatever form that takes, I’m game.”

Isn’t that what he says in CW, or something very close to it? Whatever form that takes. That’s the issue, right there, whatever form that takes. Realistically, yes, there should be laws regarding people with powers, the same way there are special laws pertaining to people who carry guns, or people who are licensed to fly planes. You have a thing/can do a thing that not everyone else does, so there are regulations pertaining to that thing. Laws change with the times, they always have. Some new technology comes up, eventually there will be laws that regulate it. As there should be, honestly. The issue with the Accords, Steve’s issue with the Accords, was not the basic idea. He says as much. He says that it could work, but there would have to be safeguards. Safeguards that are not in the Accords that Tony wants him to sign.

It's not a matter of oh, fuck the law, there should be no law governing these people, they’re above it. The problem is that the law as it’s presented here is unjust. There’s what, a month between Lagos and Ross coming by to tell them about the Accords? A month is not enough time to properly analyze such a big issue, Especially when you’re reacting out of fear, which is what happened with Lagos. People died because of an Enhanced person, an Avenger, in this case. Lawmakers don’t want that to happen again, they especially don’t want the political shit storm that comes with it. Damn, we look like we were asleep at the switch here, not having anything to throw at this problem earlier. Quick, let’s throw together this thing so no one can say we’re not addressing the problem.

Patriot Act of 2001, anyone? 9/11 happened, the public were rightfully terrified, the US said oh man, these are unprecedented circumstances, we’ve never had this before. Don’t worry though, we’re on this, we’re protecting you. The reality being that that bill simply gave the government too much power, most of it being used against people who were not actually threats, and it’s debatable, to say the very least, whether or not that law helped more than it hurt.

No law is perfect. No law ever will be. It’s not possible. We still have to strive for perfection though, have to aim there so that the laws we get are as close to fair as possible. Tony’s a big deal. If not for his “whatever form that takes” attitude, he might’ve been able to use his influence to pressure lawmakers into coming up with a fairer bill. Hey, I’m me, the public loves me, I will endorse this bill publicly and work on getting the rest of the team to sign, but you need to change this and this and this first, or no deal. Instead, he took the easy way out, the quickest, easiest way for him to feel like he’s atoned for his sins without actually doing anything. Whatever form that takes.

Tony’s not wrong because he backs the creation of a law that addresses these things. He’s wrong because he says himself that he does not care what that law does, specifically, so long as it exists. He’s wrong because he violates said law upteen times during the movie, while preaching to team Cap about what assholes they are for not backing it. He’s wrong because he cares more about feeling as though he’s tackled a problem than he does about taking the time to make sure that the thing he’s proposing is actually a good idea. He’s wrong because of what he does with Bucky, though that’s honestly a separate issue, for the purposes of this discussion.

Anyway, that was longer than I ever wanted it to be. Damn. Next time you see a comment about CW being the reason people stan Tony, just remember there are other people out there who stopped stanning Tony because of that movie. Everyone’s entitled to see a piece of media however they see it, and although the Tony stans are often the loudest, there are plenty of like-minded people out there who share your take on events. Block who you need to, unfollow who you need to, blacklist what you need to, and don’t let them get you down.

Hang in there, and have an awesome day :)

[the-13th-rose]

Why I'm "neutral" on the Great Shipping Debate

(LONG ASF and kinda disorganized because I wrote it at 2 am)

Do whatever you want with this post. Scroll past without reading, reblog it, get mad at me over it, unfollow, block, whatever. I don’t care. Just understand that I’m not required to entertain your counterpoints just as you’re not required to entertain mine.

I don't put myself on either side of the great shipping debate because I just don't think it matters as much as people on both sides think it does. And also because I've seen both sides take their respective arguments to absurd degrees. You've got "antis" claiming a relationship between a 30-year-old and a 40-year-old is pedophilia, and on the other hand, you've got "proshippers" acting like they're being oppressed when people talk about what makes them uncomfortable. There's reasonable people on both sides and good points on both sides but I'd never fully ally myself with either because of the nutcases that for the most part aren't disowned by the rest of their groups.

I honestly think writing callout posts and reporting people who create skeevy fictional content is like crying wolf, it takes resources, time, and energy away from the search for the people who produce and consume the Real Deal (which I will always believe is at least a thousand times worse to create or consume than any fictional imitation of it)

YET. People who create and/or consume fictional skeevy content should not be exempt from criticism. No one ever truly should be, that's how you get things like echo chambers and, I dunno, dictatorships. I don't think telling someone to kill themselves is acceptable behavior, but I have to wonder why people who enjoy content others find highly triggering are often so thin-skinned. You'd think they'd be able to handle more criticism than the average internet-user, and maybe at one point this was the case, but recently it seems like these people can't even handle the thought of someone being made uncomfortable by their work. I feel like if you're going to make that sort of thing, and make it your whole online personality, you ought to be willing to deal with the fallout. I am, as a writer who doesn't even dabble in most dark subject matter beyond the standard death and injury seen in vanilla content, prepared to deal with the potential fallout of people Not Liking That, so considering you're prepared to write things that will upset far more people, why aren't you?

Ultimately I hate internet conflict these days, so I don't engage in debate with these people and I don't bust into their inboxes to tell them they offended me, because frankly I don't think they care (and honestly I don't really think they HAVE to), and I'm never in the mood to deal with the argument that would almost definitely ensue. But I do find myself going "that's weird as hell bro" before blocking. Personally, I think if you want to tell these people they're weird, or speak about it on your own blog with no intent to actually reach them, you're not a terrible person. You're not a mean nasty "anti" for being uncomfortable in your own space. And frankly I don't think these people need protection in the same way that actual marginalized people do. Sorry, but being into loli girls doesn't make you a marginalized person. If you want to do that sort of thing, fine I guess, but don't act like the poor helpless victim when people feel uncomfortable around you.

