#which is the theory ive had basically the whole time

[dualitysdownfall]

i have a tendency to reblog posts about promoting one's own art and/or the importance of reblogging art, onto my art blog, as a sort of "wink wink nudge nudge i do have followers on this blog don't i" kind of thing

but whenever i do that, it feels as if people pay more attention to that than to my art

i know that's not literally true, i'm sure the note count does not actually rival or surpass a new art post, it only feels like a note spike because that blog posts so infrequently and therefore its activity is usually flat line, and reblogging the post made there Be Something There For People To Interact with

i guess it irks me anyway because i reblog it with the intent of "hey, look at the message of this post and where it is right now, mind giving my blog a scroll and maybe hitting a couple of green buttons" but it doesnt really work that way because people just see it in their dash. i constantly be reblogging shit with little if any awareness of which person i follow that i'm getting it from.

i just wish there was a way to be like, "hey, please give my art some attention, i work hard on this shit and it feels like there's at most about a classroom's worth--if that!--of people who care enough to show it to folks" without literally just being the annoying pushy attention-seeking bitch on the dashboard that's like "just fucking reblog my shit"

[red-might-be-dead]

hello hi here to force strange thoughts into your brain once again, this time about jrwi (wow who could’ve guessed)

been thinking about this for a little but it’s basically what i think some campaigns would be if not podcasts, i haven’t listened to some of the older ones so i’m sorry they’re not on here :(( if you have any ideas feel free to add them btw :DD

RIPTIDE!!!!! - really long animated series

not an anime though, no matter how much grizzly wants it, it would be an animation style where the characters could have very clearly different nose, face and body shapes, really pushing my riptide nose agenda here sorry, each episode would be like 20-40 minutes long and instead of coming out in seasons there would be massive gaps in between episodes, from 2-6 months long, to leave time for writers and animators to get stuff done (massive team of animators btw, i feel like it would be pretty successful)

PRIME DEFENDERS!! - comics

literally nothing else they could be, just really well made, well performing comics (i’ve already talked about this before you can stalk my talk tag if you really want to find it lmao), the comic company making them would be keeping well away from movies n shit btw

APOTHEOSIS!!! - i wasn’t really sure about this one to be honest

i had to ask my friend and she said anime which i don’t agree with but i can see it, i think maybe a short book series where each book is 150 - 300 pages and is about a different god they have to kill/a different episode, i think that works but if anyone has any better ideas please tell me :D!!

BLOOD IN THE BAYOU!!! - i hate to say it, i really do…

bitb would be a really long really good 80s horror book with strong homoerotic undertones, a satisfied fanbase and lots of active members in the community making fan comics, films, writing, theories and art ect… until well after the book came out……….. and then it would be made into the most egregious and awful live action movie you have ever seen, the most awful casting (like chris pratt as officer dudes….. throws up) and even worse sfx, oh yeah and the characters would be ruined and the story would become so butchered it wouldn’t make sense, they would do some shit like cut out becky so kian just kisses some random lady (removing both a really good and well written character and a layer of kian’s character that i think is super important) and make rolan really be an evil bug spy the whole time so rand has to kill him to save the town also add in a whole new sub plot that never existed like the rand family is secretly a long line of bug alien hunters or something fucking stupid like that and the entire fanbase would murder whoever thought re-writing the story was a good idea (ahaha can you tell ive been through something like this before ahahaha, character morals and motives being removed and whatnot ahahahhahahaha.)

anyways………

THE SUCKENING!!! - live action series

it would be well made though, unlike the bitb movie it would be its own original thing, have great makeup and effects also be well casted and well shot, well written, ect ect, it would bloody and gory and not suitable for people who can’t handle showing bones and organs all over everywhere, lots of shitty rip off merch would be made though and the fandom would be 99% gay little freaks (normal suckening enjoyers) and 1% homophobic straight white men who get mad whenever they see soda and emizel having gay sex on screen or whatever fag shit that biting thing was

again feel free to add your thoughts and ideas and shit in the reblogs it would be nice to read them :DD!!

[wonder2realities]

as someone who came into the manifestation / LOA space like before the void state and neville goddard was even talked abt - its rlly interesting to see how much ppl focus or try to act as if the void state is the only way to manifest

cuz like i found out abt the void state like 2 years ago through shifting, but prior to that everything ive manifested has always been super simple i mean currently im literally living my dream life in so many ways possible (i can go into heavy detail in another post lolz) and it was never through the void state or through me reading pages of neville goddard and theories and shit and this isnt me saying theres anything wrong with that its just interesting how no matter how much time passes and different trends with the community continue there's always this need to "logicise" and almost profit off of manifestation

for example i remember ppl would pay money for someone to write affirmations for them (idk if ppl still do this) or people would pay to get tips, i rmbr ppl paying money for OTHER PEOPLE to go into the void state in like 2022 so that they can manifest for you etc — that alongside the concept of manifestation coaches and influencers and its so...tacky

and the same thing goes for submakers, as someone whos had a lot and i mean A LOT of shitty experiences with larger submakers (cons of being a blk autistic ; not a lot of ppl want u to exist happily...if i had a penny for everytime someone asked me to manifest my autism away id be scrooge mcduck) — a lot of them also fall into this category of turning manifestation or LOA into this profitable business and its sad honestly

something that is free, where you dont need anything is being turned into something that is behind a paywall - its almost sinister honestly and rlly makes me feel bad for any younger ppl (like 10-15) who are getting into manifestation or interested in it because u basically have ppl being like "YOU CAN ONLY GET UR DESIRES IN THIS ONE WAY. IF YOU WANT, I CAN DO IT FOR YOU BUT YOU NEED TO PAY ME TONS OF MONEY!!!" - it almost gives a subconscious message that they cant do it on their own which goes against the whole point of manifestation and it just sucks ass

idk maybe im like a commie in the manifestation society #downwiththesocialhierarchy but it rlly irks me and i dont like it and again maybe its cuz i dealt with a lot of bullshit before the LOA community became more...minority friendly and that shit TRAUMATISED ME but like idk i just dont fw it yk

u can do wtv u want in wtv way u want for free, u cant buy a consciousness so you dont need to waste money on shit (obviously if u wanna support a submaker or someone thats perfectly fine but you dont HAVE to)

[destinysbounty]

Huh. I just dug up an old fan-theory i came up with back when i was like 15. And while its definitely way too weak to hold up against any real scrutiny, it at the very least makes for some mildly interesting fanfic fodder so i thought id share it with the greater fandom hivemind.

(Dont come at me about the holes in this theory btw, i was practically a baby when i came up with this and it was one of my first attempts at theory-crafting. Trust me, ive come a long way since then)

Anyway, the theory goes like this:

While in the lighthouse, Dr. Julien builds a replica of his son. But try as he might to get it to turn on, it never actually works. Whatever special spark brought the first Zane to life is inexplicably absent from this one. So he locks it away in his basement, and never gives it the light of day again. This is the reason Dr. Julien never told Zane about Echo, or brought him with them - because at the time, Echo wasnt even functional. Wouldnt even turn on. Was nothing more than a lifeless shell collecting rust in the basement.

So how, then, did Echo become sentient by season 6? Great question! But uhh heres where the theory kinda starts to go off the rails. So buckle up, folks.

Basically the theory goes that when Zane died at the end of s3, his soul still lingered in Ninjago. And his disembodied spirit eventually found itself drawn to a vessel that was similar to the one he'd lost - one his father had built yet long abandoned. But his new body lacked the memory storage contained within his old one, and his resurrection effectively gave him almost complete amnesia. All he could remember was his name and his purpose (to protect those who cannot protect themselves).

Meanwhile, when Titanium Zane says hes a replica, hes actually completely right about that. Some fragments of his code left behind from his visit to the Digiverse gained sentience and inherited Zane's elemental power, creating the Zane we know and love today.

But the original Zane, the one that died fighting the Overlord, actually ended up becoming Echo Zane. Which then would have explained why Zane had so many holes in his memories after being resurrected, and why his sixth sense became much less active as well - he was only made from fragments of the real Zane's code, after all.

Now, as the big smart grownup i am today, i can look back at this theory my baby self had crafted and poke about a million holes into it. But...idk, i always feel nostalgic about this theory in spite of all that. Not just bc it was one of my first fan theories ever, but also bc it would have such fascinating narrative implications if true.

Like, the idea of Mr. E being Echo? Well, if we apply that to the concept of Echo being the Original Zane, then his hatred for Current Zane takes on a whole new dimension. It also gives me a lot of emotions about the whole Ice Emperor situation, as well as Zane's apparent discomfort towards his own statue.

And what kind of position does that put the rest of the gang in? If they had to choose between saving one or the other - the Zane who died for you, or the Zane who lives for you - which one would they choose? Could they choose? How long do you have to love a replica before it starts to feel more authentic than the original? And in that case, who becomes the 'real' zane? The one you love, or the one you lost?

Again. This theory has more holes in it than the Titanic. Cut me some slack, i was an idiot child and also a novice at making theories. But giving credit where its due, i do think it at least raises some interesting concepts. And Ive always casually wondered what would happen if it turned out to be true.

Like i said. Fanfic fodder.

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

not really enjoying tumblrs trend of comparing Thomas Andrews to Stockton Rush 😒Could you share how the two differ despite the fact they died by their own creations?

ive been trying to figure out how to tackle this ask for a few days now because theres so much to disentangle, but disentangle i will.

see, this comparison relies on common misinformation and misconceptions about titanic. its a ship thats been romanticised and mythologised for decades, and every portrayal of it from william randolph hearts yellow newspaper coverage to robin gardiners conspiracy theory to jim camerons film.

what im gonna list to disentangle this whole thing is by no means an exhaustive list of titanic misconceptions, only those relevant to this topic

-titanic was a cruise ship - titanic was an ocean liner not a cruise ship (ive detailed the differences in a different ask here)

-titanic was a brand new unique ship never seen before - not true, ocean liners had existed for decades. theres debate about which was the first, but many agree that its the ss great western which launched in 1843. titanic wasnt even the first launched in her class; that honour goes to the rms olympic.

-it was built with substandard materials and cut corners - this is one of those where theres potentially some truth, but its been misrepresented. theres some evidence that the rivets werent the best made, but the board of trade cleared the ship and she was built with the same materials and basically the same design as her sister ship, rms olympic which sailed for 24 years under the nickname "old reliable" and literally rammed a u-boat during ww1 when she was requisitioned as a troop ship. ultimately, the builders were not blamed in the wreck inquiry and the materials used were not substandard.

-it was built as said above due to the choices of j bruce ismay - yeah so this one obviously ties into the above. theres a lot of unreliable sources who seem to believe ismay oversaw the entire design and every cut corner was due to money. this simply isnt true and isnt how this sort of thing worked. white star had a contract with harland and wolff wherein they would build the ship agreed upon and when it was finished, it would be presented to white star and undergo sea trials, and during that time, white star could reject the ship if they considered it substandard. this is what happened to the ss city of rome. unles. the design itself was to be changed a la britannic after titanic sank (improving safety measures), white star could not interfere. ismay could not force them to use different materials.

-it was all ismays fault - okay, i could go on about this for a long time, but this ask isnt about ismay. the gist of it is that history has blamed ismay due to the influence of william randolph hearst (yeah, the guy from newsies and supported hitler) who hated ismay and blamed him entirely. actual evidence shows ismay helped a lot of people during the sinking itself.

-titanic was badly designed - ive kinda gone over this a little already, but again, titanic was not badly built. she was practically identical to olympic which was a fantastic ship. in the design, no risks were taken. most of the designs were enlarged versions of parts of previous successful ships. she was considered the safest ship on the sea. four of her water-tight compartments could be breached without her sinking which was a big fucking deal.

-thomas andrews was the sole designer - there was actually a team of designers that included andrews. he didnt even draw up the original plans; that was alexander carlisle.

-titanic sinking was a unique situation - yeah nah, boats sank a lot around that time. literally two years after, there was a similar disaster with the rms empress of ireland which goes entirely forgotten nowadays. in the same decade, you also had the sinking of lusitania in 1915, principe de asturias in 1916, volturno in 1913 and even thrown in princess sophia in 1918.

-the sinking was actually caused by a coal bunker fire - this is simply horseshit and im sure im gonna end up having to explain and debunk that one too

-the crew were taking unnecessary risks to win the blue riband - this myth is widespread because of the movie, but titanic was not trying to beat the record of the fastest ship from southampton to new york (thats what the blue riband) is; she physically couldnt. it was held by mauretania at that point with a record of 26.06 knots/48.26 km/hr. titanics top speed was 23 knots. white star as a line never focussed on speed and ismay never told the captain to speed up.

-she was "unsinkable" - this is a little harder to disentangle. the claim itself was "practically unsinkable", but the context of that was to do with how safe titanic was as mentioned above. also, the idea of an unsinkable ship was not quite to white star or harland and wolff; most of the shipping industry believed it.

-almost everything youve heard about the life boats - okay so here you need to throw out your preconceptions of what a life boat is because our modern conception does not match that from the early 1900s. to not get into all the details of life boat philosophy at the time (if you do wanna know, just send me an ask lmao), the main purpose of life boats at this time was ferrying passengers to a rescue ship. that was it. this attitude was informed by both the wrecks of the ss valencia and ss clallam, as well as the miraculous rescue of the rms republic. titanic did not have enough life boats for everyone because it was never expected for the passengers to be alone in the life boats for hours; it was not a design flaw, it was a feature.