People shouldn't be literally beaten to death for wearing ahegao hoodies in public, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with asking them to leave an event or space (or to change their clothes) if it's upsetting enough people. People shouldn't be told to kill themselves because they get off to 600-year-old anime girls who look 5, but there's nothing wrong with telling them to cut that shit out or leave your server. If you allow literally everyone into a space, eventually you'll be left with only the least pleasant, because they'll wind up driving everyone else away. Sometimes it's just better for everyone if certain people leave a space and create their own. And that goes for everything, not just skeevy fictional stuff.

That being said, the solution is never to outright ban certain topics, because that just results in things being posted without tags or warnings, which often makes things even worse than they would have been without a ban. (Just look at this website's laughably bad handling of an nsfw ban, for example. You've still got people posting nsfw content, just without tags or proper warnings now. Oh and bots. Lots and lots of bots posting links that will definitely give you a virus, steal your financial and/or account information, or both.) The fact is respectable content creators know to properly tag and warn their potential audiences, so banning content from being properly tagged just winds up getting rid of the respectable ones.

Long-winded stream-of-consciousness rant aside, these are my fundamental thoughts on the Great Shipping Debate. I am not going to pin this, I am not going to tag it so people on either side can find me and tell me why I'm wrong and also a horrible person for not Taking A Side. I'm just gonna put it out there and let it be. Liberal use of the block button is your greatest tool in comfort and safety. Use it without remorse. It's not like a report, anyway, all it does is prevent either of you from having to interact. And that's pretty cool in my book.

[jjeehoon]

wanna one as your fanboys

requested by my fav woojin stan anon lol

have a gif of your man btw lol

a reverse au where instead of them being your idols, you’re being their idols. 

a/n: i did some editing on minhyun’s bc this man ain’t quiet,,, he’s literally the loudest out of nu’est smh  

jisung:

MEMES. Jisung would be the one fan who’d be turning you into a living meme. Even if you already were a living meme, he’d make you into an even funnier one. Plenty of screenshots of your cute derp faces would be sent to his friends often as reactions, due to the fact that he couldn’t react to their messages in real life. Sometimes, if he were ever feeling especially hilarious, he’d message you on Instagram with a meme he made of you captioned, “notice me unnie/oppa, please!” You’d view his profile when you were looking through your incredibly filled DMs, and you’d laugh loudly at the sight of his clearly male feed. If he met you in real life, he’d spend his time making you laugh with puns and funny faces the entire time, since it was short lived and he wanted to do anything to make it last. 

sungwoon:

Sungwoon admired you so, s o much, and no one could blame him, because he believed you were perfect. You were the juniors of his buddies, Kai and Taemin, and at one point, he was jealous that they were under the same company as you were. “So, like, when is your CEO gonna let me into the building to let me see (y/n) - I mean, your group members?” He’d ask them every once in a while. Sungwoon would also be singing along to your parts in your latest hit single while he was with his group of friends as if it weren’t obvious enough that he liked you. Once they finally obliged to him meeting you, his ears would heat up once he saw you, like they typically did when he was embarrassed. You would probably also hear some small voice cracks every now and then while talking to him, but probably because he was tired and flustered, which didn’t exactly click in his agenda. Oh well - you called him adorably handsome, and that’s all that matters.

minhyun:

There were two sides to his fanboy, the fanboy where he’d be smiling to himself when he hears your name on the streets or something, and the fanboy where he’s jumping around the house and happily screaming your new song. Neighbours of his wouldn’t be surprised when they hear his loud voice on the other side of the wall. Minhyun also seems like someone who enjoys making covers of your songs. He was pleased to think that your songs, your angelic voice matched with his light and thin tone extremely well. People who followed him were also your fans and they enjoyed his covers when he occasionally posted them, but the most important thing here is that they literally begged Minhyun to do a (y/n) selca day thing because they thought the two of you looked great together. After crying to himself, ranting to Dongho about it (”they’re like me to you, bro, they aren’t gonna let me live”), and disagreeing with his followers for the longest time, he would post it. And, not gonna be lying here, they were right - the amount of visual in that relationship would be incredible.

seongwoo:

Similarly to Jisung, he’d express his love through memes and other funny things. He’d probably be the type who has a spam account on Instagram where he posts crack videos that he made of you and photos of you making hearts captioned, “have I ever mentioned how much I f u c k i n g love (y/n) because I LOVE (Y/N) SO MUCH”. Probably also in the comments section of your music videos with the most original comments, including jokes and gags without forgetting to mention how great you looked and how wonderful you sounded. Seongwoo would never hesitate to start jamming out to your songs if they ever came on in public, hitting some of the dance moves smoothly while shopping for clothes. He’d draw some attention to the other shoppers, and he’d be hoping the slightest bit that you were there watching him dance as well.

jaehwan:

I don’t know why (lol), but Jaehwan seems like a proud member of stan twitter. Sometimes, he’d be really soft and post acoustic covers of your songs which would cause an uproar in the fandom. He’d smirk once he saw the amount of reposts there were on Twitter itself, as well as seeing his covers on Instagram and Tumblr. Other times, he’d be shitposting just as much as Seongwoo would be. Heck, Jaehwan and Seongwoo would probably be partners in crime, making the dankest memes possible and making other users vote for which meme is better. Jaehwan’s probably also the type to ship himself with you, saying things like, “look at that. Just look at it, Ong, (y/n) and I would be the ultimate visual couple. Ultimate visual, vocal, flute playing couple. No, shut up, I don’t care if (y/n) plays the clarinet. Our children would inherit our talent and beauty and they’d be fucking legends just like (y/n) was.” 

daniel:

As we all know, Daniel loves dancing to Signal, so he loves dancing to your songs as well. Like his husband #ongnielisscience Seongwoo, hearing any of your big hits in public means a celebratory dancing spree, no matter what he was doing at the time. At the vet for his cats? He’d be doing the hand movements in the waiting room. Just woke up from a coma? Playing your music gets him back into daily routine immediately. Preparing dinner with his family? He’d be shuffling down the counter to the upbeat melody. Asides from that, he would seems like the type of person to think about your ideal type every once in a while - he thought about how he would make a good boyfriend to you. Of course, he was smart enough to keep his daydreaming to himself; that is, until he meets you in person and just falls for you even harder.

jihoon:

I can honestly imagine Jihoon being your classmate while you’re an idol. He’d admire you from afar while you were with your close friends, he would feel jealous once someone else came over to talk to you about your popularity. He looked up to you greatly and quietly listened to your music both in his free time and, often times, during class. If he was feeling rather ambitious that day, he’d casually start talking to you about your music and your group members if the solo game wasn’t the the thing for you. “Ah, yeah, you know your friend, (group member name i literally can’t think of a name on the spot)?” He’d ask while trying his hardest not to freak out over the fact that he was talking to a celebrity, his idol, to be much more specific. “Yeah. What, do you like them? Wanna meet them someday?” You replied jokingly. He chortled at your statement, mainly because they weren’t the one he liked, but you were.

woojin:

Super big throwback to his cover of BoA’s Only One, there would be low quality footage of Woojin dancing to your song jokingly. Once that circulated around, he’d be an embarrassed mess thinking about how you could’ve been watching the video at that moment. Spoiler alert: you were, and you thought it was absolutely adorable. You even reposted it with the caption “thank you, my fans, for such great content” or some shit and Woojin would be bawling his eyes out like, “I’ve won, but at what cost?” (uh jokes aside,,,) He would upload a proper dance cover and blow literally everyone away, including you. His smooth dancing and his ability to hit every move with precision made you question yourself on your dancing skills. (ok but i’m sure you’d be a great dancer <33) When you reposted that cover of his, he would bawl again, but this time, he shed some happy tears instead. 

jinyoung:

From the looks of his Kyulkyung fanboy days, Jinyoung seems like someone who’d defend their idols to a certain extent. If he encounters a troll among your Instagram feed, he’d definitely call them out with a bit of insult, and it’d be brought to your attention. He probably also runs a fan account where he posts photos of you and captions them with cheesy love quotes; not to the point where it’s Seongwoo or Jaehwan-level shit posting, but a regular fanpage that posts fan taken photos as well as performances on music shows and, sometimes, fancams. He’d be thrilled to hear that you and/or your group were coming to his town, but once someone brought it up, he’d act all shy and deny any notions of wanting to meet you. However, on his breaks, he’d go and see you in person, his heart beating quickly when he saw you - all while being the shy boy he was. 

also, you’d probably be like, “aw, your head is so smoL I’M CRYIN” and he’d fall over tbh

daehwi:

Daehwi would be the type of fan who would have a fanpage for you, much like his best friend Jinyoung. He’d be the main source of all the girlfriend/boyfriend!(y/n) aus because he honestly thinks that those are the absolute cutest, and he’d make them just as fluffy as possible while trying his best to be accurate at the same time. If you were in a group, he would make compilations of basically anything you were known for, whether it be your evil maknae schemes or your lovely singing parts. If he ever went to a fan sign, he’d be a smiling the mess the whole time once it was his turn to meet you. “Ah, I was so excited to meet you,” he would tell you, his natural overflowing aegyo making you feel all bubbly inside as you have a nice casual conversation with him. You probably ended your meeting with a hug from him as you told him, “come to our next fanmeet,” and he probably melted into a pile of gush inside. 

guanlin:

Guanlin would be the quiet yet ambitious fan of yours. Much like Minhyun, he wouldn’t shove his love for you in everyone’s faces, but he’d be much more obvious with those close to him. “(y/n)’s really soft in this performance? Jihoon hyung, look at how wonderful (y/n)’s rapping is. Seonho, look, (y/n)’s just as cute as you are.” Every once in a while, he’d go and binge watch your funny videos, giving himself a huge laugh (which may or may not scare his hyungs). Just like any other of his idols, Guanlin looks up to you greatly. You inspired him to do better at his own talents, and if you were to ever find out about this, you’d be amazed on how fast his improvement rate was. Needless to say, he had a little celebrity crush on you for a lot of reasons, from your lovely personality to your fans to your charismatic presence on stage. 

peep euiwoong - i mean

hit my inbox up y’all!! and here is my masterlist!! + sorry if this was a bit shitty lol

[the-questionmark-kid]

Once Upon A Fuckin Time

Probably gonna post about it now, so if you dont’ want to see this awful thing, just blacklist ‘ouat’ or ‘happy beginnings’ (i’m trash i am actual trash dear fucking god)

I finally finished this hell show and I’ve got a lot of thoughts so yes there’s spoilers this entire post is spoilers i’m so angry-

Alright in all honesty, I truly unironically enjoyed watching Once Upon A Time. The idea is wonderful, it’s everything a younger me would have wanted; fairytales existing in the ‘real’ world, their memories locked away until a fated day, magic existing all around us if only we know where to look. I love it. So many of the characters enchanted me, whether because of their strength, their intelligence, their kindness, or their cunning. The plot WAS interesting, for a time, some arcs better than others, some storylines falling flat while others reignited my interest in the show as a whole. But there was a lot of unnecessary mucking around in some ways, I feel. 

So to start, let me just say I began watching this show last year, it’s literally been over a year since I began this due to my fucked up attention span and work and sleep schedule and personal projects. So my memory of the storyline has always been a little disjointed. However: I did just marathon the last two goddamn seasons so I remember everything with near perfect clarity (aaaand I needed to watch some happy Rumbelle scenes so I went back over those episodes). And there are things I have issues with that like…aren’t even just my opinions, they’re just structurally bad for the series? I suppose that’s still an opinion, but I’m quite positive they’re opinions shared by many.

Now my biggest issue is honestly with how the writers handled Rumpelstiltskin, he himself but also his relationship with Belle, his sons, and his overarching destiny. But that doesn’t truly bother me that much until probably the middle of season 5 (that’s a lie, but this is how I’ll present the argument. I guess.), so we’ll skip that for now. First, I want to talk about the AMAZING opportunity they had to work with “the Moms” and how they threw it into the gutter:

1) Emma and Hook -Okay just….what the fuck. What was the Point. Captain Hook was one of my favorite villains as a kid, and honestly I was on board with this scrappy pirate and Rumple being the bane of each other’s existence. I enjoyed the feud for a little while, and the Emma not being swayed by Hook’s ridiculous attempts at flirting was a refreshing reminder of her true purpose in the show: she is the Savior. She has more important things to worry about than a romance. -Hook’s purpose was… Frankly, he felt expendable during the last two seasons, and when he died, I was thankful that arc was finally over. But beyond his practical uselessness, having to move on from Hook would have been very good for Emma, for reasons I was going to explain but I’m too fired up to get into right now. Point is, Hook’s presence stopped meaning anything beyond giving Emma her boy toy love interest. Given the fact that it’s a show about fairytales, okay whatever, that’s fine, but Emma is SUCH a badass! I actually LIKE this character! But by season 5, by the time Emma is as fallible as she can get as the Dark One*…most of her reasons for doing things are because of Hook. And frankly? That’s boring. Even Snow and Charming**, with their constant sleeping curses and “I will always find you” lines, still manage to be more engaging and keep me invested far more than Captain Guyliner trailing after Emma like a lost puppy.     -**On that note, can I just express my disappointment over David’s total lack of involvement in Emma’s life until season 5?? It felt like up until that point, David was just a side character that Emma never really spoke to and had barely any desire to be around, which I feel is a real disservice not only to the characters but to the phenomenal acting Josh Dallas provided when he WAS allowed to play as Emma’s father, not just Snow White’s Prince.

2) Regina -I didn’t like Regina until well into the third season, I’ll admit. She was a bad person who did bad things for very little reason, and it didn’t seem like her character was going anywhere. But I’m glad she grew. I actually have very little issue with the overall way her story went; she learned to love herself, which I feel was the most important thing for her to learn. That being said, that business with Robin Hood? Pretty unnecessary. Once again, it felt like a pointless romantic subplot meant to create drama and throw another snag in any potential plot building or character dynamic.

3) Emma and Regina - On that same vein of thought; I didn’t understand why my friend shipped Regina and Emma at first, but I sure as HELL do now. Jesus christ, what a missed opportunity. So much about them becoming a couple makes sense, would bring the series full circle; what could be more ideal than the product of true love, destined to defeat evil, falling in love with the personification of said evil? That is…the whole point of the show, I feel. That love and faith in those you love will always triumph over the darkness in the world. -Having them end up together also reinforces the central theme of family, as well as family found in unlikely places, which I got the sense was extremely important to Regina, Henry, Snow, Charming, Rumple, Baelfire, and Belle in addition to (obviously) Emma. -If Regina were a dude, they would have gotten together. Enough said.

4) Rumple -The series spent a great deal of time setting up Rumpelstiltskin’s tragic backstory, making his rage and his pain and his despair relatable, only each time his redemption seemed at hand, it was ripped away from him one way or another. -As frustrated as I am with Emma’s forced romances, Rumple’s actually make me cringe. Holy shit why are all the witches after the Dark One. Like, it’s not even Gold that they want, it’s literally scaly, deranged, conniving Dark One. And it’s not like Belle, who legitimately wants the man she sees struggling within, the witches are quite literally after the mad dog they see. And I am SO disturbed by this. Cora’s entire life did not need to be dictated by her obsession with a madman. Zelena did not need to be tossed away because she became infatuated with someone incapable of love. And that whole business with the Evil Queen in season 6? When he’s MARRIED? When he’s MARRIED to the woman he ACTUALLY LOVES, the woman he has a SON with???? I am. Actually disgusted with the writers for that cheap little drama. It just seems so incredibly out of character? Especially for how Rumple is in that particular moment when the Evil Queen approaches him. -Forcing Rumple to walk the line between light and dark even after he makes decisions that, for any other character, would be a decisive moment of positive growth. The struggle with the dagger and his ultimate decision to give it to Belle, the loss of his power on numerous accounts and the realization he could be strong without it, pulling Ex-fucking-calibur out of the stone and throwing it away without asking for a single thing in return (an act that only someone with the heart of a true hero could undertake and yet he still reverts completely????), finding out he was predestined to be a fucking SAVIOR. My god. You cannot give someone all of this growth, all of this struggle and positive reinforcement, and then insist he’s still the ultimate form of evil in the world. That’s. Incredibly hypocritical. Even when he’s still technically a villain and Isaac writes him his happy ending, Rumple’s deepest desire is to be seen and revered as a hero; he WANTS to be good, to be admired, to know his wife and son are proud of him. Even during this reality where he never became ‘evil’, he struggles with morality, something no other villain in that alternative story did. I am beyond disgusted by this character’s treatment. -You know what, there’s so much that dissatisfies me about Rumple’s treatment, I might have to rant about it in a different post. I was given a fallible character with an intriguing backstory whose reasons for doing evil were the best of intentions; who when approached with any sort of honest kindness or love, struggles daily with concepts of morality, humility, and selflessness; whose deepest wish is for family and heroism, a place of belonging and deep, unbreakable love; but there was no redemption arc. Correction: there were THREE redemption arcs, and each one of them fell flat for dramatic plot defects that served no purpose but to STOP this delightfully complex character from coming full circle and getting the arc he deserves. -I’m going to be salty for a long. Long time.