-that fucking stupid ship swap myth and the idea that the crew were trying to sink the ship - i dont even want to get into why this is bullshit, plus ive also debunked it in another ask

i highlight all of the above to emphasise the fact that titanic was not a badly built ship. she was designed well, built well and sailed well. many experts agree that the way that she hit the iceberg was the only way she could have sank.

this is not the case with titan and stockton rush. in a previous post, ive gone over the design of the titan, the flaws in it and what experts in the field believe, so im not gonna go over it again, but rest assured, the titan imploded because of rush's actions and decisions.

titanic did not sink because of thomas andrews. its due to his design that anyone survived the titanic because she stayed afloat for over two hours which allowed the crew to launch all the life boats. thomas andrews himself helped many survivors during the sinking and evacuation.

he also was not a rich man using a gravesite as tourism; nepotism was certainly involved in his career but he spent ten years working his way up in the company, helping with the design of countless ships. he was mostly regarded as a good man who worked hard and recognised the hard work of others.

its honestly ludicrous to compare them because the disasters themselves are simply not comparable. the titanic did not sink because of the folly of rich men cutting corners; titan did.

thomas andrews, for any faults he had, knew what he was doing and built a good ship that was unlucky. almost every other ship he helped design didnt sink or if they did, most of them were due to ww1.

its just such a ridiculous comparison, and thats all it is. without the misconceptions and misinformation about titanic, the comparison simply falls apart. its built on a foundation that fundamentally misunderstands the titanic disaster.

if you want to talk about shipwrecks caused by stupid decisions made by rich men, go look up the last incarnation of hms captain or the gunilda or the fucking vasa if you want, you can literally go see that one. but dont besmirch the memory of a guy who, by all acounts, died a hero helping other survive.

[thefutureiswhat]

My (brutally honest) thoughts on Fargo 5.10

I was gonna wait awhile to write up my thoughts, but my mind is racing and I've had too much caffeine, so here goes nothing...

Gonna be real here, my reaction on first watch was major disappointment. Going into the finale, this season was neck and neck with 3 as my overall favorite, and I felt like this episode ruined that.

Basically as soon as Witt died I checked out. I don't usually say this about fictional characters because I feel like it often misses the point, but he deserved better. And that death was so ridiculously preventable. Roy refuses to drop the knife, is basically telling Witt he's gonna kill him, Witt has a gun... JUST SHOOT HIM!

The moment with Gator and Dot just didn't feel earned to me. This guy breaks into your house, threatens your family, refuses to help you when you're being held hostage, says he hopes you die... and you're gonna bring him cookies in jail?

Nothing after the scene with Dot in the back of the car is real life, and I'm shocked that more people don't realize this.

The FBI drives Dot to her burned-down house that doesn't even look that damaged despite firefighters still "extinguishing the embers" the next morning, instead of... I don't know... a hospital? Lorraine's house? That woman needs an IV!

After the time jump... it's the height of the pandemic (the era Hawley said he wanted to avoid) but no one's wearing masks or distancing; Scotty is wearing pink; lactose-intolerant Wayne is eating sour cream, cheddar, and buttermilk; Dot is wearing clothes (yellow cardigan, plaid coat) that shouldn't have survived the fire.

Also the title is "Bisquik" (not "Bisquick") for a reason.

That entire cemetery scene was the cringiest thing I've ever seen. It was like something out of a Lifetime movie. It was the most un-Fargo scene in the entire series.

Dot doesn't seem to know even the most basic details about Witt despite it being a year since he died and her being so distraught over his death? Did she not go to the funeral? Read his obituary? Talk to Indira in the past year?

Indira is taking care of Witt's cat? They barely knew each other, and he has six sisters! Wouldn't one of them get the cat?

Munch coming back for his "pound of flesh" in real life after his last encounter with Dot just... doesn't make any sense? Does he want to kill her? Why didn't he do it when he had the chance? Why isn't he doing it now? What is he waiting for?

That whole scene with Munch was just... too long.

Okay, I'll stop being quite so negative...

I'm still on the fence about the execution, but after looking at the episode according to @tdciago's "Gaear is the author" theory, there's A LOT to unpack here. I need to watch the finale (and the entire season) again to really solidify it.

Basically, I think 5x09 was about wrapping up the "justice for Jean Lundegaard" aspect of the story (which I absolutely loved -- that last scene with Dot and Munch was one of my favorites of the entire series), and 5x10 was about wrapping up the "forgiveness for Gaear" aspect.

What I love about this show is that it always strikes such a wonderful balance between compelling storytelling/character work and deeper thematic/symbolic meaning. I think this episode lacked the former and had a heck of a lot of the latter (deceptively so). So I'm pretty much split down the middle on it... like a car cut in half with a chainsaw. Kind of perfect, actually.

More thoughts/analysis surely to come.

[starrrling]

REECE STARLING ( RACHEL SENNOTT ) is a TWENTY-SIX year-old GUITAR TEACHER in STATEN ISLAND. They were brought under Richard’s care when they were only ELEVEN years old. They are known as THE MISCHIEVOUS because they are MIRTHFUL but also IRREVERENT.

tw: substance abuse/addiction, parental neglect/custody loss, death, domestic abuse

BASIC INFORMATION

Full Name: Theresa Rebecca Starling

Nickname(s): Reece 

Date of Birth: December 7, 1978

Age: twenty-five

Occupation: guitar teacher & restaurant hostess 

Current Residence: Staten Island

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

Hair: brown, curly

Eyes: gray

Height: 5’2

Notable Features: Reece is rocking up to Richard’s funeral with a strip band-aid over her nose and a bruised eye :/

PERSONALITY & BEHAVIOR:

Strengths: amiable, outgoing, witty

Weaknesses: flippant, addictive, impulsive

Quirks: talks with her hands like a true italian, constantly fidgets with her jewelry

Vices: aside from her smoking habit—weed and cigarettes—Reece needs Monster Energy in an IV to make it through the day

INTEREST & HOBBIES:

Interests: astrology, music production, tabloid gossip, the 2005 music industry as a whole, the brad x angelina x jennifer love triangle, survivor, grey’s anatomy, gwen stefani 

Hobbies: stand-up at the local open mics, songwriting, music mixing, bird-watching, parkour

Special Skills/Talents: music theory & a handful of instruments (mostly guitar)

BECOMING A WARD

Reece’s grandmother, Estie, was an old friend of Richard’s wife, Adelia, who she met in school; once they were all married—Adelia to Richard, of course, and Estie to her own husband, Charlie—I imagine they were “couple friends,” with double dates and so on.  Estie got pregnant with Reece’s mom, Tess, a little less than a year before Adelia got pregnant with Winifred; the women probably talked about how they’d raise their daughters together. When Adelia passed in childbirth, though, Estie was heartbroken; Estie and her husband remained in contact with Richard, trying to be there for him and Winnifred if they needed anything. Winnifred and Tess spent their early years as friends.  Shortly before Winnifred disappeared, Estie’s husband died of a heart attack; Estie and Richard came to lean on each other in this time—a widower trying to raise her daughter alone, and a man who had lost everything. They found comfort in each other. It wasn’t some torrid affair—they were just the only two people left living who could understand one another. They both felt guilty, as though they’d betrayed Adelia and Charlie, and the two grew apart.  Tess, who never fully recovered from the sudden loss of her father and close friend in childhood, dropped out of high school later on, and developed a drinking problem which progressed to a drug addiction as she got older. At 24, Tess got pregnant with Reece; when Reece’s father, a fling at best, didn’t want anything to do with it, Tess moved to Chicago for a fresh start. Tess tried to raise Reece and get her life under control, but without proper help, Tess was never able to stay sober for long. When Reece was five, CPS got involved after Tess overdosed, and Reece was taken into the foster care system for a few months.  Tess was able to get sober and get Reece back; the two moved back to Staten Island, where Estie was, and when Tess fell off the wagon again a year later, Reece moved in with Estie, who raised her for the next five years. This took place in the late eighties, when I imagine Estie and Richard would have caught up after all of that time had passed—perhaps Richard would have even met Reece once or twice at some gathering or another that he invited Estie to attend, although Reece and Richard didn’t know each other especially well until Estie, aged 63, died in a car accident in 1990, when Reece was only eleven. Aware that Reece had been in the sole care of his old friend, Richard stepped in to prevent Reece from having to enter the foster care system again.

LIFE AS A WARD

Reece arrived at the Woodrow House as a grieving eleven-year-old who had no idea how to deal with her pain aside from joking about it. The times she spent in her mom's care as a kid were often turbulent, and she'd kind of adapted to the unpredictability of her mom's moods by learning to be an entertainer—nobody can yell at you if they're too busy laughing, right? So, reece developed a real knack for levity and lifting spirits that she carried with her when her grandmother got custody while reece was 5, and again when her grandmother passed and she moved into Richard's care at age 11. Reece has never been good at dealing with the deep stuff, so it's always been hard to get her to be serious about anything. Growing up, I guess you could say she was kind of a troublemaker, but it all came from a kind of impulsive hedonism on Reece's part. it was less true rebellion for the sake of rebelling, and more a desire to do whatever would be the funnest/funniest, no matter the consequences. She has some trouble knowing when a joke has gone too far sometimes, because in her mind, the Joke—whatever that joke may be in the moment—is praxis. Reece more or less invented committing to the bit! She probably spent plenty of time trying to get the other wards to go along with her dumb bits or reckless schemes, too, and she's never been able to stand anyone who takes themselves too seriously. So, that's Reece: an eternal class clown, because laughter takes some of the sting out of the truth. Even the wards that are closest to Reece probably haven't had a lot of truly deep, serious conversations with Reece—at least ones that she participated in voluntarily. Reece spent a long time in and out of alcoholism treatment programs because she couldn't really take her own addiction seriously and see it for what it was; she started drinking young, probably around 13, and she immediately understood what her mother saw in it as an all-day activity. It didn't take long for Richard to recognize Reece's drinking as problematic—after all, thirteen is young to even be experimenting with alcohol, especially given Reece's family history—but it took years of short-lasting sober stints and casual backslides for Reece to understand that she wasn't just being young and dumb, and everyone was right to be worried: it's an illness, and it's not something that went away when she turned twenty-one, which is what she'd been hoping. an instance of alcohol poisoning on her 21st birthday, though, led to Reece getting placed in a more serious addiction rehabilitation program, and she had to drop out of school, but she did get sober at 21, at least for the time being.

AESTHETIC

vintage rings, snarled curls, smudged makeup, menthol marlboros, crushed energy drink cans in the bottom of a beat up purple vw bug, scrawled-on sheet music

Reece's wardrobe pretty much gives y2k laundry day. even though her outfits are usually pretty low-effort, she sort of always comes off as though she's wearing a costume. She oscilates drastically between slutty hi-femme clothes and absolute androgyny, and sometimes she blends the two at once. She wears rings, and her hair is almost always tied back.

EDUCATION

Reece absolutely wanted to be a private school girl, but not for any academic reason. She probably just thought it would be like the movies. Reece wasn’t especially focused when it came to her education, but she did well enough to get accepted to college, which she saw, on-and-off, as a place to party, mostly. She ended up dropping out in her junior year because her alcoholism had gotten out of control, and she needed to go to rehab; she never ended up getting her music degree. 

EXTRACURRICULARS 

Always inclined towards music, Reece cycled through a number of instruments growing up—piano was her first and longest instrument, encouraged by Richard, but Reece’s favorite was guitar (something she picked up at around 14), which she still plays today. She took singing lessons for a while when she first started taking piano, and she also learned some percussion. She probably learned a little saxophone and clarinet, too, so that she’d have experience with band instruments. When it was clear that music was a real passion of Reece’s, Richard set her up with someone who could teach her music theory, and her tutor helped her learn to write music of her own, which became Reece’s major focus during her high school years. For the first couple of years she was at the estate, I also think she probably took some acting lessons and did some local theater acting, since it was probably pretty obvious that Reece really liked being the center of attention and needed some outlet for that.

THEIR LIFE NOW

As stated before, Reece enrolled at NYU to get a degree in music—I'm thinking something related to digital music production, although Reece doesn't have the equipment to do much of that anymore—and she was sober on-and-off over the first few years, not really taking seriously the fact that she needed to stop drinking, but keeping it under wraps enough that things didn't come to a head until her 21st birthday. After being hospitalized with alcohol poisoning, Reece dropped out, got sober, got settled, and moved back to her hometown of Staten Island, where she job hopped for a while before becoming a guitar teacher. Nine months ago, Reece relapsed; she'd had a conversation with her mom, something she hadn't done since her mother lost custody, and it reopened a lot of old wounds Reece didn't know how to deal with; she felt really alone in Staten Island, and she didn't want to reach out to anybody, so she started drinking again, something she kept a secret for as long as she could. Of course, Richard eventually caught on, and he helped Reece to get sober again; the other wards will probably be vaugely aware that Reece is set to collect her 7-month chip in a couple of weeks. Another thing Reece kept a secret, albeit successfully, this time: she started dating a guy she met at an open mic night she preformed at (aspiring comic in new york lets goooo) five months ago, even though recently recovered addicts are generally supposed to hold off on dating anyone until they've been sober for at least a year, for the sake of stability in sobriety. The relationship was turbulent to start—he negged her comedy routine–but it was combative in a way that Reece found kind of... comfortable, maybe? It was passionate, kind of hot and heavy, and Reece moved in with him right away; however, the relationship very recently came to a head—what had always been a fiery relationship eventually progressed into Jack manipulating & mistreating Reece, including a few instances of physical abuse. So, Reece will be rocking up to the Woodrow House for the funeral with a black eye and a bandaged nose, less than a week off of a break-up, and in need of somewhere to live (she'd been planning on couch-surfing during the process of trying to get her old apartment back </3).

[lucyandthepen]

a lesson on style - iv . [ ljn | njm ]

pt. i, pt. ii, pt. iii, pt. iv.,  pt. v, pt. vi

you’ve always been content with being associated with one word and one word only: average. average in looks, academics and social skills, you’re just looking to graduate high school without causing disasters you’ll have to live with until you kick the bucket. when you’re paired with school king lee jeno for the semester-long physics thesis, you can’t help but think the entire situation has pretty much set itself up for failure. that is, until you strike a deal with your partner. alternatively: an au tale involving lessons in popularity, eleven consecutive B­ minuses, a secretly sensitive, chess­-loving jock, and an amateur sex tape.

pairing: jeno x fem!reader, jaemin x fem!reader verse: high school au { jocks!nomin ft. a super cute whiny ap physics genius renjun } rating: M for sexual themes ( there are allusions to sex but no explicit smut! ) chapter warnings:  word count: 7.6k

author’s note: i went quiet for a hot minute because a ton of nice things ate up all my weekends and a ton of terrible things ate up all my weekdays but im BACK with gremlin energy stronger than ever !!!!

tagging @justalildumpling​

Renjun, being the quintessential all-around nerd that he is, has told you a lot about what they talk about in his advanced placement physics classes. A huge part of their class’ previous term had to do with theoretical physics; it had been basically months of him trying to enthusiastically explain something wildly abstract to you, and you laying your head on his fairly tall pile of books checked out from the library, humming in agreement at opportune times, like when he’d catch his breath, to make it sound like you weren’t falling asleep on him. He’d told you about the uncertainty principle, the multiverse theories, the difference between loop quantum gravity and string theory — both of which, he’d said, had their merits, but he was ultimately a stringy universe kind of guy. A lot of the stuff he’d said hadn’t made much sense, and they mostly seemed impossible, which is why you’d stopped trying to pay attention by the end of the first month.  