[murasaki-murasame]

Danganronpa V3 Liveblog Part 15 [Chapter 5 - Daily Life]

Well things sure took a turn.

Thoughts under the cut.

I kinda knew in advance that this was around when the game was gonna veer into it’s end-game, but I didn’t know what to expect, so . . . this sure took me by surprise. Huh.

I’ll talk about the major plot reveals and stuff in a second, but first I just wanna say that I’m really fucking sad about Kaito dying. And also surprised by it. I thought he was going to kill someone in this chapter. Like, I genuinely thought that was a thing I’d been indirectly spoiled about. I probably shouldn’t talk about what exactly I read that made me think that, in case it comes up later, but I still thought that I’d been spoiled in advance about him being a killer, so . . . I guess this is good, in that it means it came as a surprise, but I’m still sad that he died. He was one of my favourite characters, so obviously I wanted him to stick around. But I’d already prepared myself for the idea of him getting executed and dying that way, so I’m at least not shaken too much by the basic idea of him dying.

I’m almost afraid to even play the next part because I feel like Shuichi’s reaction to this is gonna emotionally destroy me. 

[Rant time starting, I guess]

Just to get it out of the way before getting into the rest of this post, I still interpret Shuichi as having a crush on Kaito. I’m still not entirely sure if I think it’s “““canon”““ or whatever, but especially with Tsumugi pointing it out with her ‘reverse love triangle’ comment, the subtext is completely intentional and being actively acknowledged by the story at this point. It already was, with Shuichi’s inner monologues in Kaito’s free time events, but it’s even more concrete now that it got pointed out during the ‘actual story’, so to say, and not just an optional free time event. Anyway, I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt for now, since his feelings still come across as an authentic portrayal of someone in the closet, but since the subtext is explicitly acknowledged in the text now, I’m willing to hold the writers accountable if they handle this entire topic in a really shitty way. It’d just leave a bad taste in my mouth, especially after the whole Juzo thing in DR3, as I brought up before.

I should probably say that I think Maki’s crush on Kaito is cute and understandable and endearing. I’m just preemptively annoyed at the prospect of the game setting up that sort of conventional heterosexual crush while also being really shitty toward the idea of Shuichi the exact same sort of crush, just because it’d be a gay one in his case. But still. We’ll see how it goes.

I mean obviously on some level you could say that it ‘doesn’t matter’ because Kaito’s dead, but I’m only talking about the idea of the nature of Shuichi’s feelings for Kaito, and how the game frames those feelings in relation to other things, like Maki’s feelings for Kaito. The fact that Kaito’s dead doesn’t really have anything to do with that. My point still stands.

[Rant time over]

I should probably leave my discussion of the big plot stuff for the last section of the post since it’ll be the longest, probably, so I’ll talk about other parts of this chapter first.

I got the skill from the casino that removes some of the blocks in the mind mine sections, but I probably won’t bother equipping it at this point since there’s other skills I care about more. I just got it because I could. The skill about getting a faster Psyche Taxi car seemed too pointless [and expensive] to bother with, though. I feel like those parts would just get too awkward if they went much faster. And on that whole note, I still feel a bit sad that Kaito’s free time event skill was related to that mini-game, since I probably won’t bother using it. It’s not a very difficult mini-game, and I’m also not entirely sure what ‘lets you pick up more letter cubes’ even means.

Then I got Shuichi’s handbook theme, since I figured I may as well get at least one theme for it. I wasn’t prepared for the fact that like half of the design is really heavily red/black. The description for it’s kinda . . . inaccurate, lol. I like it, though. I would have gotten Kaito’s one since purple’s my favourite colour, but for some reason his theme was way more expensive than Shuichi’s, so I didn’t bother.

Also, the hard difficulties for the gambling games are really hard. I don’t think I could do any of them consistently well. Even on the medium difficult I just stick to the driving one since I can do that pretty well.

I also did the second, third, and fourth free time events for Maki. I wanted to finish her event chain off, but I didn’t have time, and I don’t think I’ll be getting any more chances for the rest of the game. Oh well. I still love Maki as a character. She’s great. I feel so bad for her, but I also can’t help but respect her strength and endurance. It really warms my heart to think that she’s making steps toward regaining the sense of humanity and normality that was beaten out of her. But obviously you then have the, uh, plot revelations in this chapter looming over any sort of idea of the characters overcoming their personal struggles and making it all really depressing and bittersweet.