With all of that information in mind, however, you have to say that this is the most absurd thing you’ve heard thus far.  

“That’s physically impossible,” you say without even thinking. Jeno, who has been grinning for the last two minutes leading up to his proposition, suddenly shifts mood, looking a little taken aback.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, this,” you gesture to yourself as a whole, trying to ignore the inappropriately timed wave of tingles that arises when his eyes follow your hand. “Is not a shapeless slab of stone you’re going to be able to sculpt into something magical. I’m… I’m as good as it’s going to get. Which is fine, by the way.”

“Not really sure about the analogy,” he muses. “But I’ll go with it. I’m not going to try to re-mold you, or anything. We can just spruce it up. Kind of like putting Calvin Klein boxer briefs on that ripped naked guy by Michelangelo.”

“Wh — okay, I’m not even going to bother asking about the underwear brand choice.” You wave the analogy away. “You know that… getting a good, stardom-esque reputation like yours isn’t easy in high school, right?”

“Yeah, but it’s not impossible,” Vaguely, you note that he doesn’t reject the idea that he’s a high school superstar. “Remember Park Jisung?”

“The guy that stands behind you in games?”

“The running back, yes,” he confirms. “Two years ago, that kid was a total loner. He ate lunch under that big tree next to the teacher’s parking lot. Now he’s running for captain next year, and everyone in his level is friends with him. And he’s wearing contact lenses instead of glasses now. See?”

“I’m not sure how that last one fits in, but I’m also going to let it go for now. I don’t have two years,” you remind him. “We graduate this term. Well — hopefully.”

He shrugs nonchalantly. “You don’t need two years. I’m just saying. You’re always with that friend of yours, but you could stand to widen your circle, and there are a lot of our classmates I know you’d get along with. You could get into some cool new things, meet new people, share new interests. Plus, we’d get to hang out a lot more instead of just, you know, doing,” he points disdainfully at the list of topics. “That.”

You stare down at the paper, but your eyes just stick to it blankly without reading, your mind trying to process everything instead. You don’t really care about climbing up the proverbial social ladder; average is pretty fine with you, and you’re not even sure what a better reputation is going to achieve at this point. Still, the most appealing part of this conversation is getting to hang out with Jeno — the one thing you’ve craved since puberty, probably. Honestly, it seems like a win-win; it’s not like you weren’t planning on doing the project, anyway.  

For some reason, it just feels too good to be true, though; you think there might be a snag, but you also can’t figure out what it might possibly be. You look up at Jeno for any sign of him faltering, but he’s just staring back at you a little expectantly, and it suddenly dawns on you that he’s worried you’ll say no.

Which is, frankly, laughable.

“Yeah, okay,” you say slowly, setting aside any hesitation you have. He lights up, that grin making a comeback on his face. “Yeah — why not?”

“Why not,” he echoes, looking exceptionally pleased. “For sure. Okay, well — awesome. So, I was thinking we could probably get some more headway with the project this week. You know, get it over with, rip the bandaid off quick and early, that sort of thing.”

“I’m free any time,” you say almost immediately, not only because it’s true but because even if it weren’t, you’d happily cancel all of your schedules for this. Luckily for you, your eagerness comes off as a simple fact, and Jeno clearly takes it as such.

“Cool. I have practice after school, though, so can we do it over the weekend?” You nod, and he takes back the piece of paper, flipping it over while uncapping his pen with his teeth. “Here’s my number; text me on Saturday morning or whenever and just remind me about it. If I don’t reply in ten minutes, call me. I oversleep sometimes, or sometimes I let my battery die out because I forget to charge my phone. In that case, you can call my sister to wake me up. We don’t have a landline at home because, well… obviously.”

“Uh,” you’re not sure what to do with this sudden onslaught of information about his daily life, and it’s almost hilariously surreal that he’s writing down his sister’s phone number under his own. “That — okay.”

“Also, is it okay with your parents if I park in your driveway?”

“You know where I live?” You don’t even bother masking the tone of surprise.  

“Well, yeah.” He looks amusedly perplexed. “You’re Jaemin’s neighbor. You’ve played Winner’s Really Really almost everyday since it came out. I can hear it from his bathroom.”

Right. Your lapse in memory makes you want to punch something — preferably yourself. “Oh. yeah. I should probably keep it down.”

“Nah. It’s a good song. Pretty sure that’s why Jaemin won’t stop asking me to play it in the car now.”

“Anyway,” you try to shift the topic back on track. “Usually, on weekends, my parents take the cars so the driveway’s empty, but their schedule’s kind of messy. They have, like, alpaca enthusiast functions sometimes, and sometimes they just stay home, so I can’t really promise a parking spot right now.”

“It’s cool. I can just park in front of Jaemin’s house, if that’s the case.”

“Is that okay with his family when you’re not even in their house?”

“Are you kidding? His mom invites me to their Seollal celebration like every year. I join their family for jesa like I don’t have my own family to do it with. She even calls me adeul. I could strangle Jaemin in his sleep, and she’d come in and ask me if I needed more heavy duty rope. It’s totally fine.”

You feel like a part of what he’s saying is a huge exaggeration, but it’s almost endearing that he and Jaemin have this kind of friendship. Briefly, your mind shifts to Renjun, and you wonder if you have the same kind of confidence in your relationship — then you remember you’re furious at him and shake the idea off before you start thinking about strangling him with some heavy duty rope.

“I’ll let you know if they leave anyway.” You take the paper back, index finger running idly over the dents in the paper that his writing his number had made. “Just in case.”

“Cool, just —“ He stops for a second as the teacher walks in, looking as disgruntled as ever. Jeno lowers his voice to a whisper. “Just text me.”

You nod, and he drops the conversation, turning his attention to the board where your teacher is trying to graph out a parabola. You try to focus on it too, opening your notebook to copy it down quickly alongside the equation he’s written to its right, except you have no clue where that figure came from and why he’s drawing it.

It also doesn’t help that you’re trying really hard not to stare at Jeno, who’s obviously not paying attention and is, inexplicably, smiling to himself, which is just giving you the worst (or best) kind of butterflies.

You don’t know why you’d expected things to change immediately, but whether or not they were supposed to, they don’t. The assumption was that because you’d be hanging out with Jeno, you wouldn’t need to worry about where to sit during lunch time, but he’s hardly in school for the last two days of the week; the crowd he’s with is still at their regular spot, and you understand that they’re probably friendly enough to accommodate you, but it seems like a stupid idea to approach them and say that you want to sit there because Jeno is supposed to be there.  

It gets worse when you see Renjun at your usual table, eating his donkatsu, and you make eye contact. His expression is unreadable, and you suddenly feel the overwhelming need to either cry or throw miso soup at his face, so you deduce that you’re still not ready to approach him. It doesn’t help that his backpack and a stack of three, unbelievably thick books is on the chair where you frequently sit next to him, like he’s doing all he can to shun you. In the end, you take a cue from Park Jisung of two years ago and make your way to the big tree near the teacher’s parking lot, settling down under its shade.

It’s actually not as bad as it had sounded when Jeno had talked about it; the cell service is surprisingly great, so you get to wedge your phone between your legs while you’re Indian sitting and watch more Facebook videos featuring samoyeds and rescued kittens on mute. You spend maybe five minutes in between to check Jeno’s profile, but you’re unsurprised to find that the last time he’d been active was almost three days ago; the most recent post was a picture from last month that he’d been tagged in by who you assumed was his sister.

Halfway through the hour, a shadow grows over you, blocking out the sun. You look up, expecting that it’s Renjun, seeking you out after more than thirty-six hours of stony silence, but it isn’t; it’s Jaemin, looking a little sweaty and breathless. From your position, you notice that he’s in muddied cleats instead of the traditional casual sneakers that almost everyone wears, and there’s a little ring of darkness around the neckline of his navy blue shirt.

“Hey,” he sounds as breathless as he looks. “Can I sit here for a sec?”

You nod wordlessly, still in the middle of chewing your donkatsu, and he busies himself with tossing his backpack down against the tree before following suit, collapsing next to you with a huff. He even smells a little sweaty, like he’s been out in the sun for long; even if it isn’t exactly repellent, you inch away slightly. Thankfully, he doesn’t really notice, with him so busy trying to find the right place on his scalp where his hairline cuts evenly. When he speaks up again, his voice is exceptionally casual.  

“You know this tree is infested with wooly caterpillars, right?”

“What?” Your mouth is half-full, though, so it just comes out as a garbled hnwaf?, and you jerk away quickly, precious bento box in hand. When you look back at Jaemin, though, he’s chuckling, back still pressed against the tree trunk.

“Kidding. Obviously.”

“Not funny.” You shift back in place, swallowing your food so that he can more clearly understand how unamusing that was.

“Sorry.” There’s a light twinkle in his eyes that says he isn’t though. “I didn’t have a better conversation opener. Anyway — why are you out here? This is literally the second least desirable place to have lunch.”

“What’s the first?”

“The boys’ bathroom on the third floor.”

You snort softly, putting the lid back on your bento box to avoid spillage just in case he decided to trigger panic again. “I’m just… enjoying the breeze and sunshine. Nature is such a thing for me. I also hear looking at greenery speeds up your metabolism.”

“Bullshit,” he laughs, and you’re amusedly taken aback by how comfortably he’s speaking around you. Then again, he doesn’t seem the type to talk any differently around anyone else. “Nice straight-faced lie, though. I would have believed you if I knew that definitely wasn’t true. I do hear it relaxes you, though — the looking at greenery thing.”

You laugh softly, leaning back (a little gingerly) against the tree, your bento box balanced on your knee; you can feel Jaemin’s gaze burning into the side of your face, clearly expecting an answer to his question, but the ideas of elaborating on petty fights with your only consistent friend or on petty desires involving his best friend both feel weird, so you just avoid the topic altogether, throwing your own question at him instead in an attempt to curveball the conversation into your favor.

“Do you know why Jeno isn’t in school today?”

Jaemin doesn’t answer immediately; you can tell he’s noticed you weaseling away from such a basic question, but, thankfully, he doesn’t push it after a brief moment of silence, simply reaching into his bag to extract a sandwich and an energy drink bottle. He takes his time popping open the bottle but doesn’t drink, twirling the cap between his fingers.

“He just does that sometimes, Jeno.” It’s clear in the tone of his voice that he’s choosing his words carefully. "He’s got… other stuff to do outside of school, so he suddenly ghosts. I’m sure he’ll be back on Monday, though. He usually shows up after the weekend, in my experience.”

“Other stuff?”

“It’s not really something I can explain or — you know. I don’t know how to, anyway. I wouldn’t know where to begin. Plus, it’s technically none of my business —“

“No — no, I get it. You don’t have to tell me.” It feels uncomfortable, anyway, suddenly prying into Jeno’s business, no matter how much a substantial part of your consciousness wanted to.

“But you want to know,” he takes a sip of his energy drink. “Because you’re nosy.”

“I’m not!” You want to cringe at how defensive your voice sounds, but it would just give you away more. “It’s just that, you know, he wasn’t around for class yesterday, and I haven’t seen him around today, so, I just…”

“I’m kidding, ________________. I know you’re not nosy. You’re worried about him because you like him.”  

Horror creeps into your expression; you watch, frozen, as Jaemin takes a large bite out of his sandwich. You can see the spam between the slices slipping down at the bottom, threatening to fall into the plastic bag. You lock eyes with him; he stares at you, but you can’t tell if he’s smiling because his cheeks are puffed out by all of that bread and filling he’s munching so diligently on. Denial is the first thing that pops into your head; it seems so easy just to say no, I don’t!, but you can’t bring yourself to. In the end, you just sigh in defeat.  

“Does he know?”

“Jeno? I don’t know. Maybe, but he also has this talent for not paying attention to stuff that seems obvious, so there’s the possibility that he doesn’t. We don’t really have a very in-depth feelings are valid relationship, so it’s not like we talk about it.”

“Is it that obvious, though?”

“Is Dongbangshinki’s Here I Am the best song in history?”  

“Debatable,” you snort half-heartedly. “But I get what you’re trying to say.”

“I know you think Winner’s Really Really is the best song, but,” he pauses, swallowing down his food and taking another enormous bite. “You should really expand your horizons more. For both our sakes.”  

“Really Really is a great song. Besides, Jeno says you’ve been playing it in his car these days.”

“It is an earworm kind of jam,” he admits. “But it doesn’t beat out the classics by a mile.”  

“Here I Am was released in 2010!” You argue. “That was like ten years ago!”

“No, it was released in 2012.” He says as-a-matter-of-factly. “And Really Really should be thankful for all Here I Am sunbaenim has done for it.”  

You don’t know why the sound of your laugh is so foreign until you realize you don’t really remember having laughed genuinely over the last week; between panicking over the strangely massive amount of attention Jeno had bestowed upon you and Renjun’s childish and, therefore, frustrating behavior, you haven’t found much humor in anything, and humor hasn’t really found you until now. It feels nice to just carry out a conversation without worrying it’s going to turn into a disaster or an argument, and you kind of like how Jaemin laughs even louder and a lot more obnoxiously than you do; some freshmen crossing the field in front of you actually turn when he starts guffawing.  

The silence that you both lapse into is a little less strange; you get to resume finishing off your donkatsu, and Jaemin enthusiastically inhales the rest of his sandwich. He’s flicking the bread crumbs off his fingers into the grass when he starts talking again.