As I said above, I also do find her crush on Kaito to be really cute and endearing [at least in a vacuum]. It’d be kinda hypocritical for me to dislike the idea of it, since her reasons for falling for him are very similar to the reasons why I think Shuichi fell for him too.

I don’t really think the game’s even trying to set it up so it might not be worth mentioning, but I’m largely ambivalent about the idea of shipping Shuichi and Maki. I kinda hope that the game doesn’t try and stick them together just because Kaito died. That’d be a little awkward and depressing.I figured that in this chapter we’d find Kaito and Rantarou’s labs, and I was completely right. There’s nothing much to say about Kaito’s lab, other than that it feels kinda cruel to put his lab at the top of a huge staircase when he’s literally dying from a terminal illness. As for Rantarou’s lab, I’m not too surprised that we weren’t allowed inside it. It’s making me really curious to see what the hell his talent actually is, since they’re still keeping it a secret, and even implying that it’d be a really big deal if we found out. There’s not much to go on, but the weapons and blood spray painted on the entrance to his room definitely makes it seem like his talent relates to killing. But that’d feel weirdly redundant in a game that already has an Ultimate Assassin. We’ll see, I guess. I still feel like Rantarou has to somehow play into the climax of the game, but I’ll get to that later in the post.

We also didn’t find Kokichi’s lab, as I suspected. I still can’t help but think that he’s actually the Ultimate Prisoner, even though the plot reveals in this chapter definitely establish a plausible explanation for why he might genuinely be the Ultimate Supreme Leader. I still can’t help but doubt him, though.On a sort of random note, I’m honestly slightly baffled that Tsumugi is still alive. I don’t really dislike her at all, but she just seems so . . . pointless? Basically nothing ever happens with her, she never really faces any meaningful or personal problems, she doesn’t have any real character arc or a sense of development, etc etc etc. There’s nothing actively bad about her, I’m just kinda surprised that the game decided to keep her alive instead of someone else. I mean, I was surprised by Himiko surviving, but at least in her case she’s more of an actual developed character who has a satisfying development arc. I really expected someone like Miu to survive instead of someone like Tsumugi. But it’s a good thing that the game at least somewhat surprised me in terms of who survived this far. I guess technically she might not survive past this chapter if she’s the one who killed Kaito, but we’ll get to that whole topic later.

OK I guess I should finally address the elephant in the room and talk about the big plot reveals. There’s . . . a lot to go over. I’ve seen some people say that this game doesn’t actually connect heavily to the first games, and that it can be played on it’s own just fine, but at this point I really, really don’t think it works as a standalone game, unless they’re completely misleading us with where the story’s going. This whole part even included an exposition dump about the gist of what happened over the course of DR1-3 in order to explain the workings of the world and how things ended up the way they did in this game. Surprisingly they didn’t really comment much on the DR2 side of things beyond talking about the idea of the Remnants of Despairs without ever bringing up the fact that they were the DR2 cast. But still, you get what I mean. All of the sudden discussion of Hope’s Peak Academy, Junko, Naegi, the Remnants of Despair, the Future Foundation, etc, wouldn’t have any meaning or impact to someone who hadn’t been following the franchise already. I really like the way this game is tying itself to the earlier games, and providing at least some kind of a, uh, conclusive end-point to the DR universe, but yeah I really feel bad for anyone playing this part as a new fan.

I imagine that a lot of people are probably upset with the idea that Kodaka basically destroyed his entire fictional universe, if this is indeed what’s going on. It’s an incredibly risky sort of story development, at least because it kinda makes everything the DR1-2 casts did to save the world seem pointless in hindsight. But it feels really fitting, in a way, that the DR universe ended in a fiery apocalypse, and that even after a fiery apocalypse, we still get one last killing game. It’s a depressing end to the series, but for a story that was all about the idea of reveling in the thrill of despair and the voyeuristic appeal of murder, it’s pretty fitting that this is how things ended up. It’ll definitely feel . . . uncomfortable revisiting the franchise in hindsight, though, knowing all this. In a lot of ways it feels like this game is all about Kodaka bringing this franchise to as definitive an ending as possible, and amping up every theme of the story to 11. It’s an interesting experience. It’s especially interesting to consider how this is incredibly similar to DR1′s ending, except instead of it being a lie that the world was completely uninhabitable and that humanity had died, it’s all completely true. It really doesn’t seem like there’s any hope for the surviving characters in this game, aside from them just spending the rest of their lives at the academy. Assuming, again, that what we’re being shown and told is correct. I wonder if there’ll be a bad ending like in DR1, about showing everyone years after deciding to stay inside the academy forever. That’d be . . . really depressing, but kinda fitting.

I don’t think they have any real chance of actually leaving the academy. If the world really is at a state where there’s literally no breathable oxygen left, then they’re kinda fucked, no matter how much hope they have. There’s not much to do in that scenario. I also doubt that there’s any real chance for repopulation to happen on any sort of macro scale. I don’t think even all 16 of them would have been enough to repopulate the entire species, but with just seven of them left there’s not much to be done. I really couldn’t help but sympathize with all of them when they were basically just planning to die, and thinking about how if this was going to be the truth they would face, then they should have just died long ago. I can’t really blame them. Even with the nebulous power of hope on their side, there’s not much they can do. It hurt enough seeing Shuichi contemplate suicide, but it REALLY hurt seeing Himiko talk about wanting to die painlessly, and asking Maki if she knew how to do that. Seeing Maki seriously answer that question really drove in how bad the situation was. And yeah, it also hurt seeing Himiko say that Tenko wouldn’t blame her for killing herself in this scenario.

In a way, it’s probably almost a good thing that Kaito got murdered, since he was never going to be able to get treatment for his illness, and so his only other option was to eventually die a much more drawn out and painful death that everybody would have been powerless to stop. Before I forget, I should say that, especially with the reveals in this chapter, I’m getting more and more convinced that the voice in Keebo’s head is Naegi. At least, like, an AI version of Naegi, or something along those lines. So that’s an interesting idea to consider. To address the OTHER elephant in the room, I’m kinda surprised that Kokichi ended up being the mastermind. It’s just weird that the suspicious character really did end up being the villain. It’s definitely surprising, though, so that’s a good thing. I can’t help but continue to doubt him, though. It just feels TOO convenient and simple. The idea of him being the leader of the Remnants makes enough sense, but I thought that the Remnants solely consisted of Junko and the DR2 cast, who of course all got rehabilitated. I guess maybe there could have been others, though. Mostly, I think I’m just suspicious about the fact that all of these huge, conclusive plot twists and reveals are happening when we still have an entire chapter or so left after this one [presumably], and there’s still several major hanging plot threads, like everything to do with Rantarou, and also the Monokubs. They all seem tied into this currently unexplored plot point of a previous killing game that happened, and I don’t know how that ties in. It’s also very suspicious, in hindsight, that Rantarou knew in advance that there’d be a killing game, let alone the fact that he said he needed to win it. If he knew about the world ending, I feel like there’d be no real point in wanting to win a killing game. There’s also the fact that he said the killing game is ‘one he wanted to have happen’, which is a big reason why I can’t help but wonder if Kokichi’s lying about being the real mastermind behind all this. With everything we know now, Rantarou knowing about the killing game in advance and wanting it to happen so he can win it seems incredibly suspicious.

I still also feel like the Monokubs might have been programmed to resemble the other potential survivors of the killing game Rantarou was part of, so there’s also that to consider.Also, I still haven’t forgotten the weird time loop thing that happened at the start of the game. I’m also still completely aware of how much the game keeps repeating the concept of everything being ‘like a fictional story’. It just keeps coming up again and again. The way that the game framed the idea of ‘Kaede being the protagonist of this story’ was suspicious enough, but the whole ‘story’ idea still keeps getting mentioned. So I can’t help but wonder if that might tie into the true end-game reveals, but I’m not sure how it’d work.I should also say that all of the reveals being discussed here make sense, much more so than I expected. Everything fits together really neatly, and I can understand the logic behind the Gofer Project. Even though I still feel like sending just 16 people to repopulate humanity on an alien planet seems a bit silly. I know I found exact numbers on how many people you’d need to repopulate a civilization without it being completely crippled by inbreeding, but I can’t remember it. Maybe it really is a number close to 16. It still feels like a very low number to me, though.

And yeah the idea of the mastermind tampering with the project in order to arrange a killing game between the last humans alive is exactly the sort of thing I’d expect out of this franchise, in a good way. I can’t help but feel like Kodaka feels kinda cynical about this entire franchise, with how much this entire game is basically tearing down the previous happy endings by spelling out that nearly everyone on earth, including every single character we knew and loved, ended up dead in a fiery apocalypse, with the additional knife-twist of them not even being able to succeed at attempting to restart the human race on a different planet. It feels like Kodaka did everything he could to make a ‘Despair wins’ sort of ending, which is really interesting, given the sorts of moral messages the previous games ended with. I get why it probably bugs a lot of people, but it’s kinda fascinating to watch this all unfold. I’m not trying to deny that it’s depressing as fuck, since oh boy it sure is depressing as fuck, but it’s depressing in an interesting and satisfying way.

Also, before I talk about Kaito’s death, I should also say that while I really like the bookend-y nature of everyone going through the Death Road of Despair and actually escaping [technically], I still find that whole gameplay segment to be a little agonizing. I guess it was easy enough once I realized what exactly the hammer did and how it made things easier, but it took me a few tries to figure it out, and that was kinda frustrating. Oh, and on the whole note of how depressing this turn of events is and how it really puts a damper on the entire franchise, hypothetically, it’s probably also going to put a really bittersweet atmosphere over all of Dating Sim Mode, if it’s what I think it is. It’d just be depressing as hell to watch fun, fluffy, romantic scenes between the characters when I know what the truth is. Oh well.

Anyway, I don’t think I have anything left to talk about aside from Kaito’s murder, so let’s talk about that. As I said before, I didn’t expect him to be a villain, but I was braced for the idea of him dying in this chapter, and honestly as soon as he got kidnapped by Kokichi I just immediately understood that he was about to die. Especially after he and Shuichi got to have one last conversation. I’m really thankful that they got that much, at least. [Also don’t even try and doubt that I nearly teared up when Shuichi thought to himself that he just wanted to hear Kaito tell him that everything was gonna be OK. That part fucked me up. That entire goddamn scene fucked me up inside. And don’t even get me started on the fact that I still think he has a huge crush on Kaito that he’s been desperately trying to deny, which makes the whole thing even more depressing.]