“So you and Renjun still aren’t talking?”

“Wh — now who’s being nosy?”

“Technically, it’s not hard to deduce,” he crumples the plastic bag and smushes it into his backpack again. “You’re not in the cafeteria with him like you usually are. Plus, he punctured three holes into his quiz a couple of days back because of how hard he was digging his pen into his paper. I had to give him a new sheet.”

“Yeah, well,” you blow out air in a sharp, annoyed huff. “I hope he failed.”

“He didn’t, but for the sake of my curiosity, why would you hope that?”

“Because he’s just — he’s being a pain in the ass. He has been, for a while. Also, he has this really bad problem of talking too much even though it’s obvious you want him to shut up. And he thinks he’s hilarious when he’s just being mean.”

“To Jeno, you mean?”

“You heard about that?” You raise your eyebrows. “I thought you guys weren’t into talking about feelings or whatever.”

“We aren’t. Jeno literally said you know that Renjun guy? What’s his problem?, and I just naturally put the pieces together.” He shrugs.

“Yeah, well, I wonder that sometimes too.” You pluck out blades of grass aggressively, feeling your face heat up with residual fury from the thought of Renjun.

“Haven’t you guys been friends for years?”

“Yeah? So? He can’t be a jerk to me after all these years?” Your snippy tone cuts through your trance of anger, and you look back at Jaemin, who’s surprisingly not at all taken aback. He’s just looking at the dirty blades of grass in your fist with some mild form of interest. “Sorry. That was rude.”

“No, it’s okay. It’s not like I know what you really fought about. Although,” he adds as an afterthought. “If it’s about Jeno, I really don’t think he’s worth losing a friendship over. Don’t get me wrong; I mean, Jeno’s great. He’s my best friend.”

“Your mom loves him,” you interject helpfully, and he hums in agreement.

“But it’s not like you have only one position for a male friend in your life. You don’t have to trade Renjun for Jeno, or anything like that. Maybe you guys can just talk it out.”

Jaemin’s fingers are idly playing with the grass as well; instead of pulling them out, though, he’s just brushing his fingers through them like they’re the fur on his sleeping cat. It strikes you that Jaemin and Jeno are weirdly nothing alike; Jeno’s substantial physique totally eclipses Jaemin’s fairly leaner one, and they even talk differently, not to mention the fact that the latter is clearly lightyears ahead of the former academically. Still, they’re close — kind of like you and Renjun were. Are? Should be?

“Yeah — I guess,” you let go of the grass, watching them fall, crumpled, back into the dirt. “I guess you’re right.”

“Besides, if anyone were to replace Renjun as your best friend and confidant, it would obviously be me.” The light humor creeps back into his voice, and you smile slightly.

“Obviously.” It’s weird to think of Jaemin as coming close to the level of a best friend, but it’s also starting to hit you that he’s talking more like a friend than a casual neighborhood acquaintance, a particular relationship development that you didn’t think would be possible at the start of this school year — or, well, two weeks ago, actually.

You can see streams of people walking out of the cafeteria back into the main building; lunch time is nearly over, and this fact is confirmed by Jaemin suddenly tilting his head back along with his energy drink, downing its contents in swift, audible gulps, his Adam’s apple bobbing rhythmically. He lets out a refreshed exhale once he’s done, popping the cap back on.

“I have to get the class’s quizzes back from the faculty before I go in. Want to walk back together?”

“No, that’s okay,” you watch him shrug on his backpack, reaching out to fix the zipper that leaves it half-opened. He mumbles a thanks. “I’m going to sit here and finish watching this samoyed ASMR video until the bell rings.”

“Cool,” he stands, brushing off the grass and dirt from his jeans. “Well, see you around, _______________.”

You give him a wave, and he starts trekking across the field; you almost turn back to your video, which has been on pause since he’d arrived, but he calls out to you, walking backwards now instead of stopping like a normal person.

“By the way, you should know that ownership of my jacket comes with great responsibilities. More information to follow,” he calls out.

“Oh, shit,” you mumble to yourself; you’d forgotten about it, even if it’s been sitting on the chair by the front door for the majority of the week. You raise your voice to respond to him. “I’ll drop by later and give it back!”

“Don’t worry about it,” he waves away your words. “Whenever you remember.”

“I’ll do it after school,” you’re practically shouting now because he refuses to stay still. He gives you a thumbs up that looks minuscule from the distance between the two of you.

“I’ll hold you to it!” He gives one last wave, turning back around and jogging towards the main building.

You can see the little sweat patterns that are almost dried up on the back of his shirt, even if he’s so far away now; weirdly enough, they remind you of tiny angel wings.

This is the first Saturday in your life on which you wake up really early; you’re actually up to see the sunrise, which is something you haven’t seen since a Thursday during your second grade when you’d woken up, startled, to a stray cat making a mess of the trash cans in front of your house. You’re already oddly feverish and more than a little jittery from the moment you roll out of bed, which leads to you taking an hour-long shower that you use to create multiple scenarios involving Jeno’s visit. None of them end particularly well, especially the one where he drives up to your house only to tell you that he’s found a better partner before driving away. It’s at that point — as well as the point where you notice that the tips of your fingers have significantly pruned up — that you decide you’ve wasted enough time and water.

Still, even with the hour above you’ve killed, it seems way too early on a weekend to call someone, much less expect them. Now is actually one of the rarer times in your house that it’s fairly quiet, with only a few footsteps in adjacent rooms breaking the silence, so you take advantage of the opportunity to prepare. In this case, preparation really means taking out the piece of paper that had Jeno’s number, adding Jeno’s number, adding Jeno’s sister’s number, taking note of the project Jeno wants to do very briefly before deciding you have no tools to prepare for it, and then contemplating whether or not you should call Jeno or his sister now.  

Your final decision is to head down for breakfast and attempt to stop obsessing too much over the Jeno situation, and you’re surprised to see Jisoo at the table, a bowl of cereal in front of him that looks only a fraction of a percentage touched. His eyes are glued to his phone, and he’s scrolling madly away. He doesn’t even notice you as you open the refrigerator and let out a small noise of defeat as you learn he’s taken the last of the milk.

“Hey,” you finally speak up, setting down your glass of grape juice way too hard on the table so he snaps out of it; he fumbles with his phone, almost dropping it into his bowl of cereal. “Who are you talking to this early in the morning?”

“None of your business,” he mumbles, locking his screen.

“Okay. Well, it’s also none of my business, but your cereal milk is curdling.”

He looks down at the bowl, like he’s shocked to see that it’s somehow materialized in front of him, but he doesn’t respond, opting to shovel soggy cereal into his mouth to avoid having to speak. You both consume your food in silence for the most part, until he’s only got the last dregs of milk and some cereal he didn’t manage to stuff into his face swimming at the bottom of the bowl.

“You can’t tell Sooyeon noona,” he starts suddenly, and you put down your half-empty glass of juice.

“That’s a promise I cannot make without knowing what you’re hiding.”  

“It’s not bad. I swear. It’s just… if you tell her, she might do something about it, and I will literally never come out of my room again if she does.”  

You wrap your fingers around the glass, condensation sticking to your skin. “Fine. I won’t tell her. For now.”

“I’ve been… I’ve been talking to Kim Minjeong.”

Your mouth forms a tiny ‘o’, finally cottoning on to why he doesn’t want you blabbing to your sister; Kim Minjeong is in the same year as your sister, and she comes over sometimes after cheerleading practice. You like her, mostly because she’s undeniably nice and also because sometimes she brings egg custard tarts for the family, but you do know both of your brothers tend to avoid going down when your sister invites any of her friends over. You’d always naturally assumed that neither of them enjoyed the awkwardness that comes along with hanging around older girls you don’t know but have no choice to play host to (which is a specific and odd type of awkwardness, but a real one just the same), but that seems to be true for only one of your brothers now.

“Since when?”

“For a couple of months now. She — I don’t know,” Jisoo’s hands squeeze around his phone. “She’s so nice. She doesn’t treat me like a kid. Plus, I found out she watches Battlestar Galactica. The original and the remake.”

“Sounds like you’ve got a keeper. So what’s the big deal?”

“I mean, I like her, but I think she just… you know, she’s just nice to me because she has to be — because she’s friends with Sooyeon noona? And I don’t know if I should tell her I like her. And if I do, how should I tell her? And what am I going to do if she says she doesn’t like me back? And what do I do if Sooyeon noona finds out?”  

He lifts his eyes, looking at you expectantly, but you’ve been operating under the assumption that these questions are all rhetorical, and you have no response to offer. All you can do is shrug helplessly, which is extremely lame, and Jisoo looks even more devastated now.

“Well, how would you go about it?”

“You’re asking the wrong person,” you snort. “My signature move is stare and stutter. You having a conversation about Battlestar Galactica with a hot cheerleader is a lot, lot farther than I’ve gone.”

“Well, how did Jaemin hyung ask you out?”

“He — hang on — what?”  

“How did. Jaemin hyung. Ask you out?” He chops up his sentence like you’re a baby, and you smack his forearm. He doesn’t even flinch.

“He didn’t ask me out because we’re not together, as I repeatedly told you guys earlier this week.”

“Yeah, but some girls from my level saw the two of you near the teacher’s parking lot making out. Which reminds me — I think you have a couple of new… enemies from my year level. You should probably know that.”

“We weren’t making out! We were just talking. I’m —“ You almost want to say you’re loyal to Lee Jeno, but even in your head, it sounds a little pathetic. “I’m not into him. At all. Please don’t make me repeat myself.”

“Fine,” he sighs in frustration, as if it’s your fault that you’re single and therefore useless as a source of advice. “Well, what do you think I should do? If you were her — would you be creeped out by me asking you out?”

“Yeah. Because you’re my brother.”

“I mean if I weren’t.”

“Look, I can’t predict what she’s going to do; even if I were her closest friend, I wouldn’t know what the future was. Why can’t you just ask her out? If you’ve been thinking about it this much, then you’re obviously ready to try, right?”

“What if she says no? I’m going to have to live with Sooyeon noona knowing about it.”

“You’re going to have to live with her regardless, because she’s your sister,” you remind him. “And sooner or later, she’s going to find out. Personally, I think you should tell her. Sooyeon, I mean. She might be able to help you.”

“She might blab and ruin me. Sooyeon noona gossips so much.”

“Hey, watch it. I accept you looking down on me, but I will not have you have any negative opinions on our precious sister.”

“But it’s true,” he groans. You smack his arm again. This time, a tiny ow escapes him.  

“I know it is, but it’s her one and only flaw, anyway, and she’d never gossip if she knew it would affect you negatively. Talk. To. Her.”

“Fine,” he picks up his spoon, scraping off the soggy cereal that’s adhered to the bottom of the bowl. You flinch at the loud noise. “Fine, I will. But if this goes horribly, I’m blaming you.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” you say, raising your glass to your lips and finishing the last of your juice while your brother washes his bowl and retreats back into his room.

You can hear the rest of your family slowly waking up, and your mom is the next one to come down, announcing that she’s on her way to go to some quilt-making class that she’s been itching to go to for months. She asks you what you’re going to do today, and you talk about your project in as vague a way as possible so that she doesn’t continuously pry; luckily, she’s so excited about making a quilt today that she doesn’t even try to push it, simply promising to buy more milk on her way home from the class before heading out.

It still seems too early to expect Jeno, so you end up going up the stairs way too slowly, consequently annoying your youngest brother, who’s waiting to go down; he blows past you once you’ve reached the top of the stairs, muttering something about how girls always take their time. The end result of you trying to kill more time is you booting up the Sims on your laptop, making a new household and cheating your way into free real estate and a ton of money so you can move them into the fancier neighborhood. In the end, though, the yipping of the new dogs they’ve adopted gets to you, and you pause the game, finally picking up your phone.  

Unfortunately, it doesn’t even ring; the operator voice just tells you the number is unreachable at this time. It takes another five minutes for you to muster up the courage to call Jeno’s sister, who, to your relief, picks up after the third ring with a sleepy ‘hello?’

“Um… I’m sorry to wake you,” you don’t know why you’re whispering, but it just seems appropriate. “I’m… well, Jeno told me to call you if his phone isn’t ringing, so I just… sorry.”

“Oh,” there’s a pregnant pause that makes you wonder if she’s hung up the phone for a short, scary moment. “Oh, right; you’re probably ______________, right?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Yeah. Sorry. Jeno told me you might call. He’s probably got his phone turned off. I’ll go wake him up and tell him to contact you.”

“Thank you,” you’re still whispering when you hang up, and all the extra air escapes you in the form of a relieved sigh once the call drops. You return to your sims with a significantly lighter heart thereafter, and you even get them into cool new jobs before your youngest brother sticks his head into your room without knocking.

“______________ noona, Renjun hyung’s downstairs.”

You press the pause button so hard it actually sounds like the key has cracked, swiveling around in your study chair.

“Renjun? Huang Renjun?”

“Who else?” He sounds annoyed, but that’s how he usually sounds anyway, so you just brush it off. You think about telling your brother to tell him to go away, but your brother is already gone before you can finish deciding if you really want to do this, leaving your door ajar. With a groan, you slip off your chair, only momentarily distracted by your text message alert going off.

[ from; Lee Jeno ] hry sorry. 4got to charge my phone. Battery died. omw to u.

You don’t take the luxury of cooing over how cute his text sounds in your head, running down the stairs instead to see Renjun standing by the front door, twiddling his thumbs. He hears you charging down, looking up as you do so, and you can tell he’s swallowing hard because his Adam’s apple bobs dangerously in his throat. It’d be kind of funny if you weren’t equally as nervous.

“Hey,” he greets, his voice sounding a little choked up, like he hasn’t spoken for days — which, you know, is physically impossible for him.

“Uh. Hey. Why are you — what… are you doing here?” So maybe it comes out a little more accusatory than you’d initially intended, and you see that Renjun recoils a little. You feel bad about it. Kind of.

“I… um… we haven’t spoken for a few days.”

“I know that.”

“Right. Sorry. I was just hoping to talk to you.” He takes a deep breath. “I’m… I… you know.”

“Here to make fun of me? Like you’re so used to doing?” This time, his cringing brings about the slightest wave of pleasure in you, followed immediately by a larger, much more all-consuming attack of guilt.

“No, no. I came here to, you know. Apologize.”

“Oh.” You nod slowly. “I see.”

You wait for him to say something, but he’s just watching you, like he’s waiting for some kind of bigger reaction, except there’s absolutely nothing to react to, so you just give him a look that urges him to keep going.

“Right. Sorry. I mean — I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what I said back then.” He sighs, and it’s clear he thinks he’s digging his dignity’s grave deeper and deeper as he talks. “I have my reasons for not really liking Jeno. I don’t really know how much that’s going to change in the span of a few days. But I do know that I embarrassed you in front of him, and I don’t want to do that to you, ever. I’m sorry for that.”

“It was kind of embarrassing,” you agree.

“And, more importantly, I… I want to support you. I mean, I really don’t think you guys should get together, if I’m being honest,” he notices you bristling and hastens to add to his sentiments. “But I also know it’s not really about what I think. If you like him, and you’re happy around him, then… I’ll be okay with it. As long as he makes you happy.”

“We’re not together, Renjun,” you reply quietly. “I just like him. One-way crush — that’s it. It’s really, really not that big of a deal. I don’t want to fight just because I have a crush. If you liked someone, just liked them, I wouldn’t stop you from having feelings.”

“I know. I know you wouldn’t because that’s what good friends should be like. I should’ve been a better friend to you.” He takes in a shaky breath. “_______________, I’m really, really sorry. I hate fighting with you like this. Eating donkatsu alone without anyone to complain to about the moistness of the breading was torture.”  

You choke out a laugh, and it’s only then that you realize that you’ve been slowly tearing up. Even Renjun looks a little misty-eyed, which is weird for the both of you, considering that you only ever cry watching Ma Dongseok movies.

“It really was kind of soggy.” You agree, and he laughs loudly.

“So this is good, right? I mean… we’re good?”

“We’re good.” You and Renjun rarely hug, since there’s never any cause for it, but it seems appropriate to do so now; luckily, he must be on the same train of thought, because he envelops you in a tighter-than-usual hug. You spend a couple of seconds just standing in your living room, trying not to sniffle too loudly into each other’s ears.

“Anyway,” he starts up again when he pulls away, dabbing at his eyes with his sleeve. “I have to go home and help my mom with her garage sale today, but I’ll see you on Monday?”

“Definitely.”

“Cool. Oh — one more thing. Do you… think you can tell Jeno I’m sorry, too?”

“No,” you laugh. “No way. You tell him you’re sorry yourself.”

“Aw, come on,” Renjun whines, emphasizing his reluctance to do so by stamping his foot childishly. “There’s no context in which I’d be able to get to talk to him alone, anyway.”

“He’s coming over here in a few minutes to start on the project with me,” you inform him, and he actually looks a little crestfallen at this new information. “You can tell him you’re sorry then.”

“Fine,” he grumbles, sitting himself down on the chair near the front door only to sit back up, looking up at you in mild disbelief.

“You still haven’t given Jaemin’s jacket back?”

“Oh, shit. Yeah. Well, I keep forgetting!” You defend yourself.

“He lives right next to you! You could even ask your brothers to do it if you promised to pay them 10,000 won!”  

“Yeah, but giving it back through someone else when I could just do it myself just seems so rude, you know?”

“And keeping it even though you have no reason to is polite in your head?”

“Shu— oh, oh, he’s here,” you cut yourself off as you hear the crunch of tires on your driveway, signaling that Jeno had parked in the spot your mom had left behind when she’d gone for her quilting class. Renjun flies off the chair and presses his back against the door before you can fling it open. “Hey!”

“Can you relax for one second? He’s getting out of his car. If you open the door now, you’ll look crazy.”

“Oh,” you pause, considering his words. “Good catch.”

A few moments later, the doorbell rings, and you shoo Renjun away from the door to open it. Jeno’s form is literally blocking the view of the outside, and you briefly wonder if this is more of a testament of his physique or proof that your family is just made up of small people. Or both.

“Hey, sorry,” he pulls off his baseball cap, which leaves his hair adorably flat and messy. “I overslept a little. Also, just in case, I brought my g — oh.”

Jeno stops when his eyes land on Renjun, who’s now miraculously standing behind you, looking like he wants to disappear. The look on Jeno’s face is stony, but he tears his gaze back to you anyway.

“Is this a bad time? I can come back. I’m sure Jaemin’s awake by now.”

“No, it’s cool. Renjun just… dropped by.” You step back so that Renjun is in the forefront, and he shoots you a withering glare. “He actually has something to say to you.”

“Does he?” Jeno doesn’t even sound interested, but he focuses on Renjun again anyway. “What’s that?”

“Look, dude,” you’ve never heard Renjun call anyone dude before, and it makes you snort, a noise which the both of them ignore. “I’m sorry about the other day. It was totally uncool of me, and I shouldn’t have said what I did. I didn’t mean any of it.”

“Oh,” Jeno clearly wasn’t expecting an apology, but he looks pleased anyway. “Okay. Well, apology accepted.”

“Thanks,” even though it’s what he’d wanted, Renjun doesn’t sound too enthusiastic about receiving forgiveness. “And I mean it. I give you both my blessing. You can… pursue this relationship without any more active, explicit judgment from me. Good feelings for everyone, and all that.”

“Okay,” you cut in, not missing the fact that he’d gone out of his way to add active and explicit to allow himself the sneaky sliver of opportunity to judge Jeno in silence. The latter is looking at him, befuddled again. “That’s all you wanted to say, isn’t it, Renjun?”

“I’m not even sure if all of it was what I really wanted to say,” he sighs defeatedly at you. "But yes; I’m good.”

“Cool,” you push him towards the door; Jeno steps aside to let him through, and Renjun walks out, looking a little dazed, like his body can’t handle the idea that he’d just apologized to Jeno and is in the process of going into total shock. “Bye, Renjun. See you on Monday.”

You hear him mumble something as he trudges away, and Jeno follows his movements in silence until he disappears down the sidewalk.

“Was that weird, or—?”

“Yeah, it was kind of weird,” you admit, ushering him in. “But he means well. Anyway, putting that aside, should we get started on the actual proposal?”

“Did he say he gave us his blessing?” Jeno suddenly starts echoing Renjun’s words like they’re only starting to sink in now.

“Oh. Yeah — I wouldn’t really think too much of it,” you wave it away as Jeno settles down on your couch. “Smart people tend to say crazy things. So, I was thinking about the topic you picked, and I think the physics lab has a digital multimeter. We can check if it has that option for measuring sound frequency.”

“Uh huh,” he still looks like he’s not latching onto the topic change, whacking his baseball hat onto his thigh idly. “Sounds good.”

“You know… I’m going to go and get my laptop first,” you announce. Jeno makes a sound of assent, and you run upstairs into your room again. Your Sims game is still going on, and your laptop’s fan is working on overdrive. You press quit a good ten times, not bothering to save the game and open up Facebook, typing out an angry message to Renjun.

You: WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU

Na Jaemin: ??????

You: oops sorry wrong send !

Na Jaemin: lol good morning to u too

You leave Jaemin on read, focusing on your mission to chastise Renjun and opening the right chat.

You: WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Huang Renjun: IDK WHAT HAPPENED THAT WAS SO WEIRD

Huang Renjun: I SAID BLESSING JDGJSSJSF

You: I KNOW I WAS THERE

Huang Renjun: I KNOW IM SORRYRIJSPJG

You: DOSIJGSJG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You almost make it out of your room before having to double back, realizing you’re leaving behind the laptop you came up to get, and run back down, finding Jeno in the same position with the same perplexed look on his face. He, thankfully, doesn’t notice how red your face is when you sit down.

“Okay. Sorry. Should we start?”

“What? Oh, yeah of course,” he shakes his head as through trying to break himself from a trance.

“So I was saying, we could probably borrow one of those multimeters from the lab, but we’d need a written request for that. Also, I think we need to figure out—”

“Sorry, I just really need to ask,” Jeno interrupts you, and your voice dies in your throat. “That thing Huang Renjun said —”

“I’m really sorry.” You sigh, realizing the topic is unavoidable. “It was weird. I’d say he’s not usually like that, but…”  

Jeno nods, staring at the inside of his cap, which is now settled on his lap. His long fingers are playing with the backstrap idly, and you wonder if what you’ve said is enough to make him drop the conversation. Unfortunately, you can tell he’s still on it when he looks up at you seriously, leading you to a sharp, uncomfortable inhale.

“You… didn’t tell him we were dating, did you?”

[ryuzakjis]

glamrock bonnie theory!

ok hey fnaf fans! my brains been brewing with a theory about exactly what happened to glamrock bonnie for a while so i wanna share what ive come up with !!

now i know theres a lot of people under the opinion that monty had decommissioned bonnie a short time before the events of security breach, but in my opinion most of the evidence people had pointing towards monty being the perpetrator has been rendered prettyyy baseless after the release of ruin.

so now im beginning to point fingers elsewhere.

specifically, fazbear himself.

OK but just hear me out because i know what ur all thinking !!! but a close relationship has been established between bonnie and freddy in both the base game AND in the ruin dlc !!!!!! how could he possibly become suspect to these claims !! and to THAT i say... Motive.

now by no means am i implying that there was malice behind my theory of events, i know freddy and bonnie were obviously extremely close before his decommissioning (gay robots hehe..) but id like to draw attention to how much emphasis was placed on bonnie and freddy throughout the game! i have a feeling that this was intentional.

one thing that caught my attention in particular was the fact that there are now confirmed to be 2 glamrock freddys.

at first glance, a second freddy seems to make sense considering that in the majority of the base game endings, freddy ditches the plex alongside gregory. of course they would need to use a second freddy after all that happened in security breach! but even so, this is easily disproven by the fact that all of the animatronics remain in the state gregory left them in, implying that fazbears immediately went out of business after the events of the game.

this implies that there must be another reason for the existence of 2 freddys.. now i KNOW this still seems a little skeptical considering that prototypes arent often used in the final product, but at the same time it does seem like the prototype freddy had been used as the main attraction before, a clue towards this being the gift in his stomach hatch. and anyways, would fazbear entertainment really spend all that cash on a whole other model after creating a functional prototype..?

but regardless of whether or not u think that theres another reason behind the existence of 2 freddys, there was clearly some emphasis on fazbear - like the graffiti along the vents, the intentional prototype print on the bottom of his paw, the focus drawn to him and bonnies relationship.. this along with monty's origin story, which seems to subtly shun freddy throughout, gives me the feeling that there must be more to it than what we initially assumed.

now to shift our focus to the possible motives of bonnies decommissioning.. what if he had been the first target of glitchtraps virus? this would make more sense now that glitchtrap is basically confirmed to have been the mimic all along because of COURSE the mimic would have a rabbit bias if its basing its behaviour off of afton!! and now that bonnies body has been found in bonnie bowl, monty being the aggressor seems to be off the table. sure his aggressive nature initially would place him under suspicion, but this flaw isnt any different to chicas food cravings and roxys perfectionism, i dont think his temperament is anything more than just another flaw displayed to show off the ai's sentience. under this premise, i have a slight suspicion that monty was simply used as a sort of red herring to cover up the truth of what happened.

so what actually happened?

what if while spending time with bonnie in the bowling alley one day, freddy was suddenly presented with the impossible task of facing off against the first victim of the virus. while attempting to fight off the unknown virus, maybe bonnie had begged freddy to put a stop to it for his own sake in order to save his best friend from destruction during the small moments of clarity he experienced while fighting for his own autonomy. the amount of damage on bonnie suggests a struggle, so maybe freddy was forced to obey bonnies request when he realised it was too late for him, grabbing a bowling ball and following through as a very last resort. perhaps this is why a second freddy had to be built, what if the aftermath of losing his best friend by his own hands, as well as the damage he wouldve sustained in the struggle, rendered freddy beyond repair.

BUT of course this is just speculation based off of the hints given to us, so if anyone has any criticism feel free to share! and even if this ends up being disproven, its at least an angsty headcanon i quite enjoy..

[branmuffins22]

for the toh ask game- 2, 8, 12?

from this ask game:

2. Ramble about your favorite character of all time as much as you want. We're listening

Ohhhh boy. Oh man. Oh geez. You play a dangerous game, starting out with the kicker.

The obvious choice would be Luz, right? because she's like, the perfect main character. Lovable, relatable, flawed, believable (mostly; those fireworks were a bit much), clever, emotional, funny, the list goes on.

But.

However.

I have to go with Vee.

To me, Vee is all those things and more. She's still relatable, but for completely different (some unaddressed by canon, some completely made up by me) reasons. She's the cutest sweetest little shapeshifter we actually got the chance to get to know (sorry Stringbean). She's flawed, she'd completely given up on Luz's return and was ready to throw away whatever parts of her life she didn't jive with, and then even after most of a day of hanging out with her, she was STILL kinda mad at her! She's got confusing emotions and she was able to admit it! She's a tortured and traumatized kid who's trying maybe a bit too hard to put it all behind her, and even her more fantastical struggles are made to make perfect sense in that context. She's clever and observant enough to blend in with humans (and even convince Camila she was Luz for a while), and she was instrumental in solving the rebus. She's funny not just in her sense of humor (which is anywhere from awkward to earnest to dry, all hilarious), but also in the dichotomy of being one of the more "normal" "human" characters in the show, despite not really being either of those things (part of a thought-extinct species, and unique even among others of that species. said species is a kind of magic-eating shape-shifting demon from another realm, and here she is in suburban connecticut, idly learning spanish with her friends).

She's my precious baby blorbo and I love her. She's chubby (I'm chubby), she's awkward around her crush (I'm awkward around my crush (and also in general)), she likes to wear warm colors and big boots (I like to wear warm colors and big boots (not that I have any that fit well enough for daily wear)), she's got a bit of an overbite (I had one when I was young), she is (or, I guess, was?) kinda sorta something like a twin (I'm a twin), her hair is poofy and long (at least in her epilogue design) (my hair is poofy and long), augh, she feels basically tailor-made for me. I'm not exaggerating when I say I learned to love certain parts of myself by loving them first in her.