I would have understood the idea of him being a killer, motive-wise. At least before the big plot reveals happened. But after that point, I don’t get why anyone other than Kokichi would have any interest in killing anyone. Well, killing anyone other than Kokichi, that is. Obviously everyone has every reason in the world to kill him, but there’s no reason to kill anyone else. It’s gonna make me really unsure how to work this trial out. Motive-wise, my best guess is that somebody just wanted to mercy-kill him because they knew that, as I said before, he had no chance at survival because of his illness. But in that case, I feel like they should have waited until after they rescued him, so they could at least discuss it as a group. And we know for a fact that the murder happened after the rescue plan was arranged, since Shuichi talked to him while he was scouting out the hangar. So someone decided to go through the trouble of killing him before rescuing him. Additionally, I imagine that the killer isn’t going to just confess immediately, so they’re going to actively lie about it and make everyone go along with another class trial, even though they’d know how traumatic it would be, and how it might cause everyone aside from the killer to die. So that seems really strange, if their motive was just to mercy-kill Kaito and not, you know, kill someone with the intent to win the killing game and escape. I doubt any of them would have had any desire to escape after how they came face to face with the state of the outside world. In general, killing Kaito in this sort of way seems really pointless. Maybe I’ll get proven wrong when I play the next part, but I imagine we’re getting another trial, like always.

I would say that killing him via a hydraulic press also feels really unfitting if it was meant to be a mercy-kill, but since the press deactivates when it scans a living being, I guess that his body must have been crushed after it died. Which makes it seem even more weird and pointless. I can only imagine that it was done to hide the cause of death, but the Monokuma File will probably spell that out. So it all just seems really strange. I’m also assuming that Kaito really IS dead, and it’s not some sort of a trick.So if the cause of death was something else, it basically could have been anything, but I have a feeling that the crossbow from the start of the chapter had something to do with it. Not sure how, though. Obviously it’d imply that he was killed from a distance, but somebody had to be in the room to move his body into the press afterward. Unless Kokichi did that after someone else committed the murder.

It’s really difficult to suspect anyone at this point, but as the cast gets smaller, it gets easier to narrow down the options. Obviously we can rule out Shuichi [unless we get a Kaede-esque twist again, which I could almost see happening], and Kokichi just seems WAAAAY too suspicious. Not to mention that since he had full access to everything, the entire set-up with the barriers and doors and alarms would be kinda pointless if he was the killer. It feels more likely that we’ll have to solve how someone other than Kokichi could have done it.

There’s not many ways to even get access into the room. I assume that everyone who used their hammers in the rescue attempt was charging it for the entire 24 hours, and that none of those ones were used in that time. I also assume that the one Electrobomb they had access to was a one-time use thing, so that maybe probably wasn’t part of it. So in terms of tools, it kinda leaves Maki’s hammer as the conspicuously missing puzzle piece. And like I said above, there’s stuff like the crossbow to consider, in terms of what tools could have been used. Once I play the investigation part I’ll obviously get more clues, but that’s about all I have to go on. That, and the scratched-up control panel, which is suspicious. We also have testimonies from Maki and Keebo about certain things going on over the night before the murder, I think. And Shuichi can also testify that Kaito was still alive when he talked to him.

Really, I feel like Keebo’s the most likely suspect at this point. As I said before, I’m ruling out Kokichi, and I doubt Shuichi’s the culprit even if I can’t rule it out entirely. I also highly doubt that Maki did it. Maybe it could have been her if she just mercy-killed him and immediately came clean about it, but I don’t think she’d lie about it and set up a new class trial. She also had a crush on him, but I guess in a sense that might have made her more likely to want to mercy-kill him. Same goes for Shuichi, of course. I also highly doubt that Tsumugi did it, if only because there’s absolutely nothing pointing at her specifically, at least as of right now. Which leaves us with Keebo. I have no real guess as to what his motive could have been beyond what I said above, but I at least think that he has some amount of a connection to the overall set-up of the murder, which makes me more willing to think he’s connected to it. That is to say, we had the whole scene of him experimenting with how the hydraulic press works and if it counts him as a living being or a machine, and similarly there was the whole point of whether or not the hammer would work on him. But most of all I’m very curious about the Electrobombs. I don’t think the game ever directly raised the question of if he’d be affected by it, which seemed odd to me, and when they used it on the barrier, it seemed to leave him unaffected. I at least think that when it went off, he hadn’t, like, ran outside of it’s blast radius. So I think it just doesn’t affect him somehow, which makes me think that the hammer might not affect him either. It makes sense why the hydraulic press didn’t see him as a living being, but I think that Miu specifically designed those tools so that they wouldn’t work on Keebo. So it’s pretty obvious how it feels like that’ll probably play a big role in figuring out how this murder happened.

And as I’ve said before, he also said a while ago that he always follows the orders of the ‘voice in his head’, which still makes me think that it’s foreshadowing for him having killed someone because of those orders. Which might also help explain the overall weirdness of this case, if the voice also told him to stay quiet about the murder. So yeah, with what little we have to go on, I guess Keebo’s my main suspect, with Shuichi and Maki at a distant second place. Those two both have similar degrees of motive and capabilities [for the record, Shuichi also figured out how the crossbow worked in that one scene, in case that comes up], so I’m putting them at a similar level of suspicion. But because of how Maki already seems kinda immediately suspicious since she left her hammer unused and also because she’s, well, an assassin and whatnot, I feel like she’s probably a bit less likely to be the killer, so maybe I’ll bump her down to third place, below Shuichi, who would definitely be the more surprising option, between the two of them. And yeah I’m not suspecting Kokichi or Tsumugi at all. So that’s where my suspect list is at with this chapter. I’ll probably at least play the investigation part tomorrow, maybe also the trial, but I’m gonna have to brace myself for a whole lot of emotional pain as we go further into this chapter.