She's perfect.

also. im gonna rant about her even more in the next bit, sorrynotsorry.

8. Any headcanons? If so, which are your favorite?

Soooo many. Like, enough that I'm writing a whole ass barely-even-canon-divergent AU just to give myself the excuse to explore them. Actually, kinda writing two if you count MatVNN, but it's more of a post-canon affair.

Probably my favorite, though, is Vee being trans (and a bunch of other flavors of queer). I'll admit, a lot of the things that make me like Vee so much are just Sorta Plausible Shit I Came Up With, and chief among them is my trans Vee theory.

So, I'll start with the canon stuff:

Vee is rather unique, even among basilisks. Her tail has 3 fins rather than the other basilisks' 1 or 2 fins, her eyes have a different structure (and more individual colors) than the others', and she has a distinct head and neck that the other basilisks don't have. She's also a lot smaller than the other basilisks: about half the size of III and IV, and even smaller compared to the "greater basilisk" which attacked Hexside (we'll call her the Inspector). In the epilogue, Vee's size doesn't appear to have changed much, if at all (hell, even in her human form, she doesn't look much taller), nor have the sizes of III and IV. The only change any of them appear to have gone through is that Vee has more/longer hair, some of which is a lighter cyan than the previous navy blue, which still remains at her roots and on her ears.

Those are the facts. Now, there could be any number of reasons for her unique traits.

The doylist reason is the easiest: she was designed to look smaller and more humanoid to appear to the audience as more sympathetic. Her strange eyes could just be a bit of fun character design, something to make her stand out on screen. No biggie.

The watsonian reasons are a lot more compelling to me though.

She could very well be quite young for a basilisk. Perhaps their eyes change shape and lose some of their color as they grow up. Perhaps the neck becomes less distinct as they get older. Perhaps even after the 3+ year timeskip before the epilogue, Vee was still prepubescent for a basilisk.

Perhaps the various basilisks are representative of different species within the same family (ex. the Inspector is called a "greater basilisk", but the others are just referred to as "basilisks"), and Vee's unique traits are staples of whatever specific species she is (I first came across this theory in A Blight on Bonesborough, by GeminiAlchemist, and they proposed "fat-tailed basilisk" as the name of Vee's species, mostly for the sake of a gag)

One of the more interesting theories is that she's only half basilisk. I wasn't the one to come up with it, but I don't remember who was, so for that I apologize, but basically, there was a theory going around for a little while after her introduction, that Vee was actually the bastard child of one of the other basilisks and Warden Wrath. The biggest point of evidence was the yellow pupils, a trait only shared between Vee and Wrath, as well as the fact that Wrath was clearly involved in the basilisk project, as shown in Vee's flashbacks in Yesterday's Lie. It's not my favorite theory by any means, but it's a super interesting one, very angsty.

My personal theory, however, and the theory on which I base a few of my other Vee headcanons, is that all the myriad differences between Vee and the other basilisks can be explained away by a simple case of sexual dimorphism in the basilisk species. "Number 5" was simply the only "male" basilisk shown on screen.

Now, what's the evidence for this theory? There is none! As with all the best headcanons, there's no real reason it should be true, but there's ALSO no definitive evidence it isn't true.

So, Number 5 escaped the labs, wandered into the Human Realm, took the form of the only human he'd seen, and spent 3 months at summer camp incidentally trying out being a girl. Turns out, she liked it! So when the time came to give Luz back her identity, Vee made her own new form a girl too.

Now, this headcanon comes with some... caveats? Complications? Sprinkles of realism? I like to imagine some extraneous silly little plot points surrounding this.

Gonna mention 'nads & stuff in purple, so skip past it if you're squeamish about people having body parts or whatever.

When Vee took on Luz's form, she didn't really know what was going on under all those clothes, so she improvised, and kept things as close to her basilisk form as possible. It was partly to conserve magic during the shift, and partly just because she couldn't imagine what to put there. This meant she had a dick, and probably a pretty funny-looking one, too, until she came across a human health textbook and got a better picture of what that whole situation is supposed to look like.

Eventually, during an accident with someone in the Cabin 7 crew (probably standard "woops, didnt realize you were changing in here" shenanigans), someone catches her with her pants down, and she accidentally makes them think Luz is trans. A silly little mixup, definitely no consequences in the future, for sure.

After this, Vee ends up learning about pride flags and their meanings, and starts collecting those things like trading cards. She is staggeringly queer. I tend to think of her as bi/pan/demi-rose, genderqueer, genderfluid (usually on a sliding scale between fem and neutral, but outside that range often enough to be noteworthy), and polyam (in theory, anyways, but even by the epilogue she's still only had one partner, Masha. Granted, she's only maybe 18 by then, so she's got a LOT of time left to try things out), but because that's So Many Labels, she tends to simplify down to Queer. Am I projecting? Yeah, a little. Maybe a lot. So what?

Anyways, when Luz comes back and Vee picks out her own human form, she mostly performs a 1-1 translation from her basilisk form to her human form (matching her standing height, size, approximate face shape, etc), and in so doing, takes on a few typically-masculine characteristics (like a mostly-flat, somewhat-wide chest, bodyfat mostly at her belly, and of course, a (normal, human) dick (most of the time, anyways; she is a shapeshifter, and can do whatever she wants forever)), resulting in her rather androgynous appearance. If her human form is gonna be her, it's gonna reflect her truth: she wasn't always a girl, but she is now. In the epilogue, her human form looks a bit more feminine/less androgynous than before (most notably with wider hips), as if she'd been on HRT for long enough to see some changes.

Now, I've also got all manner of general Basilisk Biology Headcanons, such as how shapeshifting works (magic is used to perform transformations, and reverting to their natural form doesn't use any; holding a transformation only burns calories, not magic; transformations are holistic, inside-and-out, with the two exceptions being the brain and whatever organ stores collected magic), how magical hunger works (it doesn't quite exist, they're not vampires, eating/draining magic is just a thing they Can do in order to transform, not a thing they Have to do to live; however, when a basilisk is hungry, it begins burning through its magic to stave off malnutrition, causing them to seek out magically dense food (really just magic in general, kinda maladaptive like humans' sugar cravings)), how mass distribution works when they transform (they retain their weight when they take on new forms, which limits their transformed size by how far they can compress/decompress their mass. this is part of why the Inspector was so hungry; they were near the limits of how far they could compress, and burning through calories like crazy to stay that way), their natural habitat (fins on their tails suggest they're at least semi-aquatic, but the fact that they stayed on the Boiling Isles as they fled from Belos suggests that they're not immune to (and thus not native to) the Boiling Sea, therefore I propose that they were native to lakes, the only bodies of water shown not to be boiling all the time. also they use their shapeshifting to change their bouyancy as they dive for mollusks or whatever), reproduction (internal fertilization, followed by egg laying; they can change their physical sex pretty much at will, because they're shapeshifters, but if it's not their "natural" form, it still consumes magic to get into that form and burns extra calories to hold the form; fertilization and pregnancy tends to go quite poorly if a basilisk changes/reverts to a form that doesn't have the proper equipment for whatever child they're currently bearing), and so on (basilisk eyes are adapted for underwater, leaving them relatively nearsighted unless transformed to be otherwise, and they have a short-term photographic memory to make assembling accurate disguises on the fly easier/possible), but I don't really feel the need to go tooooo into detail with all that >.>

12. What do you consider the most memorable scene? Why?

That's a very tough choice, between the graveyard fight in Thanks to Them (Very intense. Very beautiful, very powerful) and the Lumity dance in Enchanting Grom Fright (Very romantic. Very beautiful, very powerful). They both basically defined the fandom brainrot after their respective releases, and unlike the various season finales, there was little else cutting in to interrupt and distract from them. Just tasty, tasty action, one at the breathtaking height of fluff, and the other in the soul-crushing depths of angst.

A close third, to whichever one of those is only second-best, would be the duel for the portal key in Eclipse Lake (Very dramatic. Very beautiful, very powerful). Another big action scene, who'd'a thunk it, and another angsty one, too.

[bunnyinatree]

Here are my thoughts about Death Note compared to Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment...

It makes sense that people compare Light to Raskolnikov, although they strike me as very different characters. Light wants for nothing and is successful in basically everything he tries. Raskolnikov is intelligent, too, but unlike Light, he is down on his luck financially. While Raskolnikov might be just as capable of success as Light, it is denied him due to his socioeconomic standing.

In addition to his lack of resources, Raskolnikov is worse than Light at hiding his resentment and boredom with life. Especially in the manga, we see that Light has many friends, that he's popular with women, and that most everyone thinks of him as Japan's best and brightest. Conversely, Raskolnikov makes no effort to disguise his disgruntlement, and his only friend (Razumihin) is the one who carries and maintains their relationship, despite Raskolnikov's best efforts to drive him away.

The novel says that Raskolnikov "kept aloof from everyone, went to see no one, and did not welcome anyone who came to see him, and indeed everyone soon gave up" on being his friend (Part I, Chapter IV). This is a far cry from Light's outwardly social attitude, although I think that some people assume that Light is more of a lone wolf like Raskolnikov (specifically the people who wrote Light Turner in the Netflix adaptation of Death Note).

Still, I do see a kernel of similarity between Light and Raskolnikov, and that has to do with their lofty theories about society and criminal justice. Raskolnikov may not have any police chiefs in his family, but he does subscribe to a theory that resembles Kira's ideology: Those who are strong enough to seize what they want and who are charismatic enough to do so can get away with murder. The public may even regard their atrocities as progress and vital for the greater good, as is the case with Napoleon.

This reminds me of a quote from Tolstoy's War and Peace: "[W]ar began, that is, an event took place opposed to human reason and to human nature. Millions of men perpetrated against one another such innumerable crimes, frauds, treacheries, thefts, forgeries, issues of false money, burglaries, incendiarisms, and murders as in whole centuries are not recorded in the annals of all the laws courts of the world, but which those who committed them did not at the time regard as being crimes" (Book XI).

Just as Light develops a god complex and justifies his actions as Kira, Raskolnikov convinces himself that his murder was faultless and that it actually contributed to the greater good, even if it was technically illegal. There's also a shared theme about "might making right," where it's suggested that only time will tell if Kira is just or not. If he wins, then his actions are just; if he loses, then he's the worst murderer of all. Here's a quote from Crime and Punishment that expresses the same sentiment: "But those men [i.e. Napoleon] succeeded and so they were right, and I [Raskolnikov] didn't, and so I had no right to have taken that step [murder]" (Epilogue, II).

Both Light and Raskolnikov start off bored/fatigued by the world around them ("Mere existence had always been too little for him [Raskolnikov]; he had always wanted more" (Epilogue, II)), and both characters experience adverse reactions to their first kills, with manga Light cowering under his bedsheets and not eating for several days. Light, of course, continues murdering people, because he successfully convinces himself that it's the right thing to do, whereas Raskolnikov stops after his first attempt, which takes two lives. I think that if Raskolnikov had a Death Note, if he had possessed the same means as Light, then he would have pushed his theory further and murdered more people. As Porifry Petrovich says to Raskolnikov, "It's as well that you only killed the old woman. If you'd invented another theory you might perhaps have done something a thousand times more hideous" (Part VI, Chapter II).

If we were to assign the role of L to anyone in Crime and Punishment, Porfiry Petrovich is our best bet. He may not be a world-renowned detective, and he doesn't have the same autistic charisma as L (in my opinion), but he does back Raskolnikov into a corner with his disconcertingly accurate theories, and the style of these scenes reminds me of Death Note. Raskolnikov wonders why Porfiry Petrovich is being so frank with him; Porfiry Petrovich admits that he likes Raskolnikov a lot; Rasknolnikov's minute expressions are called into account as evidence that he's hiding something; Porfiry Petrovich has less physical proof against Raskolnikov than he has inner assumptions and gut feelings.

Of course, Raskolnikov stops after his first double murder, and he turns himself into the police. Unlike Death Note, where L dies halfway through, Porfiry Petrovich comes out alive and well, and the story concludes where many Death Note adaptations do, without delving into the second half of the story. For this reason, I don't think that there are any character equivalents of Near, Mikami, Mello, Takada, and the rest of the second half crew.

However, there are a few other parallels to address. Razumihin is a good stand-in for Matsuda. Both characters are chummy with the protagonist and always eager to help him out. I'm not sure that Razumihin shares Matsuda's clumsiness or perceived lack of capableness, but it is true that, like Raskolnikov, Razumihin is down on his luck and currently taking a break from his studies. Like Matsuda, Razumihin is talented and just needs the opportunity to flourish. There's also the parallel of Matsuda being attracted to Sayu (Light's sister) and Razumihin being attracted to Dounia (Raskolnikov's sister).

Honestly, I was hoping there would be a more dramatic betrayal scene when Razumihin learned about Raskolnikov's crime, but Crime and Punishment doesn't seem like that kind of story. While Light gets his just desserts and dies like all of the criminals that he's killed before, surrounded by the people he's hurt and betrayed, Raskolnikov retains his loving family, even after they know the full extent of his guilt, and the epilogue suggests that his life will go on, and he will be surrounded by people who love him—and people he's finally capable of loving back (specifically, Sonia).

Speaking of Sonia, I've heard people say that she is the Misa Amane of Crime and Punishment, but I don't think that's true. Personally, I think that Misa is a combination of Sonia and Svidrigailov. Sonia fits the bill of Misa's childish popularity, because the other characters often disapprove of her life choices but can't help feeling drawn to her. Also, she's positioned as Raskolnikov's love interest. Besides that, though, I don't think the connection is very strong. Light has no respect for Misa and sees her as a liability more than anything, whereas Raskolnikov often feels hateful toward Sonia but is frequently moved to bursts of kindness and generosity. And even though Sonia wants to save Raskolnikov and looks upon him in a religious way, Misa sees Light as a savior, while Sonia sees Raskolnikov as someone to be saved.

I think that Svidrigailov is a much better fit for Misa, because they are both brought into the story thanks to their stalkerish behavior. Misa makes a point of tracking down Light, because she is in love with him, while Svidrigailov shows up at Raskolnikov's apartment without any warning, because he is obsessed with Dounia. His love is directed towards the protagonist's sister, rather than the protagonist himself, but the way that Misa and Svidrigailov approach the objects of their affection is similar: They want to be a slave to their love; they'll do whatever their loved one says; they don't care if they're treated badly because of it.

The way that Raskolnikov treats Svidrigailov is much more similar to the way that Light treats Misa than the way that Raskolnikov treats Sonia is. Raskolnikov wishes that Svidrigailov would go away but recognizes him as a liability who learned his darkest secret without his permission, just as Misa uncovered Light's identity on her own.

Sadly, there are no Shinigami equivalents in Crime and Punishment—at least, none that I can make note of.

Lastly, we have Dounia, Raskolnikov's sister, and Pulcheria Alexandrovna, Raskolnikov's mother, who are parallels to Sayu and Sachiko respectively. There isn't much to say about Pulcheria Alexandrovna and Sachiko, because neither plays a major role in the story—although in my wildest dreams, Sachiko would also turn a blind eye to Light's murderous side and go on loving her son in spite of it. I'd like to think that Sachiko would go further than Pulcheria Alexandrovna and directly assist her son, joining Light's crusade to keep him from getting caught.

The connection between Dounia and Sayu fascinates me, because I see Dounia's storyline as everything that Sayu's could have been, had the creator of Death Note chosen to incorporate her into the main plot. Dostoyevsky makes frequent references to how similar Raskolnikov and Dounia are, in terms of appearance as well as personality. Both of them have an underlying coldness about them, a certain cunning intelligence that makes them unique and attractive to others. While Sayu is kidnapped and used as a pawn in other characters' schemes, Dounia is the final goal of Svidrigailov and gets her own scene involving helplessness and coercion—although Dounia made my day by pulling out a gun and aiming it at Svidrigailov. She did not kill him, but she did graze him with a bullet, and I love the parallel between her and her brother, the insinuation that both of them might be driven to murder under the right circumstances.

Sayu does not do any of this, of course, but I would have loved for her to play a more active role in her story. If she had been given as much intelligence and cunning as Light... If she had possessed more agency and had discovered her brother's secret on her own.... If she had pulled a gun on someone, Matsuda-style... As it stands, she and Dounia are both beloved by the main cast, but Sayu does less to differentiate herself from other little sisters. She's simply part of a generic category that people want to protect, and Dounia, in my opinion, has much more complexity and depth given to her.

Overall, I understand why I've seen more than one post comparing Death Note to Crime and Punishment. And while it's a fun topic to mull over, I don't think there's as direct of a correlation as some posts imply. Light and Raskolnikov are both young intellectuals driven to murder by lofty theories; they each have a mother who burdens them with her high expectations (Sachiko/Pulcheria Alexandrovna); they both have younger sisters with minor romantic subplots involving a friendly guy (Sayu with Matsuda/Dounia with Razumihin); there's a detective in both stories trying to catch a criminal (L/Porfiry Petrovich); and there's an unwelcome stalker with a romantic obsession there to complicate everything (Misa/Svidrigailov).

But Crime and Punishment ends much sooner than Death Note; there are only two deaths the protagonist is responsible for; and Dostoyevsky seems to have loftier themes of mercy and forgiveness to convey than Death Note. It's possible that swapping the two protagonists wouldn't alter the individuals stories much (if Raskolnikov were in Light's shoes and found a Death Note just before graduating high school, and if Light had been living in poverty, barred from higher education, and forced to deal with a disagreeable pawnbroker).

Still, Death Note strikes me as more of an engaging psychological thriller meant to entertain and satisfy with the protagonist's ultimate downfall, while Crime and Punishment feels intentionally religious and much more concerned with morals/messages. I enjoyed reading Crime and Punishment, but I've enjoyed reading/watching Death Note more (even though I appreciate what Dostoyevsky did with Dounia much more than what Ohba and Obata did with Sayu). I would recommend that fans of Death Note give Crime and Punishment a try, if nineteenth century Russian literature sounds at all appealing to you. It's fun to draw parallels between the stories as you go, and even if they're not the same (no story is), they're both entertaining and engaging in their own right.

[areax]

laika bg3 lore dump (BG3 SPOILERS)

keeping with her source material (homebrew campaign) her patron is cthulhu bc i was like oh i love cosmic horror lets get a little funny with it— [discovers that i, erika, was born in lovecraft’s town] ah shit. which fits perfectly into bg3’s story as well because of the. you know. mind flayers. but her backstory is still pretty much the same: she grew up in an isolated village, wanted to learn forbidden magicks, accidentally contacted cthulhu, he was like hey girl hasten my return to this realm and i will give you power beyond imagining also you WILL have to serve me for 1000 years in the dreaming city after you die btw. and she was like yeah i can do that, he did a whole the color out of space thing where everyone in her village was turned to white ash except her… whoopsie.

and then as in her og lore he would give her an assignment every few years to go kill someone whose death would make the world worse on a structural level not just a personal one so like. a noble who would have pushed for reforms, a worker who would have become a union leader, a scholar who would have had a scientific breakthrough and in the mean time laika made the most of her warlock power by searching for a way to defeat death because if there’s one thing she loves it’s weaseling her way out of consequences for her actions and also she wants to live forever.

also in her og lore her patron (and another being just like him) were connected to mind flayers even though the exact nature of that connection was never made clear (like did they create them? do all mind flayers in this universe serve one of these great old ones?) with the implication that this is what laika would eventually become when she serves her 1000 years after death

HOWEVER, in the bg3 canon ive decided that cthulhu is some variation on a highly advanced elder brain from another universe of existence (and not just another plane like the astral plane or hell or something, i mean an entirely different universe that is basically unconnected to the bg3 universe, one that’s outside of our own, but since cthulhu is so powerful in his home universe, he’s able to influence / contact the bg3verse) who wants to take over control of this universe or be born into it and wreck shit or whatever. who knows. he’s a great old one. who knows what he wants. point BEING that he has some kind of meaningful connection to the mind flayers in the bg3verse but the specifics of that ive not decided and may just leave ambiguous (is he the one who first created them aeons ago so that they would evolve into a species like his own and execute the grand design to bring about his own birth in the bg3verse? thats the main theory)

the thing is. how does he communicate with laika. and i think it honestly would be. really funny. if she already had a (mostly dead) parasite in her mind even before she got got by the mind flayers. and they were just like well this ones defective put another in there. so when everyone is freaking out about being infected shes like oh a mind flayer parasite? no problem 👍 this is normal to me. but having another one put in her skull suppresses her connection to her patron enough so that he can’t contact her, but she can still siphon off his power... so initially its in her best interest to KEEP the thing in her head and that adds much more depth to her choices later on of do i accept more of these parasites into me? do i become half-ilithid? do i try to take control of the brain? what will happen if i destroy all the parasites? will that mean that he has control over me again?

which opens up really interesting parallels between her... quest (kind of) and that of the other companions. do i become like my abuser to gain power over him? is what ive done in the name of my god justified? am i responsible for my actions when someone else was forcing my hand? can i give up my power in favor of what i know is right?

this also makes her dynamic w raphael really interesting bc he has like no interest in her soul whatsoever its like buying a shitty used car. this bitch is already sworn to 1000 years of service after she dies, i’ll have to wait that long for her soul? pfft dont waste my time!

ALSO IT MAKES EVERYTHING WITH THE EMPEROR MUCH FUNNIER SHES LIKE I SEE YOU VILLAIN.

[hikari-ni-naritai]

Hello Emily I am unsure if you are watching anime this season but I have a question. I am interested in Frieren but I just watched a show where they suddenly shoehorned a het romance in and it really soured the whole experience. Basically, do you know how het the show is? I really dont wanna be let down again... Also I am curious, any other recommendations?

i am watching. approximately 25 anime this season. its a big one ill fuckin tell ya that. a lot of good stuff. ill be sure to steer away from het stuff for recs tho. anyway frieren, i havent read the manga or anything so i dont know what kind of , if any, romance is in it. but so far there's been none. frieren herself states that elves lack romantic and reproductive urges, so i think its unlikely she'll get any het romance forced on her. she does have positive feelings towards her old adventuring party, but not like romantic ones. though i guess you could READ them as romantic if you wanted? but i dont and see no reason to. anyway frieren is REALLY good so please watch it!!

as for recs, uhhh. lemme fuckin. you would probably prefer female protags right? there's 'im in love with the villainess' of course. that one's been good so far. i've also really enjoyed 'the family circumstances of the irregular witch', which is a comedy about a witch who adopts a human girl. theres a guy whos got a thing for the witch but neither she nor her daughter have any interest in romance. its funny and theyre cute. there's also 'i shall survive using potions!', an isekai about a girl who dies and goes to a fantasy world where she has the power to just. manifest Potions that do whatever. i dont THINK she's shown any romantic inclinations, but she's had to turn down some suitors. either way shes fun and i love her. paragraph break bc this ones getting long

another one that's been pretty good so far is 'vexations of a shut-in vampire princess', about a shut-in vampire princess who suddenly becomes the leader of a vampire army in a world where no one can die. her maid is gay for her but she doesnt seem to have much interest. but at the same time no interest in men either so. its good, its got vampires in it and violence. ive also been enjoying 'tearmoon empire', which is about a really shitty awful princess who gets guillotined and wakes up several years in the past with a bloodstained journal she carries with her everywhere now detailing the events of the future. she's trying to make sure they dont revolt and kill her, which has the incidental effect of fixing the problems in the empire. this one will probably turn het though, she's definitely straight but shes primarily interacting with boys for her own not-getting-murdered purposes. but yaknow.

one last one ive been watching is 'let me check the walkthrough first', an isekai about a girl who ends up in a game world with a spoiled rich girl she used to tutor. i like it but i would say it is an EXTREMELY acquired taste, most of it is like. rwby-type cgi. this is something that doesnt bother me, but i know it would bother a lot of people.

i would love to rec my actual favorites but they've got male protags and unnecessary fanservice. no romance, the protags are like. functionally ace, but yaknow. those would be eminence in shadow and dead mount death play, both in s2 this season. theres a lot of other good stuff too, but like. not about girls. i kind of understand in theory why people only watch stuff about girls but its not a restriction i could ever place on myself. anyway i hope you like frieren!!! and if you choose to check out any of the other stuff ive mentioned, i hope you like them as well! <3

[littlest-bugz]

current hyperfixation? (feel free to infodump!!)

YIPPEEE!!! This made my day FR!! Thank you, mutual <3

ANYWAYS

This is kind of embarrassing, but I’ve been deeply invested by my own OCverse for going on 8 years now. Its my Special Interest, which sucks because,,, im the only one who can make content of these stinkies,,,,,

I really find it hard to hyperfixate on anything else because of the fact Ive been invested for so long (except for Web Design and coding, which I wont infodump about, since its literally all for these stories, deadass).

It is not fun at times because 1) all the characters live rent free in my head and criticize how I write them in my novels [that DID life] and 2) its SO hard to make new projects and get attached to them. Ive been trying for 2 years to make a horror project out of one concept but I seriously cant get fully invested and it SUCKS. Let me make my silly little horror web series damnit!!!!! (@ my brain)

I have 3 novels and one fantasy series im working on so,,,, Infodump time >:3c

TWs: Terminal Illness + brief mentions of (mental institute) hospitalization, murder, war, and some others that I’m not 110% sure the exact tags for them (basically kind of cannibalism, but between nonhuman species). Other than terminal illness, they’re super brief mentions, but still proceed with caution.

Right now, I’m working on one of the books I’ve been writing for nearly my whole time writing. Ive been only working on it since feb 1st (it’s, like, the THIRD draft tho).

Blurb about book

Melissa is a bassist in a rock band she formed with her high school friends. Just as her, and her friends’, career begins takes off, she gets diagnosed with a terminal illness. With a month left to live, and a shit ton of unfinished business, she invokes her best friend’s patron deity who is capable of miracles, Flip. Melissa and Flip make a pact to keep her alive until her business is over, but oh no! Melissa has caught the eyes of another god, and a pretty shitty one at that. How is she going to make her last months peaceful if she’s being hunted down by a god?

The working title is called “Ensuring Your Spot In Hell” because Flip is, essentially, a demon in the universe (rules an infernal ring of hell- it means I would have to explain the worldbuilding around hell and its A LOT), but titles are!!! So hard for me!!!

A list of random facts about the book™️ because I don’t want to write full paragraphs bc I can go on forever if u ask me to:

Flip’s name is a shortened version of his actual name, Fli’pyek. Furthermore, the domain Flip rules over is that of Wrath and Violence

Trinity (Melissa’s childhood bestie, and the friend that worship’s Flip) is a hereditary witch and pagan. Her family has been worshipping Flip and practicing witchcraft for several generations! They literally have their own holy book (generational BoS/Grimoire/whatever u want to call it).

Melissa had been sick with the disease™️ since she was 16. She just neglected the shit out of her own health (me too bestie, me too). It easily could have been prevented if she went to the doctor back when she was, at least, 18 years old, max 24.

At the time Melissa is diagnosed with her terminal illness, she’s 26. By the time she was supposed to die, she would’ve been freshly 27. Has anyone heard of the 27 club theory before? Or is it just an obscure reference I made LMAO

Melissa has extended biological family that worships Flip! It gets super awkward when Melissa visits them with Flip lol

The other primordial god that Melissa finds herself in a predicament with is named Ama, the god of Cruelty and Torture. Not a swell guy to get mixed up with, that’s for sure!

Melissa has an orange and white cat named Cheddar!

Flip always smells like whiskey and freshly cut tobacco. At all times. It’s bc his blood smells like it (and tastes like it too, but why are you tasting it? /j)

Any other facts might be getting into spoiler territory, BUT!! Thats the one Im working on rn, in February. In January I worked on another book, but that one honest to gods might be too triggering for this acc for an indepth thingy like the book I just did. It’s being rewritten to not be so triggering, but bc it’s a throw up of some of our trauma, it’s not an easy task to censor it.

REGARDLESS, Here’s a rundown of ALL of my main novels (minus the one I already talked about)

The Case of Twin Woods [mystery, drama, crime] (the one i worked on January)

Chastity hates her life. She hates her shitty job, she hates her shitty friends, and she hates her shitty family. After opening up too much to an online friend about her chronic suicidality, Chastity gets taken to Twin Woods Mental Institute, the state’s mental institution. There she befriends an eccentric group of patients, then finding out something terrible might be going on with the head warden, Leon Bellamy. She takes it upon herself to find out and solve the mystery, but she may have bitten off more than she can chew.

Untitled One (but leaning towards the name of ‘Jealousy’ or somethin idk) [drama, romance, crime]

Mia has a quiet life. She works at a library, she fosters cats, and by all means, has what could be considered a ‘boring life’. One day, she gets laid off from her job under the excuse of “cutting costs”, leaving her without a job and severance. While scrambling for a job, she finds one at a local cafe, the most frequented one in the city. There she befriends one of the regulars, a cold, quiet man named Zander, and after she unknowingly helps Zander’s brother, she becomes significantly closer to him. However, her boss, a bitter ex of Zander’s, hears about their ensuing closeness and decides she doesn’t like what’s going on. One failed dinner party and murder attempt later, Mia is left scrambling to hide that she killed Angelina in self defense. Will she be successful in hiding the murder? Or will the justice system make quick work of her?

Untitled Fantasy Series (has about 2 actual novels and 3 novellas… a possible third novel too) [drama, romance]

book one

Since his birth, King Sunshine has known his fate. He is to be sacrificed for the greater good of the realm he resides, killing his oppressive father, but losing his life in the process. It’s a prophecy that has been laid out since the beginning of Racktokian history, one King Sunshine was never able to escape due to his father’s unspoken rage at his own murder. After meeting a Vurtock for the first time, a species his father only used as cattle, Sunshine finds himself quickly entangled in a plot to overthrow his own father to liberate the Vurtockian race. He knows what he has to do, but it isn’t easy.

book two

The great war tore apart the country King Sunshine called home. His father left no stone unturned from his rage, and public opinions split the people. In the rubble of his home, he builds a new country founded on the importance of the civilians, only to be elected as a King in place of his father. Living in the palace he always called home, but had tried to escape, he finds that his father keeps sending assassins to make attempts on his life. One assassin, a vurtock with nothing to lose, hits a soft spot in Sunshines heart. After deescalating the attempt on his life, he offers the vurtock to stay in his castle until they’re able to find the proper resources to help him build a life in the new country. Far away from the oppressive dictatorship of his father. Yet, as his guest begins to stay for longer than intended, he sees that yet another step in the prophecy will begin.

Despite how the second book blurb is written, it’s more from the vurtock’s point of view than Sunshine’s. I just had a total brain fart.

The novellas for the fantasy book follow the POV of other important characters, such as the ruler of the Vurtockian rebellion, the POV of other rulers. For a while I wanted to write one from Raphaël’s POV, but I decided it wouldn’t be worth writing a whole book about a piece of shit finding joy in the pain he causes. Like, no thanks, ill pass.

Theres a possible 3rd book that would essentially be an extended epilogue, since the prophecy doesn’t stop at Sunshine’s death. I just haven’t thought as far as the 2 books and 3 novellas, in terms of outlining the books and stuff.

I honestly could give TONS more info on the fantasy books because that part of my universe has been around nearly the whole time Ive been writing. I have maps of the world, maps of countries, maps of even just cities, house and castle layouts, moodboards, art. Visual references galore. Not to mention the playlists for each character + each book. I also made a document called “The Remian Bible” because it has everything about the world in it, including the alphabets of the languages, grammar structures for said languages and literally 5 holy books for the religions even tho they wont evEN BE TALKED ABOUT IN ENOUGH DEPTH (why did i do that to myself /lh j/. It doesn’t help that I still want the write the holy books in their native languages… oo,,, and imagine writing the actual novels in the native languages,,,,). It’s honestly kind of,,, surreal how much time Ive put into this world 🧍 Like??? Damn,,,,

BUT YEAH!!! Those are all the books that take place in my ocverse + some other info!!! The things that are my hyperfixation,,,, My own books and world LMAO— The books don’t include half of the ocs in my ocverse tho, so thats where the website im coding comes in. It’ll have short stories based on the backstories of various characters on it, and Yes, even the background characters will be on it bc Im fucking bonkers and fleshed them out, even though some of them are in one scene for 2 minutes.

That being said, if anyone, or u mutual (if u read this wall of text), found any of this interesting, or wants to read even just the prologue of any of these, DM me!! I’m always looking for beta readers!! Or people to talk to about it too, that’d be fantastic. I really need beta readers, so seriously. DM me if u want to read my cringey stories!! I can give better in depth tws too!!!

EDIT: I need to mention that I go through spurts of hyperfixating on only one book or series. Thats why its both my hyper fixation AND my Special Interest

[retrievaldivision]

comparing how we've seen dispatch operate in manga canon to the BITE model for cult identification <3

putting this all under a readmore for thorough discussions of cults and suicide . heres my meta everyone

so basically. imho dispatch operates like a cult and will grelle ron and othello need to dip asap and ut had the right idea for leaving. this is basically evidence for my theory that at some point its going to get revealed that the "higher ups" are uhhhh. fucked up actually and the squad is getting emotionally manipulated. alright lets get to it

starting off w behavioral control letsgo

"promote dependence and obedience"

-so the big thing that signifies this in canon for me is the fact that . as sascha talked about in ch 105 (#brainwashedgirlqueen) the reapers are dependent on dispatch and the higher ups for forgiveness of their sin. if they dont play by their rules theyre not getting out of punishment purgatory

"modify behavior with rewards and punishment"

-remember when grelle was gone for an arc and then came back in campania and was like haha yeah ive been on suspension . i mean. there it is. theres definitely an argument to be made here about the fact that grelle was killing random ppl and like yeah definitely wld call for uhhh not being in public However-- why i kept this in was bc like . yeah she was being suspended for doing some mass murder etc-- but she was also being suspended bc she fully left dispatch during that time. like she was off with angelina pretending to be her butler not @ hq literally in disguise and thats why will had to come get her ass in the first place. which i think should be pointed out here

"dictate where and with whom you live"

-keeping this on here tentatively bc we dont know specifics but like. HQ. i think its important to point out that they all have this building where theyre all supposed to be

"control clothing and hairstyle"

-the suit uniform swag period.

"restrict leisure time and activities"

-again pointing out saschas monologue. the part where she points out theyre all supposed to be "worked to the bone".

-in the extended version of the BITE model they also talk about weaponizing keeping a cult member busy thru tasks bc if they are so pre occupied with tasks it leaves them w less time to question whats going on and . Yeah .

moving on to informational control

"deliberately withhold and distort information"

-pointing out how in campania ron and grelle had no fucking clue who undertaker was even tho he was supposed to have been a Huge Deal while he was at dispatch. why werent ron and grelle privy to this info why did they have to hear it from ut himself . unless ur deliberately withholding shit it makes no sense as to why they shldnt know abt the guy who destroyed half of HQ even if it happened before their time

"forbid you from speaking with ex members and critics"

-this is in purple and only half credited bc the strongest example i can think is from tmbd and not the manga but i still do want to bring it up (and i think is worth mentioning bc yana did draw those bitches into the manga when talking abt deserters so) but the whole. will monologue in tmbd where hes like yeah ur name will be stricken from the records . its a little uh. yeah its coded

"divide information into insider vs outsider doctrine"

-yeah so remember when the fight was about to happen in campania and grelle was like this is shinigami business stay out of it outsider to sebastian. like literally called him an outsider. its the vocabulary.

"encourage others to spy and report on others' 'misconduct'"

-for this i am citing the entirety of management div and the fact that its a thing. it can def be argued that management is also there to intervene during like very fucked situations where just retrieval div cant handle it as we've seen will do. but also like. it does seem esp w ripper arc that management div is there to narc on ppl for not following rules etc.

-Also for this one wanted to point out that in the extended BITE model they talk abt using buddy systems so like. u arent truly alone there is always someone who can rat on u . and how thru most of the arcs w reapers present theyve been in groups of two (ron and will in circus, ron and grelle in campania, sascha and ludger in green witch, othello and grelle during the whole ut standoff). again this can also be argued that theyre there for helping purposes in terms of fights But Also. its a little coded u guys imho

moving onto thought control

"instill black vs white, us vs them & good vs evil thinking"

-going to be talking abt this again for the second point but the way that specific language is used to moralize what the higher ups r asking the reapers to do. the way that the reapers describe what theyre doing as "collecting" souls whereas demons "hunt" souls even tho they are both. Taking Someones Soul. the fact that this paints their actions in a morally better light even tho it is the same action

-also wanted to point out a moment in the training ova even tho its not manga canon bc it is worth mentioning imo. will's whole monologue when hes getting his glasses where hes like. going to be "protecting" ppls souls and all of this stuff. and that these r Glasses Of Life. all of this pure morality and saviorism the reapers are being taught to attribute to them being in dispatch. Yeah.

"use loaded language and cliches to stop complex thought"

-thinking abt the v specific terms both will (current member of dispatch) and ut (ex member of dispatch) use to describe demons when they call them "vermin" like it is the Exact Same Word that they use. its again the repeated vocabulary to other and condemn demons even though they are Both Entities Who Take Ppls Souls Away. its . hmmmm. why does this not apply to u guys.

last one!

"install irrational fears (phobias) of questioning or leaving the group"

-based on the 105 info, if u leave dispatch, u r never going to be forgiven from ur "sin." even though. we've never seen this "forgiveness" ever actually happen and none of the reapers have ever indicated that anybody they know has ever actually been forgiven. its the irrational fear of not being forgiven even though attaining forgiveness has not, as we seen, been proven to actually be a real thing

"label some emotions as evil, worldly, sinful, or wrong"

-wld like to briefly point out wills monologue to ron in circus abt how having empathy is like not something that should be done

-also the whole . again with the 105 drop. the fact that dispatch is labelling having mental illness as A Sin. lol

"promote feelings of guilt, shame, and unworthiness"

-again going off of 105 . the whole reason they are there and working for the higher ups is bc they have killed themselves and feel the need to get forgiven for it. The Entire Model Of Dispatch Runs On Guilt

"shun you if you disobey or disbelieve"

-circling back to previous points made abt ut being a big deal and ron and grelle only finding out abt him when he literally spelled it out for them . like he was. all info of him was gone that wasnt firsthand witnessed once he deserted. also rons whole moment in campania i believe while hes talking to ryan where hes like i have no respect for ppl who meddle w death. and dispatch has rules against meddling w death.... hmm...

"teach that there is no happiness or peace outside the group"

-bringing up 105 again. there is no forgiveness outside of dispatch that is why they are still there this is the only way they can get forgiveness and presumably peace bc theyve righted their "sin"

in conclusion, the higher ups are fucked up and will grelle ron and othello are getting played <3 i do think this is going to be blatantly revealed at some point like. with everything ive talked about in this post . i do think there is foreshadowing directly pointing to this idea. and i think there will be a moment where will ron grelle and othello realize this . thanks for coming everyone

[wilted-woman]

music time

ha. you fool. do you know what you’ve done.

comparing turnabout sisters’ ballad, turnabout sisters’ theme (maya’s theme) and with pearly (pearl’s theme) - this does get technical btw you have been warned:

These three tracks all build off the same basic melodic line, with variations in tempo, key, chord structure, and rhythm in order to evoke completely different feelings. I’m calling Maya’s theme (also sometimes called Turnabout Sisters’ Theme) the base melody, since it’s the one we hear first. Maya’s theme is interesting: even though it’s written in F minor, the composer is able to keep it feeling happy by centering the melodic line around Ab (the relative major), and having it at an up-tempo andante (a quick walking pace). Ending the line on a i6 rather than a i helps to soften the minor as well: by inverting the chord, we’re working with two major intervals (a third and a fourth) rather than a minor and then major third. (it feels more major because it’s made of major intervals - deceptive).

*i wrote the inversion wrong in m2, it should be vii6/4 not 6/5 i just don’t wanna rewrite it

This image of the first line shows where the main melody ends, and the fill comes in to keep the momentum going. I’ve also marked how the melody makes Ab feel like the tonal center, even though the tonic is actually F. That first point about the fill is important, because it’s one of the biggest differences between Maya’s theme and Ballad of Turnabout Sisters. 

Ballad of Turnabout Sisters has a much sadder, but just as sweet, tone to it. It’s slowed down to an adagio, and the key is lowered to A minor (with the melody still centered around the relative major - keeping that bittersweet feeling and the connection to Maya’s theme). 

When we look at the sheet music, a few more differences pop out immediately. For one, it’s a whole lot emptier. Instead of the full chords we had with Maya’s theme, this ballad has been stripped down to melody and bass line. We also don’t have those fills in between the melodic phrases to hurry the piece along, making it feel a lot more still. The lengthened pickup and the repeated note in measure 2 strengthen this effect, making you really wait for that resolution. And when you get it, we aren’t in major-interval-land like we were in Maya’s theme. That i chord is now in root position, and is missing its major third, so all we have is a minor interval, making the whole thing sound a lot sadder.

With Pearly probably has the most changes out of all three.

The biggest one by far is the time signature: we are now counting in three instead of two, making the whole thing sound more bouncy and fun. It’s also been taken faster (this sheet music didn’t have a specific marking but it feels like vivace - lively and brisk) and raised up, not to D minor, but to F major. Again, it’s a softer major (note the vii to IV in measure 2 instead of your usual V to I), but it’s major nonetheless, scrubbing basically all melancholy from the melody. The amount of space between the melody and bassline also makes it feel all the more brighter compared to even Maya’s theme, which is about a sixth lower. All-in-all, this is very nine-year-old.

The way this melody-and-variations connects Mia, Maya and Pearl, while also encapsulating a myriad of different moods is really clever, and honestly so much better than writing individual themes from scratch. It conveys a sense of family incredibly well: same, but different.

ALSO on a slightly different note i was inspired by this to write. all this

go check it out even if you’re not a theory buff it’s really cool trust me. it also gives you like. a more wholistic appreciation for all the soundtracks rather than this super-niche deep-dive i wrote